Predictable Iowa

There was nothing interesting about the Iowa caucuses.  Mitt Romney got more or less his expected 25%.  Rick Santorum was the not-Romney candidate of the moment, and got about the same vote.  Ron Paul got the votes he was expected to get, high for a non-mainstream candidate, but not enough to make him mainstream.  If the vote had been held 10 days earlier, the not-Romney vote would have gone to Newt Gingrich.  If it had been 20 days earlier, the non-Romney vote would have gone to Herman Cain. 

Mitt was smart to move the non-Mitt vote to Santorum instead of Gingrich, because Santorum will be a weaker challenger.  But none of the non-Mitts really had much support of their own. 

What a waste of time, energy, and money!  And how discouraging to think that this is how Americans elect a President. 

Iowa Caucuses

Based on the results I have heard, a tie between Romney and Santorum, the Iowa caucuses appear to be an enormous waste of time.  If they contribute anything to the Presidential election, it just shows how broken our electoral system is.  Part of the problem is due to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, basically making it legal for rich people to buy an election.  And part of the problem appears to be that the Republican Party is dysfunctional, offering such lousy candidates, and that Republicans in Iowa are idiots, turning out to vote for such incompetents. Poor America!

Obama's Failure on Consumer Protection

After failing to nominate Elizabeth Warren to head the new consumer protection agency, Obama proposed Cordry. See this Vanity Fair article on Warrren. However, when the Senate blocked Cordry with some filibuster trick, Obama just accepted it. He has obviously been bought by the big banks and other financial interests. Obama should at least have made a stink. He's been quiet as a mouse, hoping the public will forget and the Wall Street money will keep rolling in. The average person has no one to stand up for him, except Elizabeth Warren, whom Obama has thrown to the wolves.

Jews Need to Clean Up Their Act

In Boomerang, Michael Lewis points out the absence of Jews in the German financial community.  We all know why this is so.  But the problem now is that the American financial community is largely led by Jews, and it turns out to be corrupt, while the gentile German banking community turns out to be largely honest, if gullible.  Not all Jews are dishonest, but events like this tend to reinforce unfavorable stereotypes of Jews. If Jews want to overcome these "Shylock" stereotypes, they need to clean up their act.   Unfortunately they are dragging America down into the gutter with themselves.