Late Night: Punkin The White House

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statedinner1125That’s punkin, not pumpkin my fellow gobblers and gobblees. Yes indeedy, the White House has been officially punked. Late breaking from the Washington Post:

A couple of aspiring reality-TV stars from Northern Virginia appear to have crashed the White House’s state dinner Tuesday night, penetrating layers of security with no invitation to mingle with the likes of Vice President Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Tareq and Michaele Salahi — polo-playing socialites known for a bitter family feud over a Fauquier County winery and their possible roles in the forthcoming “The Real Housewives of Washington” — were seen arriving at the White House and later posted on Facebook photos of themselves with VIPs at the elite gathering.
…
While the White House offered no official explanation, it appears to be the first time in modern history that anyone has crashed a White House state dinner. The uninvited guests were in the same room as President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, although it is unknown whether they met the Obamas and the guest of honor.

Here is the best part – they had their picture taken with the one and only Ron Emanuel:

But the best was yet to come: Once inside the dinner tent, they got pictures that appeared to show them with ABC’s Robin Roberts, Bollywood composer AR Rahman, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, Obama Chief of Staff Emanuel (identified as “Ron” in the couple’s Facebook photo caption) and two with a grinning vice president. (Emphasis added)

So, that is a pretty good story; but here is an even better one of some punkin going on at the White House, courtesy of the inestimable Howie Klein.

Howie tells the story of how he arranged for Lou Reed to attend and perform for an official Clinton White House State Dinner for Vaclev Havel, President of the Czech Republic:

One of the “big” news stories yesterday was the State Dinner President Obama gave in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who, like CNN’s Sanji Gupta– a guest– is a doctor. 400 people were invited– probably 200 + 1 each, but I’m not certain– and it was in a heated tent on the lawn. I have a half-baked reason for telling the story of the state dinner I went to in September, 1998
….
I understood exactly what President Clinton wanted– and delivered. Havel and Lou Reed, a Reprise artist and a friend of mine, had such a powerful bond that Havel actually credited him with being part of the inspiration for the Velvet Revolution that freed Czechoslovakia from Soviet domination.
….
Everyone was grooving out (Henry Kissinger, Ted Stevens, Eric Holder, Kurt Vonnegut, Jane Harman, Chuck Hagel and 2 generals, John Shalikashvili and my new pal, Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff)– not just Lugar– and I kept wondering if anyone had any clue what the lyrics were. Clinton certainly didn’t. He got up onstage and played his sax.

Now that is some punkin the White House!

The Politico Villagers Go Deer Hunting!

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elmer-fuddWell, this is exciting! Yesterday on Morning Joe on MSNBC, Mike Allen of Politico proudly announced that he, the managing editor at Politico, John Harris, and Politico executive editor Jim VanderHei all went on their first deer hunt Monday. And, according to Allen, they ALL bagged a large mammal from the Cervidae family.

In plain English, all three of these first time rookie deer hunters managed to take time off from chasing unnamed sources, get dressed, get out of town, track their prey, shoot and kill a real live deer. These are clearly some awesome American Sportsmen!

This would also mean they are such studs that they tracked and finalized the kill on each of the three deer, field cleaned their prey and transported the large carcasses out of the wilds, back to their vehicles, loaded and secured the bodies and drove out of the hunting fields. And they were all back safe and sound at home in time to get a night’s sleep and be in a studio at the crack of dawn to do Morning Joe! Astounding!

All it took was a few hours apparently. These guys must be damn good, because when I was younger, I used to deer hunt with three older men that were knock down dead eye pros, we went for 3-4 days at a time to open the season, and never had the kind of success that beginners Allen, VanderHei and Harris did in seemingly just a few short hours. My coonskin hat is off to all three of them; this is a truly impressive feat.

I am kind of shocked they didn’t run into Dick Cheney, kind of sounds like his type of “hunting” expedition. But, as Allen’s face did not have buckshot oozing from it, I guess not they did not encounter Deadeye Dick. I tried emailing and phoning the three intrepid hunters for more details of their safari, but they failed to return contact.

Fortunately, in an Emptywheel exclusive, we were able to obtain video of the grand hunt!

The Danger of Losing Beat Reporters: The ACORN Hoax

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Go read this E&P article analyzing how right wing’s noise machine managed to plant a particular narrative about ACORN in the traditional press. (h/t Susie) The whole thing is good–relying on data and interviews with individual reporters. But I want to draw attention to a detail the report doesn’t make explicit: that the reporters who proved immune to the right wing noise machine were, for the most part, beat reporters. Here are the descriptions of the reporters E&P singles out for praise:

One of the rare reporters who does cover community organizing is National Public Radio’s Pam Fessler. Fessler was perhaps the best qualified reporter in the country to report on the allegations of voter fraud. Her beat includes poverty, philanthropy, and nonprofit groups, and she has also covered voting issues since 2000. Her NPR reports were the best fact-checked of all of the reports we studied.

Fessler was familiar with ACORN and complaints about its voter registration work long before the 2008 election. “Since I’ve been covering voting issues, ACORN has been popping up as an issue almost every election.” ACORN’s notoriety at election time, she said, is because the organization has been a “target by Republicans across the country and some local election officials.” Based in Washington, Fessler was aware that the Republican National Committee had spotlighted the voter fraud issue, particularly as Election Day 2008 neared. “The RNC started holding these phone conference calls almost daily when they were specifically targeting ACORN.” The RNC sent out almost daily releases on the topic as well.

[snip]

Kevin Diaz is the Washington correspondent for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He started as a metro reporter at the newspaper in 1984, and has been based in D.C. since 1999. Diaz is familiar with what ACORN does, and said their operations are “pretty robust in the Twin Cities.” The allegations of voter fraud came to his attention as he was covering the presidential election. Although most of the attacks were national, Diaz said that some Minnesota Republicans were on the offensive against ACORN, particularly Mary Kiffmeyer, a former Minnesota Secretary of State, and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Because there had been some irregularities in Minneapolis-St. Paul in past elections, and because he “thought this would be a tight race,” Diaz decided to look into the allegations. After his investigation, Diaz reported on his findings published in a front-page Oct. 24, 2008 story.

“Yes, there had been a track record of voter registration fraud, but that’s different from voter fraud,” Diaz said. Diaz also had a different explanation for the source of the voter registration fraud. “The irregularities were perpetrated against ACORN, not by ACORN,” Diaz said,

[snip]

Joe Guillen, a metro reporter at the [Cleveland] Plain Dealer since 2004, wrote his first story about ACORN and voter registration problems before it became a national story and organizations like Fox News and the New York Post visited Cleveland. “I was covering the Board of Elections – it was part of my beat. I went to every board meeting.” That’s where Guillen first heard of problems. “A woman in the registration department told the Board that there had been a problem with a batch of voter registration cards.” The problems included registration cards filled out by multiple people and some cards with transposed addresses. At that point, they were still in the process of finding how much ACORN registration workers were involved in the problems.

In his reporting, Guillen stayed in touch with Cleveland ACORN representatives and their superiors, as well as the members and staff of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.

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Donate to First Draft So Athenae Can Continue to Call Out Bad Reporting

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One of the points I always make when I talk about the failures of traditional media journalism is that they are captive to their sources–and to certain kinds of sources, at that.

Athenae has a typically righteous post about just this topic today, with regards to the Fort Hood tragedy yesterday. And as it happens, it is fund-drive week over at First Draft.

So go over and read the post, part of which appears below. And while you’re there, leave some scratch if you can.

The only part of this Fort Hood business I feel remotely qualified to begin to talk about is the coverage, of which it is impossible to judge the accuracy right now. But on TV people are calling up anyone they can think of, to say anything that pops into their heads, without vetting, without background checking, without any of the vaunted gatekeeping traditional media like to deride bloggers for lacking.

My first daily paper job out of college was in a small city getting ripped apart by gang violence. I’d never covered cops before, and the police reporter was this terrifying news god who knew everything and had sources that made Deep Throat look like Ari Fleischer. I was scared to death I’d get called out to some scene where nobody would talk to me, and I’d end up screwing something up.

So one night I’m confessing this to the copy editor working my meeting story into something recognizable as English, and he tells me something I’ve never forgotten in 12 years. “If you can’t get anyone to talk to just look around and write down everything you see. Everything that’s happening, write it down. That’s the story too.” I’ve gotten a very few great journalism lessons in my life and that was one of them, that this is the job: Write down what you see.

It’s not a lot. It’s not anything I’d ever put above anyone who can swing a hammer. I don’t have a lot of useful skills but I felt for a long time and still feel that we know each other because we are told about each other and that if all you can do is bear witness then you do that. Write down what you see. And tell as many people, as many many people, as you possibly can. It’s a simple job. It’s an impossibly simple job.

But you have to shut the fuck up and get out of your own way to do it, and that’s where most of us slip up at least once. We make it all about us, or about who we know, or what we really think, and not about the experiences of the people involved.

[snip]

The first day, the first hours: Cut out all the analysis, all the nonsense, and just tell us what you see. What you can prove. What you know is real. That’s what we need. That’s the best thing that can be done in this scenario. That’s the only useful thing. That’s what people need the most.

Kaplan Test Prep Still Brokering Meetings with Lobbyists

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Zachary Roth reports that Newsweek, a subsidiary of Washington Post aka Kaplan Test Prep, is teaming up with the American Petroleum Institute to host an event on climate change.

Newsweek magazine is teaming up with an oil-industry lobbying group to host an event on climate-change and energy issues involving lawmakers, just as the Senate gets set to take up legislation on the subject.

The panel discussion, entitled “Climate and Energy Policy: Moving?,” will feature Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, and, as moderator, Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman, according to an email invitation sent by a Newsweek business staffer and obtained by TPMmuckraker.

Roth is working off the invite for the event, rather than any internal funding documents, so he doesn’t explain who is funding this shin-dig. But he does provide a list of those–aside from Gerard and Fineman–who have been involved in the schmoozy relationship between Newsweek and API:

  • Newsweek International editor Rana Foroohar
  • Newsweek International managing editor Tony Emerson
  • Columnist Jonathan Alter
  • Editor Evan Thomas

And Roth notes that one of APIs front groups has a big ad today in the WaPo:

And today, the Washington Post is running a full page ad from a group called Energy Citizens, attacking climate change legislation. Energy Citizens is essentially a front group for API — the two share a Washington address, and the astroturf rallies that API organized this summer were officially projects of Energy Citizens.

Roth asked Newsweek if they had thought to invite an environmentalist. Director of External Relations Mark Block feigned interest, then said they probably couldn’t do it because they had to give Congressmen time to bloviate.

Asked whether Newsweek planned to invite a representative from an environmental group to the upcoming event, to balance Gerard’s appearance, Block said the magazine “would definitely consider that opportunity,” if there were a high-profile environmentalist who might be appropriate. But he said that because members of Congress would likely also participate, time constraints might dictate against it.

Again, thus far we have no proof that this is another WaPo Pay2Play scheme. Rather, Newsweek pitches this as them trying to make news, with reporters invited and on-the-record treatment understood.

But it does point out how cozy Newsweek is with the climate denier industry.

Election Day: The Dead, Dead Tree Ballot Proposal

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And now for something super local on this Election Day.

As you may have heard, the Ann Arbor News closed down during the summer. That has left a bit of a problem under the city charter, which requires the publication of public ordinances in a “newspaper of general circulation.” The only one left is the Washtenaw Legal News–not exactly the best read rag in town. So the city has two ballot proposals which offer alternatives to publication in a dead tree newspaper.

Here’s coverage of the ballot proposal AnnArbor.Com–the much watched online outlet that has replaced the Ann Arbor News.

Ann Arbor voters will be asked Tuesday to approve two ballot proposals that will ease city charter restrictions and allow city staff to publish ordinances and notices on the city’s Web site instead of in a newspaper.With the closing of The Ann Arbor News, city officials are seeking alternative methods of providing the public with important information, said City Clerk Jacqueline Beaudry.

Currently, the city charter requires changes to city code or notices of proposed zoning amendments be published in a “newspaper of general circulation” in Ann Arbor. The Washtenaw Legal News is the only publication that fits that description right now.

Proposal A would allow city staff to publish approved ordinances within 10 days after enactment either in a newspaper of general circulation, by posting to the city’s Web site or by any other means or method determined appropriate by the City Council. In cases of ordinances longer than 500 words, a summary may be published and copies of the full text would be available at city hall.

Proposal B will allow the city to publish notices of proposed zoning ordinances and amendments in newspapers of general circulation or any other media otherwise permitted by law.

The Michigan Press Association has spent more than $46,000 on a campaign urging Ann Arbor residents to defeat the two proposals. It claims their passage would impact the public’s right to know how local government operates.

As they note, the Michigan Press Association has been spending what–because it seems to have been spent largely in robo-calls–feels like a big chunk of change to defend dead tree opposition to the ballot proposal. Washtenaw County has a very big and very contentious millage to replace school funding stripped by our broke state on the ballot today, which is the big story (“It takes a Millage”). But from all the robo-calls the MPA has been doing–using really hysterical language about secret changes to the city’s laws–you’d think it was the Dead Tree Ballot Proposal that had everyone worried.

Anyway, I shared this with you partly to raise the sensitive issues that arise when the dead tree press goes under.

But also to remind you to vote!

WaPo, I Hate to Say I Told You So…

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Back when DOJ first submitted its motion to hide a bunch of information from Dick Cheney’s interview, I did a post calling out the Washington Post for what appeared to be factually incorrect reporting.

The WaPay2PlayPo’s Jeffrey Smith is usually a much better reporter than this. In his report on DOJ’s latest attempt to keep the materials from Cheney’s Fitzgerald interview secret–published right under a link to all the evidence released in the trial–Smith “reports,”

A document filed in federal court this week by the Justice Department offers new evidence that former vice president Richard B. Cheney helped steer the Bush administration’s public response to the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson’s employment by the CIA and that he was at the center of many related administration deliberations.

Which, if you take “new evidence” to mean “a new list summarizing many of the events described in evidence introduced two years ago at the Libby trial,” would be factually correct.

But this isn’t.

Barron also listed as exempt from disclosure Cheney’s account of his requests for information from the CIA about the purported purchase; Cheney’s discussions with top officials about the controversy over Bush’s mention of the uranium allegations in his 2003 State of the Union speech; and Cheney’s discussions with deputy I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, press spokesman Ari Fleischer, and Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. “regarding the appropriate response to media inquiries about the source of the disclosure” of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity. [my emphasis]

Smith gets that last bit from this language in the filing.

Vice President’s recollection of discussions with Lewis Libby, the White House Communications Director, and the White House Chief of Staff regarding the appropriate response to media inquiries about the source of the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as a CIA employee.

Now, the language used there–”the source of the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity”–ought to be a pretty big clue to Smith that this conversation happened after Plame’s identity was actually made public. That is, after July 14, 2003, which happened to be Ari Fleischer’s last day, meaning it’s pretty clear that Ari Fleischer (who was White House Spokesperson, not Communications Director) isn’t the guy referenced here. But you don’t really need clues like that to figure out that Smith is wrong here. Had Smith only clicked that link above his article and actually looked at the evidence released at trial, he would have seen the famous “meat grinder note,” a note Cheney used as a talking point document for conversations with Andy Card (correctly identified by Smith as Chief of Staff) and Dan Bartlett (in his role as “White House Communications Director,” the position listed in the filing) in early October 2003 to get them to force Scottie McClellan to exonerate Scooter Libby publicly.

I also wrote the reporter of the piece, Jeffrey Smith, to let him know about the mistake. His first response was to accuse me of being “over the top” (note, the “posts below it” pertain to the WaPo’s Pay2Play scandal).

i’m busy with kids today, but glanced at your note and i have to say it’s over the top — as are some of the blog posts below it. will respond in full this evening. but you are seeing more than is actually there, as you occasionally do.

I ignored that comment in my response.

Thanks for the response, Jeff–I look forward to your fuller response later.

Have a nice day with your kids.

In his response back, Smith used a fair bit of sarcasm even while complaining about my snark.

i shall have to look more closely at the fleischer/bartlett question. our researcher advised me that fleischer was the right person for the time period in question, and i recalled some fleischer-cheney interactions in the record.

of course i knew and know that the cheney conversations that were directly referenced took place AFTER the public disclosure through Novak, from Armitage.

as to what was newsworthy — i’m not aware of any prior listing of what cheney and fitzgerald discussed, and that question has been a topic of enormous curiousity. i know you have the whole case solved, and all the loose ends tied up, but many others would still like to know more. otherwise, there would never have been a FOIA in the first place.

as to the “conflation” of two grafs into one — i mean really — do you really think that was part of a conspiracy to neutralize or hide damning information? come on now. you’re much more sensible than that. you must be. what i wrote was accurate. the added detail you posted was of interest, but not of sufficient interest to warrant inclusion in a brief article.

i thought the tone of your whole posting was snarky, by the way. i suppose that’s what drives traffic. but it was unwarranted.

The “conflation” of two graphs refers to my complaint that Smith used the “NIE leak is a leak to Judy” shorthand that is common among journalists. In my long follow-up post, I noted that this was not inaccurate (though the Fleischer/Bartlett confusion was), just sloppy.

First, just to set the record straight, I was correct. Read more →

Isikoff Doubles Down on His Anonymous Leak from Cheney’s Lawyer

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Michael Isikoff’s coverage of Dick Cheney’s interview (h/t Leen) seems designed as much to defend his bad reporting on the CIA Leak case as to report the content of the interview itself. It’s not that I expected Isikoff to point out that Cheney refused to say things to Fitzgerald that Cheney’s own lawyer had been willing to say to Isikoff. Whatever the ethical and logical problems with reporting O’Donnell’s leak uncritically, Isikoff granted him anonymity and I fully expected Isikoff to continue to honor that pledge.

What’s pathetic about Isikoff’s coverage, however, is that he doubles down on the content of the leak O’Donnell gave to him!

Perhaps the most intriguing parts of the interview occurred toward the end, when Cheney was asked about President Bush’s decision in June 2003 to declassify portions of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraqi WMD.  The federal investigators wanted to know what he had told Libby about the president’s decision.  (The declassification led to Libby’s selective leaking to New York Times reporter Judy Miller about some portions of the NIE that appeared to bolster the White House position about Iraqi WMD.)

Isikoff here repeats the several details from O’Donnell’s leak that almost certainly were invented in 2006 to fix the obvious, glaring logical inconsistencies in Scooter Libby’s story (but which, regardless of what O’Donnell said to Isikoff anonymously, remain glaring inconsistencies): the claim that the declassification occurred, the claim that it occurred in June, and the claim that the declassification led to the leak to Judy Miller. Note, the FBI didn’t ask Cheney about the date at all! The only one who mentions the day is Michael Isikoff, based on what Cheney’s defense attorney told him. And in fact, some of Cheney’s comments during this interview actually undermine that story (though his comments about the NIE declassification are thoroughly incoherent, which ought to make a reporter think twice about the NIE story itself). In other words, Isikoff’s reporting on this is actually Isikoff glossing Cheney’s interview with comments Cheney’s own defense attorney made anonymously to Isikoff at a time when Cheney had the need to shore up the inconsistencies in that part of the story.

And besides≤, don’t you think Isikoff should have thought seriously about what it meant that Cheney’s NIE story in his interview was so incoherent, but that Cheney’s defense attorney gave Isikoff such a coherent story?

Interestingly, Isikoff also goes out of his way to establish his cred here. He notes that Cheney claimed he had a low opinion of Newsweek.

Asked if he had authorized Libby to provide information about the issue to NEWSWEEK as well as Time, Cheney said “he could not conceive” of doing so because “he does not have a very favorable view of NEWSWEEK.”

Again, you have to wonder what went through Isikoff’s head when he wrote this. Such an unfavorable opinion of Newsweek that when they needed to plant a cover story about the NIE, they chose Isikoff? (Sort of like when OVP wanted to seed its “Libby was not the leaker” story in October 2003, they instructed Scott McClellan to go to Isikoff.) There are several ways to unpack this comment, but Isikoff revels in the claims Cheney made about Newsweek in an interview packed with lies, anyway, and in fact turns the story into “Cheney versus the press” rather than “Cheney using the press.”

Also, somewhat bizarrely, Isikoff appears to mis-attribute a comment Cheney made to the NYT. He said,

(Cheney appeared to have expressed similar views of The New York Times, although for reasons that are not clear, portions of the passage in which he discusses the newspaper are redacted.)

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Hey Reporters??? It Might Be Worth Pointing Out Lieberman Is Stupid or Lying…

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As news outlets are reporting everywhere, Joe Lieberman is threatening to join a GOP filibuster of heath care reform. Brian Beutler reports the news without much elaboration on Lieberman’s stated justification for doing so. (See below for Beutler’s follow-up.)

I told Senator Reid that I’m strongly inclined–i haven’t totally decided, but I’m strongly inclined–to vote to proceed to the health care debate, even though I don’t support the bill that he’s bringing together because it’s important that we start the debate on health care reform because I want to vote for health care reform this year. But I also told him that if the bill remains what it is now, I will not be able to support a cloture motion before final passage. Therefore I will try to stop the passage of the bill.

The AP provides just a hint of Lieberman’s justification.

Lieberman said Tuesday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that he’s worried a public option would be costly to taxpayers and drive up insurance premiums.

But the Politico reports Lieberman’s stated justification.

“I can’t see a way in which I could vote for cloture on any bill that contained a creation of a government-operated-run insurance company,” Lieberman added. “It’s just asking for trouble – in the end, the taxpayers are going to pay and probably all people will have health insurance are going to see their premiums go up because there’s going to be cost shifting as there has been for Medicare and Medicaid.”

Lieberman said he “very much” wants to vote for health care reform but that he’s worried about stifling “the economic recovery we’re in” or adding to the federal debt.

“I feel this way about a national, government-created health insurance company – whether it’s a trigger or not,” he said. “My answer is – we’re – we have the opportunity to do some great reforms here. These exchanges that we’re talking about, I think, are going to drive competition and probably bring the cost of health insurance down or at least contain the cost increases for a lot of people. Let’s give that two or three years to see how it works to see how it works before we talk about creating another entitlement that will end up increasing the national debt and putting more of a burden on taxpayers.”

So here’s what Joe Lieberman claims the public option will do:

  • Be costly to taxpayers
  • Drive up premiums
  • Involve cost-shifting to private plans
  • Create an entitlement
  • Increase the national debt
  • Put more of a tax burden on taxpayers

As DDay points out, this is utter nonsense.

Lieberman’s justification on this is just nonsense – the public option would SAVE money for the government, to the tune of $100 billion dollars over 10 years according to the Congressional Budget Office. Read more →

Mark Sanford Goes Galt

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Clearly Jon Meacham and his deputy editors at Newsweek could use a refresher course in compelling journalism from their sister ship test proctors at the Stanley Kaplan Corporation. Newsweek, you see, has just seen fit to publish a lengthy interpretation of Ayn Rand by none other that Appalachian Trail aficionado Mark Sanford.

The Fountainhead is a stunning evocation of the individual and what he can achieve when unhindered by government or society. Howard Roark is an architect who cares nothing about the world’s approval; his only concerns are his integrity and the perfection of his designs. What strikes me as still relevant is its central insight—that it isn’t “collective action” that makes this nation prosperous and secure; it’s the initiative and creativity of the individual. The novel’s “second-handers,” as Rand called them—the opportunistic Peter Keating, who appropriates Roark’s architectural talent for his own purposes, and Ellsworth Toohey, the journalist who doesn’t know what to write until he knows what people want to hear—symbolize a mindset that’s sadly familiar today.

Yeah, because the guy using state money to fly himself around the globe to meet his Latin lover, while his wife and children are back in the government paid for Governor’s mansion, ought to be talking about second hand leeches.

When the economy took a nosedive a year ago—a series of events that arguably began when the government-sponsored corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went broke—many Americans, myself included, watched in disbelief as members of Congress placed blame on everyone and everything but government. This wasn’t new in 2008. It’s an act we’ve seen over and over since the beginning of the New Deal in 1933. For that reason, I think, those passages in Atlas Shrugged foreshadow what might happen to our country if there is no change in direction. As Rand shows in her book, when the government is deprived of the free market’s best minds, it staggers toward collapse.

Uh huh, how convenient. Sanford pegs Fannie and Freddie as the ultimate culprits without noting that, while government sponsored, they are privately run enterprises. Nor noting that the reason the GSEs failed is from the complete hash of the financial markets made by the anti-regulatory, free wheeling, Randian geniuses populating Wall Street and the “financial products” markets that Sanford so adores.

Then there is this: Read more →