Enter a scarf-clad, color-coordinated group of singers.
Condoleeza Rice
Sung by the New Christian Minstrels to the tune of "Winter Wonderland"
PDB Are you listening FBI Memos glistening The hijackers came But she's not to blame Nine-eleven Condoleeza Rice
And in August he'll be on vacation She will have to brief him on the threat Mention that Osama hates the nation Maybe with an airplane or a jet
Later on The Commission Won't be down With her vision A failure to spot What three thousand got Nine-eleven Condoleeza Rice
An elaborate fanfare of jubilant trumpets. With tears of joy in his eyes, host Pat Sajak introduces the President of the United States.
As George W Bush takes center stage with the ecstatic studio audience applauding and speaking in tongues, the Seal of the President of the United States appears from above him and descends into place behind his head like a halo. In flowing white robes Ann Coulter and Peggy Noonan sing "Alleluia! Alleluia!" as a choir of Caucasian angels, strumming miniature golden harps, wordlessly intones celestial melodies from on high.
In an abrupt change of mood, Alan Jackson and Toby Keith enter, flanking the President, playing a jaunty tune on their guitars.
Spider Hole
Sung with a Texas twang by George W Bush to the tune of "Jingle Bells"
Dashing to Iraq With a stopoff in Kuwait Overspend a lot Catch the guy I hate Cheney makes a face Loves inflicting pain ‘Cause everything they’re losing there Is Halliburton’s gain!
Oh, spider hole, spider hole, Shock and awe and bomb Oh what fun it is to try To neutralize Saddam! Silo nukes, Baathist gooks, Nothing there? My bad! Oh what fun to fry the guy Who tried to kill my dad!
Cue nine-minute standing ovation.
See you in 2005 — sure to be a stinking, rotten year!
NASD announced today that it has censured and fined First Command Financial Planning Inc., a Fort Worth, TX broker-dealer, $12 million for making misleading statements and omitting important information when selling mutual fund investments with up-front sales charges of up to 50 percent through a monthly installment method known as a "Systematic Investment Plan."
From that $12 million, First Command is ordered to pay restitution to thousands of customers who purchased a Systematic Investment Plan between Jan.1, 1999 and the present who terminated the plan and paid an effective sales charge greater than 5 percent. All money remaining will be payable to the NASD Investor Education Foundation, to be used for the investor education needs of members of the military and their families. The Foundation will use the funds to support educational programs, materials and research to help equip members of the military community with the knowledge and skills necessary to make informed investment decisions. It is anticipated that the Foundation will receive approximately $8 million.
A mother who admitted killing her baby girl by severing the child's arms was guided by a Bible passage in which Jesus refers to cutting off body parts to cast away sin, the woman's attorney said today.
Dena Schlosser, a 35-year-old housewife with a history of mental illness, has referred to the New Testament passage since the killings, said attorney David Haynes. He told The Associated Press that he believes the passage influenced her method in killing 10-month-old Margaret.
In the Book of Matthew, Jesus says, "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."
Schlosser was charged with capital murder Nov. 22, after she told a 911 operator she had severed her baby's arms. Police found her in the living room, covered in blood, still holding a knife and listening to a church hymn.
Haynes, a Christian who teaches Bible classes at his church, said Schlosser was severely mentally ill at the time of the killing and misinterpreted Christ's words. Haynes believes Christ was simply encouraging followers to cast out anything that came between them and God.
"Many things can be justified if you chop a couple of verses out of the Bible and say 'OK, these words mean what they say and say what they mean," Haynes said.
Somebody please explain that to 51% of the American population, which is on the fast track to becoming the collective antagonist of a third-rate Stephen King potboiler: "Police found her in the living room, covered in blood, still holding a knife and listening to a church hymn."
FOX is turning a grown adopted child's search for her father into a reality/game show called "Who's Your Daddy."
On the Jan. 3, 90-minute special, the woman will face eight men — one is her father, and the fakes' goal is to trick her into thinking they are.
If, after three elimination rounds, she picks out her real father, she wins $100,000. If she picks the wrong one, the fake daddy gets the big-bucks prize.
Don Weston used to feel special cruising the world in his 100-foot yacht. Yet on a recent morning at the International Boat Show here, the retired Cincinnati businessman stood on his upper deck, overshadowed by giants.
Next door was the Corrie Lynn, a 130-foot cruiser with a king-sized Jacuzzi, five cabins, retractable plasma TV screens and twin jet skis. Down the dock was the 197-foot Alfa Four, with an indoor gym, swimming pool and helicopter pad. The talk of the show was billionaire Paul Allen's new pleasure boat, Octopus, which extends over 400 feet and has a basketball court, music studio and personal submarine. That's about to be topped by a yacht under construction in Dubai for a Saudi client. It's expected to exceed 500 feet, the size of a small cruise ship.
"I used to think I had a good-sized boat," sighs Mr. Weston. "Now it's like a dinghy compared to these others. How big are they going to get?"
The yacht business reflects a new arms race breaking out among the wealthy. With the population of millionaires soaring to more than two million in the U.S., the rich are finding it harder to set themselves apart. Many are turning to supersized luxury consumer products to rise above the pack. Today's super-wealthy, and the companies that serve them, are creating a whole new category of high-end products that are priced beyond the reach of mere millionaires.
Megayachts have grown in size from a typical length of 80 feet to 110 feet in the mid-1990s to well over 150 feet today. The market for luxury yachts has more than tripled since 1997, with some boats costing well over $100 million. Dozens of boats longer than 200 feet are now under construction.
[...]
The luxury boom stems from a huge increase in personal fortunes. The wealth held by millionaires world-wide rose to $28.8 trillion as of the end of 2003, according to a separate Capgemini-Merrill study, up 11% from $26 trillion in 2001. That's more than the annual gross domestic products of the U.S., Japan, Germany, France and the United Kingdom combined. Those at the very top appear to be doing especially well recently. The wealth controlled by individuals in North America with more than $30 million in financial assets -- such as stocks and bonds, but not including real estate -- jumped 45% to $3.04 trillion in 2003 from $2.1 trillion in 2002, according to Capgemini-Merrill.
A generally rising stock market over the past decade, soaring executive compensation, higher real-estate values and lower taxes on the wealthy are all cited as explanations for the rising wealth. Also, more and more entrepreneurs who started family businesses after World War II are cashing out because of industry consolidation, creating what private bankers like to call "major liquidity events." Today's instant multimillionaires tend to be younger than the rich of the past, and more likely to splurge on lifestyle goods to differentiate themselves from hoi polloi affluent people.
Edward N. Wolff, a professor of economics at New York University who studies wealth, likens modern-day big spenders to nobles at the court of France's Louis XIV, who reigned from 1643 to 1715. To ensure the nobles' loyalty, Louis continually raised the "entry price" of being in his court, requiring them to wear increasingly expensive clothes and keep larger and larger homes. The nobles' need for greater wealth made them even more dependent on the king's good graces, and left them less money to spend on arms.
It is obscene for a class of people owning 400-foot yachts with helicopter pads to talk of the "hedonism" of same-sex couples that want to marry.
Here's your real "ownership society." These are the people George W Bush calls his "base," and it was for them he created the biggest deficit in American history by cutting their taxes, growing the government, invading Iraq, and masquerading that he shares the so-called moral values of those with less than eight figures in liquid assets.
Coveted invitations to join the Bush-Cheney inauguration celebration at the highest levels — $250,000 and $100,000 — have begun landing in the mailboxes of wealthy Republicans and corporate chieftains across the country.
And our town's Nancy Kinder is part of the national team in charge of harvesting those top-tier sponsorships.
As finance chair of the Presidential Inauguration Committee, Kinder, along with committee leaders Bill DeWitt, Brad Freeman, Mercer Reynolds and Jeanne L. Phillips, has the megaresponsibility of raising $45 million, the price tag for the four days of inaugural festivities. Kinder was offered the plum position directly by the White House.
With only a few weeks to raise that super sum, Kinder, who was one of the top female fund-raisers in the country for the Bush-Cheney campaign, is charging full steam ahead. But don't expect to see her in the D.C. office that has been reserved with her name on the door. This high-powered fund-raiser is conducting her inaugural business from home base.
The high rollers who pony up at the six-figure levels, with only 100 available in each category, earn multiple tickets to a variety of parties and special events during the Jan. 18-21 celebration. And despite the high price tag, Kinder says the VIP packages are going fast.
She adds that the pricy sponsorships allow ordinary citizens to enjoy the four days of festivities at a more reasonable price. It will cost regular folks $150 each to attend an inaugural ball.
Nancy Kinder is better known as the wife of Richard Kinder, an ex-president of Enron Corp., Bush’s top career patron, according to the Center for Public Integrity.
During the 2005 fiscal year, the federal government will spend $170-million to support programs that preach that sex is to be reserved for marriage only, and a number of the recipients of those dollars will be faith-based. That's more than double what was spent in 2001.
But unlike Bush's energetic concern over educational accountability and standards reflected in No Child Left Behind, the curricula for abstinence-only sex education programs are not vetted for accuracy. (There was an attempt by Democratic lawmakers in 2002 to require medical accuracy as a condition of receiving money for these programs, but that effort was voted down by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.)
So rather than getting the tools they need to make sensible choices about their health and bodies, young people are being told outrageous lies, such as how 5 to 10 percent of women who have abortions will become sterile (when there's no correlation between elective abortions and sterility) or how condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission 31 percent of the time (when a study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that consistent condom use resulted in a zero transmission rate.)
The congressional study, conducted by the Special Investigations Division of the Committee on Government Reform at the behest of Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., found "false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health" in more than 80 percent of the most popular abstinence-only curricula.
The result is not that young people are scared off sex until marriage. (Even most of those who take virginity pledges engage in premarital sex.) It's that they don't bother taking precautions against sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy. They are led to believe that condoms are ineffective.
"We hear from kids all the time about the myths they've been fed," said Marilyn Anderson, director of education at Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida. "The whole idea is to scare kids and make them think they'll get HIV by having sex. But what's walking into our clinic says that kids are having sex, just without condoms."
$170 million just to say "Just Say No"! "That's more than double what was spent in 2001." They weren't kidding when they said 9/11 changed everything.
Shit like this just makes me want to get high and have sex.
If the stock market's glory days are over, why borrow against the future to invest in a losing gamble?
Assuming the US had privatized Social Security on the first day of the Bush presidency in January 2001, then using the Dow Jones Industrial Average as our yardstick, your hypothetical retirement nest egg would have lost 0.4% over the course of the four years of his first term up until the market's close on Friday. (The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened at 10,587.59 on the first day of Dubya's appointment to the presidency, and closed at 10,543.22 Friday.) A net loss of 0.4% is even worse than the crappy yield you get in a savings account at your neighborhood bank. And, to make matters still worse, we are clearly moving into a period of renewed inflation in which your money will be worth less. Goodbye, life savings!
On the other hand, the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened at 3,255.99 on the first day and closed at 10,587.59 on the last day of the Clinton presidency. Using the index as a broad barometer of the wealth contained in personal investments and 401(k) plans, American assets realized a gain of 325% after the eight years of his administration.
If you want to make a case against Social Security privatization then the pseudo-CEO presidency of George W Bush is Exhibit A, associated as it is with executive entitlements, a rock-solid pattern of incompetence, a total lack of accountability, a history of nonperformance, an oil-industry policy rubber stamp, scandals among his biggest contributors (Enron, Merrill Lynch, etc.), and a dangerously weakened dollar concurrent with higher oil prices.
Maybe the only way privatization could really work is with a Democrat in the White House. That's how wealth is not only more evenly distributed, but properly generated, as recent history shows.
