A few words about George Santos

The newly elected Congresscritter for New York's 3d district to the US House of Representatives is George Santos.

As most of the literate world knows by now, George Santos is a liar. Bigly. Wherever his account of his life can be placed up against documentable facts, his account falls apart. His response to the disclosure of some of his lies is that, yes, he did tell untruths, create "embellishments" etc., but no he is not a fraud and did nothing criminal.

Okay: Santos' lies are what we have come to expect from politicians and are not the biggest story in recent history. It is not even the biggest story of this hour concerning the still-unorganized House of Representatives of the 118th Congress. But I do have to say a few words about Santos. Or, specifically, TWO words with a little embellishment. The two words are: Goldman Sachs?

I am surprised that anyone would tell the lie that he told about having worked at Goldman Sachs. Republicans of "the base" hate GS because it is an example of the globalist Big Banks and their scheming coastal ways. Heck, Heidi Cruz is a Big Shot at Goldman Sachs. The Trump gang, as part of their ugliness, singled out her ugliness as part of their attack on her husband, Senator Ted Cruz, during the 2016 primary reason. It isn't just the unflattering photograph of her that made her a flash point, though. It is her high-level job at ... Goldman Sachs.

Now Republicans are falsely PRETENDING to have worked with Heidi Cruz at Goldman Sachs? That's a change.

From what I've heard and read, the Democratic candidate running against George Santos (Robert Zimmerman) did have information due to the standard "oppo research" that indicated Santos was full of Shiite. But he did not use it.

Apparently, the line of attack that Santos should not be trusted BECAUSE of the Goldman Sachs connection seemed too tempting. "Goldman Sachs is NOT valuable experience for a Congresscritter," they said in effect. "Goldman Sachs is part of the problem, not part of the solution, in the contemporary USA." Once they went down that route, it would have seemed blatant back-covering to say, "and he may not in fact have worked for Goldman Sachs."

Those are my few words for this morning.

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...

Recent Controversies Involving Nassim Taleb, Part I

I've written about Nassim Taleb on earlier occasions in this blog. I'll let you do the search yourself, dear reader, for the full background. The short answer to the question "who is Taleb?" is this: he is a 57 year old man born in Lebanon, educated in France, who has been both a hedge fund manager and a derivatives trader. He retired from active participation from the financial world sometime between 2004 and 2006, and has been a full-time writer and provocateur ever since. Taleb's writings for the general public began where one might expect -- in the field where he had made his money -- and he explained certain financial issues to a broad audiences in a very dramatic non-technical way. Since then, he has widened has fields of study, writing about just about everything, applying the intellectual tools he honed in that earlier work. As you might have gather from the above, I respect Taleb, though I have sometimes been critical of him when my own writing ab...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Search This Blog