Merry Merry

The Way it Is

Memorable quotes from the first week of the great Bush/Cheney rewrite:

"While there's room for an honest and healthy debate about the decisions I made — and there's plenty of debate — there can be no debate about the results in keeping America safe," Bush said.

"I was aware of the programme, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency, in effect, came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do," he [Cheney] said.

"And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it."

Look, whether it is over the decision to go to war on what turned out to be a bevy of lies, the decision to inflame the hatred of a billion Muslims and turn the entire international community against us, or the explicit approval of the use of illegal and immoral torture against captured prisoners, it is important that you realize that Bush and Cheney simply do not give a shit what you think. Just get over it.

Just go.

Two short clips from the first few exit interviews with Bush perfectly illustrate just how amazingly unreflective and obtuse he is in the face of the destruction he has brought to this country, our reputation, the economy, and the lives of millions of Americans and Iraqis.

First, he comes to the conclusion that he has "abandoned free market principles in order to save the free market"



Unlike Alan Greenspan, who finally came to the conclusion that his Randian belief in a self regulating free market was an absurd and childish notion, Bush simply does not understand that his free market fundamentalism hasn't been abandoned, it has failed.

Next, he farts out his true thoughts on the disaster in Iraq. In the face of all of the information that has come forward over time, the misguided decisions made that dragged us to the place we find ourselves today, the flawed intelligence, the outright lies and the human tragedy that he has unleashed, his response is a chilling, "so what?"



Socrates said that the unreflective life was not worth living. Apparently that message didn't resonate with the cheer leading squad at Yale.

and another thing....

...that I learned from Joe Scarborough this morning:

It is very suspicious that the sitting Democratic State Senator in Illinois would support the election campaign of the Democratic candidate for Governor in 2002.

Truisms

Some things I learned from watching CNBC today

1. The auto industry is in trouble and the bailout failed because the auto workers get paid too much and wouldn't budge on negotiations regarding future wage concessions.Their problems have nothing to do with the fact that GM sells less cars than Honda but has 10x more dealerships. Furthermore, the fact that the Republicans in the Senate think it's a good idea to forcibly legislate the wages of working Americans is in tune with their belief in a free market economy.

2. The SEC failed miserably in the last decade not because they have been starved as an organization by successive Republican administrations, but because they've lacked a strong leader.

3. Nancy Pelosi is really to blame for the fact that the Treasury has poured a trillion dollars into banks, insurance companies and brokerage firms. She said that the Democratic Congress would be more frugal than the Republican one.

4. Larry Kudlow thinks that Mitt Romney should be the car czar because his father ran AMC, and he used to live in Detroit.

5. Nobody in Detroit has even lost their job, like on Wall Street. It's been like a big party out there.

6. Sen's Corker, Shelby and McConnell did a great job because they were tasked with brokering a settlement. The fact that they failed at this should not in any way get in the way of Corker being named by MNBC as a new "star". Their failure also has nothing to do with the fact that they each represent states with large non-union plants for Toyota, Mercedes, Nissan and BMW.

Meanwhile, read Joseph Stiglitz' article in Vanity Fair if you'd really like to understand how we reached this point. I'll be wrestling my neighbor for a dead squirrel in the street.

Universal Health Care, Round II

Thomas Frank lets the cat out of the bag in today's WSJ...

He points out that the GOPs visceral reaction to any proposed plan to provide universal health care is based upon two bedrock beliefs, one of which they have proven to be quite willing to cave on, namely big government spending. Conventional wisdom tells us that the GOP opposes universal health care because they can't stomach the idea of big government programs and favor the magic of the free market. This is a bit tough to swallow considering the debacle we are wading through at the moment.

The other, more critical opposition comes from a much deeper place, however. As Frank points out

Still, conservatives have always dreaded the day that Democrats discover (or rediscover) that there is a happy political synergy between delivering liberal economic reforms and building the liberal movement. The classic statement of this fear is a famous memo that Bill Kristol wrote in 1993, when he had just started out as a political strategist and the Clinton administration was preparing to propose some version of national health care.

"The plan should not be amended; it should be erased," Mr. Kristol advised the GOP. And not merely because Mr. Clinton's scheme was (in Mr. Kristol's view) bad policy, but because "it will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests."

Historian Rick Perlstein suggests that this memo is "the skeleton key to understanding modern American politics" because it opens up a fundamental conservative anxiety: "If the Democrats succeed in redistributing economic power, we're screwed."

Frank's piece places this thought in the context of the Clinton administration's failure to realize that embracing a "liberal" approach to the issue would not only be popularly accepted, but could become a game changer for the Democratic party, but perhaps that was another time and place. At this point, it is irrefutable that the country resoundingly supports a comprehensive universal health care plan, and that the GOP understands the existential threat that such a plan may represent.

Deep thought of the day

Am I the only one that thinks it odd that Goldman and Morgan Stanley are issuing government-backed debt?