Friday, September 10, 2010

Is Wall Street headed to Ohio for a 'New Day' ?

WEEK-END WIDGETS:

Having watched and read about the ceremonial rollout of GM's Chevrolet Cruze from the Lordstown assembly line, it didn't surprise me that John Kasich was absent from the lines of applauding workers. You would have thought that when the word got out that his opponent, Gov. Ted Strickland, would be sitting happily on the passenger side with GM President Mark Reuss beaming at the wheel, that Kasich would want a piece of the action. But, alas, the Republican contender was not a cheerleader for the bailout of GM that saved thousands and thousands of jobs and kept the company out of bankruptcy. Is that the "New Day" that he promises on his home page?

Let's face it. That kind of opposition to such expenditures is widely popular for so many GOP candidates today, including the ticket in Ohio that it might easily have been arranged in a board room at the Bank of America.

It would be heretical for Kasich to change his stripes now, particuarly after he spent such a long time at the Wall Street investment firm of Lehman Brothers that wound up in bankruptcy. As
Candidate Kasich makes his rounds, he swears Lehman Brothers is old history for him and besides, he had little to do with its operation. Ouch! I would demur by saying that you can take Kasich out of Wall Street, but you can't take Wall Street out of Kasich.

There's been such a loud noise in the campaigns that blame President Obama for the economic mess - great political fodder, if mindless, considering what he inherited - it might be worthwhile to turn to an appropriate comment by the late Daniel Schorr, offered in a collection of his commentaries, "Come to Think of It." Observed Schorr in 2001, as he took an early inventory of the works of Bush II:
"But perhaps one should not be surprised at this tendency [ by Bush ] to act now and think later. This, after all, was the president who decided how much money he wanted to commit for tax relief before he knew how much he would need for defense, education, and prescription drugs.
It was true then - nearly a decade ago. And it's just as true now as Republicans continue to rehash the beauty of restoring the economic nightmare of the Bush tax cuts.


Finally, when we hear the Three Amigos - Sarah Palin, John Boehner, and Newt Gingrich - link the preacher's threat to burn the Koran to the building of the Islamic Mosque in Manhattan - isn't that a wildly over-the-top quid pro quo that ought to be left to playground toughs? These people are regurgitating a Gothic novel to scare the hell out of Americans and it is working in some quarters, with help from Fox News. So may we now turn to the late Allen Ginsberg, the Beat generation poet, who may have been simply looking at faces in the crowd when he wrote :

"Whoever, controls the media - the images - controls the culture."







4 comments:

Anonymous said...

So where is Bond when we need him. In "Tomorrow Never Dies", Bond takes down media mogul Elliot Carver. Like Carver, Murdoch seems intent on stoking the fires of nativism, xenophobia, and distrust of government so that Faux News will benefit from the fracas. There are no new scripts, only new narrators.

ChrisChristieFan84 said...

No matter how hard the Democrats push the story, no one cares if John Kasich worked for Lehmen Brothers. People are more concerned with things that actually matter: high unemployment, huge budget deficits, etc. If this line of attack is the best that Ted Strickland can do then it is no wonder that he is so far behind in the polls.

Grumpy Abe said...

No one? What do you guys do all day? Call every registered voter in that state? Are you comfortable being so superficial? .

joe hill said...

FanofaLiar84,
You must have been lonely under your rock. Your pathology of reinventing/twisting reality to fit your spin does not serve you well. You might want to check the historical record. In the interim, please stop waisting our time with your utter nonsense.