I think I'm gonna go along, at least 3/4 of the way, with
this piece by Christopher Hitchens on
Kissinger/Obama/McCain.
Christopher might, indeed, have a broader agenda in raising this subject the way he has. But he cites an undeniable and rather uncomfortable truth: that there's something particularly
appalling in both major candidates rushing to align their foreign policy views with a flea-bitten, discredited war criminal like Kissinger. Worse that one of those two is Barack Obama.
Of course, I understand why Obama -- for obviously opportune reasons-- made a point of saying his position on negotiating with hostile powers was the same one enunciated recently by Kissinger. Ok, so this is a clever ploy to win over moderate or even Republican voters. It's also getting down into the dregs of humanity.
Kissinger has never flinched not only from talking to diseased dictatorships. His specialty was to engage in public copulation with them.
Whether one defends Obama or not in his associating himself with Whore Henry, it is a sad commentary that this old bastard still retains some sort of venerated space in American history. Quite an honor for one of the architects of mass death in Vietnam, butt buddy and co-conspirator of
Dick Nixon, hand-maiden to
Mao, pal to
Pinochet and so on
ad nauseum.
On the other hand...Henry has gotten his comeuppance. I don't just refer to the care he must now take when planning a trip abroad lest he be detained by Interpol. No. I'm thinking of his living out these last years of his life as a hired prop for none other than
Ms. Sarah Palin. Dictatorship, butchery and genocide aside, I imagine there's was nevertheless some glory in hanging with Mao or General Pinochet. But to wind up being a rented -out photo op bitch to Sarah Palin?
I guess we get the last laugh anyway.
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September 29th, 2008 at 2:51 am
And speaking of the bimbo Sarah Palin here is a hilarious if not sad clip of CNN comparing Tina Fey’s parody/quote to the actual words of Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMypXCUWMw
‘
September 29th, 2008 at 5:21 am
Marc,
You accidentally linked to an article on Paul Newman. I think this is the piece you meant: http://www.slate.com/id/2201130/
September 29th, 2008 at 7:55 am
“bimbo Sarah Palin”
And people wonder why I gave up so long ago on having civil discussions with you babblinig, frothing radicals. What would you think about “that boy, Barack Obama?”
September 29th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Woody, at age 47, Obama is hardly a boy. But if a bimbo is someone who is attractive but clueless, that definition might fit Palin for those who for some reason could find her attractive in any way.
To Marc’s point. I do not question that Henry Kissinger is a war criminal. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day. More to the point, Obama wasn’t agreeing with Kissinger so much as showing that McCain can’t keep his story straight.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:12 am
The left’s obsession with….uh, hatred of Palin is bridging on unhealthy mental disorder.
One has to ask which is one is behaving ‘normally’, and which keeps repeating a behavior that continues to benefit the one they so despise.
It’s just not normal.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:16 am
What explains the rights obsession with . . . uh, hatred of Palin – then?
lol
Remove the Rove colored glasses and join us back here in reality.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Btw. If McCain and Palin win, against all odds of 8 years of disaster culminating, in the worst disaster of all, you will have nothing or no one to blame but your own radial behaviors for it.
Not ballot problems. Not vote denials. Not racism, sexism, xenophobia, redneck, white trash, ignorance or religion……excepting your own hateful kind.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Jim R,
I suggest that you review the actuarial tables and see what the life expectancy is for a 72 year old two-time cancer sufferer. While his mother is still alive, his father died at 70.
If McCain/Palin were to be elected, there is a very good possibility that she would finish out his term. Given that even some on the right are saying that she’s not fit to be president (David brooks and Kathleen Parker come to mind), what you define as “not normal,” most of us refer to as good judgment.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:25 am
How, btw, is this benefitting her? She has the highest negatives of anyone in the race.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:34 am
“David brooks and Kathleen Parker come to mind”
Along with George Will…
September 29th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Jim R – Hate Palin ? Naaah! Anything that gives Saturday Night Live a new lease on life can’t be all bad. I’m starting to love Paliin. I especially appreciated her when I saw that shit-eating grin on McCain’s face yesterday morning when he told George Stephanopoulos how ecstatic he was that he’d picked her and how she’d made the campaign more “fun.” Uh…yeah. She sure has.
September 29th, 2008 at 10:10 am
As always when discussing Obama, Hitchens is grossly dishonest. McCain attacked Obama for saying he would negotiate without preconditions, and Obama responded by saying that even one of McCain’s own advisors (namely, Kissinger) agrees with that position. That’s no more aligning with Kissinger than he aligned with the Bush administration by pointing out that IT has negotiated without preconditions.
September 29th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Not ballot problems. Not vote denials. Not racism, sexism, xenophobia, redneck, white trash, ignorance or religion……excepting your own hateful kind.
Ah, so rather than the actual reasons, we will have your fevered fantasy to blame. Uh, sure.
September 29th, 2008 at 10:16 am
To Marc’s point. I do not question that Henry Kissinger is a war criminal. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day. More to the point, Obama wasn’t agreeing with Kissinger so much as showing that McCain can’t keep his story straight.
Indeed. And both Cooper and Hitchens are smart enough to be aware of this obvious fact. Which suggests that their comments reflect their agendas rather than the detailed facts here.
September 29th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Jim R:
Was that part of your self-proclaimed high level of non-partisanship?
So, I’d like to hear your views. Are you comfortable with the possibility of Palin being the president? Do you think she was a good choice, and based on the available evidence does she inspire confidence that she knows enough to handle the job?
September 29th, 2008 at 10:22 am
link is fixed.
Passing Through: Excuse me, but BS. The DETAILED FACTS as you call them is that Obama cited Kissinger as back up for his position. Sorry. Im an Obama supporter but Im not deaf. Nor blind.
September 29th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Jim R: BTW, I LOVE Palin. Nothing better than watching a 120 lb shrieking, flapping, bepectacled albatross chained to McCain’s neck as he struggles against drowning in the polls. They only thing better would be if Track, Todd, Piper, Bristol, Cloud, Moose, Drum, Fyfe and Pepper also tied themselves to John’s neck. Oh, wait, they have! Bravo!
September 29th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Marc, if that isn’t a Photoshop job up there, can we start a caption contest? Something like, “you know, honey, you’re younger than Jill St. John?”
September 29th, 2008 at 11:22 am
It seems like the Cooper family has a lot in common with the Palin family:
http://buyalogical.blogspot.com
September 29th, 2008 at 11:44 am
I can’t agree that Obama is pandering by citing Kissinger in support of his pro-negotiation stance. He did so, I thought, in the classic rhetorical “even your friend/advisor/wife agrees with me” manner. Now if he had moved toward Kissinger’s position on an issue, or endorsed a Kissinger initiative, that would be a concern. But given the debased standards for presidential debate rhetoric, I thought this was most acceptable.
September 29th, 2008 at 11:48 am
There’s a lot of bases on which to attack Palin, and McCain for choosing her, but I think it is out of line to characterize her as a “bimbo.” When Bill Maher did so on Friday, Nader was right to call it “sexism of the worst sort.”
Thursday night is very important, but the way this debate will work she can parrot talking points for 90 minutes and only look mildly bad. The McCain people got rules much different from those that governed Friday night’s debate, which I thought worked pretty well.
September 29th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Ok. Enough whining. These people have real problems.
(CNN) — I have just returned from my latest trip as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Once again I found myself in one of the world’s poorest countries; once again I held children with stick limbs and distended bellies.
Again, most of these children are without clean water, adequate food, basic health care and the opportunity for an education. Again, before they reach the age of five, many will die from preventable diseases.
But this visit was not to Africa. These are the grim realities for the people of Haiti, just one hour from the shores of the United States.
Haiti is shattered by decades of poverty, violence, bad governance and neglect. There is little infrastructure, no jobs for 75% of the population, child trafficking is common, there are countless orphans and street children.
Then a few weeks ago, things got a whole lot worse for the people of Haiti, when the first of four hurricanes pounded their shores.
The damage wrought by Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike is beyond imagining or describing. Whole cities and villages are devastated, fields and crops lie beneath water. Roads and bridges are washed out. Many areas remain inaccessible to relief workers. We cannot yet know how many have perished. Photo See photos from Mia Farrow’s trip to Haiti »
Don’t Miss
* Desperation grows as Haiti city awaits aid
* Commentary: A better beginning for newborn babies
* In Depth: Commentaries
Impact Your World
o See how you can make a difference
During that first week of September, water, some nine feet high, tore through the coastal city of Gonaives, sweeping people and their possessions away, shredding houses and shops. Gonaives was home to more than 350,000 people.
Today, thousands are still stranded on rooftops, more have crowded into schools and churches. Although the water has begun to recede, the city is choked with mud.
The hills behind Gonaives slid down and churned the broken things and people too into a thick, terrible soup. I have never seen or imagined there could be so much mud.
Still, here and there I saw people wading though the mud in search of belongings, or washing their clothes in the putrid water. I saw a man doing his best with a single bucket to haul the mountain of mud out of his house.
“We need food and water,” an old woman cried with her arms outstretched. “Our children are sick,” said another. The light streamed through the high windows of the cathedral in Gonaives. It was an eerie sight.
The pews had been tossed aside like matchsticks clearing a vast open space where a child, waist-high in mud, moved toward me with large, unsmiling eyes.
In the crowded, sweltering choirloft where hundreds of families had taken refuge, there is no water, no toilets, no food. Infants were sprawled on a dirty floor, and emotions were raw from fatigue, hunger and desperation.
I visited an orphanage where the children had been huddled on the second floor for these long three weeks. (The ground floor was filled with mud) There I met a little boy named Watson, who greeted me with a smile and a fist pump. As I was leaving, he said: “Stay with us.” I told him that I couldn’t but promised I would come back. Watson said. “I will pray for you.”
I know as I write this, Watson and the other orphans are still on the upper floor of the orphanage, the babies are still sleeping on the church floor, the man with his bucket is still hauling mud, families are still stranded on rooftops and they are still hungry in sweltering makeshift shelters.
While the tsunami prompted a generous and immediate response from the international community, the situation in Haiti has largely gone unnoticed. Haiti and its people urgently need our help – especially the most vulnerable, the children.
The enormity of this catastrophe has overwhelmed the impoverished Haitian government and the UN agencies that are struggling to sustain human life there.
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International and local aid workers on the ground have made a remarkable commitment to provide humanitarian assistance. But they cannot do it alone. I realize these are not easy times for Americans. But a small donation goes a very long way. For many of these families, who are, after all, our neighbors, it will mean the difference between life and death.
September 29th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Bail this:
We Have the Bailout Money–We’re Spending It on War
By Chalmers Johnson
September 29, 2008
The Nation
Chalmers Johnson is the author of three linked books on the crises of American imperialism and militarism. They are Blowback (2000), The Sorrows of Empire (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006). This article originally appeared on TomDispatch.
There has been much moaning, air-sucking and outrage about the $700 billion that the US government is thinking of throwing away on rich New York bankers who have been ripping us off for the past few years and then letting greed drive their businesses into a variety of ditches. In fact, we dole out similar amounts of money every year in the form of payoffs to the armed services, the military-industrial complex and powerful senators and representatives allied with the Pentagon.
On Wednesday, September 24, right in the middle of the fight over billions of taxpayer dollars slated to bail out Wall Street, the House of Representatives passed a $612 billion defense authorization bill for 2009 without a murmur of public protest or any meaningful press comment at all. (The New York Times gave the matter only three short paragraphs buried in a story about another appropriations measure.)
The defense bill includes $68.6 billion to pursue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is only a down payment on the full yearly cost of these wars. (The rest will be raised through future supplementary bills.) It also included a 3.9 percent pay raise for military personnel, and $5 billion in pork-barrel projects not even requested by the administration or the Secretary of Defense. It also fully funds the Pentagon’s request for a radar site in the Czech Republic, a harebrained scheme sure to infuriate the Russians just as much as a Russian missile base in Cuba once infuriated us. The whole bill passed by a vote of 392-39 and will fly through the Senate, where a similar bill has already been approved. And no one will even think to mention it in the same breath with the discussion of bailout funds for dying investment banks and the like.
This is pure waste. Our annual spending on “national security”–meaning the defense budget plus all military expenditures hidden in the budgets for the departments of Energy, State, Treasury and Veterans Affairs, the CIA and numerous other places in the executive branch–already exceeds a trillion dollars, an amount larger than that of all other national defense budgets combined. Not only was there no significant media coverage of this latest appropriation, there have been no signs of even the slightest urge to inquire into the relationship between our bloated military, our staggering weapons expenditures, our extravagantly expensive failed wars abroad and the financial catastrophe on Wall Street.
The only Congressional “commentary” on the size of our military outlay was the usual pompous drivel about how a failure to vote for the defense authorization bill would betray our troops. The aged Senator John Warner of Virginia, former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, implored his Republican colleagues to vote for the bill “out of respect for military personnel.” He seems to be unaware that these troops are actually volunteers, not draftees, and that they joined the armed forces as a matter of career choice, rather than because the nation demanded such a sacrifice from them.
We would better respect our armed forces by bringing the futile and misbegotten wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to an end. A relative degree of peace and order has returned to Iraq not because of President Bush’s belated reinforcement of our expeditionary army there (the so-called surge), but thanks to shifting internal dynamics within Iraq and in the Middle East region generally. Such shifts include a growing awareness among Iraq’s Sunni population of the need to restore law and order, a growing confidence among Iraqi Shiites of their nearly unassailable position of political influence in the country, and a growing awareness among Sunni nations that the ill-informed war of aggression the Bush administration waged against Iraq has vastly increased the influence of Shiism and Iran in the region.
The continued presence of American troops and their heavily reinforced bases in Iraq threaten this return to relative stability. The refusal of the Shia government of Iraq to agree to an American Status of Forces Agreement–much desired by the Bush administration–that would exempt off-duty American troops from Iraqi law is actually a good sign for the future of Iraq.
In Afghanistan, our historically deaf generals and civilian strategists do not seem to understand that our defeat by the Afghan insurgents is inevitable. Since the time of Alexander the Great, no foreign intruder has ever prevailed over Afghan guerrillas defending their home turf. The first Anglo-Afghan War (1838-1842) marked a particularly humiliating defeat of British imperialism at the very height of English military power in the Victorian era. The Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989) resulted in a Russian defeat so demoralizing that it contributed significantly to the disintegration of the former Soviet Union in 1991. We are now on track to repeat virtually all the errors committed by previous invaders of Afghanistan over the centuries.
In the past year, perhaps most disastrously, we have carried our Afghan war into Pakistan, a relatively wealthy and sophisticated nuclear power that has long cooperated with us militarily. Our recent bungling brutality along the Afghan-Pakistan border threatens to radicalize the Pashtuns in both countries and advance the interests of radical Islam throughout the region. The United States is now identified in each country mainly with Hellfire missiles, unmanned drones, special operations raids and repeated incidents of the killing of innocent bystanders.
The brutal bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, on September 20, 2008, was a powerful indicator of the spreading strength of virulent anti-American sentiment in the area. The hotel was a well-known watering hole for American Marines, Special Forces troops, and CIA agents. Our military activities in Pakistan have been as misguided as the Nixon-Kissinger invasion of Cambodia in 1970. The end result will almost surely be the same.
We should begin our disengagement from Afghanistan at once. We dislike the Taliban’s fundamentalist religious values, but the Afghan public, with its desperate desire for a return of law and order and the curbing of corruption, knows that the Taliban is the only political force in the country that has ever brought the opium trade under control. The Pakistanis and their effective army can defend their country from Taliban domination so long as we abandon the activities that are causing both Afghans and Pakistanis to see the Taliban as a lesser evil.
One of America’s greatest authorities on the defense budget, Winslow Wheeler, worked for thirty-one years for Republican members of the Senate and for the General Accounting Office on military expenditures. His conclusion, when it comes to the fiscal sanity of our military spending, is devastating:
class=”blockquote” America’s defense budget is now larger in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any point since the end of World War II, and yet our Army has fewer combat brigades than at any point in that period; our Navy has fewer combat ships; and the Air Force has fewer combat aircraft. Our major equipment inventories for these major forces are older on average than any point since 1946–or in some cases, in our entire history.
This in itself is a national disgrace. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on present and future wars that have nothing to do with our national security is simply obscene. And yet Congress has been corrupted by the military-industrial complex into believing that by voting for more defense spending, they are supplying “jobs” for the economy. In fact, they are only diverting scarce resources from the desperately needed rebuilding of the American infrastructure and other crucial spending necessities into utterly wasteful munitions. If we cannot cut back our long-standing, ever-increasing military spending in a major way, then the bankruptcy of the United States is inevitable. As the current Wall Street meltdown has demonstrated, that is no longer an abstract possibility but a growing likelihood. We do not have much time left.
September 29th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
An interesting article on voter suppression:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/why-the-debates-wont-matt_b_130104.html
September 29th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Ms. Churchill,
War BUILT the US Empire. It also made them/it/us a tidy profit in WWI, and WWII. Check it out!
As long as a surplus of poorly educated, angry, young labor exists in the US, the
military-welfare-industrial-congressional complex is a great idea.
It worked for Rome and it almost worked for, uh, Nazi Germany.
But this is America, the Big Bank commercials tell me, and getting young people off the street here works awesomely. It’s an awesome country.
Go Obama! Let’s bomb Pakistan and stay in Iraq with Kissinger and General Petraeus AND Matt Damon!
September 29th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
And you have a position teaching our young people with all this left-wing anger Serg?
Oh, you would be typical I hear. In fact, your kind of leftist dumbassery is a requirement for an NEA madrassa.
September 29th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
One armed bandit…
Come on 7′s…
-777
September 29th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Nancy, unintentionally I’m sure, gave red America a huge gift today with her out-of-control partisan speech dividing the troops in the House just before the bailout vote.
With her nitwit leadership skills, she managed to confuse enough of her own, while pissing-off the rest, pushing us even closer to a financial crash for the coast fringers. Bring it baby. We’re ready for it, you’re not.
September 29th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Nice to know that Republicans are whiny babies, Jim R.
Barney Frank nailed it: Republicans before country.
September 29th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Just for the record, Jim, what did Nancy say that got your knickers in a twist? When she praised Roy Blunt and the bipartisan support?
September 29th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Speaking of audacity, Randy brings up Barney Bail Out, King of the Crash.
The King and his Queen Dodd lived in a make-believe-world where if only Fannie and Freddie
were allowed to purchase junk loans made by greedy capitalists, all would live happily ever after in a S0cialist dream world where someone else pays. And we’re fucking going to…..like it or not.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Randy Paul: “Barney Frank nailed it: Republicans before country.”
That assumes that fucking piece of corporate welfare was in the country’s best interest. I’m far from convinced of that.
September 29th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Excuse me
No, I won’t excuse you for your ridiculous dishonesty. Obama did exactly what Michael Crosby and I have said he did.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:23 am
As Richard Dreyfus wrote in his Nation blog, Obama was particularly brutal on foreign policy in the debate as he sadly attempted, in most cases, to outhawk Mccain and missed a valuable attempt to crticise the framework of the Bush doctine, at this late date. Here’s Dreyfus on Obama’s performace “He checked all the boxes. Barack (“Senator McCain is right”) Obama couldn’t find anything to disagree with the militarist Arizonan about. Support for NATO expansion? Check. Absurd anti-Russian diatribes? Check. Dramatic escalation of the war in Afghanistan? Check. I’m ready to attack Pakistan? Check. (Actually, on this one, McCain was the moderate!) Painful sanctions against Iran, backed up by the threat of force? Check. Blathering about the great threat from Al Qaeda? Check. It went on and on.”
What’s sad about all of this is that it was Obama’s opposition to the war on Iraq that really created the groundwell around his campaign. When, I listened to him early in the pramaries, saying that he would meet leaders in Iran and Cuba, he sounded like one the the few candidates who understook that America needed to be part of the world instead of dominating it. His totally pathetic performace was made worse by the fact that I watched the debate in a room full of left liberals who clapped in unison after every belligerent point BHO made. It reminded me that many american libs don’t really have a problem with imperialism, no they simply want a more efficiently and rationally managed imperialism. Our blog host, who really should know better, echoes this sort of thing when he suggest that his oppostion to Pailin is grounded upon the fact that Pailin would get bullied around by Putin. As if the decline of American hegenomy wouldn’t be a good thing for the bulk of the world. Yes, I know, Mccain is a mad man and the election of another republican administration would be a very real disastor. But let’s have an honest conversation on the left and choose not to be mind inducing partisans in this campaign.
September 30th, 2008 at 3:41 am
“let’s have an honest conversation on the left”
I honestly agree with Obama’s position on going after al Qaeda in Pakistan if we’ve got actionable intelligence. That’s what he said and to exaggerate that out of context or take the utterly absurd position that McCain is more “moderate” when he makes a totally disingenuous attack on Obama on this point is not “an honest conversation on the left.” And some more troops in Afghanistan used strategically and wisely might help the situation. Things have been royally screwed up, but the move to topple the Taliban and go after al Qaeda was hardly “imperialistic” – it was a response to aggression. What other possible interest could there be in waging war in Afghanistan, of all places ? It’s not exactly a prize.
September 30th, 2008 at 4:07 am
Also, I think the notion that there would be some benefit to the world if Putin were in a position to bully the US or that a further decline of the U.S. as a world power -such as has been presided over by George Bush – is necessarily a good thing is a notion that contains equal parts nihilism and “anti-imperialism.”
I’ve argued from some nostalgia for the benefits of a Cold War balance of power as regards the less stable parts of the world, but that’s not really an option. For all of the faults of the US, I think there’s a lot more chance of the US playing a positive and progressive leadership role in the world, working with the Europeans and other emerging democracies, than the Russians or Chinese. Insofar as one assumes that the concept of “leadership” is a concept with some practical value and effect.
I certainly don’t see any alliance of the “third world” or regional stabilizing alliances or anything along those lines anywhere on the horizon (with the exception of Europe and Latin America.) Which is disgraceful when you step back and think about it. That old “Bandung” illusion – and it’s “revolutionary” variants – died long ago. I don’t have an “essentialist” view of US power as inherently good – but I do see it in terms of more long-term positive potential than most other aspirants to the “great power” mantle. Russia and China are exemplary of precisely nothing that I can identify as positive.
September 30th, 2008 at 6:58 am
DCS,
My point is this: Claiming your feelings were hurt is a pretty piss poor reason for voting against a bill.
Jim R: Your’re getting even more shrill and whiny.
September 30th, 2008 at 7:10 am
here’s the WSJ on the whiny titty-baby Republicans:
Indeed.
September 30th, 2008 at 9:50 am
“a financial crash for the coast fringers. Bring it baby. We’re ready for it, you’re not.”
Upside of the financial crisis: The Waltons will pull through while Sodom and Gomorrah burn. That’s ‘cuz folks in the heartland grow their own vegetables, raise chickens in the back yard, aren’t dependent on cheap Chinese imports to maintain their lifestyle, gave up gas guzzlers years ago and don’t pay for their sacks of flour, work boots and gingham dresses with plastic cards.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
“if only Fannie and Freddie
were allowed to purchase junk loans made by greedy capitalists.”
I have to say I’m surprised at how quickly the right-wing noise machine came up with a narrative that resolves Republicans and their free-marketeer fabulists of any and all responsibility for the banking implosion.
In one swift pivot, the talkradio dogma went from government regulation being the root of all economic evil to Democratic opposition to greater government regulation being the cause of the worst credit freeze since the Great Depression.
We’ve known these people are shameless. They peddled Saddam Hussein as an ally of Bin Laden, a ludicrous idea on its face, so we shouldn’t be surprised they go with the Alice in Wonderland view of the economy now.
Still, I had assumed a greater level of willingness to accept reality when it comes the economy, where there is no racist crutch to help truly crummy reasoning stand, as there is, inevitably, in American militarism.
With the investment banking business vanishing right before our eyes, you’d think a few questions would occur to ideological idiots like Jim R. For example:
What compelled Bear Stearns, Lehman, et al. to by the CDOs that included sub-prime loans in such large numbers and, more important, using so much leverage to acquire them?
Remember, the people who ran these banks got fabulously wealthy essentially for one reason: they knew how to count better than the rest of us, i.e. they knew how to put the right price on anything, including complex cash-flow mazes like CDOs.
That why the idea that lending to poor people is the root cause of this crisis just doesn’t wash.
Bear, Lehman and the rest bought CDOs because they were profitable and, based on their intensively developed mathematical models, were safe enough to be acquired with leverage as high as 30 to 1. That turned out not to be the case.
Moreover, the crisis has spread much further and faster because of the so many banks were entangled in credit default swap contracts. These insurance agreements were traded in an opaque market driven more by speculation than by the simple desire to insure against default.
Again, the banks mathematical models underestimated the risk of these contracts and when counterparties began collapsing in rapid succession, there was no way to enforce payment on many of them.
Political pressure on Frannie to buy sub-prime loans certainly worsened the situation simply because it expanded the market for them and because their quasi-government-backed status made it easier for the Lehman’s and Bear’s to rationalize buying them too with huge leverage.
The consequences of this debacle are bad enough without adding that some Americans will end up believing the outrageous fable that it was caused by poor people who were allowed to borrow money to buy their own home.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
And thanks to Anna C. for bringing some perspective.
I have to admit to being distracted by the big-money hullabaloo. I hadn’t paid enough attention to the horrific suffering in Haiti and what can be done about it.
September 30th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
They’re going to try to beat up Gwen Ifill – who is about as tepid a journalist as one could find – after the Palin-Biden debate. Wait and see…
September 30th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Reg and I have a fundemental disagreement about the nature of the counterinsurgency operation in Afghanistan as well as the possible consequences of strikes on Pakistan. They’re too specific and narrow to address here (tom hayden, dreyfus and others have been doing a good job going at obama’s policies on this front) and we also disagree fon the issue of US hegemony versus a more bipolar world. But let’s leave that aside for now. On a more comedic front I always falsely assumed that of the Roper and Woody, the former was a tad more rational than the latter. Judging by GM Roper;s latest unintentionally funny screed over at his blog, I may in fact be wrong. Here’s GM Roper sounding as if he missed his meds this morning
“To say Mr. Obama is not ready for the presidency is a gross understatement. It is not simply that he lacks experience … it is also that he repudiates traditional American values and culture by embracing Marxist ideology, has been an acolyte of black racist theology, cuddled up with the anarchist activism of Saul Alinsky, and even worse … the man is simply and irrevocably dishonest. There is nothing about Barack Obama that may cause us to think he honors American tradition, or shares with us our time-honored values. Significantly, a man who works to undermine our education system through socialist engineering is a man who seeks to destroy America.
If the American people elect this man to the presidency, he will certainly destroy the cultural and political fabric of the United States, and when he has finished his work, none of us will recognize what he has left behind: The People’s Socialist Republic of the United States.”
September 30th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Ahmed – we probably disagree less than you think. I’m not defending the particulars of our strategy in Afghanistan – and I’ll bet that after the exigencies of campaign rhetoric, Obama will address the goals of the mission, i.e. bringing them more in line with something achievable and directed toward al Qaeda, as well as the troop levels, etc. Let’s face it – more troops CAN reduce violence levels against civilians if deployed properly.
I also don’t want a “unipolar” world – but I do see the US as having the potential to play a relatively progressive role in a multi-polar world that I don’t see in Russia or China.
On Roper, I posted that thing as well here – didn’t see your post yet. I don’t think this is funny really. I think it’s indicative of something very sick that’s going to get exaggerated even more assuming Obama wins. I shouldn’t even think these thoughts, but I’d hate to have the Secret Service job in coming years. If Roper, who’s just a blowhard, is this bitterly crazed and unhinged – and this is really a culture war “entitlement” issue when you boil it down – think of what’s out there.
September 30th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Reg,
It’s sheer desperation. The better Obama is doing, the more hysterical and shrill GM and Woody get.
September 30th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
But that’s just so damned ugly on so many levels.
“There is nothing about Barack Obama that may cause us to think…he shares our time-honored values.”
And this from a jerk – and he IS a jerk, as I surmised years ago – who babbled on about “Bush Derangement Syndrome” when folks questioned Bush’s plan to invade Iraq and the subsequent, universally acknowledged pig-fuck. These guys blather about “elitism” – getting their panties all in a twist – but they really must have contempt for the majority of Americans if they actually believe bullshit like this post. I’m sure Winston Churchill could come up with some perfect riposte to this kind of arrogance founded on boundless ignorance. Frankly, reading that I was shocked. It makes me sick and frightens me that this level of hysteria is already being unleashed.
September 30th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
But that’s just so damned ugly on so many levels.
Agreed, but it’s all they’ve got.
September 30th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Btw, reg, I took Ropers rant to be comedic only in the sense that it constructed a world which is so far from the one in which we live in. But you’re right to use the words “crackpot racist” and “nativist” to descibe both the tone and author of that vicious and deluded piece
October 29th, 2010 at 9:41 am
Awesome ideas here, thanks. I actually took the plunge and got me some chickens last week! Now I have more eggs than I know what to do with!. You might like these egg recipes.