And then at 10 on NBC5, how well as County Board President Todd Stroger used Homeland Security money?

Join us for both!

Almost.

John McCain, who announced he was leaving the campaign trail to go to Washington and assist the rescue, didn’t carry his own team in Illinois. Five of seven Illinois Republican members of Congress also gave the bailout a resounding thumbs down.

An odder vote tally you are not likely to see as liberal Democrat U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. found himself on the same side as a conservative Democrat with whom he seldom agrees, Dan Lipinski, and a suburban Republican, Peter Roskam, whose politics he does not share.

Reached by phone in Washington, Jackson had two words to explain his vote.

“Mildred Howell,” he said.

As far as Jackson is concerned, she is the human face of the current crisis who didn’t get a bit of help from the so-called bipartisan bailout that was rejected Monday.

Mrs. Howell is 68 and a widow. She and her husband, Caeser, bought a modest brick home in South Shore in 1969 where they raised three children. They worked hard for their American dream, making mortgage payments every month. He was a police officer, she had jobs at the Board of Health and at Children’s Memorial Hospital.

Five years ago, Mr. Howell was robbed and beaten. He was 79 and died from his wounds. Their house was almost paid off. His wife went to their mortgage company to ask about a reverse mortgage, something that would take the home’s equity to supplement her small income of $1,700 a month. The company, according to mortgage specialist Robert Wallace who is now helping her, steered Mrs. Howell into an adjustable rate mortgage instead. And within four months, she was paying 82 percent of her income in house payments, drowning financially and on the road to foreclosure.

Should she have known better? Wallace, who has seen many senior citizens in Mrs. Howell’s predicament, says the lender deliberately misled and took advantage of Mrs. Howell.

Jackson and his wife, 7th Ward Ald. Sandi Jackson, along with Wallace, have tried to ride to her rescue. But, says the congressman, “There are millions Mildred Howells out there.”

In the congressman’s South Side office, longtime aide Rick Bryant says the phones have been ringing wildly. “Last time I remember getting this many calls was the impeachment of Bill Clinton,” he said Tuesday. Back then constituents were split 50-50 but this time, according to Bryant, callers were 100 percent against a bailout for Wall Street that was financed by Main Street without giving people there any help.

“No particular leader has been influential,” acknowledged Jackson.

Not President Bush. Not House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And not presidential aspirants Obama or McCain.

It’s the American people who are leading on this.

Jackson, who favors a moratorium on foreclosures and outlawing adjustable rate mortgages, said, “There is no organized coalition . . . there are plenty of issues and everyone has a different reason” for their vote, pro or con.

Which accounts for the strange alliances within the Illinois delegation as Republican Mark Kirk, in a tough battle for re-election in the 10th District on the North Shore against Dan Seals, joined ranks with Democratic Chicago Rep. Danny Davis and Rahm Emmanuel in voting in favor of the bailout.

Bipartisan has been the byword of this rescue attempt.

But as Monday’s stunning defeat makes crystal clear, bipartisanship is a knife capable of cutting both ways.

And a lot rides on it.  Here’s Sunday’s Sun-Times column.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/1188888,CST-EDT-carol28.article

Bert and Ernie.

Oprah and Gayle.

Barack and Emil.

Sometimes friendship saves the day.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/1174377,CST-EDT-carol21.article