Life, the universe ... and Sotomayor

They won. They have Congressional might ... and their choice will sit.

The trouble is this: the candidate is not qualified ... nor was Barry, but this does not seem to matter to the American public. You see, Barry was simply underqualified: he had sat less than 145 days in the U.S. Senate before announcing his run, and had been the CEO of precisely nothing.

Sotomayor is a Federal Judge -- that's a lifetime appointment, breakable only by something extraordinary in terms of malfeasance. Since being elevated from prosecutor to the District Court by Bush Senior (who is generally, an "OK" sort despite numerous failures) ... wait ... let's look at that. She was an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan for about 5 years. That means that Morgenthau got to hire a female latin attorney from Yale ... that's a trifecta! Yale got to educate an under-privileged female latin from the Bronx, their own trifecta, and Princeton before them! And of course, Bill Clinton, who elevated her to the Second Circuit simply couldn't wait to score his trifecta. Before this turns to a rant about affirmative action, Sotomayor has, unlike Barry, a record of academic authorship and as editor of the Yale Law Journal and published her pieces. Judge Cabranes (a very accomplished jurist, and Sotomayor's professor at Yale -- he was a District Court Judge in D.Conn.) recommended her to Morgenthau -- and for me Cabranes' recommendation is not mere race politics: if she were an affirmative action flack, he would not have done it. But it sure looks and smells odd.

Further, 3 out of 5 of her decisions to go to the Supreme Court have been reversed. "There! You see!?!" No, I don't. Because only the cherry-picked ripe cases are taken by writ of certiorari: you need present and urgent conflict between the Circuits on an issue of law to get there -- or a few other rare instances. So it is only where Constitutional interpretation is at stake do we get there. Sotomayor has authored literally hundreds of Second Circuit decision -- and where there isn't conflict presented as to constitutional interpretation, that is the highest Court the aggrieved party can get to.

Meaning, there is TONS of leeway to influence policy through "law" without risk of reversal. AND, as a matter of law, you can't even get to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals unless "a matter of law" is involved. As a "finder of fact" on the District Court bench, she had even greater ability to move her liberal agenda forwards. You can only get to the Appeals Court through gross error in findings of fact (it almost NEVER happens) or incorrect application of the law ... and that can be VERY subjective.

Sotomayor has never really had any personal disasters or setbacks (apart from a divorce which may or may not have been a setback). Straight from the Bronx to the Second Circuit. Sort of like Barry. It could only happen in the good old US of A. But all this experience and astoundingly good luck does not mean that she is qualified. In fact she could be spectacularly ill-qualified. You see, to be a good Judge you have to leave your personal agenda "at the door." As a finder of fact at the trial court level (as in the U.S. District Court) you need to ensure that you are not reversed -- although you can view facts very differently than, say, someone else might. What is a "slur" and "discrimination" to one person may be mere joking or of no consequence to the next. Just so long as your "view" is not so extraordinary that it shock the consciousness, then you should be OK -- provided that you meet the requirements of also "following the law." Nobody said that Sotomayor was stupid ... in fact she may be very clever indeed -- like Bill Clinton.


My fear is that she is intellectually dishonest -- and it is precisely this dishonesty that should disqualify her from the Supreme Court. She is on tape epxressing her own RACIST statement: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life....” Hang on a frikkin second, if it was a white male that had said the equivalent ... the world would be up in arms! Racism is racism, no matter who says it. And who the hell is she to presume that she is "wise?" Don't be an idiot and parse this as though she were not refering to herself.

Worse, she is on tape stating that "policy" is made in the Appeals Court. She then realized that it was on tape, mentioned that and back-tracked, ending in a lame, "...well, you know." And that is precisely why she is not fit to sit on the Supreme Court. That position is meant to interpret a 200+ year old document that is the fabric of our society, that has endured only because of restraint and certainly not because of "policy makers."

Just "because we won" is NOT a good reason to mess with our judicial process. We need less Souter/Ginsburgs and more Roberts (although maybe not Scalia or Thomas). If the law is wrong, let our ELECTED officials change it. If they get it wrong, they can undo it or be thrown out of office. But do not let UNELECTED life-time appointees have a say. That is bad precedent.

Pelosi -- Liar, liar ... and Barry's Abortions-R-Us

Nancy the Vampire, the suck-your-wallet-dry brought to you by the loonies of the Bay Area, has been caught with her figurative "pants" down. When she flat out accused the CIA of lying as to the disclosures made to Congress in 2002 ... the CIA told her to put up or shut up: we told you everything, so show us where we didn't.

Not surprisingly, Pelosi has not. She just postures and struts and claims she was misled, but it becomes clearer by the day that she expected to be able to "play both sides of the street" in the same way Liberals have over the last 20 years. In the same way Liberals helped to create the housing mess by forcing banks to lend to those who couldn't possibly pay the loans, or even the interest on them -- but now point to some evil cabal of Republicans (Goldman Sachs seethes through the new regime .. they're Democrats).

Pelosi was expecting that the news media would sweep the CIA defense under the rug while highlighting their perfidy. With some justification, given the lopsided attention they have received since Bill Clinton took office in '92: Bill decimated our intelligence capabilities and we received 9/11. Somehow the guilt of the Clinton administration in that event seems to have passed everyone by. Looks like she guessed wrong. Much to my shock. BUT....

So now we are treated to the delightful spectacle of Pelosi fielding calls for her resignation as Speaker of the House. BTW, how much have you heard about Pelosi's chosen "ride?" A military 757 costing over $50,000 per journey between California and Washington ... talk about carbon footprint. But Nancy-girl, you see, poster-child for LiberalNation, wants more than Newt had as speaker of the House. She needs something that can fly coast-to-coast non-stop. And carry 50 of her closest aparatchiks. Since she only works 3 or 4 days a week in D.C., that means she can go home in style. Ever noticed that the more Liberal the weenie, the greater the Marie-Antoinette effect? Bono, great spokesperson for Liberal causes globally flies his private jet from rally to Dalai to South Africa. George Clooney? Flies Mom from place to place on his G-5. Personally, if you want to waste the money, feel free to fly whatever you want -- even the Starship Enterprise to beam you from place to place. Just pay the fuel taxes, I couldn't give a rat's ass.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Barry the Abortionist (as some at Notre Dame would have it). Now, I am a serious Libertarian in many ways. If you can justify the killing of an unborn child with your God, under your ethical system, then feel free, provided that it is legal within the structure of our secular society. From my point of view, in the abstract, if the baby is viable and you abort it, you should be tried for murder: let's call it 25 weeks for convenience sake. If you don't want the baby/embryo before that, then get on with it and abort it. Just don't whine to me about it, or ask me to pay for it, in any way.

BUT, to get to the point, Barry the President is cool with "partial birth" abortions, very late term abortions -- and has voted consistently in that regard since entering politics in Illinois. Yet, the self-same righteous hypocrite is against waterboarding as a violation of the rights of a terrorist that would hack your head off with a dull spoon.

Hmmm ... lemme see ... innocent baby, probably conscious, certainly able to feel pain and about to die because of no fault of his or her own -- a President who sides with the withholding of medical assistance to babies aborted live (yes, THAT is a fact, and on the voting record of Senor Obama), AND terrorist MF'ers on the other who have killed large numbers, and would kill every one of us if they could. Difficult choice that ... yet Barry sides with the later. Am I missing something?

Why hash this up again? A few days ago, "Your" President Obama (not my President) gave the hoo-haa at Notre Dame, a Catholic university and received an honorary degree of law. Lots of irony there. "Law." Natural law? Law of humanity? Irony in honoring someone with a law degree who is hell-bent on flouting the Constitution? A Catholic institution honoring a person who embodies the violation of almost everything that the Holy See professes to hold sacred? What kind of Catholics would do this? The McDonald's kind? Has an abortionist form Martin Luther tacked up some new limericks on a cathedral that I missed? Why honor this man? Merely because he is the President of the United States -- a distinction owing more the lack of viable choice available to, and gullibility of, too many of its citizens, than anything else? Hope? For who? Change?

Barry, upon being heckled, essentially asked the crowd, "why can't we just get along" (a rephrase from the famous Rodney King query)? Well, from the conservative Catholic point of view, how in hell does Obama think that he can get along with the fundamental crisis of the faith posed by the veneration of a political machine that supports godless abortionists? Get along?

Get along with me? From my (relatively non-religious) point of view, when you enfranchise an absolute majority of indolent, feckless and ignorant in my country to support your systematic pillaging of our economy and future ... you want me to get along? Huh? Barry, you want me just to open up the pocketbook and hand out the contents to the first "undocumented alien" that crawls in from under the wire? And then hand this creature the right to vote? What ever happened to "citizenship" as it comprises service and commitment to society? Your gall in suggesting that any uneducated human detritus should be accorded the rights to dictate my future and that of my children reflects hubris beyond anything shown by Bush or even Bill. It is simply staggering. "Liberal" seems insufficient ... treason would be a word that is closer to the mark as to what is happening here.

Fear and Loathing v. 5.12.09

There are mornings when I wonder why I bother. I just watched a YouTube clip of the interrogation of the Inspector General for the Federal Reserve Board. To say that she did not have the requisite answers is to understate matters. To say that she did not have a f**king clue is rather closer to the mark.

According to the Inquisitor, Alan Grayson (D, Florida), the Fed has executed 9 trillion dollars of "off-balance sheet trades" with various banking institutions since last September. He asked about them specifically: the IG could not clarify what they were, or who they may have traded with, saying only that they have not specifically reviewed that area of the activities of the various Federal Reserve banks. A jurisdictional problem.... Uh huh.

Grayson asked about the P&L of the two TRILLION dollars of extra balance sheet weight added since then to the Fed. IG Elizabeth Coleman did not have any information as to that piece of business either. No idea if the additions to the balance sheet were related to any profits or losses. None.

It almost seemed as if they were speaking another language to each other. And as they counter-communicated (to coin a phrase), the topic was our money. MY money. YOUR money. And I am meant to run out and place money in the market? Buy some more real estate? Re-capitalize our banks by buying their stock? What the frikking heck are the "off-balance sheet" trades that they have made? What kind? I used to trade "off-balance sheet" derivatives and know the risks involved. Are they just netting out naked trades already on the bank books or what?

Juxtapose this with Obama lending/giving hundreds of billions to developing nations. Bailing out GM again. Spending like there is no tomorrow. Maybe he knows that there IS no tomorrow. Maybe he knows absolutely nothing.

Then, driving to school, I watched an affirmative action recipient walk out into an intersection -- a 4 way stop on a busy road -- and proceed diagonally across the "box." She looked neither right nor left, taking her good time in doing so, as if to say,"go ahead, hit me. I got my rights and I know I can make you stop so's I can cross any time I want to." And she was correct. She did have that power because there was zero chance that anyone wanted to exercise their right foot and accelerate into her. Want to see what the scum-bag attorney she would hire would make of that in a Cambridge courtroom ... with a jury of "peers?"

Her attitude also guarantees her perpetual poverty and represents that of the 45% or so of Americans that don't pay taxes (note that includes by definition Americans of all races, colors and ethnicity). Nobody who runs a business would/will hire her: why hire trouble? Why hire someone that would be guaranteed to scream "discrimination" or some other blame-shifting accusation at the first sign of an unsatisfactory work review? I just saw a future government employee, someone who will be behind some window "serving" the public, taking their own good time to look over your papers. Someone whose health care and pension you will pay for, whether they are employed or not. She knows it and has already started giving us the finger and we are too weak, too politically feeble (or brainwashed) to anything about it.

How does this fit in with the topic of economic chaos? These people are voters, the red-neck trailer denizens of a hundred thousand rural American communities and the inhabitants of urban American slums. Education is NOT the answer, because they don't care: it takes too much effort to participate in the rule of law and taxes. Why do so when the government will simply hand you a car anyway? Far easier to just give us the finger and laugh at us ... because they know we are too weak to stand up for OUR rights. They also know that "we" just elected a government dedicated to perpetuating THEIR rights.

The Obama government and Democratic Congress is walking diagonally across the intersection of history, mindful of only its interests in retaining power, heedless of the damage inflicted in "engineering social change," and oblivious to the risks involved. And nobody has any gas left in the tank to run them down cause the Obots have siphoned the tanks dry.

Kars for kidz

On various Boston radio-shows, they play an advertisement for a children's charity: donate your car to the charity, then they will sell it for whatever they can get for it. "Kars for Kidz." The reality is that you only get to deduct the actual sales price, not some arbitrary fair market value ... so it is not quite as good a deal as it sounds. Their incentive is to move the vehicle for what they can get, not what it is actually worth -- so you can get screwed.

So, I was driving while listening to the jingle, "call 1-800 kars for kidz, K - A - R - S, kars for kidz ..." My soon-to-be 16 year old son turned to ask me, "do you suppose they could get me a Porsche?" Well, in the abstract, it was ambiguous as to what the purpose of donating a car was ... did they give the cars they received to kids? Was this some teenager's fantasy? My son did know the real purpose, but as a piece of humor it was pretty good.

The trouble with this topic is that Governor Devoid of any Sense Patrick of the Commonwealth of Massholes thinks that it is a good idea to take my son's idea literally. So, if you are a low income or welfare family and can make the argument that you need a car to get to work or find a job, Cadillac Patrick might just be able to provide one for you. By the way, there is meant to be a budgetary crisis at the State House on Beacon Hill right now.

You see, under Cadillac Patrick's rule, we fund a rare beast called "The State Department of Transportational Assistance." It gives out about 65 cars a year. Even better, the State covers insurance, maintenance, fuel and ... AAA membership. A Lutheran Charity provides the cars (what basis do the donors get in tax deduction I wonder, since there is no real "sale" per IRS guidelines?), and then does the maintenance ... billing the State. No fools in those Lutheran charities.... The estimated cost per year per car? $6,000.

And if you lose that job for which you depended on your car ... you get to keep the car, but lose the other benefits, such as AAA, insurance, taxes and fuel. So you have another uninsured motorist swanning about the State.

People keep on suggesting that Deval might make a good Supreme Court Justice, notwithstanding that the Archdeacon of Conservativism Alan Dershowitz thinks it would be a disaster ... "Patrick's not even a good lawyer."

Our nation is starting to resemble Zimbabwe ... as Barry Obama picks the pockets of Chrysler bondholders to feather the beds of the UAW. Redistribute the wealth to your backers, cronies and footsoldiers.

Double Standards -- Liberal/Left Hypocrisy

According to the Washington Post, Iran just sanctioned the stoning to death of an adulterer. Last month two men were stoned to death for the same "crime" (have you had a look under the Chador / Burka to see what you are getting?).

The Iranian Penal Code mandates that a male to be stoned to death should be buried up to his waist and a female up to her chest. The stones to be used are not to be so large as to kill the victim immediately. That is Sharia Law, and what jurists in England, France and the United States claim should be able to operate side-by-side with those respective legal systems.

The European Union -- that bunch of craven, miserable toads -- "heavily criticized" the practice of stoning. Yet, within the Europeans Union there are those who take their "outrage" at barbaric practices far more to heart: Spanish judges start actions to bring violators of human rights to justice. Nasty Americans, for instance.

Baltasar Garzon is a "counter-terrorism" judge who has referred the case of abused Guantanamo prisoners to Spanish prosecutors for the eventual arrest and prosecution of six senior Bush Administration officials. Under Spanish law, the prosecutors will have little option but to persue the case. The same system resulted in Pinochet being tried and found guilty in absentia, followed by his arrest in London on an international warrant. Garzon operates under the theory of "universal jurisdiction." A few years earlier, some Germans tried the same thing, targeting Cheney and Bush, but the prosecutor involved deflected the attempt stating that such matters would best be addressed within the United States itself.

In the present iteration, the Spanish prosecutor will issue a "subpoena ad testificandum" -- come into my parlor and testify. This will be followed by an arrest warrant, for the ex-Bush official to be remanded to custody pending trial. Since the crime is "torture," (perhaps violation of human rights or some such drivel), the arrest warrant is almost a certainty following precedent. Now comes the sneaky part -- pay close attention -- once the arrest warrant issues, the Obama administration faces two options: (1) fight or accept the extradition request; or (2) bring an action in the United States directly that addresses the charges brought in Spain, which in effect nullifies the Spanish action. That is, a Spanish leftie-psycho Judge can force the political prosecution of U.S. officials. Didn't the Spanish also have an Inquisition? Is there something in the water there that incites people to rabid pursuit of irrational beliefs?

Back to the plot: Ah hah! So who are the lucky recipients of the New Inquisition? "They are: Alberto Gonzales, a former White House counsel and attorney general; David Addington, former vice-president Dick Cheney's chief of staff; Douglas Feith, who was under-secretary of defence; William Haynes, formerly the Pentagon's general counsel; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who were both senior justice department legal advisers." (London Independent).

Do the names Bybee and Yoo mean little to you now? That is probably because nobody much cared who the lawyers are that "sanctioned" torture by the United States. The lawyers who through a "twisted interpretation" of the law, achieved the goals of a legal framework with which to wring out information from real terrorists. Nobody except Barry Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the New York Times.

Is this starting to make sense to you now? Do you not see a "vast left-wing conspiracy" (to [ab]use Hillary Clinton's famous phrase) designed to punish, through use of the courts, the class enemies, political enemies in the great tradition of Stalin, Mao and notable European dictators?

Barry Obama opened the door to prosecution of the officials of the previous administration within the last two weeks ... so much has been already reported by the New York Times and its adherents. Then they targeted the lawyers, because having tested the waters of roping in the CIA, they decided that it would be too detrimental, politically, to do further damage there. And the lawyers are the self-same characters ALREADY targeted by the Spanish judge. Obama just removed the doubt that he would fight extradition. So the question remains, does he hand these people over to the Judge, or does he do a show trial in the United States? It is clear that he operating under the influence of the International Left: the Spanish made their move at the end of March -- not that we in the US heard much about it -- and Obama's moves (leaks, slips, innuendo) are all from the month of April. Where and when was the decision made to seek to punish the outgoing administration?

What is Barry Obama playing at? If I needed any more convincing that our President may in fact be the ultimate "Manchurian Candidate," I need look no further.

Right after 9/11, Congressional leaders (Pelosi WAS briefed) were concerned that we did not go far enough in extracting whatever information that we could from our few captives. They -- and that includes Pelosi -- wanted the Bush administration to get information at all costs, no doubt thinking of their own political careers first. And as far as "torture" goes, our methods are pretty small beer in the vast world of torture. I have little to no doubt that in every Muslim terrorist training camp, lesson #1 is on how to avoid freaking out under waterboarding. The rest of it -- stress positions, sleep deprivation, etc. ... have you ever been forced to spend 54 hours straight in a room full of Skadden lawyers trying to hammer out a purchase and sale agreement on an M&A deal? Gitmo skunks don't know shit about sleep deprivation. Stress positions? Puhleaze.

Torture is not what some panty-waisted Liberal would rather avoid, it is about infliction of physical unendurable pain on an individual without regard to that individual's short or longterm health, physical or mental well being. Permanent, irreversable harm, disfigurement and pain are the products of torture: shattered minds and bodies. Nobody can be serious about his "religious pain" or humiliation. Want humiliation? Go to law school and summarize a conlaw case incorrectly in front of a class of 50. Get caught like Hugh Grant. I fail to see how nakedness and being subjected to a sniffing dog will do that -- because you "believe" them to be dirty. Dirty? How about the prinsoner himself in the mountains of Afghanistan? Had a shower lately? Waterboarding ... that must be unpleasant indeed to break these SOBs that quickly. But torture or mere shock/novelty? There is no way that it will work now, we just handed the enemy our playbook.

The "victims" of U.S. "torture" have shown a willingness to abrogate the human rights of their captives ... cutting off people's heads with pocket knives while the dying man screams through a gurgling, slashed throat. Are we afraid of what they might do to us if we hurt them? What? The Taleban (Gitmo USDA Prime cell-rats) have shown a certain affection for the more extreme forms of Sharia law that might even give Iranians pause to think. And we are worried about the how the world views our treatment of Gitmo inhabitants? Remember, those that we have released from Gitmo have largely gone right back to jihad. Are we stupid?

Yet, we cringe and recoil, bow and scrape every time some idiot (whom we have spent decades and untold billions protecting) in Europe claims that we, the United States, is the source of evil. The truth of the matter is this: Europe and Europeans are afraid of the Muslim time bomb within their midst. The birth rates of Christian Europeans is so low, that within 20 years large parts of Europe will be de facto Muslim countries. The European Left is blind to this fact and/or wants to destroy European society anyway, little realizing that the society that will take its place will utterly and completely destroy the Left and socialism: Islam has no room for other beliefs and systems. Islam has no room for Garzon, unless he wants to go to Mullah-school.

Hence the EU criticizes Iran for stoning people to death for adultery and wants to prosecute Americans for protecting their country. And Barry Obama, ever eager to impress his socialist allies as to what a good lefty he is, goes along with it -- or even orchestrates it....

Fear and Loathing -- revisited

At the risk of being asked to remove this, I have copied and pasted substantially the entire contents of a blog that a reader turned me on to this morning:

From Finem Respice -- http://www.finemrespice.com/node/56 -- the author states that he is attempting to verify these rumors/allegations/facts:

Confronting the head of a non-TARP fund holding Chrysler debt and unwilling to release it for any sum less than that to which it was legally entitled without compelling cause, this country's "Car Czar" berated the manager of said fund with an outburst of prose substantially resembling this:

Who the fuck do you think you're dealing with? We'll have the IRS audit your fund. Every one of your employees. Your investors. Then we will have the Securities and Exchange Commission rip through your books looking for anything and everything and nothing we find to destroy you with.

Faced with these sorts of threats, in this environment, with valued employees in the crosshairs and AIG a fresh, open wound upon the market, the fund folded.

It is a tale literally so outlandish and difficult to picture that, in these circumstances and given the source, it rings absolutely true. Consider all this in a larger context where:

You see Non-TARP entities claiming that:

...we have been systematically precluded from engaging in direct discussions or negotiations with the government; instead, we have been forced to communicate through an obviously conflicted intermediary: a group of banks that have received billions of TARP funds.1

...not to mention the fact that the salary, bonus and "stress test" results for TARP banks are all within Treasury's control.

Then you have White & Case attorney Tom Lauria, describing the experience of one of his clients, holders of Senior debt in Chrysler, to Frank Beckmann:

Lauria: One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House, and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight. That's how hard it is to stand on this side of the fence.

Beckmann: Was that Perella Weinberg?

Lauria: That was Perella Weinberg.2

We see the White House Chief of Staff (whose primary finance and economics qualifications appear to be a Bachelor of the Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College- apparently appealing because of its strong ballet program- and a Master of the Arts in Speech and Communications) calling the plays over at Treasury for the last several months. To wit:

On Jan. 20, Timothy Geithner took control of the Treasury Department, directing the government's response to the financial crisis.

Within three weeks, the White House tightened its grip, alarmed by the poor reaction to Mr. Geithner's performance during the rollout of his rescue plan, government officials say. Since then, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been so involved in the workings of the Treasury that "Rahm wants it" has become an unofficial mantra among some at the Treasury, according to government officials.3

We have senior government officials apparently ordering, or at least strong-arming, the Chief Executive of a publicly-held firm to make or avoid certain disclosures and to close a merger, "or else."4

We watch the White House fire the Chief Executive of General Motors after he makes the most generous settlement offer to bondholders (to whom he owes fiduciary duties) up to that point, and smile gently when Wagoner's successor puts the screws to financial creditors and eases up on the UAW.

It is my deepest wish at this point that there is nothing about this latest bit of Car Czar thuggery even remotely based in fact- as this would mean that this country has truly and unarguably descended into fascism.

I use this term, "fascism," quite deliberately. I also use it well aware that many will consider it needlessly inflammatory. Be this as it may, I submit there is simply no other term that properly describes the style and tenor of government emerging both in public and behind once closed doors.

While it has seemed fashionable in past to brand the leanings of the current administration towards the left-biased "socialism," or even "communism," neither of these definitions withstands simple scrutiny. Nothing about these goings-on rises to the level of sophisticated argument required to sustain a claim that the state should a priori own the means of production. Nor does the present administration seem to harbor this as a goal. (It is not entirely clear if this is the result of philosophical or practical limitations, though I suspect the latter). Instead, the rhetoric flashing about commands subservience to the state, particularly by those industrialists and financiers whose acquiescence is required to maintain the machinery of commerce and the illusion of normalcy. Consider, then, these more elaborate definitions in light of what we have seen just in the last sixty days:

Fascism varied from nation to nation, but in its simplest terms it was a doctrine that sanctified the interests of the nation-state and minimised the rights of the individual.

The roots and antecedents of fascism can be traced back to the French Revolution of 1789, which ushered in ideals of liberalism and representative government that eventually spread across Europe as the old political and social order was overturned. During the nineteenth century, liberalism went hand-in-hand with a wave of nationalism that resulted in the unification of Italy and Germany in the 1860s and 1870s. Many believed, however, that liberal democracy had failed to curb the excesses of capitalism, providing instead the conditions under which the strong could prey on the weak. The 1890s saw an intellectual revolt against the dominant ideology of liberalism and capitalism. As a result, two major doctrines gradually emerged in opposition to liberalism. On the Left it was challenged by Marxism, which burst onto the European scene in Russia; and on the Right it was attacked by a right-wing movement that came to be known as fascism.

Fascism therefore emerged in direct opposition to liberal democracy, because fascists contended that democracy had created class conflict and that individual rights undermined the authority state. Fascists opposed communism because they argued that communism (or socialism) deliberately inflamed class conflict for revolutionary purposes, and this also threatened the nation-state. What distinguished fascism from other right-wing political movements was its 'revolutionary' intention to replace the existing political structure with the 'one-party totalitarian state' that would eliminate class conflict by encouraging the people to place the nation-state before their own self-interests.5

The core mobilizing myth of fascism which conditions its ideology, propaganda, style of politics and actions is the vision of the nation's imminent rebirth from decadence.6

[Fascism is] a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.7

Chrysler ... and next?

What worries me about the Chrysler deal is not so much that the Obama administration is slicing up the rancid cake into pieces and handing it out ... that much was necessary, but more the fact that the government is messing around with contractual obligations. That is, when you are a secured debt holder, you are first in line for whatever gets generated by asset liquidation in the event of a bankruptcy. Sure, there are some fine legal distinctions as to who is first in line based on priority etc., but that is the rule.

BUT the Obama administration wants to spread the wealth a bit more .... Does this sound familiar? Various bond holders of Chrysler initially wanted something like 70 cents on the dollar for their junk. Obama offered them 29 cents. Then the bond holders (Goldman, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley et. al. who hold approximately 70% of the debt) went to 50 cents. No dice: Obama -- maybe Rahm E -- felt that this was not enough. So with enough juice to squeeze the testicles of the bonus pools in the affected institutions, all the TARP recipients caved and the government got their way -- a vastly lower payout than would otherwise be contractually required. Non TARP players were not so easy to coerce, but given pressure, they too caved. Except for Parella Weinberg, a boutique investment bank and their Xerion Fund. They held out until Thursday afternoon, well past the Wednesday deadline, then they too gave in to the pressure from Washington. It begs the question: what threats, dirty laundry and skeletons were dug up to induce independent and non-indebted institutions to just waive their contractual rights to recover their investments, albeit at reduced recoveries?

Two things bug me about this: (1) the interference with contractual rights: if you are a first lien debt holder, then you should stand first in line, TARP or no TARP -- it is not up to the government to decide that the wealth should be spread further, and to do so is to enter the sphere of a "managed economy" -- that is socialism writ large; and (2) the blatant threat (as reported by a White & Case lawyer, Lauria, who is part of this mess) by the White House to use their press corps to destroy the reputation of Parella Weinberg. That threat is not all that different from the use of the courts by the Russians to disenfranchise anyone that stands in the way of official planning. In both cases, you are effectively ruined.

If true, it is also an example of the extraordinary hubris of the Obama government: imagine the uproar if a Republican / conservative government had done this? This is an official Obama statement of "what's yours is yours ... until we want it, in which case it is no longer yours, but mine." Holy crap!!

Obama complained in a press conference that certain participants weren't playing ball: "While many stakeholders made sacrifices and worked constructively, I have to tell you some did not," the president said. "In particular, a group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout. They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices, and they would have to make none." Hmmm. Nice political rhetoric about fairness, making us taxpayers out to be those that would be hurt, but the facts belie the show: Parella/Lauria's clients are pensions plans, college endowments, credit unions and others willing to accept low yields for the sake of security of the investment. The beneficiaries are, therefore ... taxpayers. So it becomes the distinction of Obama dictating which taxpayers will receive and which will pay, completely outside the process of law.

Importantly, Obama's behavior constitutes a "taking" without due process and is as a consequence unconstitutional. Yet another example where the rule of law in our country can be abused by the Left because it suits their purposes. I don't mind the government arranging the bankruptcy, but we NEED to make a distinction about its ability to act in equity as opposed to law. Equity-based decisions are a very slippery slope, and I don't like it.