Bloodthirsty Liberal

One acts creepy around kids and is nauseating after about twenty seconds—and the other’s a purple dinosaur!

That’s a joke, son.

But is there a stranger person in the entire US Congress than Barney Frank?

What’s the deal with Barney Frank and his “partners?”

First there was Stephen Gobie, male prostitute and pimp:

Frank, one of two openly gay members of Congress, confirmed Friday that he paid Gobie for sex, hired him with personal funds as an aide and wrote letters on congressional stationery on his behalf to Virginia probation officials, but Frank said he fired Gobie when he learned that clients were visiting the apartment.

Then there was his love connection over at Fannie Mae:

Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s.

So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.

…

Now there’s this:

FOX25 has learned that Congressman Barney Frank was present during a marijuana arrest at James Ready’s home in Ogunquit, Maine. Ready is well-known for his relationship with Congressman Frank.

According to a police report, police charged Ready with marijuana possession, cultivation and use of drug paraphernalia in August of 2007. Ready admitted to civil possession and paid a fine. The remaining charges were dismissed in 2008.

Sources tell FOX25 that when Frank was questioned he told police that he did not live in the house and that he only smoked cigars.

Further, Frank now claims he doesn’t even know what marijuana looks like.

I wonder why he didn’t use that excuse when caught with the male hooker, Steve “Hot Bottom” (as Howie Carr calls him) Gobie? “Honest, Officer, I’ve never seen a schlong before.”

It’s been a long time since he’s seen his own.

This nice Jewish boy from New Jersey certainly likes to hang around with rough trade—and by that I mean the Democratic caucus in the US House of Representatives.

Come here, I want to show you a couple of things.

You know how Aggie and I have been shaking our heads over the sheer volume of repaving jobs currently underway, all in the name of stimulus?

Well, it takes a mind greater than ours—Sarah Palin’s, in fact—to connect the potholes:

Given that we’re spending billions of stimulus dollars to rebuild our highways, it makes sense to think about what we’ll be driving on them. For years to come, most of what we drive will be powered, at least in part, by diesel fuel or gasoline. To fuel that driving, we need access to oil. The less use we make of our own reserves, the more we will have to import, which leads to a number of harmful consequences. That means we need to drill here and drill now.

It would take President Obama forty-five minutes and 3,000 words (spoken on two continents) to come to the exact opposite—and dead wrong—conclusion. You may not agree, you may have objections to her premises (though I can’t imagine what they would be), but she made her point in 88 words. If brevity is the soul of wit, she’s Einstein and Obama is a paramecium with a learning disability.

And she’s right, too!

Last Wednesday in Moscow, the remaining illusions the Obama administration held for cooperation with Russia on the Iranian nuclear program were thrown in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s face. Stronger sanctions against Iran would be “counterproductive,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, just days after President Dmitry Medvedev said sanctions were likely inevitable. This apparent inconsistency should remind us that Mr. Medvedev is little more than a well-placed spectator, and that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who discounted sanctions in a statement from Beijing, is still the voice that matters.

This slap comes after repeated concessions—canceling the deployment of missile defenses in Eastern Europe, muted criticism of Russia’s sham regional elections—from the White House. Washington’s conciliatory steps have given the Kremlin’s rulers confidence they have nothing to fear from Mr. Obama on anything that matters.

And nothing matters more to Mr. Putin and his oligarchs than the price of oil. Even with oil at $70 a barrel, Russia’s economy is in bad straits. Tension in the Middle East, even an outbreak of war, would push energy prices higher. A nuclear-armed Iran would, of course, be harmful to Russian national security, but prolonging the crisis is beneficial to the interests of the ruling elite: making money and staying in power.

To paraphrase Sarah Palin, we’re gettin’ all socialisty just when the rest of the world is turning into rapacious capitalists.

President Bush popped the oil bubble by just suggesting an increase in domestic production. A show of hands of anyone who thinks President Obama even allows discussion of such a policy. Anyone? Bueller?

No, we’d much rather let the Arabs, Russians, Venezuelans, and Sudanese (all swell fellows) profit from oil; and the Chinese power their expansion with coal. We have plenty of both, but we’d rather sit here in the cold and dark (global warming? are you kidding?).

Inconvenient truths about the economic meltdown

One of our readers wondered why Barney Frank didn’t rush to the rescue. I have a thought. A few years back Congressman Frank shared a DC apartment with his lover, whose name I’ve forgotten. This guy was running a male prostitution service from their apartment, I believe. Somehow the media caught on and it was really unpleasant. My guess is that he tries to avoid prostitution related stuff these days.

This is the article It’s coming back. The prostitute was Steve Gobie. This was back in 1989.

Once burned, twice shy.

- Aggie

Be afraid. Be very afraid:

As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Frank is busy assembling a complex bill to give the federal government unprecedented control over the country’s financial institutions. It is as ambitious as any legislation jolting town halls and cable-news programs…When Congress returns to session after Labor Day, Frank expects to chair a series of hearings and markup sessions that he hopes will generate a single comprehensive bill on financial reform for a vote in the House…

…Frank says the legislation is necessary to help fend off future episodes of financial panic. Hedge funds and derivatives traders would have to operate under new limits. A financial products safety commission would regulate the consumer marketplace, down to payday loans and check-cashing stores. Federal officials would gain new powers to unwind failed financial institutions.

Arrogance: check.
Socialist: check.
Funny looking and sounding: check and check.

He’s so infuriating, it’s hard to credit Barney Frank with the ample intelligence he wields. But he’s a true believer and a dead-ender. When the Tea Party activists corner him in the barn, like a latter-day John Wilkes Boof, he’ll shout: “You’ll nevew take me awive, you wats! Eat wead!!”

PS: It would be worse:

Frank, a lawyer, could be next in line for the Judiciary Committee gavel, but says recent events have made that ambition moot. He said he has shrunk his political portfolio to only two nonfinance subjects: fisheries issues (due to his coastal district’s economy) and gay concerns (“because there aren’t enough of us to go around’’).

“Go around?” Is that some sexual euphemism?

If we go with the Obama plan, we will deserve it.

- Aggie

Didn’t President Obama scold the “speculators” in the Chrysler bailout as being unwilling to sacrifice?

Can’t wait to hear what he has to say about this:

President Obama may have “no interest” in running General Motors, as he averred Monday. But even if that’s true, we are already discovering that he shares Washington with 535 Members of Congress, many of whom have other ideas.

The latest self-appointed car czar is Massachusetts’s own Barney Frank, who intervened this week to save a GM distribution center in Norton, Mass. The warehouse, which employs some 90 people, was slated for closure by the end of the year under GM’s restructuring plan. But Mr. Frank put in a call to GM CEO Fritz Henderson and secured a new lease on life for the facility.

Mr. Frank’s spokesman, Harry Gural, says the Congressman discussed, among other things, “the facility’s value to GM.” We’d have thought that would be something that GM might have considered when it decided to close the Norton center, but then a call from one of the most powerful Members of Congress can certainly cause a ward of the state to reconsider what qualifies as “value.” A CEO who refuses the offer can soon find himself testifying under oath before Congress, or answering questions from the Government Accountability Office about his expense account. To that point, Mr. Henderson spent Wednesday with Chrysler President Jim Press being castigated by the Senate Commerce Committee for their plans to close 3,400 car dealerships. Every Senator wants dealerships closed in someone else’s state.

As Mr. Gural put it, Mr. Frank was “just doing what any other Congressman would do” in looking out for the interests of his constituents. And that’s the problem with industrial policy and government control of American business. In Washington, every Member of Congress now thinks he’s a czar who can call ol’ Fritz and tell him how to make cars.

Don’t you think of Norton, MA when you think of the American auto industry? Henry Ford, Ransom Olds, Lee Iacocca—Barney Frank. Which doesn’t belong?

Good for Barney Frank for going to bat for his district, but if this is how the government is going to run a car company, I’ll take the bus, thanks.

What a great story:

Calling itself and other minority-owned banks a “rare beacon of hope” in their neighborhoods, OneUnited Bank of Boston last fall made an emotional plea to the US Treasury for help with millions of dollars in soured investments.

Without assistance, bank officials said, OneUnited and other institutions might fail. The money did not come right away. But with the aid of US Representatives Barney Frank and Maxine Waters, OneUnited secured meetings with the Treasury, and by December received $12 million from the government’s bank bailout fund.

It was the latest sign that the nation’s largest black bank still holds sway with powerful politicians, despite a shrinking profile in Boston and financial troubles that brought a sharp rebuke by regulators. The bank has retreated from traditional urban lending, and in recent years has made few home loans in its Boston community, parts of which have been ravaged by subprime mortgages.

Among the handful of home loans OneUnited has made in the past few years were several to wealthy businessmen for upscale properties in the South End, Brookline, and even on Martha’s Vineyard.

Lending to Kennedys, Cabots, and Lodges—what a great business model! Why should a black-owned bank in Roxbury or Dorchester have to lend to freeloaders and deadbeats in, you know, Roxbury and Dorchester? If doing so in the past put them $12 million in the hole—from which they climbed out by stepping on piles of our money—maybe they shouldn’t do that anymore.

Just because they’re black-owned? Does being black make you unable to follow sound business practices? Isn’t that a little bit racist?

Listen to the bank’s chief executive, no fool he: “If we had participated in inner-city housing lending, . . . we would have been out of business.”

You can say that again.

Except they didn’t say that before, when they were shnorring for the bailout:

“Unlike majority banks, which principally focus on profit, the express mission of minority banks is to promote these underbanked, underprivileged communities,” the bank’s chief counsel, Robert Cooper, wrote.

For which all the underbanked of Brookline and the underprivileged of Martha’s Vineyard give much thanks.

There’s a lot more—for which we have to give credit to the Glob—but as one commenter observed:

Amazing. No mention that Maxine Water’s husband served on this banks board and they still own stock in the bank they came to the aid of. The state prosecutors need to examine this bank and it’s political friends.

Which state? Massachusetts? Are you drunk? What pawt of Bawney Fwank don’t you get?

Third term, same as the first two:

When will Barack Obama apologize to George Bush? He spent the entire campaign impugning Bush’ handling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, claiming that they required access to federal courts and that military detentions were not necessary. On Friday, Obama took another big step towards Bush by deciding to fight a federal court that essentially endorsed Obama’s views on the campaign trail:

The Obama administration said Friday that it would appeal a district court ruling that granted some military prisoners in Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits seeking their release. The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight.

In a court filing, the Justice Department also asked District Judge John D. Bates not to proceed with the habeas-corpus cases of three detainees at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, Afghanistan. Judge Bates ruled last week that the three — each of whom says he was seized outside of Afghanistan — could challenge their detention in court.

…

Terrorists and insurgents captured by military and intelligence personnel engaged overseas do not get habeas corpus. Not even the Nuremberg defendants got habeas corpus in American courts, the example Obama liked to use (and got wrong) on the campaign trail.

Judging by his attitude toward the pirates, President Obama will deny terrorists not only habeus corpus, but their corpora themselves. Just like his daddy (in presidential terms) did.

Can waterboarding be far behind? (I hope so not! I hope not.)

More and more people are getting those blue state/blue pill blues.

If your election lasts longer than four years, see your doctor immediately.

By week’s end, I was more depressed about the financial crisis than I’ve been since last September. Back then, the issue was the disintegration of the financial system, as the Lehman bankruptcy set off a terrible chain reaction. Now I’m worried that the political response is making the crisis worse. The Obama administration appears to have lost its grip on Congress, while the Treasury Department always seems caught off guard by bad news.

And Congress, with its howls of rage, its chaotic, episodic reaction to the crisis, and its shameless playing to the crowds, is out of control. This week, the body politic ran off the rails.

There are times when anger is cathartic. There are other times when anger makes a bad situation worse. “We need to stop committing economic arson,” Bert Ely, a banking consultant, said to me this week. That is what Congress committed: economic arson.

Another opinion:

As for the consequences we can’t foresee, most of them relate to the precedent of taxing income retroactively, which seems to introduce a level of arbitrariness that can’t be good for economic growth. My only hope is that there’s a hidden genius at work here—a kind of unintentional good cop/bad cop routine. That is, maybe the House’s efforts will get the AIG derivatives-meisters to cough up their bonuses, which will appease the public a bit and make the new law moot. But even then the precedent is pretty ugly. Getting people to hand over money under the threat of legislation that will take it from retroactively is pretty damn coercive. There are third-world juntas that would think twice before doing this.

They’d think twice—but they’d do it.

Robert Mugabe, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jung Il—I have a fourth for your bridge game: