Thank God for Obama

Just to weigh in on the Obama-Cheney debate on Thursday, Obama defends the America I love, and Cheney disgraces it. From what Brooks says in this column, Cheney's views were rejected even by the Bush administration. Obama says the right things as far as I'm concerned. So what about indefinite detention and other stuff the left worries about? Obama inherited a bad situation. If decent people had been thinking about how to handle this situation, we would never have had Gitmo, rendition, torture, and all the other weird stuff that went against centuries of Western law and tradition.

Cheney says this weird stuff protected the US from another attack. That's like saying that it also protected us from an invasion by intergalactic aliens. When do we give them credit for stopping an invasion, rather than just saying that no one tried to invade? When there is no attack one day after 9/11. After one month? After seven years? There is no way to know. Certainly there were no well planned attacks against the US that were prevented. Some incompetents were caught, and some well planned attacks were carried out in other countries. I guess Cheney doesn't care if some Spaniards or some Brits died on his watch.

Obama faces a tough situation. Of course the real villains are the terrorists, and there are still terrorists out there. But the Bush administration handled its reaction to 9/11, Iraq and the "war on terror" badly. That now makes Obama's job tougher than it would have been if better people had been in charge on 9/11. Better in the sense of more competent (maybe they would have read the intelligence saying bin Laden planned to attack the US) and better in the sense of more moral (no torture, adherence to US and international laws and mores).

Obama, I'm with you. Try to do the right thing.

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.