That must have been quite a weather forecast in Hell today: The president said we can’t win the war on terror, and I thought finally, the man comes to his senses. Is it too late to hope for peace with honor in Iraq?
Of course you can’t win a war on terror. It’s like winning a war on war. Duh.
I’m sure things were nice and warm in Hell by noon, though; he changed his mind.
What do the Bushies sing at Kerry rallies? The theme from “Flipper.” Ha! That’s a good one!
I don’t want this to get all screechy. But I was reading a story today about the systematic looting of the Chicago Sun-Times, a story that contained neither shocking revelations or anything I didn’t really know already, but, well, grrr:
“Not once or twice, but on dozens of occasions (S-T owner) Hollinger was victimized by its controlling shareholders,” Hollinger chief executive (Conrad) Black and Sun-Times publisher (F. David) Radler, says the Breeden report.
The two men “made it their business to line their pockets at the expense of Hollinger almost every day, in almost every way they could devise,” asserts the report, which outlines Black and Radler’s “aggressive looting” of the publicly traded company.
The report is critical of the “somnolence” of Hollinger’s outside directors, singling out Richard Perle, a onetime Pentagon adviser, for a “stunning” failure to protect shareholders during his tenure as a member of Hollinger’s powerful executive committee.
The report says the former assistant U.S. defense secretary, a member of the executive committee that signed off on some of Black’s most controversial fiscal maneuvers, repeatedly breached his duty to protect shareholder interests.
In discussing Perle’s actions, the report is harsh: “It is difficult to imagine a more flagrant abdication of duty than a director rubber-stamping transactions that directly benefit a controlling shareholder without any thought, comprehension or analysis.”
So here’s the point where I get testy. Black and Radler are high-profile conservatives. Perle is a textbook neocon. If Republicans are going to present themselves as the party of morality and virtue, it would help if they didn’t go around looting companies, and helping their friends do so. Just a thought.
I had a big rant about newspaper ownership all ready to spew, but it makes me tired just thinking about it, so let’s talk guppies.
Guppies, some of you may know, are live bearers, which is to say, they don’t lay eggs, spray a little milt over them and swim away. Males have teensy little penises, females have the opposite apparatus, and they squirt out baby guppies every month or so. Some squirted in the last couple of days, as Alan discovered today when he did tank maintenance.
“They were off their feed a day or two ago, and look — there’s a dead baby, there’s another,” he pointed out. “I’m sure they had a feast.” What’s more, the males are in rut again, doing these rather obvious mating displays, which the females, being female, are ignoring. Once again, nature amuses, astounds and educates. You think you’re getting a tranquilizing television substitute, but you really get Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, with fins.
We bought three pairs of guppies, and a tiny seventh one got caught in the net when the guy was scooping them out. It’s a female; we call her Small Fry. She’s about half an inch long and growing by the day. I can’t wait to see how she shapes up, since now she looks like a translucent blob with eyes.
We haven’t told Kate about the orgy going on in her new educational resource. She already thinks Small Fry has been adopted by the older fish, who are now serving as her parents. We don’t need to clue her in just yet.
Kim said on August 31, 2004 at 10:21 pm
While you’re on the topic, let’s not leave out former IL Gov. James Thompson, one of the lax neocon board members who looked the other way or (perhaps worse) saw nothing when Black/Radler were putting up for a loooooong winter. Yeah, that former gov., who served on the 9/11 commission. As a mother, I’m tending toward nature and not nurture on these matters. Ugh.
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alex said on August 31, 2004 at 11:55 pm
Well, here’s some delicious dishin’ on Big Jim Thompson, former governor of Illinois who’s now Of Counsel at Winston & Strawn. Word around the office is the former gov needs to bring himself up to date on the nuances of employment law. Apparently he advertised for a personal assistant, but in terms more befitting a personal ad (i.e., blond, six-foot-tall, blue-eyed hunky male). I hear from some staff at W & S that the HR folks had to pull him aside and advise him that this ad was an open invitation for a discrimination suit and he acted like he had no idea.
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Dave Reilly said on September 1, 2004 at 9:51 am
Whenever you want to know what sins the conservatives are committing, look at what they’re accusing liberals of doing. They project like Freud wrote a how to manual.
That’s why they were so exercised over Hillary’s small killing in cattle futures. Insider trading and shady backroom deals are their turf! (It’s how W. got rich.) They screamed about Bill’s sex life and said nothing when their speaker of the house had to resign because it was about to come out he was, as Jerry Seinfeld would have put it, an orgy guy.
So flip flopping is what Kerry does. Fudging and covering up disgraces in his military record is also a Kerry sin. Liberals are destroying the sanctity of marriage, and we never heard of Neil Bush. Lying and smearing are what Democratic 527s do. Being a coward and a wimp in the face of terror? Also a Democratic weakness. Class warfare? Oh no, not us, but all you lucky ducky poor folks worrying about the economy are girly men.
Projection, projection, projection.
Makes you wonder about their stand on the chair and shriek homophobia, doesn’t it.
No, it doesn’t.
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=74982&ran=126361
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Dave Reilly said on September 1, 2004 at 9:54 am
PS.
Kos has more. Kos always does. Hooray for Kos!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/8/30/184915/447
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