McCain Ties Obama To Fannie Mae Collapse as Obama Pretends Franklin Raines Wasn't an Adviser

Smears! Racist!

Uh, actually, the truth.

Maybe some day the media will get their heads out of their asses and dig a little further into the connection. It's not as if it's too difficult to tie Obama with Franklin Raines.

Just Google it!

Remarkably, Raines pretends to not have any connection to Obama, and the Obama people break out the tired McCain has seven houses line. Ugh.

This is another flat-out lie from a dishonorable campaign that is increasingly incapable of telling the truth. Frank Raines has never advised Senator Obama about anything -- ever. And by the way, someone whose campaign manager and top advisor worked and lobbied for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shouldn't be throwing stones from his seven glass houses.

So why did the Washington Post say he was taking Barack Obama's calls a couple months ago?

In the four years since he stepped down as Fannie Mae's chief executive under the shadow of a $6.3 billion accounting scandal, Franklin D. Raines has been quietly constructing a new life for himself. He has shaved eight points off his golf handicap, taken a corner office in Steve Case's D.C. conglomeration of finance, entertainment and health-care companies and more recently, taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters.

Ahem, here's another refresher for the Obama campaign.

In the current crisis, their biggest backers have been Democrats such as Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (Mass.). Two members of Mr. Obama's political circle, James A. Johnson and Franklin D. Raines, are former chief executives of Fannie Mae.

Is the Washington Post smearing Obama?

I wonder if those stories will magically be re-edited?

Ed Morrissey has a look at Franklin Raines and his trail of fraud. Thanks for the link!

Update: Time hack Karen Tumulty says this ad shows McCain is playing the race card, What an idiot. So McCain isn't allowed to show an ad linking Obama with another black man?

Let me stipulate: Obama's Fannie Mae connections are completely fair game. But this ad doesn't even mention a far more significant tie--that of Jim Johnson, the former Fannie Mae chairman who had to resign as head of Obama's vice presidential search team after it was revealed he got a sweetheart deal on a mortgage from Countrywide Financial. Instead, it relies on a fleeting and tenuous reference in a Washington Post Style section story to suggest that Obama's principal economic adviser is former Fannie Mae Chairman Frank Raines. Why? One reason might be that Johnson is white; Raines is black.

Not only is she's stupid, she's too lazy to even find more than one story linking the two.

But she's an, ahem, respected journalist. And a complete moron, to boot.

Maybe this respected journalist should wait for the Johnson ad.