The New York Times editors are ready to throw Chrysler — actually Cerberus (the equity fund that owns the car company) – overboard. They observe that Chrysler is seeking over $5B more (without much proof its done any hard work to make itself viable) and question why those equity fund managers shouldn’t kick in more of their own cash to save the car company. The editors write:
Chrysler said the only reason it was back asking for more money so soon was that the car market was worse than it had expected two months ago.
This cavalier approach to the public purse raises a very big question. If Chrysler is really on track for a turnaround and all it needs is some financing to get over a bad patch in sales and debt markets, why doesn’t Cerberus Capital Management, which owns 80 percent of the company, put up the money itself? Why should taxpayers have to take the risk? That’s what private equity funds like Cerberus are supposed to do.
But many of the Times‘s objections to Cerberus (e.g. there aren’t as many jobs at risk now, bankruptcy wouldn’t necessarily mean liquidation) are equally applicable to GM. After all, GM’s bondholders are complaining that GM really hasn’t made the needed adjustments to become viable. And there is plenty of reason to believe a pre-packaged bankruptcy would not lead to the dissolution of GM.
It would be a step in the right direction to give Cerberus the message that the taxpayers have had quite enough of subsidizing atrocious management and excessively lucrative union deals. But once we acknowledge that move makes sense, there is less reason to object to a similar course of action for GM. When you survey the things taxpayers are being asked to pay for these days (e.g. stimulus pork, their neighbor’s underwater mortgages), propping up GM seems to be one of the least justifiable. And considering the competition for misuse of taxpayers’ money, that’s saying something.
And I’m pretty sure that those Representatives shared their opinion on Freeman all on their own without encouragement from the Lobby.
Americans need to wake up to the highly ethnocentric fifth-column minority among them who has managed to hijack our Middle East policy to the detriment of all Americans.
This antipathy towards Mr. Freeman will strike most Americans as alien and highly suspicious, so even if the Zionists manage to take him down I envision it being Pyrrhic victory.
All valid points, but I think you are seeing only a small part of the playing field. While this is happening, Obama is pressing forward on offense on many different fronts: (1) bashing Bush by revealing secret memos; (2) stem cell research; (3) various “green” initiatives; (4) the “stimulus” plan; (5) the budget . . . there is a lot more. The point is, he is playing offense big time. The Chas Freeman story is a small one, and perhaps Obama should cut his losses, but this is like losing a tiny battle while his armies are advancing in huge lunges across vast continents.
Perhaps the strategy is to let this nomination fester to the point that a slightly less horrible choice will seem acceptable.
Michael Goldfarb found some quotes of Freeman Mao Maoing Mao:
Freeman on Chairman Mao: A Man of “Great Spiritual Conviction”
If Chairman Obama starts talking about a Great Leap Forward, shoot me.
Abe don’t accuse me of being in the fifth column. It’s first or nothing!
Abe: Wonders never cease. I didn’t realize they had internet access at the compound in Idaho.
See the article by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post, March 6, about the policy of the Obama administration with Syria, Iran, and Israel.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1236269357164&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
To my mind, Obama’s policy seems to be that of Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Rashid Khalidi. No wonder he wants Charles Freeman to head Intelligence (Blair would not have appointed him without the approval of the Obama administration.)
Everyone is confused and in a constant lather about Obama’s appointments and the obvious disarray in the White House and Congress, because they fail to understand how he perceives his role. He identifies himself as a Monarch, a SUN KING, around whom the planets revolve. He does not do the thinking. He does not do the planning. He does not determine strategy. He does not select appointees. He just rules.
His style, which he considers “Presidential” and, in the narcistic manner of a Supreme Ruler, he considers himself very good at, is to have his henchmen and his menials go their chambers and do their thinking, their planning, their selections, and then come back to him in the Oval Office to present their proposals and recommendations to him, in the manner of, say Richelieu to Louis XIV or Bismark to Kaiser Wilhelm. He does not consider himself, or represent imself, as an expert in any of these matters – note how often he deprecates his knowledge in some areas. For him, he has only to pick either what pleases him most or what is most persuasively presented to him. That’s his choice, a part of his job. Then he does the other part, his Royal Presence schtick, of going out and with his lofty, leaderly-sounding rhetoric, persuading the idolitrous peasants, yearning to touch the hem of his jeans, of its great worthinous and life-changing benefits. Always, of course, in their interest.
This saves him, as it did the other Sun King, from a lot of dull hours in meetings, or thinking, or studying, and frees him for little jaunts to elementary schools, sunny beaches, and ciy pleasures with his Queen: the Perquisites of Power. The Audacity of Hoax. The common touch.
Seriously, this is the Divine Right of Kings perception he brings to his Presidency. It enables him to stay calm. If things get screwed up, it can never be his fault. If an appointment goes wrong, he just sends it back and asks for a new proposal. If he has Royal favorites like Reid and Pelosi, they get to call their own shots, no interference from him. Those who cross him or criticize him are summarily dealt with by the Palace Guards. He displays his power by spending vast amounts of money to no purpose.
If you insist on regarding him as the usual CEO or Governor type of POTUS, you are going to continue to be confounded and frustrated. Remembering his King Of The Universe self-concept explains all the irrationality.
I think of him as LeRoy Soulay – Le Roi Soleil.
Love it Dragonfly.
And I think of him on my more charitable days as La Roi de merde!
But that’s just speaking entre nous!
9: What you say, without doubt.
11: That wd be la reine, and the position is reportedly taken, though, regrettably for some, not remunerated (but check out those biceps!).
The day must come, I suppose, when the teleprompter jams and the words “mon peuple” escape the brain via the mouth. Then we’ll know.
His defense, too, I can imagine:
Honi soit qui mal y pense!
I agree with abe re: the fifth column… we need to stop Saudi domination of the American political system!
I dunno, it seems to me to be a brilliant strategy of creating minor scandals to distract from the major radical thrust of his larger initiatives.
The Dow keeps tanking and the media’s been talking about Rush Limbaugh for the past couple of weeks. Meanwhile, Obama manages to pass off $800b bill of huge handouts to leftist groups as a stimulus bill.
Now we can talk about Freeman while Obama spends the next trillion…
dragonfly, that’s the best riff yet on the Sun King theme. But I do have one quibble. The money spent is not to no purpose. In pre-capitalist cultures, the acquisition or possession of wealth was only (or principally) legitimate to the extent it was conspicuously given away. The more lavish and insouciant the altruism, the greater the prestige. Among the Chinook Indians of the Pacific Northwest such gift-giving was known as a potlatch, and the custom provoked virtual wars in which rival chiefs sought to bankrupt each other by example. (You might ask Bill Gates if his charitable giving was influenced by that.) Of course it is one thing for people to court ruination with their own money, another to do it via the taxing and appropriations power. That’s where modern liberalism and socialism help out. Prestige accruing solely to the ruler is transformed into goodness accruing to the society at large. I am not entirely convinced that even Obama recognizes how much he has residually, derivatively availed himself of THAT bait and switch.
Very good, dragonfly!
Well, Richeleu advised Louis XIII and and his son, the Sun King took advice principally from Colbert, Louvois and Chamillart. Still the overall burden of the piece is quite correct.
However, in the process of bankrupting his country Louis built any number of great edifices many of which continue to confer pleasure (and generate income for France). THAT was real investment in “inrastructure” (and defense). No such luck here. Systematic destruction of wealth and freedom to no minimally redeeming purpose.
And to think, we actually have the power to change this!!
#19,”we actually have the power to change this”
I’m interested in this power.
it’ll be funny if the lobby loses this one. I will never let them forget it and perhaps change my screename to memorialize it
lol okay that was a little irritating even for me
Pathetic. The usual Zionofascists quoting one another.
Oh no, not the “potlatch”! That takes me back to classroom discussions I’d rather forget. Thanks Seth!
=)
And Gord, don’t insult Idaho or the people in its various compounds. Most of those people are separatist Christians, who are actually quite big on the Jews keeping hold of Jerusalem. More likely “abe” is a self-loathing liberal.
Jennifer: I am afraid that with everything else kind of tumbling around them and being so wrong-headed they might want to make “an example of winning” or of pushing through despite the complaints
(they they love to cheaply label “politics of the past”) and appoint Freeman nonetheless….
This POTUS and his WH is so insecure that I wouldn’t be surprised they prefer petty wins to objective analysis.
Obama is 1,000 percent behind Freeman
Is it any surprise that Andrew Sullivan is reflexively supporting Freeman because he thinks only Neocons oppose the appointment?
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/freeman-and-ira.html
“Larison:
“My guess is that it is Freeman’s reported aversion to groupthink and moralistic cant that led him to be critical of Israel in the first place, and that this inclination probably became stronger as time has gone by. I am also inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt inasmuch as I am rather familiar with how one posting or one statement can be taken out of a much larger body of work and be made to stand in for your entire worldview.
There does seem to be some considerable overlap between those making the most noise about Freeman and those preoccupied with the “Iranian threat.””
I cannot see how, after the debacle of the Iraq war intelligence, a contrarian and Israel-skeptic is not an asset in an administration. Unless, of course, you still want to skew intelligence for your next war. “
I, for no apparent reason, read the speech Freeman delivered here: http://www.mepc.org/whats/MaoZedong.asp. Essentially Freeman blows kisses for what must have been twenty minutes. He mentions Mao’s resistance to joining “the sphere of influence that we Americans then, with shameless inaccuracy, called the “free world.”
Thankfully, it’s unlikely that mainland Chinese “might have to use force to deter efforts by the Taiwan authorities to alter the legal status quo.” You’ve got to love the passive language, as though the Taiwanese, if they were so impertinent to seek political freedom, would be the real ones responsible for the military attack that would follow from mainland China. Not a single critical word of China’s continued threats and bullying of Taiwan and its refusal to allow Taiwan the space for self-determination. Yet America’s fear of “the use of force” against Taiwan is “increasingly delusional.”
And do you want someone atop our foreign intelligence structure who says things like this?:
“China does seem determined to invest in modernizing its still relatively backward armed forces to be able to deter others from attacking it as we and many of its neighbors have in the past. Speculation that China should and will aspire to be a ‘peer competitor’ of the US military is, however, made in the USA, not made in China. Threat analysis is, of course, the mother of all defense spending, and Americans are really good at both. Having a potentially formidable high-tech enemy is a great fund-raiser for the hyper-expensive advanced weaponry our military-industrial complex prefers to make and our armed forces love to employ.”
But if you really want to see some sharp intelligence, and a first-class intellect at work, listen to this. Fortunately, we can be confident that the Chinese would never use their military offensively because Mao advocated the idea of a “peoples war,” which is “inherently defensive” in nature. That’s it. That’s the argument. The fact that China has not launched an offensive operation is evidence that it never will; apparently it has nothing to do with the fact that China’s military was far too weak to contemplate offensive actions, especially as it was contained by the United States. (And by the way, the “peoples war” method is how the Lebanese “militia” (also known as Hezbollah) defeated “Israel’s effort to bomb their country into peaceful coexistence.”
It gets better: “China is popular [on the international stage] in no small measure because it now stands against us in its opposition to coercive diplomacy directed at changing the domestic policies of other nations, rejection of the notion of humanitarian intervention, and insistence on adherence to the norms of international law.” Anyone want to talk about arms sales? About deals with Sudan? About China’s flouting of “international law” in the areas of human and animal rights? And I wonder why the Chinese were allergic to the notion of intervening in other nations? Could it be because they don’t want us to tell them they should start thinking about political freedoms? But no. China is “now the staunchest defender internationally of once purely European stipulations about the sovereign equality of states.”
Never you worry, though, Freeman really knows how to crack the whip when the moment is right. He encourages the Chinese to adopt a “more direct, more visible, and more credible role in selecting their leaders.” Wow! That’s some hard-hitting material right there. Apparently the Chinese have an indirect role in choosing leaders already; it just needs to be made more visible for those foolish “white devils” living outside the Middle Kingdom. This, along with its pro-market reforms, will lead to a restoration of China’s “historic” role as “the global economic center of gravity,” replacing the United States (a prospect Freeman clearly welcomes).
One thing Freeman might be right about, though, is that China is now “the potential leader of the capitalist world.” That may not have been true at the time he said it, but now it’s more conceivable due mostly to the fact that China has shown with it sown recovery plan that it better appreciates successful western models (such as Reagan’s) than Obama does.
“utterly uniformed”?
The only ones who are supporting this appointment are the ones who actually believe, like Freeman, that there is an all-powerful Lobby that exerts disproportionate influence on US policy, in other words, the usual anti-semitic motif. It raises the question of where their loyalties lie, with the country where the an unfit appointment to a vital role would naturally be opposed, or to this mythic idea of a Lobby and their morbid obssesion in opposing this fiction. I will only add that there are plenty of substantial reasons to oppose this appointment, the unneeded politicization of intelligence among them. But just as the issue of anti-semitism is, particularly among the purveyors of fashionable opinion, always allegedly a smear or a canard or an hysterical accusation, so cries of a great Israel Lobby conspiracy (as opposed to the more trite idea of simple democratic objection), is used to make Freeman a supposed victim and to make people defensive when they discuss his anti-Israel quackery. I’m sorry, but when you are talking about a man who openly traffics in classic anti-semitic themes about conspiratorial behavior, dual loyalty and inordinate influence, that smears conscientious objection as the machinations of a nefarious Lobby with a capital “L”, all cries about the evil Lobby in the sky notwithstanding, people should not be dissuaded from calling Freeman out on his views, which the exact intent of claiming that he is somehow the victim of some coordinated conspiracy. Yes he deserves to be disqualified by his foreign ties and intemperate views in other areas, but why be intimidated by shouts of “Lobby!” when we add his demonization of Israel and its supporters to the mix, just as we should.
RCAR@20
Well, if the “people” had the wit to use it they have the power to vote the Dims out. Even now, if they had the wit to recognize the monstrous depredations of the One on their retirements, job security and job prospects they could express their disaporval in the polls and meaningfully cripple his agenda. The absence of that wit is truly pathetic.
29 She leaves them to make sure we’re following along!
plus uniformed is spelled correctly — Fallows wrote a bit on this 20 yrs ago or so
This reminds me of the “unmitigated Gaul” slip a little while ago.
I have dim memories of Chinese involvement or influence or investment or something in places like Korea, Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, and maybe even the Philippines. Don’t suppose there was anything militaristic or aggressive about it though.
34, thanx to all concerned at contentions — we really learn a lot here. On a lighter note, once I gave a speech and said H. Hesse (remember) died of a brain hemorrhoid — (which I had to look up to spell just now) but there were only 20 witnesses
I don’t get it. do you guys not like china?
That’s pretty funny, aadrunza. I’m trying not to visualize that.
I’m sorry–last nite someone was “impressible.” today Chas Freeman is utterly uniformed”?
I know there aren’t any copyeditors on the internet, but honestly, I expected better from commentary and Jennifer. aren’t you, you know, a writer?