In one of my earliest blogs, I admitted to believing in UFOs, another Dallas gunman, and yes, a Loch Ness monster. I guess that makes me prone to being a “conspiracy theorist.”
Ok, guilty, as charged! But, am I the only one who thinks there is a possibility that the Medvedev/Putin government (more the latter than the former) could have had something to do with the crash of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski’s plane, which killed the President, his wife, many senior Polish military and government officials?
It was a more than 20 year old Russian jet, serviced by a Russian company, and it all but wiped out the progressive thinking Polish political leadership, ironically, while on the way to help memorialize an event where 20,000 Polish military officers were murdered in World War II by Soviet Red Army troops. Nah, not the Russians. They wouldn’t be involved in anything like that, would they? (“So what you are saying Mulder…..?”)
Call McConnell’s Bluff
Are the Democrats going soft already? What’s with the “Nancy talk” about dropping from the Chris Dodd (D-Conn) financial reform bill the $50 Billion fund—paid for by Wall Street firms—which would be cover the first losses for any “too big to fail firms” which weren’t?
It’s hard to read McConnell and the R’s any differently than, suggesting, strongly, that the GOP doesn’t’ want to change the status quo and see Wall Street financially nicked. McConnell and the Republcians would prefer any future financial failures to be paid for the taxpayers.
The Dodd “Fund “ was designed to forestall that need, but where there is a trough you’ll find the GOP pigs, as long as their peeps are the only ones who can wallow in it.
All forty one Senate Republicans already have signed a letter signaling their opposition to Dodd’s efforts, but so what? One of the best election moves the Dems could receive is for the entire GOP Senate to hold that position and carry it through to the November elections. “We the GOP oppose financial reforms trying to fix Wall Street excesses.”
As someone observed, which could “fund Dodd’s Fund,” but left in Wall Street hands, likely will go to GOP coffers and aid their candidates running against Democrat incumbents and in open seats.
Let those R’s who face back home political trouble justify protecting “The Street” from more and better regulation. Those move might pass muster with some “Tea Partiers,” but I expect it won’t cut it with all of the voters and certainly not with many independents.
(Read my friend Ken Guenther’s blog from this past weekend on the matter. http://www.fcmalert.com. )
Democrats should not compromise on this issue and dare McConnell and his merry men and women oppose it. I think, soon, some R’s will “turtle” once a strong Senate majority votes on the Dodd bill. Then, let Harry Reid and his lieutenants figure out a way to pass the legislation in the face of 41 possible obstructionists, who I expect won’t be able to hold their numbers.
The Democrats bust some healthcare china and now they consider backing off their success and pushing their majority numbers? There are many expressions for that conduct and one is “candy-assed.”
The D’s should ride that healthcare horse harder and see how much resolve Mitch and his team has for protecting the big money guys.
Goldman and the Other Paulson
The SEC provided most of the financial community here and in New York with a ton to talk about over the weekend when it brought suit against Goldman Sachs for not disclosing a deal it structured with John Paulson (no relation to Fannie/Freddie-Killer Henry), based on Paulson’s belief that the housing market would drop and that he could make a ton of money with a designed investment.
Goldman may have erred when, after creating the fund filled with bonds and marketing them, it did not disclose that Paulson helped shape the fund with the hope that they would go bad and, indeed, invested to that very end, making a cool billion dollars.
I’ll let the SEC and others worry about if what the august firm did was legal or not, but Goldman probably has more Democratic Washington ties than your average investment banking firm and I am curious to see what support, if any, Goldman gets from the White House and Hill Democrats.
Bellicose Ahmadinejad
Iran’s Jew-hating President seems to be taunting the US and other countries about his newly produced nuclear capacity and his country’s military might.
What a dreamer, I guess he hasn’t realized that author Vince Flynn and his rugged, non-PC security agent hero, Mitch Rapp, destroyed Iran’s primary nuclear facility about three years ago—in his novel “Protect and Defend”--with the help of Israeli spies strategically imbedded as employees in the nuclear facility. No missile strikes or nuclear on nuclear hits, just some well placed bombs in the basement of the underground plant and the things crushed itself and lots of folks inside, giving plausible deniability to everyone, since Iranian construction is so shoddy!
Oh, if it were only as easy as Flynn wrote.
But, maybe it is.
Defense Secretary Bob Gates has acknowledged that the US doesn’t have enough policy options to deal with Iran’s nuclear aspirations—and he is creating a new such laundry list-- and the Israelis were born with itchy trigger fingers when it comes to Muslim nukes.
President Obama—having a snoot full of Iran’s Mr. A--could enlist Gates to call Netanyahu (and Vince Flynn) and activate the plan laid out three years ago in Flynn’s “P and D” and make sand and glass out of Iran’s prize nuclear facility. That would force the Iranians to do something really stupid militarily giving us the right to go in and test Mr. A’s vaunted military.
But at 72 virgins per Iranian fatality, would there be enough women in their heaven for the new residents?
I’ll bet the Israeli’s aren’t without a list of how they would “fix the problem.”
Maloni, 4-19-2010
I don't want to hurt my arm, patting myself on the back, but I sensed that the Senate R's didn't want to be on the wrong side of this issue and now seek compromise on a reg reform bill.
ReplyDeleteGreat, Chris Dodd should take take all of their help, but not at the expense of his Wall Street-financed $50 Bil "Fund" to pay for future failures or a strong derivatives regulatory plank.
The Democrats should continue to pressure the GOP on this measure, since the policy and the politcs both are correct for them.