AIG Bonuses: Here's what happened

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has sent a letter to House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank sketching out what his office has learned so far about the bonuses paid out to the thieves at AIG who (quote) brought the firm to its knees, forcing a taxpayer bailout.(unquote)

STATE OF NEW YORK
OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
120 BROADWAY
ANDREW M. CUOMO
Attorney General
NEW YORK, NY 10271
March 17, 2009
(212) 416-8050

Honorable Barney Frank
Chairman, House Committee on Financial Services
United States House of Representatives
2129 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515

Re: AIG 2008 Retention Bonuses

Dear Chairman Frank:

I am writing to provide you and your Committee with information regarding an ongoing investigation my Office has been conducting of executive compensation at American International Group (“AIG”). I hope this information will be useful to the Committee at its hearing on AIG tomorrow.

We learned over the weekend that AIG had, last Friday, distributed more than $160 million in retention payments to members of its Financial Products Subsidiary, the unit of AIG that was principally responsible for the firm’s meltdown. Last October, AIG agreed to my Office’s demand that no payments be made out of its $600 million Financial Products deferred compensation pool. While this was a positive step, we were dismayed to learn after the fact that AIG had made multi-million dollar payments out of its separate Financial Products retention plan on Friday.

AIG now claims that it had no choice but to pay these sums because of the unalterable terms of the plan. However, had the federal government not bailed out AIG with billions in taxpayer funds, the firm likely would have gone bankrupt, and surely no payments would have been made out of the plan. My Office has reviewed the legal opinion that AIG obtained from its own counsel, and it is not at all clear that these lawyers even considered the argument that it is only by the grace of American taxpayers that members of Financial Products even have jobs, let alone a pool of retention bonus money. I hope the Committee will take up this issue at its hearing tomorrow.

Furthermore, we know that AIG was able to bargain with its Financial Products employees since these employees have agreed to take salaries of $1 for 2009 in exchange for receiving their retention bonus packages. The fact that AIG engaged in this negotiation flies in the face of AIG’s assertion that it had no choice but to make these lavish multi-million dollar bonus payments. It appears that AIG had far more leverage than they now claim.

AIG also claims that retention of individuals at Financial Products was vital to unwinding the subsidiary’s business. However, to date, AIG has been unwilling to disclose the names of those who received these retention payments making it impossible to test their claim. Moreover, as detailed below, numerous individuals who received large “retention” bonuses are no longer at the firm. Until we obtain the names of these individuals, it is impossible to determine when and why they left the firm and how it is that they received these payments.

If AIG were confident in its claim that those who received these large bonuses were so vital to the orderly unwinding of the unit, one would expect them to freely provide the names and positions of those who got these bonuses. My Office will continue to seek an explanation for why each one of these individuals was so crucial to keep aboard that they were paid handsomely despite the unit’s disastrous performance.

As you may know, my Office yesterday subpoenaed AIG for the names of those who received these bonuses, and we plan to do everything necessary to enforce compliance. American taxpayers deserve to know where their money is going, and AIG’s intransigence and desire to obscure who received these payments should not be tolerated. Already my Office has determined that some of these bonuses were staggering in size. For example:

• The top recipient received more than $6.4 million;
• The top seven bonus recipients received more than $4 million each
• The top ten bonus recipients received a combined $42 million;
• 22 individuals received bonuses of $2 million or more, and combined they received more than $72 million;
• 73 individuals received bonuses of $1 million or more; and
• Eleven of the individuals who received “retention” bonuses of $1 million or more are no longer working at AIG, including one who received $4.6 million;

Again, these payments were all made to individuals in the subsidiary whose performance led to crushing losses and the near failure of AIG. Thus, last week, AIG made more than 73 millionaires in the unit which lost so much money that it brought the firm to its knees, forcing a taxpayer bailout. Something is deeply wrong with this outcome. I hope the Committee will address it head on.
We have also now obtained the contracts under which AIG decided to make these payments. The contracts shockingly contain a provision that required most individuals’ bonuses to be 100% of their 2007 bonuses. Thus, in the Spring of last year, AIG chose to lock in bonuses for 2008 at 2007 levels despite obvious signs that 2008 performance would be disastrous in comparison to the year before. My Office has thus begun to closely examine the circumstances under which the plan was created.

I look forward to continuing to cooperate with the Committee in any way possible to ensure that taxpayer funds are not misspent on unjustified bonuses or otherwise misused.

Andrew M. Cuomo, Attorney General of the State of New York

current-events

Paulson is outsourcing the bailout

This is breathtakingly major bad news. From WaPo:

The Treasury Department this week plans to start outsourcing the management of up to $700 billion in troubled securities, using special contracting authorities that enable it to retain private portfolio managers, custodians and other financial services consultants without following standard acquisition procedures.

The department’s quick turn to the private sector will help it prepare for the massive task of overseeing mortgages and other financial assets to be acquired by the government as part of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act that was approved by Congress and signed by President Bush last Friday.

But it means that the government has little time to assess the companies that will be partners in what could become one of the largest public sector funds in American history. Some of the same firms that have played roles in the rise and collapse of the mortgage-backed securities market may end up guiding the government as the bailout unfolds, department officials said.

The job of repairing the financial system is being outsourced (think "fees and commissions") to the very numbskulls who caused this mess in the first place.

Perfect.


current-events

Feds decide to hide economic data

Another ominous sign in a season full of ominous signs: the US Department of Commerce will shut down their website, www.economicindicators.gov, effective March 01, 2008.

This is the central clearing house that economists and commodities futures traders rely on for various crucial reports, such as Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services, Gross Domestic Product, New Residential Construction; stuff like that.

Apparently, the coming depression is going to be so massive, nobody will give a crap about any of this stuff anyway.

In related news, Mike Whitney has this report on Fed Chair Bernake's recent sitdown with Congress, engagingly titled, Bernanke's State of the Economy Speech: "You are all Dead Ducks."

It doesn't look good, Gentle Readers.

Critical Update: U.S. Credit Markets Collapsing!

current-events

The best press money can buy

A salute to the Sunday morning talking-lapdog shows.

current-events

Out to lunch

Recent personal events, not to mention the sheer exhaustion that comes from hating everybody in Washington, DC, individually and collectively, have caused me to forsake the petty world of politics for the nonce and consider other things, such as Life, meaning, and contemplation of the Void.

You can see the fruits of my ruminations over on my other blog, Marching Morons.

Gonzales is under investigation for (gasp) perjury

Department of Justice official Glenn Fine has revealed that he has an open and on-going investigation into the slimy wetback's persistent lying to Congress.

What's to investigate? He's a weasel, as you can plainly see from the photograph above: while he distracts Vermont senator Patrick Leahy, his mini-me clone is preparing to slip a shiv into Leahy's back.

'Nuff said.


current-events

No worries, Mate

Ft Devin, Mass. detention center

There are only two months to go until General Petraeus presents his assessment of the Surge; Senate Repugs are battling Dems to a standstill in the ongoing debate about defunding the troops preparatory to a withdrawal from Iraq; and we're hearing lots of paranoid noise across the Internet about a possible false flag operation that would allow the Shrub to assume dictatorial powers and Take Over the World.

This operation would theoretically take the form of a terrorist incident of such scope and mendacity that all Americans will quake in their collective boots and will cry out for a total lockdown of the country. The scenario calls for the Shrub to declare a National Emergency and invoke his authority under the Warner Appropriations Act of 2007 (HR-5212) to federalize the National Guard – or what’s left of them; he then sends Congress home and begins the roundup of the usual suspects while simultaneously nuking Iran with bunker busters.

Granted, there’s lots of craziness going on lately and people who worry about these things have lots of things to be worried about; presidential hopeful Senator John McCain recently sang - to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” - “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” to a cheering American Legion audience; Department of Homeland (sic) Security chief Michael Chertoff recently announced that he had an attack of stomach gas and this inspired him to announce with near-certainty a terrorist attack on the Homeland - wherever that might be - “sometime this summer.” Adding fuel to the paranoia is the existence of Executive Order 12919, an obnoxious piece of gobbeldygook originating in the Clinton administration. (You really need to follow that link; the list of executive orders concerning federalization of private property alone is enough to make one very, very nervous.)

This EO is a controversial (but not controversial enough, IMHO) document which theoretically streamlines federal governmental response (and executive consolidation of power, e.g. the “unitary executive”) in the event of a catastrophic event such as a nuclear war or asteroid strike, although it presumably could be triggered by something as minor as a threat to poison the water supply of a major American city. The signing of this document was enough to trigger mass hysteria and hand-wringing among the more sensitive of civil libertarians, and perhaps rightly so, as members of Congress apparently never even heard of this stealth EO until it hit the blogosphere. (The “liberal” mainstream media ignored it completely.)

Unasked in all this anxiety and fretting is the question, who’s going to do all this taking-over and martial-lawing? Have any of these people (whether conspirator or anti-conspirator) ever looked at a map of the United States? Its one thing for a president to declare martial law for a continent-spanning country and quite another to have it actually go into effect.

Consider this: It’s about 3,100 miles from Washington, D.C. to Seattle, Washington. (That’s roughly the distance from London to Teheran, Iran.) Let’s say some idiot terrorist bombs the Holland Tunnel in New York state, the Shrub declares a national emergency and calls out the troops. According to the paranoids, the plan is to bring in National Guard units from distant states; this reduces the odds that the troops will be likely to resist orders to shoot “dissenters” and “protesters” because they are not fellow staters; further, out-of-state Guardsmen will have no compunction in shooting, clubbing, or herding non-fellow states-people into “internment camps.”

But is that true? It seems to me that the National Guard of any state has just about had it with this president. And anyway, how do you get these Guardsmen across the country? How do you get the governor of Washington state (for instance) to release the troops to federal control, or better yet, why would the governor of Washington state even call the Guard up in the first place, only to have it federalized right out from under him?

Governors aren’t stupid; they can very plainly see what the feds have done with their Guard units in Iraq. Ditto for the officers and certainly ditto for the Guardsmen themselves. In the event of a true national emergency, any sane governor will want his Guardsmen at home where he can use them when and as he (or she) sees fit. Additionally, how do you force a governor to call out the Guard? Have a federal marshal put a gun to his or her head? No, this “martial law” thing is one big can of worms for all concerned and, I submit, an unnecessary worry.

So how about a military coup? Considering that most of the paranoid scenarios call for – simultaneously - a declaration of martial law, a nuclear attack on Iran, and the rounding up of civilians all over the country, we’re talking about a fucking revolution right there. It’s far more likely that the governor of a big state (or several governors of several states) calls out the National Guard and sends it to Washington, D.C. to arrest the president and anybody else hanging around the White House.

And about bloody time, if you ask me.

current-events

Those darn furriners!

Shiva Lingam

Those darn furriners are invading the Senate with their heathen religion, gosh darn it.

Read this and then bless the Rev. Wildmon for catching wind of this brazen attempt to take over our government and for his passing us the Good Word before it's too late. Oh, and please to disregard Mr. Barton's bad grammar; he's doing the best he can with his home schooled education.

And oh-oh, watch out: thems is live hyperlinks.

July 10, 2007

Please help us get this information into the hands of as many people as possible by forwarding it to your entire email list of family and friends.

Hindu to open Senate with prayer

Send an email to your senator now, expressing your disappointment in the Senate decision to invite a Hindu to open the session with prayer.

Dear GLENN,

Please read this news report from OneNewsNow.com.

On Thursday, a Hindu chaplain from Reno, Nevada, by the name of Rajan Zed is scheduled to deliver the opening prayer in the U.S. Senate. Zed tells the Las Vegas Sun that in his prayer he will likely include references to ancient Hindu scriptures, including Rig Veda, Upanishards, and Bhagavard-Gita. Historians believe it will be the first Hindu prayer ever read at the Senate since it was formed in 1789.

WallBuilders president David Barton is questioning why the U.S. government is seeking the invocation of a non-monotheistic god. Barton points out that since Hindus worship multiple gods, the prayer will be completely outside the American paradigm, flying in the face of the American motto "One Nation Under God."

TAKE ACTION – Call your Senators at 202-224-3121

"In Hindu, you have not one God, but many, many, many, many, many gods," the Christian historian explains. "And certainly that was never in the minds of those who did the Constitution, did the Declaration [of Independence] when they talked about Creator -- that's not one that fits here because we don't know which creator we're talking about within the Hindu religion."

TAKE ACTION – Click here to send your E-mail today!

Barton says given the fact that Hindus are a tiny constituency of the American public, he questions the motivation of Senate leaders. "This is not a religion that has produced great things in the world," he observes. "You look at India, you look at Nepal -- there's persecution going in both of those countries that is gendered by the religious belief that is present there, and Hindu dominates in both of those countries."

And while Barton acknowledges there is not constitutional problem with a Hindu prayer in the Senate, he wonders about the political side of it. "One definitely wonders about the pragmatic side of it," he says. "What is the message, and why is the message needed? And will it actually communicate anything other than engender with folks like me a lot of questions?"

Barton says he knows of at least seven cases where Christians have lost their bid to express their own faith in a public prayer.

Zed is reportedly the first Hindu to deliver opening prayers in an American state legislature, having done so in both the Nevada State Assembly and Nevada State Senate earlier this year. He has stated that Thursday's prayer will be "universal in approach," despite being drawn from Hindu religious texts.

Take Action

Send an email to your senator now, expressing your disappointment in the Senate decision to invite a Hindu to open the session with prayer.

Click Here to Email Your Senators Now!

If you think our efforts are worthy, would you please support us with a small gift? Thank you for caring enough to get involved.

Please help us get this information into the hands of as many people as possible by forwarding it to your family and friends.

Sincerely,

Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman
American Family Association

P.S. Please forward this e-mail message to your family and friends!

-------------------

Om, padme, om

The myth of Congressional Democrats' helplessness

The Democratic presidential candidates had a big debate last week but I didn't watch it. I mean, Who cares? I knew that they would try to weasel out of their shitty vote on the war funding, and that most of them would say what they did in fact say: "Hey, we tried to end the war, but Bush vetoed it, and now we're stuck."

What a bunch of tripe. This shit isn't rocket science, Gentle Readers. This here vid from YouTube lays it out pretty simply.






current-events

FCC loses in indecency ruling

"A federal appeals court tossed out an indecency ruling against Rupert Murdoch's Fox television network yesterday and broadly questioned whether the Federal Communications Commission has the right to police the airwaves for offensive language." - Washington Post

News media Information 202 / 418-0500
Fax-On-Demand 202 / 418-2830 TTY 202/418-2555
Internet: http://www.fcc.gov
ftp.fcc.gov
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, S.W.
Washington, D. C. 20554

This is an unofficial announcement of Commission action. Release of the full text of a Commission order constitutes official action. See MCI v. FCC. 515 F 2d 385 (D.C. Circ 1974).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NEWS MEDIA CONTACT
June 4, 2007 David Fiske 202-418-0513
STATEMENT OF FCC CHAIRMAN KEVIN MARTIN
ON 2ND CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS INDECENCY DECISION

[Before proceeding, I think it is only fair warning to our Gentle Readers that an agent of the Federal government is about to use some choice and probably offensive words right out loud here in a public document, one, by the way, which is easily accessible to any computer-literate 10 year-old. OK, fair warning, here we go....the Mgt]

Today, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said the use of the words “fuck” and “shit” by Cher and Nicole Richie was not indecent.

[Damn! First paragraph, and they said TWO bad bad words already, and NO PARENTAL WARNING LABEL. Shame on them.]

I completely disagree with the Court’s ruling and am disappointed for American families. I find it hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that “shit” and “fuck” are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience.

[Actually, fucktard, the New York court said no such thing. They said that you couldn't "FINE" them for allowing those bad words to go out over the airwaves. Big difference, you cretin.]

The court even says the Commission is “divorced from reality.” It is the New York court, not the Commission, that is divorced from reality in concluding that the word “fuck” does not invoke a sexual connotation.

 [When I was serving in the reality-based military, we said “fuck” a lot, and it almost never had a sexual connotation. For military folks on active duty, fuck is a versatile word, manifesting itself as a verb, an adverb and an adjective, oftentimes in the same sentence and frequently referring to the same fucked-up situation.]

These words were used in prime time, when children were watching.

[Whose children? Yours? I sure don't let my kids watch that crap at any time of day.]

Ironically, the court implies that the existence of blocking technologies is one reason the FCC shouldn’t be so concerned. But even a vigilant parent using current blocking technologies such as the V-Chip couldn’t have avoided this language, because they rely on the program’s rating, and in this case the programs were rated appropriate for family viewing.

If ever there was an appropriate time for Commission action, this was it. If we can’t restrict the use of the words “fuck” and “shit” during prime time, Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want.

[Right for once there, dickbreath. It's called “freedom of speech.” It's like a First Amendment kind of thing. But you wouldn't know about shit like that.]

The Court Decision

As part of its March 15, 2006 Omnibus Indecency Order, the FCC determined that the 2002 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards broadcasts were indecent and profane.

During the 2002 Billboard Music Awards, the entertainer Cher made the following comment:

“I’ve had unbelievable support in my life, and I’ve worked really hard. I’ve had great people to work with. Oh, yeah, you know what? I’ve also had critics for the last 40 years saying that I was on my way out every year. Right. So fuck ‘em. I still have a job and they don’t.”

[And fuck 'em if they can't take a joke, I say.]

During the 2003 Billboard Music Awards, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie took part in the following exchange:

Paris Hilton: “Now, Nicole, remember, this is a live show, watch the bad language.”

Nicole Richie: “Okay, God.”

Paris Hilton: “It feels so good to be standing here tonight.”

Nicole Richie: “Yeah, instead of standing in mud and [audio blocked]. Why do they even call it ‘The Simple Life?’ Have you ever tried to get cow shit out of a Prada purse? It’s not so fucking simple.”

[Good point there, Nicole. Maybe you aren't as fucked up in the head as you pretend to be. Although it does beg the question as to why there was cowshit in your Prada purse in the first place. Just saying.]

Fundamentally, the Commission acted in accordance with its Congressional mandate to prohibit indecency and profanity on the airwaves, and in keeping with previous court decisions regarding indecency.

[I wouldn't be putting much stock in Congressional mandates, Bub. Most of those assholes can't tell their pieholes from their asscracks.]

In the case before the court today, the Commission was restricting only the use of two of those seven words. But as a result of this ruling, the New York court may have prohibited the Commission from enforcing any restrictions on language.
[Lord, I hope so.]

Potential Solution

Today’s decision by the Court increases the importance of Congress considering content-neutral solutions to give parents more tools and consumers generally more control and choice over programming coming into their homes. By allowing them to choose the channels that come into their homes, Congress could deliver real power to American families.

[This is a really fucking brilliant idea! We could call it Content Labeling, or better yet, a fucking remote control!]

Permitting parents to have more choice in the channels they receive may prove to be the best solution to content concerns. All of the potential versions of a la carte would avoid government regulation of content while enabling consumers, including parents, to receive only the programming they want and believe to be appropriate for their families. Providing consumers more choice would avoid the First Amendment concerns of content regulation, while providing real options for Americans.

[Nope. Doesn't work. I've already had the experience of cable, then satellite TV. Fifty-seven channels and not a god-damned thing worth watching on a single one.]

- FCC -

There you have it Gentle Readers. Kevin Martin, Official Asshat of the Federal Government, on paper and for the record, used the patently offensive words “shit” and “fuck” in a public document 9 times.

Seems kind of gratuitous, if you ask me. Maybe the FCC is shooting for higher ratings.


current-events

Olbermann says it straight: Dems betray country

I have been livid since I heard that the House Democrats have folded in the face of Bush's threat of a veto over his war funding reauthorization and can't speak or write without sputtering, so I'll let Keith Olbermann do it for me:

Few men or women elected in our history—whether executive or legislative, state or national—have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear:

Get us out of Iraq.

Yet after six months of preparation and execution—half a year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:

• The Democratic leadership has surrendered to a president—if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish, in our history—who happily blackmails his own people, and uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that the Democrats “give the troops their money”;
• The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans;
• The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.
• The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised, are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq.
  

For the whole video (7 minutes plus) click on the image above.

current-events

Tales of the First Earth Battalion

It's been pretty much agreed to by most rational people that the present administration doesn't check in with reality often enough, but who would have thought that our military are fighting the War on Terror by channeling cosmic forces from the Beyond?

Alas, it's true, if you believe Jon Ronson, author of The Men Who Stare At Goats.

From the product description on Amazon.com:

In 1979 a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the U.S. Army. Defying all known accepted military practice -- and indeed, the laws of physics -- they believed that a soldier could adopt a cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls, and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them.

Entrusted with defending America from all known adversaries, they were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren't joking. What's more, they're back and fighting the War on Terror.

With firsthand access to the leading players in the story, Ronson traces the evolution of these bizarre activities over the past three decades and shows how they are alive today within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and in postwar Iraq. Why are they blasting Iraqi prisoners of war with the theme tune to Barney the Purple Dinosaur? Why have 100 debleated goats been secretly placed inside the Special Forces Command Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina? How was the U.S. military associated with the mysterious mass suicide of a strange cult from San Diego? The Men Who Stare at Goats answers these and many more questions.

Actually, wacky as the above reads, we know that the CIA - in conjunction with the army - dosed unsuspecting soldiers and civilians with LSD and basically screwed with people's minds for years back in the '50s. There's also the "remote-seeing" adventures of GRILL FLAME, and CENTER LANE by the Defense Intelligence Agency and INSCOM, and STAR GATE and SCANATE by the CIA. Then there's MKULTRA; well, the list of wackiness goes on and on. We learn of a connection to Scientology; many of the people involved in these various occult investigations for the military were paid-up Scientologists, apparently because they're familiar with Dianetic psychology and those engram gizmos, the E Machine:

For those of you not in the know, the Church of Scientology was invented out of whole cloth by L. Ron Hubbard, a writer of rather bad science fiction stories in the '30s and '40s; he based his Church on Dianetics, The Science of the Mind, a book he wrote on a bet with - I have been told - Ray Bradbury. In Scientology, e machines are used to "audit" the supplicant, and advance him/her to the next level of Clear, until they come into the full possession of the knowledge that they are the reincarnations of 250 million-year-old outer space lizards. The e machine is Hubbard's contribution to mind/machine interface technology, although it's really just a fancy skin galvometer.

Hubbard aside, a good deal of the esoteric & psychic research was done for the military at (or via the auspices of) the Stanford Research Institute, in Menlo Park, California. Yeah, that Stanford Research Institute (as in Stanford University), the same people that brought us Tide laundry soap, Disneyland, those magnetic strips on your bank checks, diamagnetic levitation, and the Stanford-Binet IQ test.

And Uri Geller's back as well, according to Jon, so you know reality is really gonna get wanged some more.

This is your money the government is spending on this stuff, by the way; don't think that these programs are over; many are still chugging along. As Amazon.com puts it: Ronson tells of one ex-Army employee who claims to have killed a goat and his pet hamster by staring at them for prolonged periods of time. Like Ronson's original source, this man says he has been reactivated for deployment to the Middle East.

Thanks and a tip of the hat to Chris Locke at Mystic Bourgeoisie

Tenet cries into his beer

The International Herald Tribune has obtained a copy of George Tenet's new book, "At the Center of the Storm," due out Monday. In it, Tenet unleashes his frustration at what he perceived as shabby treatment by the folks in the White House.

He pours a lot of vitriol over the figurative heads of the administration, and in no uncertain terms, although he never directly criticizes the president by name. Also, he whines just a little too much that he was a "patsy." (And him a grown man ...)

Anyhoo, some random quotes:

"There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat," Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years.

Nor, he adds, "was there ever a significant discussion" about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Tenet admits that he made his famous "slam dunk" remark about the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he argues that the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on Bush's decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war.

Tenet described with sarcasm watching an episode of "Meet the Press" last September in which Cheney twice referred to Tenet's "slam dunk" remark as the basis for the decision to go to war.

"I remember watching and thinking, 'As if you needed me to say 'slam dunk' to convince you to go to war with Iraq,'" Tenet writes.

He also expresses skepticism about whether the increase in troops in Iraq will prove successful. "It may have worked more than three years ago," he wrote. "My fear is that sectarian violence in Iraq has taken on a life of its own and that U.S. forces are becoming more and more irrelevant to the management of that violence."

As violence in Iraq spiraled, beginning in late 2003, Tenet writes, "rather than acknowledge responsibility, the administration's message was: Don't blame us. George Tenet and the CIA got us into this mess."

There's more at: Tenent Denounces Cheney

Why I Hate Him So, Part the Umpteenth

"The only thing worse than a politician is a child molester."
-- Rip Torn, in "Extreme Prejudice"

For those of my Gentle Readers who may still support Bush - and by extension his appointees such as Alberto "Gonzo" Gonzales - and wonder why I rant and rave about his incompetency (and obviously despise the man), it is fruitful to dig into the actual workings of his administration. This is not accomplished by watching Fox News. One is forced to seek alternative news outlets, even if they might seem a little, well, leftish. But leaving no stone unturned in the search for the truth about the corruption of this administration, I bring you this cut-and-paste from the decidedly left-wing blog, DailyKos. Draw your own conclusions.

The Chart of Injustice
by Devilstower
Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 04:20:16 AM PDT

Kos readers got a preview of this story in drational's diary, and now that chart for selecting US attorneys is getting some scrutiny from the Associated Press. Far from being the kind of politics-free evaluation of prosecutorial competence that Bush, Gonzales, and crew had maintained, the document encapsulates the real motivations behind the firings.

The Justice Department weighed political activism and membership in a conservative law group in evaluating the nation's federal prosecutors, documents released in the probe of fired U.S. attorneys show.

The political credentials were listed on a chart of 124 U.S. attorneys nominated since 2001, a document that could bolster Democrats' claims that the traditionally independent Justice Department has become more partisan during the Bush administration.

To sharpen the damage caused by this document, there's an accompanying note that completely demolishes the argument that Gonzales was either duped by his underlings or merely asleep at the wheel.

"This is the chart that the AG requested," Monica Goodling, Justice's former liaison to the White House, wrote in a Feb. 12 e-mail to two other senior department officials. "I'll show it to him on the plane tomorrow, if he's interested."

Alberto Gonzales requested a chart showing the political activism of the USAs and their membership in the Scaife-funded Federalist Society. Any notion that he was only interested in their success in prosecutions is now completely lost. Explaining that when Gonzales gets on the stand next Tuesday should be very, very interesting. In fact, a better question might be whether Alberto Gonzales will actually be AG by Tuesday.

Permalink

[An interesting companion piece is here, concerning an interview with former career Justice Department attorney Daniel Metcalf.]

This seems to be typical of the Bush administration and everybody, and I mean everybody, that he has appointed or had appointed. Every one of them is driven by an agenda that is definitely partisan to a degree not seen since Louis XIV said, "L'etat, c'est moi."

That's French, a vile language, but very poetic. Translated, the expression means, "The nation, that's ME."

One of the problems that I have with Bush and all his buddies is that they have this idea that the authority of the government - their idea of government - that that authority and power flows from the Constitution, from the institution, in other words.

This is why they feel comfortable in trying to establish Republican rule in America, with all their actions designed to establish a one-party stranglehold on the reigns of power. Gonzo made this clear a short time ago when he was testifying before the senate Judiciary Committee. He is on record as saying, (in reference to Habeas Corpus"), “There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution..."

Whoa, there, Gonzo! This is upside down.

The Constitution is a legal document designed to prevent the usurpation of the authority and rights of the sovereign people, and doesn't grant anything to anybody. Rather, it limits the government's authority over the people.

As the Founding Fathers made plain (in writings, speeches, and action) all rights derive from the people. The people are sovereign (as in self-ownership, a concept also referred to as the sovereignty of the individual). The elected officials work for the people, fulfilling as best they can the wants, needs, and desires of the people.

As any reasonable person can quickly discover upon entering a neighborhood bar of a Friday after work, the people have a lot of differing points of view about the issues of the day.

Most recently, an overwhelming majority of the people decided that they had had enough of the President's war, whether it is right or wrong makes no difference, and they elected a new Congress to get them out of it. The Congress is directly elected by the people, as the President is not; as Chief Executive it is his job to fulfill the desire of the American electorate and Execute a speedy exit from Iraq.

But fire Gonzo first.