Author: Henrik

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Pardon, what was that again?

I know. I have said elsewhere that I’m tired of Sarah Palin. And I am. However, that does not stop me from being fascinated with the fascination for Sarah. Now with her book tour in full swing, and the facebooker1 herself reportedly being in my state for Thanksgiving I couldn’t help being absolutely stunned by her recent Bill O’Reilly interview. Thanks to TheYoungTurks for bringing it to my attention.

Here is my transcription of one question from O’Reilly and Palin’s answer:

Bill O’Reilly: Let me be very bold and fresh again. Do you believe that you are smart enough, incisive enough, intellectual enough to handle the most powerful job in the world?

Sarah Palin: I believe that I am because I have common sense and I have, I believe, the values that are reflective of so many other American values, and I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the um, the, kind of a spineless, a spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite ivy league education and a fat resume that is based on anything but hard work and private sector free enterprise principles. Americans are… could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership. I’m not saying that it has to be me.

If that made sense to you, you are smarter than you look. Don’t you just hate that bold and fresh gotcha journalism that Bill O’ Reilly uses. If you don’t believe me and want to see it for yourself? Here is the episode from TheYoungTurks:

Priceless!

1 I cannot really call her a blogger, since she doesn’t blog. I guess I could call her author, but that would imply that she had written at least one book. I’m not even sure she writes her facebook postings herself.

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Please, say it ain’t so!

The rumors are already flying. Tim Geithner might not be Treasury Secretary much longer. But who are they floating as a replacement? JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Huffington Post has an article where they discuss whether it would be a good fit or not. My reaction? I pray that they will not be that stupid.

I know that a Treasury Secretary needs to know a lot about finance, economics and what goes on on Wall Street. But really. Replacing one Wall Street insider with another just makes it a revolving door of people mentally connected from most people in the USA, and makes lobbying from Wall Street look like an amateur’s game.

If Timothy Geithner steps down, which might not be such a bad thing, I would hope that they could find somebody that has more knowledge of small businesses, entrepreneurship and general daily grind activities. Somebody who undersands that keeping banks too big to fail will just set us up for another crash just like the one we’re in with bigger job losses and the potential for a real depression. No, we need to make the price to be big so high that it’s not financially responsible to share holders to be so big. And separate money lending banks from investment houses. The latter should not even be allowed to be called banks, just to limit the confusion.

The USA needs a good and steady hand at the helm of the Treasury. I don’t believe the Wall Street CEOs even know what the chart looks like.

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Senate Voting Saturday night

On Saturday night I was watching the vote to proceed to debate on the Health Care Reform in the Senate, or Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to H.R. 3590 as it’s officially called. Is that a proof that I need to get Life 2.0? I don’t know. However, I was stunned by the lack of drama. The clerk called roll and everybody said yea or nay as predicted strictly along the caucus lines. The only exception is Sen. Geaorge Voinovich, who chose not to vote, but that took me some time to figure out. After a brief pause the clerk then read out the names of the people for and the people against, and then the presiding senator, Chris Dodd, asked if anybody wanted to change their vote, and then that was it.

Compared that to the house vote. There you heard a buzz on the floor, and applause as the 218 threshold was passed. In the Senate. Nothing. No wonder that C-Span is the only channel that broadcasts these kind of things live. The normal cable 24-hour news cycle people just don’t have time for these kind of drawn out, quiet affairs. I’m so glad there is a C-Span (or three).