Don't Quit Your Day Job, Mr. Duke!

It can be an interesting phenomenon when you come across a pundit or media figure whose politics are unknown. It strips away any preconceptions you may have before the person even opens his or her mouth.

For example, the first time I ran across Glenn Beck on TV. This was before he was "The Glenn Beck" - the Fox News host that some love and many love to hate. He was just some guy who was on HLN. I was on a cruise and HLN was basically the only channel available in my room. So I watched him for a little while and thought this guy is an idiot. I stand by that initial impression. And you can add to that my more recently formed impression that Mr. Beck is a total huckster.

It has been noted several times on this blog in the past that I am a loyal viewer of Fareed Zakaria GPS. They (almost) always have very intelligent guests with rational points of view on the topics of the day (the recent appearance of Ann Coulter notwithstanding). However, on Sunday's show, there was a discussion about the rioting in London (and other English cities) and Fareed welcomed a guest named David Goodhart. He was introduced as the founder and editor of Prospect magazine. I had not heard of it. I have no idea what it covers, any ideological slant it may or may not have, if it's any good, etc.

Anyway, Fareed asks the question to Mr. Goodheart:

FZ: Why is this (the riots in London) going on? Why is this happening right now?

The reply (mildly edited for space and clarity):

DG: We have a lot of problems in the our inner cities... there is a whole culture of nihilism amongst a hardcore people in the inner city. A lot of it comes from the black hip-hop and rap culture, which was picked up by the white kids as well. This idea that you cannot make it in straight society so violent transgression is really the only thing to do.

How about that?

White kids and young adults are rioting in London and it's the fault of black culture?!?!

And I don't think you have to have a PhD in Sociology to wonder why, when hip-hop and rap are also popular in the United States (not to mention other countries throughout the world), are the other countries not experiencing such rioting? If there is a cause and effect relationship, shouldn't there be rioting in Detroit?

It is also worth pointing out (hopefully without stepping on my previous point) that there has been rioting throughout history. There have been countless reasons to trigger flash riots (some "better" than others: think the travesty of justice of the acquittal of the officers who beat Rodney King compared to the Los Angeles Lakers winning an NBA Championship). So, in that sense, I would concede that a cultural phenomenon can play a role. Yet, it still begs the question, why there and not "here"? And why now?

I consider those to be interesting questions that merit intelligent conversation on a show like GPS. Unfortunately, in my opinion, Mr. Goodheart does not seem fit for such a role.

Are You An Extremist?

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

That quote is one of the more famous observations of the late great George Carlin. I actually often think of that quote while on the road as a reminder to myself to not fall into the trap of being judgmental about others whose driving habits don't exactly mirror my own.

However, I don't typically think of it as being necessarily applicable to other areas of life... until yesterday. What happened yesterday? Glad you asked. I got an e-mail from my brother which included an accusation that:

"(you) parrot out extreme left wing viewpoints (and therefore are) an idiot"

Now, how exactly do you refute such a charge? One's instinct it to inquire as to who exactly is an extremist out of such people whom I admire (in policy and media - listed alphabetically):

Stephen Colbert
David Gergen
Melissa Harris-Perry (column: Fighting For Change, Longing For The Sea)
Simon Johnson
Ezra Klien
Paul Krugman (op-ed: Republicans War on Math)
Rachel Maddow (segment: Obama Risks Compromising the Presidency)
Bill Maher
Keith Olbermann
Nouriel Roubini (interview: with Charlie Rose)
Robert Shiller
Eliot Spitzer
Jon Stewart (YouTube: final speech at Rally To Restore Sanity)
Joseph Stiglitz
Fareed Zakaria (YouTube: comments regarding the "Ground Zero Mosque")

And, as I may have mentioned on this site before, I actually respect David Brooks and, to some extent, even David Frum.

And is Defense Secretary Robert Gates a left-wing extremist? I really like what he has had to say about defense spending, military intervention in the Middle East, DADT, etc.

Anyway, maybe faced with such an inquiry, my brother picks a couple he considers extremists (and who are we kidding? Olbermann and Maher are going to get tagged)... maybe others?

Maybe he accuses, for example, Robert Shiller (although to be honest, I suspect my brother has as much chance of knowing who won the bronze medal in the Hammer Throw at the 1976 Olympics as he does of knowing anything of significance about Mr. Shiller). Now I know from watching Mr. Shiller on Charlie Rose that he advocates mandatory tax increases on the wealthy when the inequality index rises. Does that opinion make him an extremist? I'd say "no" - but who am I to judge? I suspect it's not an idea that would poll well with the American people. Does that, by definition, make it extreme? I say 'no'... it merely makes it unpopular (at least temporarily so). Moreover, the same brother accusing me (sort of) of being an extremist is a long-time advocate of the Fair Tax. This is a policy proposal recently referenced by Rachel Maddow as something like "a fringe, Right-Wing idea" (I can't find the actual quote just now... hopefully I will!).

Is she right? Maybe, but not necessarily. It is her opinion. Is the Fair Tax "extreme"? Maybe... who am I to say? I can define it as "extreme" by my own standards, but that is all those standards are: mine and mine alone.

So, back to the beginning. My concern is that many people are falling into a trap where they define people in their own party who are closer to the center as, well not necessarily "idiots" per se, but rather, in conservative circles, they talk of RINOs (a common charge against Meghan McCain for example); liberals and progressives might label their centrists as "corporatists" and/or the more blunt "sell outs" (I'm looking at you Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Max Baucus, Evan Bayh, etc).

I suppose if there is one thing that we should all agree with: Joe Lieberman is a worthless piece of shit.

And then people further from the center become "wing-nuts" and/or "extremists". I, of course, cannot and/or should not speak for the mainstream Right, but one has to assume they're embarrassed by the likes of Michelle Bachmann, Steve King, Louie Gohmert, Allen West, etc.

So, I don't know. I guess all I can say is if Fareed Zakaria is considered an extremist: consider me an extremist.

Conservatives Trust CEOs...

As we all know, conservatives trust businessmen. Presumably, the more successful, the better.

Well, I was watching the special Fareed Zakaria GPS this weekend where Fareed talked to four successful CEOs (three current, one former) to solicit their opinions on the economy and their ideas on how to fix it.

Eric Schmidt, whom you may know runs a mildly successful enterprise called Google (If you don't know what that is, I would suggest you google it), said this (while arguing for more government involvement):

People assume that somehow America's government was not involved in the world fifty years ago; almost all of the science and technology research that we take for granted now* came out of the Defense Department spending post World War II.

At that point, Fareed pointed out of some examples:

1. semi-conductor industry (D.O.D. project)
2. internet (DARPA project)
3. computer industry (NASA was main client during it's formative years)
4. GPS (D.O.D. project)


As I listened to their conversation, I couldn't help but think of a friend who - while not necessarily self-identifying as a teabagger - opined that "government screws up everything it tries to do".

While it would be truly naive to argue that government gets everything right, it is nevertheless a startlingly uninformed opinion to somehow suggest that an unregulated private sector is inherently "better" than the alternative. I pointed out to my friend that the V.A. scores better than the private sector in patient satisfaction. His response was (more or less) "uhhhh... I don't believe that"... like it was just a matter of my opinion rather than the result of polling data.

And then there are Teabagger politicians (specifically Sharron Angle and Ken Buck - both losers in their elections of course) who voiced an interest in privatizing the V.A. until veterans groups howled - then lied about their previous position. If teabaggers are so confident in the sanctity of their free-market ideology... why do they back down?


* NOTE: I couldn't decipher exactly what phrase he used here.

Iman Feisal Abdul Rauf

Rauf, of course, is the iman behind the Park 51 Community Center project.

And I'm certain that all Furriners readers have a competent grasp of google so this will not replace your own research should you be interested in learning about this gentleman's background. However I did want to single out a couple recent "takes" of Fareed Zakaria.

Take #1 (from 8/8)

Take #2 (from 8/22)

Also, here is a quote from John Podesta on Charlie Rose last week (~8/19):

The Iman who leads that effort was somebody that has been embraced by Republicans and Democrats. (He is someone) who Condi Rice and Karen Hughes sent on the road on behalf of the State Department as a goodwill ambassador explaining the best traditions of America. This is exactly the kind of voice that we want to hear. A voice that repudiates Al Qaeda - that is against terrorism.

He's Sitting Right There, Paul!

Over the past few weeks, I've posted a few times about how the economy is lagging largely due to a lack of demand rather than for reasons that the Republicans and some pundits want you to believe (tax policy, regulatory uncertainty, etc). Moreover, I linked to a post by Barry Ritholtz where he sort of debunked a Washington Post column written by Fareed Zakaria where Mr. Zakaria espoused the idea that corporations are hoarding cash because of concerns over Obama's policies.

Well, some follow up to report from Fareed's own show. Yesterday, Fareed hosted a conversation with Robert Rubin (Secretary of Treasury, 1995-99) and Paul O'Neill (Secretary of Treasury, 2001-02).

It seems to me that Mr. Rubin's reputation is in the tank. Other than Alan Greenspan, I'm not sure any individual has suffered such a calamitous hit to their reputation as a result of the economic collapse of 2008 (Phil Gramm & John Thain may be other candidates - but I didn't think much of Gramm to begin with and I think John Thain is still largely anonymous to the public). Anyway, Mr. Rubin didn't have all that much interesting to say. However...

...Paul O'Neill proved to be VERY quotable!

Recall as I just stated, Fareed himself had written an article titled "Obama's CEO Problem --- And Ours" and yet Mr. O'Neill let rip with these comments:

PO: I must say I'm kind of amused by some of the conversation about companies hoarding $1.5 trillion in cash or something because I had a rule when I was in the private sector for 25 years including 13 running ALCOA and that is:

DON'T HIRE PEOPLE UNLESS YOU HAVE SOMEBODY DEMANDING GOODS THAT YOU CAN'T PRODUCE WITH THE PEOPLE YOU ALREADY HAVE

so it seems pretty unrealistic to me to urge people to spend money unless there's a demand that they're not able to satisfy with their existing resouces.

FZ: And capacity utilization... the plants and factories are not at full capacity.

PO: Exactly. Until there's a reabsorption of that latent capacity, people are not going to build new capacity... why would you? It's crazy. It's not a charitable function... if you're running a business to say "oh my goodness, we have so many millions of people unemployed, I should rush out and spend my cash and hire more people".

Later in the conversation, O'Neill, once again just nailing Fareed (probably oblivious to it):

PO: So I think an awful lot of this conversation about (how) Wall St's upset with Obama... it's because people don't have something sensible to talk about I suppose. I don't think there's much merit to that conversation.

Then, O'Neill basically rips Robert Rubin right to his face (once again perhaps oblivious to it - but maybe not because he looked at him when he said it):

PO: And the financial community compounded the problem by securitizing this stuff (sub-prime loans and loans with little or no equity (down payment)), calling it 'AAA', putting it into cyberspace... it's no wonder that we cratered the world financial system. What we were doing was stupid!

(Note: Robert Rubin joined Citigroup after leaving the public sector and was reported to have pushed for the massive conglomerate to take on much more leverage and risk... i.e. they got deep into MBSs & CDOs with his encouragement).

So, there you have it. A former Republican appointed Sec. of Treasury keeping it real. Now, I will add that he stated that he was basically fired by George W. Bush for two reasons:

1) He didn't support the 2003 Tax Cuts.
2) He indicated he didn't believe there was any evidence that Iraq had WMD.

I don't know if he actually wants to be admired by liberals but - fuck it - I'll say it: I can't see any reason I'd rather have Timothy Geithner than Paul O'Neill.

Thank You, Lord...

...Robert Skidelsky.

I was watching Fareed Zakaria GPS this weekend and there was a discussion of economics with Harvard Professor Niall Ferguson and Robert Skidelsky.

You pretty much know what you're going to get with Mr. Ferguson. I was poised, notebook at-the-ready for some pure conservative BS. Here is the first quote I took note of:

For years, there's been a consensus in Washington: Republicans are against increasing taxes and Democrats are in favor of spending public money and the net result is that the United States always runs a deficit, it's a structural deficit; it's nothing to do with the recession.

Alas, the facts can be cruel to conservatives. I would direct you to www.presidentialdebt.org to familiarize yourself the actual data on the federal spending of the past 35 years. It's not the most user-friendly chart I've ever seen but I'm sure the learned readers of Furriners will make sense of it. A key number is the -2% in YOY column of the last year of the Clinton administration. That's the surplus! So, don't give this "structural deficit" nonsense.

Anyway, the second quote from Mr. Ferguson that I took down that I was ready to call bullshit on is this:

NF: But why is it that small and medium sized businesses in the United States today are not hiring? Why is it that they're not expanding? Why is it, therefore, that unemployment is stubbornly high? It's because they see the tax-hikes coming that are implied by this fiscal policy.

It turned out I don't have to call BS because Robert Skidelsky did it for me:

RS: It's not the case that the reason businesses are not borrowing is because they are expecting tax increases down the line. They're not borrowing because they don't see the demand in the economy for the products they might be producing.

And therein lies the argument for additional stimulus.

I Call Bull... No, I Can't Do It!

I was watching Fareed Zakaria GPS this weekend and Fareed said this:

Now, at the end of August, remember the United States will pull out all but 50,000 troops from Iraq. At the end of 2011, all American forces are scheduled to be gone.

I have too much respect for Mr. Zakaria to "call bullshit" on him but it does strike me as naive. Isn't it pretty much a truism that the U.S. almost never leaves anywhere?! I think that is where many progressives and Ron Paul see eye-to-eye. In fact, Barney Frank and Ron Paul have recently teamed up to argue for cutting the military budget and shutting down some of the military bases we have around the world (and bringing the troops home... or, more accurately I presume, deploying them to where they are actually needed).

This transcript of a joint interview with Wolf Blitzer is worth a read. Here is an (edited) excerpt to whet your appetite:


BLITZER: Congressman Frank, the Pentagon's budget for 2010 almost $700 billion, in your estimation, what should it be?

FRANK: Well, for this year, I would like to cut it about 50. And I want to stress, Wolf, I don't want this argument hijacked. The case that Ron Paul and I are making, along with Representative Walter Jones, a Republican, Ron Wyden, a Democrat, is separate, to a great extent, from Afghanistan.

People can differ about Afghanistan. I voted to go in, I think it is bogged down. But we are talking about useless expenditures which are, for geopolitical reasons that I don't think are valid, in NATO, in Japan.
...
So I want to make it very clear, we are talking about NATO. NATO was a wonderful idea. It was formed in 1949. We are as far away from NATO as NATO was when it was done in time from the presidency of Grover Cleveland.

NATO has served its purpose. And I don't -- The New York Times had a very interesting article a couple of weeks ago about the extent to which Europe -- Western Europe, wealthy nations, facing no real threat, can afford very, very good expenditures for social welfare, because America...

BLITZER: So basically, what both of you are saying, bring the troops home from Germany, from Japan, from South Korea, bring them home...

BARNEY: Yes.

BLITZER: ... from all over the world. It is a waste of money.

FRANK: No, not all over the world. Excuse me, Wolf, I don't argue in extremes. Not all over the world. There are parts of the world where I think...

BLITZER: Where?

FRANK: ... there needs to be -- well, for instance, I do want sea and air power to confront the People's Republic of China. I don't want Taiwan overrun. And I think sea and air power can help with South Korea. But South Korea is larger than North Korea, and can put its own troops in. Fifteen thousand Marines in Okinawa are irrelevant to what we want to do with China.

We're not going to land Marines on the Chinese mainland. So yes, there are parts of the world where our presence would be useful, but -- and I think we have to be very clear that we would be there militarily to confront Iran. But it is not any longer reasonable to have troops virtually everywhere.

The general view is America must be the superpower and be everywhere. And that exacerbates our national security, doesn't help it.


In spite of the political clout of the Frank/Paul combination, allow me to make a not very bold prediction, U.S. troops will be in Iraq when the 45th president takes the oath of office in January 2017.

It's not very often I say this - but I really hope I'm wrong (except about Barack Obama being re-elected of course).

James Carville vs. Fareed Zakaria

As I do most every week, I tuned into Fareed Zakaria GPS this past Sunday. Fareed opened his show with his take on the media coverage of the BP Oil Spill that I thought was more or less perfect (in that it echoed what I have thought along... yay me!)

After returning to the Furriners office with the intention of putting up a link to a YouTube clip of Fareed, I found out that James Carville had blasted Fareed earlier in the week in response to Fareed's column in Newsweek. With all due respect to Mr. Carville, he does not seem to be thinking completely rationally on this topic. I certainly appreciate his passion and I think it is overall a very positive thing that he is screaming to anyone who will listen that more needs to be done to help the Gulf Coast - but Fareed, as is usual, is a tremendous voice of reason on an emotional topic.

Here are links to the relevant clips if you're interested:

Carville Blasts Zakaria (originally aired on June 10th)

Fareed's Take (aired on June 13th)

And here is one example of at least one news show "properly" covering the BP Oil Spill:

What We've Learned