Cheney Utters Reasonable Statements

“I was a big supporter of waterboarding.”

 

 

 

Obviously, Cheney’s reasonable untterances were not about his views on enhanced interrogation techniques.  Rather, he offered his support for “reconsidering”  removing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of the U.S. millitary on gays.  Read the Eugene Robinson WashPo editoral here.

Robinson continues:  “I think that freedom means freedom for everyone,” Cheney said last June. “As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish.”

Robinson quotes some interesting poll data:  “Last week, a Post-ABC News poll found that 75 percent of Americans favor letting gay people serve openly in the military. This compares with just 44 percent when the poll asked the question in 1993.”

It was good to hear from our former vice president.  He could not stay long in that he was scheduled to return to his coffin where he lays awake during the day worrying about Sadam Hussein and his potential use of imaginary weapons. 

iggydonnelly

Business in the U. S. Senate

Goldman Sachs ‘helps’ European Governments Hide Debt

Greece’s overwhelming national debt has set off yet another global economic crisis—and just like the last one, American banks are at the center of the story. According to the New York Times, Goldman Sachs and other U.S. banks played a key role in postponing Greece’s day of reckoning while it racked up more debt by using a variety of complicated financial tactics reminiscent of the mad science that sparked the subprime mortgage crisis. Just months before the current crisis, in November 2009, Goldman president Gary Cohn led a group of banks in offering Greece a way to refinance their health-care debt, but it was hardly the first of such efforts. In 2001, Goldman Sachs engineered multi-billion dollar loans for the government hidden behind currency trades to help it skirt the EU’s deficit rules. “Politicians want to pass the ball forward, and if a banker can show them a way to pass a problem to the future, they will fall for it,” Gikas A. Hardouvelis, an economist who’s studied Greece’s accounting, told The New York Times.

Barack Obama as the 2nd Bill Clinton…

E.J. Dionne, Jr.

E.J. Dionne is one of my favorite editorial writers and I like hearing him on NPR.  In the WashPo he wrote an editorial about how much Obama could learn from Bill, commented on their similarities, and the challenges they have respectively faced.

On the shared challenges, Dionne says:  “And they share a major weakness: Both believe so devoutly in their capacity to convert adversaries and to get lions and lambs to lie down together that they spend more energy trying to win over their enemies than rallying their friends. This leaves them helpless when the lions continue to devour the lambs.”

I can’t recall where I read it, but my understanding is that the Obama group has been loathe to accept Bill into their camp because they don’t trust him and fear he will have an undue influence.  Hillary they trust implicitly and she is one of theirs.

If what I’ve read is true, it is unrealistic to think  that Obama will accept, or get, any tutoring from Bill Clinton.

iggydonnelly

Monday, 2/15/10, Public Square