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The Obama Nation
I’ve Got Disgust… for Obama
Music video response to “I’ve Got a Crush… on Obama” by the Obama Girl. An uplifting tune backed by bongo playing and timely lyrics about Presidential hopeful, Barack Obama.
Barack Obama and Chris Dodd
I’ve got to wonder if Senator Chris Dodd is still being considered as a potential Vice-President pick by Barack Obama.
After all, Obama could pull his standard, “that’s not the guy I knew” line and excuse Senator Dodd and his sweetheart mortgage deals from Countrywide, a company whose practices he once called “abusive”?
If you’re not up to date on the story, Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, got two loans at special rates from Countrywide in 2003 to refinance homes in Washington and East Haddam, CT.
The loans were reportedly part of a “V.I.P.” program, where certain lucky folks received preferential rates from the chairman and chief executive of Countrywide, Angelo Mozilo.
Yes, the same Countrywide that had ties to Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson, who served briefly on the committee to help pick a VP for Obama.
He was booted when his questionable connections to Countrywide were revealed.
Stay tuned to this one.
Obama has a Bill Clinton Moment
Barack Obama has been stumbling and bumbling as he tries to explain his methodology for selecting the group of folks who will be vetting his Vice President prospects.
Obama seemed to be blindsided by the close relationship Jim Johnson has with Countrywide Financial Corp, a company he has demonized as he’s spoken around the country.
And his campaign for change has to be questioned when another of his vetters is Eric Holder, “the Clinton Justice Department official in the middle of the sleazy pardon for fugitive financier Marc Rich.”
Good, old fashioned cronyism.
Criticism of these picks has led to a whine from Obama that he’d have to hire a vetter to vet the vetters.
He went on to say “these aren’t folks who are working for me”.
The people Obama brought on to help select his running mate are not working for him? Is Obama rudderless?
It depends on what the meaning of the words ‘is’ is.
See Obama trying to explain it in a press conference yesterday. Would somebody please get him a script! He’s drowning here.
Obama’s Countrywide Subprime Mortgage Connection
Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson is tight with Barack Obama. He was just tapped as one of three people on Obama’s vice presidential search team.
Johnson also has close ties to and loans from Countrywide Financial Corp., a company hit by subprime mortgages and loan problems.
Additionally, the Countrywide lending practices and CEO compensation are under scrutiny.
James Johnson was part of an elite group known as “friends of Angelo” (Countrywide Financial co-founder Angelo Mozilo), and he got more than $7 million in “special loans” from Countrywide.
These loans were below market averages, according to the Wall Street Journal.
This is one of those companies that Obama has been railing against, at least in public.
Obama has blasted Countrywide’s executives as “the people who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis,” at a town hall meeting in Lancaster, PA this past March.
So it seems pretty disingenuous that Obama would engage in cronyism with Jim Johnson if Obama is going to bring change to politics.
More details in the New York Sun.
