{"id":3814,"date":"2008-12-16T10:00:46","date_gmt":"2008-12-16T15:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3814"},"modified":"2008-12-15T18:45:54","modified_gmt":"2008-12-15T23:45:54","slug":"barney-frank-on-60-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3814","title":{"rendered":"Barney Frank on 60 Minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

I watched Leslie Stahl’s 60 Minutes interview of Barney Frank online and made a couple observations.<\/p>\n

First of all, the media’s pronounced bias (or Leslie’s for that matter) manifested itself conspicuously, and it was even before the interview began.<\/p>\n

Leslie Stahl’s lead in, emphasis mine:<\/p>\n

“Barney Frank has been called the smartest guy in congress, which is lucky for us since he works on some of the thorniest issues around<\/strong>. The fourteen-term, sixty-eight year-old Harvard educated Democratic (she dips her head in approval)<\/strong> Congressman from Massachusetts is chairman of the house financial services committee, which means his portfolio includes banks, housing, and now the auto industry.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let’s be clear on one<\/em> thing. Fourteen terms of Frank ‘n Beans has not been “lucky” for any of us.<\/p>\n

Frank has purportedly spent his career becoming Congress’ de facto expert on America’s banking system and Wall Street only to oversee – nay, become complicit in – the biggest failure of both in modern times?<\/p>\n

Lucky us!<\/p>\n

Leslie Stahl asks Barney Frank about the unfairness of some people getting bailed out of their mortgages while others work two and three jobs to pay theirs. He justifies the program by asking is it unfair that one neighbor loses his job and gets unemployment while the one that doesn\u2019t lose his job doesn\u2019t? He justifies one policy with another as if they are the same thing. Two wrongs don’t make a right.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s been at the center of both the 700 billion dollar rescue for financial institutions, and the bailout attempt for the car companies that failed in the Senate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As they say, the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.<\/p>\n

I learned from the interview that it’s not the only time he’s been at the center, or on the scene of a crime for that matter.<\/p>\n

The lowest point of his life he says\u2026when he found himself in a sex scandal. A male hooker that Frank had hired told reporters that he had run a prostitution ring out of the congressman\u2019s apartment. An investigation concluded that Frank didn\u2019t know anything about it but he was reprimanded and went to the floor of the house to apologize.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Never mind the fact that Barney Frank hired a hooker. He has a prostitution ring run right under his nose and escapes culpability on the basis of ignorance. Never mind the fact that he gets to keep his job. He is charged with overseeing our nation’s financial systems.<\/p>\n

Only in a Liberal America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I watched Leslie Stahl’s 60 Minutes interview of Barney Frank online and made a couple observations. First of all, the media’s pronounced bias (or Leslie’s for that matter) manifested itself conspicuously, and it was even before the interview began. Leslie Stahl’s lead in, emphasis mine: “Barney Frank has been called the smartest guy in congress, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-democrats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}