Sunday, October 19, 2008

Palin and Supporters in Ohio/McCain and Freddie & Fannie

The following is a quote from an article in the Washinton Post about quotes obtained from Palin supporters at a rally in St Clairsville, Ohio:

  "From an older white woman: "I'm afraid if he wins, the black [sic] will take over. He's not a Christian. This is a Christian nation! What is our country gonna end up like?"

An older white man: "When you got a Negro running for president, you need a first-stringer. He's definitely a second-stringer."

A young white man holding a child: "He seems like a sheep -- or a wolf in sheep's clothing to be honest with you. And I believe Palin -- she's filled with the Holy Spirit, and I believe she's gonna bring honesty and integrity to the White House."

An older white man: "He's related to a known terrorist, for one."

An older white man: "He is friends with a terrorist of this country!"

An older white man: "He must support terrorists! You know, uh, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. And that to me is Obama."

A young white woman: "Just the whole, Muslim thing, and everything, and everybody's still kinda -- a lot of people have forgotten about 9/11, but . . . I dunno, it's just kinda . . . a little unnerving."

A white woman: "Obama and his wife, I'm concerned that they could be anti-white. That he might hide that."

An older white woman: "I don't like the fact that he thinks us white people are trash . . . because we're not!"Colbert I. King - A Rage No One Should Be Stoking


McCain frequently claims that he supported a couple of years ago legislation that would have increased regulatory oversight of Fannie and Freddie.  This is a link to an interesting article that points out that he did not sign on as a sponsor until a Republican lobbying firm had all but killed the bill on behalf of Freddie.AP IMPACT: Mortgage firm arranged stealth campaign: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance See also the analysis by Politifact on McCain's claims:PolitiFact | Ringing an alarm, not averting a crisis  There have been several articles written about McCain's campaign manager and other members of his staff having been hired by either Fannie or Freddie, or a lobbying organization controlled by them, to prevent legislation restricting or controlling their activities. Freddie Mac Money Trail Catches Up With McCain | Newsweek Periscope | Newsweek.comMcCain Aide’s Firm Was Paid by Freddie Mac Through August - NYTimes.comStumper : McCain's Boomerang ProblemThe Washington Monthly  Most of McCain's closest advisors were at one time lobbyists for Fannie or Freddie.   

There was an attempt by McCain to link Obama with Franklin Raines based on a blurb that appeared in a Washington Post article and this was the Post's response to the ad: 


 "An already nasty presidential election campaign is getting nastier. The meltdown on Wall Street has touched off frantic attempts by both the McCain and Obama camps to secure political advantage and indulge in guilt by association. Over the past 24 hours, both campaigns have issued what are, in effect, video news releases attempting to show that the other side's "advisers" are somehow responsible for the crisis. The latest McCain attack is particularly dubious.

THE FACTS

The McCain video attempts to link Obama to Franklin D. Raines, the former chief executive of the bankrupt mortgage giant, Fannie Mae. It then shows a photograph of an elderly female taxpayer who has supposedly been "stuck with the bill" as a result of the "extensive financial fraud" at Fannie Mae....

So what evidence does the McCain campaign have for the supposed Obama-Raines connection? It is pretty flimsy, but it is not made up completely out of whole cloth. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers points to three items in the Washington Post in July and August. It turns out that the three items (including an editorial) all rely on the same single conversation, between Raines and a Washington Post business reporter,Anita Huslin, who wrote a profile of the discredited Fannie Mae boss that appeared July 16. The profile reported that Raines, who retired from Fannie Mae four years ago, had "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters."

Since this has now become a campaign issue, I asked Huslin to provide the exact circumstances of that passage. She said that she was chatting with Raines during the photo shoot, and asked "if he was engaged at all with the Democrats' quest for theWhite House. He said that he had gotten a couple of calls from the Obama campaign. I asked him about what, and he said, 'Oh, general housing, economy issues.' ('Not mortgage/foreclosure meltdown or Fannie-specific?' I asked, and he said 'no.')"

By Raines's own account, he took a couple of calls from someone on the Obama campaign, and he or she had general discussions about economic issues. I have asked both Raines and the Obama people for more details on these calls.

THE PINOCCHIO TEST

The McCain campaign is clearly exaggerating wildly in attempting to depict Raines as a close adviser to Obama on "housing and mortgage policy." If we are to believe Raines, he did have a couple of telephone conversations with someone in the Obama campaign. But that hardly makes him an adviser to the candidate himself -- and certainly not in the way depicted in the McCain video release."Linking Obama to Ex-Fannie Mae Chief Is a Stretch - washingtonpost.com

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