Tag Archives: John McCain

Save Us Warren Buffett, You’re Our Only Hope

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Warren Buffett speaking to a group of students...

Warren Buffett is everywhere these days. In fact, he’s behind you right now. Boo!

First there was The Snowball a 1,000-page authorized biography that was just released. (Portfolio is reviewing it section-by-section for those of us who can’t dedicate that sort of time to the project. They’re mostly unimpressed, so far. With the writing, of course, not with Buffett.)

Then Buffett, stepped in to help shore up Goldman Sachs and General Electric to the tune of $8 billon. Next, there was John McCain, bringing up Buffett’s name on Tuesday night as a possible choice for Treasury Secretary, and going out of his way to remind everyone that Buffett is an Obama supporter. Now, articles like this piece in Slate by Daniel Gross comparing Buffett’s actions today with J.P. Morgan‘s actions in 1907 and this piece by Steve Lohr in the New York Times which makes the same point, have started to pop up.

It would be nice to think that one man really could do something about the current crisis, but that’s just not the case this time around. The problems today are a lot bigger than the situation in 1907, and Buffett doesn’t have nearly the comparitive wealth or sway that Morgan had at the time. As a voice of reason in frightening times, however, he does serve us well.

Buffett’s conversation with Charlie Rose, as mentioned in the Times piece, is worth watching in its entirety. Buffett compares the current crisis with Pearl Harbor and suggests that government action on the same scale is needed to respond. He loves Paulson, loves the Bailout, and sees opportunity where everyone else sees disaster. He thinks that, long-term, buying up distressed assets will be a money-maker. In fact, he’d like a piece of the action, and if there’s anyone who knows something about making money over the long term, it’s Buffett. As always, his credo is: “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” The best thing we can do right now is keep that in mind.

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Replace McCain with a tub of lard

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With John McCain announcing that he is suspending his campaign and pulling out of the debate tomorrow night, Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber is reminded of a famous episode of BBC4′s “Have I Got News For You” where the Right Honourable Roy Hattersley fails to show up for the third time and is thus replaced with a tub of lard.

I wasn’t familiar with HIGNFY until I watched that clip this morning, but I was fascinated to learn that Boris Johnson has made many memorable appearances on the show, including several episodes where he served as a guest host. Apparently he even won a BAFTA in 2003 for work like this episode, where it appears he’s either having trouble with the teleprompter, or is stuck in some kind of time warp.

Get Your War On!

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Some people believe that the defining conflict of our era is Islamofascism vs. the permissive culture of Western Civilization, others think it is Blue State liberalism vs. Red State family values, and a few will tell you that it is Kenny vs. Spenny.

These people are all idiots. The defining conflict of our time is Accounts Receivable vs. Accounts Payable. Get Your War On, based on the clip art comic of the same name by David Rees, is now a weekly video series on 236.com. Here are a couple of the best episodes.

Sarah Palin and the Rape Kits
“Sarah Palin and the rape kits? Sounds like a punk band. Are they good?”

You Are Loved
“Josh Groban would never say something like that!”

(I tried to embed those videos here, but for some reason that wasn’t working.)

Here’s an old article by Doug Paton from the Ryerson Review of Journalism that explains the origin of the comic.

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John McCain Approved This Message

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How surprising is it that John McCain, war hero, maverick, man of principle, is taking the low road in this election? Not surprising at all. He has no other choice. This is from Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University and author of The Political Brain.

With all that stacked against him, the only road that could take McCain to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the low road, one of the few pieces of infrastructure left in good repair by President Bush. His father paved it against Michael Dukakis, George W. Bush repaved it running against John Kerry, and the GOP repainted the dotted line in now-Senator Bob Corker’s 2006 contest with Harold Ford. The path to success for McCain is to make the election a referendum on his opponent, by working in silent concert with 527 groups and media outlets such as Fox News to pursue character assassination, guilt by association, and, most of all, the effort to paint Obama as different, foreign, unlike “us,” and dangerous (and did I mention that he’s black?).

That’s from a piece Dr. Westen published in The New Republic over two months ago, but it stuck with me ever since. Westen also maintains a semi-regular blog at the Huffington Post.

It saddens me that McCain has been reduced to taking the low road. The only thing sadder will be if it works.

Republican P.O.W.

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“John McCain became a P.O.W. this week, at the hands of his own Party. It was Sarah Palin’s Convention, not McCain’s. His speech last night was so out of sync with the vituperative tone and stale, hard-right cultural populism of the Convention’s other headliners—above all, Palin—that he sounded less like a Presidential nominee than one of those token speakers given a spot on the program just to prove that the Party welcomes diversity. ”

That’s from George Packer’s blog, available online only at the New Yorker.

Using the P.O.W. myth against McCain has never been done as effectively, I believe, as Packer does in this short piece. He continues:

This time, though, McCain is collaborating with his captors. By picking Palin he knowingly guided his campaign well over hostile territory and then aimed its nose straight down. Once taken hostage, he refused to speak his captors’ propaganda, but he allowed everyone else to shout it to the rafters.

As I was watching McCain give his speech, I mostly kept thinking to myself “I can’t stand the rest of these Republicans, but I have a soft spot for McCain. They’ve managed to nominate the only candidate who’s life history and personal story has a conceivable chance of standing up against Barack Obama’s.” Yet, I couldn’t help thinking, at the same time: He’s the nominee now. He’s the head of his party. He should be able to dictate the tone of the debate, but he’s been completely unable to do that.

No one would hold against him the fact that he broke, as he said last night, under North Vietnamese torture. His capitulation to the latest group of hard-liners to take him prisoner is a lot harder to justify.

I’ll always have a soft spot for John McCain. I think he’s a guy who really has tried to do the “right” thing over the long course of his career. It’s unfortunate that the end point of that career has him a prisoner of the hard-right Republican base, instead of finally being able to rise above it.