Dec. 5, 2008
Just yesterday Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the House’s resident comedian, gave these two gems to the APÂ about the need for Obama to be more assertive in the economic crisis:
Frank, who has been dealing with both the bailout of the financial industry and a proposed rescue of Detroit automakers, said Obama needs to play a more significant role on economic issues.“At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time,” Frank said. “I’m afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He’s got to remedy that situation.”
“It is a grave mistake to assume that parties are irrelevant to this process,” he said. “My one difference with the president-elect, about whom I am very enthusiastic, is when he talks about being post-partisan.“Having lived with this very right wing Republican group that runs the House most of the time, the notion of trying to deal with them as if we could be post-partisan gives me post-partisan depression,” Frank said.
Here’s an incomplete collection of Frank’s work from just the last six months. I don’t know why reporters would even try going anywhere else for official reaction to anything.
- On potential criticism of cabinet choices by Barack Obama before he takes office:
“Anybody who has reacted after two weeks is not a serious person,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).
- On John McCain suspending his campaign and returning to Washington to “help” with the bailout:
“It’s the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of either football or Marys.”
- On Sarah Palin (Frank is one of two openly gay members of Congress):
“I want to give her this,†said Frank. “She is apparently a lot more tolerant of me than I am of her.â€
- After Bill O’Reilly tried shouting him down over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Frank said what everyone watching was probably thinking:
“Bill, here’s the problem with going on your show. You start ranting. And the only way to respond is almost to look as boorish as you.”
- And finally, after the Republicans outrageously blamed a partisan speech by Nancy Pelosi for sinking the initial bailout bill, the press asked Pelosi for comment. Frank happily responded instead.
There are certainly more (I’m just going to assume every news article he’s ever been quoted in). Post ‘em if you got ‘em.
Trevor Timm is a Blast Magazine staff writer
Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) is also openly gay.
thanks…fixed.
the real comedy is how frank’s roommate/lover was convicted of running a brothel out of THEIR apartment in the 90’s. added to the fact that his new gay lover is a high ranking executive at fannie mae, the joke is on the american taxpayer.
Love Barney Frank. He makes his point with so much humor. Just love it.
Hey Mark,
In case you have forgotten the lover was running a brothel that Frank didn’t know about. He was investigated about that already. Can you prove Frank has done something wrong with this executive who works at fannie mae? You ought to be careful what you say Mark you can be sue.
Telling it like it is with humor…we need more of that. Thanks for gathering some of the good Frank stuff.
This guy is the joke. He misled the American peopel about Fannie and Freddie and has the audacity to blame everything and anything on anyone but himself.
Rahm Emanuel is standing behind him in that video.
Funny, I didn’t notice him as a bailout crisis figure before he was appointed Chief of Staff.
To Melanie:
Emanuel was not so much a bailout crisis figure as he was the third ranking member of the House before being appointed to chief of staff.
Brothel? Maybe some bail out money to a good one with the proceeds going back to the people. Let’s make Barney can be in charge.
To the Republican idiots who go on and on about Frank’s roommate scandal of twenty years ago: What about the Republicans not throwing Sen. Larry Craig out of the Senate after he plead guilty to soliciting for gay bathroom sex? What about Senator Vitter and the prostitute? You Republicans are such disgusting hypocrites. A majority of the public no longer buys your Christianist(it sure ain’t Christian!) self-righteous whining.
I’ve been a fan of Rep. Frank for years. I remember watching some conservative debate him on a talk show probably 10 years ago. He was a handful – it was like watching someone try to give a cat a bath: no matter what end of the issue the conservative grabbed onto, it had squirmed out of his grasp and left scratch marks behind by the time Frank got done with it.
Rep. Frank was chairing the recent House hearings about the bridge loans to the auto industry. He was very strict about time limits for the Q & A. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito was fondly remembering her family’s cars, including an old station wagon she referred to as a ‘chick magnet’.
Frank responded to her time wasting with: “Chick magnet. It’s just not something I’d ever want to drive.â€
Reporter’s Notebook: At Auto Hearing, Frank Runs a Tight Ship
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2008/12/05/reporters-notebook-auto-hearing-frank-runs-tight-ship/
I love you liberals, all the same. Threaten to sue me when I make a statement of fact and then call me an idiot.
And if you believe Frank didn’t know his lover was running a brothel out of his house I have some swampland in Florida to sell you.
Mark
Barney Frank is a dork. He does what he wants, and I can’t figure out why people keep electing him. He is the reason why we should vote to put at 12 year limit in Congress. So people like Frank don’t stay in there to fill their pockets with tax payer money. Most politicians that have been in there for longer than 12 years learn to “steal” from us (taxpayers). Frank just happens to be the dumbest one, and most annoying.
Also, about John McCain unsuspending his campaign to attend the first debate:
“Now that Sen. McCain is safely in Mississippi we can get back to serious work,”
Rep. Barney Frank predicts bailout deal by Sunday
JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and DAVID ESPO, AP
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080926/ap_on_bi_ge/financial_meltdown
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Mmes/Messrs:
This, of course, is a defense and advocation of the loan/bailout of the Big 3, and a counter to the union busters in the Republican Party:
I haven’t clearly stated my position, so I understand that you might not know what it is. By advocating for the re-strengthening of unions, I’m not saying that EVERY company in the country, no matter how big they are, should be unionized. Even now, current unionization laws don’t apply to shops under a certain size, as I understand things. Just a healthy presence, by way of union membership in major and some minor corporations, is enough to bring up everyone’s wages – especially suppliers and companies in the same field as those corporations (until recently). The presence of unions, the more the better ONLY to a point (union membership has never been more than about 33% of the work force), simply holds capital’s (the class) feet to the fire.
As to your point that high wages are being earned by many who are not in unions. Of course professionals and entrepreneurs, and management sycophants (a small portion of the workers),
are, and always have, going to do better than the masses. Even nowdays, in the era of the service economy (which was partly artificially brought on by a flight from capital away from the manufacturing sector), including lawyers and Wall Street paper shufflers, FEW “average workers” (INCLUDING some with degrees and training) are making more than the Big 3 (other than the professionals, entrepreneurs, and management). In fact, I think that the service economy has been partially responsible for a race to the bottom re:wages.
The thing to realize is that the health of the country/economy depends on a much broader scope of wage earners than the OTHER Big 3 (professionals, entrepreneurs, and management). That’s where unions come in – they force the top 4% of the country to spread the wealth, which is a good thing, btw. Econ 101 tells you / taught me that money concentrated in a few hands does not have as much impact as when it is in the hands of many (more ideas get funded, more products get sold, etc.)
Hence, it is in the interest of EVERY worker other than the “second Big 3″ (professionals, entrepreneurs, and management sycophants), even capital (the class), to see the Big 3 (car companies and their suppliers) do well. (Capital, the class, sees more money come out of their pockets, but it is in their LARGER self-interest to see more money spread around as I explained above [more ideas funded, products sold, etc.]. Only greed [especially as defended and advocated by the modern Republican Party and the current crop of Wall Street paper shufflers] keeps BIG business from acting in their own larger self-interest.) Henry Ford understood this ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. He was the first of the capital class to say, “I want to pay workers enough so that they can afford to buy the products/cars that they are producing.” Only because of greed and the rise of the Republican Party, doing the bidding of BIG business/capital class, has Henry Ford’s logic been ignored and even scoffed at. You can bet your last dollar that the paper shufflers on Wall Street are 90% Republican.
Talk to you later…
Reid
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Mmes/Messrs:
This, of course, is a defense and advocation of the loan/bailout of the Big 3, and a counter to the union busters in the Republican Party:
I haven’t clearly stated my position, so I understand that you might not know what it is. By advocating for the re-strengthening of unions, I’m not saying that EVERY company in the country, no matter how big they are, should be unionized. Even now, current unionization laws don’t apply to shops under a certain size, as I understand things. Just a healthy presence, by way of union membership in major and some minor corporations, is enough to bring up everyone’s wages – especially suppliers and companies in the same field as those corporations (until recently). The presence of unions, the more the better ONLY to a point (union membership has never been more than about 33% of the work force), simply holds capital’s (the class) feet to the fire.
As to your point that high wages are being earned by many who are not in unions. Of course professionals and entrepreneurs, and management sycophants (a small portion of the workers),
are, and always have, going to do better than the masses. Even nowdays, in the era of the service economy (which was partly artificially brought on by a flight from capital away from the manufacturing sector), including lawyers and Wall Street paper shufflers, FEW “average workers” (INCLUDING some with degrees and training) are making more than the Big 3 (other than the professionals, entrepreneurs, and management). In fact, I think that the service economy has been partially responsible for a race to the bottom re:wages.
The thing to realize is that the health of the country/economy depends on a much broader scope of wage earners than the OTHER Big 3 (professionals, entrepreneurs, and management). That’s where unions come in – they force the top 4% of the country to spread the wealth, which is a good thing, btw. Econ 101 tells you / taught me that money concentrated in a few hands does not have as much impact as when it is in the hands of many (more ideas get funded, more products get sold, etc.)
Hence, it is in the interest of EVERY worker other than the “second Big 3″ (professionals, entrepreneurs, and management sycophants), even capital (the class), to see the Big 3 (car companies and their suppliers) do well. (Capital, the class, sees more money come out of their pockets, but it is in their LARGER self-interest to see more money spread around as I explained above [more ideas funded, products sold, etc.]. Only greed [especially as defended and advocated by the modern Republican Party and the current crop of Wall Street paper shufflers] keeps BIG business from acting in their own larger self-interest.) Henry Ford understood this ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. He was the first of the capital class to say, “I want to pay workers enough so that they can afford to buy the products/cars that they are producing.” Only because of greed and the rise of the Republican Party, doing the bidding of BIG business/capital class, has Henry Ford’s logic been ignored and even scoffed at. You can bet your last dollar that the paper shufflers on Wall Street are 90% Republican.
Talk to you later…
Reid Wickiser, Bowling Green, Ohio
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