The Kiss of Death!

"Just about perfect" That was the judgement of Joe Lieberman, the detestable Senator from Connecticut regarding Barack Obama's recent cabinet appointments. All I can say is, when a super sleazy hack like Joe Lieberman gives his imprimatur to anything, be more than a little suspicious. After all, "say it ain't so" Joe was only just last week saved from political oblivion by President elect Barack Obama. What a coincidence that he is now singing Mr. Obama's praises. Prepare your barf bags my fellow Americans, the toadying and genuflecting by the Senator from Connecticut towards the President Elect and his new administration is just getting started. Wait till Israel and the Middle East become front burner issues again, as they always do at some point in every administration, then you will need double strength two ply sick bags.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081126/ap_on_re_us/lieberman_connecticut

Congress %!!s Up Again!

Watching Congress rationalize not providing twenty or so billion dollars to an admittedly obsolete, badly run, yet vital national industry is sheer torture. Congress can oversee the fraudulent funding of "performance bonuses" for wayward Wall Street executives, but somehow, in their infinite wisdom, they can't pony up for the auto industry which has very far reaching tentacles into the U.S. economy. Congressional arguments for refusing to provide funds ring hollow since all the various complaints, which I won't bother to recount, could just as easily have been lodged against the banking cartel that effectively destroyed American finance and kicked the U.S. economy, and quite possibly the entire planet's, off a very steep cliff. Now, according to a Chinese newspaper of some decent repute, The 21st Century Business Herald, several Chinese auto manufacturers are interested in buying some parts of our nation's toppling auto industry.

The last time a Chinese concern tried to buy a key industrial player, in the prior case it was Unocal, the Federal Legislature said no on the grounds that a key company such as Unocal could not be allowed to fall into foreign hands. National security don't you know. One wonders what they would say now to a proposed Chinese buyout of some or all of Detroit, which is, despite its depleted state, the United State's last bastion of heavy automotive manufacture. Where does that fall on your national security Richter Scale, Congress? "No, we're sorry, we'd rather see them fail rather then wind up in your furry foreign hands. I'm afraid we must let this industry die in order to save it." Note to Congress: Please go home now before you botch things even more than you have already.

I Say It Here, It Comes Out There.

Not that we are neccessarily correct, but the Yahoo analyst agrees with me that Lieberman was "forgiven" so he would then be ow(n)ed by the President-elect.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20081118/us_time/08599186039600

Just A Theory.

For some reason, the President Elect has decided that he doesn't want to see renegade Senator Joe Lieberman expelled forthwith from the Democratic Party. The mind fairly reels. If one can't be expelled for vigorously supporting the other side's candidate for President, what can one be expelled for? It's ludicrous on the face, unless...unless the two parties are essentially the same and banishing someone to the other side doesn't have any practical value. Hmm. Or perhaps this is just the result of Obama's saintly character having difficulty dispensing what amounts to richly deserved payback. Even though I think the first conjecture is true, (the two parties are effectively the same), I don't think that's why Obama supports the retention of Joe Lieberman. Nor do I think Obama supports Lieberman remaining in the party because Obama is afraid to smite a foe. After all, one would be hard pressed to find a smuck more deserving of being smote than Joe Lieberman. Now, before I provide my answer to this seemingly strange circumstance, a bit of history:

Way back in '06, during the primaries for the mid-term elections, the Democratic party supported another candidate against Lieberman. As you can no doubt tell, I have no affection for Senator Lieberman, but it is hard to argue that the smarmy Senator from Connecticut didn't have a right to feel some sense of betrayal by his party. Lieberman's subsequent support of Republican, John McCain, was, therefore, in my view, in no small part, an act of revenge. So, here we are, a few days after the Dems have cleaned up in the national election, with say it ain't so Joe very much on the losing end of things and his political career hanging by the thinest thread imaginable. So what does a savvy President-elect do? Save the renegade from certain political oblivion, because in doing do the aforesaid renegade now owes you big time.

Very Early Returns.

Hope and change were the incessantly repeated dual mantras of The Obama Campaign. I want to believe that the President elect will take meaningful and effective strides towards restoring (some of) what has been sundered over these last eight years, however, Mr. Obama's choice of Rahm Emanuel, for example, a former director of Freddie Mac, (appointed by Bill Clinton) to be the new adminstration's Chief of Staff, is far from encouraging. It is equally disheartening that the Democrat's most prominent eradicator of Glass Steagall, Robert Rubin, has been one of Obama's top financial advisors, and, though I don't necessarily expect his appointment, Rubin is said to be on the short list for a return to head the Treasury.

It is axiomatic that birds of a feather flock together, and very few of the names being bandied about for key cabinet positions in the Obama administration are birds of change. Rather, they represent the opposite, birds of a status quo flock that have steered the U.S. financial sphere and now the general economy to ruin.

Now It Gets Interesting.

A few facts. Make of them of what you will.

1.) Barack Obama's victory was a landslide.

2.) The Democrats have even firmer control of Congress.

What do they mean?

Here are a few ideas:

The landslide and subsequent bolstered majority mean that The Democrats will have massive power to legislate as they see fit. Notice I did not say something silly like: The Democrats will have massive power to effect change. The U.S. is bankrupt, and this will manifest in due course and be profoundly limiting to government's wherewithal. The main question going forward is how will the new President and his majority party respond to extreme duress. Be mindful of what a Democratic majority in Congress did not achieve before TSHTF. No change in U.S. military engagements, and no attempt to address any of the most pressing issues in the financial sphere.

The Democrats will have little or no leeway or excuse now for misrule. I expect the honeymoon for Obama to last no more than six months. That's right, one hundred and eighty days, and that might be generous by half. If Obama does not appear to be equal to events, (and I believe there will be many "events" as we head into '09) his Presidency is going to be even more miserable for him and us than I imagine it will be. I would like to be optimistic, but the party of Pelosi, the same party that gave us the unconscionable "No Banker Left Behind" Bill is almost certainly not up to the challenge. We must hope that in time others will be.

She Gives Trashy A Bad Name.

Just in passing, I happened to catch a bit of footage of Sarah "The Whore of Babylon" Palin voting for herself somewhere in the great interior of the United States. And I couldn't help but notice (to a degree that inexplicably I had not before) how utterly ridiculous her hairdo was. For starters, there was entirely too much of it, and it was piled on her head in such an unruly and ostentatious fashion as to suggest that the woman possesses a surfeit of both bad taste and vanity. I don't know if the hair whirling about Palin's head is all hers or not, or whether she was utilizes dreaded hair extensions, but the total effect simply left one asking a few simple yet pertinent questions such as...

Why does a woman Palin's age, and in her position, namely running for the second highest office in the Federal government, think that sporting such an absurd looking pile of hair is acceptable? Is she truly not aware how silly she looks, or does she believe that her gaudy coiffure confers something useful to a candidate for the Vice Presidency? Mark Twain once observed, albeit as part of a joke, that "The clothes make the man." In the case of "The Whore of Babylon", her outlandish hair is the joke, and if you voted for her-and her big thicket of trailer trash hair- the cruel joke will be on you.