A Nation of Cowards

We tax all the others and pass the revenue on to you

That's what Attorney General Eric Holder called America earlier this year, "A nation of cowards." Do you agree?


Is there an American political topic that is more talked about, more beaten to death, than race relations? The race card is the Democrats' hole card, played as needed to obfuscate real issues that need public debate. Tawana Brawley was an example. BTW, did you know that her lawyer was disbarred for treating poor clients badly? (You mean clients like Ms. Brawley but without national notoriety?)


"Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we average Americans simply do not talk enough with each other about race...". -- Eric Holder


"I think it's fair to say that if I'd been advising my attorney general, we would have used different words." -- Barack Obama


But you're his BOSS, Barry. Gotta agree with the prez on this one, though. I even might have used the words "race-baiting coward", but that's just me.


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Eric Holder's stewardship of the DoJ is open to some question. He doesn't want to prosecute Black Panthers who intimidated voters this year. I don't understand that so I impute nefarious race-baiting cowardly motives to what might be a simple matter of DoJ resource conservation. From here, it looks like Eric being a judge rather than an Attorney General. Or maybe that coward thing. Hey, those BPs had big sticks and, y'know, a guy could get hurt if had to stand up to big guys like that.


He dismissed the indictment of ex-AK gov Ted Stevens, the indictment that successfully convicted him of corruption charges, in order to avoid the potential stain of prosecutorial misconduct. He was convicted, Eric. Let the court decide if it was misconduct or not. You don't have to be Stevens' judge either. Eric cowardly imposed his values on your judicial system when he didn't like the system's results.


Today the murder trials of five Blackwater employees were thrown out. Turns out the DoJ promised them immunity for their statements, then relied on the statements in their prosecutions. I am NOT for letting murderers (if that's what they are) go but I AM for the government keeping its word. Eric knew all this but unlike in the Stevens case, he said nothing. Coward. The one guy who ratted out his fellow Blackwater-ites in return for a plea deal is probably wondering when his number will come up. Bad idea, ratting out guys with lots of guns. Nice touch, Eric. Gonna keep him locked up now? Coward.


Eric isn't a big fan of waterboarding, either. Well, who is? Certainly not the three guys the US has used that technique on. Eric might change his mind if it was his life on the line and not yours, I suspect. That's what cowards do, sell out their principles. Your life is expendable in his zeal for justice. His isn't, I speculate, because he's special... him being the AG and all, and you're not.


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EricH is agenda-driven while the DoJ is supposed to be JUSTICE-driven. Thus the J in their name. Rather than list his agendas (agendae?) and risk missing a few, I'll just summarize them by saying his are anti-you and serve only to advance his personal political best interests.


Eric represented a big Swiss bank (UBS) in the private sector. I don't blame him for that. Money is money and banks, as bank robber Willie Sutton noted, are where the money is. As AG, when UBS was accused of American tax fraud Eric nobly recused himself from involvement in the prosecution, THEN... wait for it... held private meetings with the Swiss Minister of Justice. Agenda-driven? More like client-driven, but the AG's only client is... you. Guess he forgot.


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I really can't close today without mentioning GMAC again. They make loans, right? Congress converted them to kinda-like-a-bank status in order to give them $13.5 bil in free money. Your money, true, but free to the gummint. Yesterday they gave GMAC another $3.8 bil. So, $17.3 bil and what did American taxpayers get in return? Some preferred stock that is supposed to pay 8%. The US now owns 56.3% of GMAC and all of GM and Chrysler.


GMAC, GM and Chrysler have one thing in common. They are victims of their own decisions and the gummint has chosen them, and a few others, to become captive quasi-gummint organizations, propped up (perhaps indefinitely) by capital infusions from... YOU. Is that really what you had in mind, gummint ownership of what used to be the biggest private entities in America?


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Neither a borrower, nor a lender, be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. -- William Shakespeare


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Happy New Year, good and faithful readers.