November 2011

Bloomberg is out with another article about the financial collapse. In it they report that former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who was in charge during the collapse, gave insider information to hedge funders. The following alledgedly took place on July 21, 2008

At the Eton Park meeting, he sent a different message, according to a fund manager who attended. Over sandwiches and pasta salad, he delivered that information to a group of men capable of profiting from any disclosure.

Around the conference room table were a dozen or so hedge- fund managers and other Wall Street executives -- at least five of them alumni of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), of which Paulson was chief executive officer and chairman from 1999 to 2006. In addition to Eton Park founder Eric Mindich, they included such boldface names as Lone Pine Capital LLC founder Stephen Mandel, Dinakar Singh of TPG-Axon Capital Management LP and Daniel Och of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC.

After a perfunctory discussion of the market turmoil, the fund manager says, the discussion turned to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Paulson said he had erred by not punishing Bear Stearns shareholders more severely. The secretary, then 62, went on to describe a possible scenario for placing Fannie and Freddie into “conservatorship” -- a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets.

Now who was President in 2008? Oh yeah! But again that is fact. Here's what Andrew Breitbart's Big Government is pushing this meme from their editor's new book, Throw Them All Out:

With the big Herman Cain news today comes the right digging in and continuing the media blame game. Here's William Jacobson, who has been painting the media as the bad guy all along:

This will all be used to justify Politico’s original reporting, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The issue never was whether the settlements or allegations of sexual harassment were fair game; I took the position at the very beginning that they were legitimate vetting issues but that the public was entitled to facts as to the allegations, not just Politico’s characterization.

Early on I also suggested that what Politico really was doing was trying to smoke out other accusers, and that in fact was the effect. We’ll never know the truth of what happened, and for most of the accusers we don’t even know their names or what the accusations were, but it worked.

Let's go back to the original story by Politico, which is still online here. Ten days before this story came out, the reporters tried to get Cain to tell his side of the story. Instead he chose to ignore it. Finally Politico did get a response from Cain, well sort of:

Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon told POLITICO the candidate indicated to campaign officials that he was “vaguely familiar” with the charges and that the restaurant association’s general counsel had resolved the matter.

The latest statement came from Cain himself. In a tense sidewalk encounter Sunday morning outside the Washington bureau of CBS News — where the Republican contender had just completed an interview on “Face the Nation” — Cain evaded a series of questions about sexual harassment allegations.

Wow! What an interesting twist this story just took:

Gov. Sam Brownback apologized Monday for his office's reaction to a Kansas high school senior's disparaging tweet about the Republican during a visit to the Statehouse.

The governor's staff complained about a post by Emma Sullivan, 18, and the student quickly landed in hot water with administrators at Shawnee Mission East High School.

I really got to give credit to Brownback here. He did the right thing. From his statement:

"I enjoyed speaking to the more than 100 students who participated in the Youth in Government Program at the Kansas Capitol. They are our future," the governor said. "I also want to thank the thousands of Kansas educators who remind us daily of our liberties, as well as the values of civility and decorum."

"Again, I apologize for our over-reaction," he said.

Again - thank your Gov. Brownback for doing the right thing here!

I blogged about Emma Sullivan on Saturday. She's a high school senior in Kansas who made a "disparaging" comment about Sam Brownback on Twitter and got called to the principals office for it. The principal tried to force her to write a letter of apology to the Republican governor after his office complained about the tweet. Sullivan is now refusing, saying such a letter wouldn't be sincere.

This is my "feel good" story of the day. It's great to see a young person stand up for their rights today. As the article pointed out, Sullivan was only talking to he 65 friends on Twitter when she made the comment. Now she has exploded to over 3,000 followers and is becoming a hero for freedom of speech.

Here's the interview with Sullivan, a new crusader for our Constitutional rights.