Bernie the Implausible Anti-Semite

Will Congress recognise Bernie's services to Israel?


I remember someone arguing many years ago that Stalin was the greatest anti-communist of the 20th century. What is the proof? I asked. "Look at the millions of communists he killed!" was the reply.

By the same logic, Bernie Madoff is the greatest anti-semite of the 21st century. Look how many Jewish families he ruined financially.

Like most personality cult investment managers, Bernie was in the "giving" business. The arch-swindler diverted tons of supposed fee income from stellar investment performance to his favourite Jewish charities. In reality, the "fee income" was the vast sums handed over by his gullible country club acquaintances many of whom thought they were investors in the Madoff bonanza and who are still coming to terms with the fact that they were not Bernie's best friends. To paraphrase the old Gentile saying, Bernie robbed Hymie to pay Shlomo. Surely this proves there was no religious bias to the scam.

Not so fast. We still don't know where most of the money went. Did he lose it in the markets? Is it hidden in a Swiss bank account? Or did it travel to Israel? The last possibility is the most intriguing because it is the one that could bestow Robin Hood status upon the crook of the century (and perhaps for eternity). What if Bernie diverted money from those stingy East Coast Jews and funneled it all into special offshore Jewish causes, ie. Mossad front companies? What would the reaction be in the States? One can picture the headlines in the New York Times: "The Madoff Affair: All For A Good Cause" accompanied by Tom Friedman in the op-ed pages explaining how if only Congress would give more to Israel, then people like Madoff wouldn't feel the need to steal on behalf of our deserving little democratic ally in the Middle East.

Of course things will never be allowed to go so far. The Bernie Madoff scandal represents the biggest threat to Israel's image as an unimpeachable ally of the United States since the Pollard case. The longer the silence on the whereabouts of the missing funds, the more suspicious we should be that the money has left the country for good and that a water-tight alibi is being prepared under the guidance of AIPAC and their useful idiots in Congress, this time with the full cooperation of the "slumbering" SEC.

Maybe Hilary won after all?

Is Obama waving goodbye to "change"?

It definitely felt like a hangover. I hit the sack at 4 am only to be woken 3 hours later by my 8-year old son. He was hovering over me. "Can you tie my school tie, daddy?" Then my wife intensified the misery. "Steve, you have to find Christopher's football gear. He has practise today." Some way to celebrate the end of the worst presidency in American (or do I mean human?) history.

Still, I managed to smile. Our decrepit war hero and his village idiot partner had been cast into the dustbin of history. The morally bankrupt Republican Party melted down to irrelevance. Altogether, it was a pretty satisfying result although it's frightening to think that McCain/Palin somehow managed to secure 45% of the vote.

The media couldn't get enough of the biggest global party of the century. Images of joyous Americans, Germans, French, Indonesians, Kenyans dominated newspapers and television. The verdict on 8 years of Bush was crystal clear. One has to go back to the overthrow of Nicolae Ceaucescu to recall such unmitigated joy.

Yet we need to be careful. Obama has not brought change to America. All that is certain is that a change in American thinking has brought Obama to power. The authenticity of Obama's change will be revealed through his choice of cabinet. Indeed, it is instructive to note who is not popping open the champagne.

While Chicago danced in the park, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced that Russia will station short-range missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave, a clear response to America's "anti-Iranian" missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Is this the "test" that the prophet and self-proclaimed Zionist Joe Biden warned of during the election campaign? I pray that it is. Will Obama lower the temperature and pledge to dismantle the shield? Or will he continue to maintain the fiction of the threat of an Iranian missile strike on Europe? Russia, it seems, is demanding early proof of "change".

Unfortunately with America facing crises on so many different fronts (wars, economy, health, energy), the conventional wisdom is that Obama must assemble a cabinet ASAP. This plays into the hands of the Clintons and their mafia who are more than ready to infiltrate the corridors of power in the name of "experience". Veteran interventionists of the Clinton years such as Richard Holbrooke and Strobe Talbott have returned to the op-ed pages of the Guardian and the FT urging the new administration to stand-up to Russia "aggression" and obstruct Serbian "mischief" in Bosnia. A Clintonian offensive to re-capture the levers of foreign policy appears to be well underway.

There are other bad signs. Obama has already appoined Clintonite Rahm Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff. The powers of the Chief of Staff are not defined in the Constitution (who reads that obsolete document these days anyway) but he controls who gets to see the President. It is an alarming first step in sealing off Obama from those who may see the world differently from the Clintons.

I have a horrible sense of deja vu.

The ICARUS Principle

Maybe the Pentagon is right. Maybe Camp X-ray is full of dangerous jihadists.

Ever hear of ICARUS? Not the ancient Greek story of the boy whose wings melted when he flew too close to the sun but a modern variation of one of the oldest human truths, ie. "It's Called Armed Revenge on the US, Stupid."

ICARUS is absent from all mainstream US political analysis of the Middle East. A fine example is the recent ham-fisted attempt to spin a suicide bombing in Mosul. The Pentagon whores at the New York Times dutifully reported that the bomber, a Kuwaiti national captured in Afghanistan and handed over to the Americans in 2002 by some Northern Alliance boy scouts, "returned" to terrorism after his release from Camp Xray in 2005.

Stop right there. Does anyone for a moment think that the Americans would take the risk of freeing a proven terrorist? The Pentagon PR machine, however, is in a tight spot because if this inmate didn't "return" to terrorism then there is only one other much more frightening and wholly inadmissible conclusion, namely that our Kuwaiti friend TURNED to terrorism to avenge his treatment in Gitmo.

So now we see why the foot-shooters in the Pentagon prefer to hold the remaining 300 prisoners in indefinite legal limbo. There is every likelihood that 8 years of tender loving care in Camp X-ray has converted a number of unlucky detainees into super-jihadists.

But only, of course, if you believe in the "myth" of ICARUS.

A Fitting End (or the Politics of "Deliverance")

Bah golly ah'd jes luv to shoot rabbits with ya'll!!




Those nauseating toads at CNN are playing make-believe again. We all have to pretend that the West Virginia primary is a significant political event whose result will affect the outcome of the Democratic nomination. No one, it seems, has the guts to call Horrible Hillary what she really is - a washed-up loser clinging to wreckage of a campaign that totally misjudged the mood of the Democratic Party. Instead everyone speaks of the need to tiptoe around Hillary's feelings until she is ready to concede defeat like parents of a spolied child, petrified of provoking a tantrum.

How Ole Hill' miscalculated! She banked on media-hyped nostalgia for her horny hubby and her eagerness to obliterate Iran to secure the nomination yet somehow she managed to lose to a guy whose name sounds suspiciously like Osama bin Laden. Like Humpty Dumpty, not even the storm-troopers of the Israel lobby could put her together again. Even worse, Tinsel Town has deserted her. How it must have stung to watch one ultra-bleeding heart after another throw support behind Obama. The only progressive thing about the Clintons these days, it seems, is their irrelevance to American politics.

What a delicious irony though! Who would have guessed 3 months ago that the real elitist liberal in this contest would finish up as the race-baiting trailer park trash candidate? The Clintons, written off by ordinary folk long ago as classic out-of-touch Washington insiders, have re-invented themselves possibly (and hopefully) for the very last time. How long before Hillary swaps her dreary campaign uniform for combat fatigues and a Support Our Troops baseball cap? How long before she crosses the border into Kentucky, shoulder-to-shoulder with her bourbon-swiggin' raccoon-shootin' diehard supporters in the back of a Ford pick-up plastered with Jesus Loves You bumper stickers? (An' jes cos' she's worth millions of bucks don't mean she can't feel what them God-fearin' Blue Ridge mountin folk is feelin'. Maybe that's why she's driving her campaign into debt. She needs some financial street credibility when she drones on about making ends meet.)

So here is where it probably ends. Not with a prime-time coronation or bear hugs from Oscar winners on the podium of the Democratic convention this August but in the God-foresaken political junkyard of gun-totin' backwoods bigots and hip-flasked hicks straight out of the film "Deliverance". More or less where the long journey to the White House began in Arkansas many years ago. Re-invention humbug. Welcome home Hillary and Bill!!

Revealed: al-Qaeda’s inter-galactic hideout

Intelligence officials worry that some galaxies have succumbed to al-Qaeda's ideology




There are growing fears that Islamic fundamentalists have seized control of the Andromeda galaxy and are preparing it for a spectacular suicide mission. “We have reliable intelligence that Andromeda is racing towards the Milky Way at the mind-boggling speed of 500,000 kms per hour”, claimed an unnamed source at the Pentagon. “That means that Andromeda will collide with the Milky Way in approximately 2 billion years from now.”

The White House is pleading for additional emergency defense funds in anticipation of the present military surge in Iraq lasting well beyond the collision. “Democracy takes a long time build”, explained the Warlord-in-Chief George W. Bush in a video conference from a nuclear bunker. “Our commitment to Iraq and Afghanistan is unshakeable and precludes any troop redeployment during this time-frame. I’m afraid we are going to have to dig deep into our pockets and our neighbours pockets and our kids piggy banks and their college funds to confront this new menace”. Bush added that “Andromeda must not allow itself to become a haven for inter-galactic terrorism” and insisted that the Andromedan authorities move quickly to dismantle all terrorist networks, adopt free-market legislation and recognize the state of Israel as a pre-condition for normalization of relations with the Milky Way. “Andromeda must take concrete steps to prove that it respects Israel’s right to exist.”

Aspiring WiC candidate John "Maybe 3 Billion Years" McCain praised Bush's commitment to war in the Middle East but went a step further calling upon the White House to break off all relations with other galaxies that fail to condemn Andromeda. “We must teach the universe that there is a price to be paid for appeasing Andromeda”, snarled McCain before throwing a punch at a bewildered passer-by for looking insufficiently patriotic. McCain is widely credited with the administration's current Rogue Galaxy Rollback strategy and is a co-sponsor of the Andromeda Liberation Act which is expected to sail through the Council of Yes-men and become law sometime next week. The bill is the brainchild of the Project for an American Milky Way which shares office space with McCain.

Speaking at a Mossad fund-raiser in New York, visiting former British prime minister Tony Blair was in little doubt as to the consequences of Andromedan belligerence, “Andromeda will find us united in our determination to thwart any attempt to impose its barbaric values on Milky Way civilization. To the Andromedans I say this – good will triumph over evil.”

Some former military officers, however, have spoken out against the White House’s approach describing it as “unimaginative and unproductive”. One retired warlord stated that, “there appears to be no strategy for winning the hearts and minds of the Andromedans or any of their organs for that matter.”

The Campaign for the Release of all Hubble Space Telescope Scientists from Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo issued a press release dismissing the supposed threat from Andromeda as “science fiction along the lines of Saddam Hussein’s WMDs” noting that both galaxies are “racing towards each other”.

Neither Osama bin Laden nor the Andromedan ambassador could be reached for comment.

Eliot the Idiot

"And once I booked a room in Bill's name......"




"If Eliot Spitzer wants to use prositutes then that's his business". Thus barked the noisy and irascible Alan Dershowitz, plagiarist, Israel Firster extraordinaire and holder of the Felix Frankfurter chair at Harvard School of Law.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple because Client No. 9 hid his "habit" which put him in a position where he could have been blackmailed. Such poor judgment totally undermined his authority as governor. There is also the obvious hypocrisy of employing the services of prostitution rings while supposedly hunting them down but does anyone really care? As former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez might have put it, revulsion towards hypocrisy is a quaint relic of American political life.

The dignity and integrity of public office certainly means little to Dershowitz who has stained his own academic reputation with all sorts of lies and dirty tactics against his political enemies (eg. his nasty private war to block tenure for Norman Finkelstein at De Paul University). One suspects, however, that Dershowitz's bitterness is motivated by Horrible Hillary's loss of a prominent, pro-Israeli, "Teflon" campaign supporter. Indirectly, Spitzer's fall is Obama's gain.

So I guess this kills any chances of a Hillary-Eliot ticket this November but then again, we are talking about America where scumbags can stage suprising scumbacks. Just ask Bill.

Kebekistan

A clip of the little devils skiing down Mt. Tremblant (Feb 2008).

A Tale of 2 Hillaries

One climbed Everest, the other, um....let me see....

Yesterday Sir Edmund Hillary died. Typically an ABC newscaster botched a tribute with a parting reference to “Mr. Hillary” but I don’t think it would have bothered Sir Edmund. By all accounts he was an extremely modest and reserved man for whom titles held little importance. It is incredible to think that the only photo taken of the conquest of Everest was Sir Edmund’s shot of sherpa Tensing Norgay. Self-publicity was the last thing on his mind. Not only that, both men spent some time looking for traces of Mallory and Irvine, 2 mountaineers who had perished on the slopes of Everest nearly 30 years earlier perhaps having been the first to ascend the summit. Sir Edmund, you see, was not scared to prove that he had not been the first to conquer Everest. He also led expeditions to the Antarctic, traced the source of the Yangstee River and devoted himself to improving the lives of the sherpas of the Himalayas. Sir Edmund was a hero and a true humanitarian.

This week Hillary Clinton cried. She cried because either she thought she was going to lose the New Hampshire primary or because someone instructed her to cry to make her more likeable to the voters. No one calls Hillary Clinton “Mrs. Clinton” because that is too damn dowdy for someone of her self-importance. Hillary has achieved nothing in her career (other than convincing many people she has achieved something) but to listen to her you’d think she had climbed Everest single-handedly many times over. Hillary has an entourage of well-paid spinmeisters working 24/7 to make sure that barely an hour passes without her making headlines. The idea that Hillary could do anything without claiming credit for it is sheer fantasy. Moreover Hillary’s idea of humanitarian sacrifice is human sacrifice. Ask any Serb, Iraqi or Afghani. Depressing to think that for millions, Hillary is a selfless hero.

So there we have it. The Hillary on the right was a giant full of dignity while the one on the left just squeals and wallows in mud.

All aboard the investment banking gravy train!!

I’ll be earning lotsa dosh!!





Crime never pays. Unless you are in investment banking where the sky’s the limit. That’s the inevitable conclusion from the reported decision of JP Morgan to hire the unindicted war criminal Tony Blair as a strategic advisor. Gone are the days when you had to bring an impressive track record to the table to land a senior position at a major financial institution.

One wonders what insight JP Morgan thinks it is getting by bringing Toady on board. It’s rumoured that JP Morgan prizes Blair’s unique perspective on international politics and globalisation. I guess the management were too distracted with their gigantic losses on the sub-prime portfolio to notice this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2207514,00.html

Blair’s perspective is about as unique as a black cab in London. The man is derivative from his head to his toe. His guiding principle in international politics is clear: America must never feel isolated. So why hire a Brit if you want an American perspective? I have a feeling that Bush interceded on behalf of his buddy to obtain this sinecure. Tony has a crippling mortgage to pay off and he needs to get cracking on boosting his earnings.

Then again, should we be surprised? Acquiring worthless assets appears to be part of JP Morgan’s core strategy.

US elections: The freak show continues

Democracy is ugly





I dislike Barack Obama. He is a windbag and is not the threat to the political establishment that people like to imagine. But at least he voted against the war in Iraq. So I was happy when he kicked Hillary Clinton’s large and ever-growing backside in the Iowa caucuses. I am really sorry he couldn’t repeat the triumph in New Hampshire but that’s the way it is in the United States. Just when you think the voters may have smelled a rat, they pull out a bag of bread crumbs and start feeding it. Humiliating Hillary was simply beyond the courage of American voters. And all she had to do was shed a few tears on prime-time television in response to yet another obviously planted question (“How do you keep upbeat and so wonderful?” Oh yuck!). That was the signal for Hillary’s reserve army of aging feminists to storm the polling booths and swing the election in favour of “experience”. What experience? The experience of failing to reform health care under her whoring husband? Of watching impassively as former friends from Arkansas went to jail or were found dead on park benches in Washington? Of participating in dodgy property deals and making money off questionable commodity trades? Or was it the experience of ignoring her husband’s lifelong philandering? Perhaps it was the experience of voting to support Bush’s disastrous military adventure that qualifies her to become C-in-C. I am reminded of the words of AA Milne: “Three cheers for Pooh! For who? For Pooh? Just tell me someone – what did he do?” Exactly. Just what has Hillary achieved that makes her “experience” so valuable?

Just as depressing was the victory of John “Bomb, Bomb Iran” McCain. Lunacy has obviously become a pre-requisite for the Republican nomination. The nightmare scenario is Hillary the Bitch vs. Madman McCain in November 2008. Keep the cyanide handy.