Swopa must be off doing something either more productive or more entertaining. Therefore I must post Cheney’s disclosure that he worked on the Plame press talking points.
From all-but-admitting that he was the force behind the waterboarding and Gitmo to casually almost admitting to this felony, Cheney is just laughing at us, knowing that he ‘got away with it.’
Back in September when Shrubya warned of economic doomsday if we didn’t immediately give $700 billion to the financial services execs with no-strings attached, Fubar smelled a rat.
Surely, our money is being put to good use? Apparently, getting an accounting for the tens of billions spent to date is strictly on a need to know basis.
However, rest assured that at least those poor financial services execs aren’t suffering! Collectively they’ve received $1.6 billion in compensation for their stellar work:
Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found.The total amount given to nearly 600 executives would cover bailout costs for many of the 116 banks that have so far accepted tax dollars to boost their bottom lines.
See? Knowing this, doesn’t it truly feel better to give than to receive?
*Update* Sadly, you won’t get the chance to tell any of these pillars of our financial services community how happy you are for them in a chance airport encounter - your tax dollars are still supporting their fleet of private jets.
Matt Yglesias caught this bit of double-talk about the Rod Blagojevich indictments coming from the Washington Post’s Shailagh Murray in an online chat yesterday:
There isn’t a reasonable person around who thinks this scandal will taint Obama in any meaningful way, but at the very least, it reminds people of the political world from whence he came. This story could be a useful preamble to something bigger down the road.
Seeing Murray’s eagerness to tolerate phony claims of corruption in the hopes they will prove “useful” in reporting on a hoped-for presidential scandal later, I immediately flashed back to her comments in the summer of 2007, reacting to the actual corruption of a President commuting the sentence of a criminal in his own administration:
Yaawwn. That’s my view of the Libby flap. What on earth did people expect Bush to do?
Apparently her enthusiasm for White House scandal depends greatly on which party is occupying the White House.
Some rock bands are upset that Shrubya has been using their music to illegally torture illegal detainees. The reporter had some fun with this one, raising the obvious question - are they more upset about the fact the music is being used without authorization to torture people illegally, or the fact that listening to their music could be preceived as torture? He even found one self-unaware musician, Stevie Benton of Drowning Pool:
“People assume we should be offended that somebody in the military thinks our song is annoying enough that played over and over it can psychologically break someone down,” he told Spin magazine. “I take it as an honor to think that perhaps our song could be used to quell another 9/11 attack or something like that.”
Some questions weren’t posed, though. Are they really as concerned about the use of their music in illegal torture, or the fact that the Military isn’t paying them royalties (notice RIAA-friendly Metallica not mentioned among the complainers) for the songs. And why has it taken them so damn long to complain?
In a blog for the Chicago Tribune, columnist Eric Zorn responds to the long line of politicians proclaiming yesterday’s arrest and indictment of Gov. Rod Blagojevich to be “a sad day for Illinois”:
Oh, buck up!
Tuesday was a great day in Illinois, a thrilling day, an exciting, hopeful day . . . Perhaps it’s unseemly for a serious person in high office to pump his fist and say “Yessssss!“ as many of the rest of us did.
But look. There have been many sad days in Illinois political history. The days when governors pocketed bribes and steered contracts to big donors. The days when legislation died because its backers hadn’t ponied up. The days when unqualified truckers got commercial driver’s licenses in exchange for cash under the table. . . .
We never learn about these sad days, however, until the happy day when the law pounces and a bit of our faith in the system is restored.
Well said. Happy Fitzmas!
From the Department of Famous Last Words, the Chicago Tribune reported yesterday:
Gov. Rod Blagojevich responded today to the Chicago Tribune’s report that he has been recorded by federal investigators, saying people should “feel free” to tape him because everything he says is lawful.
. . . “I should say if anybody wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it. . . . I can tell you that whatever I say is always lawful and the things I’m interested in are always lawful and if there are any things out there like that, what you’ll hear is a governor who tirelessly and endlessly figures out ways to help average, ordinary working people,” Blagojevich said.
. . . Blagojevich was asked if he felt there was a cloud over his efforts to pick a Senate replacement for President-elect Barack Obama.
“I don’t believe there’s any cloud that hangs over me, I think there’s nothing but sunshine hanging over me,” Blagojevich said.
Today, based at least in part on evidence gathered in tape-recorded conversations, Blagojevich was arrested for soliciting bribes in exchange for naming Obama’s replacement in the Senate.
Judging from the indictment (PDF download), Obama’s team wasn’t interested in paying him off, and the governor was pissed off:
ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that the consultants (Advisor B and another consultant are believed to be on the call at that time) are telling him that he has to “suck it up” for two years and do nothing and give this “motherfucker [the President-elect] his senator. Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him.”
In fact, the taped conversations are almost comical in how completely corrupt Blagojevich is:
99. Later on November 7, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH discussed the open Senate seat in a three-way call with JOHN HARRIS and Advisor B, a Washington D.C.-based consultant. ROD BLAGOJEVICH indicated in the call that if he was appointed as Secretary of Health and Human Services by the President-elect, then ROD BLAGOJEVICH would appoint Senate Candidate 1 to the open Senate seat. HARRIS stated “we wanted our ask to be reasonable and rather than. . .make it look like some sort of selfish grab for a quid pro quo.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that he needs to consider his family and that he is “financially” hurting. HARRIS said that they are considering what will help the “financial security” of the Blagojevich family and what will keep ROD BLAGOJEVICH “politically viable.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated, “I want to make money.”
About 13 years ago, I was living in Chicago and stumbled into a coffeehouse on Belmont Avenue on a chilly day. It was nearly empty except for 3 people at a table with assorted campaign materials. The name was long, but I made a point of remembering it (along with the candidate’s bushy hair) just in case he went on to become famous — it was Blagojevich and some aides, apparently sketching out his upcoming run for the U.S. Congress.
The district had been represented for decades by Dan Rostenkowski, who had been forced out after being indicted (and eventually jailed) for corruption. Little did I know at the time that Blagojevich would be an heir to that part of Chicago’s political tradition, too.
Now that the dust has settled over the bad financial waves that Emperor Shrubya vainly tried to whip back (at least until after the election), more information is now filtering out about the architects of the junk mortgage disaster - starting with the Freddie Mac’s “enablers.”
As you might presume, Freddie’s ‘bad government’ partners include some of the usual suspects, like Newt Gingrich, who pulled in $300,000 to lobby his good buddies in Congress and the misAdministration about “the benefits of the Freddie Mac business model” - i.e. against moves to break up Freddie Mac’s business and spread it among other companies such as commercial banks.
But the Grinchster wasn’t alone - here is the current Repug list of shameful enablers:
•Sen. Alfonse D’Amato of New York, at Park Strategies, $240,000
•Rep. Vin Weber of Minnesota, at Clark and Weinstock, $360,297
•Rep. Susan Molinari of New York, at Washington Group, $300,062
•Susan Hirschmann at Williams and Jensen, former chief of staff to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, $240,790
•Viet Dinh, $300K
Just don’t expect any of these ‘Grinches’ to return any of the misbegotten dough.
With my geriatric car costing me more each year, I thought I’d check out the SF Auto Show on Black Friday. What the hell, right? Man, what a waste of time! Only the Toyota & Honda hybrids could match even the 35mpg my old import got (in its heyday, anyway). WTF?!? My car is like 12 years old - and most of the gasoline sedans made today get worse mileage?
The most disappointing thing is that there were even fewer alternative fuel teaser vehicles out there than the last time I went, several years ago. In the token ‘green room’ Calcar.org was demonstrating a plug-in conversion kit for the Prius (sorry fubar, too damn expensive for something that voids your warranty!), a conversion kit for a Scion to make it run on vegetable oil and a conversion kit for a Taurus to make it run on CNG.
The manufacturers had a few concept cars in their booths. For example, Mitsubishi had an electric vehicle, the MiEV on display. Mini had a graphic display of an electric Mini Cooper. ‘Concept’ is apparently a code word in the automotive industry that means ’something we’ll never sell you,’ or more succinctly ‘inconceivable’ that you’ll ever be able to buy it here in the U.S.
VW was displaying a diesel station wagonette that had okay mileage, and if you are fortunate enough to live near a biodiesel station, you could kind of rationalize that purchase.
The North Hall, featuring mostly Japanese imports was buzzing with activity. The South Hall, mostly ‘Big Three’ U.S. manufacturers along with expensive Euro imports was mostly buzzing with flies. You could almost smell the stench of carrion in the mostly silent hall.
The only real fun I had was by the Ford booth. Ford had some dorky fake robot giving their car pitch. I translated for the folks standing near me “Warning! Warning! Unless you give us $75 billion in bailouts we will destroy Washington D.C.!”
What a frigging waste of time. I want my plug-in hybrid!!!! And I want it now!!!
(Image via Suitably Flip.)
One of the tidbits of news that seeped out in the wake of the roundly criticized weekend bailout of Citigroup was this report from Justin Rood of ABC News:
AIG, Citibank and a number of other federally bailed-out financial institutions have no plans to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in sports team sponsorships, even as they take billions in taxpayer support, ABC News has found.
In boom times, the sponsorships were seen as a way to advertise the firms’ “brands” and appeal to potential customers.
I’d like to join the call from skippy the bush kangaroo and a pair of righty blogs that U.S. taxpayers deserve a share of the action here. But rather than replacing the existing names, I think this should be treated as a co-branding opportunity — “Citi Taxpayers Field,” “Wachovia Taxpayers Center,” etc. — just to make sure everybody knows who owes us some payback.
As an alternative, I’d be willing to support simply naming every arena or stadium involved after Barack Obama, if only to see if it would make Grover Norquist’s head explode.
For all the political rhetoric about ‘The Children’ (don’t pols always trot them out to defend positions on…well just about everything?), it seems like the US really doesn’t give a shit about The Children. How else can you explain the INS treating children like animals, or the hundreds of thousands of American children that went hungry in 2007?
I mean like - WTF?!?