411 Politics Fact or Fiction: Week 123 - Should Tim Geithner be Fired, Would Obama Crush Palin in 2012, More

Posted by Brandon Crow on 03.25.2009

Should Tim Geithner be fired NOW? Is the fact that President Obama would crush Palin in 2012 a no brainer? Is Dick Cheney a total joke by saying the economic crisis is not the fault of the Bush Administration? Is Dick Cheney..."evil?"

Good day to my loyal readers.

I want to start this week's Fact or Fiction with a little announcement. I will be ending my run as host/moderator of F or F in a couple of weeks. Additionally, when I leave F or F, I will also be stepping away from 411 Politics.

I mean, really, what else is there but abject shame and utter self-imposed humiliation after resorting to something so cheap, so low, so vile as to put The Spook into F or F as a legitimate participant? I guess when that happens, your column's "jumped the shark…" So I guess I'm off to penance now…

No, seriously, leaving the zone was a difficult decision to make, but it is time the old Crow moved on. I've been here since April of 2005—four whole years. And looking around, I am the last of "the originals" at 411 Politics after Ashish re-envisioned, revamped and re-launched the zone back in the day. The last of the originals…I guess that makes me Tommy Dreamer…or AJ Styles…

This is Week 123. I will finish up my tour at the nice, round Week 125, coming on April 8, which will bookend nicely with my start date (same day four years ago). The week after that, I will have a very special guest host and the participants will be me, and Ryan Latimer, the F or F host before me. That'll be my sign off. Hope you all stick around for it.

Ok, enough about poor little me. Let's get to this week's action. This week, on the Crow's "farewell tour," (yes, it is ALWAYS about me, even if I just said it's not about me!) we have two of my all-time favorite participants, Ray Church (also a former columnist here), and Krunchy Law, who I believe to be the zone's People's Champion. Now just imagine Krunchy raising the eyebrow.

Ding! Ding!

1. The one guy in the Obama Administration that we can all clearly agree "needs to go now"—despite only having worked for sixty days—is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

Ray Church: FICTION. But only on the grounds that the question mentions the ONE guy we can all agree on.

You see, Geithner doesn't need to step down, he needs to be fired. He needs to be fired publicly and he needs to be fired loudly and he needs to be fired in full view of anyone else in the Obama administration that would look to get away with the bullshit that Geithner pulled.

Not only did we find out that Geithner sat on the knowledge that AIG would be using government bailout money to pay as much as $218 million in bonuses to failed employees, but we also find out that he went so far as to kill the Dodd Amendment that would have prevented such use of money. We find out that he personally made phone calls to Senator Dodd to kill the amendment, along with his cohort, Larry Summers of National Economic Council...

And hence the fiction, because we hear a lot about Geithner, but nothing about Summers, who was as culpable as Geithner. Summers is a holdover from the Clinton Administration who called for higher interest rates and a balanced budget in Korea while the country was suffering a depression (oh look how the worm turns), a former Chief Economist at the World Bank who called for more pollution in the third world, and, more famously, the President of Harvard who decided that, genetically, women were just not as good at math as men.

And before you all chime in and say that that is a gross oversimplification of his viewpoint let me say yes, it's an oversimplification, but not a gross one. He definitively placed genetic disposition ahead of discrimination and socialization as the reason for the gender difference in the maths and sciences, but behind a willingness to devote the time and flexibility to these high paying fields.

And, for the last few months, he has been lobbying to allow the good men and women over in AIG to keep bonuses they totally failed to earn, at the expense of the American taxpayer.

So.... certainly, let Geithner's head roll, but send at least one more head down the aisle at the same time.

Krunchy Law: FACT. Ray brought the goods on this one. I say fact because you could argue either side for quite a few of the mistakes Obama has brought into the administration, but since it's only been 60 days or so, I'll give a mulligan to most. Timmy G. has been a complete disaster though. Blame it on his advisers, or blame it on whatever you like. When you make Alan Greenspan seem as charismatic as Bono, you are doing something terribly wrong. America wants John Wayne to come riding into town and fix the problem, not John Wayne Gacy making balloon animals (without bringing the balloons.)

And Ray, the three women of the female persuasion Crow's Note: Um, Krunchy, are there women of the male persuasion that I don't know about? that live with me all hate math. My roommate actually gets physically ill and has a panic attack if you ask her math questions. My fiancé has a history degree. If my daughter was driving a bus that couldn't stop and had to stay above 50 miles per hour, and her math teacher and Hitler were in the crosswalk, and she only had time to hit one…I'm pretty sure she'd have detention until the end of the year. Now that I think about it, her math teacher DOES look like Keanu Reeves. Hmmmmm.

0 for 1. Man, I love these guys. Leave it to Ray and Krunchy to pull absolutely no punches in their own respective styles.

2. A recent poll conducted by Public Policy Polling found that President Obama would "crush Sarah Palin" in a head-to-head match up in 2012. This is the biggest no brainer going today.

Ray Church: FACT. The GOP really needs to get a grip on itself. Sarah Palin is incredibly popular, but only within a narrow target of the population. She gets rock star responses, but only within a narrow spur of the population.

For the vast majority of people, she is not Sarah Palin, she is the caricature of Sarah Palin performed by Tina Fey, and to have her considered for president is another indication that the GOP doesn't know where to turn for leadership.

Here's a hint guys. The only wing of the GOP growing at the moment is the libertarian side. I may thoroughly disagree with the libertarian ideal, but people are getting religion about it.

Krunchy Law: FICTION. Why does anyone still fall for this? It's not even the middle of 2009 yet! Two years ago, Obama was considered a long shot. Obama would crush just about anyone RIGHT NOW that you put him up against, but 4 years from now is a long time to predict.

The office of the presidency has become almost a true cult of personality. I'm sure studies have been done about this, but the way I look at it, undecided people will vote for the person they'd most like to have a beer with at the local Applebee's.

In 1996, would you rather have a brew with Bob Dole or Bill Clinton? Bush Jr. or Al Gore? Bush Jr. or John Kerry? McCain just seems like an angry drinker. OK, I'll say it right now. I can't think of any Republican I'd rather fuck than a drunk Sarah Palin. Wait! Is her daughter a Republican? Recently pregnant, rebound sex is something you can definitely find at Applebee's. Don't look at me like you wouldn't either, you horny bastards. She's of age!

There is still a lot of time left for Palin to repair her damage. Tweny years ago, Biden was a joke on Saturday Night Live for his foot-in-mouth comments and his plagiarizing. Now he's one heartbeat away from the presidency. A run in the Senate would probably be good for Palin, though I still see Romney as the best bet for the Republicans in 2012. He was the only one that was offering any alternatives to Obama's plan that wasn't just vague ideas, and if the economy bogs down in the next few years, even his religion won't stop the GOP from running him.

0 for 2. I think Krunchy has been to Applebee's one too many times… on the other hand, I give him credit for voicing out loud what most Republican men won't ever admit to—the only reason they "liked" Palin was because they liked jacking off to her. By the way, isn't that wasting sperm, killing potential babies gifted by God?

Switch!

3. Last week, Dick Cheney went on CNN's Sunday show "State of the Union" and said that the Bush Administration was not responsible for the horrible state of the economy. He should have been laughed off the program.

Krunchy Law: FICTION. It's hard to be snarky when it comes to economic realities. I would say that the mishandling and wrong projections about the war impacted the economy in a horrible way. However, it's been going downhill for awhile, and policies instituted by Barney Frank among others have about as much to do with it as the Bush Administration. I would suggest that debt mismanagement from the average Joe Six Pack all the way up to the largest corporations did much damage that could take YEARS to dig out of. And when the biggest export we can ship out is "information" or "celebrity gossip," then we have no physical goods to really produce anymore to get us back on track.

A few weeks ago, a store in my town went out of business. Its name? National Wholesale Liquidators. When a chain that sells closeout items from stores that go bankrupt can't survive in this economy, all bets are off, don't you think? Even Alanis Morrisette could see the actual irony in that.

Ray Church: FACT. Ah, Krunchy, my foe. You make many salient points. Were there other people responsible who should ALSO be blamed for the economic crisis, certainly. But to claim that you can't blame the Bush Administration in the same breath that he blames Barney Frank for blocking their reforms is disingenuous.

Krunchy rightfully brings up the "mishandling and wrong projections" of the war in Iraq, even if his language is parsed (most people would call it a massive political lie and a clusterfuck, but we'll let him off with that for now).

What Krunchy doesn't mention is the determined program of deregulation and laissez-faire economics that the Bush Administration championed for eight years. When government oversight of the economy is largely run by people who feel there should be no government oversight, this is what you get. When the camp coordinator is sleeping, the boys in the banking bunks run pantie raids on the unsuspecting public.

Let's not forget, this is an administration that started their eight years with a $218 billion a year budget surplus, and ended it with a trillion dollar debt. The only way that Cheney's name was "fiscal responsibility" was if it was followed by the word "Sucks".

0 for 3. Could these two actually send me off on my farewell tour with a rare 0 for 4? That would be way cool.

4. Former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, Larry Wilkerson wrote that Dick Cheney is "evil." This is the biggest no brainer since Obama would crush Palin in 2012.

Krunchy Law: FICTION. This is a really hard question when it's just sprung on you. He did shoot someone in the face as vice president, so he's on par with Aaron Burr. BUT he did shoot a lawyer AND made the lawyer apologize. Like Chucky from "Child's Play," Cheney doesn't seem to have the capacity to be killed, BUT having a bull-dyke daughter gives him that cuddly feel so lacking in some conservatives.

The best thing ever about him though was that Bush-Cheney gave off a wonderful Pinky and the Brain type vibe. Clinton and Gore were much more of a Foghorn Leghorn / Droopy combination (for those not following the animation portion of the paragraph, substitute Dean Martin for Clinton and Jerry Lewis for Gore).

Anyone that makes me think of an Orson Wellesian mouse hell bent on taking over the world CAN'T POSSIBLY be evil, right?

Ray Church: FACT. Oh Krunchy.

Adolf Hitler reminds me a bit of Charlie Chaplin. That doesn't mean he wasn't a power-crazed dictator set on conquering the world and destroying the Jewish people. What makes Cheney evil? Let's go back to his "Bull-Dyke" daughter (your words, not mine). Here's a guy who knows, from family experience, that homosexuals are people too, and yet he sides with the teams that cynically manipulates public perception about homosexuality, denying homosexuals the same rights as everyone else.

But that's just the diet coke of evil... only one calorie, not evil enough...

No, this is not just the lovable guy who shoots his friend in the face and gets him to apologize. This is a guy who publicly lied about the existence of non-existent WMDs in order to invade another country, even after the facts had been made clear to him.

He plants evidence in the New York Times, then calls on that as "impartial" evidence that Saddam Hussein was a threat. He then proceeded to push for the invasion of Iraq, reassuring the world that it would be a "cakewalk" despite previously stating, after the first Gulf War, that the reason they didn't oust Hussein then was that a protracted ground war would inevitably lead to a quagmire.

He was the foremost push in the Whitehouse for harsher detention measures, a voice that was instrumental in policies that would lead to the use of water boarding within US detention centers, and when this wasn't enough, the voice that pushed for rendition to other countries where oversight on torture previsions didn't exist.

The guy is a war criminal who runs the gamut on every deadly sin except lust, and I only say that because I know nothing about the guy's sex life. From having Enron and the oil industry write their own energy policy to investing in jails and detention centers while he's part of the machinery responsible for executing the laws (and if you believe his bullshit argument about the unique role of the Vice President, also part of the machinery responsible for writing the laws), Cheney was one never-ending sulfur pit of a Vice-President.

0 for 4!!!! And these dudes pull off the rarity or rarities for me! THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH! A great way to start my farewell tour!

Alright y'all…that's it for Week 123. I'll see you all in seven, but not for much longer… Come back and visit next week when I showcase two more of my favorite participants.