Nemesis

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A retort to: Bush Will Address The Nation

By Steve Clemons The Washington Note September 29, 2008

My dear Steve, I’m saying this with great regret that your ‘amok’ propensity and desire to blame the Bush administration “for the reckless stewardship of America’s economic and security portfolios” for the purpose of justifying yourself of your flippant and irresponsible position on the issues of the war and the economy, is blatantly biased and dishonourable.

In your eagerness to make your case you totally disregard that the roots of the economic crisis lie in Democratic administrations and their caravanserai of Democratic activists, among whom Barak Obama was one who, as Tahoe Editor says correctly, was “suing banks for not taking riskier & riskier loans.” Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac (The most ‘populist’ of names), and The Community Reinvestment Act, that are the cornerstone of the economic crisis, were the offspring of Democratic administrations. It was “the Clinton administration’s resurrection of Jimmy Carter’s 1977 Community Reinvestment Act which appears to have been the major single factor ( My emphasis) in the origins of American high-risk sub-prime loans.” Under Clinton “banks were required to provide loans on an affirmative action basis to poor inner-suburban ghettoes” irrespective of the latter’s insecure financial position. And it was the Republican senator Phil Gramm who denounced Clinton’s program as “a vast extortion scheme.” Indeed, the US Senate finance committee in 2005, after the warning of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan of an imminent financial collapse if Fannie Mae’s activities were not reined in, proposed a bill that would increase scrutiny of Fannie Mae’s accountancy mechanisms. The bill however was opposed by the Democrats, while Obama kept his silence, and was lost.

I’m sure if you had taken the above facts into consideration you would not have condemned so gratuitously the Bush administration for the current economic crisis. Once again it was ‘peanut’ politicians and the ignorant crowd of good intentions that has cast America into the present hell.

As I’ve said four days ago in a post of mine on The Atlantic. com , if the corporate greed of Wall Street and the insouciant complacency and unimaginative stand of regulators have brought the American economy to the brink, it will be obscurantist democratic populism and its weak politicians, as it has been exemplified by the vote in Congress yesterday, that will push the economy over the abyss.

Once again the economically ignorant populace and politicians in their wrath and outrage to punish Wall Street, are raising the psychologist’s demon of “altruistic punishment” by which ironically they will be punishing themselves and most of all America.

Your opinion

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Barack Obama in another crucial test of leadership–the others were his withdrawal of troops from Iraq and his diplomatic parlay with Iran—has irretrievably failed. In his response to John McCain’s proposal to suspend their campaign and postpone their debate that is to take place next Saturday and concentrate all their efforts in persuading Congress to pass immediately and urgently, in a modified form, the financial measures of Paulson-Bernanke– measures that were elaborated by the experts in the field and not by primitive “tzu-tzu” practitioners nor by populist nostrums–that would have a better chance than none in saving America from descending into depression, that they should not postpone their debate and by having it they would allow the American people to have their say on the financial package, shows Obama to be abjectly and callously irresponsible to the “main street” people whom he presumably professes to represent and protect, all in the name of a stampede of voters rushing toward him on the heels of the debate that would facilitate him to capture the White House.

In his delirious manic run to catch the fleeing damsel of the ‘oval shape’, he is completely careless and unconcerned that this unprecedented financial crisis since the 1930’s depression that threatens many millions of Americans of losing their jobs and their houses, and, indeed, their life-savings, as there is a high probability if the Paulson-Bernanke measures are not passed promptly and expeditiously by Congress might engender a stampede, a run on the banks by ordinary Americans that would bring the collapse of the whole American economy.

Thus Obama’s sinister aim to have his debate for the purpose of bringing a stampede of votes to his side might turn out to be a stampede on the banks. And while he gives his glorious victory speech to Americans the latter will ingloriously be losing their savings. Hence, his ‘victory’ will rest on a pile of ashes, on the ashes of ordinary Americans’ savings.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Has anyone seen at the Memorial Service of 9/11 when both Barack Obama and John McCain were approaching the tomb to render their respect to those who had lost their lives how each of them placed their flower on the tomb Obama by flicking it throwing it and McCain reverentially laying it on the tomb? This action in itself shows the difference in the gravitas of character between the two candidates and the degree of loyalty each has for America. The indifferent nonchalant attitude of Obama toward the fallen alone should cost him the election.

If one cannot show real empathy for the dead he has ever lost it for the living. Obama’s so called empathy for the poor and disadvantaged has the gravity of a flick.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The political cradle of America is rocking! On September 04, 2008, the United States has given birth and laid in its cradle a sassy, vigorous, kicking, and bouncing new baby characteristically named the American iron lady. Sarah Palin on that unexpectedly wondrous day hit the political landscape of America with her feet running. Neither the ‘silent’ mines exploding under her feet that the political machine of the Democrats had planted nor the booming hand grenades that the liberal media were throwing at her and her family were able to prevent her from running the race of the vice-presidency and like a sprightly Olympian athlete winning it with resounding accolades of glory. The savvy humorous content and the strength of her speech before millions of Americans was the oozing of her strong character from the depths of her soul. And, indeed, her speech was Hurricane Sarah hitting the east and west coasts of the United States, where the liberal intelligentsia lounges in, and pontificates on international and domestic issues from, the comfort of their glasshouses, wreaking havoc to their dreams and dislodging them from the certainty and complacency that the election of November 04 was already in the Democratic bag. In their panic seeing the rising waters of the Republicans inundating the country the educated elites are scurrying to find the kind of sand bags that would obstruct these waters from bringing on their crest McCain-Palin into the White House. And the sand bags are already piling up.

The eminent economist-cum-commentator Paul Krugman of the New York Times and his colleague the fiery and always charming but vitriol-splashing Maureen Dowd have discovered new mantras with which to attack the Republicans and their nominees McCain-Palin. Krugman asserts that the GOP is forging a new “strategy of resentment” to pounce upon the Democrats as being elitist that tend to “look down their noses at regular people.” In his resuscitation of Nietzsche’s ‘resentiment’ and intention to graft it on the stem of the Republican plant Krugman completely forgets or doesn’t want to admit that the Democrats are already running their campaign on a strategy of hate both against the Bush-Cheney administration and the GOP as well as all of their followers. So if it’s true that the Republican campaign is going to be infused with resentment against the Democrats and hence the competition will be between resentment and hate one perforce poses the question which campaign will be morally worse, one that runs on resentment or one that runs on hate?

Maureen Dowd on the other hand with master strokes of mockery and irony in which she is a virtuoso storms Palin’s status of inexperience in international affairs deriding her with the words an “oversized igloo (Eskimo house) becomes commander in chief after the president-elect on his first day chokes on a pretzel…” And telling Putin, a former KGB agent, that being an Alaskan close to the border of Russia she knows how to handle a gun and shoot straight, the implication of this mockery by Dowd being that such ‘straight talk’ by Palin would force Putin to run to the United Nations asking for help.

But in reality what value experience has in the cutting edge knowledge of our contemporary times that only experts in their fields are qualified to delve in and make recommendations to governments with the precision of their expertise? Certainly some rudimentary experience is necessary in the affairs of state, and Palin as a mayor for four years and a governor for two appears to have that. And if a haberdasher and an actor made great presidents, Palin could also be in the same league. The authority and qualification for being commander in chief do not lie so much on experience but on intelligence and character. The presidency is a ‘receptacle’ of knowledge attached to multiple channels of knowledge of other members of the executive and advisors and experts from the different departments of government. The task of the president is, once he has a number of recommendations on a specific issue coming from the professionals in the field, to make his/her decision, after intense study of the different recommendations, on the basis of intelligence and character. Palin’s tenure as mayor and governor as well as her speech before the Convention, undoubtedly show—of course her opponents with their bitter predilection to belittle and malign her will never admit this–that she is a highly intelligent person with a very strong character. And on these attributes alone she would make a great president if McCain somehow choked on his pretzel.

The Democrats may draft as many horses from the stables of Krugman and Dowd to pull their flat tyre omnibus that Palin punctuated with her entrance on the political proscenium of America beyond the finishing line on November 4, but the result will be, E pur non muove, (And yet, it doesn’t move) to paraphrase Galileo.

Over to you

I would like to notify the readers of Nemesis that an article is being written by me on The American Iron Lady, Sarah Palin, making her debut on the political proscenium of America. It will be published on Sunday night Australian time.