A bit of a round-up for now.
On the VP debate:
From Ace of Spades:
From Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler:
Isn’t the Word “Moderate” Somehow Linked to the Title “Moderator?”
From Arrgghhh!!!:
Debates Don’t Always Reveal Character
Should Congress Be ‘Perp-Walked’?
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, September 30, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Justice: A federal grand jury in New York is probing the accounting shenanigans at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It’s about time, and we hope it doesn’t end there.
Remember the early 2000s, when companies such as WorldCom, Enron, Tyco and Xerox suddenly and spectacularly were revealed to have been cooking their books?
Remember the glee expressed by Washington politicians, especially Democrats, as they watched CEOs and their underlings get perp-walked out of their buildings and into federal custody?
Enron became the poster child for corporate misdeeds. In the accounting crisis of 2002, CEO Ken Lay was one of the most loathed human beings on Earth. And no, that’s not an exaggeration.
we now have an opportunity, thanks to the New York grand jury, to probe perhaps the greatest financial crime ever — one that dwarfs Enron in size and scope.
Fannie’s and Freddie’s top executives, almost all with deep ties to the Democratic Party? Did they get perp-walked to prison like WorldCom’s Bernie Ebbers, Tyco’s Dennis Koslowski, Adelphia’s John Rigas, ImClone’s Sam Waksal, or any of the others who did time for corporate misdeeds in the early 2000s?
No. Jim Johnson, former Walter Mondale aide, became head of Barack Obama’s vice presidential search committee. Franklin Raines, who headed Fannie from 1998 to 2004, the years of its worst excesses, pocketed nearly $100 million in pay and bonuses from Fannie. He, too, became an adviser to Obama.
Other Fannie-Freddie alumni did equally well. Rep. Rahm Emanuel has been front and center in crafting a new rescue bill. Ex-Clinton Justice official Jamie Gorelick careens from career catastrophe to catastrophe, and still gets top jobs. It pays to have ties.
Meanwhile, as previously documented, Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd repeatedly thwarted reforms. Yet today they stand front-and-center as Democrats try to “fix” a problem they created.
As such, any investigation into Fannie and Freddie must include Congress, both current and past.
There’s lots of evidence that the two mortgage giants had become little more than taxpayer-guaranteed front companies for Democrats, who used them to reward supporters with cheap loans and to provide jobs for out-of-work politicians.
