McCain Wants Ballmer For His Cabinet

While many people jumped all over presidential hopeful John McCain's wrong-headed view on network neutrality, few noticed his infuriating love for Microsoft. "[T]he 70 year old presidential hopeful also said that he would ask Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to serve on his cabinet to deal with technology issues if elected. He did not however say what position Ballmer might be hired in, but did joke that he might consider him for a diplomatic position, such as ambassador to China."

Comments

But a sad Joke

[Anonymous Coward]

McCain was once a Republican I could vote for: His own man. But a few years ago he became little more than a lapdog for the RNC. Makes you wonder what kind of dirt they have on him. He's not White House material. Once maybe, but not anymore. Not because I think he's become crooked, but because I think he's become weak.

McCain doesn't have a chance anyway

[The Analog Kid]

He is old, and he would be the oldest President if he won and he also supports the unpopular Iraq War. If Fred Thompson enters the race which is just a formality now, there will be no chance McCain will grab the Republican nomination.

Re:McCain's Bad Taste

[Dachannien]

You act like John McCain made it up. It's actually an old parody cover that came out of the Iran hostage crisis of 1979.

By the way, I thought it was kinda funny.

Criminals?

[Tom]

Err... Balmer is the CEO of a convicted criminal corporation.

In a country where convicted criminals can lose the right to vote, you can also go to the White House for being one? That's not really something that can be explained in english without getting into some kind of semantic Moebius loop, can it?

Re:Criminals?

[EvilRyry]

convicted criminal corporation vs you can also go to the White House for being one

Is Ballmer a convict or is it Microsoft? He is the CEO of a company that is constantly involved in lawsuits, but can you name one large company that isn't? And does that make the CEO a criminal? Regardless of what you may think of him, he is one of the world's most powerful voices in the world of technology, so I am sure his word counts.

And while we're at it, don't forget to criticize George W Bush for using the constitution as toilet paper. I was trying to think of something that may get modded insightful as a response, but I don't have the time at the moment.

Ballmer is the head of a company that is violating US law. He is not trying to fix this. Rather he seems quite content with the current situation. Microsoft continues to force its way into new markets by abusing its monopoly power, and tightening its grips on its existing markets. They seem to be ignoring the very weak settlement of their antitrust suit, but by putting a pretty face on, no one seems to notice! Ballmer undoubtedly has a hand in this, he is a criminal and an enemy to the free (as in capitalism) market.
Ballmer may be well known, but he should be thrown into a pool of sharks, not into a government office.

Re:Lies, not Truth, Appeal to the American Voter

[Zeinfeld]

McCain is running as a Faux version of his 2000 personna. Flip flopping on his 2000 positions loses all the people drawn to his 'straight talk express' and the religious right is making clear they don't buy it.

If Balmer wanted to be a politician he could run for President himself, he is a vastly more credible candidate than the rest of the Republican field to date.

Romney is running against the state he was governor of, openly attacking liberals for holding the views he claimed to hold five years ago, another flip flopper.

Worst flip flopper of all is Giuliani, he was for terrorism before he was against it. Back when he was running for Major of NYC it was convenient to pander to the expat Irish vote by supporting the IRA. So Giuliani was a regular fixture at Sinn Fein and Noraid fund raisers. In 1994 he gave a 'humanitarian award', the Crystal Apple to Gerry Adams, who blew up a shopping mall 18 months later.

Thompson is busy hiring staff embroilled in the worst Bush administration scandals. And Ron Paul will have been drowned in the slime generated by the administration noise machine long before the primaries.

What is particularly disgusting about this crew is the snearing contempt they have for anyone who does not share their exact views. There were plenty of people who understood what the Iraq war was almost certain to become, it was not even a close call if you knew the history of the British occupation. Put one of those people in charge, not the blind sheep.

Re:Indeed, a bought man

[ichigo 2.0]

I had mod points but decided to respond.

Even worse, if the population increases faster than we mine gold, then we get bad deflation.

And deflation is bad because?

Deflation increases the value of money. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who you are. For wages, deflation increases unemployment, because the real price of labor goes up. The same is true in reverse, inflation increases employment because real wages go down. However, from an economic point of view, nothing has changed. Increased employment through inflation is essentially reducing the wages of those who are employed and giving it in form of new jobs to the unemployed.

Another claimed "negative" side of deflation is that if you have borrowed money, the real amount you end up paying grows as the value of money increases. With inflation your debt decreases the more inflation eats the value of money. Obviously this causes problems in a central bank-run monetary system. Which however isn't an argument for paper money, but is an argument for letting the market decide what the rate is. In periods of great inflation, this would cause high interest rates, and in periods of deflation, the interest rate would be zero, and in some cases negative.

Tying inflation or deflation to the amount of a specific metal that we happen to dig out of the ground is a pretty bad way to do things. See what happened during the price revolution, where nations rapidly increased their silver production, in part causing a lot of inflation.

Oh my. The awful price revolution, where prices increased sixfold in a period of 150 years. This is obviously why paper money is superior to a gold standard!

Do you know how much a 1966 dollar is worth today? 6 dollars. That is the same sixfold increase in prices, in a period of 40 years, and that's for a relatively strong fiat currency . To make an apples to apples comparison, we need to compare the price revolution to a similar case of extreme growth of money supply. A good example would be Germany, from the year 1914-1924. During this time period, the prices in German papiermark grew an incredible one trillion times!

Compared to the horrors of paper money, a gold standard is rock solid. Such stability would increase the predictability of the economy, and would benefit almost everyone. There is one huge problem with moving to a gold standard however. Losing the power to inflate, means that the US government would have to pay for military expenses through taxation, instead of just borrowing money from the Chinese and inflating the debt away. If the people actually saw in their taxation how much it all costs, the empire would dissolve overnight.

Re:Oh God

[aurum42]

And here are citations for Halliburton's and Cheney's involvement with "axis of evil" fulcrum Iran: First, from Fox News of all places.

An excerpt:

While he headed the Houston-based oil services and construction company, Cheney strongly criticized sanctions against countries like Iran and Libya. President Clinton cut off all U.S. trade with Iran in 1995 because of Tehran's support for terrorism. ...

Much of Halliburton's business with Iran comes through Halliburton Products & Services Ltd., a subsidiary incorporated in the Cayman Islands and based in the United Arab Emirates. Halliburton Products & Services opened a Tehran office in early 2000, before Cheney left Halliburton to become Bush's running mate.

And something more current regarding Halliburton's current relationship with Iran.