New Credit Card Law

The new Senate bill regulating the credit card industry no doubt owes much of its success to the financial debacle on Wall Street. People used to think that bankers were people just like the rest of us, albeit with a special job that give them community leadership positions and some wealth. Now, bankers are widely perceived as creeps, men and women who will do anything for money, including destroying the world economy, and impoverishing their neighbors. So, there's not much sympathy for bankers these days, hence the bill.

This Financial Times article compares today's bankers with the kings and queens of yesteryear (Off with his head!), and the Russian oligarchs of more recent times. Not a very pleasant comparison, but one that invites more government regulation. Hopefully this is only the start.

Scarborough & Mika Suck Up to Immelt

On yesterday's "Morning Joe" Eliot Spitzer criticized the New York Fed's decision to have GE CEO Jeff Immelt as a public member of its board. On the show and in his column, Spitzer criticized Immelt for being a public representative because GE had benefited from the US government's largess. In his column, Spitzer says that by participating in program under which the US stands behind GE debt, GE saved billions of dollars that it would otherwise have incurred in issuing that debt. In the public mind, such largess is no doubt perceived as part of the "bailout" whether or not GE actually received cash, or just government guarantees.

Today, Joe and Mika made a totally suck up apology to Immelt for Spitzer's comments that did not actually deal with Spitzer's criticisms. First they talked about how handsome Immelt is. Then they read a GE statement that said GE has received no government bailout, but rather paid money to participate in a program that help liquidity and the commercial paper market. It did not deal with the question of whether by participating in this government [bailout] program it saved billions of dollars.

I was sort of enjoying "Morning Joe," although I was already put off my Mika's frequent unabashedly fawning praise of Joe. Now, they both prostrate themselves before the wonderful, mighty, faultless Jeff Immelt. It's more than I can take. I hope they get big bonuses; they lost at least one viewer. I wonder with Mika's father thinks about what she's doing. I'm sure he's happy she's making money; he may not be proud of her integrity.

Cowardice on Parade

The Congress' refusal to accept Gitmo detainees into US prisons is cowardice at its worse. I'm guessing that most of those voting to keep them in Gitmo never served in the US military. Clearly they have no confidence in their own prisons; they represent states that have incompetent law enforcement agencies; dishonest, stupid judges; worthless state governments that probably gave a start to their careers. They know how bad it is. They know that foreigners scare them to death; the only salvation is to torture them. Most have Newt Gingrich's view of government, that it is worthless; only the private sector can do anything right. Newt knows from experience; he was once the third highest federal government official, and he knows that he was absolutely incompetent to do anything. He hates government because it's made up of cowardly fools like him.

Israel Says Ignore Palestinians, Kill Iranians

During his Washington visit, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to turn the discussion from Israel and its oppression of the Palestinians to the need to invade Iran. He successfully deflected a lot of the discussion, refusing to acknowledge the possibility of a Palestinian state, for example, but hopefully he did not beat Obama into embarrassing, fawning submission the way he did Bush and Cheney. In theory his argument is that America is too stupid or too poorly informed to understand the threat that Iran poses. (This begs the question, "Poses to whom?" Israel or America.) But once Netanyahu gets Obama to accept his premise, then his point is, "Send the American military to destroy Iran, or at least important parts of it." Jews love to send Gentiles to die for them. They successfully did it in Iraq, where the predominately Jewish neo-cons sent thousands of Americans to die in Iraq for a threat that was mainly of concern to Israel. In retrospect, however, Israeli intelligence was apparently just as bad as American intelligence on Iraq, and Israel ended up calling in a lot of favors with the Bush/Cheney administration for a war that probably did little to increase the security of Israel. For sure, it did little to increase the security of the US. The self-evident bankruptcy of this policy has caused Cheney to go on a public relations blitz, but while it might change some current opinions, Bush and Cheney will go down in history as some of the worst leaders in the history of the world. They still trail Hitler and Caligula and a few others, but they are in bad company. But Netanyahu, AIPAC, and the rest of the blood-thirsty, Jewish neo-Nazis loved them. (Is this anti-Semitic? I don't think all Jews are blood-thirsty neo-Nazis. There are many wise, decent Jews, John Stewart and Tom Friedman always come to mind, but the Jewish right wing is dangerous, rejoicing the deaths of Gentiles, whether they are Muslim Palestinians or Christian Americans. Comparing Jews to Nazis is supposed to be the ultimate anti-Semitic act, but if they don't want to be compared to Nazis, Jews shouldn't act like them. Richard Perle, William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Paul Wolfowitz, AIPAC, you have a lot of Chrsitian blood on your hands, along with fellow-traveler Dick Cheney.)

Another thing is that Obama tried to get Netanyahu to talk about peace, and while he mentioned it, it seems pretty clear from the general discussion that what Israel really wants is territory, i.e. settlements, not peace.

Why is Israel so important? It's a tiny country in terms of geography and population. But Jews are rich, successful, loud and in-your-face. When I was growing up, one of the main concerns about Jews was why they didn't fight back during the Holocaust. There was the Warsaw ghetto uprising, but it was brief and unsuccessful, much less of a threat to the Germans than the main Warsaw uprising, which was also put down by the Germans, but only after a much harder fought battle. Somehow, the Jews have now finessed this question, and nobody asks it anymore. Moreover, they seem to have tried to make up for not fighting during the Holocaust, by fighting the Arabs around Israel. But by moral standards, they're fighting at the wrong time and in the wrong place, and against the wrong people. They are mainly known for killing children, although they kill a lot of adults for every child.

Fortunately, Obama seems much more reasonable than I. The compassion and understanding that he showed at Notre Dame about abortion, no doubt applies to Israel as well. And he has a pretty zealous Jew, Rahm Emanuel, as his right-hand man. I think I was petty oblivious to the whole Jewish thing until two incidents brought it home. First, my dealings over a number of years with Richard Perle and his empire at Defense, where it seemed like we were on opposite sides of any issue that came up. Second, my experience at the American Embassy in Warsaw for the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, where the ceremonies were all-Holocaust, all the time. Since my dad fought in Europe in WW II, I felt slighted that the American government did not do more to recognize what the American troops did, and basically turned the operation over to the Jewish Holocaust leadership. In particular, I was disappointed that the one rabbi in Warsaw (and I think in all of Poland), whom I worked with and who was a very nice, religious guy, was replaced shortly afterwards with a much more radical, publicity-seeking rabbi, more concerned about vilifying Polish Christians than ministering to Polish Jews.