Month: September 2008

Categories
Economics Humor

Urgent Help Needed

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a
transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had
crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion
dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most
profitable to you.
I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my
replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may
know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the
1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds
as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names
of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family
lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person
who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.
Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account
numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to
[email protected] so that we may transfer your commission for
this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with
detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the
funds.
Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

Unfortunately, I cannot claim credit for this. Apparently it is in an email going around. I actually came across this virtually simultaneously here and here.

Categories
Election 2008 Foreign Policy Iraq McCain Obama Politics The Opinionsphere

Yglesias: Bush pressured Maliki to revise the withdrawl date to bail out McCain

Matt Yglesias points out that according to statements by Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki made only in Arabic, Bush had pressured him to change the withdrawl date from 2010 to 2011 “due to political circumstances related to the [U.S] domestic situation.”

In other words, Bush pressured Maliki to revise the withdrawl date, putting American military lives at risk, in order to bail out McCain. Pathetic.

Categories
Election 2008 Foreign Policy McCain Politics

Fun Fact About McCain #3: Temper Tantrum in Nicaragua

McCain once attempted to strangle someone on a diplomatic mission.

Seems True. McCain denies it, but Republican Senator Thad Cochran remembers McCain’s volatile presence while negotiating with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
Categories
Election 2008 McCain Politics

Fun Fact About McCain #2: Attacking The Character of His Opponents

[digg-reddit-me]John McCain has a history of calling his political opponents motives and patriotism into question.

Very true. Just ask:
Some deserved it. Some didn’t. Either way, it’s a pattern.
Categories
Domestic issues Economics Politics The Opinionsphere

The Price of Panic

[digg-reddit-me]

Seeing this headline in the New York Post made me furious. The Democrats – and a number of Republicans – are insisting on some basic accountability measures and a pledge that they will be able to pass some sort of relief for those affected by the crisis who aren’t millionaires. Each of these requests is reasonable. The first request is absolutely essential. The Post‘s attempts to “stampede the herd” into accepting whatever it is Paulson wants are dangerous.

Everyone from Newt Gingrich to Paul Krugman to William Kristol to Matt Yglesias to NRO’s Yuval Levin has urged caution and some sort of oversight mechanism as the least.

The proposed bill would give Secretary Paulson authority to “take such actions as the Secretary deems necessary to carry out the authorities in this Act,” giving him extremely broad powers to unilaterally control the market in addition to the $700 billion. In addition to these dictatorial powers, Paulson would be granted legal immunity for all of his actions:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Although I doubt Paulson would use this crisis to personally profit – nothing in the law would prevent him. And if he did, no action could be taken against him. This is incredibly reckless.

This law would remain in effect for two years – which would allow Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury as well as Paulson to, in exercising authority under this law, do virtually anything and be immune from any consequences.

This is how the Patriot Act was pushed through Congress in the dead of night, with no one reading the weighty tome. This is how democracies are given away in a moment of crisis, in that Roman tradition of granting a temporary dictatorship over Rome until a crisis passes. Power is never given away easily – and so, in the end, the democracy with temporary dictators became a permanent dictatorship. In this age of terrorism and globalization, the crisis is never fully past us; and a new one is always on the horizon.

I don’t think anyone has any definite idea about what will work in this situation. And this is a time for pragmatism, not ideology. But even – and especially – in a crisis, there must be accountability and limits. This fear-mongering by the Post and other Republican puppets represents the worst impulse we can have at this time. We must act quickly but deliberately – because in our understandable haste, we might accidentally give away more than we intend.

Categories
Election 2008 McCain National Security Obama Politics The Opinionsphere

Fun Fact About McCain #1: Panicking in a Crisis

[digg-reddit-me]John McCain has a history of over-personalizing and overreacting during crises – which has led a number of top former military officials and others who know him to voice concerns about McCain’s fitness.

True. Between McCain’s taunting of Putin and his scapegoating of SEC chief Cox, he has shown this tendency several times in the past month.
  • As one general said, “I am a little worried by his knee-jerk response factor. I think it is a little scary. I think this guy’s first reactions are not necessarily the best reactions. I believe that he acts on impulse.”
  • As another said, “One of the things the senior military would like to see when they go visit the president is a kind of consistency, a kind of reliability…McCain has got a reputation for being a little volatile.”
  • Conservative columnist and curmudgeon George F. Will wrote of McCain’s reaction to the current financial crisis: “Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama…[The more one sees of McCain’s] impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events the less confidence one has [in him] …It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?”
  • A Republican Senator stated, “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”
Categories
Election 2008 Humor Obama Politics The Opinionsphere

Bartlet’s Advice

President Bartlet speaks to presidential candidate Obama:

Four weeks ago you had the best week of your campaign, followed — granted, inexplicably — by the worst week of your campaign. And you’re still in a statistical dead heat. You’re a 47-year-old black man with a foreign-sounding name who went to Harvard and thinks devotion to your country and lapel pins aren’t the same thing and you’re in a statistical tie with a war hero and a Cinemax heroine. To these aged eyes, Senator, that’s what progress looks like. You guys got four debates. Get out of my house and go back to work.

Categories
Election 2008 Humor McCain Politics Videos

SNL Skewers McCain

SNL takes on McCain’s deceptive advertising. The best exchange comes after the line reader reads one of the new ads: “Barack Obama has fathered two black children in wedlock.”

McCain: My friends, I must say that reminds me of an attack that Bush made on me in 2000.

McCain aide: He won that election, right?

McCain: I’m John McCain and I approved this message.

Al Franken, the former SNL writer and current candidate for Minnesota Senator, suggested the idea for this piece to SNL’s head writer last week.

Categories
Election 2008 Humor Politics Videos

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog interviews Ralph Nader

[digg-reddit-me]

Nader is so pathetic, this interview veers between humor and pathos. At times, it looks like Nader is about to cry. But he tries so hard to be in on the joke. He can’t seem to decide whether to attack the dog puppet or to try to get his vote – and he tries to do both. Towards the end of the interview, Nader attempts to defend himself in a sing-song voice:

Triumph: Come on – you screwed Al Gore. You campaigned in the swing states.

Nader: Politics has gone to the dogs! With two parties, Republicans and Democrats!

Triumph: [interrupting in a sing-song voice] You campaigned in the swing states. You campaigned in the swing states. Harder. Harder.

Nader: [interrupting, in a sing-song] You’re telling a canine lie. You’re telling a canine lie.

I would feel bad for the guy if this weren’t all of his own volition. He did seem to betray a feeling of guilt in how he defended his 2000 campaign – but he refused to acknowledge any responsibility – and deflected the blame onto the Republicans.

But if the past eight years has proven anything it is that Nader’s core message was wrong – that it wouldn’t make a difference if a Democrat or Republican was elected, if Gore or Bush won – both were equally bad. Nader rightfully has much criticism of our two-party system and how it exerts a stranglehold on power – but the Bush administration proved definitively that it matters who is elected. And Nader, after promising not to campaign in swing states to raise money, decided to campaign anyway and without his support in Florida, we would have had a different president.

Something to remember as we approached another Tuesday in November.

Categories
Election 2008 Foreign Policy McCain Politics

McCain v. Spain

Matt Yglesias, I think fairly, gives his take on the whole McCain v. Spain gaffe:

…instead of admitting to a minor mix-up, the McCain campaign decided that in order to preserve their man’s aura of omniscience they would . . . provoke a diplomatic incident with Spain.

It’s kind of sad that virtually all of the other alternative ways of looking at this situation portray McCain in a worse light.

I wanted to put this in the “Humor” category – but it’s too scary/pathetic to be funny at the moment. Maybe in November – or maybe not.