Law professor Joseph Grundfest of Stanford, in a 2002 class for Fortune 500 directors, as recalled in today’s Times by Andrew Ross Sorkin:
“If there are ways people in this room go to jail, it’s probably through crimes of upholstery – the cover-up will kill you.”
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Bob Herbert in his Op-Ed column, “When Madmen Reign,” about the right wing congressmen who scuttled the bailout plan:
“These were the reckless clowns who led us into the foolish multitrillion-dollar debacle in Iraq and who crafted tax policies that enormously benefitted millionaires and billionaires while at the same time ran up staggering amounts of government debt. This is the crowd that contributed mightily to the greatest disparities in wealth in the U.S. since the gilded age.
“This was the crowd that cut the cords of corporate and financial regulations and in myriad other ways gleefully hacked away at the best interests of the United States.
“Now we’re looking into the abyss.”
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One from 1894
French author Jules Renard, in a novel called Poil de Carotte:
“I don’t know if God exists, but it would be better for his reputation if He didn’t.”
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& One from the nameless, placeless e-mailosphere:
Dozens of Japanese banks have been caught in the wake of the U. S. financial crisis. In the past few days Origami Bank has folded, Sumo Financial has gone belly up, and Bonsai plans to cut back some of its branches. Karaoke is up for sale and expected to go for a song. Shares in Kamikaze were suspended after they nose-dived and ultimately crashed, and 500 back-office employees at Karate got the chop. Analysts suspect something fishy is going on at Sushi Bank and, with layoffs expected, staffers fear a raw deal.
Tony Parsons in The Spectator (the British Original, not the sinkhole called The American Spectator) writing from a Tokyo bar:
VJ Day never really caught on over here.
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Jon Caramanica (does that rhyme with harmonica?) in a Times review of Celine Dion’s concert in Madison Square Garden:
… she held true to her firm belief that there is no emotion that can’t be better delivered with judo chops and hammy facial manipulations.
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Russian news service Pravda on Sarah Palin:
…a cheap little guttersnipe
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Joann Wypijewski in The Nation, on Republicans:
For the party’s cynical power elite … Palin is the sex symbol they’ve been waiting for, better looking and more real than the ghastly gasbags Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham.
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Huffpost’s Chris Kelly, noting John McCain’s promises, “Evil must be defeated” (8/16/08) and “We’re going to put an end to greed” (8/16/08):
John McCain will not only take on special interests and Washington insiders, he’ll fundamentally alter human nature.
Or maybe he’s just a desperate shell of a man, babbling glorp.
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Maureen Dowd in the Times on Carly Fiorina:
The woman sent out by John McCain to defend Sarah Palin … admitted Tuesday that Palin was not capable of running Hewlett-Packard. That’s pretty damning from Fiorina, who also was not capable of running Hewlett-Packard.
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And finally, a totally speechless snark remark:
At a college debating match between Pitt and Fort Hays University, the two team coaches got into an argument. Truly a teachable moment, when students could observe how accomplished professionals conduct a debate. Pitt’s coach Shanara Reid-Brinkley stunned Fort Hays coach Bill Shanahan with a stream of obscenities. His response?
He mooned her.
The free market is good!
Government is bad!
Regulation is terrible!
Let’s get the FDR pinko liberals out of our hair and the government off our back!
These were the battle cries of banks and investment banks and insurance companies ever since Reagan – actually since Andrew Mellon and then Ayn Rand – until the freewheeling free-marketers ran aground, lost their gigantic bonuses, and managed to put the whole financial system at risk.
At that point, Morgan Stanley cashed in all of its lobbying chips to get government intervention against short-sellers. Former Goldman Sachs chairman. now Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was busy working up plans for the government to bail out Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, and then AIG.
Now short-selling has been banned, at least for a while, the government has come up with another $500 billion to buy up all the abusive mortgages, and yet another truckload of taxpayer money to insure $2 trillion worth of mutual funds.
In other words, they’ve nationalized the financial markets.
And whose tantrums forced the bureaucrats to take over? Those same mighty brokers, bankers, fund managers, and insurers – Ayn Rand’s “men of genius” — who used to ooze contempt for the banana republics, the “European socialists,” and other “looters” who once intervened in the private sector on a much more modest scale.
Meanwhile, the men of genius were gambling your house and your pension at mindless levels of leverage because they thought they had it rigged so that they would make a bundle even if you were wiped out in the process.
Now the government owns them all, including three of the largest financial firms and all their fraudulent mortgages, and is lending out money (yours and mine) to most of the others.
Well, why not? Fat cats are people, too.
Comrade, under the new socialism they’ve brought down on their own heads, masters of the universe have a right to receive the same generous pensions that FBI agents, bus drivers, and letter carriers get.
We would love to give proper attribution for this sneak preview of the Bush Library, but it arrived, like so many others circulating by e-mail, absent of any clue on authorship. We got it from Jack Rosen, and he got it from who knows where; but to the unknown originator, our thanks.
The Library will include:
The Hurricane Katrina Room, which is still under construction.
The Alberto Gonzales Room. Have you seen that? You can’t remember?
The Texas Air National Guard Room. Skip this one. No need to show up.
The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they don’t let you in.
The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they don’t let you out.
The Weapons of Mass Destruction Room, which no one has been able to find.
The National Debt Wing. Bigger than a WalMart, and it has no ceiling.
The ‘Tax Cut’ Room: admission restricted to the fabulously wealthy.
The ‘Economy Room.‘ You’ll find it in the toilet.
The Iraq War Room. After you complete your first tour, they make you go back for a second, third, fourth, and sometimes a fifth.
The Dick Cheney Room, in an undisclosed location.
The Environmental Conservation Room. Still empty.
The Supreme Court Gift Shop, where you can buy an election.
The ‘Decider Room’ complete with dart board, magic 8-ball, Ouija board, dice, coins, and straws.
The museum will be equiped with an electron microscope to help you locate the President’s accomplishments.
The following is from a venture capitalist and stalwart Republican in New Jersey. His nephew – a financial advisor friend of ours – had asked in an e-mail if his uncle was nervous about the possibility that Obama might win in November. Here is his answer (emphasis ours):
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I believe in the two party system. I also believe that power corrupts; and the longer one party stays in power, the more corrupt it gets.
So I think that after 8 disastrous years of the Republicans, it is time for a change. We have seen 9/11 used as an excuse for all sorts of government abuses of power, wasteful spending, and the huge run-up in our national debt. Do we really want to be the nation that tortures prisoners?
Interestingly, Republicans — traditionally the party of less government and fiscal responsibility — have been exactly the opposite. Under Reagan and Bush 2, the deficits have soared. I think the boom in the 90s had a lot to do with Bush 1 and Clinton raising taxes and eliminating the deficit, which brought real interest rates down. But now we have built a mountain of debt that will take a long time to eradicate. I don’t like paying more taxes, but I think we are going to have to, and we need to cut government spending. It’s hard to see how that is going to happen after the Feds take over Fannie and Freddie.
The big change we need is to start rebuilding our country and not swaggering around the world.
We are spending $10B per month in Iraq. We all know it was a mistake, but we keep borrowing from the Chinese to build a democratic society there. We seem to have gotten it to a reasonably stable place. Let’s get out as quickly as possible. It makes me nervous when McCain says we are staying until we win. And why are we sending $1B to Georgia after their president decided to be a rogue and attack the Russians? We can’t be the world’s cop.
Clearly, we need to start investing in building renewable energy. By borrowing billions from the Chinese and giving it to the Arabs, we are involved in perhaps the greatest transfer of wealth ever known. We need to start now. I’m not against doing some more drilling in the U.S., but that has to take second priority to creating renewable sources of energy. The Republicans are running a scam by telling us that drilling in the U.S. will solve the problems. And do you think that Russia and the Middle Eastern countries would be so belligerent if oil were $20 per barrel?
McCain seems like a good guy, but he seems to be too reactive and likes to make decisions without all the facts. Sarah Palin is a good example of this. To have the 2-year governor of our biggest welfare state a heartbeat away doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. And while McCain calls himself a maverick who bucks his party, he hasn’t led a change in the party. It seems like he is changing his positions to those of the right wing.
I just don’t see McCain challenging the country to do things differently. And I hate the gimmicks, like calling for a suspension of the gas tax for the summer.
Is Obama any good? Probably not the best. He seems like a decent guy who hasn’t stooped to the mud slinging that usually goes on, but of course that may change in the next 2 months. I think he has run a good campaign. It seemed very well organized. I like that he understands new ways to reach people through the modern forms of communication and has built his fundraising base from lots of small donors. I’m sure there are the big ones as well.
I also like that he has inspired young people to get involved. He seems to listen to people – and take the facts seriously — and then makes decisions.
I don’t like all his positions — like foreign trade, some of the tax proposals, his pro-choice position. But my sense is that some of these will get modified before anything is enacted, which is what usually happens. On abortion, the Republicans have been in office for 20 of the last 28 years. Has there been a constitutional amendment proposed to change Roe v. Wade? I may be cynical, but I think the Republicans just drag this out every 4 years to rally their base but then do nothing in the intervening time. W. probably did the most by appointing the judges he did. But frankly, their views on other things scare me.
We are not going to continue to be a superpower and maintain a high standard of living if we don’t pour resources into innovation, which starts with educating more kids in science and technology. The Republicans have cut spending in research and in innovative programs that help small companies to grow.
Some of our friends worry that Obama will socialize medicine. Perhaps, but I think the damage is already done there. Wall Street is the big draw for kids coming out of college these days. We need to make medicine, science, and engineering the hot careers of the future.
“I didn’t really graduate from the University of Iowa, but I was only there for two terms. Truman’s and Eisenhower’s.” - Alex Karas
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“When I was a child, I used to pray to God for a bicycle. But then I realized that God doesn’t work in that way — so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness.” - Emo Phillips
Ever since midway through the primaries, I’ve been on a one-man, losing campaign to get Josh Marshall to stop publishing, with banner headlines, every political poll press release that crosses the virtual desk over at TPM.
It’s maddening. TPM is a great site; but, like the Democrats in Congress, even your best friends can unwittingly play into the hand of the enemy camp.
Two days ago, HuffPost ran a terrific article pointing out how all of the national polls which purported to show McCain pulling even with Obama this week did so by changing their survey samples to include more Republicans and fewer Democrats. (Poll Madness: McCain Takes Lead Even As Democrats Out-Register Republicans?)
But the mainstream media, both print and broadcast, simply reported the questionable polling numbers as gospel—thus aiding Karl Rove and John McCain create a spurious bandwagon effect.
This whole thing reminds me of a story I learned in a class at Penn State: that Lenin, arriving in Moscow with a small group of followers, named his group the ‘Bolsheviks’, which translates to something like ‘the majority party’. The uneducated, rural population streaming into the cities looking for work, hoping to align themselves with a group that could help them, gravitated to the name, and it became a self-fulfilling reality.
Similarly, almost ANYTHING with a bunch of numbers attached to it gets treated as gospel truth by one (very large) section of the Fourth Estate, in the same way that Doctors’ advice is often accepted without question. Innumerate or time-starved (or both) reporters can’t understand it, but rather than do their homework they just assume that the subject is over their heads. They figure that the guy who said it must be awfully smart because, well, it’s all so numbery! So they assume that it’s true—and hope for the best. And in so doing, they assist in bringing about the worst
That’s what passes for critical thinking in mainstream journalism today. And now that this pattern has manifested itself, you can be sure that the Roves of this world will be utterly amoral about exploiting it as a mob-controlling political tool.
That’s one of Rove’s founding principles: if enough people think McCain is winning – even though he’s not – then they’ll just go along with the herd because they’re sheep. Another is that if you tell enough lies fast enough, nobody can ever catch up with the refutations, and the lies will take over as the popular version of reality. A corollary is, the bigger the lie, the more the commercial media will play it up, and the less they’ll question it.
Goebbels is alive and well in the Republican campaign.
So thank heaven for DailyKos and HuffPost—and if Josh Marshall shapes up in his handling of polls, we’d be happy to include him in that blessed category as well. As for the pollsters, maybe we need to begin looking at where their money comes from.
Michael E. Lewitt is the Managing Member and President of Hegemony Capital Management. He’s a financial analyst, portfolio manager, and former investment banker whose sympathies might be expected to align with those of free-market Republicans. But he’s also a realist. Here are two excerpts from his latest client bulletin (boldface added):
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The American model of debt-engorged free-market capitalism is coming full circle and straining under its own weight. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the epitome of the capitalism-for-the-poor, socialism-for-the-rich policies that have been pursued by financial authorities in this country.
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Confidence in the American model has been shaken with good reason. Despite the rally of the dollar (mostly against the Euro, another compromised currency), the U.S. currency has been battered largely due to a loss of confidence in American economic policies and leadership.
We continue to shift hundreds of billions of dollars out of lour own coffers into those of countries that do not share our beliefs because we have moved too slowly to develop sound energy policies. In large part this is because our politicians remain indebted to an automobile industry that is on the verge of insolvency and to an energy industry that places its own interests ahead of the country’s and the world’s.
This from Bob Yuna, an American TV consultant now working in Mumbai:
Jesus was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor.
It is time to cry wolf at the 800-pound gorilla in the room. I wish people would stop melding their mixaphors and giving us the fingers of speech they got from giant pundits on television.
The trouble is, they’re clashing their symbols.
It used to be simple. The 800-pound gorilla was supposed to be a fierce overweenied presence that keeps everyone terrified, and whatever the gorilla says goes. Dennis Miller used to call himself the 800-pound gorilla in the credits to his show, back when he was still funny, but actually he was no King Kong even then.
The elephant in the room. on the other hand, was trumpeted as the huge issue that nobody was acknowledging, that everyone pretended not to notice, which was why everyone was doomed to oblivion or a disreputability discharge.
An African elephant weighs, oh, 36,000 pounds and could wolf down a dozen gorillas, although they would have to be vegetables because, zoologically, elephants are not cannibals. An Indian elephant weighs less, but if one were sitting on the hassock in your living room, it would spell the collapse of your ottoman empire.
And now there’s an elephant in debasement!
The linguistic clam sauce of the Internet has inundated the once-proud English language in a mailstorm of mongrelization because people bursting to say what they think don’t think about what they say, like the ones now confusing the 800-pound gorilla with the elephant in the room. And, fanning this feeding frenzy, there was a troupe of gorilla commercials for some financial company out of whom the subprime mortgage fiasco has since made a monkey.
“You really should look into this retirement plan,” the gorilla says to a designated patsy, “but don’t mind me – I’m just the 800-pound gorilla in the room.” And, hell, it isn’t even a room; it’s a fucking elevator! Some wide-eyed Madison Avenue enfant terrible must have overheard the term guerilla marketing and wet his bananas.
But no matter how misbegotten, the mangled metaphor is spreading like welfare, even in the intellectual etherium. I just saw a letter to the editor of The Nation complimenting Katrina vanden Heuvel for calling attention to the 800-pound gorilla in the room – in this case the fact that the constitution is unconstitutional or some such nitpick.
No wonder they’re teaching English as a second language!
This is exactly the kind of lofty cultural palisade that tyrannosaurus wrecks.
