From Paul Krugman
Its just a glancing mention in this Times piece on how Fannie Mae won friends and influenced people:
Fannies board once included Frederic V. Malek, a longtime friend of the Bush family and a former business partner of the current President Bush.
Theres a bit more to who Malek is:
He was Nixons Jew-counter: he counted Jews at the Bureau of Labor Statistics at his bosss behest you see, Nixon believed that a Jewish cabal was distorting the economic statistics to make him look bad.
He was the deputy chairman of the RNC during the elder George Bushs presidential run in 1988, but resigned when the Jew-counting story came out.
A year later, he helped the younger Bush purchase of the Texas Rangers a supreme case of crony capitalism.
And now hes John McCains finance co-chairman.
It’s hard to think of parallels in Australian politics. In America it’s standard operating procedure – for Republicans anyway.
From the slate link:
What’s outrageous is that these guys don’t need to go to these levels to denigrate Nixon as his track record speaks for itself. In other words Nixon was a rotten prez. However Slate’s dishonesty is just as bad.
Nixon said some pretty bad things about Jews at times but this hardly made him an anti-Semite. Henry Kissinger has spoken about this before and totally refuted it. I’d rely on Kissinger’s word about this than Slate or Slate’s sources.
Nixon was a paranoid fuck who thought everyone was against him. He was close to ordering a nuclear exchange as a result of a potential Soviet backed attack against Israel.
To be honest relying on a Republican party hater and disseminator like Krugman is like relying on scorpion’s word not to bite.
Who is Fred Malek:
Melak admitted he fucked up.
If he was such a Jew hater is Krugman implies Krugman may want to explain how Melak was asked to become a director of the Carlyle group headed essentially by NYC Upper East side Jewish-Americans.
Krugman ought to spend more time trying to freshen up on his friggen economics than peddling third rate “truther” like crap like this. His hatred for the GOP is starting to become a medical issue.
Clinton made scathing comments about Italian-Americans and their associations with organized crime in a private /recorded telephone conversation when he thought Cuomo was going to enter the race in 92. It hardly made him a racist bigot. People say stupid things in private they don’t really mean.
There are better ways to attack the GOP and this gutter crap that Krugman always resorts to.
>> Hard to think of parallels in Australian politics…
I dunno, but I reckon the then treasurer’s hysterical reaction, indicating a hit nerve in the liberal party, in starting up BurkeGate, (which I reckon is when the electorate decided to give it up for Kev), gives a pretty strong clue as to a contender corner:
Quoting Tip on Lateline, as published on the then treasurer’s own , his own admission:
“Can I go back to last week as to how all this arose. You might recall that last week Mr Rudd went into the Parliament and said that the Government had to answer questions about its association with Ron Walker, Hugh Morgan and Robert De Crespigny over this secret nuclear company….This arose in the Parliament because Mr Rudd decided to try and make an issue of the Prime Minister and my association with Ron Walker.”
Ron also turned up earlier during the Robert Gerard affair, he of the very temporary Reserve bank board membership, due to some tax problems that, apparently, neither Ron nor Tip knew or were worried about, even though he’d for some reason declined the proffered Liberal party treasurership when Ron wanted to pass on the Chalice from The Palace, when the due diligence question just might have arisen.
He gave it to Malcolm instead.
JC “People say stupid things in private they don’t really mean”
That I would suggest is a rather stupid observation to make in public!!
thats disgraceful
JC I think Nic was focusing on the cronyism issue rather than the antisemitism issue. Rightly – it’s that ruling class cronyism, not limited to Republicans by any means, which is both a major symptom and a minor cause of the decay of the American empire.
Yes, Nixon was a paranoid who believed everybody, including “the Jews”, was out to get him. His antisemitism was just one small part of this larger paranoia, and as you point out was neither the most prominent nor the most dangerous part. But it was still antisemitism.
I take your point DD.
I find it hard to believe that Nixon despite all his faults (which were legion) was a Jew hating virulent anti-Semite. A closer description is that he was a paranoid psychotic as you also point out.
There were numerous Jews in that administration. With the cold war in full swing you could say the Sec. of State was the second most important job in the administration. Kissinger was in that job. The White House general counsel was Jewish. Casper Weinberger who started off in the Nixon Administration was Jewish. The great NYTimes (now retired) former token conservative columnist, Bill Safire was Jewish and worked for Nixon as administration.
Nixon was everything bad, but he wasn’t a raving anti-Semite.
And I’m don’t want to be placed in a position to defend the bastard because there is very little to defend when it comes to Nixon.
Krugman is now taking a swipe at McCain for hiring Malek with the accusation he’s a bad dude. I don’t like McCain I don’t think he would make a good prez and would offer the GOP even worse prospects. However I don’t think he is a bad guy and neither is Fred Malek.
Perhaps for a while it seemed like that. But it looks like with the candidates in this election Americans just took a new direction.
In terms of shonkiness, if not scale or antisemitism, Thomas Ley was worse by far. His object of hatred was Catholics, though, not Jews.
Liam,
you read the Leys obit/ Bio, right? It starts off:
Well yes, Joe, indeed.
Nabakov, where are you? I think Ley needs a comic light opera written about him. In the style of Carry On Richard III by Gershwin, with jazz dance.
I really dislike Nixon. I also really dislike Krugman. On balance Nixon is worse but only because somebody let him near the levers of power.
Nick is parodying Krugman.
It is quite clever actually – what a preposterous statement from (a fan of) the party that gave us the Kennedys, the Daleys, the Clintons and the Gores and even ran John Kerry (famous for: marrying well) as a Presidential candidate.
What is it with you and homicidal pollies, Liam?
Bet you’re pissed Latho didn’t get up eh? Would have been none of this softly softly cover-your-tracks for him – a lunge across the House and the crunch of a neck.
Patrick,
Who said I was a fan of the Democrats?
Nah, FDB. Latho had nothing on Aaron Burr.
Not me – but the guy you so cleverly parodied certainly is. You personally I would think a Nader voter :)
Thanks Patrick,
As you can imagine, I grow more impressed with Ralph Nader by the day. He may be able to steer another Republican into the White House.
I guess you’re a Ross Perot fan ;)
Well, we have Bob Barr now who might be able to steer Obama into the White House.
;-)