Feast of Saint Bonaventure*
The Dumbest Billionaire.
I suppose if you’re Jewish yet dumb enough to be taken for millions by slicker lefty ideologue Bernie Madoff you’re dumb enough…even though you’re a Wharton MBA and Harvard lawyer…to be taken for a ride by Obama even if you’re the president of pro-Israel organizations notwithstanding that it was clear during the campaign that The One was, if not by heritage, at least by passion a supporter of Palestinian militancy. But all the same it’s humiliating for a supposed business sharpie like Mort Zuckerman to have to admit it as he did yesterday on Fox News that he not only voted for Obama but wrote at least one speech for him.
His writing for Obama doesn’t faze me or give me the sense of unethical conduct. When you’re a newspaper publisher you can do whatever you want. Remember Phil Graham who advised JFK to pick LBJ while Graham was publisher of The Washington Post? Doesn’t bother me. Publishers have played politics all the time: they’re entitled. Col. McComick huddled with Bob Taft; William Randolph Hearst confabbed with a host of Dem candidates pre-FDR.
Even journalists who play politics under the covers don’t necessarily sicken me. Steve Neal did it all the time—and some say he paid the price. George Tagge of The Trib became a part-time lobbyist to get McCormick Place built. But what I don’t understand is this: All of them were smart.
Zuckerman is supposed to be smart. So what in the world was he thinking when Obama was running around pledging that he would be the very Lefty he has become? I mean it’s no surprise that he foisted a Rube Goldberg health insurance plan on us because he said he would. Not blowing my own horn but I was the first radio interview Obama had after getting elected to the state Senate. I knew he was a socialist then. I knew his foil of agreeing with every radio caller (“you have a point; you too have a point”) was a dodge.
Wasn’t Zuckerman around when Obama promised all the stuff that since has come true? Zuckerman is a Zionist. Wasn’t he around when Obama kept dissing Israel during the campaign? Now the publisher of U. S. News & World Report and The New York Daily News is disenchanted because of Obama’s record, saying he’s barely treading water. What did he expect—that Obama would walk on water? I guess he bought that stuff about the seas rising and planets healing after the 2008 election.
I always thought Zuckerman was a smart guy. But then I should have known. Anybody who could stand going out with a young Gloria Steinem even for one date in the `60s has got to have something wrong with him.
The Dumbest Pundit.
For some reason Politico’s Roger Simon has the reputation of being astute. The other day in The Sun-Times he wrote that Michael Steele has a chance of being nominated for president by the GOP.
Michael Steele? The GOP national chairman who has said Afghanistan is an un-winnable war? Whose finance director took a group of contributors to a gay-lesbian bondage club? Who in the heart of the recession said that the GOP’s winter meeting will be in Hawaii while the rest of the nation’s Republicans froze? Who attacked Rush Limbaugh (who has 20 million conservative listeners daily) by saying he’s mean-spirited and just an entertainer?
The Dumbest Interior Secretary.
So there they all were yesterday in New Orleans at the very first meeting of the presidential commission on the BP-Deepwater Horizon incident. Testifying was Interior Secretary Ken Salazar who since he’s been sworn in has been regarded as at least two bricks shy of a load.
Salazar told the commission that he was awaiting its recommendation concerning the administration’s proposal to halt deepwater drilling.
Wait a minute, said the commission’s two co-chairmen with almost the same voice: We’re only 10 minutes old as a commission. We were told specifically by the White House that we’d be concerned with long-range policy matters, not decisions like this! In fact your very own deputy, David Hayes, told us that this question is not our concern. After all, the decision has already been made by the White House, remember?
Salazar said, weakly, oh?
But just to clear things up the two co-chairmen, William K. Reilly and former Florida Senator Bob Graham announced that they plan to go to the Interior Department “to try to clarify what is our responsibility and how we’re going to carry it out.”
Go to the Interior Department? But the Secretary of the Interior is on hand! He’s just said he’s expecting your recommendation and his assistant has said that you don’t have to be concerned about deep-water drilling policy. And now you’re going to the Interior Department to clear things up?
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*: Saint Bonaventure [1221-1274]. He was born Giovanni di Fidanza in Bagnore, Italy but reportedly received the name Bonaventure from Francis of Assisi who cured him of a childhood illness. He studied theology at the University of Paris under Alexander of Hales whose disciple he became…later receiving a doctorate in theology with Thomas Aquinas in 1257. He was a stunning mind and was named Cardinal-bishop of Albano by Gregory X, and assigned by Gregory to draw up a plan to effect a reconciliation with the church of the East at the 14th council of Lyons—but he died while the council was in session. The fact that there has never been an effective reunion can be laid to the fact that at the strategic time the man who could have done it, Bonaventure, died. He was one of the outstanding philosophers and theologians of the medieval times, known as the “Seraphic Doctor.” Too bad Bonaventure died because reunion between Rome and the East has been on hold ever since. Bonaventure was regarded as the guy who could have got it done—and nobody has arisen yet with his credentials.
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