Metro Weekly

Right-wing news targeting Barney Frank and ‘gay boyfriend’ for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, bank meltdown [video]

”It’s absolutely a conflict. He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane?…. If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have – or at least what’s not in the stock market – that this would be considered germane. But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard.” — Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute and a T. Boone Pickens Fellow

”C’mon, he writes housing and banking laws and his boyfriend is a top exec at a firm that stands to gain from those laws? No media ever takes note? Imagine what would happen if Frank’s political affiliation was R instead of D? Imagine what the media would say if [GOP former] Chairman [Mike] Oxley’s wife or [GOP presidential nominee John] McCain’s wife was a top exec at Fannie for a decade while they wrote the nation’s housing and banking laws.” — An anonymous ‘top GOP aide.’

Quotes from a Fox News article that alleges a direct connection between Congressman Barney Frank and Herb Moses to the recent economic disaster by way of a position Moses held at Fannie Mae. The article seems to be saying Frank and Moses had a conflict of interest back in the 1990s because the congressman promoted deregulation of the mortgage and housing giant while he had a gay relationship with Moses who was working there at the time.  (Fox News) Representative Barney Frank [D-MA] was recently an outspoken lead on crafting legislation to facilitate the so-called $700 billion bailout, and he mocked Republican Members for blaming Speaker Nancy Pelosi and partisan rhetoric as the reason they could not gather an agreed upon number of votes to move the controversial measure forward. A number of smaller conservative news outlets have coordinated similar pieces attempting to discredit the congressman’s efforts, and at least two right-wing radio blowhards, Michael Savage and Bill Cunningham have stated in the last week that Barney Frank at one time personally ”ran a house of [male] prostitution” in reference to a reprimand he received nearly 20 years ago.

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