Chimpie's poll numbers remind me of the tech stock bubble crash of 2000-2001. Lucent, previously the darling of the investment community, had soared from an initial IPO of $24 (or close to that) to $80 a share and I had colleagues who were shifting their entire portfolios into Lucent stock, with some even borrowing money to buy even more of Lucent on margin. Considering that these folks were also working for a Lucent-owned subsidiary, this was really not the wisest of moves, but hell--it was going to $100/share!
Then it dropped to $75, $73, $70...well, a buying opportunity, they said, a little profit-taking, that's all. They bought more. $69...$65...$61...$55. Some started dumping shares of exercising their options. $37...$29...$17...by now it was clear that there was going to be no recovery, as it was revealed that like many other high-flyers, Lucent had engaged in questionable practices to make their books look good. For example, they loaned money to customers to buy Lucent equipment, thus logging the loans as assets along with the sales which had yet to actually put any gear into the hands of customers, who then were to use it to make money to pay back the loans. Got it? Yeah, it sounded corrupt to me too.
$12...$11...and the joke became, "Hey, it can't go below zero dollars." $7...$4...we began to wonder if that was strictly true. It's been hovering between $1 and $3.25 a share ever since, and sinking last time I looked.
And so it is with the Chimpie administration. Bush is at 35 percent approval rating, when it once was at 90-something right after 9/11.
Well, at least it can't go below zero, ha ha ha. Unless you consider the finger in the dike of corruption that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has as one of the digits on his left hand. He's being arraigned today, expected to plead not guilty. He's facing 30 years in prison. Patrick Fitzgerald's appearance on Friday to present his case, according to Newsweek, even impressed Bush himself. If Libby flips...
It can go below zero.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
How It's Breaking Down for Bush
There is a fault line running through the executive branch of our government right now. On one side is El Presidente Chimperor Chimpie Bush, our incurious and rather dimwitted chief executive. Allied with him are Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Condoleezza Rice, and the Bush clan. On the other side of the increasingly widening divide is the Cheney cabal, consisting of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Scooter "I"m a-goin to Prison" Libby, new VP chief of staff David Addington and new assistant to the vice president for national security affair John Hannah. Now that Scooter has been indicted and Rover is still under investigation, it looks definite that somebody is going to take a fall, and if Seymour Hersh is right, it's going to get very big and very heavy.
Rove is probably right now telling Chimpie that he'd better be prepared to throw Cheney to the sharks if he wants to survive as president. Hell, that's what Nixon tried to do by letting the prosecution go forward against Spiro Agnew. Distraction is the name of the game. Trouble is, Cheney has far more power that Agnew did and Cheney is no pie-eyed idealist who thinks Chimpie is Our Saviour. In fact, he knows good and well what the Bush clan is capable of, up to and including assassination (remember CIA-chief William Casey's convenient death during Iran-Contra?), so you can bet he has kept a few trunks and suitcases secreted that contain a plan of escape should the Bushits realize that the only way to sever th umbilical cord of corruption between Chimpie and Cheney is to make him the scapegoat for all that twisting of intelligence leading to war. Then a sudden heart attack, elaborate funeral and inflated rhetoric after substantial revelations in the press, and Chimpie scrimps out his last months in the White House, broken, but not destroyed.
You see, if it is suddenly revealed that Cheney was behind the intelligence cooking and that Bush was just a gullible dupe, no one would be surprised, much as when Reagan said he couldn't remember and guns for hostages negotiations or arms for the contra forces in Nicaragua. He was the "amiable dunce" to Bush's irritatingly incurious ignoramus. Since George W. has always been protected by Mommy Barbara and Daddy Bush and their moneyed friends like Prince Bandar (among the Saudis, for example) they've got the will and the resources to really stick it to Cheney if it will pull the prosecutorial bloodhounds off the scent of a panicked Chimperor, up to and including having Cheney essentially take a bullet for team Bush.
But Cheney is a wily insider, with a lot of keys to closets in which skeletons for every major conservative pol are hidden, and he won't hesitate to call in all and any favors he can to salvage his own skin. And he knows that if the stain can be splashed on Bush, he can remain the enigma he's always wanted to be and return to Wyoming fo clip his Halliburton coupons for his remaining days.
The real battle royale will not be between Patrick Fitzgerald and the corrupt scum of the exeuctive branch, but rather betwen the White House and the Naval Observatory. Chimpie and Cheney are scheduled for a steel-caged death match.
It's gonna be great!
Rove is probably right now telling Chimpie that he'd better be prepared to throw Cheney to the sharks if he wants to survive as president. Hell, that's what Nixon tried to do by letting the prosecution go forward against Spiro Agnew. Distraction is the name of the game. Trouble is, Cheney has far more power that Agnew did and Cheney is no pie-eyed idealist who thinks Chimpie is Our Saviour. In fact, he knows good and well what the Bush clan is capable of, up to and including assassination (remember CIA-chief William Casey's convenient death during Iran-Contra?), so you can bet he has kept a few trunks and suitcases secreted that contain a plan of escape should the Bushits realize that the only way to sever th umbilical cord of corruption between Chimpie and Cheney is to make him the scapegoat for all that twisting of intelligence leading to war. Then a sudden heart attack, elaborate funeral and inflated rhetoric after substantial revelations in the press, and Chimpie scrimps out his last months in the White House, broken, but not destroyed.
You see, if it is suddenly revealed that Cheney was behind the intelligence cooking and that Bush was just a gullible dupe, no one would be surprised, much as when Reagan said he couldn't remember and guns for hostages negotiations or arms for the contra forces in Nicaragua. He was the "amiable dunce" to Bush's irritatingly incurious ignoramus. Since George W. has always been protected by Mommy Barbara and Daddy Bush and their moneyed friends like Prince Bandar (among the Saudis, for example) they've got the will and the resources to really stick it to Cheney if it will pull the prosecutorial bloodhounds off the scent of a panicked Chimperor, up to and including having Cheney essentially take a bullet for team Bush.
But Cheney is a wily insider, with a lot of keys to closets in which skeletons for every major conservative pol are hidden, and he won't hesitate to call in all and any favors he can to salvage his own skin. And he knows that if the stain can be splashed on Bush, he can remain the enigma he's always wanted to be and return to Wyoming fo clip his Halliburton coupons for his remaining days.
The real battle royale will not be between Patrick Fitzgerald and the corrupt scum of the exeuctive branch, but rather betwen the White House and the Naval Observatory. Chimpie and Cheney are scheduled for a steel-caged death match.
It's gonna be great!
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Making My Day
What a great day! Senator Harry Reid's move today was extremely heartening. Now add this Canadian article on New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh's view of the Scooter Libby indictment:
"He's going to save America," Hersh predicted, on the phone from his home in Washington, just days before Fitzgerald announced indictments against I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, on Friday.Mr. Hersh is no cockeyed optimist--unlike your humble blogger who finds such accusations a badge of honor in such dire times--and for him to be this upbeat tells me that he knows something we don't and that something is very, very bad news for Chimpie and the Chimpettes.
"Because it's not just about Wilson," maintained Hersh, who, as a New York Times reporter in the late 1960s, first blew the lid off the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and, more recently, exposed abuses at Abu Ghraib, the prison west of Baghdad where U.S. forces engaged in torture and humiliation of prisoners. He appears in Toronto tomorrow to speak to the group Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.
"Fitzgerald's going deep. He may just unravel the whole conspiracy," continues Hersh, who might be proven right. While Libby resigned after being indicted for perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements, Fitzgerald continues to investigate Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's influential deputy chief of staff.
If You Think Chimpie's Plan for Avian Flu Will Work...
...then review the record for national security in general.
The Bush administration has missed dozens of deadlines set by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks for developing ways to protect airplanes, ships, and railways from terrorists.I guess Jesus will take care of it.
A plan to defend ships and ports from attack is six months overdue. Rules to protect air cargo from infiltration by terrorists are two months late. A study on the cost of antiterrorism training for federal law enforcement officers who fly commercially was supposed to be done more than three years ago.
Cafferty Again, Now on Tom DeLay
"The former house leader accused of money-laundering and conspiracy--he's charged with felonies--is suddenly concerned with integrity...So let me get this straight: Republicans get Republican judges?"
Go Jack!
Go Jack!
Jack Cafferty Speaks Like an American
On CNN, just moments ago, Jack Cafferty launched into a passionate rant in which he said (and I'm paraphrasing) that this is not a Republican or Democratic thing, but has to do with what's right and what's wrong, and if we were lied to, and most Americans now believe we were, then it has to be discussed and examined, and if it is proven, then those that lied us into war should have their fingernails pulled out and then be thrown out.
Whew! A journalist with blood flowing through his veins. Imagine!
My hat's off to you, Jack. Of course now we have to listen to Leslie Blitzer and his overfed pundits try to dampen Cafferty's clear insight. At least Jeff Greenfield, despite his conservative bent, is owning up to the lack of honesty in the Chimpie administration.
"This country is involved in a war that is not like Pearl Harbor...with a grave and gathering fret." That's what Greenfield is saying, and that a debate on the war would actually benefit this country.
The kneepad press may be recognizing that the winds have shifted.
Whew! A journalist with blood flowing through his veins. Imagine!
My hat's off to you, Jack. Of course now we have to listen to Leslie Blitzer and his overfed pundits try to dampen Cafferty's clear insight. At least Jeff Greenfield, despite his conservative bent, is owning up to the lack of honesty in the Chimpie administration.
"This country is involved in a war that is not like Pearl Harbor...with a grave and gathering fret." That's what Greenfield is saying, and that a debate on the war would actually benefit this country.
The kneepad press may be recognizing that the winds have shifted.
The Tide Has Turned
For those of us who have known for three years that Chimpie's program for invasion of Iraq was a deranged and/or dishonest play for raiding the U.S. Treasury, paralyzing the citizenry by fear, and seizing all power in the name of national security, this is a sweet, sweet moment. At long last, Harry Reid and the Democrats are showing some fucking spine and forcing the Senate into closed session because, as Popeye would have put it, "I've taken all I can stands and I can't stands no more!"
They are going deep into why Scooter Libby has been indicted, why Dick Cheney has continuously lied and been allowed to get away with it, and why hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of lives have been destroyed for a war which is not indefensible on any level. War crimes, war profiteering, and general trafficking in human misery are crimes that deserve hanging, and now the motherfucking bastards are going to get what they deserve.
At last. At last. At long last, we may see that democracy can work in this country.
They are going deep into why Scooter Libby has been indicted, why Dick Cheney has continuously lied and been allowed to get away with it, and why hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of lives have been destroyed for a war which is not indefensible on any level. War crimes, war profiteering, and general trafficking in human misery are crimes that deserve hanging, and now the motherfucking bastards are going to get what they deserve.
At last. At last. At long last, we may see that democracy can work in this country.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Further into the Bunker
Chimpie is retreating further into the labyrinthe, both of his own delusion and ignorance, and of his literal evasion of scrutiny of all that has gone before--an illegal and bungled war, the alienation of our allies, economic weakness, and moral corruption the likes of which I have never seen. His nomination of Samuel Alito is certainly going to lead to a huge fight in the Senate and the press, and will conveniently shunt the indictment and resignation of VP Dick "I'm a Crook" Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on two charges of perjury, two charges of giving false information, and one charge of obstructing justice. No big deal, really, since these crimes carry a maximum sentence of 30 years in a "pound me in the ass" federal penitentiary.
These fools don't even try to be subtle or tricky any longer with these "Hey! Look! Over here!" distraction strategies. And the complicit kneepad mainstream media collectively scuttle over with beaks open waiting for the White House to feed them their talking points. If you want to understand how the press in this country operates, just watch chickens for a few days. I keep a small flock, and while I hate to denigrate these noble birds by using them as an example of Pavlovian behavior, in them it is entirely understandable. We feed them and protect them and they give us eggs.
But the media has a responsibility to protect us, yet they think that their care and feeding comes from the halls of power, which they give such sycophantic obeisance to that you'd think they were on the payroll. In a sense, they are, since the corporate masters of NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, the New York Times, and so on are connected ball in socket to the very politicos on whom these intrepid reporters are supposed to be keeping honest. When the powerful in the press and the powerful in politics hold banquets together as a normal part of business, when they marry one another (example, NBC's Andrea Mitchell and Fed Chair Alan Greenspan), when they get nice and familiar and their kids play together, there is not going to be what we need to protect the public interest. In any other business in which one agency monitors another, it would be unthinkable for regulators to socialize with those they inspect, but in Washington D.C., it's the only way to fly.
So, in perfect marching cadence, every media outlet this morning was hyping the food fight to come over Alito's nomination to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's Supreme Court seat, and Scooter Libby literally became yesterday's news.
Just chickens running in the barnyard toward the fellow holding the corncobs.
These fools don't even try to be subtle or tricky any longer with these "Hey! Look! Over here!" distraction strategies. And the complicit kneepad mainstream media collectively scuttle over with beaks open waiting for the White House to feed them their talking points. If you want to understand how the press in this country operates, just watch chickens for a few days. I keep a small flock, and while I hate to denigrate these noble birds by using them as an example of Pavlovian behavior, in them it is entirely understandable. We feed them and protect them and they give us eggs.
But the media has a responsibility to protect us, yet they think that their care and feeding comes from the halls of power, which they give such sycophantic obeisance to that you'd think they were on the payroll. In a sense, they are, since the corporate masters of NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, the New York Times, and so on are connected ball in socket to the very politicos on whom these intrepid reporters are supposed to be keeping honest. When the powerful in the press and the powerful in politics hold banquets together as a normal part of business, when they marry one another (example, NBC's Andrea Mitchell and Fed Chair Alan Greenspan), when they get nice and familiar and their kids play together, there is not going to be what we need to protect the public interest. In any other business in which one agency monitors another, it would be unthinkable for regulators to socialize with those they inspect, but in Washington D.C., it's the only way to fly.
So, in perfect marching cadence, every media outlet this morning was hyping the food fight to come over Alito's nomination to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's Supreme Court seat, and Scooter Libby literally became yesterday's news.
Just chickens running in the barnyard toward the fellow holding the corncobs.
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