March 25, 2009
March 24, 2009
March 23, 2009
March 22, 2009
The Tattlesnake – Red Tails in the Sunset Edition
Wall Street Will Soon Become Insignificant to Our Financial Future
“The reality is that the American overclass has just been on the most amazing feeding frenzy for three decades now, to the extent that they’ve simply lost any sense of proportion, whatsoever. The sense of predatory entitlement has become what water is to fish. It is so much a part of their world view that they no longer even have consciousness of it, or any alternative to it, any more than a tuna ever wonders what it might be like to walk on two legs and breathe air.”
– David Michael Green, “Barack Obama and the Altar of Greed,” Common Dreams, March 20, 2009.
With a large majority of the public in the mood to Merrill Lynch the whole obtuse gaggle of scoundrels on Wall Street, current marquee malefactor AIG (American International Group, Inc.) dispatched its ineffectual new Dollar-A-Year CEO Edward Liddy to Washington last week, apparently just to prove he’s vastly overpaid.
While assuring the Congressional committee that he was there solely to serve virtuous honesty and glassine transparency, he found cause to do a Connecticut Yankee’s imitation of a Mafia kingpin by consulting his attorney before responding to certain questions, no doubt to strike just the right tone of forthright candor.
Liddy’s presentation was comically anemic when it wasn’t blandly soporific. He noted he had kindly asked the ruthless dark dead things who inhabit the senior slots at AIG – the Servants of Hades that designed the complicated ‘credit swap’ shell game that caused the firm’s collapse – to please voluntarily return half of the bonuses they ‘earned’ for turning AIG into a smoking ruin that had to be bailed out by Uncle Sucker. (Yes, that’s right – a Million-Dollar Baby would have to pout with a mere $500K to mollify any hurt feelings after burning down the house by playing with matches. In giddy Liddyland, this passes for sanity.)
The new CEO only displayed human emotion when asked to reveal the names of his employees who insouciantly demanded a hefty tip for giving the customer food poisoning that nearly killed him. Breaking a polite patrician sweat, Liddy seemed most concerned that his fellow well-dressed vermin might be hounded by angry rabble with pitchforks, or, worse, subjected to an interview with Jon Stewart, should their identities be known. He even dolefully cited a missive that had come to his attention wherein the author threatened to garrote with piano wire all the top executives at AIG, which undoubtedly struck foreclosed homeowners and those who have real jobs as extreme only in its leniency.
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March 21, 2009
Free the Papal States
SF sentiment
The owner of this vehcile, seen recently in San Francisco, might be a potential customer for the new WPE t-shirts.
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March 20, 2009
March 19, 2009
March 18, 2009
March 17, 2009
March 16, 2009
Silence Implies Consent
After the news stories broke last week that Seymour Hersh would be publishing a story about a death squad that reported directly to Dick Cheney, we sat back and waited for a tsunami of editorials decrying the appearance of the final link in the chain of similarities between the Nazis and the Bush Junta.
When the story about U. S. actions at Abu Ghraib Prison first broke, back when many U. S. newspapers had large staffs and would have had the resources to check for any relevant editorials from the Nuremberg trial era, did any one of them, some, or none; bother to check to see if any of the rules, which America helped establish, had been broken? Were the ones who remained silent giving their tacit approval to whatever happened?
Were there any editorials at the time of the Nuremberg War Crime Trials denouncing the moral turpitude of the members of the German Military who carried out the heinous atrocities committed to please the Fuhrer?
Should American journalists have established any differences between the two countries’ actions, to eliminate any possible misperception prevalent at that time?
Didn’t Americans, in the post WWII period, revel in their righteous indignation knowing that American troops would never (ever) resort to Gestapo methods of interrogation?
Didn’t the war crimes trials at Nuremberg, establish the principle that the German troops (as did all soldiers around the world) had a moral obligation to refuse to follow orders to commit atrocities?
Wouldn’t the legal principle that silence implies consent mean that if (speculation alert!) President George W. Bush is ever convicted of war crimes, then the American troops who remained silent were guilty of violating the principles established at Nuremberg? Wouldn’t it also mean that when the allegedly pro-Liberal mainstream media remained silent, they were giving their consent for what happened? Wouldn’t it also mean that members of the clergy in America were also giving their consent?
If the legal axiom that silence implies consent is valid, and if Bush is ever convicted, then some people who expressed patriotic enthusiasm for what was happening, would then have some need for confession and contrition, if they also have endorsed the principles established at Nuremberg.
If President Bush’s authorization of extreme questioning methods was not prohibited by the rules established at Nuremberg, then shouldn’t a Congressional investigation be held to clear up any doubt and misconceptions about what he knew, sanctioned, and ordered?
Ordinary citizens who want to establish that Americans did not consent to any violations of the Nuremberg rules of military conduct during war: write to your congressional representative and your two Senators and urge that a preliminary inquiry be conducted so that at least from this point forward, each citizen will know that he or she didn’t hide behind a “go along to get along” attitude that was the same as consent by silence endorsement of any possible Bush violations of the rules of war.
Readers can speak up now, by forwarding this column to various well known (bur curiously silent about the death squads) journalists and ask them to reveal their philosophy about what President George W. Bush did and didn’t do or they can continue to remain silent.
Robert Benchley said: “Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing. ”
Now, the disk jockey will play Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” and we will quietly sneak out of here. Have a (Silence is) Golden week.
Dead Reds Better?