McCain: Phil Gramm and Fred Malek
McCain Throws Phil Gramm Off the Train/Under the Bus/Over the Side:
Think Progress: Holtz-Eakin: Phil Gramm Is No Longer ‘Giving Advice To Senator McCain’» Since Thursday, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign has been in damage control mode, attempting to distance itself from top economic adviser Phil Gramm’s belief that America is “a nation of whiners” that is only going through a “mental recession.” “Sen. Graham and I, as I said, we have a total disagreement on whether Americans are whiners or not,” McCain told reporters yesterday.
Appearing on PBS’s Nightly Business Report last night, McCain’s senior policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, claimed that because of the comments, Gramm would no longer be giving McCain advice:
GERSH: Is Senator Gramm still giving advice to Senator McCain?
HOLTZ-EAKIN: No.
GERSH: No.
HOLTZ-EAKIN: At — I haven’t spoken to Senator Gramm since the comments took place, and I’m not expecting to...
But the Infamous Dog-Roasting Jew-Counter Fred Malek Is Still in the Boat/on the Bus/Riding the Caboose:
Follow the Malek - Paul Krugman: It’s just a glancing mention in this Times piece on how Fannie Mae won friends and influenced people:
Fannie’s board once included Frederic V. Malek, a longtime friend of the Bush family and a former business partner of the current President Bush.
There’s a bit more to who Malek is:
- He was Nixon’s Jew-counter: he counted Jews at the Bureau of Labor Statistics at his boss’s 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 Bush’s 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 he’s John McCain’s finance co-chairman.
Phil Gramm would probably make a better Treasury Secretary than any Republican we have seen since George Shultz (the jury is still out on Hank Paulson).
Fred Malek has no qualifications whatsoever, save for total sycophancy and a lack of any moral sense whatsoever.
