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| Courtesy of the VA |
Quote of the Day
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for
words left unsaid
and deeds left undone.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
McQueary on Leave From Penn State: Thumbs UP!
The Penn State assistant coach, who in 2002 was a graduate assistant whom caught Sandusky, a retired Penn State coach, with an underage boy in a Penn State athletic facility shower, has been placed on leave. I was sharply critical of Coach McQueary in yesterday's commentary. The school implied that the reason that McQueary has not been terminated yet may have something to do with McQueary's legal rights under Pennsylvania law. There are rumors that fired Head Coach Joe Paterno is looking for a defense team in the event he is charged or sued in civil court by victims. There is a dispute over exactly what McQueary told Paterno in 2002. McQueary has testified that he saw the boy being raped by Sandusky, but Paterno says what McQueary told him back in 2002 was that the situation looked suspicious but wasn't definitive that something occurred.
A Rant on Herman Cain and His Supporters
My readership seems to take a hit every time I criticize Sarah Palin, and I expect it may well be the same when I do the same after Herman Cain, BECAUSE MANY PEOPLE CONFUSE SOUND BITES WITH COMPETENCY.
Let us recall the Sarah Palin who won the 2006 race to become governor. I cited excerpts from one particular WSJ article back in 2008 when I became disenchanted with Ms. Palin:
[Incumbent Gov. Frank] Murkowski and [former state legislator and chairman of the Alaska Railroad Corp John] Binkley went after each other other [in a GOP primary debate]. Ms. Palin interrupted and said 'Don't Alaskans deserve a better discourse than that?'...In the general election, she faced off against a former governor, Tony Knowles, and former state legislator Andrew Halcro. In most encounters, her métier was projecting winsomeness -- making a virtue of not knowing as much about the minutiae of state government [[unable] in one exchange, to identify a single bill passed by the legislature that she either approved or disapproved of] because, for most of her adulthood, she was immersed in small-town life and raising a family. [When asked where her opponents could play a role in her administration, Palin said that] Knowles could be her official chef, while Mr. Halcro would be Alaska's top statistician.Now in disclosure forms during the 2008 campaign, the Palin's revealed total assets estimated by opensecrets at over $1M; Mr. Palin worked for BP and owned (with Sarah) fishing business assets. There's nothing wrong with that; it's living the American dream. In 2004, the mean family net worth was roughly $448K and the median net worth was $93K. Definitely not the family next door.
But in fact, this "woman next door" had served in city and state government during the prior decade: how could you run for the office of governor without being articulate on relevant legislative issues? The rope-a-dope / Rodney King / John Edwards / "rise above the fray" bit may have won over Alaskan voters, but that's not what captured the heart of the base in the 2008 election: it was, in fact, red meat, divisive politics that made her radioactive to independents and moderates. As for Palin saying "can't we all just get along" in the primary but then being dismissive of her general campaign opponents?
Being an effective executive requires certain knowledge, abilities and skills; it requires leadership, knowing how to set priorities, and being able to compromise and adapt. When I taught as a professor, unlike my other colleagues, I often changed textbooks and assembled unique collections of supporting materials in a rapidly evolving discipline. As an IT professional, I can think of at least 4 or 5 projects off the top of my head where I inherited very real failing projects and turned them around. I've had to battle organizational inertia, hostile clients (e.g., inheriting the ill will against my predecessors) and vendors, and troublemaking, finger-pointing colleagues and consultants (which will REALLY get arrows in your back, not Herman Cain's poor, poor pitiful me act). I've also had to invent solutions to fix unprecedented unconventional technical problems caused by other professionals (instead of some chief executive whom goes around constantly complaining about the problems he's inherited). I'm not saying these things to draw attention to myself; the point I'm trying to make is that I have had to jawbone customers and I've had to battle vendors.
The point is, this country is facing very difficult problems, and real solutions are going to be painful. I need a President whom has real executive experience and performance, INCLUDING IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR, and has the flexibility to fashion a win-win negotiation putting country ahead of party. There's only one person in the GOP lineup whom fits that description: Mitt Romney; he's the ONLY Republican candidate whom polls well with independents and moderates. I have criticisms of Romney, but they are very fixable. I don't CARE about ideology purity.I'm looking for evidence of his ability to solve problems; RomneyCare was NOT HillaryCare, and he even managed to win the backing of Ted Kennedy, a former election opponent. He brought his parent company out of bankruptcy. He turned around the Salt Lake City Olympics.
Now, as to Herman Cain: first of all, on the sexual harassment charges: I don't want to hear the various conspiracy theorists. Herman Cain's critics did NOT invent his track record from a decade-plus ago. The blurring of business with personal life has been a high-profile issue ever since (if not before) the alleged romance between Bill Agee and his executive assistant Mary Cunningham. What person on earth did not know of Bill Clinton's involvement with at least two subordinates over the years, Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky? It is impossible for the CEO not to know he had sexual harassment charges placed against him. (Quite often HR departments feel the need to protect the complainant against retaliatory measures by the higher-ranking employee, i.e., Cain.) Cain had to know, especially after the Clinton and other sex scandals, that sooner or later these details would surface. I personally regard it as a serious sin of omission to GOP voters. Now you see money flowing in to Cain, just as it did when Sarah Palin over "unfair character attacks". I have zero sympathy here.
Cain was defeated in his only prior attempt that I'm aware of for public office: a bid for a Senate nomination in Georgia. Not only has he demonstrated lack of detailed knowledge of HIS OWN proposals (i.e., 9-9-9), he shows an astonishing lack of knowledge of well-known facts (e.g., the Palestinian right to return and China's status as a nuclear power). He even has shifted his story on the harassment claims. (By the way, I know Perry lost a lot of good will by questioning the hearts of conservatives over immigration reforms, but for people to CHEER Cain as several audience members did; the fact is that NRA confirmed Ms. Bialek as a former employee at the time of the purported meeting and we also know Bialek had a tense public encounter with Cain at a Chicago Tea Party event BEFORE the sexual harassment charges for the women whom filed charges were in the media. It's pathetic; those people cheering Cain haven't even seen the complaints. I saw an IBD editorial all but attacking the women making charges against Cain nearly a dozen years ago: BEFORE he was a candidate.)
I was watching Greg Gutfeld's "Red Eye" (FNC, 3AM EST, weekdays) when Tucker Carlson said this:
Come on, can we just stop pretending? I don’t know what happened with these women, the ‘he said, she said, she said, she said’ thing. He is not qualified to be president, and we are all pretending he is. He’s a nice guy. I know him, I like him. I think he’s a great guy. He would be a better president than the current president, but he can’t explain his own economic plan.The ad hominem reaction of the pro-Cain supporters was predictable (e.g., see here). Before responding to a few points, let me point out besides being a prominent media conservative on CNN Crossfire and his own MSNBC program before joining Fox News as a contributor, he is a fellow of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank--libertarians were Tea Party members before there was a Tea Party. Carlson is also a co-founder of The Daily Caller, arguably one of the best conservative portals out there. (Ironically, as I write, Herman Cain is running one of his campaign ads in the upper right of the home webpage.)
Jack Hunter penned an interesting commentary questioning Cain's Tea Party credentials and economic judgment. Cain wasn't convinced of a real estate bubble during the times more condos were flipped than flapjacks at IHOP. Months after the 2007 recession started, he was in a state of denial. He also supported TARP at a time House Republicans mostly voted against TARP. (I will point out here that Romney also supported TARP although not the way the concept was implemented. From my perspective, we have to confront the fact that the GSE's exposed the American taxpayers to massive market share losses. The moral hazard already existed at that point in the form of a government guarantee of MBS. But I never had a problem with letting the relevant big banks (or auto companies) fail. See here a take from the Austrian School economic perspective. Methinks the liquidity problems were much exaggerated.)
The conventional viewpoint is that Romney is a so-called unprincipled RINO, an "Obama Lite", that Herman Cain doesn't have federal experience--just like Sarah Palin (above) made it a virtue that she wasn't an Alaskan state government insider. (Well, of course, Mitt doesn't have federal experience either.) First, it casts a broad brush across all legislators. Second, it assumes that somehow someone outside the system is intrinsically more qualified than someone inside the system. Well, let's see--we have Keynesian economist Paul Krugman whom argues that Barack Obama hasn't spent nearly enough money to improve the economy. Surely by this standard, Krugman should run for the Democratic nomination! After all, Obama has been a professional politician since 1996. Let's point out; every politician starts his career as a rookie. It's a cheap populist line! Cain is no better than Palin in trying to convince us (as Bill O'Reilly would say) he's one of the folks.
Let's recall this incident from Donna Donella, then with USAID which paid Cain to give a speech to Egyptian businesspeople. Cain wanted Donella to arrange a dinner date with a fetching Egyptian businesswoman in her 30's whom had asked a question, because, of course, he felt bad about not having enough time to give a full answer to her question... Let's pick it up from there:
Donella ... declined to set up the date. Cain responded, "Then you and I can have dinner." That's when two female colleagues intervened and suggested they all go to dinner together, Donella said. Cain ...did order two $400 bottles of wine and stuck the women with the bill, she said. The next time the women heard from Cain was Christmas, when he sent them his gospel CD.What a classy guy. Given that gospel CD, I'm sure he'll claim the waiter brought them bottles of water (John 2:1-11). I don't I've spent $400 my whole life on wine (one of my friends in the OLL men's dorm used to buy Boone's Farm: you can still get 3 bottles for under $10). Ordering $800 in wine and sticking your lady dinner companions with the bill: that's a man's man for you. The CD, no doubt, did the trick in Cain's view of the world: he sang for his supper.
In many polls, this guy is still leading Romney in some state polls: Cain has never balanced a government budget, and there are huge gaps in his views on foreign policy; he vacillates--details of what he's done in the past and his own policy positions (e.g., abortion, 9-9-9, etc.)
I don't know what's going on in this Alice in Wonderland tour to getting Romney the nomination. We have an inexperienced politician whom has had multiple complaints against him for sexual harassment (a real winning issue with today's professional woman, if ever there was one) and loses to Obama in almost every poll, getting applauded. Yeah, no wonder the money is flowing in: the Democratic machine is trying to sabotage the candidacy of someone whom is losing in every matchup to the President with low approval ratings. Now we're seeing a former Speaker of the House climbing up the polls. Apparently that stuff about Greek cruises and Tiffany jewelry is all in the past--as well as the fact Clinton outmaneuvered him during the government shutdown, he resigned Congress under controversy, his multiple marriages ... Gingrich has also never administered anything, loses to Obama big time (he's had sky high unfavorables since his tenure as Speaker) and likes to bash debate moderators (something he picked up from Palin).
People are unhappy with what they feel are Romney's shifting views over time. What really we need is not someone whom comes up with the best political spin and one-liner, like Palin and occasionally Cain--but the most capable and effective person. I'm a professional problem solver; you have to put aside the surface-level details and look at how he pulled it together. He didn't get everything he wanted; he vetoed some things but got overridden. But the point is, he got most of what he wanted; he won over Kennedy; the progressives didn't get the far more Draconian solution they thought they were going to get; and he went down swinging on the things he didn't want, vetoing items. (He wanted, for instance, certificates of financial responsibility versus mandates.) After Bush hardly ever used his veto powers while spending exploded, I guarantee that won't happen with Romney. What Romney can do in 2013 depends on how strong a hand center-right voters give him in the House and Senate.
The "Oops" Moment
Rick Perry certainly has the money to fight for as long as he cares. He got a brain freeze briefly forgetting to list the Energy Department as one of his targets (from a state which is one of the top energy producers). Ironically that's one thing Sarah Palin for sure wouldn't forget... But to be honest, we know that Reagan wanted to get rid of the Education Department, too. I mentioned several months ago how I would go about this, basically merging departments, flattening bureaucracies (e.g., early retirements for higher-level positions), consolidating resources and locations, expiring all but the most essential regulations, freezing and/or real baseline budget cuts, restricting eligibility for government programs, improving performance baselines, etc. I'm not interested in picking and choosing budget cuts. The real story is not the "big wins" (e.g., defunding Planned Parenthood) but a million little wins under the surface.
But I always thought that electing Bush's successor after Obama still regularly bashes Bush and "8 failed years" made Perry's candidacy difficult. The last impressions voters will have is the debates. I don't see Perry rising again. There are just too many bad debates from him to recover from.
Political Humor
"I'm worried about Rick Perry. For one, I'm worried that maybe he's too conservative. Two, I worry a little bit about his debating skills. And three, I — Oh, what was three?" - David Letterman
[Letterman knows all about senior moments. Like when those senior NBC executives forgot whose talk show followed the retiring Johnny Carson's when they named Carson's replacement host.
Well, to be honest, Barack Obama can't seem to remember the Department of Energy either, ever since the Solyndra bankruptcy scandal...]
"Look, I know these Rick Perry jokes are a little mean, but tomorrow, he won’t even remember them." - Jimmy Kimmel
[The moment endears him with senior citizens, but unfortunately they'll forget his name when they mark their primary ballot...]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Foreigner, "I Want To Know What Love Is". Simply one of the greatest songs ever recorded.
