Swiss Bank paid Gramm to oppose aid to homeowners

(CNN breaking)
No, I don’t know if it’s Phil or Wendy, and I have no other details. I can’t find it at the CNN site. But it was on the CNN ticker.

CNN has disappeared the story. As Phoenix Woman points out in comments, not so MSNBC.

“Countdown with Keith Olbermann” reported Tuesday night that lobbying disclosure forms, filed by the giant Swiss bank UBS, list McCain’s campaign co-chair, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, as a lobbyist dealing specifically with legislation regarding the mortgage crisis as recently as Dec. 31, 2007.

Gramm joined the bank in 2002 and had registered as a lobbyist by 2004. UBS filed paperwork deregistering Gramm on April 18 of this year. Gramm continues to serve as a UBS vice chairman…

The final UBS form listing Gramm’s work as a lobbyist says he was lobbying the Senate in the second half of 2007 regarding the Helping Families Save Their Homes in Bankruptcy Act. The bill would have let bankruptcy judges rewrite mortgage terms for Americans facing foreclosure so they could repay their loans and keep their homes.

The banking industry opposed this measure. The bill failed.

Buh-Bye, Steno Sue

Howard “Mistah” Kurtz, in the course of watching several longtime fellow WaPo employees, including Susan Schmidt, take the buyouts that the Post has offered them, states this steaming hunk of untruth:

…Sue Schmidt, the investigative reporter who revealed Jack Abramoff’s dirty dealings…

Um, no. The late David Rosenbaum, a reporter with the New York Times, had his first story out on Jack Abramoff on April 2, 2002 — a full 22 months before Steno Sue’s first piece on the subject saw the light of day. Her main contribution to the coverage of the Abramoff story seems to have been pretending that Abramoff gave money to Democrats.

But, as our very own Charles noted at Brad DeLong’s shop, the Washington Post has been cheerfully promoting the fiction that Susan Schmidt broke the story, when in fact the only things I can recall her actually breaking with regard to journalism are reportorial ethics and maybe a fingernail or two transcribing the tripe she was fed by Ken Starr’s OIC and other members of the Republican Party’s get-Clinton cabal during the 1990s.

This Should Kill Any Talk Of Putting Lieberman On McCain’s Ticket

The gent we last saw offering up words of praise for McCain’s endorser, John “Israel Must Die” Hagee, is so unpopular that he can’t even deliver his own son-in-law for McCain: Rabbi Ethan Tucker is voting for Obama.

Oh, and even after his buddy McCain finally rejects and denounces Hagee, Lieberman is still embracing the guy and all he stands for:

Senator Joseph Lieberman is scheduled to headline Pastor John Hagee’s 2008 Christians United For Israel Washington-Israel Summit this July 22. In accepting Hagee’s invitation, Lieberman became the most senior elected representative confirmed to appear at the annual gala. Last year, when Lieberman spoke at Hagee’s summit, he compared the Texas televangelist to the biblical prophet Moses, dubbing him “an Ish Elochim,” or “a man of God.” Unless he rescinds his pledge to appear at this year’s summit, Lieberman can be expected to deliver another soul-stirring tribute.

Hagee’s vitriolic condemnation of Catholicism, his jeremiad declaring Hurricane Katrina divine punishment for New Orleans’ hosting of a “homosexual rally,” and his generally disturbing apocalyptic theology became national news last February when John McCain accepted his endorsement in a widely publicized ceremony.

While initially resisting pressure to reject Hagee’s endorsement, McCain finally ended his relationship with Hagee when a sermon by the preacher describing the Holocaust as the will of God registered on the mainstream media’s radar (Hear the now-infamous sermon here).

Hey, Joe: Last time I looked, Moses didn’t advocate establishing the Jews in Israel just so they could be the disposable caretakers of the staging area for the end of the world.

Things That Made Me Happy Today

– Went out on a longish bike ride yesterdat with the spouse; stopped at a fine restaurant, and then at a bike shop, where some work was done on my bike which made it a happier bike (and more work was done at home that made it even happier still).

– Saw this article on Apple’s filing patents to place solar cells on portable devices such as the iPhone and iPod touch. The solar cells would reside under the LCD touch screens. Heck, you could probably at least partially charge the sucker while it was turned off just from the solar power you’d get from an airplane window. Go off the grid, yet stay in touch.

– While we’re talking about solar powered electronics, check out the world’s first solar-powered laptop bag, from Voltaic Systems. Top off your laptop or give it a full charge with a day’s worth of sun.

– Lastly, this blog post on container gardening let me know that I was mostly on the right track with my own little garden.