Questions of the Week
1. Is the White House trying to get us to REFOCUS on terror or DISFOCUS on screw-ups?
2. How much different from ours will Iraq’s ‘new democracy’ be?
3. Should ‘Assisted Suicide Law’ be changed to ‘Dignified Death Law?’
4. Was Afghanistan’s voter fraud greater than ours?
DUH! to W for insisting over and over and over that his supreme court nominee, Harriet Miers, knows the law. Double Duh!
Weekly Chutzpah Award To Tom DeLay, deposed House majority leader, for saying that “Ronnie Earle has stooped to a new low with his brand of prosecutorial abuse” referring to the District Attorney of Travis County, the county where the new money laundering charge and the previous conspiracy charge were brought. (Italics mine)
Weekly Lottery Award
1. To Judy Miller, jailed NY Times reporter who goes to jail for eight-six days and comes out with a book deal rumored at $1.2 million. That’s $14,000 per day. Beats hell out of reporting.
2. To Anderson Cooper, (Gloria Vanderbilt’s son and intrepid CNN newsman) who goes to New Orleans, bravely stands in Katrina’s mighty wind for a few days, and gets a book deal that may exceed $1 million. That’s about $300,000 per day. As I said, beats hell out of reporting.
Scam Sham Don’t you get pissed when a perfectly good scammer gets scammed? Victor Kozeny sold certificates to rich American investors who expected to own a piece of Socar, Azerbajan’s oil company. From the proceeds, Kozeny paid $11 million in bribes to the Azerbajanis to get an allotment of Socar shares. Instead, he got the Azerbajani finger; Socar didn’t go public, but the bribed officials kept the money. And poor old Kozeny got indicted because he didn’t return the excess. This on top of the $182 million he stands accused of previously stealing from U.S. investors. For shame!
Corporate Crook Update
1. A judge denied bail for Kozlowski and Swartz, ex bigs at Tyco and each facing 8 (+) to 25 years on the rock pile. They weren’t smiling.
2. Scrushy, former CEO of HealthSouth, who dodged a cannon ball by convincing an Alabama black jury that he was not a crook but a ‘God-fearing, friendly-to-blacks’ man, might have his story made into a movie starring Christopher Walken. Careful Richard, the rest of the country might be watching. In typical Scrushy hubris, he said he wanted “a nice-looking fellow” to play him. O.J. Simpson was one suggestion received, probably not from a Scrushy or O.J. supporter.
Demic, Epi or Pan? Epi: think local; Pan, think global. The Birds, no, not Hitchcock, the Avian flu variety, will be pandemic.
Rove IV Will there be a sequel? Will Carl Rove, W’s chief of staff, be indicted as a consequence of his fourth appearance before the grand jury?
Bacrolist? Bacronym: the reverse of acronym, i.e., assigning words to letters that suggested words previously existed, but didn’t. Bacrolist: the reverse of list, i.e. making up a list to match a number suggesting a list existed, but didn’t; e.g., when W says the U.S. disrupted 10 serious terrorist plots, White House staffers had to hurriedly construct a list of ten serious terrorist plots that were disrupted.
Central INSULATION Agency Do you ever get the feeling that the CIA is more interested in protecting its own than protecting ‘we the people?’ Master Spy, Tenet, didn’t get fired for incompetence; he got the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a big pension. This week, Porter Goss gave the finger to Congress when he said no disciplinary action would be taken as a result of the Inspector General’s report. Why do I keep thinking that this smells like an old spy agency from another country?
FISS An inventory system otherwise known as First In, Screw Shareholders. Delphi, an auto parts company, NYSE $2.20 10/20/05, to fictitiously inflate prior years profits and cash flow, apparently recorded $440 million in sales for problematic (scrap?) inventory that it promised to reacquire at a later date. Margins were likely pretty good. A group of pension and investment funds is suing the company, nine investment banks, an accounting firm (poor old accountants, they can’t buy a break), six former or current Delphi executives, fifteen former or current directors and two other companies. With a cast like this, can an opera be far behind?
New Majority Rules?? Consider this hypothesis: a President of the United States may be elected only if he/she garners votes equal to a number greater than half the registered voters, not greater than half the ballots cast. Based on 11/04 numbers, the successful candidate would have had to receive in excess of 71.035 million votes; W got 62.041 million (forgetting about the agony of de count). Don’t like it? Neither did the Sunni’s when the Shiites and Turks tried to sneak similar provisions into the rules governing passage of their new constitution (mark the date: 10/15/05), rules effectively neutralizing the Sunni’s ability to meaningful dissent. The UN (U.S.) thankfully squelched this attempted skullduggery.
Bad Breath! Some are making a big to-do about Altoids, the ‘curiously strong’ mint, moving from Wales to Tennessee. Why? Is a Tennessee mint less effective than a Welsh mint? Is CZJ of Hollywood less effective than CZJ of Wales. I think not; she’s still a tasty mint, and I think Altoids will do as nicely. Does anyone care?
