Of course, I already pretty much knew this. But still–drat!
Dueling Madoff interviews
Bernie and Ruth Madoff, who no longer speak to each other (at her request) since their son’s suicide, have nevertheless got dueling TV interviews going. Hers will be seen on this Sunday’s “60 Minutes,” while his with Barbara Walters is scheduled for Friday’s 20/20, and offers the following interesting (and believable) quote from this remarkably blank individual:
“I feel safer [in prison] than outside,” Madoff said. “Days go by. I have people to talk to and no decisions to make. … I know that I will die in prison. I lived the last 20 years of my life in fear. Now I have no fear — nothing to think about because I’m no longer in control of my own life.”
That has the ring of truth.
I also find the comments to the linked article about the Walters interview interesting. Since there are over 5,000, I’ve only read a small fraction, but they (as expected) excoriate his wife, assuming she knew about his crimes all along and was an accessory before the fact. The amount of hatred directed at her seems nearly equal to that thrown his way.
I’ve never understood that, but I seem to be in a small minority in that regard. From the start, it has seemed quite possible to me that Madoff had managed to keep his perfidy secret from the family, and I’ve seen nothing since to change my mind. If there had been evidence of collusion, family members would have been indicted as well.
Good con artists are really good, and anyone can be a victim, especially in a relationship that assumes love and trust. In January of 2009 I wrote the following, and I stand by it now:
There are people…who say Ruth Madoff must have known; a wife would know and a wife should know. There are people who say the same thing about child molesters, serial killers, adulterers, and most of the other varieties of human wrongdoing. But it is my observation that, although it is sometimes true that wrongdoers leave a clear trail and that any spouse who doesn’t intuit what’s going on is in a state of denial, sometimes the culprits are so slick and so clever, so good at dissembling, that no one would ever know.
To think otherwise is a self-protective lie we tell ourselves to reassure ourselves that we could not be taken in this way; oh no, surely not! But the evidence points to the fact that Bernard Madoff was a master at taking people in, gaining their trust, and then politely screwing them. He fooled people who would otherwise have been wary. His reputation was spotless, stellar, and lengthy.
And his wife, apparently, was part of his game, if only unwittingly.
That doesn’t mean that his wife is any sort of exemplary person; I do not think she was or is. But until I hear something new, I’ll reserve my vitriol for the one who clearly deserves it: Madoff himself.
[NOTE: Another theme in the comments section of the Madoff/Walters article is that Barbara Walters is a POS for giving Madoff a forum. I’m not sure whether I agree with that, either, although I am most definitely no Walters fan. But I’m interested in hearing what makes a financial sociopath like Madoff tick, so I plan to watch the interviews.]
The Democrats never went broke…
…underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
Here’s the strategy:
(1) Presidents Truman and Clinton won re-election by complaining about their Republican-controlled Congresses.
(2) Obama wants to win re-election.
(3) Therefore he and the Democrats are complaining about their Republican-controlled Congress.
Only thing is—Democrats are in the majority in one house of the legislature, the one known as the Senate. The Democrats’ argument is that Republicans “control” that house by the use of the filibuster. They don’t, any more than any minority party with 40 or over seats in the Senate “controls” it; their power is limited to blocking legislation. If “control” is now defined as “having over 60 Senate votes in order to invoke cloture,” then surely the Democrats are closer to “control” of this Senate than the Republicans are, and to say otherwise is sophistry.
But apparently Democrats are counting on the fact that “polls taken over the last several years show that many voters are unclear which party runs the House and/or Senate.” In other words, the people may be getting the government they deserve.
Why is so much of my email spam…
…about replica watches?
The stock market…
…is a complete mystery to me: “Dow headed for best October ever.
Andrew McCarthy on the Libyan War, Obama, and Gaddafi
Here’s an excellent article by Andrew McCarthy that skewers Obama and the left (with a small dig at RINO Lindsay Graham along the way) for their hypocrisy in dealing with Libya and Gaddafi vs. Iraq and Bush. I will quote his piece at some length:
Just to review what happened here: Qaddafi…was not “brought to justice”…In “leading from behind,” our government went rogue ”” to the evident satisfaction of the formerly antiwar Left. Obama claimed to be keeping the peace and protecting civilians while waging an unauthorized offensive war against Qaddafi’s government ”” a regime with which the United States was at peace; a regime with which the United States had made a great show of arriving at friendly relations; a regime to which the United States (urged on by such official emissaries as Sen. Lindsey Graham) had provided foreign aid, including assistance to prop up Qaddafi’s military; a regime to which the Obama administration, including Secretary Clinton’s State Department, had stepped up American taxpayer subsidies ”” including aid to Qaddafi’s military and contributions to charitable enterprises managed by Qaddafi’s children.
Protecting civilians? Please. We jumped in as a partisan on the side of the Islamists, who sported violent jihadists in their ranks and among their commanders ”” including al-Qaeda operatives whose dossiers included a stint at Guantanamo Bay and the recruitment of jihadists to fight a terror war against American troops in Iraq. While NATO targeted Qaddafi, the rebels rounded up black Africans, savagely killing many…When the Islamists finally began seizing territory, which they could not have done without NATO, they raided weapons depots. In Qaddafi’s Libya, his regime controlled the materiel; once the “rebels” swept in, weapons started going out ”” to other Islamists, like al-Qaeda in Northwest Africa and Hamas in Gaza.
And now that the Islamists have won, the first order of business, naturally, was to install sharia ”” Islam’s politico-legal framework that oppresses non-Muslims, women, homosexuals, and apostates. To install sharia, by the way, is the reason jihadists engage in violence ”” it is the prerequisite for Islamizing a society…
Qaddafi had last attacked the United States almost a quarter-century ago. Before that, he’d endured punishing retaliation for his Reagan-era terror attacks. The Bush 43 administration had declared these hostilities settled. The two governments resolved outstanding claims ”” much to the chagrin of those of us outraged by the moral equivalence drawn between Qaddafi’s terrorist aggression and President Reagan’s righteous response…Qaddafi abandoned his advanced weapons programs and began providing what the Bush and Obama administrations regarded as vital intelligence ”” vital, no doubt, because Libya is rife with Islamists who despise America and the West…[A]s the State Department put it in 2008, Libya had become “an increasingly valuable partner against terrorism.”
In the last several years, the Libyan regime never even threatened, much less attacked, American interests. Qaddafi spoke glowingly of Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and of President Obama, the Bush and Obama administrations embraced him and supported his regime. There was nothing close to a casus belli for the United States to launch a war against his government. The rationalization about the regime attacking civilians is nonsense: Qaddafi never stopped repressing Libyans in the years we were allied with him, and our aid to him only increased; Libya is a brutal society in which Qaddafi’s demise will not stop the internecine savagery; and we don’t intervene when hostile governments in Iran, Syria, China, Russia, and elsewhere repress their citizens.
Yet, President Obama invaded without congressional authorization ”” just consultations with the Arab League and a Security Council resolution that called for a no-fly zone to protect civilians, not for war against Qaddafi or regime change. Even as Obama paid lip-service to this charade, promising Americans there would be no U.S. “boots on the ground,” he dispatched covert intelligence operatives to guide the Islamists…
Qaddafi’s escape from his last holdout was thus cut off by NATO airstrikes. Trapped and hidden in a sewer, he was dragged out and brutalized ”” not for intelligence, but for sport. There is video here if you can stomach it. What NATO abetted was not a military capture. It was an assassination. We will be worse off that it happened. And the way it happened should sicken us.
It has occurred to me that, except for the fact that in Libya the US has been acting under the aegis of a US-dominated NATO rather than with a US-dominated coalition of allies as in Iraq, the invasion of Iraq was far more justified than that of Libya, for many of the reasons so ably stated by McCarthy. And yet, as we know, much (although not all) of the left defends Obama’s actions in the former while excoriating and reviling Bush’s in the latter.
Whether or not WMDs were ever found in Iraq, Saddam Hussein had done worse—to his people, his neighbors, and the UN—than Gaddafi ever did, and he did it far more recently prior to the US invasion. What’s more, Saddam had only been a supposed US “ally” briefly, back in the 80s in the war against Iran, on the principle of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” but Gaddafi had (as McCarthy points out) been recently embraced by the US as a reformed sinner.
I am not saying Gaddafi shouldn’t have been deposed, although McCarthy goes so far as to say just that. I’m saying it should not have been done in this manner, and it most definitely should not be accompanied by continued criticism of Bush’s action in Iraq, which was a model of rectitude in comparison. After all, Saddam had continually and brazenly defied UN sanctions. He was not a US ally. He had committed genocide on the Kurds of his own country, and murdered countless other citizens of Iraq. Bush went to the UN for approval before the invasion, as well as to the US Congress, and got it. After the war, Saddam was tried, convicted, and executed by the Iraqis, not lynched by a mob.
And—very importantly to this neo-neocon—Bush was at least somewhat committed to the US sticking around to manage the aftermath of the invasion. That this was done poorly, especially at first, and that the task was far more difficult than the administration had naively expected it to be, does not alter the fact that there was at least a commitment to do it, and that in the end (post-surge), its efficiency and effectiveness improved dramatically.
Not so for Libya. You might say that, paradoxically, Obama is much more of a pure neocon in Libya (at least as the term is popularly although incorrectly defined) than Bush ever was in Iraq, since Obama seems to have a much lower threshold for military intervention. As for my own neocon persuasion, it comes with the following restrictions that appear to be lacking in the Obama brand: (1) support for liberal democracy that preserves human rights, not just democracy; (2) some responsibility for the aftermath of any war started in its name and in which the US participates, in order to give (1) the best chance of occurring; and (3) the need to determine what a side stands for before supporting it militarily.
[NOTE: It has long been great sport for the left to demonize neocons after setting up a strawman as to what they believe. But if you really want to know more about what neocons actually think, there’s this, this, and this.]
It occurs to me that…
…nowadays, campaign staffs are increasingly composed of moles. Each time an aide quits, doesn’t he/she seem inordinately quick on the draw with the critical interview and/or the tell-all book?
Now staffers don’t even wait for the campaign to be over to start the trash talk. Case in point: Cain’s ex-staffers give the NY Times enough ammunition to create the catchy headline, “As Cain Promotes His Management Skills, Ex-Aides Tell of Campaign in Chaos.”
Has the term “disgruntled former staffer” become a redundancy?
Anybody else…
…experiencing a lull in their interest in the 2012 election? I am.
I have little doubt it will spark up again. But the idea of comparing the latest of Perry’s gaffes to the latest of Romney’s flipflops to the lastest of Biden’s stupidities to the latest of Obama’s bamboozles fills me with ennui at the moment.
Instead, let us rejoice at “Dancing With the Stars.”
No, really. I happen to think that JR Martinez and Ricki Lake are excellent dancers, considering they’re not professionals. Yes, I know the show is a piece of trash. But that’s why I like it. We’ve all got to eat bon-bons and unwind sometimes.
Here’s Ricki and then JR, each doing the quickstep (it’s quick! And it’s got a lot of steps!):
I adore JR. What an upbeat personality, and the guy’s a natural dancer. If you’re not familiar with his amazing story—for which the word “inspirational” might have been coined—please take a look.
Mad Men
I’ve finally gotten around to watching the first few episodes of the TV series “Mad Men.” I’d heard it was set in the early 60s—an era I remember well, although from a child’s eye view—and so I was predisposed to like it.
I gave it a good try and watched about three episodes. But it seemed soulless and empty, a stylized and shiny surface with nothing underneath. The writers were focused mainly on conveying the thought, “we’re so smart and good and aware nowadays; and they were so dumb and bad, but so much fun to look at!”
I wasn’t in a Manhattan ad agency in the early to mid 1960’s, it’s true. But I remember the times in general, and people had a lot more emotion and variety than that. They were not just smooth (and often reptilian) facades, and men didn’t automatically hit on their secretaries the moment they were introduced.
In short, people were as varied and complex as now, and not the unaware and power-hungry idiots depicted in the film, although of course some were. The heart of things has been taken out. Maybe more is put back in as the series goes on, but I don’t feel like sticking around to find out. And I know it’s a show, and not meant to be reality. But for me to continue to watch it, there has to be some emotional hook other than emptiness and the opportunity to congratulate myself on my own illusory superiority.
Ah, but the clothes! Now, that’s the interesting part—and, for you guys, Christina Hendricks’s formidable ta-tas. However, her character Joan’s girdled underpinnings (necessary in order to wear those sheaths effectively) bring back very unpleasant memories for me. Even thin women word girdles back then so as not to jiggle and look trashy, and one of the rites of passage for a young girl was to wear a panty girdle to hold up her stockings and appear generally refined.
But those things hurt. They were constructed of an iron-like material that not only harnessed the gut, but effectively stopped digestion. I’ve got no nostalgia for those suckers.
Changing out of Pajamas into PJs
Pajamas Media announces a name change: it’s now PJ Media. Its new URL is, appropriately enough, pjmedia.com (although the old URL pajamasmedia.com will still get you there).
Well, most of us already called it “PJ” anyway, didn’t we? But, according to PJ Media head Roger Simon, the new name gives PJ more gravitas and signifies that “we are here to stay.”
It’s been six years since PJ was formed, with the snazzy kickoff party in Manhattan that Roger calls “in retrospect a bit too snazzy.” Well, those were heady days in the blogosphere, and it sure wasn’t too snazzy for me. I had a great time meeting and greeting so many other bloggers, and the food was good, too. But in the relative austerity of the post-2008-crash world, we can’t expect that again, although we can dream.
I’ve always been partial to the name Pajamas Media, though. I think you can call a company almost anything, so long as it performs. After all, funny names didn’t stop Google or Apple, did they?
[NOTE: Here’s a piece I wrote back in those early days of Pajamas Media’s formation.]
So, what do you think…
Obama: not a good politician?
Ramesh Ponnuru doesn’t think Obama is a very good politician:
Obama never had to fight for and win the votes of people who don’t agree with him. Both his biggest political setback and his biggest political accomplishment — his defeat by Bobby Rush in a 2000 U.S. House primary and his victory over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 — came during struggles within a liberal universe.
Ponnuru adds that Obama has been the beneficiary of good luck, not only during the 2008 campaign (particularly the financial crisis towards the end), but also earlier “in November 2004 because his first Republican opponent self-immolated in scandal and his second was Alan Keyes, a fringe figure who came from out of state to run.”
That’s certainly true, as far as it goes. But Ponnuru doesn’t go nearly far enough. As I’ve described here, that “self-immolation in scandal” to which Pnnuru refers (involving Obama’s 2004 Republican opponent Jack Ryan) was preceded by a similar “self-immolation in scandal” of Obama’s Democratic primary opponent in the same race (Blair Hull), and the latter’s scandalous revelations may have been helped along by forces in the Obama camp. Then, of course, there was the matter of what Obama did to Alice Palmer during the primary of his very first run for office, a story that should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand Obama the politician, but not widely-known even today.
So while it is true that Obama has rarely had a strong political opponent, and that he’s been the beneficiary of much good luck, it also appears that some events that at first glance appear to have been good luck were actually helped along by Obama and/or his forces in a series of rather nasty and strategic machinations. Therefore, we could say that some of Obama’s strongest political skills have long been in the realm of dirty tricks.
This runs so counter to the picture Obama presented the world during his 2008 campaign that it’s been almost universally ignored, despite the fact that it was a prominent and early part of his political history—perhaps because, until now, another of his strongest political skills has been to get the press to cover for him.
So, is Obama a good politician? Well, it depends what the meaning of “good” is.