Drug Lord Housing? Now it seems that with the Afghan opium harvest at all time high record levels, the epicenter of this painfully profitable, war mongering Taliban murder machine is none other than Lashkar Gah, a modern city, the largest development project in Afghanistan’s history, called Little America by the Afghans. Why do they call it Little America? Because it was built by Americans with American dollars, THAT’S EFFING WHY!

Condoms Behind Bars Even with the AIDS infection rate five times that of the general population, in a number of states condoms aren’t readily available to inmates who want them. In fact, California lawmakers more intent on morality issues (don’t ask because I don’t have a clue) than in the prisoners’ safety and the safety of those with whom prisoners come in contact (the willing and the unwilling) once they leave prison don’t think condoms should be made available. Is this the dumbest thing you heard this week, or am I missing something?

Knock! Knock! “Who’s there?” Karl Rove. “Who?” Karl’s White House dummy and Dickie the bad might still be listening, but it seems an increasing number of Republicans are shutting their ears to Rove Speak. About time.

Happy Birthday! Blow out the Candles! Make a Wish! Here Come De Judge! That’s about how Lord Black’s sixty-second birthday party went. Included in his gifts was a Marvera order that curtails the lord and lady’s monthly allowance to C$25,000 each, all expenditures to be approved by the court. I feel sorry for them, don’t you? I mean, having to get by on so little. They’re used to dropping ten times that much, but of course it might have been pissed off shareholders money, part of the reason for the Marvera order. Black, accused of fraud and all other sorts of nasty deeds, is the deposed head of a newspaper empire.

Presto! Changeo! Guantanamo! With a flip of his political wrist, George the Illusionist made secret prisons, whose existence had been vociferously denied, suddenly appear; whisked fourteen so-called high-profile terrorist suspects (though I don’t why they call them high profile if no one other than spy guys has ever heard of them) being held in said secret prisons off to that bastion of human rights, Guantanamo; then just as suddenly made the secret prisons disappear again. It seems these fourteen prisoners will now be treated as humans now that the CIA and foreign agents have what they want. Hey, I don’t like terrorists either, but I’m damned sure not in favor of torture, our government lying to us about secret prisons and tortured prisoners; and cover-ups. Ya gotta ask: What other tricks does George the Illusionist have up his pre-election sleeve?

Hercule Poirot? No, Hewlett Packard. After the shenanigans revealed at Hewlett-Packard this past week, Agatha Christie might want to ink a new series. Leaks, guys in raincoats wearing dark glasses and fedoras worn low on the forehead, deals and side deals, cloak and dagger investigations, clashes, lawsuits, criminal charges, a disgruntled board member giving the board one finger and doing a lot of pointing with another; it doesn’t get any better than this. That sound you hear is the collective drool of corporate intrigue novelists sharpening their pencils.

Rotten Eighty-Two-Year Old Kid? Has Brooke Astor’s eighty-two-year old son, Anthony Marshall, been ripping off the estate in favor of his own pockets and lavish life-style? His son Phillip and JP Morgan Chase bank seem to think so, maybe to the tune of $25 million or so, and are pressing the issue in court. Marshall says the bank has shown unrelenting hostility, and one of his lawyers said, “It is a completely bogus and bloated claim that just piles on the kitchen sink, indiscriminately.” Huh? Well, piling up on the kitchen sink or not, it is all such a tawdry chapter in the life of a great and generous philanthropist who, at age 104 and ailing, will always be known as one of New York City’s most gracious ladies.

Wal-Mart, We Love You $o, $o Much It’s getting so you can’t trust anyone these days. Wait a minute, did I say ‘getting’; baby, we passed ‘getting’ a long time ago. It seems conservative research groups like the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, and the Manhattan Institute, aggressive defenders of Wal-Mart to reporters and government, have been getting big bucks from the Walton Family Foundation run by Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton’s three children. Hey, we’re talking conservative research groups here; what did we expect? The problem is non-disclosure. We know what’s going on; we know your pulling a scumbag scam; just remind us once in a while.

Metro-Goldwyn-Amazon? There’s a raft of companies, Amazon now included, that want you to download movies on your PC. How can they hope to compete without lousy ten dollar popcorn and sodas, broken and dirty seats, and people talking on cellphones? It just won’t be the same.

Corporate Crook Update Bernie Ebbers, 65, deposed as CEO of WorldCom because of orchestrating a paltry $11 billion accounting fraud, has run out of wiggle room. On September 26th, he reports for twenty-five-year duty at a yet to be named prison. Let’s see: 65 + 25 = 90. Hmmm?

Microsoft Plays Scare Card Microsoft said regulators pushing the anti-trust suit against Microsoft in Europe might cause a delay in the release of Windows Vista in Europe because of unclear guidelines. If only we could be so lucky. My XP still isn’t working right. In fact, it’s getting worse. Maybe it has built in obsolescence, or maybe it’s suffering from Microsoft reaching out in the dark of night and unleashing little Gatesean bugs under the guise of auto update.

Blair Benched! Tony’s boys give him the old thumbs down. He says he’ll leave within the year, but on his own timetable. We shall see.

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

Good Job, Well Done! If one accepts the premise that Bush and Rumsfeld, under Cheney's watchful eye, are employed by the Pentagon and Big Oil to ensure the war in Iraq continues by constantly suggesting that anything as intelligent and humane as troop withdrawal will have terrorists raining down on American cities, then they are earning their money.

There Ought To Be A Law! Speaking of money, with first year lawyers in the Big Apple finding $145,000 in their annual pay envelopes, pro bono work, and that includes politics, is looking a lot less attractive.

Bond, James Bond. I, for one, am glad that Ford is selling Aston Martin. The panache of James with the latest busty Bond babe whipping down a treacherous mountain road in a Ford just didn't cut it.

Rich Man, Poor Man. Well hardly poor, but on the heels of lopping $40 billion off his estate and giving the proceeds to Bill and Melinda Gates charitable foundations , Berkshire Hathaway's septuagenarian Warren Buffet this past Wednesday said "I do" to his twenty-year companion who, at sixty, is sixteen years his junior. If you own BH stock, you'll be happy to know it closed at $96,097 per share (yes, you read it right) yesterday, no doubt because it was an intimate, inexpensive wedding.

Village Voice, How Come You is Talking Funny? Since the October 2005 merger with Phoenix-based New Times Media, Village Voice, the epitome of alternative media, is losing a lot of the great artistic people who made it what it was. Some are being pink-slipped, and others are leaving amid distrust, disgust, and dismay. How long will it take for the once great Voice to become nothing but another plastic peep?

Who’s Sorry Now? Politicians, racing like lemmings at light speed toward November elections, are falling all over themselves to tell us how sorry they are for past sins, and a lot, like lemmings, will not be back. We don't want sorry; we want honest representation that won't be squashed under the big fat thumbs of big fat lobbyists.

Marx My Words! For shame! China is rewriting its high school history books, eliminating a lot of Marxist references that aren't complicit with present economic and political objectives. We can be proud that we would never tolerate history revisionism for political and economic reasons in this country.

FOK? (Friend of Karl) So Kenneth Y. (what does the Y stand for?) Tomlinson, a Bushie buddy in charge of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, who last year got booted out of Corporation for Public Broadcasting for trying to politicize programming, is running a horse racing operation from his office and has improperly put a friend on the government payroll. And Bush still supports his nomination for another term as Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors? FOK!

O Canada, We Stand On Armed Guard For Thee… If you plan on crashing the Canadian border, you had better do so before September 2007. That's when Canada will begin arming its border guards, another example of how the NRA and like associations and arms dealers are helping win the war against terrorists and making us feel all warm and cozy. Take heart, though, because only 150 Canadian border guards will get their Rambo badges the first year.

Nuclear Iran or Nuke Iran; That is the Question. Next to Iran, Iraq's WMD (remember them) capability is laughable. But is Iran intent on making nuclear weapons? Some parts of the world, notably the part we live in, think so. Enola Gay, I ask you, how will this dilemma be resolved?

The Terminator! Big Arnold took a swipe at greenhouse gasses, demanding mandatory rather than the Bush favored voluntary caps. Let's see: Bush plan – big business self-regulates for the good of the people; Arnold's plan, government forces big business to obey the laws for the good of the people. Tough one, eh?

Birds of a Feather? Isn't it interesting that Kenneth G. Langone, co-founder and director of Home Depot who served on the committee governing stock options, and who is being pushed to resign for stock option grant improprieties at Home Depot, is one of ex-NYSE head greedy Grasso's biggest defenders. Langone led Grasso's hand-picked compensation committee. Hmmm!

Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford May 1, 1916 – August 30, 2006. Superman's father and a lot of other great stuff. Thanks! Good job! Well done!

Bad Apple! Last week, Dell got smoked and announced a 4.1 million battery recall before its users got incinerated because of lousy Sony lithium ion batteries. This week Apple decided to lasso 1.8 million apple heads before they got baked. The culprit is again Sony’s lithium ion batteries. Here’s a question: what battery does Sony use in its laptops?

Have You Driven A Citigroup Lately? Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary and now Chairman of Citigroup resigned from Ford’s board because of potential conflict of interest problems. Does this mean that Citigroup is about to pull the plug on its loans to Ford? What other potential conflicts does a banker have? I doubt it has anything to do with annoying rattles that the service department can’t find.

Made In Japan? For once, it isn’t a shady US company selling nuclear weapons parts to hostile governments. A handful (that’s five) of Mitutoyo Corp. execs were arrested for suspicious behavior like selling the Malaysians bomb making stuff.

Hong Kong Big Mac Bong! The Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce can’t be happy that three hoods with baseball caps bearing wooden batons beat the crap out of one of its leading litigators against debt collection and gambling, two big crime-magnet industries. We weren’t told if the hoods had a Big Mac or which baseball team they favored. Of far greater concern: is the rule of law in post-Britain Hong Kong being eroded?

War Nonsense How’s that again: the US says cluster bombs it sold to Israel that Israel then dropped all over Lebanon weren’t supposed to be used that way. What did the US expect Israel to do: use them as planters?

Not So Fast! Peru’s congress observed a moment’s silence for hospitalized former president Valentin Paniagua after a lawmaker reported Paniagua had died. Mr. Paniagua’s doctor moved quickly to point out that not only had Mr. Paniagua not gone to that great congress in the sky but that his condition had actually improved. Now if we could just figure out how to so remarkably improve the health of our congress...

EEOC Muslim Style In Bagh, Kashmir, where a massive earthquake struck last October, enlightened Muslim clerics are saying relief agencies will face “direct action and extreme steps” if they don’t fire all their female employees, despite tens of thousands of homeless still living in refugee camps.

This Guy Gets My Vote. A prominent Shiite cleric in Iraq told lawmakers to stay home and try to improve the lives of ordinary citizens rather than gallivant around the world.

Baloney! Ever think it strange that the preeminent place to study law is the University of Bologna?

Crystal Clear With goodie baskets for Academy Award presenters and performers getting into the serious money category, $100,000, about two or three times the average paycheck for us working stiffs, the IRS has decided to add a wee token of its own, a 1099. No wonder Billy decided to duck out on his hosting gig. Like he needs a 1099 for $100,000 worth of crap he doesn’t need or want screwing up his eight figure income.


Merck’s Vioxx & Shareholders Get Another Heart Attack I’m not a big fan of big drugs because of the way they rip off the US health care system, but when a retired FBI guy who gets involved in an auto accident then starts taking Vioxx and has a heart attack gets a $50million jury award, you gotta ask yourself if the system’s gone a little nuts. Might not the fact of his previous employment and the accident been contributing factors?

Speaking Of Drug Company Heart Attacks – Bristol-Myers Squibb, maker of heart drug Plavix (U.S. sales last year - $3.5 billion), and Sanofi-Aventis, Bristol’s marketing partner, have reportedly been using trickery and bribery and other scandalous doings to stop Canadian generic drug maker, Apotex, who might also have been a party to the trickery and bribery and other scandalous doings, from selling a cheaper generic version of Plavix in the U.S. Did big bucks change hands? Were secret agreements made? Did Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis try to screw Apotex, or did Apotex try to screw Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis, or was the screwing mutual. Stay tuned.

Should Washed Up CEO’s Get Same Treatment As Washed Up Ballplayers?
Michael J. Burns of Team Dana (Dana declared bankruptcy in March this year) doesn’t think so. He wants $3 million for hanging around until Dana’s coffin is in the ground, $ 3 million more if Dana’s value doesn’t drop from where it is now (the way CEO’s cook the books these days, you can bet it wont drop a dime), and hands off his $5.9 million pension. I say trade the bums, throw the bums out!




The Mel & Andy Show: First it was Mad Max Mel getting soused and blaming all the world’s problems on the Jews (doubtless something he learned from Passion of the Christ). For thinking he could drive in his drunken state (sound familiar), he gets three years probation and has to attend AA for a year. OK, fair enough, though I’d have put a breath analyzer on his starter, but what about the anti-Semitism? What does he get for that?

Now Andrew Young, civil rights leader, former mayor of Atlanta and former US representative to the UN (you know, the world peace people), hired six months ago by Wal-Mart as chairman of Working Families, a Wal-Mart attempt to improve its public image, told an African-American newspaper, the Los Angeles Sentinel, that Wal-Mart should displace mom-and-pop stores in urban neighborhoods because “You see those are the people who have been overcharging us, and they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs.” (I guess he doesn’t realize that Wal-Mart, known to many as the substandard wage and benefit company, employs, but some counts, a quarter million blacks).Young apologized, retracted his comments, and resigned as chairman of Working Families. Wal-Mart shouldn’t have given him the option and publicly booted his bigoted ass out the door.

You know what I think? I think Mel and Andy need to spend a year helping the Jews and Arabs rebuild in northern Israel and southern Lebanon then Andy can go on to Korea and solve the nuclear Kim’s problems.

Click, Click That familiar sound of W listening in on your calls might soon disappear. Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the US District Court in Detroit told the NSA to hang up, that Jefferson and his cronies never intended to give W that much power. Good for Judge Taylor, but she forgot one critical point: W takes his instructions from a higher authority.

Questions Of The Week
1. Do you believe this whacko, John Karr, who recently crawled out from under his rock, killed JonBenet Ramsey?
2. How long ago did a federal judge order strict limitations on tobacco marketing as punishment for big tobacco companies’ decades-old conspiracy to deceive the public about the dangers of smoking: (a) one week, (b) one year, (c) ten years? (Answer at bottom)
3. What do $300 (+) billion and $65.6 billion have in common? The first was Time Warner’s value in January 2000 after its merger with AOL; the latter is Time Warner’s value today now that most of AOL’s deceptive bookkeeping has been properly accounted for or at least that’s what all the crossed fingers in TW hope.

Two Women Screw Shareholders & Soldiers: Dawn Schlegel & Sandra Hatfield, execs at DHB Industries, got thrown into chains (alas, since released on bond) for reaping $8 million in profits from jacking around with the books, driving the stock priced up, and selling before the shit hit the fan. OK, bad enough, but far worse, DHB had juicy contracts to supply our soldiers in Iraq with bullet-proof vests whose quality and adequacy have been called into question. These people, along with David H. Brooks, the company’s founder and former CEO, are not only crooks, but traitors. They should not be out on bond; they should not be allowed to ever again take a free step, unless on the front lines in Iraq behind one of their crappy vests.

Nude Air - Coming Soon To An Airport Near You Isn’t that the answer? The new X-Ray machines aren’t leaving a thingy to the imagination, and the lamebrain idea that airport security people can determine passenger emotions by looking at their faces is right up there with duct tape.

Correct answer to Question Of The Week #2 above is (a).The ruling was made this week by Judge Gladys Kessler of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia.
Stupid me, I thought this issue had been resolved ten years ago. Says something about the tobacco lobby.

Ya Got Terror, My Friend, Right Here In River City… I decided to Google 'define terrorist'. Interestingly, the first definition begins thusly: One who utilizes the systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve political objectives, while disguised as a civilian non-combatant…Yes my friends, ya got trouble, right here in River City, with a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for Politics. (With a tip of Robert Preston's hat, a flip of his Music Man baton, and apologies to Meredith Wilson for massaging his wonderful words; somehow I don't think he would have minded.)

Am Not! Are Too! A sandbox squabble? Not quite, but Atmel (NASDAQ $5.24) has a squabble of its own going on. Sometime last fall, when Chairman and CEO George Perlegos got fired by his five independent directors, he said something to the effect that you can't fire me because I already fired you. If you happen to be in Delaware next month, you might want to sit in as the trial gets underway. Maybe the judge will jump up and yell, "And so's your old man."

What's Wrong With This Statement? "David Einhorn, a hedge fund manager, does not play much poker…" By definition, hedge fund managers bet billions every day. Perhaps when Einhorn entered the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, no one should have been surprised. P.S. He came in 18th and won $650,000. Will he surprise his hedge fund clients share by handing over his winnings?

You Got To Know When To Hold 'Em, Know When To Fold Em… Offshore BetOnSports, buffeted by US charges of illegal Internet gambling, decides to fold, with its ex CEO in jail in St. Louis and the Feds looking around to grab anyone else they can get their hands on. Looks like BOS will take its game to Asia where presumably what they do isn't deemed to be illegal and there are probably a couple billion more gamblers. It might be a good time to take some of your earmarked Lotto money and stick it into BOS stock if it ever trades again (currently suspended by the London Stock Exchange).

Not My Job! This is another holey statement: a study found no evidence that immigrants have taken a large number of jobs from Americans. First of all, define immigrants. Second of all, why did we need a study? If eleven million illegal immigrants have jobs, then illegal immigrants have taken eleven million jobs from Americans. Is that difficult?

Saks Butts Goat Out The Door Cashmere is out, everything else is in, according to Saks, the first name in retailing in the entire universe. Last year Saks had all its bets on the goat wool, and customers balked. Cashmere lined boxing gloves and cashmere skipping ropes apparently didn't sell. Nor did cashmere anything else, at least not enough to keep the happy sounding cash bells ringing. So this year, you Want It, they got it, or so they'd have you believe. Say what you want, it's still the only joint on Fifth Avenue that has a doggie bidet.

Glaxco's Zofran Nausea Drug Causes More Than A Little Nausea Like $70 million worth, the amount Glaxco agreed to pay to settle civil lawsuits accusing it of inflating costs of several medicines, including blockbuster Zofran, this on top of $130 million for ripping of federal health care programs. Glaxco, I'm sure sensing the foul taste of bile rising in its throat, did not admit to wrongdoing, saying similar charges have been filed against many other pharmaceutical companies, like that makes it OK. Pardon me while I puke.

A Billion Bucks For Movie Rentals? Surely This Is A New Pixar Movie. Sadly no, it's true. Movie Gallery (NASDAQ $2.59 – fifty-two week high $22.321), which borrowed more than $1 billion to acquire the Hollywood Video chain, posted an unexpected quarterly loss and hired an investment bank and turnaround specialists to help it revamp. I blame Movie Gallery for saying it had an unexpected loss because anyone who knows what's going on in the movie rental world should only be talking about expected losses, but curiouser, what dummies put up the billion?

Middle East – North Canada's energy exports have buoyed its US trade surplus over the past five years. Canada has the largest pool of oil reserves outside the Middle East, companies are spending billions on pipelines pointed south, and the US is searching for Betsy Ross's great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great granddaughter or anyone else who can sew (likely an illegal immigrant since Americans don't do that kind of work any more) to tack another star on Old Glory. A word, Oh Canada: stay alert for a bald-headed madman and an angry black woman with a dummy.

A Final Word Keep the whole terrorist thing in perspective. For whatever reason or reasons, we've got enemies, but they aren't going to win.

Grasso Soap Opera - Continues! I haven't written this blog for several months, but I'm thrilled to see cue ball Dickie is still hogging headlines. Why is this pox on our house so difficult to eradicate? Here's the question: was the $200 million for his last four years equitable? Here's the answer: not in two hundred million years. On to next story.

Hillary Kicks Ass! No wonder Rumsfeld didn't want to appear before the Senate. After Hillary scarred and bloodied him with snick and snee thrusting she got out the big cleaver for the piece de resistance: “Yes, we hear a lot of happy talk and rosy scenarios, but because of the administration’s strategic blunders and, frankly, the record of incompetence in executing, you are presiding over a failed policy. Given your track record, Secretary Rumsfeld, why should we believe your assurances now?” Help! Help! Medic! Medic!

Anti-Concurrent Causation Clause? Quick, have you got one? Don't know the answer? Have you got homeowners insurance? Then you probably have an anti-concurrent causation clause, and it's not a good thing. Here's the deal: you insure for wind damage, the wind blows your house down, but at the same time (concurrent causation in insurance mumbo-jumbo) you also get flooded and buried in mud (risks insurance companies won't cover); NOTHING IS COVERED; NADA, ZIP. It's a bit like having an anti-concurrent pregnancy clause that says if you get pregnant as a result of having sex, you're not covered. CHECK YOUR POLICY. Know your coverage. It might not be fixable, but at least you won't get blindsided.

Wyly, Pretty Darn Wyly It seems billionaire brothers Sam and Charles of the wily Wyly Texas clan have been shtupping Uncle Sam by dumping boatloads of options in offshore trusts that then cashing them without all that nastiness of paying hundreds of millions in federal taxes. The brothers two were invited to testify but said they'd plead the Fifth, you know, that provision of the US Constitution designed to protect criminals.

And Speaking of Wily – Those pesky Republicans tried to saddle the minimum wage increase bill with a tax cut for the rich, but the Dems, who don't want the Republicans riding off into election year sunset on shiny saddles, said bareback boys, or not at all. So far, the working poor aren't getting their much needed raise.

Castro Convertibles? So 79 year-old Fidel is out, temporarily according to the official Cuban line, dead according to some Washington and Miami hopefuls, and 75 year-old Raoul is in. What is this? A CBS reality show?

Quack! Quack! The Sound of Paradox? Now read this carefully: Wealthy campaign donors in New York are legally using limited liability corporations to illegally give money above the maximum allowed by law.

Advertising Industry Dead? Concern is seeping noisily (hey, we are talking advertising here; what did you expect? Silence?) into the media that Internet amateurs will replace professional ad people. Stupid me. I thought that had happened years ago.

You Got Mail, er, Pink Slip! The good folks at AOL are axing another 5,000 jobs, 25% of their current workforce. That only leaves 15,000 still sucking blood from this dying body.

Cuban Missiles? Question: If Cuba has missiles capable of reaching the US, wouldn't fleeing Cubans settle a lot further north, like Canada, than in Miami and environs, only 90 miles distant? Well yeah, I suppose there is the winter climate thing.

Gays Vs Grubs So having a bunch of unwashed, bare-chested, unshaven men and braless, straggly-haired, unwashed women eating maggots and cockroaches finds and audience, but a show about gay families trying to convince their new neighbors that they, the gay family, are really not from outer space or hell or from where ever it is that Republicans and the Religious Right would like them to be, gets cancelled by ABC because it might be offensive? Lord have mercy.

Orpah Fries Frey It seems Frey’s memoir, “A Million Little Pieces,” is more “A Million Little Lies,” and Oprah gave author Frey a metaphoric kick in his metaphoric lying ass. O as in Oprah Baby, we like it when you play rough. Next, we hope you knock the hubris stuffing out of publisher Nan Talese and Doubleday who seem to think they can peddle whatever, wherever, whenever.

Questions of the Week
1. Why can’t anyone find the CIA’s secret European prisons? Would that be because they’re secret?
2. Will Pixar break up Disney to sell the theme park and other non-film assets?
3. How many of the worst movies made this year will enjoy concurrent theater, DVD, and cable release?
4. Why was Pakistani gang-rape victim Ms. Mukhtar Mai denied an opportunity to speak before the UN simply because Pakistan’s prime minister was visiting? One would think that as prime minister of a country that claims to be an ally he would insist she speak.

Shama, Amash, Hamas No matter how you look at it, it’s a mess. Palestine’s terrorist Hamas party caught the world with its pants down when it won 76 of 132 seats in that country’s national election. Either the U.S. will get its head out of the sand and learn how to negotiate with terrorists, or start arming up Israel.

Our Friends in Washington Update
1. The White House is trying to declare Katrina confidential, like maybe it didn’t happen? Given its penchant for rewriting blunders, and Katrina ranks right up there with the top two or three, refusing to turn over Katrina papers perhaps isn’t all that surprising, even when oft-times Republican friend Democrat Joe Lieberman does the asking.

Surprise? Scores of projects aimed at rebuilding Iraq will not be completed because of unforeseen security costs, haphazard planning, and shifting priorities, which is political speak for fraud, incompetence, and confusion.

Stirrings In The Corporate Anthill
1. Remember Michael Ovitz, Michael Eisner’s friend who was president of Disney for a few minutes and pocketed $130 million in severance pay? Some mice (shareholders) are roaring; they want the decision to let the severance pay stand overturned. This wasn’t severance pay: it was a looting and pillaging masterminded by the two Michaels. Hey, if it walks like a mouse, talks like a mouse, and shits like a mouse, it smells.
2. Donald Trump is suing Warner Books and Timothy O’Brien, author of “Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald,” mainly, it seems, for understating his net worth by $2.5 billion, give or take a few hundred million. Donald 101: Never, never, never understate The Donald.
3. IBM, in a “we do not comment on pending or ongoing litigation” mode, is being sued for screwing tens of thousands of workers out of overtime. IBM, if for no other reason than your cockiness, needs its Big Blue kicked big time.

Smells From The Corporate Dungheap

1. We’ll know a lot about the Enron disaster by the time the trial ends. Meanwhile, you might want to rent or buy “The Smartest Guys In The Room” or watch for it and others on TV.

2. FirstEnergy Corporation paid a measly $28 million for covering up an acid leak that nearly ate through a reactor vessel’s cap in its nuclear plant on Lake Erie. What if the escaping waste had found its way into Lake Erie?

The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay, more familiarly The Hudson’s Bay Company or The Bay, obviously thinking that Jerry Zucker, eclectic financier, not Jerry Zucker, eclectic movie producer, was an OK buyer since he owns part of a hockey team (Carolina Stingrays, a Washington Capitals farm team). I mean, can a guy with a hockey team be all bad? The Bay is Canada’s oldest company, incorporated May 2, 1670, with a Royal Charter from King Charles II. Zucker, who used to own Dominion Textiles in Montreal, is paying C$860 million for HBC, which has reported ten consecutive quarters of falling sales.

True Rome-ance Pope Benedict’s first novel, doubtless to be a best seller, talks a whole lot about love and sex. In church speak, the work is called an encyclical titled “God is Love,” or for the Alex Trebeker’s out there, “Deus Caritas Est.”

Corporate Crook Update
1. The Lay and Skilling show starts next week. Stay tuned.
2. Perennially grinning Maurice Greenberg, deposed king of AIG, is still fighting his ouster. Billions of dollars are at stake, not to mention the power and the glory.
3. While admitting no wrong,
Ameriquest is paying $325 million, $295 million to victims of its shoddy lending practices in two dozen states and $30 million for legal costs. It sure is a good thing they did nothing wrong.

If These Rocks Could Talk… It seems the Russians are upset because they found “property of MI6” listening devices imbedded in rocks. Would those be the devices placed there right before or right after the invention of the wheel?

CC on Ice No, not Canadian Club, but Canadian Conservatives, who booted beleaguered Liberals from their thirteen-year perch that had grown soiled by the excrement of scandal. Now Canadians, hoping for lower taxes and elimination of corruption, will have to “stand on guard” against their new government staking a claim to women’s wombs and bedrooms.

Sam’s Bank? Remember the joke about the rabbi who tells Hymie that he shouldn’t call his bank Hymie’s bank and Hymie responds by saying, “Why not, Irving did it?” So, the question is: will WalMart call its proposed new bank Sam’s Bank? Can Sam’s bucks, an official world currency, be far behind?

“When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968 – from his “I have a dream” speech delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963.


Taka Who? Takafuma Horie, rotund, spiky-haired, young hotshot with a silver-blue Ferrari, a bikini model girlfriend, and founder of Livedoor Company, has either run afoul of the Japanese business establishment that he holds in high finger disdain or taken Japanese investors for a bundle of yen. Prosecutors, suspecting a giant fraud, raided Livedoor’s offices sending shivers down the spines of mom and pop investors and sending the Nikkei into a 1000 point (roughly 6%) tumble. Livedoor’s stock has plummeted from pre-raid ¥696 to ¥137 ($6 to $1.20), 80% in any language.

Government Googles Google’s Googlers? The Bush administration is trying to get Google to cough up dope on its Googlers to find out whether or not they’re surfing for porn. This puts anyone who enters the Internet on a regular basis at risk of being whisked away, under cover of darkness, to Guantanamo for inadvertently, by following an e-mail link, or purposefully, as in researching nudist colonies say, visiting a porn site.

Dead Happy The Supreme Court told Oregonians that it could proceed with physician-assisted suicide, tossing out former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s bullying attempt to bury Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act.

Questions of the Week
1. Will Alito ever be confirmed?
2. Why, with a capital J Jerk like Manmoud Ahmadinejad sitting in the president’s tent, does the White House want to avoid anti-Western resentment in Iran? Too late, it’s already there, and isn’t Manmoud, with his fiery rhetoric, every bit as dangerous as Saddam?
3. What if federal government lobbyists simply posted all payments, gifts, etc., and contacts like some thirty plus states require? Wouldn’t that solve the problem of guys like Black Jack Abramoff, super evil lobbyist?

American Hypocrisy? Bushies halted free-trade negotiations with Egypt to protest Egypt’s harsh imprisonment of a political dissident. Is there some type of national schizophrenia running amok that I don’t know about?

Our Friends in Washington Update
1. Rice stirring the pot. Condi is setting up a new office whose denizens will report to her and keep tabs on $19 billion ladled out to foreign aid. Maybe someone in Washington should set up a new office to keep tabs on the billions of dollars spent on new offices to keep track of the billions of dollars being spent.

Sponge Bob Gets Squeezed Peed of parents, tired of Viacom and Kellogg using Sponge Bob and other happy hookers to hawk unhealthy cereals, are suing.

Stirrings In The Corporate Anthill
1. Long-term Marlboro smokers filed suit against Philip Morris hoping to force the company to pay for low-dose CT scans that detect early-stage lung cancer. Sounds like a great idea, but will PM’s legal permit de facto admission of product liability?
2. Did the supervisory board chairman of DamilerChrysler give the chief executive of Deutsche bank insider information? Some in der fadder land think so.
3. Is Bruce Wasserstein, king of Lazards, seriously interested in Time Warner? If he is, he’ll likely get it. But will he break it up? Yes, or course, if breaking it up makes $en$e.
4. Omnicare, a provider of drugs and services to the healthcare industry has received administrative subpoenas from federal authorities who suspect something more than Omnicare’s patients are sick.

Corporate Crook Update
1. Unscrupulous Scrushy: this guy wins gold for gall. A writer for The Birmingham Times (you remember Birmingham where Scrushy was found not guilty on all 36 counts of looting and pillaging of HealthSouth) and fellow genuflector from Believers Temple Church has disclosed that Scrushy paid her $10 thousand for and then edited articles favorable to him that were published during his trial. He also purchased a $1 thousand computer for the reporter, who now says she wasn’t paid nearly what was originally offered, the amount of the shortfall described only as significant. Nothing like shortchanging a church lady to find the worms hiding under the collection plate. The father of the owner of the paper wasn’t available for comment because it was his golfing day. Ya just gotta love it.
2. Prosecutors, in keeping with their newfound KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) philosophy lest they addle what they deem the lesser minds of jurors, will go after Joseph Nacchio, former top corn chip at Qwest, for insider trading rather than the complex issues of accounting and several other frauds, lying, cheating, looting and pillaging. Nacchio pocketed $100 million plus or minus by selling Qwest stock ahead of public pronouncements of pending doom. Shame on him.

Finger Fraud, The Sequel The couple who tried to purloin Wendy’s with phake proctology is off to the slammer for nine years where they may get their own proctology purloining.

Katie Couric’s Pay If the SEC has its way, we may soon know how many millions the all-American girl and other senior executives are paid. How much do you want to bet that batteries of lawyers are already creating loopholes? We will probably see a sharp decline in executive titles or the definition of senior executive will change. This year, our top mail room employee, the executive vice president in charge of string, earned $30 thousand and received ten shares of company stock.

Religious Wars Religious leaders in Ohio are irked that two large churches are campaigning on behalf of a conservative governor wannabe Republican. God moves in mysterious ways.


Poll Queens
African: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Harvard-educated banker, but we won’t hold that against her, took the oath of office of president of Liberia. Let’s all pray, or hope if prayer isn’t part of your daily bread, that she makes a huge, positive difference.
Chilean: Ditto for Michelle Bachelet, agnostic, guitar-strumming hippie, physician, former U.S. resident and new president of Chile.
Germany: And don’t forget Chancellor Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany.
United States: ?

“Zheng He” Day We may have to change the second Monday in October from Columbus Day to Zheng He Day if the Chinese prove that, in 1421, Mr. Zheng sailed his Asian Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria up the Hudson and plopped a chow mein noodle on Manhattan Island or anywhere else in North America. Of course, that doesn’t solve the audacious claims of the Norse who say they landed along the eastern seaboard of Canada and United States millions of years ago, or at least around 1000 AD.

Medicare Mumbo Is anyone surprised that the new Medicare system is FUBAR? (Google FUBAR)

Questions of the Week
1. Should Major General Geoffrey D. Miller, mastermind of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons, be allowed to simply and quietly ride off into the sunset on full military pension? Curious that the U.S. Court of Appeals this week upheld a $54.6 million torture verdict against two U.S. backed Salvadoran generals now living in Florida. They stand accused of torturing Salvadorans in the country’s 1980’s civil war. Curious also that the army dropped its case against Christopher M. Beiring, the only officer to face criminal charges in the deaths of two U.S. prisoners held in Afghanistan. Beiring said, in part…”I think it got blown out of proportion….at some point, they were just playing politics.” Hey! Two human beings were murdered while in U.S. custody. That is not politics. That is not blowing out of proportion.
2. Will Sam Alito, Supreme Court nominee, survive senate grandstanding? Willl we?
3. How many seconds will Iran exist if it drops a nuclear bomb?
4. Are U.S. anti-abortionists against abortion in other countries? Lancet, the British medical journal, reports that in India in the last twenty years, as many as 10 million female fetuses may have been aborted as families vied to produce male heirs. There are doubtless other countries where similar practices exist. How immoral would it be for us to farm these fertile stem cell sources?

Dumbest Statement Ever We do not negotiate with terrorists. Of course we do, every week of every year: Iran, North Korea, Iraqi insurgents, etc. Just once, I’d like to kick Scott McClellan’s pompous ass while he stands in front of the press corps and says, “We do not negotiate with terrorists.” And while we’re on the subject of Scott McClellan, why does the press of the world continue to bother with this pillar of obtuseness?

Our Friends in Washington Update
1. DeLay’s return to majority leader delayed by House Republicans, who, like the rest of us, have finally had enough of Tommy boy, but not because he’s a crooked politician, because, despite the Tenth of the Big Ten, they covet his vacated position.
2. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s mother, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, Texas’s comptroller, (Strayhorn: gory name for a Texan) is running as an independent in the state’s governor’s race. Bush will back her Republican rival; publicly at least, Scottie says he will back his mother.
3. Black Jack Abramoff’s cronies at the well heeled, well connected Greenberg Traurig law firm, are now saying they, like everyone else, were victimized by Abramoff. Tsk, tsk.

THOR-oughly Modern Norse Norway’s government says 40% of the board members of all large, publicly traded private companies must be women.

Stirrings In The Corporate Anthill
1. The SEC is checking into Home Depot’s recording of vendor credits
2. The SEC has upped the heat on its investigation into the way IBM’s announced first quarter 2005 earnings
3. The feds sued Oppenheimer for denying a job interview to a female
4. Mostly Martha is still trying to clear her name
5. AOL, though strenuously denying wrongdoing, is paying $25 million (that’s a lot for doing no wrong) to settle complaints by users who claimed wrongful billing
6. Six women sued Kleinwort Wasserstein for getting smaller bonuses and promotions than less qualified men. Lewdness toward women and unprofessional behavior (lunch time prostitutes) were also cited.

Smells From The Corporate Dungheap
1. Tenet Heathcare agreed to pay $215 million to settle shareholder suits accusing the company of lying about Medicare payments, etc. It still has the feds to deal with regarding accusations of billing misconduct and physician recruitment. (Billing misconduct?)
2. UBS got rapped for $49.5 million for improperly trading mutual funds
3. By being cheap, WalMart is attempting to transfer its employee healthcare burden to states.
4. Refco is trying to oust its former CEO, Phillip R. Bennett, charged with defrauding the company by hiding a $430 million loan, from its board. Shouldn’t that be an automatic: defraud the company, you’re off the board?
5. Tom Coughlin, off to the slammer for defrauding his employer, WalMart, of at least $350,000 (that must be big money in Arkansas), may still get part of $12 million in retirement benefits because an Arkansas judge (a cousin?) tossed out part of the lawsuit saying that a pre-existing agreement barred the former executive and the company from suing each other. Huh? Coughlin had been WalMart’s No. 2 exec.
6. AmeriDebt Founder, Andris Pukke (what a lot of his customers felt like doing) got smacked with up to $35 million, had to give up virtually all (what does that mean?) assets, and is permanently barred from engaging in credit counseling, debt management and credit card education activities. His lawyer, hopefully with tongue in cheek, said, “This settlement does not change the fact that Mr. Pukke did nothing wrong here.”

Corporate Crook Update
1. Fearing accounting fraud and energy market manipulation may confuse jurors, prosecutors will go after Enron bigs Skilling and Lay for lying.
2. Skilling and Lay tried to get their case dismissed, citing, ironically, prosecutorial misconduct.

Cajun Bulldozer The poor of New Orleans have four months to a year to show the city rebuilding commission that their neighborhood should not be bulldozed. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Ribit Global warming might kill a bunch of frogs in Central and South America. Don’t tell the people who are killing each other in advance of global warming.

RFI Viagra To fight counterfeiting, Pfizer is tagging Viagra packages with Radio Frequency Identification (RFI). Can tagging individual pills with RFI be far behind? Is this yet another way for the Bush administration to spy on its citizenry?

Have You Driven a Geely Lately? Bad enough that the Japanese knocked the American auto industry on its ass, now the Chinese are gearing up to make a run with the Geeley (Jee-lee) starting in 2008. Even if only eighteen and over Chinese Americans are the only buyers, that knocks seven million out of Detroit’s showrooms. The good news: The Geely looks about as exciting an American sedan, so I doubt many, including Chinese Americans, will be lining up for a test drive.

China/Microsoft Cancel First Amendment? Knuckling under to pressure from the Chinese government, MSN shut the popular blog site created by Zhao Jing, Bejing blogger and research assistant for the Bejing bureau of the New York Times. A Microsoftie from Seattle said, in a suck-up statement that you really gotta wonder if China dictated, “We think it’s better to be there with our services than not to be there.” Boys and girls, stop worrying about bombs and terrorists—that ain’t what’s going to do us in.

IBM Officially Implements Feudalism Employee Pensions at IBM were frozen this week. Henceforth, serfs, as employees will know be known, will receive bread and water once per day, just outside the castle walls next to the moat. In a related announcement, King George declared three official classes of Americans: the rich, like him; government employees who get full pension and healthcare benefits; and the working class who shall no longer have the right to vote.

Charities ‘R’ US One could almost hear the sucking sound as an avalanche of tainted money from Black Jack Abramoff, disgraced lobbyist, flew from panicked lawmakers’ piggy banks to charities of their choice. Maybe they ought to start a home for crooked politicians right next to the new ‘Lie to Save Your Lawmaker’s Ass’ game show that, according to rumor, Tom DeLay will host.

Our Friends in Washington Update
1. Black Jack Abramoff (has he always worn a black trench coat and fedora or is he, like the Christian crooks who pull out their Bibles and ministers at the first sign of trouble, trying to get us to believe he’s an Orthodox Jew) threw a giant handful of poop into the Washington scandal fan by cutting a deal with prosecutors. Washington lawmakers caught in this downpour of the brown stinky are running for cover faster than rats from a sinking ship, divesting tainted campaign contributions with almost the same alacrity as they took them in. How do they divest the illegal favors?
2. President Bush called thirteen (not a lucky number) former secretaries of state and defense to the White House for a bipartisan meeting. Bush and his usual pals, for forty minutes, said the Iraq war is great. They allotted five to ten minutes in total to hear what their guests had to say and then took pictures in the Oval Office. People, people, people, don’t you know that you will now be blamed for the Iraqi failure, and he’s got proof.

Corporate Mafia - Business As Usual So Enron’s Kenny the Lay Man Lay and Big Skil Skilling finally get a date with justice, scaring American corporations into compliance with the laws of the land. Fuggetaboudit! Nothing’s changed. Corporations continue ripping off America by skirting every law their legal and accounting advisors think they can. Here’s a surefire fix: Buy American products made in America by Americans, all of whom pay required taxes, no offshore hiding of profits or sexy tax straddles. Ever since I met you, all I want to do is dream, dream, dream...

Heads, Playboy; Tails, India Bunny Humping Playboy will stick a fuzzy ear in the Ganges, absent nudes and its trademark title because of India’s laws and general disdain for nudity and public sex. Excuse me: this from the people who, for the last two thousand years, have brought the world thirty-five torrid chapters of Kama Sutra? Is there a KS centerfold? How about a blonde joke of the month?

Management 101 - Wife Bypassed, Cold Shoulder For CEO Here’s the problem: assume you are CEO of a major corporation, your wife holds position that traditionally inherits CEO title, but she doesn’t get selected and resigns. This is what happened when Dow Jones picked its chief operating officer to replace Peter Kann, retiring CEO, bypassing Kann’s spouse, Karen Elliott House, publisher of The Wall Street Journal. Couldn’t they have given her the job for a year? Is that too much to ask? I mean, these people have to live together, now without jobs to go to, figuring out how they are going to tolerate each other 24/7 for the rest of their miserable days.

Corporate Crook Update
1. Scrushy, such a great name for a guy who has more evasive tactics for skirting the law than Tiki Barber has for avoiding bone-crunching tackles, is told to repay $48 million in performance bonuses unjustly received because targets weren’t met. Scrushy’s illegal guys will appeal.


Pat Robertson Speaks Mind, All Of It This guy wins jackass of the century award for suggesting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke was divine retribution for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. News flash Babbling Pat, if there were divine retribution, you would have been dust eons ago.

Paris Gets 400 Overseas Beds That slinky sylph can now rest her tired body in a family controlled hotel whether she be in Europe or ranging as far as Phuket Arcadia Beach in Thailand. Granddaddy Barron, co-chairman of Hilton Hotels, helped orchestrate a $5.7 billion (part of Paris’s allowance) deal to acquire Hilton Group. The two split a public breakup in 1964, part of the postnup being no international foraging by Hilton Hotels, putting it at a disadvantage to hated rivals like Marriott and Hyatt. With the expected ribbon-cutting for a spate of new hotel openings, Paris will grace us with her presence even more.

Questions of the Week
1. Speed vs. longer battery life? Who will win the Intel/Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) war? The next generation of in-home electronic devices hangs in the balance, as does the future of Intel and AMD. Intel is deep-sixing its ubiquitous ‘Intel Inside’ logo for ‘Leap Ahead’ and going the cooler running, longer life, slower chip. AMD continues to think warp speed is the way to go. These issues are important to Intel and AMD because their existence, let alone dominance, likely depend on the right choice. What do you think? I’m going with speed.
2. Will Uncle Sam ever have high-speed trains that compare favorably with those in Europe and Asia? NO! Why? Have you ridden the rails on the back of AMTRAK, the cattle/mushroom moving experts? Maybe I’m being too metamorphic. What I mean to say is: AMTRAK herds its passengers aboard, keeps them in the dark, and covers them with s--- (manure).
3. If the US wasn’t mired in Iraq, would it leap to the Ukraine’s defense and start a new, decades-long freeze with Russia over the gas control thing? Does Dick Cheney own shares in Gazprom, the Russian company playing the ‘it’s our gas and we’ll sell it to whomever we wish’ game?
4. Does it strike (bad word choice) you as ironic that GI’s will supervise Iraqi police to cut down on prisoner abuse? Would you like to be Sunni in post-war Iraq regardless of who runs the prisons?
5. As South Africa moves away from virginity testing of young women, are certain religions in America moving toward it?
6. Shouldn’t the Iraqi’s be the ones to determine if their election was valid? It’s their country; let them run it.

Triennial Shareholders’ Meeting? Healthsouth, under the leadership of its new CEO, Jay Grinney, held its first shareholders meeting since May 2002. The company’s second largest shareholder, Richard M. Scrushy (the one the Bible-belt Birmingham jury found not guilty of involvement in a $2.7 billion fraud - no tampering there), was out of the state on vacation. He did manage to squeeze in a press conference saying, “It is long past time for Jay Grinney to stop using me as his excuse of his inability to manage the company.” Now why didn’t he have the chutzpah to say that in person at the triennial shareholders’ meeting?

Say it ain’t so Dudley, eh? Paul Martin stands behind (Why not in front of?) his finance minister, Ralph Goodale, who is under investigation by the Mounties for leaks that may have led to insider trading. Keep it up, Oh Canada, and you will qualify for statehood.

Our Friends in Washington Update
1. Because I have always expected much more, I am disappointed that one of the few Colin Powell utterances since leaving office comes out in favor of the Bushies wiretapping frenzy. For shame, and tsk, tsk.
Not So Independent Independence Air, whatever that is beyond a wing and a prayer, may stop flying if it can’t get outside financing. Now that’s a (an?) unique industry problem.

Screwed Up Justice Of The Week Award The US Court of Appeals in San Francisco affirmed a $500,000 jury award for a mentally ill man who tried to kill a quadriplegic former classmate by unplugging his respirator. Why? It ruled that Pacific Bell had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by refusing to rehire him because he was mentally impaired.

My Three Sons – A Question Of Morality William A. Ginglen got forty years after his three sons, who recognized him from cameras at the banks he robbed, turned him in to authorities. They said they were only doing the right thing, something their former marine father had taught them. If you were one of the sons, what would you have done? Would you as father, if one of your sons was a police officer and may have obtained evidence illegally, appeal?

Corporate Crook Update
1. Richard Causey, former chief accounting officer of Enron, finally caved and will testify against Lay and Skilling, former chief executives and two of Houston’s most hated. Causey will likely sit on a cot and contemplate his navel. The judge granted Lay and Skilling’s attorneys until January 30th, giving them more time to prepare. This is going to be one of the year’s most interesting. Will Skilling rat on Lay? Will Lay rat on Skilling? I hope they both get twenty-five years and have to repay every dime that they ever got from Enron in compensation.
2. Richard M. Scrushy sued HealthSouth for $100 million in back compensation. This guy really believes he’s innocent. The sooner someone nails his crooked hide to the wall, the better. Maybe Scrushy will be the trial of 2007.

As Miles O'Brien of CNN said, "Good riddance to 2005."
HAPPY 2006!

Big Fat Liar Award To the CHENEY/Rove/bush administration for WMD, torture, rendition, secret prisons, and spying on Americans. If you do nothing else this week, listen to the Condi/Tim interview (Internet Explorer only - another Microsoft attempt at monopolization) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/ and decide for yourself if the CRb administration is telling the truth about spying on its fellow citizens. If you want to do two things, read Senator Robert C. Byrd’s December 19th speech on the floor of the Senate (click on article under Previous Posts to the left)

Questions of the Week
1. Isn’t it a shame third world countries awash in money aren’t able to root out corruption, separate government from religion, and protect government from the undue interference by the wealthy thus ensuring a government of, by, and for the people?

Swift Kick in the Ass Award To South Korean Hwang Woo-suk NOT for fabricating stem cell research, which he did, BUT for falsely raising the hopes and dreams of the World’s afflicted. The scientific community should stop worrying being damaged (Damaged? It is not you who are damaged. Get off your collective PhD asses and get on with your research. Please.).

If You’re So Smart: Please explain the new drug plan to the rest of America, or, is it, as all of us suspect, so darned complicated that no one can explain it, despite Carol Burnett being suckered in by some little b ‘bushie’ to make us think it’s a good deal. Here’s a simple solution: everyone in America gets exactly the same healthcare and prescription plan that federal government employees get. Too expensive? Legalize and tax the other drug lords’ (Columbia, Afghanistan, etc.) products.

WalMart, Say “Guilty” 8 Million Times Real Fast Somewhere back in medieval England the courts decreed that kids under four could no longer work and employees were allowed to eat. Jump in the time machine to the year 2005 and it seems Good King WalMart violated the eating part eight million times and got whacked with a $172 million fine. That’s about $21.50 a head, or three times the hourly minimum wage that most WalMart employees earn…forget about working; demand longer lunch hours.

Our Friends in Washington Update
1. In what may be the most honest thing he’s ever done, super lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the cause of many congressmen to veer from the paths of righteousness from money’s sake, is talking deal. (Crooks always talk deals.) Tom DeLay and his many tarnished brethren can’t be happy. So we’ll light candles.
2. I don’t like Rick Santorum’s (Republican Senator from Pennsylvania) religion, but I dislike even more his lack of loyalty to a championed albeit unconstitutional cause, intelligent design, that got flushed down the toilet, hip-hip-hooray, by a court ruling stating it nothing more than a pretext to promote religion in schools. So how’d you like him covering your back?

DeLay’s Delay The Texas courts aren’t shooting their legs in the air and exposing their bellies so big bad Tom can kick them with his pointy boots. No sirree Billy-Bob. An appeals court told him and his legal battalion to go back to the lower court from whence they came. Next stop: the state’s highest court, The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which, I guess they figure, is more familiar with the misdeeds of Republican no-goodniks.

Big Buck Housing Discrimination So you think you might want to live on Country Oak Lane in Alamo, CA. Guess again. After 29 of his old money (we’re filthy rich, but we don’t want anyone to know it so we live in crappy, small houses) neighbors came a knocking, David Duffield, billionaire founder of PeopleSoft, had to scale back his plans for a 72,000 square foot home to a meager 10,000 square feet and if that wasn’t enough, had to scrap his plans for a twenty-car underground garage. New money Aaron Spelling (Tori Spelling’s can you give my daughter the type of life to which she’s grown accustomed father) has a 62,000 square foot shack somewhere in the Hollywood environs. Maybe the Dufster can buy a neighboring property.

On a Personal Note Carnegie Hall, though only half full because of the transit strike, played host last evening to a lilting Handel’s Messiah eloquently performed by the Masterwork Chorus of one hundred voices and Orchestra.

A Tip of The ExtraWry Hat To GCM in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada, (for you movie buffs, Brokeback Mountain was filmed in Fort Macleod) for steering me to the Robert C. Byrd speech and to PJH in St. Lucie, Fl, for kicking my starter pedal.

Senator Rober C. Byrd's Speech on the Senate Floor

Dear Friend:
I am deeply concerned with the latest disclosure that the Administration has been secretly spying on American citizens without a warrant.

This afternoon I spoke out on the Senate floor to raise my voice about this Administration's pattern of undermining constitutional protections and the arrogance with which it rebukes the powers held by the Legislative and Judicial branches of government.

I hope you will take a moment to read these words.

Sincerely,

Robert C. Byrd
United States Senator


NO PRESIDENT IS ABOVE THE LAW

Americans have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous President. It has become apparent that this Administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our Country’s law-abiding citizens, and against our Constitution.

We have been stunned to hear reports about the Pentagon gathering information and creating databases to spy on ordinary Americans whose only sin is choose to exercise their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. Those Americans who choose to question the Administration’s flawed policy in Iraq are labeled by this Administration as “domestic terrorists.”

We now know that the F.B.I.’s use of National Security Letters on American citizens has increased one hundred fold, requiring tens of thousands of individuals to turn over personal information and records. These letters are issued without prior judicial review, and provide no real means for an individual to challenge a perNmanent gag order.

Through news reports, we have been shocked to learn of the CIA’s practice of rendition, and the so-called “black sites,” secret locations in foreign countries, where abuse and interrogation have been exported, to escape the reach of U.S. laws protecting against human rights abuses.

We know that Vice President Dick Cheney has asked for exemptions for the CIA from the language contained in the McCain torture amendment banning cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment. Thank God his pleas have been rejected by this Congress.

Now comes the stomach-churning revelation through an executive order, that President Bush has circumvented both the Congress and the courts. He has usurped the Third Branch of government – the branch charged with protecting the civil liberties of our people – by directing the National Security Agency to intercept and eavesdrop on the phone conversations and e-mails of American citizens without a warrant, which is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. He has stiff-armed the People’s Branch of government. He has rationalized the use of domestic, civilian surveillance with a flimsy claim that he has such authority because we are at war. The executive order, which has been acknowledged by the President, is an end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which makes it unlawful for any official to monitor the communications of an individual on American soil without the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

What is the President thinking? Congress has provided for the very situations which the President is blatantly exploiting. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, housed in the Department of Justice, reviews requests for warrants for domestic surveillance. The Court can review these requests expeditiously and in times of great emergency. In extreme cases, where time is of the essence and national security is at stake, surveillance can be conducted before the warrant is even applied for.

This secret court was established so that sensitive surveillance could be conducted, and information could be gathered without compromising the security of the investigation. The purpose of the FISA Court is to balance the government’s role in fighting the war on terror with the Fourth Amendment rights afforded to each and every American.

The American public is given vague and empty assurances by the President that amount to little more than “trust me.” But, we are a nation of laws and not of men. Where is the source of that authority he claims? I defy the Administration to show me where in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or the U.S. Constitution, they are allowed to steal into the lives of innocent America citizens and spy.

When asked yesterday what the source of this authority was, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had no answer. Secretary Rice seemed to insinuate that eavesdropping on Americans was acceptable because FISA was an outdated law, and could not address the needs of the government in combating the new war on terror.

This is a patent falsehood. The USA Patriot Act expanded FISA significantly, equipping the government with the tools it needed to fight terrorism. Further amendments to FISA were granted under the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2002 and the Homeland Security Act of 2002. In fact, in its final report, the 9/11 Commission noted that the removal of the pre-9/11 “wall” between intelligence officials and law enforcement was significant in that it “opened up new opportunities for cooperative action.”

The President claims that these powers are within his role as Commander in Chief. Make no mistake, the powers granted to the Commander in Chief are specifically those as head of the Armed Forces. These warrantless searches are conducted not against a foreign power, but against unsuspecting and unknowing American citizens. They are conducted against individuals living on American soil, not in Iraq or Afghanistan. There is nothing within the powers granted in the Commander in Chief clause that grants the President the ability to conduct clandestine surveillance of American civilians. We must not allow such groundless, foolish claims to stand.

The President claims a boundless authority through the resolution that authorized the war on those who perpetrated the September 11th attacks. But that resolution does not give the President unchecked power to spy on our own people. That resolution does not give the Administration the power to create covert prisons for secret prisoners. That resolution does not authorize the torture of prisoners to extract information from them. That resolution does not authorize running black-hole secret prisons in foreign countries to get around U.S. law. That resolution does not give the President the powers reserved only for kings and potentates.

I continue to be shocked and astounded by the breadth with which the Administration undermines the constitutional protections afforded to the people, and the arrogance with which it rebukes the powers held by the Legislative and Judicial Branches. The President has cast off federal law, enacted by Congress, often bearing his own signature, as mere formality. He has rebuffed the rule of law, and he has trivialized and trampled upon the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizures guaranteed to Americans by the United States Constitution.

We are supposed to accept these dirty little secrets. We are told that it is irresponsible to draw attention to President Bush’s gross abuse of power and Constitutional violations. But what is truly irresponsible is to neglect to uphold the rule of law. We listened to the President speak last night on the potential for democracy in Iraq. He claims to want to instill in the Iraqi people a tangible freedom and a working democracy, at the same time he violates our own U.S. laws and checks and balances? President Bush called the recent Iraqi election “a landmark day in the history of liberty.” I dare say in this country we may have reached our own sort of landmark. Never have the promises and protections of Liberty seemed so illusory. Never have the freedoms we cherish seemed so imperiled.

These renegade assaults on the Constitution and our system of laws strike at the very core of our values, and foster a sense of mistrust and apprehension about the reach of government.

I am reminded of Thomas Payne’s famous words, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

These astounding revelations about the bending and contorting of the Constitution to justify a grasping, irresponsible Administration under the banner of “national security” are an outrage. Congress can no longer sit on the sidelines. It is time to ask hard questions of the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Director of the CIA. The White House should not be allowed to exempt itself from answering the same questions simply because it might assert some kind of “executive privilege” in order to avoid further embarrassment.

High Cost Of Admitting No Wrong $180 million, if you’re Millenium Partners. That’s what it agreed to pay over a mutual fund trading scheme that lined its pockets at the expense of other investors.

Quote Of The Week “Morons are running all these companies. In corporate America ‘it’s survival of the unfittest.’ Time Warner is the poster boy for what I’m talking about.” Carl Icahn, corporate raider who teamed with Lazard’s ‘Bid ‘em up Bruce’ Wasserstein in a shareholder war with Time Warner, as quoted in Bloomberg.

Uncle Sham, Hic, Wants You So you’ve been out of uniform for five years, soaking up a lot of well-earned rum, and you decide to reup because your money and girlfriend ran out at the same time. Surprise, now you get your old rank back and don’t have to go through basic training. I don’t know if you get a weapon.

Questions of the Week
1. So what do you think of the U.S. Military planting stories in Iraqi papers?
2. Are scissors under four inches safer than scissors over four inches? Are screwdrivers under seven inches safer than screwdrivers over seven inches? Are you concerned that people that know as much about terrorists as you and I are telling us what is and what isn’t safe? Are you concerned that we are actually listening to them?
3. Should we be surprised that now released 1964 secret documents show that Vietnam War intelligence was deliberately doctored? Will it take forty years to reach the same conclusions about Iraq?
4. Does anyone understand our Iraq policy, or is that the policy? Shouldn’t victory be defined when we get every last American soldier outta’ there?
5. Why did twenty-six planes known to be operated by CIA companies make 307 flights in Europe since 1971? Is the CIA operating secret prisons in Europe?
6. Just how big of a screw-up (please choose one or insert your own: horrific, gargantuan, unspeakable) will the Federal Drug Discount Program end up being?
7. If scientists, say, go to college on a science scholarship and don’t need to know anything about football, why should a football player going to college on a football scholarship need to know anything about science, or math, or anything else? Is a failed football player any less likely to succeed than a failed scientist?

Pfizer Pfunny Business Last June, when whistle blower Peter Rost, a Pfizer VP, went on Sixty Minutes to talk about drug pricing and subsequently found that his corporate cellphone and e-mail accounts had been turned off, Pfizer said it had not deliberately disconnected his service.

The Donald In LA Amid sagging ratings (what took so long), The Apprentice is moving west. Good Riddance. The Donald is so over. Please take Martha too.

Clostridium Difficile As if the H5N1 bird flu strain weren’t enough to clutter our meager brains, now C-diff, as those in the know seem to call it, is reaching into our rectums and causing…well, the runs. If you have severe diarrhea, see your doc.

Corporate Crook Update
1. Lord Black pleaded not guilty to ripping off Hollinger, the publishing conglomerate he helped create. He had to put up a $20 million bond secured by his Palm Beach digs and the seized proceeds of his Park Avenue pied-á-terre and promise to travel only in the U.S. and Canada. Question: Since he gave up his Canadian citizenship to become a Lord, why doesn’t Canada send him packing?

Warning: Keep Bag Away From Management Fifteen makers of plastic bags were fined $325 million by the European Commission for a twenty-year price fixing scheme. The Finns, Spaniards, and Germans are the bad guys. The pesky Brits ratted them out, and they’re not even in the union.

Our Friends in Washington Update
1. Is Carl Rove manufacturing grand jury responses to fit evolving evidence?
2. Randy Cunningham, eight-term Republican from San Diego, California, bit the dust amid a Pentagon contractor kickback scandal. Republicans far and wide are running for cover lest they get smattered with the brown stuff of fallout.
3. Trent Who? I guess Trent Lott, deposed as Senate majority leader three years ago for sticking his racist foot in his racist mouth, figures so many Republicans are up to their udders in manure he might worm his way back into power.

It’s 6:00 PM, Do You Know Where You’re Telemarketers Are? I hate the idea of the government’s ‘Do Not Call’ list. I don’t want the government telling me who can and can’t call. Besides, they are doing a lousy job since they allow all kinds of annoying calls to get through. Why can’t our service provides block all calls that we specify, the keys here being all and we?

General Moto In addition to cutting 30,000 jobs, maybe General Motors should consider changing its name and relocating to Tokyo to see if it can capture some of the design and marketing magic of the largest car company in the world, Toyota.

Weekly Lottery Winner So let’s see if I got this right. Enron goes tits up, fire sales in mid-2004 some of its assets including Texas Genco, an electric power generator with a dozen plants, to a group of buy-out hotshots (Texas Pacific, KKR, Hellman & Friedman, The Blackstone Group, which in and of itself should have waved the big red ‘someone’s getting screwed and it ain’t us’ flag) for $900 million. NOW SAID BUYOUT GROUP IS SELLING GENCO TO NRG FOR $5.8 BILLION. WOW! Question: Who bails out Genco when it goes tits up? Answer: the same citizens who pay a shit load for Genco electric power that gives Genco its current $5.8 billion value. Maybe the buyout hotshots should leave some of the money on the table for say twenty years to guarantee uninterrupted power production and protect against further consumer gouging. Sure.

Questions of the Week
1. Does big oil dictate what types of cars will be built in America?
2. Why is Cheney so afraid of Iraqi reality?
3. Did this administration abuse the legal system by declaring Jose Padilla and enemy combatant and denying him access to counsel?

When Hell Freezes Over Bush aid Iran can enrich uranium, but only in Russia and under strict controls. Are Putin and his KGB pals thinking ‘CHECKMATE?’

Halliburton’s Dirty War Charges that a $7 billion oil field repair contract awarded in 2003 on the sly to Halliburton are moving at the speed of frozen oil from the Pentagon to the Justice Department, which “is in the process of considering whether to pursue the matter.” Meanwhile, Bunnatine Greenhouse, then chief contracts monitor at the Army Corps of Engineers, who threw the shit at the fan, has been demoted from the elite Senior Executive Service to project manager with no projects.

Pinocchio or Pin Cushion? Is the nonagenarian Chilean General, Augusto Pinochet, guilty of stashing millions in arms kickbacks and embezzled peoples monies in foreign bank accounts under false names or again the innocent victim of what his lawyer calls ‘international Marxism.’ It seems odd that he was deemed too unhealthy to stand trial on human rights violations and genocide charges, but now that millions of dollars are involved, he is robust enough to stand trial on tax evasion and a host of other charges.

Corporate Crook Update
1. Early Christmas gift: Phillip Bennett, ex-Refco CEO, in addition to putting up a $50 million bond, got an. an electronic ankle bracelet to make sure he stays in his Park Avenue pad while waiting for a January 18thhearing on eight charges of conspiracy, fraud, and other baddies that left Refco bankrupt.
2. Honk if you love Jesus! What does a West Texas red-neck do with $69 million he bilks from his employer? He buys a truck stop. The SEC went after Jonathan D. Nelson, former CFO of Snyder, TX Patterson-UTI Energy (NASDAQ PTEN - land-based oil and gas rigs), for pumping $69 million into his own pockets. He also bought an airplane, airfield, cattle ranch, homes, and vehicles.
3. Win some, lose some. The guy who saved born-again Scrushy from the cross didn’t fare too well with Hannibal Crumpler, a former HealthSouth comptroller, who got nailed with a max of 15 years and fines of $1 million plus (they didn’t say the plus) for creating the ‘hide the losses’ game known as conspiracy and lying to auditors in the $2.7 billion fraud. Unlike his former boss, there were no reported sightings of evangelical ministers praying outside the bible-belt courthouse proclaiming his innocence to the heavens…and jurors.

Our Friends in Washington Update
1. While Libby fiddles and collects millions for his defense fund from the who’s who in Republican America and the who were’s in Democratic America, the leakers are getting a new grand jury so don’t send all your money to the Libbyists.
2. One of Tom DeLay’s former hit men cops a plea. Don’t you love it when bullies get theirs? Ruthless Thomas Scanlon, one-time fierce DeLay’s protector and big-time anti-Clinton mouthpiece, is naming names, hoping to have less time behind bars. To ruthless, I guess we can now add backstabbing. Scanlon agreed to repay $19.6 million that he ripped off from his former Indian clients and could spend five years in an iron teepee with no flap. Bob Ney, Republican Congressman from Ohio, one of those named by Scanlon said he wasn’t really aware of what was going on. Sound familiar. DeLay is probably cursing a blue streak. I hope they all end up as cellmates.
3. Uninformed, Unprincipled, Unfit. Don’t let Jean Schmidt off the hook for lobbing the coward bomb at John P. Murtha, PA Dem and Marine war vet. She deserves a one way ticket back to Ohio, not a place on our national stage.
4. Thank God for The Three Republicans. In July, we now learn, VP Cheney called Senators McCain, Graham, and Warner on the mat demanding that they stop pushing for regulations that would ban cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of prisoners. The three republicans gave him the GOP finger.
5. Just Say No. When asked if W talked to Tony in April ’04 about bombing Al Jazeera’s Qatar TV studio, press secretary Scott McLelland said, “We are not interested in dignifying something so outlandish and inconceivable with a response.” Seems to me that’s quite a long response for no response. Wouldn’t a simple ‘NO!’ have been more effective, even if not much more believable, given this administration’s track record on truth, justice, and the American way.

Management Doomed Peter Drucker, who single-handedly kept the world believing managers worthy of salvation, died this week. He was 92.

G$$$$$$$$$$gle This Google’s stock ran the $400 mile in under sixteen months, putting its Market Cap (market value) at $119 billion, passing such stalwarts as Cisco, Dell, Oracle, Apple, and Genentech and breathing down the necks of IBM and Intel. Even Microsoft, with a market cap of $271 billion is looking over its shoulder and is sure to come out with an ad-driven searcher of its own. At these numbers, a lot of others will follow. To me, that spells even greater googlebucks problems for Google investors buying at these insane multiples. Remember the last bubble burst that sprayed a lot of stinky brown stuff across our portfolios? No, of course not, how could we, it was almost ten years ago. Well, here’s a reminder: earnings projections were based on optimized assumed revenues ABSENT NEW COMPETITION—that’s what the Street euphemistically called new economics. Out west where I come from, it’s still known as bullshit.

The Government Made Me Do It William Weld, NY governor wannabe, said Decker College, the vocational school largely for disadvantaged blacks and Hispanics in Kentucky that financially collapsed on Weld’s watch as $700 thousand per year CEO, was driven to bankruptcy by the Federal Government. One of Decker’s investors, the partially eponymous Leeds Weld, is an investment firm chaired by ex-NYC mayor of note, Rudy Giuliani. So what we’ve got here is a Republican investment company run by not so shabby Republicans, one of whom wants to be the next Republican governor of New York and one of whom thinks the Republicans actually have a shot at the White House in 2008 and that he’s their best hope, blaming a Republican Federal Government for the failure of a school that left a bunch of kids whose parents likely vote Democratic out a bunch of money. Hmmmm. Maybe Weld’s right.

Questions of the Week
1. When the current U.S. administration starts jailing we the people, as political dissidents, where will it put us?
2. Should we declare the day after Election Day national Deficit Disclosure Day when the newly elected representatives of we the people tell the truth about how much our misinformed vote will cost?
3. How should we kill our enemies?
4. Are we surprised that the Iraqi’s torture prisoners?
5. If you have the same intelligence as I, except I know it’s flawed, is it the same intelligence?

Lego My Logo Danish Lego, as in plastic toy bricks, sued Canadian Mega Bloks, as in plastic toy bricks, for trademark infringement, Lego suggesting that its uniquely designed plastic toy bricks were so intrinsic that they had become an unregistered trademark. The Canadian Supreme Court told the Danes what they could do with their Lego’s. The Canadians and Danes are also exchanging sharp words over some piss ant island (Hans Island) near Greenland. Are they becoming the Israelis and Arabs or the Irish Protestants and Catholics of the next century? Will Canada create Danish internment camps? Will Great Danes henceforth in Canada be known as Great Canadians?

Grim, Dark, Raid Disney films? You bet. The Brothers Grimm; Dark Water; The Great Raid; they sound more like an Eisner management trilogy. And Disney wonders why it loses money on its films? Hey Mickey, wake up. You’re supposed to be the happy people.

Used Balloons For Sale How’d you like to find out that your doc has a profit sharing plan with the hospital? More and more they do, and one way the takers of the Hippocratic oath line their pockets is by reusing artery balloons. So far, it seems they confine their re-launches to the same schlub, but can an E-Bay listing be far behind, right above used heart pumps, pacemakers, and joints. At least, so far as we know, the practice hasn’t spread to planned parenthood clinics.

Corporate Crook Update
1. The Lord, as in Conrad Black, the deposed newspaper business (as in Hollinger International) mogul, got his yesterday: an eleven count indictment was served up in the Windy City charging him and three former colleagues with stealing $51.8 million from Hollinger. A piker, when you compare him to jailbird Kozlowski from Tyco: Kozlowski and friends helped themselves to about three times as much and when it comes to wives birthday parties at company expense, Conrad was a cheapskate: $40 thousand compared to Denny boys $2 million. The Black lady, or is it Lady Black, ought to get herself a really big crook if she wants to have a really big birthday bash. P.S. I believe The Lord is missing, perhaps hiding out in the homeland he discarded in favor of the fount of his titular supremacy—it shouldn’t be too hard to find 25 million or so Canadians willing to help send him south of the 49th to face the music.

Jail Jesse While governor of Minnesota, matalist Jesse Ventura could operate all the casino’s voters allowed, but private citizen Jesse might get the slammer for promoting offshore internet gambling. Other big names form Hollywood, sports, and TV face similar threats. If nothing else, it will force governments into the business and possibly even have them update all of their onshore lottos to make losing money faster and more fun. Maybe the IRS should get into the business and eliminate income taxes. I mean, wouldn’t you sooner give the money than have it taken?

Our Friends in Washington Update
1. More leaking? Bob Woodward of Deep Throat fame says someone told him two years ago that the wife of a noisy White House critic worked for the CIA. Psssst! Bob. Talk to Judy Miller. They’re putting people who don’t rat in jail now. Think of all the talk shows you’ll miss. The problem, as in Plumbing 101, is not the leaks, but the pipes that cause the leaks; if Washington stops trying to hide behind itself it seems to me the leaks stop.
2. Cheney and Bush are playing the unpatriotic card again, lashing and bashing and smashing war critics with vitriol speak.
3. Remember Judge Alito, hopeful Supreme Court man? Senate Dems and Reps are taking off the gloves. Why all the saber rattling. If enough senators want him, he’s in. Next case.
4. My Three Sons. An advocacy group wants the SEC to expand its enquiry into Senator Frist’s well-timed stock sales to include similarly well-timed stock sales by his three sons. Seems a long way from Steve, Mike, Robbie, and Chip of Fred MacMurray days.

So The Government Hires This Crook…Robert Stein, an ex-con for felony fraud, gets hired as comptroller and financial officer (known felony fraud incubators) for the American occupation authority in Iraq who puts him in charge of $82 million. It didn’t take Stein long to figure out the kickback game, putting himself down for $200 thousand a month. Bribes were paid, some for real estate, some for new cars, some for home improvements, some for jewelry, some deposited into the Stein’s accounts, but the most interesting was $7 thousand for towing services for Mrs. Stein. Buyer beware: don’t buy a Toyota previously owned by Mrs. Stein of North Carolina.

Stolen Laptop Shows Iran’s Nuke, Believe It It’s like this, see: the CIA calls a bunch of bigs to the top of a skyscraper in Vienna, overlooking the Danube no less (this makes it more CIAish) and tells them this stolen Iranian laptop computer they just happen to have in their possession contains proof that Iran is designing a nuclear warhead. What’s next, Condi showing it to the world through the UN, pointing to long silver tubes that are mobile WMD and the President barnstorming Ohio and Kentucky to round up support for another war? An even bigger outrage: some of those present suggested the CIA might have fabricated the data.

Weekly Quiz What product was once sold on Longevity Lane in Liuzhou, China? (Answer at bottom)

Passing Gas Here’s the problem: right now, the senate and congress are full of gas so there’s all this farting going on. So the Senate hauls these five really rich guys in and wants to know why they’re getting richer and the rest of the country is getting poorer and the really rich guys who are going to die rich and therefore don’t really care what the Senate thinks pretty much gave them the finger. Alas, none of the poor people who have given up food and other luxuries in order to buy gasoline and home heating fuels were in the room—they were sitting around wondering when the Senate and their other so-called elected representatives were going to get smart enough to free themselves from the clutches of the five wicked and ugly stepsisters and all their wonderful PAC money and aggressively and intelligently promote the development of alternative fuels. Alas, alas, once our dearly elected representatives pass gas and their stomach pain subsides, they’ll forget all about excessive oil company profits and constituents freezing their asses off in stalled SUV’s until the old gas pain comes back. Then the farting starts all over again.

Crackberry Pie The hundreds of thousands of Blackberry users in the U.S. may have to thumb something else if Research In Motion (RIM) in Waterloo, Ontario and NTP in Arlington, VA can’t reach agreement on the three-year-old patent infringement suit lodged by NTP. Doesn’t RIM realize that the CIA is based in Arlington? It seems shareholders are milling about the exits, but haven’t hit the panic bar: @ $78, the stock is $16 above its 52 week low, though down from $128, its 52 week high. I don’t know how much of an unfavorable NTP ruling is factored into the $78, but its my guess everyone still holding expects an equitable settlement.

Questions of the Week
1. What is the personal cost to me, my friends, and my neighbors if the world negotiates a meaningful, global trade agreement next month in Hong Kong?
2. How old will your grandchildren or great grandchildren be when tax reform becomes a reality?

What In Hall Is Going On At Halliburton Every time I turn around, Halliburton is getting its knuckles wrapped for some misdeed, the latest being improperly charging worker pension plans with executive pension and bonus plans. I think it’s a company run by crooks and gangsters who don’t give a damn about we, the people. Oh, isn’t Halliburton where VP Cheney used to be CEO? Yes, I believe it is.

Immy’s And the award this year goes to sixteen-year-old Mary Sue for baring her breasts the most times in one week and iCasting her accomplishment to iPod users around the world. NATAS, the Emmy people, has created a category for original video content for computers, cellphones and other handhelds like iPod.

I Say Nothing This from the NY Times in a November 8th article about Wall Street bonuses : The big winners could be traders involved in commodities and energy, in particular, proprietary traders who deal in those two high-octane growth areas. They could receive pay increases of 40 percent to 50 percent, with some walking away with $15 million to $20 million each, according to one investment banking executive who is prohibited from commenting on compensation issues. Just so you don’t feel too badly about your Christmas turkey, you’ll be heartened to know that the mid-level schlubs will only get $1.2 million to $1.8 million. How do they live?

Corporate Crook Update
1. You gotta love this guy: Richard (I think we should call him Jesus) Scrushy. Turns out his son-in-law, Michael Plaia, married to daughter Christa (had he been a son, would his name be Christ?), invested $3 mil in a cable station in Birmingham while Richie boy was on trial there for laundering, conspiracy and securities fraud so Richie and frau Leslie could host a religious TV show to the good jurors in Bible belt Birmingham. Guess what? Son-in-law Mikie has done it again. He’s acquired a cable TV station in Montgomery where Richie boy is being charged with bribing a former governor of Alabama. How much you want to bet that Richie and frau Leslie will soon be hosting a reprise of their Birmingham program so the good jurors from the Montgomery pool will know what a grand Christian he really is. He’s already taken three men of the cloth to court to pray with him and frau out in front of the courtroom after he pled not guilty. Maybe he is Jesus. It’s for sure a miracle he’s not pounding rocks.

Judy, Judy, Judy Cary Grant never said it, but the Gray Lady did, giving Judith Miller of 85 days in the slammer fame the boot after 28 years of Times toil. Judy says she needs some quiet time after her ordeal, which will apparently be spent in the solitude of the lecture circuit. Will we ever get to the bottom of the Libby/Miller relationship? How deep does it go?

Our Friends in Washington Update
1. Scooter Libby has started a legal defense fund. I wonder if he’s assigning future book royalties to secure repayment.

Evolution Evolves The Intelligent Design octet in Dover, PA got the heave-ho by the voters. Skirmishes got nasty and there may be some over-the-shoulder glancing, but so far no one has been killed. Praise the uh, Darwin.

Corporate Speak Answer: “Forgetting the business logic and the price, there will be options down the road there, I would answer your question about capable and that we weren’t really quite capable yet because our army was doing all the other stuff we had to do, particularly the systems conversions. “The army will be capable to do other stuff sometime next year, which is reasonable. Doesn’t mean we will.” What was the question? Question: Does J.P. Morgan Chase have plans for a potential merger? Responder: James Dimon, chief executive-designate. Ah, that’s the problem: he’s only the CEO-designate.

Non-Surprise Of The Week Blockbuster loses $491 million in its third quarter. CEO Antioco says Blockbuster will cut costs and become more dominant as the industry consolidates. Does that mean bigger losses? Not much logic need be expended to realize these guys are riding a dinosaur.

Greedy Bastards Update
1. In 2003, indicted power lobbyist fast Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay’s good friend, wanted leading human rights abuser Gabon to pay him $9 million to set up a meeting with W. In what the White House describes as a routine meeting and nothing to do with Abramoff, Bongo, President of Gabon, met with W in 2004, ten months after fast Jack’s pitch. Odd that one of fast Jack’s accounts, the one to which Gabon was directed to pay the $9 mil, had millions in cash flow right around that time.

Not Too Corny About $22.7 billion is the projected corn subsidy for 2005, up from $13.3 billion in 2004. Let’s see, at $4 a bag for movie popcorn, that’s equal to 5.7 billion bags. There’s the problem: we’re not eating enough movie popcorn so cut out the farm subsidy and give it to the movie goers so they can buy more popcorn.

Weekly Quiz Answer Cedar coffins, the sale of which is now banned in this city.

WE REMEMBER, LEST WE FORGET

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

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