Never Forget!

No, I'm not writing about the Holocaust, although it's true that we ought never forget. No -- I'm writing about the disaster that could have been, the nightmare that we could have invited, the political tsunami of horror that we nearly allowed to be unleashed. I refer, of course to my favorite Christianist she-devil, Sarah Palin.

Todd Purdum writes a clear-eyed reflection in Vanity Fair about the woman's political journey and her sociopathic dishonesty as she clawed her way into the Juneau governor's mansion. Sullivan notes:

The narcissism, the pathological and incessant lying, the viciousness, the delusions of grandeur, the vindictiveness, the fathomless and proud ignorance, the opportunism, the vanity, the white trash concupiscence and fraudulence in almost every respect: these are now indisputable. How an advanced democracy came that close to having this farce of a candidate running the most powerful country on earth reveals how deep the corruption of our politics and especially our media are.

Well, there is a minority swath of American voters and media outlets who revere this woman, but her influence among the overall GOP is waning, not growing. She placed tied for second in a recent straw poll (with Texas congressman and fellow whack-job Ron Paul), behind the far more media-savvy (and morally upstanding) Mitt Romney, of who would be the best potential candidate for the party in 2012. If she overcomes that loss, it will be in spite of herself. She is literally and utterly incapable of uttering a coherent sentence (like GW Bush). Referring to the campaign she'd just lost:

You know, it’s pretty brutal, the time consumption there, and the energy that has to be spent in order to get out and about with the message on a national level, a great appreciation for other candidates who have gone through this, but also just a great appreciation for this great country. There are so many good Americans who are just desiring of their government to kind of get out of the way and allow them to grow and progress, and allow our businesses to grow and progress. So, great appreciation for those who share that value.

She also has a disdain for details (like GW Bush), and she thinks that America still wants a president who'd be a good drinking or hunting buddy.

Finally, Purdum's money quote, regarding her desire to address the rabid Republican faithful after it was clear that they had lost the election:

Election Night brought what McCain aides saw as the final indignity. Palin decided she would make her own speech at the ticket’s farewell to the faithful, at the Arizona Biltmore, in Phoenix. When aides went to load McCain’s concession speech into the teleprompter, they found a concession speech for Palin—written by Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully, who had also been the principal drafter of her convention speech—already on the system. Schmidt and Salter told Palin that there was no tradition of Election Night speeches by running mates, and that she wouldn’t be giving one. Palin was insistent. “Are those John’s wishes?” she asked. They were, she was told. But Palin took the issue to McCain himself, raising it on the walk from his suite to the outdoor rally. Again the answer was no.

Sheesh. Shortly after being elected mayor of Wasilla in 1996, Palin was told by her campaign manager that she could be elected governor within 10 years. Her reply: "I want to be president."

Uh, yeah right.

The One-Basket Rule

Bernie Madoff will die in jail sometime during the 150-year sentence he received today. In reading the court transcript of his sentencing hearing (pdf), I was struck by the enormity of his fraud, and by his continued self-serving posture.

In particular, the judge made note of the fact that, while defense counsel had argued that Madoff should receive some leniency because he turned himself in and confessed to the FBI, Madoff had in fact done these things because he couldn't keep up with the requests from his investors who asked for their money. Basically, he would have been caught eventually and he knew it, so turning himself in might mean he'd get better treatment. Perhaps, if he hadn't done such an extraordinary job of stealing from his victims.

The other thing that struck me was in the statements made by the victims. Many of them were retirees who had lost their life savings. Every time I read that, I remembered how many other times I'd read or heard about swindlers who'd cheated people out of all they had in the world.

But why isn't anyone asking the really tough question: what were you thinking when you decided to invest everything you had with one investment house? It's the One-Basket Rule: as in Don't Put All Your Eggs in One Basket. Lisa and I used to have a pretty decent pot, which is now slowly growing again after taking a massive haircut in 2008. I have one guy managing it, but we have multiple accounts, with multiple investment houses, precisely to avoid such a thing from happening. Not only that, we have money that just sits in insured accounts.

In my line of work, I've met many, many wealthy people. One in particular has income that rivals Madoff's. Most, if not all of them, spread their wealth around -- some cash, some real estate, some private companies, some public companies -- between several different money managers. It's the only way. Madoff's victims share some collective responsibility for being short-sighted and getting seduced by Madoff's promises of high returns.

Now, Madoff was a genius, well-connected, and well-regarded in his industry, so there weren't too many people who would have advised against investing with him. But that's not the point. No matter what so-called investment experts say, common sense alone mandates that one diversify and be vigilant.

No one is going to get their money back. Many victims are ruined and face a future of untold stress. I feel horrible for them. Let their hardships be lessons for us all.

Don't Take the Bait

Alec Baldwin's commentary about Mark Sanford's indiscretions was spot on. What Sanford did, to his family and to his staff, is reprehensible. What did he really do to the citizens of South Carolina? Not much, except prove to everyone that even right wing Republican nutjobs are human too. He deserves time to sort this out, whether he resigns or not. And the Democrats will gain absolutely nothing -- let me repeat, absolutely nothing -- by joining the inevitable Republican dogpile, and the efforts to oust Sanford from office. We should just stand back and say, "We understand the pain Gov. Sanford and his family are going through. Out of respect for him, his family and his staff, we urge all concerned to allow the Governor the time to deal with this unfortunate situation in private." Taking the high road here will do more for the party than joining the battle. Why give Republicans any opportunity to point to Clinton again, or to any other Democrat who had marital problems?
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Why We Are Who We Are

... "and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security,..."

My italics, from the Declaration of Independence.

We Americans should read this document often. The last administration was, in my opinion, an effort to create a despotic regime. One doesn't get to strive for a "permanent Republican majority" without being accused of this, at least.

Not Ending Well At All

Relative to my earlier post, the post-election madness is indeed assuring a bloodbath among the protestors.

Jesus is Everywhere

About the funniest thing I've seen in a while.

Holy shit, indeed.

Nixon revisited: Oy Vey

The New York Times published a story by Charlie Savage Tuesday detailing the contents of "more than 150 hours of tape and 30,000 pages of documents made public ... by the Nixon Presidential Library." Audio clips were posted online here, and document samples are here.

Pretty staggering shit coming from the President of the United States. Given the context of the times and his upbringing, I can't say I'm surprised, but here is one money quote about abortion:

There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white, or a rape.

Nine months after this tape, Nixon forced the firing of Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor looking into the Watergate affair. He also prompted the resignations of Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus. The next day, Ronald Reagan, who was then governor of California and would later be president, told the White House that he approved.

A tape of a phone call exists from February 1973 between Nixon and Billy Graham. Graham complained that Jewish-American leaders opposed his efforts to promote evangelical Christianity, like Campus Crusade. They agreed that the Jewish leaders risked setting off anti-Semitic sentiment. Nixon's words:

What I really think is deep down in this country, there is a lot of anti-Semitism, and all this is going to do is stir it up.... It may be they have a death wish. You know that’s been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.

I really believe any efforts to canonize any Republican president or congressional leader, the way we've all seen with Reagan in particular, should be widely condemned. These two men were two of the worst leaders in US history -- although neither of them holds a candle to Bush and Cheney.

This Will Not End Well

No matter what the outcome of all these protests, Iran will become a bloodbath. Evidence here, here, and here.

Chicken Littles

Truthdig has an opinion piece by Chris Hedges that defies description. The headlines reads, "The American Empire is Bankrupt." OK, I'm thinking that this should be interesting, and it was, but for all the wrong reasons. I simply could not believe the level of hyperbole Hedges employs. Here's a taste:

There are meetings being held Monday and Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia, (formerly Sverdlovsk) among Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance. Watch what happens there carefully. The gathering is, in the words of economist Michael Hudson, “the most important meeting of the 21st century so far.”

It is the first formal step by our major trading partners to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If they succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value, the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket, interest rates will climb and jobs will hemorrhage at a rate that will make the last few months look like boom times. State and federal services will be reduced or shut down for lack of funds. The United States will begin to resemble the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe. Obama, endowed by many with the qualities of a savior, will suddenly look pitiful, inept and weak. And the rage that has kindled a handful of shootings and hate crimes in the past few weeks will engulf vast segments of a disenfranchised and bewildered working and middle class. The people of this class will demand vengeance, radical change, order and moral renewal, which an array of proto-fascists, from the Christian right to the goons who disseminate hate talk on Fox News, will assure the country they will impose.

But wait! There's more:

There will be block after block of empty stores and boarded-up houses. Foreclosures will be epidemic. There will be long lines at soup kitchens and many, many homeless. Our corporate-controlled media, already banal and trivial, will work overtime to anesthetize us with useless gossip, spectacles, sex, gratuitous violence, fear and tawdry junk politics. America will be composed of a large dispossessed underclass and a tiny empowered oligarchy that will run a ruthless and brutal system of neo-feudalism from secure compounds. Those who resist will be silenced, many by force. We will pay a terrible price, and we will pay this price soon, for the gross malfeasance of our power elite.

In 1994, the Northridge earthquake set off a rash of opinions from so-called experts in geology that the "ring of fire" would show a huge increase in seismological events such that the west coast of the United States would fall into the Pacific, making Denver a beachfront community. This is the level of hyperbole to which I equate the Hedges piece.

A few years back when I worked for Indymac Bank, my fellow Loan Officers and I witnessed a huge spike in the cost of basic construction materials like lumber and copper, which was pricing not a few customers out of the home-building business. The reason for this was because of a massive construction boom going on in China. I predicted then that China would, within 20 years, become the dominant economic superpower in the world. I still think I'm right, and the massive amount of US debt that China carries on our behalf is certainly one of the things that causes me to believe that.

Still, what so many on the left fail to realize is just how interdependent we have all become. China knows that in order for it to achieve its goals it must gradually separate the yuan from the dollar and let the yuan become as widely traded as western currencies, which is currently is not.
But anyone with even a remedial understanding of world economics knows that this interdependence means that if the collapse of the US economy, as described by Hedges, were ever to occur, it would mean the collapse of everyone else's economies as well. So that means that the whole world would start to resemble Zimbabwe, wouldn't it? This is why I think Hedges' piece is essentially bullshit.

Further, China's repressive society will always hold it back. A country with a government that so limits the economic opportunity of its citizens will ever be able to compete in the global free market. China's people must first become free to do whatever they want. Some resemblance to the US and European financial models must emerge in China before they will be able to be the world's economic leader. I don't see this happening soon.

This is the point where I say, "I want your comments" on this. Where do you think the truth lies in Hedges' piece?

Will Ahmadinejad do the Unthinkable?

Today is day six since the Iranian people began protesting the fraudulent results of their presidential election. The movement appears to be gaining momentum rather than petering out. Just check out the pictures and video on the NY Times Lede Blog.

Violence against the protestors, while it has been brutal, so far does not show signs of turning into a massacre. Some commentators have been saying that this protest is Iran's version of Tiananmen Square. We all know how horribly that ended. Will Ahmadinejad order his troops into his capital city to stop this movement from growing any further? Does he even have the backing of his army? It's hard to tell. But I see no signs of this letting up.

Via Sullivan, here's a great quote for today:

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

I turned the color of my blog page green in solidarity with the Iranian people. Now I will start wearing green as much as possible.