The Blog @ Spolitics

Obama’s Chief of Staff Tied to Freddie Mac Scandal

From ABC News:

President-elect Barack Obama’s newly appointed chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, served on the board of directors of the federal mortgage firm Freddie Mac at a time when scandal was brewing at the troubled agency and the board failed to spot “red flags,” according to government reports reviewed by ABCNews.com.

According to a complaint later filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Freddie Mac, known formally as the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, misreported profits by billions of dollars in order to deceive investors between the years 2000 and 2002.

Emanuel was not named in the SEC complaint but the entire board was later accused by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) of having “failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention.”

The American people have just handed complete control of our government to the party — and in some cases, the very people — who have their fingerprints all over the current financial crisis. So much for change.

McCain Campaign Backbiting — Who To Believe?

There’s a lot of mud flying. So who do we believe? Well, look at this article from ABC News and notice that Palin’s defenders went on the record, while the McCain aides smearing her did not. These cowards are hurling cheap shots while hiding in the shadows of anonymity. That’s all you need to know to discern who’s being dishonorable here.

To see some in the McCain camp behaving this way — and the fact that McCain hasn’t risen to Palin’s defense and put the whole thing to an end — takes some of the sting out of McCain’s loss. At least these cowards won’t be rewarded with White House jobs.

Update: McClatchy has more.

Is Obama Already Being Tested?

Is this one of those crisis in the making, Joe Biden warned us about:

President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia greeted his future American counterpart, Senator Barack Obama, with bristling language on Wednesday, promising to place short-range missiles on Russia’s western border if Washington proceeded with its planned missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

Adding to the seriousness of Medvedev’s comments is this report by Newsweek revealing that a foreign power — believed to be either Russia or China — hacked into both the Obama and McCain camps’ computer systems trying to glean information about the evolution of their policy positions in the hope that the information would prove useful in negotiations and provide clues to how they would respond to certain actions.

We know what Americans hope to gain from an Obama Presidency. We have yet to learn what other nations hope to gain.