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links for 2008-09-21

  • The market storm that brought down Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., American International Group Inc. and other pillars of U.S. finance may have also blown holes in the portfolios of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator John Kerry and more than 50 other members of Congress.

    Pelosi, in her most recent financial disclosure form, reported that her husband owned between $250,000 and $500,000 of stock in AIG, which ceded majority control to the U.S. government this week in exchange for $85 billion of loans.

    Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, disclosed that his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, had more than $2 million of AIG stock at the end of 2007, when shares were worth $58.30. AIG has fallen 85 percent this week to close yesterday at $2.69. The lawmakers' aides didn't respond to calls seeking comment.

  • A group of Hillary Clinton supporters condemned the National Organization for Women's endorsement of Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden earlier this week.

    "The New Agenda is concerned that NOW's recent endorsement of Barack Obama leaves many women in this country out in the cold," the nonpartisan nonprofit group said in a release Friday. "The endorsement seems all the more puzzling given the fact that the Republican Party is running its first female candidate for Vice-President, Gov. Sarah Palin, and the Green Party is fielding its first all-woman presidential ticket with Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente."

  • Democrats are drafting a joint House-Senate bill to expedite action on the Treasury Department’s $700 billion rescue plan for the financial markets but want the government to use its new leverage to slow foreclosures and cap compensation for the Wall Street chiefs whose companies are being bailed out.

    There will be provisions as well in either the core bill or side deals asking the White House to accept new economic stimulus spending and bankruptcy court relief for homeowners, a legal issue long opposed by bankers yet now championed by leading Senate Democrats as well as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

  • Today, the Post brazenly runs Dobb’s column—under the title “Linking Obama to Ex-Fannie Mae Chief Is a Stretch”—side-by-side (on page A4) with an“Ad Watch” column by Howard Kurtz that evaluates an Obama ad. The ad asks “So who advises [McCain]?” on economic issues, and gives Carly Fiorina, Phil Gramm, and George Bush as its answers.

    The opening sentence of Kurtz’s analysis states, “The key facts in this Barack Obama counterattack ad are accurate.” Oh, really? Only the thorough reader will learn that Gramm “relinquished his formal campaign role” some time ago, and Kurtz offers no evidence that Gramm remains an adviser to McCain on economic issues. And there is of course no evidence that President Bush is advising McCain on economic issues.

    Kurtz’s column also bears (in the newspaper edition) a title that the Obama campaign could have written: “Judging a Man by the Company He Keeps”. Any chance that the Post will use that standard in exploring Obama’s ties to Bill Ayers…

  • (tags: Barack Obama)
  • (tags: Joe Biden)
  • A scoop — or is it? The claim from Palin is that she fired Walt Monegan, her police chief, not because he refused to fire her trooper ex-brother-in-law but because of general insubordination, the “last straw” of which was his supposedly unauthorized planned trip to D.C. in July to seek funds for an anti-rape program. Enter ABC with a copy of Monegan’s travel report proving that Palin’s chief of staff, Mike Nizich, authorized the trip in late June. A smokin’ hole in her credibility?
    ++++++++
    The MSM is trying to find fault with Sarah Palin but again comes up short.
    (tags: sarah_palin)
  • An internal government document obtained by ABC News appears to contradict Sarah Palin's most recent explanation for why she fired her public safety chief, the move which prompted the now-contested state probe into "Troopergate."

    Fighting back against allegations she may have fired her then-Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan, for refusing to go along with a personal vendetta, Palin on Monday argued in a legal filing that she fired Monegan because he had a "rogue mentality" and was bucking her administration's directives.

    "The last straw," her lawyer argued, came when he planned a trip to Washington, D.C., to seek federal funds for an aggressive anti-sexual-violence program. The project, expected to cost from $10 million to $20 million a year for five years, would have been the first of its kind in Alaska, which leads the nation in reported forcible rape.

    (tags: sarah_palin)
  • (tags: Day By)