Bagged! Do you purchase foods that say HEALTHY? Hannaford Brothers, a New England grocery chain that sells a lot of ‘healthy’ foods decided to ask the question: Just how healthy is this crap? So it invented its own ‘healthy’ rating system: no star to three stars and plugged in 27,000 of its shelf items. Result: 77% received no stars; most fruits and veggies received three stars as did salmon and Post grape nuts cereal. No comment on bagged spinach.


Ortega, Si! Republicans, No! Ironic that Manuela Ortega, old Marxist enemy of the US and friend of Venezuela’s Chavez, gets elected president of Nicaragua while a lot of W’s boys and girls get the boot.


Saddam Won’t Swing? Doubly ironic if Saddam avoids the death penalty, as a number of European countries demand, while American citizens are commonly sent to the gas chamber.


HedgeHOG Funds? Question: Do hedge funds that short stocks disseminate misleading information on companies for the purpose of driving stock prices down? Maybe, maybe not. Question #2: Are the companies whose stock is being driven down victims or are they looking for a scapegoat? Maybe, maybe not. Moral: There are a lot of shady characters dicking with stock prices – Caveat Emptor!


A Won Won Situation! Now that it has received an offer for $7 billion for 70%, Lee Kang-won, former head of Korean Exchange Bank has been arrested for falsifying the bank’s records, showing it to be in worse condition than reality resulting in a lower price for Lone Star Funds, which three short years ago acquired a 50% stake in the bank for $1.3 billion (1.4 trillion won). Other bank and government officials are targeted, and Dallas-based Lone Star, which stands to pocket $2 billion and record another $1.5 billion in paper profits, might get dragged into the fray kicking and screaming its innocence. Question: Did Lone Star collude with Kang-won to get trillions of won?


Dastardly Don Departs: Supporting his decisions by saying no one but him really understands Iraq’s war, Donald Rumsfeld leaves the Democrats to deal with his mess in a move orchestrated more by James Baker, Secretary of State for George H.W. Bush than by W and Darth Dick. Is Bush I is finally getting a chance to extend his Clinton shortened presidency?


Rove, Rove, Rove Your Boat: Is Karl soon to be set a drift on the unkind seas of unemployed political geniuses? Republican strategist Ken Mehlman is taking a hike January 2007 leaving a lot of bagwash and nausea as the GOP girds its loins for 2008.


Kwan Lands Quad! Skating phenom Michelle Kwan is America’s newest goodwill ambassador. Her job will be to shine a whole lot of positive light on America that the rest of the world can see, double amen to that sister, to talk about setting goals, and to empower women. Her boss in State is a former figure skater. Who is it? (Answer at bottom).


Darth Dick’s Deviousness? Step 1. Cheney’s Halliburton acquires Dresser Industries in 1988 for $7.7 billion. Step 2. Shoddy due diligence by Halliburton soon reveals that Halliburton got screwed. Shortly after, Cheney gets himself appointed VP of ‘we the people,’ and Halliburton starts dumping pieces of Dresser. Step 3. After years of bribing NIGERIAN officials to gain contracts, Kellogg, a Dresser sub still owned by Halliburton, is being investigated by the Justice Department for violations of the foreign corrupt practices act; the Brits have a similar investigation in the works. Step 4. US and other governments, following years of suspected competitor coordinated contract bidding, investigate Kellogg. Step 5 KBR (Kellogg Brown Root), long a drain on Halliburton’s bottom line except for the money it made in Iraq largely on lucrative, no bid contracts, is the major piece of Dresser remaining in Halliburton that Halliburton is now in a big rush to dump because of potential liability from the litany of investigations plus old asbestos claims. Question 1. Did Darth Dick push lucrative, no-bid contracts to KBR to cover up his bungled purchase of Dresser? Question 2. To take the spotlight off Kellogg’s Niger bribery, did Darth Dick shine light on Valerie Plame, CIA spy, after Joe Wilson, her husband and former Ambassador to Gabon in the Bush 1 administration, challenged Cheney on NIGER sales of yellowcake to Iraq?


Corporate Crook Update
1. Enron’s Andrew Fastow, currently serving his six-year sentence in a minimum security prison in Oakdale, LA, the same joint where Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom is cooling his heels for the next twenty-five years, traveled in shackles to Houston to entertain seventy of the world’s top paid lawyers largely representing financial institutions fighting to avoid billions in class action suits filed by former Enron employees, shareholders, and other creditors. The $2.1 million in legal fees, the cost of this Andy show, is hardly a footnote in the hundreds of millions in legal fees billed (earned?) since Enron tanked.


Kleptocracy? A portmanteau of kleptomania and hypocrisy? No, but it could and should be, given that practitioners, many from countries courted by our leaders, D & R alike, are top government officials who, through shady transactions, get filthy rich while those they govern remain unspeakably poor: In Feb. 2007 the US attorney’s office in Manhattan is going to trial in the largest foreign bribery case ever brought against an American citizen, one James H. Giffen, wealthy merchant banker and consultant to Kazakhstan accused of paying $78 million in bribes to Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan, a world leader in the practice of kleptocracy. Why do the Nazarbayevs of the world continue to be royally entertained by our top government officials from the White House on down and corporate bigs like Ted Turner?


Condoleeza Rice was a former competitive figure skater. She is an alumna of the University of Denver where Kwan plans to enroll. Does Michelle Kwan plan on being Secretary of State in say 2032? Or President?


That’s all for this week, my friends. Stay alert; don’t get uh, twisted!