culture, politics, commentary, criticism

Wednesday, February 28, 2007
The fall and fall of the Bush economy. Tilting the playing field upward, part 79 (
Investment News):
New orders for durable goods manufactured in the U.S. dropped 7.8% to $17.1 billion in January -- the worst month ever for non-defense goods, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. [...]

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast that orders for durable goods would fall 2.5%, while economists surveyed by MarketWatch predicted a 5.5% drop.
Is this performance terrible everywhere, or only in certain areas of the economy? Take a guess...
Orders for non-defense capital goods fell by a record 19.9%, or $16.3 billion to $65.4 million.

New defense orders for capital goods posted a 10.7%, or $900 million, gain in January to $8.8 billion.
On a related note, something else happened in the stock market yesterday: "Biggest fall since 9-11." Just imagine what a consistently ignored and newly strengthened Al Qaeda could do to the markets if it chooses to.
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Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Who said it? "The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States... An example that comes immediately to mind has to do with efforts to develop the resources of the former Soviet Union in the Caspian Sea area. It is a region rich in oil and gas. Unfortunately, Iran is sitting right in the middle of the area and the United States has declared unilateral economic sanctions against that country. As a result, American firms are prohibited from dealing with Iran and find themselves cut out of the action, both in terms of opportunities that develop with respect to Iran itself, and also with respect to our ability to gain access to Caspian resources."
Dick Cheney, June 23, 1998.
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Thursday, February 15, 2007
Caesura. See you in a week or so.
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Wednesday, February 14, 2007
"Put your hands down."


In a brightly lighted basement gym, [Bush] visited children bending paperclips into different shapes and urged Americans to volunteer as mentors. He talked not of armies in Iraq but of "armies of compassion" at home. Even the kids seemed confused. One asked why he came. "I came to see you," the president responded. As the cameras clicked away, a 7-year-old boy made peace signs. "Put your hands down," Bush chided playfully. [Peter Baker, WaPo]

Photo Credit: By Gerald Herbert -- Associated Press
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What's a war worth? What else could the money spent on the Iraq invasion have bought? Take your pick. (From
John Allen Paulos at ABC News):
$3,000 grant to every man, woman and child in the USA
$150 grant to every human being on earth

130 Environmental Protection Agencies
18 Departments of Education
170 National Science Foundations
200 National Cancer Institutes
1,500 National Highway Transportation Safety Administrations
28 Departments of Homeland Security
If you could spend a dollar a second, it would take you 32,000 years to spend what the neocons have spent on their Great Adventure: their spectacular failure in Iraq, achieved in less than five years.
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Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Lindsey Graham, coward. Another Republican ostrich displays its puffed-up head (Jess Bravin,
WSJ):
Lesson for Sen. Lindsey Graham: next time you bash a ghost, make sure she’s not in the audience.

Monday night, the South Carolina Republican joined Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.) for a panel discussion following a Washington screening of “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,” an HBO documentary made by Kennedy’s niece, Rory Kennedy, about the 2004 abuse scandal in the Iraqi prison run by U.S. forces. As a veteran Air Force lawyer, Graham has spoken with authority on military law issues, and seemingly sought to navigate a course between President Bush’s claims of absolute power over enemy prisoners and humanitarian law concerns over compliance with the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture and other treaties.

Kennedy complained that low-ranking soldiers took the fall for Abu Ghraib, while high-level officials got a pass. Graham wouldn’t go that far, but he did take credit for blocking Bush’s nomination of an architect of the prisoner policy, Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes II, to a federal appeals court. And he added that the military police commander in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, got off easy with a demotion to colonel. She should have faced a court-martial, he declared.

Apparently unbeknownst to Graham — he arrived a few minutes after formal introductions pointed her out — Karpinski, who is interviewed in the documentary, was a guest at the screening. And moderator Jeffrey Toobin, the New Yorker magazine’s legal correspondent, invited her to reply.

“Sen. Graham…I consider you as cowardly as Rumsfeld, as Sanchez, and Miller and all of them,” said Karpinski, who has long claimed to be a scapegoat for superiors including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller.

Graham replied that those higher-ups deserved a share of the blame, but “this was going on unchecked for weeks and months, and Rumsfeld was in Washington and you were on the ground, so I stand by my statement.” Noting that Karpinski happens to reside in South Carolina, he acknowledged, “I’ve probably lost your vote.”
So Homer Simpson turns out to be a senator from South Carolina: "D'oh!"
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Monday, February 12, 2007
Don't it make your red eyes blue. We've said it before and we'll say it again: Red is bad for business, blue is good for business. When it comes to the average American's investment in a 401(k) plan, say, the Bush administration's approach loses money while Clinton's made it. We see this in the markets at large, but we see it pointedly in narrower examples, like the very blue Costco versus very red Wal-Mart. Why? Because a more enlightened, less greed-driven, holistic approach to capitalism is a long-term economic stimulus (
Barron's):
Costco is one of a handful of retailers that has flourished despite Wal-Mart Stores' (WMT) onslaught; Wal-Mart's more downscale Sam's Club chain runs second to Costco. With its strong labor relations, low employee turnover and liberal benefits, Costco has been called an "anti-Wal-Mart." Its approach has paid dividends, because Costco, based in Issaquah, Wash., hasn't encountered the same community resistance as Wal-Mart when it has sought to open new stores. [...]

[Jim] Sinegal, 70, also is one of the biggest bargains among big-company CEOs: In an era of seven- and eight-figure pay packages for CEOs, Sinegal earned a salary of $350,000 in Costco's latest fiscal year, which ended in August. He garnered other compensation of about $100,000.

What's more, Sinegal got no bonus last year, after the company determined that it failed to measure properly the appropriate date for certain option grants from 1996 to 2002, although no evidence of fraud or falsification of records was found. "Jim wouldn't let the board give him a bonus. His view was that the option glitch happened on his watch," Munger says. "How many people behave like that? No wonder everyone loves him."

Unlike Buffett, who draws a salary of just $100,000 as CEO of Berkshire, Sinegal isn't a billionaire. He owns Costco stock worth about $135 million and has options on 1.2 million shares.

Sinegal's compensation and demeanor offer a welcome contrast to former Home Depot chief executive officer Robert Nardelli, who alienated employees with his autocratic style and whose gargantuan exit package of $210 million didn't sit well with shareholders. Costco and Home Depot were two of retailing's biggest success stories in the 1990s, but Home Depot has since lost its way while Costco's growth has continued unabated.
Sounds good, but does it pan out in the value of the stock? Five years ago your investment in Wal-Mart would have lost 20 percent, while your investment in Costco would have gained 20 percent. Quite a spread, reminiscent of the Bush deficit versus Clinton surplus, wouldn't you say?


Costco is blue; Wal-Mart is red. Compare Wal-Mart's slow decay versus Costco's healthy growth.
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Thursday, February 08, 2007
Uncle Fucker. Like they're not making enough blood money already, Republican defense contractors tied to the Bush family backdate their stock options to make even more (
Investment News):
The Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil charges against a pair of executives at Engineered Support Systems Inc., accusing them of backdating stock options between 1997 and 2002.

The SEC charged Gary Gerhardt, the St. Louis-based defense contractor's former chief financial officer, and Steven Landmann, the former controller, of granting its directors between $15 million and $20 million in unauthorized compensation as a result of the grants.

The complaints alleged that Mr. Gerhardt instructed Mr. Landmann to backdate company stock option grants to coincide with historically low closing prices of the company’s common stock.

Mr. Gerhardt and Mr. Landmann received $1.9 million and $518,972, respectively.
garyAnd, naturally, CFO Gary C. Gerhardt (pictured) is a generous financial supporter of a certain George W Bush. Guess what? So is Controller Steven Landmann.

Why is Gary smiling? (I mean, besides the $1.9 million he gave himself for pretending his stock options were older.) Because war profits are so fucking sweet! Here are a couple more fun facts:

Annual Engineered Support Systems Revenues:
1999 — $147 million (Clinton impeachment — no war.)
2003 — $573 million ("He tried to kill my dad" — war!)

War means quadruple revenue! Who cares how many children Bush-Cheney are willing to kill — these St. Louis contractors are making a fortune! And it's only getting better: "Engineered Support Systems is rapidly approaching revenues of $1 billion."

And here's the ugliest part of all: "President George W. Bush’s uncle, William H.T. “Bucky” Bush, was part of a group of outside directors at a defense contractor [Engineered Support Systems] who realized about $6 million in unauthorized pay from an options backdating scheme, according to U.S. securities investigators." That's right, Saddam Hussein tried to kill Dubya's daddy and Bucky's brother.
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Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Recall the Iraq War.
AP via FoxNews:
The following recall has been announced:

About 985,000 Easy-Bake Ovens sold since last May, manufactured by Easy-Bake, a division of Hasbro Inc., because children can get their hands or fingers caught in the oven's opening, which poses an entrapment or burn hazard. The company has received 29 reports of children getting their fingers or hands caught in the product, including five reports of burns.
Let's get this straight: Hasbro recalls Easy-Bake Ovens because a grand total of five children's hands had been burned, but 46,000 children had lost their lives in Iraq by 2004?

Has America no conscience left at all? Are our children's unburned fingers worth more than Iraqi children's lives? Are we so decadent and impotent that we can recall toys that harm children but not recall wars that kill them?
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Scooter's Lil' Bowtie. "Former Ambassador Richard Carlson is on the Advisory Committee of Libby's defense fund. Hey, Tucker: who's your daddy? Do you or does MSNBC disclose this connection in the course of your running commentary on the case? No, I didn't think so. Oh, and while we're over there, who's that in charge of the Libby defense fund? Why, it's Max Sembler, Lieberman's go to fundraiser for his last campaign bid. Small world, eh?

"And, as all the world knows, bloggers can't be trusted as reporters or analysts of news because they are partisan and profane. Bloggers, it seems, have an agenda." — Pachacutec at Firedoglake.
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Tuesday, February 06, 2007
How the US spreads democracy.

Iraqi boys in a refugee camp in Baghdad play with toy guns.
Photograph: Namir Noor-Eldeen/Reuters
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Prematurely depressed, again. We've got two years of this pseudo-campaign horse-race flag-waving issue-framing photo-op soundbite-spitting pundit-spinning bullshit to wade through, and I won't even be able to vote for who I want in the White House —
Russ Feingold.
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Thursday, February 01, 2007
From one hand to the other.

ExxonMobil profit, Q4 2006:
$10.3 billion.
Result: The largest annual profit ever for an American company.

American taxpayer loss in Iraq, Q4 2006: $24.0 billion.
Result: The largest national debt ever for the American people.
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Dick Cheney: Poet Laureate. Jon Stewart's Cheney poetry joke last night reminded us of a longer
Cheney poem found in the Washington Post, written over three years ago, back when just 512 American soldiers had died so far in Cheney's manic quest to dominate the Middle East. An excerpt:
In his skull
resides the nation's most chilling intelligence.
Lynne and their daughters never ask about it.

Is this too much information
for a man
with a sick heart?

Cheney was found best-suited
to being a funeral director.
His voice is soft and even,
like an airline pilot's.
When shaking hands,
Cheney grips hard for a split-second
then pulls away quickly,
as if he's touched a hot stove.
You can't hear what Dick is saying.
If only we couldn't hear what Dick is saying, and never had to hear what he is saying ever again, the world would be a better place for it.
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Greatest Hits · Alternatives to First Command Financial Planning · First Command, last resort, Part 3 · Part 2 · Part 1 · Stealing $50K from a widow: Wells Real Estate · Leo Wells, REITs and divine wealth · Sex-crazed Red State teenagers · What I hate: a manifesto · Spawn of Darleen Druyun · All-American high school sex party · Why is Ken Lay smiling? · Poppy's Enron birthday party · The Saudi money laundry and the president's uncle · The sentence of Enron's John Forney · The holiness of Neil Bush's marriage · The Silence of Cheney: a poem · South Park Christians · Capitalist against Bush: Warren Buffett · Fastow childen vs. Enron children · Give your prescription money to your old boss · Neil Bush, hard-working matchmaker · Republicans against fetuses and pregnant women · Emboldened Ken Lay · Faith-based jails · Please die for me so I can skip your funeral · A brief illustrated history of the Republican Party · Nancy Victory · Soldiers become accountants · Beware the Merrill Lynch mob · Darleen Druyun's $5.7 billion surprise · First responder funding · Hoovering the country · First Command fifty percent load · Ken Lay and the Atkins diet · Halliburton WMD · Leave no CEO behind · August in Crawford · Elaine Pagels · Profitable slave labor at Halliburton · Tom Hanks + Mujahideen · Sharon & Neilsie Bush · One weekend a month, or eternity · Is the US pumping Iraqi oil to Kuwait? · Cheney's war · Seth Glickenhaus: Capitalist against Bush · Martha's blow job · Mark Belnick: Tyco Catholic nut · Cheney's deferred Halliburton compensation · Jeb sucks sugar cane · Poindexter & LifeLog · American Family Association panic · Riley Bechtel and the crony economy · The Book of Sharon (Bush) · The Art of Enron · Plunder convention · Waiting in Kuwait: Jay Garner · What's an Army private worth? · Barbara Bodine, Queen of Baghdad · Sneaky bastards at Halliburton · Golf course and barbecue military strategy · Enron at large · Recent astroturf · Cracker Chic 2 · No business like war business · Big Brother · Martha Stewart vs. Thomas White · Roger Kimball, disappointed Republican poetry fan · Cheney, Lay, Afghanistan · Terry Lynn Barton, crimes of burning · Feasting at the Cheney trough · Who would Jesus indict? · Return of the Carlyle Group · Duct tape is for little people · GOP and bad medicine · Sears Tower vs Mt Rushmore · Scared Christians · Crooked playing field · John O'Neill: The man who knew · Back to the top






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