Obama/Biden or McCain/Palin/Who ever (826)

Acorn is now....Reverand Wright was now until Obama threw him under the bus (remember he was scheduled to give the invocation for Obama).... Rains, Johnson and Gorelick were also NOW until he threw then under the bus, too.

How now does it need to be?

From the 1950's to 1981.... well over 20 years ago.

And you guys ask about the "NOW" of McCain's claims against Obama?????

It doesn't matter a criminal record is a criminal record...and Don Ayers bombings were also in the 70's so what's the difference...and I don't think Obama said he was a role model either....

Well now like their reactions and plans in real time to avert the major wall street crisis, that kind of now.

After all that is what is the biggest thing happening isn't it?

It's kind of amazing to me that almost no one here is talking about what our different candidates are doing for this crisis and their plans to get us out of this mess.

It's gotta be the politics of distraction in full swing.

The difference is he worked for Ayres fresh out of law school. He later helped Ayres raise THOUSANDS of dollars for his company. He has worked with him on many other committees all through the years and large amounts of money was exchanged. And let's not forget that Ayres hosted Obama at his house for fund raisers. They are admittedly friends and neighbors.

Perhaps Obama WAS only eight when the bombings took place, but he would have to be the village idiot not to have know all that time. Moreover, Ayres came out right after 9/11 and said he wished they had bombed more!!!!

Why would any future, loyal American president hang around with such scum?

Advice and Descent

Claim: Three former Fannie Mae executives are linked to the Obama campaign as chief economic advisors.

Status: False.

Example: [Collected via e-mail, September 2008]

Here is a quick look into 3 former Fannie Mae executives who have brought down Wall Street.

Franklin Raines was a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie Mae. Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when auditing discovered severe irregulaties in Fannie Mae's accounting activities. At the time of his departure The Wall Street Journal noted, 'Raines, who long defended the company's accounting despite mounting evidence that it wasn't proper, issued a statement late Tuesday conceding that 'mistakes were made' and saying he would assume responsibility as he had earlier promised. News reports indicate the company was under growing pressure from regulators to shake up its management in the wake of findings that the company's books ran afoul of generally accepted accounting principles for four years.' Fannie Mae had to reduce its surplus by $9 billion.

Raines left with a 'golden parachute valued at $240 Million in benefits. The Government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the accounting scandal became clear. The Government noted, 'The 101 charges reveal how the individuals improperly manipulated earnings to maximize their bonuses, while knowingly neglecting accounting systems and internal controls, misapplying over twenty accounting principles and misleading the regulator and the public. The Notice explains how they submitted six years of misleading and inaccurate accounting statements and inaccurate capital reports that enabled them to grow Fannie Mae in an unsafe and unsound manner.' These charges were made in 2006. The Court ordered Raines to return $50 Million Dollars he received in bonuses based on the miss-stated Fannie Mae profits.

Tim Howard - Was the Chief Financial Officer of Fannie Mae. Howard 'was a strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would ensure a 'stable pattern of earnings' at Fannie. In everyday English - he was cooking the books. The Government Investigation determined that, 'Chief Financial Officer, Tim Howard, failed to provide adequate oversight to key control and reporting functions within Fannie Mae,'

On June 16, 2006, Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., asked the Justice Department to investigate his allegations that two former Fannie Mae executives lied to Congress in October 2004 when they denied manipulating the mortgage-finance giant's income statement to achieve management pay bonuses. Investigations by federal regulators and the company's board of directors since concluded that management did manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses. Raines and Howard resigned under pressure in late 2004.

(Cont'd)....

Howard's Golden Parachute was estimated at $20 Million!

Jim Johnson - A former executive at Lehman Brothers and who was later forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO. A look at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's May 2006 report on mismanagement and corruption inside Fannie Mae, and you'll see some interesting things about Johnson. Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million when it fact it was $21 million.' Johnson is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide while serving as CEO of Fannie Mae.

Johnson's Golden Parachute was estimated at $28 Million.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

FRANKLIN RAINES? Raines works for the Obama Campaign as Chief Economic Advisor

TIM HOWARD? Howard is also a Chief Economic Advisor to Obama

JIM JOHNSON? Johnson hired as a Senior Obama Finance Advisor and was selected to run Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee

IF OBAMA PLANS ON CLEANING UP THE MESS - HIS ADVISORS HAVE THE EXPERTISE - THEY MADE THE MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE. Would you trust the men who tore Wall Street down to build the New Wall Street?


Truth:


Origins: When one of the hottest issues of a presidential campaign is the meltdown of the mortgage lending industry and the collapse of the economy, a candidate's having economic advisors on his staff who are strongly associated with the system and practices that helped create the current mess likely wouldn't sit well with the public. That's the premise of thie above-quoted e-mail, which claims that three men formerly associated with the Federal National Mortgage Association (commonly known as "Fannie Mae") are now serving as "chief economic advisors" with the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. However, although at least some of these men have had connections to the Obama campaign at one time or another, none of them has ongoing roles with that campaign as chief economic advisors.

Franklin Raines, who formerly headed the budget office for the Clinton administration, became the first black CEO of a Fortune 500 company when he took over at Fannie Mae" in 1999. Raines,
who had earned $20 million in salary and bonuses from Fannie Mae in 2003, resigned from his CEO position in 2004 after regulators determined that the company had violated accounting rules and created an illusory $9 billion in past profit.

Raines has had some dealings with the Obama campaign, but he never held any actual position within the campaign, and his involvement with it was not nearly as substantial as implied here. As the Washington Post reported when a McCain campaign commercial attempted to link Raines with the Democratic candidate, the whole substance of the connection between the two men was that Raines "had gotten a couple of calls from the Obama campaign" in which they talked about "general housing and economy issues."

(Cont'd)....

Franklin Raines' predecessor, James A. Johnson, (former chief of staff to Vice President Walter F. Mondale), was CEO of Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998. After Johnson left the company, regulators later discovered that Fannie Mae had engaged in fraudulent accounting practices in 1998 which manipulated its earnings so that executives could earn performance bonuses (up to $1.9 million in Johnson's case) they would not otherwise have been entitled to.

In May 2008, Senator Obama tapped James Johnson to be one member of a three-person panel tasked with vetting potential vice-presidential running mates. Johnson (who was not serving as an economic advisor to the Obama campaign) resigned from that position a month later after news accounts surfaced that he had received more than $2 million in home loans at below average market rates from Countrywide Financial (a partner of Fannie Mae).

Tim Howard, the former CFO (chief financial officer) of Fannie Mae, was caught up in the same accounting scandal that undid Franklin Raines, and (like Raines) resigned from the company in 2004. We haven't yet found any substantive connection between Tim Howard and the Obama campaign, however, much less any information supporting the claim that Howard is (or was) a "Chief Economic Advisor to Obama."

Last updated: 30 September 2008

The URL for this page is

That information was found to be false....

* In the early 1950s, Jim and Eugene Hensley bought into the Ruidoso Downs racetrack in New Mexico with equal partner Clarence "Teak" Baldwin. Yet a few months later, at a hearing before the New Mexico State Racing Commission, Jim and Eugene concealed the existence of Baldwin. Because of his illegal bookmaking, Baldwin had been banned from any ownership role. Additionally, New Mexico State Police discovered Kemper Marley was a financial backer for bookmakers with ties to Baldwin and with the bookmaking operations of organized crime. Despite that, Jim and Eugene were given their Ruidoso Downs racetrack license in 1953, a decision John F. Simms, governor of New Mexico's following administration called appalling.

* In 1953 Jim Hensley and Kemper Marley were again charged with falsifying liquor records. This time Jim was defended by future Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. Kemper Marley were both men were acquitted.

* In spite of being a convicted felon, Jim Hensley was somehow granted a state liquor license in 1955 (and later a federal liquor license) to found a beer distributorship. Hensley later switched to distributing exclusively Anheuser-Busch beer, and by 1980 Hensley & Company Distributors and Hensley & Company Wholesale had made Jim Hensley a multi-millionaire.

* In 1981, Hensley hired his new son-in-law, John McCain, as Vice President of Public Relations for Hensley & Company. It was Hensley's money and influential ties throughout the state of Arizona that help McCain win his first campaign for the U.S. Senate.


*And is dumb enough to vote to allow funds to go to ACORN.

Right, you mean like when McCain co-sponsored the reform bill in 2005? Or when he calls to post pone the campaign to focus on a bi-partisan effort and Obama can't be bothered to attend?

Yes, I see a big difference in their reactions

Maybe Clinton, if women were made available.

Gorelic has more skeletons in her closet than I do.

the question that will never be answered

hell, hillary wont even hang out with mamabama

My question is...If he is that much of a scum...Why is he teaching at a prominent university???....I believe most of those committees and dollars raised were advocating on behalf of kids..which has nothing to do with terrorism and I would think is a worthy cause....I would say if the man is that bad...then why are people letting him teach children...and not taking to the streets to have him fired?????

Just because you befriend someone and sit on committees etc to promote a worthy cause is a far cry from promoting terrorism...I have friends who do things all the time that I don't agree with...It doesn't make me apart of what they do or think...

I've not seen the clinton's lately.....I thought they were beating the path for Obama.


They may be smart afterall.....staying away from Obama/Ayers/ACORN. 2012???

What information was found to be false?

Because our universities are horrifically liberal! Our great GOVERNMENT SCHOOL SYSTEM at work again!