June 30, 2008
Last week, John McCain’s chief campaign strategist, Charlie Black, caused quite a stir with his invitation for an Al Qaeda attack on the United States, to help improve McCain’s chances for election. Black was obviously thinking about Osama bin Laden’s last “October Surprise” in which bin Laden released a video right before the 2004 election. That video was widely considered to have given Bush a crucial “bump”, putting him over the top to defeat John Kerry. Knowing that Al Qaeda (and other terrorist groups) hate to see moderates get elected, Charlie Black saw fit to remind Al Qaeda that they would have no rallying call if Barack Obama were to become President and pull the U.S. troops out of Iraq. Al Qaeda’s best chance for maintaining their status quo appears to Black as another terrorist attack in the U.S. He knows they want McCain to win the election because they wanted Bush to win in 2004. Four days before Election Day in 2004, bin Laden released an 18-minute videotape taunting George Bush about the events of September 11, 2001 and he claimed credit for directing the 19 hijackers. Osama’s gambit in helping Bush win seems to have paid off. The incompetent Bush will likely leave office without having caught bin Laden.
After Charlie Black tried his shot at a self-fulfilling prophecy last week, with his announcement (in an interview with Fortune magazine) that a terrorist attack in the United States would “be a big advantage” to help McCain get elected President, Black was widely scorned and criticized. Many commentators placed this remark in context with Black’s earlier statement that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto helped McCain in the New Hampshire Primary. Although McCain attempted to distance himself from Black’s remarks, he has kept Black onboard “The Straight Talk Express”.
Just as criticism of the McCain campaign, for relying on “the politics of fear”, is starting to die down, along comes our old friend, Joe “The Tool” Lieberman. On June 29, The Tool appeared on the CBS television program, “Face The Nation”. Looking into his crystal ball (perhaps that should be plural) The Tool predicted a terrorist attack against the United States in 2009. Out of fear of getting caught at an attempted, self-fulfilling prophecy similar to Black’s, The Tool, speaking with his forked tongue, tried to distinguish his prediction from Black’s wish:
Certainly the implications there I know were not what Charlie intended. And he apologized for it. Senator McCain said he didn’t agree. And, of course, I feel the same way.
Actually, The Tool feels the same way as Charlie Black. He continued on by picking up Black’s “fear flag” to carry it on to victory for McCain in November:
If we had done what Senator Obama asked us to do for the last couple of years, today Iran and al Qaeda would be in control of Iraq. It would be a terrible defeat for us and our allies in the Middle East and throughout the world. Instead, we’ve got a country that’s defending itself, that’s growing economically, where there’s been genuine political reconciliation, and where Iran and al Qaeda are on the run. And that’s the way it ought to be.
Iraq is “growing economically”? It has yet to rebuild its infrastructure. The Tool is obviously talking to those people referred to as “low information voters”. He is insulting the intelligence of everyone else. Iraq is “defending itself”? Tell that to our troops who are stationed there. If Iraq really is defending itself, then we should be able to leave. Iran is “on the run”? I thought they were getting ready to nuke Israel. The Tool is now so used to telling lies that he can effortlessly spit out a sentence containing three big ones.
On the same program, we heard from someone who, unlike Lieberman, actually has some military experience. Retired General Wesley Clark told host Bob Schieffer: “I think Joe has it exactly backwards here.” After comparing the qualities of Obama to those of McCain, General Clark said:
And I think what we need to do, Bob, is we need to stop talking about the old politics of left and right, and we need to pull together and move the country forward.
Both Lieberman and McCain used to pride themselves on being centrists in a highly-partisan Senate. Both are now singing the same, sorry tune we’ve been hearing from our unpopular President for the last seven years, at a time when we would expect a theme of hope and bipartisan progress. With Obama singing solo on that theme, the prospects for any Republican candidate this year don’t appear much better than the outlook for the S&P 500.
Kill The Whales
October 8, 2009
Those whales are back in the news again — this time due to calls for their slaughter. In case you’re wondering what kind of person would advocate the killing of whales, I would like to identify two people who recently spoke out in favor of such action. The first of these individuals is one of my favorite columnists at The New York Times, Gretchen Morgenson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her “trenchant and incisive” coverage of Wall Street. The second is the chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Sheila Bair. Two women want to have whales killed? Yes. However, the “whales” in question are those infamous financial institutions considered “too big to fail”. On October 3, Gretchen Morgenson wrote a piece for The New York Times, entitled: “The Cost of Saving These Whales” in which she defined “to big to fail” institutions as “banks that are so big and interconnected that their very existence threatens the world”. She discussed the problems caused by the continued existence of those whales with this explanation:
On October 4, Sheila Bair of the FDIC gave a speech before the International Institute of Finance at their annual meeting in Istanbul, Turkey. At the outset, she pointed out that “the first task” in creating “a more resilient, transparent, and better-regulated financial system” would be to scrap the “too big to fail” doctrine. She went on to explain how to go about killing those whales:
On September 23, 2009 Treasury Secretary “Turbo” Tim Geithner testified before the House Financial Services Committee to explain his planned financial reform agenda. Here’s what Turbo Tim had to say about the plan for dealing with the “too big to fail” problem:
So, in other words … the government subsidies to these institutions will continue, but only if the recipients get “very strong government oversight”. In his next sentence Geithner expressed his belief that the moral hazard was created “by the perception that these subsidies exist” rather than the FACT that they exist. Geithner’s scheme of continued corporate welfare for the biggest financial institutions is consistent with what we learned about him from Jo Becker and Gretchen Morgenson in their New York Times article back on April 26. That essay gave us some great insight about Turbo Tim’s blindness to moral hazard:
Geithner’s objective of putting the prosperity of the banks ahead of any concern for the taxpayers was again demonstrated in this AFP report from October 6:
On October 6, Newsweek published an interview conducted by Nancy Cook with William Black, a former federal regulator during the Savings & Loan crisis and a professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. The interview included a discussion of the government’s response to the financial crisis. One remark made by Mr. Black reinforced my opinion about Turbo Tim:
It should come as no surprise that Richard Carnell, a Professor at Fordham Law School and former Assistant Treasury Secretary for President Clinton, would have this to say about Geithner’s financial reform agenda, when asked for his comments by Kim Thai of Fortune:
It appears as though Turbo Tim is not up to the job of killing those whales. Perhaps the President should find someone who is.