Earlier today, romantic connections between Democratic lawmaker Barney Frank and Fannie Mae executives¹
were detailed in the media. During the 1990’s, Frank - who is openly gay - had romantic relationships with key Fannie Mae executives during his tenure on the House banking committee.

Frank often explored Fannie; and in public, Frank maintained that Fannie Mae was a firm and robust organization. Supporters of Fannie were known to be generous givers to Frank, who always had an eager hand out for their contributions. While speculation at the time was rampant over Frank’s motivations for his joining with Rep Joe Kennedy to soften Fannie Mae’s stance on home-mortgage rules, the thought of a personal liaison seems not to have arisen.

We attempted to reach-around Capitol Hill for comments on the matter, but those inquiries remained unsatisfied.

This:

With this:

Notice the top one had to be smuggled out of the country after filmed on a cell phone camera and the second, filmed by NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker, was done with a RED camera. Yeah, the US is such a dictatorial, evil, repressive nation.

One more below the fold.

Read More →

If you listen closely, you can hear a lot of the “hell no” rhetoric starting to shift to “maybe we should vote for a plan.”

Even Tom Coburn has now said he would vote for the plan.

Why? Because while the conservatives on the Hill have been listening to people like me and you who are opposed to the plan, they are starting to hear from the front lines — the people who are already seeing that there is problem.

As I said the other day, I don’t support the plan, but I don’t begrudge those who do because it is very clear that something serious is happening out there that a lot of us in Macon, GA and Scranton, PA and Alameda, CA don’t quite see yet.

The White House and others are starting to circulate quotes tying Main Street to Wall Street. Whether you are like me and not so inclined to support this plan, or not, these are people who deserve to be heard.

Here’s a sampling:

Read More →

I don’t know how much play it will get, but hopefully a good bit.

This is your must read of the day.

The media will not report on Barack Obama’ ACORN ties.

The relevant question for all of this, however, is this: Did Barack Obama, as a voter registration organizer for ACORN, participate in or encourage voter fraud?

I suspect that he did. I’m told that Illinois and Missouri voter registration problems have Obama’s finger prints on them from his time with ACORN. It would not surprise me in the least.

But will the truth come out on this?

“That was the biggest point loss in American history, although percentage wide it wasn’t even in the top ten.”

— Megan Kelly, Fox News, September 30, 2008.

CNN is in overdrive blaming the Republicans for killing the bailout. This morning they ran a story headlined “The Death of the American Dream” about how angry the public is and how the bailout would have helped people, even though people are so angry and blaming Wall Street the people did not want the bailout.

In any event, consider these numbers:

Number of additional votes needed to pass the bailout: 12

Number of Democrats on Barney Frank’s committee who voted no: 12

Number of Democrats total who voted no on the plan: 95

Had Frank been able to control his committee or Pelosi the Democrats or had Barack Obama bothered to pick up the phone to support the plan he favored, it would have passed.

Aides to Mr. Obama said he had not directly reached out to try to sway any House Democrats who opposed the measure.

SOURCE

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Because we all could use some humor tonight, here’s a fact about Coca-Cola I bet you didn’t know. From its Wikipedia entry:

Coca-Cola’s advertising has had a significant impact on your mom

Leon Wolf denies all responsibility for adding that to the entry.

The definitive answer, at least for my three year old, is found here.

1. The media today is trumpeting the fact that today the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by more points than on any other day in history. This caught my attention not because of the number, but because usually the media also gives us the percentage drop. Today they did not — caught up instead in the number. Peter Robinson notes the drop was only 7% in value as opposed to the 22% drop in 1987.

2. I’m a bit gobsmacked that conservative pundits who supported the bailout are attacking members of Congress for listening to their constituents. Amazing how representative democracy worked well today and that’s not good enough for some people. Truth be told, the public could very well be wrong, but members of Congress, like on the immigration bill, listened and voted accordingly.

3. Does it really hurt Republicans that the media is blaming the GOP for killing something the public did not want anyway?

4. Those of us who opposed the bill may actually have shot ourselves in the foot. Now Nancy and the Dems could very well pass a bill far to the left of the compromised Paulson plan by rallying some of those Democrats to the plan who refused to vote for today’s plan. The President, naturally, will sign it.

5. Not that we need reminding the media is out to get conservatives, but it is amazing they are so willing to blame the GOP for this when all the evidence shows Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats could have passed the plan if they wanted. And how is it that the 60+ 133 Republicans who voted no are unpatriotic, but the 95 Democrats who voted against it are not? Or maybe everyone just realizes the 95 Democrats hate America.

6. I updated 5. I had the number of Republicans wrong. I was looking at the “for” as opposed to the “noes” as the Congress spells the negative vote.

7. Notice the legislation was not entitled the “Wall Street Bailout Act of 2008.” instead, the legislation was titled, ” A Bill To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers, and for other purposes.” That’s spin for you.

On MSNBC earlier, Bill Burton, Barack Obama’s spin master said

I mean on saturday night when the negotiators were all getting together, [McCain] wasn’t making phone calls and doing the work. He was actually out at one of the finest restaurants in Washington, D.C., on a double date with his wife. I think Joe Lieberman was there with their wives. I understand they had a great meal. It was a great restaurant. What we need to do is put the rubber to the road here. Get on the phone, get the leaders together, and get the votes that we need. And when his campaign said they brought the House Republicans to the table and had gotten the votes, they actually didn’t. Two-thirds of House Republicans voted against this today. That’s not the sort of leadership we need. We need somebody in the White House right now who can actually bring the people together to get things done.

Got that? McCain and his wife were out to eat Saturday night with Joe Lieberman and his wife, instead of making sure the GOP had enough votes to pass the bailout plan. Got it?

Good.

What was Obama doing?

He was at a political rally then off, in his own words, to worry about his dry cleaning.

“It’s just trickling down a little bit here. That’s O.K. I’m going to have to get my dry cleaning going too.”

Maybe had Obama been more engaged, the 95 Democrats in the House who voted against the plan would have passed it.

How is it McCain’s fault? Seriously . . . Obama was staying in a luxury hotel, campaigning, and getting his dry cleaning done instead of working to get the Democrat votes necessary to pass the plan.

95 Democrats voted against Barack Obama’s position and it is John McCain’s fault?

I guess that is heavy starch we can believe in.

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

(SOURCE)

Totally agree Josh. She has really helped the media create a “conservatives don’t like her” narrative against Palin. It is not helpful.

Things have turned negative in OH-15, the battle of Steve Stivers, an Iraq war veteran, against socialist Mary Jo Kilroy, running as a Democrat.

Kilroy attacked Stivers for once working as a lobbyist for Bank One. Stivers responded that Kilroy ran a socialist newspaper. The Kilroy campaign shot back, claiming that Kilroy won an award for “excellent journalism” and that Stivers is lying about Kilroy’s time at the Free Press, the socialist newspaper Kilroy worked at.

But, ladies and gentlemen, I have found something far more damning about Mary Jo Kilroy.

Not only did Mary Jo Kilroy actively run the far left Free Press newspaper, she participated in a French socialist documentary sympathetically chronicling the struggle of the far left in America.

The documentary, “Sentimental Journey: America’s Dissidents”, by Noel Burch, “tells of Burch’s return to America and of meeting up with former leftist companions.“

Who is among those “former leftist companions”? Mary Jo Kilroy.

Below is opening video of the documentary. Kilroy is seen on film talking about the Free Press wanting to expand socialist debate to get “real change in this country. And we do this with the Free Press, which is one of the few alternatives from the sixties and seventies still in existence.” Kilroy admits the socialists are propagandizing via cable television and electoral politics. The director of the film describes Kilroy as living in “the belly of the beast,” i.e. America.

In the film, as well, we see Kilroy sharing office space with the American Indian Movement and the Socialist Democratic Party.

That’s the electoral choice in OH-15: An unrepentant socialist propagandizer versus an Iraq war veteran.

John Gard, running against the nut Steve Kagan in Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District, is the first candidate, to my knowledge, to go on offense against the bailout:

You can send him a few bucks here.

H/t to Mason Conservative.

People vastly smarter than me say that the Paulson bailout plan is a necessity to prevent a market meltdown.

I trust these people.

But I also know that people smarter than me got us into this mess and the Democrats will not allow us out of this mess without creating another mess of some sort down the road.

I have no bone to pick with those who support this plan. I understand and go into this with eyes wide open that doing nothing may have short term catastrophic effects on the market.

I also know that if we do the plan, we may be in a recession for a decade.

Friends, forests grow again after a forest fire. Markets grow again after a crash. Neither will grow and neither will thrive when suffocated. The Democrats, should this plan pass or not pass, will suffocate the market.

I cannot fault those who support this plan because some do it to mitigate Republican losses — they think doing nothing will make the situation so bad that the GOP will be swept so far out to sea there won’t be enough to stop a President Obama. Some do it because they think the repercussions would otherwise be disastrous for the economy.

The Left wants this deal to not pass because they think a total collapse can finally bring about the socialist revolution they crave.

I don’t think that will happen. I do think it will reward bad behavior. I also think, looking at polling right now, it will be President Obama’s Treasury Secretary dealing with this and I do not trust the decisions that person, whoever it might be, will make.

So I cannot support the plan, but do not fault those of you who support it. It may very well be necessary. I just do not think so. And I think we will spend years reaping rotten fruit because of it.

A reprint of AChance’s comment:

Unlike most here and elsewhere in the Country, I actually know Sarah Palin. I sat in Monday morning commissioner’s staff meetings with her when she was on the AOGCC, I’ve chatted with her from time to time, and I see her dealing with the press here all the time. Usually, she is quite voluable, even chatty. My only criticism is that she is sometimes too colloquial, but that may just be my own predjudice.

I think the reason she appears so tense and tentative at times is not that she doesn’t have her own answer; leadership level Alaskans have to be pretty well versed in national and international affairs since our lives are dictated in DC, NY, London, and Riyadh more than in Juneau and Anchorage - most of us even have cable TV and computers. Rather, I don’t think that she’s confident of the McCain Campaign’s answers, the briefing books must be thousands of pages, and is worried about committing McCain to something. This is the downside of the very tight control that is clearly being exercised over her.

She needs to be cut lose to say, “I haven’t discussed this with the Senator, so I’m not speaking for him, but my opinion is …” Nothing says they have to have the same position on everything, e.g., ANWR. So, long as she doesn’t say something abysmally stupid, and I’m confident she won’t, she’ll be fine and McCain can step in and say what his position is if it is different.

This one really came across as crass tonight.

McCain points out the bracelet he has from the parent of a fallen soldier. Obama, naturally, has to point out that he has one too.

Only Obama can’t remember any details. I’m reminded of President George H. W. Bush looking at his watch in the 1992 debate. Obama had to look down at the bracelet to remember the details.

How pathetic and how pitiful a way to remember the fallen.

Jim Geraghty has more thoughts on the matter.