Let's start at the top:
This is why Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel was sacked last week, because he wasn’t sufficiently eager to pursue this madcap policy of escalating the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine.
They’d rather stick with foam-at-the-mouth buffoons, like Susan Rice and Samantha Powers, so now Obama is completely surrounded by rabid warmongering imbeciles, all of whom ascribe to the same fairytale that the US is going to dust-off Russia, remove Assad, redraw the map of the Middle East, control the flow of gas and oil from the ME to markets in the EU, and establish myriad beachheads across Asia where they can keep a tight grip on China’s growth.
And all I was fed was a bunch of hogwash.
"Ashton Carter may be pick for defense secretary; Held key Pentagon jobs in two administrations" by Bryan Bender, Globe Staff December 02, 2014
WASHINGTON — Carter was the Pentagon’s second-ranking official under Hagel until last December. He was also the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer in Obama’s first term, giving him a unique mix of attributes at a time when defense budgets are shrinking but new threats are evolving from terrorist organizations like the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Carter is also an expert on US-Russian security relations — but is not considered a member of the president’s inner circle.
He rose to the top after several others with closer personal ties to the president said they were not interested in the Pentagon job.
That could prove challenging, according to Edward Luttwak, a longtime Pentagon consultant.
“That means interacting with other agencies under the direction of the White House,” he said. “And the White House, as everybody knows by now, is headed by a staff that has gotten the president into trouble time and time again.”
Carter has been lecturing at Stanford University this fall.
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Gary Samore, who served as a top White House security adviser in the first term, said, “The biggest challenge Ash faces is prosecuting the war against the Islamic State.”
Carter grew up in a working-class family in Philadelphia and as a teenager pumped gas and repaired cars. He attended Yale University, where he quickly became an accomplished, wonkish scholar.
He studied medieval history and wrote his senior thesis on “the use of Latin by contemporary monastic writers to describe the vibrant world of 12th-century Flanders.” Carter was selected to be a Rhodes Scholar and studied at Oxford University, where he pursued a doctorate in theoretical physics.
Then he knows the collapse of the towers on 9/11 due to jet fuel is a physical impossibility.
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In the Pentagon he was nicknamed “The Deliverer” for his ability, from behind a large oak desk that once belonged to legendary World War II General George S. Patton, to bust through red tape to get much-needed equipment to troops in the field.
In his last job, which he held for more than two years before stepping down last December, he was the day-to-day manager of the Department of Defense. From 2009 to 2011, in the post of undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, Carter shepherded a series of controversial budget cuts.
Long before joining the Obama administration, however, Carter was seen as a national security whiz.
He arrived at the Pentagon in 1981 as a civilian program analyst, and three years later wrote a paper on missile defense that concluded that President Reagan’s prized proposal for a space-based shield — dubbed the “Star Wars” program — was unworkable, gaining him a reputation for taking on his superiors.
At the end of the Cold War, as assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, Carter “took the lead in working with the countries of Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics and bringing them into the Western security umbrella,” former secretary of defense William Perry, one of Carter’s mentors, recently recalled in an interview.
Carter, who never served in the military, is not considered a dove. In a controversial 2006 article he cowrote with Perry, he advocated bombing North Korea if it did not give up its nuclear weapons program.
Carter has supporters in both parties. At a 2012 hearing, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, told him that “I have come to know you as a hard-working, honest, and committed public servant.”
That same year, in another interview with the Globe, Carter summarized what he sees as the Pentagon’s foremost challenge.
“We are trying to manage to a lower budget at a time when the threat is not receding,” he said. “The world hasn’t gotten any safer.”
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Related: Big challenges loom for Ashton Carter at Defense
This next article will challenge you:
"NY Times: Obama Is Said to Pick Ashton Carter, Physicist and Ex-Deputy, as Defense Secretary" by Helene Cooper and Mark Landler – New York Times Dec 3, 2014
President Obama has settled on Mr. Carter, the Pentagon’s former chief weapons buyer, but is waiting for him to be vetted before making a formal announcement, officials said.
Rebuttal by the Anti-New York Times
Upon learning of the “resignation” of the reasonable Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, The Anti-New York Times predicted that warmonger Michelle Flournoy, being a woman, would get the “ground-breaking” nod over Ivy League- Goldman Sachs – Pentagon warmonger Ashton Carter, to replace the departing Hagel. When Flournoy unexpectedly pulled her name from consideration, it was apparent that someone really wanted Carter. The brief summary of Carter’s history which we provided was very disturbing. Here it is again:
“As for Ashton B. Carter, his ‘righteous Gentile’ credentials are just as kosher as Flournoy’s. In 1998, Carter and radical Zionist Philip D. Zelikow co-authored an article in the Council on Foreign Relation’s (CFR) ‘Foreign Affairs’ magazine. In it, they laid out what changes would need to be made within the U.S. government in the wake of “catastrophic terrorism,” which is also the title of the article.
The”Catastrophic Terrorism” article begins with the strange subtitle ‘Imagining the Transforming Event’, and advocates a transformation of the U.S. government and the way Americans live.”
The neo-cons of 9/11 at AEI, American Enterprise Institute, love Ashton Carter.
That’s the bad news. Upon taking a closer look at the next Defense Secretary, we are unhappy to report that Carter’s record is actually worse than that; much worse! Have a stiff drink and take a whiff of these resume bullet-points:
· Oxford Rhodes Scholar (A Globalist training program)
· 1984: Co-authored ‘Directed Energy Missile Defense in Space’ (later used on 9/11, as proven by Dr. Judy Wood)
· 1991: Co-authored ‘Control of the Nuclear Arsenal in a Disintegrating Soviet Union’
· 2001: Co-authored ‘Keeping the Edge: Managing Defense for the Future’
· 2006: While at Harvard, urged George Bush to threaten to bomb North Korea
· 2009: One of the legal architects behind Obongo’s policy on Predator drone killings
A brief glance at those snoozefests is enough to get the basic gist of what Carter is all about; building up a massive US military machine for “defense”, while keeping Russia weak and vulnerable. But as the pitchman for one of those late night infomercials would say: “But wait! There’s more.” As if his aggressive posture towards Russia and the Middle East weren’t dangerous enough, we learn that Carter was one of the architects behind Obongo’s “Asia-Pacific pivot” that has got the Chinese really pissed off.
In a speech from April, 2013, then Deputy Secretary of Defense Carter said:
“I did recently return from a trip to Asia that took me to Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Indonesia, where I attended the Jakarta International Defense Dialogue. The purpose of my trip was to visit with our troops of course, who are performing superbly, and also to make sure that our forces, our allies, and our partners in the region understand that we are serious about our defense commitments there – that we are going to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.”
Carter’s “Asian pivot” goes hand-in-hand with puppet Japan’s, Vietnam’s, and the Philippines’ bizarre and sudden antagonization of peaceful China.
Needless to say, when Globo-thugs like Carter speak of “defense”, it is codespeak for offense. Indeed, the U.S. hasn’t fought a defensive war against another country since 1812.
Russia, Iran, Syria, China, North Korea; Ashton Carter has got them all in his cross-hairs. Oh well, at least Africa isn’t on his “defense commitment” list. ….Oh… wait a second … here’s Carter, again writing for the CFR’s Foreign Affairs Magazine in early 2014:
“JIEDDO (Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization) has already begun to support missions of U.S. Africa Command, and its expertise will help combat IED threats in such countries as Mali and Somalia.”
Mali? Somalia? In that same article Carter also praised Paul Wolfowitz’s achievements as Bush’s Deputy Defense Secretary. Yes, that’s right, Paul Wolfowitz, the fiendish Likud Zionist who has relatives in Israel.
Oh this bloodthirsty psychopath is going to get along just beautifully with McCain the Insane and the incoming band of GOP Zio-crazies. You just wait and see the love-fest that is going to take place during the Senate confirmation hearings. The closeted homosexual Lindsey Graham is liable to have an erection when the “theoretical physicist” Carter starts spewing his Globo-garbage.
It looks like 2015 is shaping up to be a very interesting year, and for all the wrong reasons. While Homo-Obongo, Sharpton, Farrakhan et al. work to “tear this God-damn country apart” from within (Farrakhan’s words), the Pentagon boys will take care of the outside wars. Good luck Mr. Putin, and Mr. JinPing, and Mr. Assad and anyone else who dares to defy Carter’s NWO gang of neo-con Globalists. And most of all, good luck Boobus Americanus, even though you have no idea what’s coming.
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Related: The Boston Globe Missed This Nuclear Explo$ion
N.M. fines US energy agency $54 million
They missed that, too.
US sends 6 Guantanamo prisoners to Uruguay
Apparently Hagel was holding up the transfers, and Bergdahl just faded down the memory hole.
Of course there is nothing new about presidents authorizing torture -- even if they now deny it.
White House and GOP clash over torture report
Hagel cites progress against sexual assaults in military
You won't have to worry about that anymore, Chuck.
Nothing new about the coming leaders of Congre$$.
Winners first:
"House speaker, next Senate leader natural allies" by Erica Werner | Associated Press November 14, 2014
WASHINGTON — Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky joined House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio on Thursday at the pinnacle of the congressional and Republican power structures in Washington — two establishment deal-cutters, each on occasion frustrated by the other’s inability to rein in their party’s most zealous ideologues.
The pair, formally selected Thursday to lead their party’s new majority control of Congress, will be charged with guiding Republicans on Capitol Hill for the final two years of President Obama’s presidency. Their success or failure could determine whether the GOP can take back the White House in 2016.
McConnell, 72, is taciturn and rarely cracks a smile. ‘‘Why don’t you get a life?’’ he joked to photographers trying to snap photos of him after he was unanimously chosen by his Senate GOP colleagues Thursday to serve as the new majority leader starting in January.
Boehner, 64, is gregarious, chain-smoking, perpetually tan, and fanatical about golf, which McConnell does not play.
But both are seasoned pragmatists steeped in the ways of Washington. They’ve served together in leadership roles for the past eight years and hail from the same region of the country.
Republicans hope their political similarities will help them to avoid conflicts that have emerged in past relationships between a speaker and Senate majority leader of the same party, due to the inherent tensions between the majority-rule House and the slower-moving Senate where minority members have numerous rights.
Their relationship is about to be tested as never before.
I really don't care whether they get along personally. It's a job.
Days into Congress’s lame-duck session, conservatives newly emboldened by last week’s election already have served notice that their cooperation is not guaranteed.
They announced this week they want to use upcoming must-pass spending bills to block Obama from taking executive action to curb deportations of immigrants in the country illegally.
Both McConnell and Boehner have stood down Tea Party challenges in the past, and emerged with a tighter grip on the reins of power after navigating the fiscal cliff and last year’s 16-day partial government shutdown over Obamacare.
Pragmatists warn of the potential for another shutdown, but some of the party’s most committed ideologues are looking at how McConnell and Boehner handle immigration as an early test of their leadership.
‘‘The will of the conference is clearly very conservative. The election, what we heard from the American people, was clearly a very conservative message,’’ said US Representative Matt Salmon of Arizona, who is leading the House effort to block Obama on immigration.
‘‘So my guess is that if they want to carry that leadership beyond the next term and win the White House, that we will not march in place, that we will be bold, that we will put difficult things on the president’s desk and not just second-guess what he is willing to sign.’’
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Now for the losers:
"Time for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to go" by Scot Lehigh | Globe Columnist November 12, 2014
In politics, there’s nothing harder than realizing that it’s time to go.
People who have made their careers as Beltway politicians start to think they’ve become indispensable to Washington, when in fact it’s Washington that has become indispensable to them. And so they can’t or won’t recognize when the moment has come to move on to other things.
For Democrats Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, that moment has arrived.
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Let’s be honest. Both Reid and Pelosi are tired faces, stale voices, entrenched presences in Washington.
Further, they’ve both had their opportunities as leaders. Pelosi made history as the first female speaker, a post she held from 2007 to the beginning of 2011. Reid became Senate majority leader the same year Pelosi assumed the speakership.
Pelosi’s Democrats lost the House back in 2010, but she has hung on as minority leader in the hopes that her party would soon rebound — and return her to the top job again. The recognition should be setting in that that’s not likely to happen anytime soon. But the day after the midterm elections, Pelosi said she would seek re-election as the Democrats’ House leader.
And now the Democrats have lost control of the Senate, too, which will soon spell the end of Reid’s tenure as majority leader. However, he is intent on following Pelosi’s example and becoming Senate minority leader, obviously in the hope of being restored to majority power in the near future.
Both Reid and Pelosi need to face a harsh reality of politics in an era of syncopated partisanship and polarization: After a certain period, congressional leaders’ caricatured images get so ingrained that they become electoral liabilities for their parties.
In a just political world, the same reality would apply to Mitch McConnell, who will become the next majority leader at 72. McConnell, after all, has made use of the filibuster an obstructionist art form in his effort to deny President Obama bipartisan accomplishments. Meanwhile, his battles with Reid — who has used parliamentary tactics of his own to deny Republican legislation a vote — have sometimes reduced Senate debate to the level of divorce proceedings between a couple who loathe each other. But McConnell’s cynical star is on the rise because of the Republicans’ midterm victory. The good news for Democrats: If the Kentuckian doesn’t change his tactics in the higher visibility post of majority leader, he could be headed for albatross status in relatively short order.
That's a startling take on the election.
Some will no doubt protest that the midterm losses weren’t Pelosi’s or Reid’s fault, and that therefore they shouldn’t bear the consequences. But this isn’t about blame. Rather, it’s about giving the Democrats an opportunity to offer fresh faces, different voices, new approaches.
Related: The Kennedy War Lobby
Not the right face?
That shouldn’t mean simply handing the job to the next person in line, and if Reid and Pelosi don’t soon come to the conclusion on their own that it’s time to bow out?
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Related:
"Pelosi, 74, was victorious despite some grumbling that the leadership needs fresh blood and that the party did an inadequate job of selling its policies to voters. Pelosi told her colleagues that Democrats need to do a better job of focusing on helping the middle class, Democrats said. Many Democrats also blamed their recent losses on an unfriendly political climate beyond their control, including President Obama’s unpopularity."
Pelosi victorious because there was no challenger!
Democrats hand Pelosi defeat on post
Big deal.
"Democrats tap Warren as liaison to liberal groups" by Jessica Meyers, Matt Viser and Cat Zakrzewski | Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent November 13, 2014
WASHINGTON — Senator Elizabeth Warren on Thursday was handed a specially created slot in the Senate Democratic leadership, further elevating her profile as the party’s liaison to liberal groups.
The job, strategic policy adviser to the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, cements her role as the Senate’s most prominent conduit to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
But it also could pose complications for the Massachusetts politician who positioned herself as a populist outsider and now must try to thrive in partnership with the party establishment. Under the arrangement, Warren, one of Wall Street’s severest critics, will work alongside New York Senator Chuck Schumer, who often collaborates with financial institutions.
She will simply be the party hack she has been, just more visible.
Warren was given the job as Democrats struggle to rebrand themselves after a blistering defeat in the midterm elections and loss of the Senate majority.
They still don't get it. They think $elling out is an image problem.
“Being part of leadership means I’ve got a seat at the table,” Warren said in an interview. It “creates an opportunity to talk, to persuade, and sometimes to lead.”
The job carries significant symbolism and some new power.
“There are plenty of folks in her party who believe that her message on economic inequality and the system at large really does resonate,” said Peter Ubertaccio, an associate professor of political science at Stonehill College in Easton.
Resonates in an echo chamber because we've heard all this from those that serve wealth.
But he noted the role could put her closer to the kind of deals and Wall Street powerbrokers she vilifies. “Part of the responsibility of leadership is to support the party line,” he said, “For someone as high profile as her, it’s a little bit of challenge.”
All she's done since she's been there is support the party line.
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Warren was one of the most sought-after surrogates during the campaign, traveling across the country to stump with Democratic nominees. She has also been one of the party’s biggest fund-raising draws.
And it helped no one.
Her decision to join the leadership could be another indication that she wants to chart a career in the Senate, rather than running for president. Although she has repeatedly denied a desire to run in 2016, her supporters continue to push.
Warren has built much of her career on arguments that working families suffer while Wall Street profits. Her views could energize liberal Democrats, but they could also make it more difficult to cut deals with newly empowered Republicans.
“Before leaders in Congress and the president get caught up in proving they can pass some new laws, everyone should take a skeptical look at whom those new laws will serve,” Warren wrote last week in a Washington Post op-ed.
Robert Reich, who served as labor secretary in the Clinton administration, said he hoped Warren’s role will make the party less dependent on Wall Street.
“I hope she lets Charles Schumer and other Wall Street Democrats know how much damage they’re doing to the Democratic Party,” he said in an e-mail.
They have already destroyed it.
The senators in the party top spots — held by Reid, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Schumer, and Patty Murray of Washington — will remain.
Nothing new there.
Not everyone wanted Reid to stay their leader. A handful of senators, including Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, said the party needed new leadership after the midterm election result.
“To me that means changing leadership,” McCaskill said. “It’s just that simple.” Manchin, along with a number of other senators, appeared confused by Warren’s post. “In West Virginia, that wouldn’t work,” he said.
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She's already off to a rough start:
"Warren to oppose Obama’s Treasury pick" by Jessica Meyers | Globe Staff November 14, 2014
WASHINGTON — Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren plans to oppose President Obama’s pick for a top Treasury post, a move that signals a disconnection with party establishment even as she takes a role within Democratic leadership.
A Warren aide said Friday the senator will not support Antonio Weiss, a Harvard-educated Wall Street investment banker the president nominated earlier this week for Treasury undersecretary of domestic finance. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because Warren has not made the decision public. Her opposition was first reported by Politico.
It's a Wall Street government.
The Treasury Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Her opposition puts her at odds with the White House, which defended Weiss and other nominees as “hard-working individuals [who] will help us tackle the important challenge facing America.”
Warren was selected on Thursday for a newly created spot in the Senate Democratic leadership as a strategic policy adviser, a position that will include outreach to liberal groups.
Warren is known for castigating Wall Street’s close relationship to many in Washington. She worries that Weiss’s background only furthers that revolving door, her office said.
She also has concerns about his advisory role on tax inversions, a practice that allows companies to pay fewer taxes by relocating their addresses overseas. Weiss serves as the global head of investment banking at Lazard, a financial advisory firm that is technically headquartered in Bermuda and has worked on tax inversion deals.
Related: Walgreens Pre$cription Up$ide Down
One of its more prominent inversion deals took place this August when Burger King merged with Tim Hortons, a Canadian coffee and doughnut chain. The company’s legal location will be in Ontario.
“Relationships matter,” Warren said in an April op-ed that ran in Politico. “And anyone who doubts that Wall Street’s outsized influence in Washington has watered down our government’s approach toward still-too big-to-fail banks has their eyes deliberately closed.”
Warren does not sit on the Senate Finance Committee, which will first consider Weiss’s nomination. A full Senate vote might not come up until next year, when Republicans will have control of the upper chamber. But as a former special adviser to the Treasury secretary, Warren’s stance could carry weight.
“She might very well be the Tea Party equivalent of the Democratic Party now,” said Mark Calabria, director of financial regulation at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, and a former staffer on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.
That's damning.
“We really do have this knee-jerk reaction where, when we have to have Treasury officials, where do we go but Wall Street,” he said. “These are very legitimate concerns she is raising.”
Warren’s position resembles that of Senate Finance Committee Republican Charles Grassley, of Iowa, who accused the Obama administration of “hypocrisy” for vowing to go after tax inversions and then selecting a man who has worked on them.
Weiss, who earned a master of business administration at Harvard University, has been a prominent donor for the president and Democrats such as Senator Charles Schumer of New York. Weiss worked with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, on a 2012 report that examined ways to reform the tax system and bolster the middle class.
American Progress president Neera Tanden, in a statement after his nomination, said Weiss brought “expertise in financial markets” and a “deep commitment to the goals of this administration, including smart policies that spur economic growth and support the middle class.”
Some see Warren’s opposition to Weiss as an indication that her new leadership role won’t keep her tethered to the party line.
“The only thing that has changed with Elizabeth Warren is her platform” to speak, said Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic political analyst in Boston. “Is there anything better than [this] example?”
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"Critics assail Warren’s bid to block nominee for Treasury; Backlash tests ability to influence party policies" by Jessica Meyers, Globe Staff December 03, 2014
WASHINGTON — Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren anticipated backlash when she launched an effort to defeat President Obama’s nominee for a top Treasury post.
She got it.
The Democrat is facing a barrage of sharp criticism from editorial boards and financial industry observers for her opposition to Antonio Weiss, an investment banker nominated for Treasury undersecretary for domestic finance. They have called her opposition not only politically motivated, but wrong.
You can't stand against them.
And while she has amassed support from some liberals and community bankers, the first-term senator is gambling on a move that elevates her agenda for economic populism just as she enters the Senate leadership. Senate Democrats named her to a strategic policy adviser position on Nov. 13, and Warren’s office confirmed the following day she would buck the president in opposing Weiss.
This represents the first real test for Warren as she seeks to carve her influence into the party’s priorities.
“All of my objections to Weiss’s nomination are substantive, including the concern about his Wall Street background,” Warren said in an interview, offering one of her strongest defenses yet. “The administration already has plenty of Wall Street executives to make sure that their views are represented in economic policy discussions . . . that is what this is all about. It’s trying to get some balance.”
Weiss, in some ways, is a surprising target.
An Obama fund-raiser, the 48-year-old Harvard Business School graduate has worked in global positions with the investment bank and asset manager Lazard. He’s a trustee of the French-American Foundation and The Frick Collection, a Manhattan museum filled with European masterpieces, and is publisher of the Paris Review.
While he comes from a middle-class New York household, his most recent financial disclosures show assets valued between $54 million and $203 million. Weiss has also coauthored a report advocating more taxes on the wealthy.
“He didn’t grow up privileged, and believes we should have economic policies for people who don’t grow up privileged to succeed,” said Neera Tanden, president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, who worked with Weiss on the tax report.
Weiss started working for Lazard in 1993, including eight years in Paris, and now is based in New York as the global head for investment banking. He and Lazard officials declined to comment.
Warren questioned Weiss’s regulatory experience and his role in what are known as tax inversions, under which companies move their headquarters abroad to reduce their taxes.
Lazard, a 2,500-employee global partnership that is headquartered in Bermuda, acknowledges that it works on inversions for some clients, but said recently that they represented less than 5 percent of its deal volume this year.
Warren’s criticism has focused particularly on Weiss’s involvement in a merger between Burger King and Canadian restaurant chain Tim Hortons, in which the combined company will reside in Canada. The two companies joined in August in an $11.4 billion deal.
Businesses in British Columbia face a 26 percent corporate income tax, compared with 35 percent in the United States. Burger King has said its tax rate prior to the move lies closer to the mid- to upper-20s — although it could still benefit from other Canadian tax policies.
“Critics need to address the fact he doesn’t have the right experience and that he has worked substantially in an area of tax inversions, something the administration is trying to fight back against,” Warren said in the interview.
She also questioned his background for the Treasury role, where he would assist in policies related to financial institutions, the federal debt, and capital markets. “Most of his career was spent on international transactions, not domestic finance,” she said. “These are different from each other.”
Weiss supporters dispute Warren’s assertions that the Burger King merger fit the kind of tax inversions the administration hopes to end.
“It was a cultural decision, not a tax decision, and the tax savings, if there are any, are minimal,” said Tony Fratto, a former assistant Treasury secretary and a spokesman for former president George W. Bush. “Warren “is wrong about him and his experience and judgment, and she is wrong about the job itself. The idea that the undersecretary of domestic finance wouldn’t benefit from a deep knowledge of financial markets is absurd.”
The Obama administration also disagreed with Warren.
“Antonio Weiss is a highly qualified nominee and we look forward to the Senate’s consideration of his nomination and swift confirmation,” said White House spokeswoman Jennifer Friedman.
Several prominent media voices also have pilloried Warren’s charges. New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote last week that her opposition was “misdirected” and her understanding of the merger “misinformed.” A Washington Post editorial said Warren’s case against Weiss amounts to a “grab-bag of symbolism and epithets, not a rationale.”
If she is being attacked by the New York Times and Washington Post she must be doing something right. F*** them!
Others said Weiss has varied experience working with Fortune 500 companies and understanding the global economy, issues that are vital for the role.
“Weiss’s background is sufficient to do the job and be successful in that post,” said Isaac Boltansky, a policy analyst at Washington financial services firm Compass Point Research & Trading, and former Warren staffer on the Congressional Oversight Panel. “But Warren’s opposition is partly driven by bigger issues than just Weiss. She is playing a bit of a long game with this one.”
This is not the first time that Warren has sought to influence nominations, although this marks her most overt attempt.
She challenged Federal Reserve vice chairman Stanley Fischer, a former Citigroup vice chairman and governor of the Bank of Israel, during his March nomination hearing in front of the Senate Banking Committee, although she did vote for him. She also worked last summer to help ensure Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury secretary, did not make the final list for Federal Reserve chairman.
I'm fed up with all this $hit.
Warren may have allies in her fight against Weiss. The second highest-ranking Democrat, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, has expressed concerns about Lazard’s work in tax inversions, and Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, has criticized the choice. The Independent Community Bankers of America also opposes the nomination.
Several Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee say they are waiting to meet with Weiss before making a decision.
But Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican who will lead the Senate Finance Committee when Republicans gain power next month, said he leans heavily toward him.
“If the man is competent, capable, and honest, to me, Wall Street experience is not an inhibition,” he said. “Wall Street experience should be an advantage.”
That really tells you all you need to know about Wa$hington.
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Yeah, it's such a great $y$tem!
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