Go Princeton: The Times on Raanan Agus

A wonderful, glowing story on a Princeton chum (and former congregant) Raanan Agus in today's Business NYT. Key quotes:

But while his predecessors have gone on to claim their greater renown, as well as wealth, Mr. Agus has done all in his power to keep a lid on his public profile. Mr. Agus declined several requests for an interview, and he asked his personal friends as well as his professional acquaintances outside of Goldman not to speak about him....

Of Mr. Agus, "he is a very private man," was all that Joseph H. Lookstein, the rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, an orthodox synagogue on the Upper East Side where Mr. Agus is a trustee, would say....

A Princeton graduate, with a joint law and business degree from Columbia, Mr. Agus, who is 39, also spent a year at Yeshivat Har Etzion, a large yeshiva in Israel where students engage in religious study. He joined Goldman in 1993 and by 2000 he had become partner, a rapid though not unprecedented ascent....

Described by all who know him as exceedingly modest, Mr. Agus’s choice of cars has become a standing joke on Goldman’s trading floor. The group he heads comprises 75 professionals.

Novak Agrees with Me?!?!

Whoa. After I wrote the post below about dumb people being a major voting bloc for the GOP - which I meant as a joke - I read this from Robert "DB" Novak hisself:

For good reason, the GOP often is called 'the stupid party.'

Scary.

{2009 update, pic from here.}

Totten Scaring the Bajeepers Outa Me

Michael Totten, as far as I've seen, the best journalist covering Israel/Lebanon Relations. He's a native English speaker who knows and likes both countries. And he gets real news, real facts, and takes real pictures. I've mentioned all this before.

His most recent blog entry, entitled A Perfect Storm? has this scary quote:

Meanwhile, a group that calls itself “Al Qaeda in Lebanon” appeared from Lord-only-knows-where and directly threatened to destroy the March 14 government. “Al Qaeda in Lebanon” may or may not exist as a wing of bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. If they do, they’re serious. If they don’t, they’re a Syrian proxy. Either way, it doesn’t look good. This is not a prank phone call.

Clinton, Nixon and Bush

In the modern era we have two bars set for impeachment. The high bar is Nixon. He obstructed justice, he stole an election, and when he found that his staff was caught breaking and entering Democratic HQ in the Water-something hotel, he covered it up. Investigations went on for months and finally Nixon resigned because Barry Goldwater (Senator from Arizona) told Tricky Dick that impeachment was inevitable.

The low bar is Clinton. After years of flagrantly flaunting his Billclintonness, going so far as to marry the most evil person on earth, Hillary Satan. He was caught red-handed being not guilty of shady land deals in Whitewater. He was caught red-handed getting a haircut, or something like that. But worst of all, he was a sitting Democratic president when a ravenous bunch of Reaganite pod-people, led by some guy named Newt and then a soon-to-be convict named Tom DeLay, took over Congress. Since 1994 they tried to crush the Democratic party and started with the best president since Truman. Ultimately, the multitude of special prosecutors caught him lying about an affair he had with a White House intern. As I said, the low water mark.

In between those two marks we had Reagan & Bush escaping culpability for Iran-Contra - and I still don't understand how…

Anyway, where will Bush be? It's infuriating that Bush gets away with stuff that Clinton was pilloried for. Every and any little thing was flung at Clinton - mainly through a structural consanguinity between the Gingrich crew and trash journalism (which grew in size and strength in the 90s). But Bush escapes through the combination of a vigorous right-wing pundit machine and a national press cowed by 9/11.

In any case, Bush & Crew have been operating under a veil of secrecy and lies for the past 6 years. It was Nixonian in design and scope because it was created by two of the lowest and meanest of the Nixon crew: Rumsfeld and Cheney. Instead of learning that being Nixon-like is wrong, those dogs learned that Nixon just wasn't Nixony enough. So they sought out Karl Rove to find them a meathead they could pound into shape to be an Uber-Nixon - a Chief of Executive Power.

Bush Jr. was a perfect meathead because he is both a dumb dumb man and a religious fundamentalist (two important GOP voting blocs).

I keep reading these fluff pieces in the press about how the Democrats need to plan a moderate agenda of legislation and blah-blah if they hope to win the presidency in 2008. Gridlock is bad to these press pundits (yeah, the same nobodies who let Bush destroy the country… literally destroy, mind you).

Legislation? Gridlock? Huh?! The Democrats, if they know what's good for them and the country, will grab a ten-foot flashlight and ram it down Bush's corrupt throat! Oversight, investigate, uncover! The veil of secrecy and lies is fragile and will come crashing down. Who needs legislation?

If the investigations make public what I've been reading online for the past few years (but, because of press collusion has not made it to the TV viewers) then Bush's approval ratings (which are already at an average of 38%) will plummet.

And, even with this horrible, ossified, desiccated, deracinated, moronic press corps will be able to state clearly the crimes of this administration. And it may even convince the majority of the population that Bush did something worse than history's greatest monster's husband, Bill.

{2009 Update, stat photo from here.}

Fla. Senator Mel Martinez to chair RNC

They just announced: Fla. Senator Mel Martinez to chair RNC. If you recall, Maryland Lt. Gov, and loser, Michael Steele was thought to be the front-runner for this post. The Republicans chose a Hispanic (Cuban) over the African-American (again, har) but all part of the same effort to create a bigger tent for the GOP.

Considering the despicable race-baiting of this past election, I would think that it takes more than a few token hues to change public perception. I don't know many Blacks who respect Clarence Thomas or Condaleeza Rice; they see them as the talentless sellouts that they are.

This type of myopia is found on both sides. Ya see, back in 2004, liberal Democrats wanted a candidate that would appeal to Republicans. Because the most extreme of either party vote in the primaries, the moderate candidates favored by the majority of the country do not get as many votes as the shameless partisans. The liberal Democrats want liberal candidates but since they also wanted someone who would appeal to 'swing voters' they selected John Kerry. To real moderates, like myself, Kerry is a too-liberal pusillanimous SOB. Only a partisan liberal would think that since Kerry had a war-record that made him a moderate!

So too with Republicans. As Howard Dean quipped, it's largely the rich white Christian party. Suuure, there are Jews and other minorities in there, as the Wiki notes: "In the 2006 House races, whites voted 51% for Republican candidates, Blacks voted only 10% GOP, Latinos 30% and Asians 37%"

So when the GOP leaders look for minority Republican candidates or figureheads, they choose abnormal examples of the population - and often as tokens. So Kerry is as much a 'moderate' as Clarence Thomas is a spokesman for the African American sensibility.

Anyway, all that aside, Mel Martinez as head of the RNC. Goodie. If you recall, when I was predicting who the Rove-Chosen candidate for 2008 would be I put Martinez on the top of the list because he's a Bush Family surrogate. Since then, I've learned that he's a real winner: he's implicated in the growing Abramoff scandal *and* he was the dude who encouraged the Terry Schiavo intervention.

He is precisely the face I personally want for the GOP: (1) a Bush crony, (2) token minority to offend the rest of the under-represented, (3) corrupt, and (4) in lockstep with the Fundamentalist Wackos.

Guttman Follow-Up

The Augean Stables is a good pro-Israel academic blog (which has one of the best blog names this side of the Styx).

Here's his rather detailed take on the hack, President of Penn (and Good Witch) Amy Guttman.

P.S. Guttman seems to suffer from Martha Stewart syndrome - if you make too many enemies on the way up, they won't help you on the way down.

Martin Peretz on US-Israel Relations in Bush Part III

Martin Peretz, the publisher (and owner) of The New Republic actively maintains one of the only must-read sources journalism/commentary for anyone who claims to be moderate (center-left or center-right). His daily blog, the Spine, is the tip of the New Republic's spearpoint. And, as should be true for all thinking moderates, he is profoundly pro-Israel.

Today's Spine has a comment about the Bush administration's potential turn-away from Israel after the midterm election. Personally, I label this period Bush III because it is a combination of the anti-Israel Bush Sr. and the apocalyptic Bush Jr.

A great line from Peretz about the history of US-Israel relations:

"Israel ... ever since its founding, has had--with the exceptions of the Eisenhower, Carter, and first Bush administration--more or less continuous diplomatic and military support [from the US]."

Eisenhower is before my time, but I always felt that Carter and Bush Sr. were the worst modern presidents for Israel with Clinton, Reagan, and Bush Jr. as the best.

{2009 Update: Peretz pic from here}

Not Only Me

It appears that I'm not the only one who thinks Jonah Goldberg is an idiot. Isaiah Berlin has my back (from Andrew Sullivan ):

"'Evil is rarely defeated by people who are unsure they are right,'
- Jonah Goldberg, on conservatism of doubt.

'To realise the relative validity of one’s convictions’, said an admirable writer of our time, ‘and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian.'
- Isaiah Berlin, 'Two Concepts of Liberty.'"

{2009 Update: Pic from here.}

Jonah Goldberg

A friend of mine has compared my writing style and attitude to Jonah Goldberg (of the National Review). I am flattered but there is way too much to dislike about JG for me to consider it a compliment anymore. Goldberg -- and any Republican journalist who has defended this administration and this (past, yihoo) Congress -- is worthless. Even in 2004, the smarter and more honest Republicans realized how horrible things were, but as I am a generous man I can understand why and how some Republicans wanted to stick with Bush (a.k.a. Kerry?!? Barf).

However, the only people who still support the President and this Congress are either (a) being paid by the GOP (b) intellectually dishonest, (c) ideologically blind, or (d) stupid. All four possibilities make people like Jonah Goldberg worthless.

And then I saw the cover of his upcoming book. It's one of those "Liberals Are So Mean" books that the GOP Press Machine spews out. But the cover?! A disgrace:

Hillary is Hitler, no doubt. And Jonah, if he had any choice in this cover, is scum.

Update Here's the book at Amazon, if you want to verify my claim

Feingold rules out run for president

I agree with his reasoning too. Anyway, according to this AP story, here are the people still lurking about:

Feingold leaves a crowded field of possible Democratic candidates, including Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who announced his candidacy last week. U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York is widely considered the front-runner for the nomination. Others considering or positioning themselves for a run include U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the 2004 Democratic nominee; former U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the vice presidential nominee two years ago; U.S. Sens. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Joe Biden of Delaware and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut; and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

Whew.

{2009 Update: note that Obama isn't even mentioned. Hee hee}

Best Cartoon About the Election

From Steve Sack:

Mehlman to step down from RNC post

Ken Mehlman is one of the bad guys. He's being axed from the RNC because of Tuesday's debacle (Mehlman to step down from RNC post). Oh, the article says:

"Mehlman made the decision not to run for a second term more than a month or two ago — well before the election"

- but don't be so pathetic that you believe anything this administration says. These people lie to a level only seen in totalitarian regimes. They lie to hurt freedom (as opposed to lying about adultery, ahem) and when caught lying they shrug and lie some more. Seriously. It's infuriating.

Anyway, Mehlman's bad-guy credentials comes from this distinguished resume:

"A protege of Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, Mehlman became RNC chairman after managing Bush's re-election campaign in 2004, when the president won re-election and Republicans expanded their majorities in the House and the Senate. Before that campaign, he served as White House political director under Rove. In 2000, he served as national field director for Bush's first presidential campaign, charged with coordinating the efforts of GOP leaders in every state."

From Atwater to Rove to Mehlman. Like any good perversion (e.g. incest), the next generations are getting more extreme and more flawed.

GOP dirty tricks

One of the most flagrant of GOP dirty tricks with documentary (digital, OK) proof as seen in this story by Bonnie Goldstein in Slate Magazine.

the Ehrlich and Steele campaigns sent out to heavily Democratic black neighborhoods in Prince George's County flyers that were designed to deceive black voters into thinking the candidates had been endorsed by three popular Maryland African American politicians: Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson, former P.G. County Executive Wayne K. Curry, and former Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who more recently served as president of the NAACP. (In fact, two of these three men had endorsed Ehrlich and Steele's Democratic opponents, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley and Democratic Rep. Ben Cardin. The third, Curry, endorsed Steele but not Ehrlich.)

To give the documents credibility, the campaigns needed to find African American campaign workers to distribute them. So they bused in homeless blacks from Pennsylvania and Delaware, paying them $100 and feeding them two meals.

Just so's ya know. Both Ehrlich and Steele lost. Steele is now vying for the position of head of RNC. In general I have as much respect and trust of African-American Republicans as I do gay Republicans but Steele seems to be a cut above/below the average. He'll be a perfect replacement for Mehlman.

In Your Face Rove

The New Republic, saying many of the same things I have said (so naturally, I think they're smart and correct).

On the Lieberman Win

One of the 'vital center' bloggers, the Bull Moose, on the highly gratifying Lieberman win.

Weep, Kos.

Liberman Wins and has the Best Line

From Hotline On Call:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT), in his victory speech: 'Love you. I'm Joe Lieberman and I approve of this election'.

Is the System Broken?

So very very broken. Two important changes need to happen in the voting system to make it even barely just: 1. Smash the gerrymandering, 2. make vote-tampering a felony.

Note, the Republicans are up to their ears in guilt over these crimes. Anyone who has been paying attention knows this. Ever since they took over in 1994 they have used gerrymandering and vote tampering to an obvious and disgusting extreme.

Unless we redraw congressional districts to make voting fair, and unless we arrest the practitioners of Robocalling and other grand schemes (e.g. prosecute under RICO), we are no better than a Banana Republic.

Krugman At Last

I refuse to give the New York Times any money. But Paul Krugman is so good - it makes the TimesSelect slimyness so attractive. Anyway, his column appears to be accessible today.

A crucial quote:

At this point, nobody should have any illusions about Mr. Bush’s character. To put it bluntly, he’s an insecure bully who believes that owning up to a mistake, any mistake, would undermine his manhood - and who therefore lives in a dream world in which all of his policies are succeeding and all of his officials are doing a heckuva job. Just last week he declared himself “pleased with the progress we’re making” in Iraq.

Senate Predictions

If I attempt to predict the Oscars, which are meaningless, then I have to at least try the Senate. Even though it kills me... but as my brother and I often say, if the Israelites could believe 10 idiots over Moshe Rabbeinu when it came to the sin of the spies, so people can trust George Dick & Donald.

The data I use to determine the predictions - for the 14 top close races - comes from the average of the major polls as tabulated by RealClearPolitics.

My basic rule of thumb, based on 2004, is that if a Democrat is under 50% in the average polls, he will lose. The Republican machine has been shown to be super efficient at bridging the gap.

Bold = my predicted winner. *=incumbent.

Arizona = Kyl (R)* 49.3% vs. Pederson (D) 40.7%
Connecticut = Lieberman (I) 49.8% vs. Lamont (D) 38.0%
Maryland = Steele (R) 45.0% vs. Cardin (D) 48.7%
Michigan = Bouchard (R) 37.8% vs. Stabenow (D)* 52.3%
Minnesota = Kennedy (R) 37.7% vs. Klobuchar (D) 53.0%
Missouri = Talent (R)* 45.3% vs. McCaskill (D) 48.5%
Montana = Burns (R)* 45.5% vs. Tester (D) 48.5%
New Jersey = Kean (R) 41.8% vs. Menendez (D)* 48.2%
Ohio = DeWine (R)* 43.3% vs. Brown (D) 53.3%
Pennsylvania = Santorum (R)* 40.8% vs. Casey (D) 52.3%
Rhode Island = Chafee (R) 43.3% vs. Whitehouse (D) 48.7%
Tennessee = Corker (R) 50.3% vs. Ford (D) 44.3%
Virginia = Allen (R)* 46.8% vs. Webb (D) 48.3%
Washington = McGavick (R) 40.5% vs. Cantwell (D)* 53.8%

TOTALS
8 wins for Republicans (AZ, MD, MO, MT, NJ, RI, TN, VA)
6 wins for Democrats (CT, MI, MN, OH, PA, WA)

Republicans will take Democratic seats from NJ and MD. Democrats will take Republican seats in OH and PA.

The Two Regimes

Those who are still even barely optimistic about a sea-change tomorrow cling to the desperate desire to see the evil government that has laid waste to 6 years of world history be destroyed. But there are two regimes that need to tumble: the republican muck-machine is the big one. The second regime is the whorish insensate press corps. Both need to be destroyed for this country to progress.

One shining light through all the lies has been the Columbia Journalism Review. For an example, see their take on the Kerry Joke Bizzarity: John Kerry: The Man Behind the Curtain

{2009 Update: pic from here.}

Guttman Follow Up

Michael Freund, a fellow Princetonian and a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, follows up on the Gutmann photo (as detailed below).

I found the story linked from my man Martin Peretz at the New Republic.

Nuclear Security Breach

From Friday; which explains why I missed it - so much weirdness has happened in the past few days that every story needs full attention; so minor stuff like Ted Haggard the meth-snorting homophobic-homo super-pastor demagogue can outshine major stuff like a Nuclear Lab Breach that officials describe as "could be devastating"

Oh joy! What a great homeland security administration we have. And I still know people who are loyal republicans (they are the modern equivalent of the band members of the Titanic, if the band members were also the captain and navigator...)

Congress as Parliament

The body of the letter I sent today to Andrew Sullivan:

I'm an orthodox rabbi and I follow Israeli politics almost as obsessively as my local American scene. There has been a disturbing similarity between the two systems as seen since 2000 but especially in 2004 and 2006.

In Israel the main parties never have enough seats on their own to form a majority and they need to gather together a coalition of the narrow-minded smaller parties. To do so, the big parties - which are normally moderate left or moderate right - need to shift hard to the extremes to get the votes necessary to rule. The majority of the country is thus forced to accede to the demands of the wingnuts.

In 2000, we saw that the country we saw that the country is even divided between left and right. It's so closely divided that the extremes will determine the election. In 2000, the Green party ironically tossed the election to the Right Wing. The even divide was known to Karl Rove and in order to win the next elections, he needed to go the Knesset route and draw out the extremists in his own party to tip the scale.

2004 is the best example of this - where the country was so evenly divided that the few percent of Whacked-Out-Rightists tipped the election in Ohio - sealing all our fate.

For 2006 I see the same dynamic coming into play. Which is one reason why moderate-Republicans like you are acting as scared and angry as we Moderate-Democrats have since 2000. We're all in the same boat as in Israel - where the extremists are able to determine elections because the country is too evenly divided.

Rove, the 21st Century Rasputin, has hijacked America by playing this legitimate electoral game to the hilt. I wish I knew a way to stop it.

2009 Update: Pic from here.

Amy Gutmann watch

Amy Gutmann was an overblown professor at Princeton when my brother and I were there. My brother took her class - and it was low-grade leftist philosophy posing as high thought. And she was a vindictive grader - it was either her way or wrong (a wonderful attitude in political philosophy, right out of the Socrates playbook... no, not the Socratic Method or the Search for Truth but the squelching of contrary thought with Hemlock).

She was quickly promoted through the ranks - typical given her emphasis on playing the academic-politics game rather than concentrate on good thought/scholarship. Eventually she left Princeton to be the President of the University of Pennsylvania. Thank you Peter Principle!

So it does not shock me at all that her bad judgment is still on display: The Appletonian: What's wrong with this picture?

After Pat’s Birthday

I tried to put this up on Oct 20, but it's still important even now:

Pat Tillman's brother writes a heart-rending, and head-banging, letter to America about the corruption of the current government and the need for change: After Pat’s Birthday

Letter to Andrew Sullivan

The body of a letter I just sent:

I am a 34 year old son of staunch moderate Democrats. The first election I could vote in was 1992. Which means my Democratic voting life has been defined and dominated by the Clintonian view of the party. Which started with a tax hike, no question, [but that undid the 12 years of deficit spending and] led to a galvanic economic boom. Compared with Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2, Clinton was a model of fiscal restraint and doing more with less and less government.

Given that, how can the label "tax and spend Democrat" have any mileage? Maybe there are some of these tax-liberals still left (I do live in Lamont-ridden Connecticut) but they haven't been in power since Carter. As far as I can tell, being a Democrat means believing in small government and fiscal restraint while being a Republican, Reagan Bush or Bush, means to borrow lots of money and spend lots of money.

I think why you and many other conservatives are finding the Democrats more palatable is because the Republicans now stand for all the things for which the Democrats had been reviled: (1) reckless spending, (2) weak/dangerous foreign policy, (3) high taxes (because my tax dollar goes mainly to pay for debt), (4) constant intrusion into bedroom and classroom, and (5) absurd moral posturing.

I know that all those things were the Democratic talking points from McGovern to Dukakis, but Clinton ended that and for people like me, there's been no other Democrat to define the party. The Republicans now own those 5 talking points. All the recent reports tell us that the "independents" and "unaffiliated" voters are the fastest growing group in this country. Those people, I believe, are the ones who hate the 5 points above and will follow whomever can embody good government.

Which is why I hope and pray the Democrats win on Tuesday and they will try to live up to the Clinton leadership legacy of moderation. If not, then it really may be time for a third party - and the numbers will be there.

New Democrats

This is a letter I sent to Sullivan (as usual, he gave no acknowledgment):

Dear Mr. Sullivan,

I am a 34 year old son of staunch moderate Democrats. The first election I could vote in was 1992. Which means my Democratic voting life has been defined and dominated by the Clintonian view of the party. Which started with a tax hike, no question, which led to a galvanic economic boom. Compared with Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2, Clinton was a model of fiscal restraint and doing more with less and less government.

Given that, how can the label "tax and spend Democrat" have any mileage? Maybe there are some of these tax-liberals still left (I do live in Lamont-ridden Connecticut) but they haven't been in power since Carter. As far as I can tell, being a Democrat means believing in small government and fiscal restraint while being a Republican, Reagan Bush or Bush, means to borrow lots of money and spend lots of money.

I think why you and many other conservatives are finding the Democrats more palatable is because the Republicans now stand for all the things for which the Democrats had been reviled: (1) reckless spending, (2) weak/dangerous foreign policy, (3) high taxes (because my tax dollar goes mainly to pay for debt), (4) constant intrusion into bedroom and classroom, and (5) absurd moral posturing.

I know that all those things were the Democratic talking points from McGovern to Dukakis, but Clinton ended that and for people like me, there's been no other Democrat to define the party. The Republicans now own those 5 talking points. All the recent reports tell us that the "independents" and "unaffiliated" voters are the fastest growing group in this country. Those people, I believe, are the ones who hate the 5 points above and will follow whomever can embody good government.

Which is why I hope and pray the Democrats win on Tuesday and they will try to live up to the Clinton leadership legacy of moderation. If not, then it really may be time for a third party - and the numbers will be there.

All the best,
JC

Backpost finished 2009-11-29. Yet another one that was completely finished.

Prager is a Ho

Dennis Prager used to be smart. In the past I had felt that his prodigious intelligence allowed him to say important things despite his obvious mental flaws (he threw away his Orthodox education in favor of easy pornography and Egotheism - i.e. the belief that you are smarter than God so you can make your own rules). But ever since the rise of Bush II Prager has torn off his reasoned facade and entered the moon-tube of the depraved Hard Right.

Many reject Prager for his embrace of Mel Gibson. I now reject him because he is a Jewish Rush Limbaugh - spouting clear, obvious lies while crushing his moral compass between the dollar bills he received from selling so sadly out.

Read his latest nutjob screed: "Note to Angry Republicans - Stay Angry but vote Republican"

Clifford Geerz dies

Oh my! See the obituary from Princeton.

He was the father of modern, decent, anthropology. Oy.

Pic from the Princeton obit.

The most dangerous U.S. cities

This story, about the most, least dangerous U.S. cities (from Yahoo News) is obviously wrong because New Haven is not even listed!