Since the time change started the day bad,

let's take a bad-tempered look at two of the people who've A: helped create the financial mess we're in and B: want their hands on your money and mine to 'fix' it by screwing things up even more.

First up, Sen. Chris Countrywide Irish Cottage Dodd:
It takes considerable political skill for a U.S. senator to win a presidential pardon for a friend without the traditional review by the Justice Department. Sen. Christopher Dodd moved the furtive levers of power in 2001 for Edward R. Downe, convicted of tax and securities fraud eight years before. A man will do a lot for a former real estate partner.

It was reported here two weeks ago that Downe's real estate development partner, William "Bucky" Kessinger of Kansas City, Mo., purchased a 1,700-square-foot home in Ireland with Dodd in 1994 for $160,000. Downe's name appeared on the transfer document filed in the Irish Land Registry as the witness to Kessinger's signature. Kessinger owned two-thirds of the property, Dodd one-third.

Dodd's spokesman told The Courant in 2001 that the senator and Downe, who pleaded guilty to insider trading in 1993, had been friends for many years. No one mentioned that Dodd and Downe together purchased a condominium in Washington, D.C., in 1986. Dodd bought Downe's share 3 1/2 years later.
And so on.
Dodd was never required to name Kessinger (on Senate disclosures) as the co-owner of their house on 10 acres of waterfront property on the west coast of Ireland for the eight years they owned it together. As with the condominium, the public doesn't know who paid the expenses associated with it when Kessinger owned two-thirds of it.
...
In 2002, long into a historic Irish property value boom and the year after Dodd got Downe pardoned, Kessinger sold Dodd his share in the lair for only $15,000 more than the $107,000 he'd paid in 1994. Two years after the bubble exploded, homes smaller than Dodd's and on smaller pieces of property than his are on the market for several times the maximum $250,000 Dodd has declared his is worth each year on his Senate disclosure formssince 2002.

Waterfront properties on the "Irish Riviera" don't often come on the market. In today's dire real estate market, a 750-square-foot, two-bedroom townhouse in nearby Roundstone is for sale for $750,000. A 900-square foot, three-bedroom semi-detached house, boasting of a view of Inishnee, the island where Dodd's house stands high above Bertaghboy Bay, is offered for $700,000.
...
A presidential pardon is a rare possession, especially when the man pardoned, Downe, still owed millions to the Securities and Exchange Commission for his violations.

Rarer still, however, is the real estate developer, like Kessinger, who appears to have left hundreds of thousands of dollars in appreciated value on the table for his minority-share partner. Dodd appears to have latched onto one — and, on paper, has turned a profit like the Wall Street pirates he once loved but now disdains.
Let us note, he now 'disdains' because he needs to blame them for the mess and is desperately trying to cover up/wash off his own handprints(lot more than fingerprints there, folks).

And now to the other, Rep. Barney Fannie Mae Frank:
“We’re going to have a hearing with the attorney general, and the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the bank regulators, the representatives of the state attorneys general and the state securities administrators, and we have a question that they are being asked now – what are your plans to prosecute those people whose irresponsible and in some cases criminal actions help bring about this crisis that will be both criminal and civil?”
Awww, doesn't that sound inspiring? It might, except
Would that include your ex-boyfriend, Herb Moses, who was an Executive at Fannie Mae. You gonna slap the cuffs on him? Again, I mean.

And will you be investigating your role in the crisis, Elmer Fudd? After all, Elmer Fudd was Congress’s most stalwart opponent against reform and oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s dubious loan operations, the very ones that led to the current economic crisis.

* According to an article in the Oct. 8, 2003, Washington Post, Frank opposed giving the Bush administration the right to approve or disapprove business activities that “could pose risk to the taxpayers.”
* He told The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2003, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s problems were “exaggerated.” “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.” Elmer Fudd wanted to make sure loan decisions were based on politics, not sound economics a gross miscalculation some five years later with costs in the hundreds of billions.
* According a front page story in the Sept. 19, 2008, Investor’s Business Daily, Elmer Fudd has received $40,100 in campaign cash from Fannie Mae and its counterpart Freddie Mac.

I was listening to somebody on Friday, may have been Rush, who said "I do not know how Dodd and Frank can look at themselves in a mirror, I really don't."