April 14 (Bloomberg) — Goldman Sachs Group Inc., buoyed by better-than-expected earnings and a 54 percent gain in its stock price, raised $5 billion in the largest stock sale this year to help repay $10 billion in government rescue funds.
I’m no economics expert, but one thing is clear about this Goldman Sachs thing - it stinks to high heaven!
Okay, first they help run our economy into the ground. Well, not them specifically, or rather, not all of them, but a lot of them, right? And then they had to stop being an “investment bank,” which is just like them, isn’t it? To sort of stop being the thing that makes money that turns out not to be money and instead try to be a thing that makes money that IS money. Sure, nice plan, Sachsy!
Anyway, the real problem is that these guys took our bailout money - just TOOK it! And now they’re giving it back. I’m not economist - but what!? Why? So they can continue to pay out those big bonuses! Not just because it’s money they owe, believe me on this one, though I could be wrong and whose fault is that!?
And what about the bailout money that they got through AIG? That was like $12 billion, but is that part of what they’re paying back or is that money that AIG actually “owed” them because they owed a lot of people money because of the dirty, bad bets that they were making? I’m not an economics professor, but I know that I don’t know the answer to that one, and what does that say about our financial system!?
I don’t have a degree in economics, but I feel pretty safe in saying that this whole damned business of “finance” is geared towards making those fatcats rich. And the only thing more galling than seeing them flounder and drag us down into a recession is seeing some of them STOP floundering. And don’t tell me that this is a sign that we all might be getting out of the recession at some point - I may not be an economics major, but I’m not falling for THAT old line.
So stop telling me that this is going to be solved by bailouts and restructuring and reform, or that MY future is somehow tied to these bloodsucking evil leeches! I may not understand Thing One about the economy, but I know that this is not the time to let “cool heads prevail” and “educate myself” about finance so that I “know what I’m talking about.” No, that time is past - now is the time to get angry! Who’s with me?
Fanny Roborat
71 comments
J. B. Blutarsky
April 14, 2009 at 2:58 pm
1Adam’s right. When the goin’ get tough………..the tough get goin’! What the fuck happened to the FanAps I used to know? Where’s the spirit? Where’s the guts, huh? This could be the greatest time of our lives, but you’re gonna let it be the worst. “Ooh, we’re afraid to go with you Bluto, we might get in trouble.” Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I’m not gonna take this.
We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part. And we’re just the guys to do it. *Let’s do it*!!!!!
piglet
April 14, 2009 at 3:50 pm
2LET’S TEA BAG ‘EM!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#30145811
(Sorry about the commercial)
Jerry, The King of Comedy!!!
April 14, 2009 at 6:14 pm
3While you guys have been wringing your hands over the country’s economic woes, our favorite detectives have been busy ferreting out the fascists in the Democrat Party.
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2009/04/14/tomo/index.html
Chris Harlan
April 15, 2009 at 1:06 am
4Hey, you want some fun; read House of Cards. I’m 3/4s of the way through, and it gets across quite a picture.
Chris Harlan
April 15, 2009 at 10:20 am
5Its funny, the Bear Stearns hedge funds often had medieval fortress names like Rampart and Tower, which should imply to anyone using Terry Gilliam’s inverse advertising law that they can be knocked over with a feather. Of course people who don’t know the law have probably figured this out by now as well, so future rounds of hyperbolic hedge fund names will have to modernize some; maybe Invisible Sonic Defense Perimeter (as seen on Lost) will have better luck.
J. Bo
April 15, 2009 at 1:37 pm
6My pitchfork is sharpened and my torch is lit. Just name when and where the angry villagers are gathering, and I’M THERE, Adam…
Hot Tub Tommy
April 15, 2009 at 3:16 pm
7Happy Tea Bag Day everyone! I went to the rally in Austin today and I probably should have saved the gasoline. I tell you, as much as I’d like to see this happen, I just can’t see a revolution springing out that crowd of sad sacks. Governor Perry gave the keynote address and he gassed on forever, bogarting the microphone and serving up all kinds of libertarian pap for the rabble to be roused by. I heard he and Newt coughed up $2500 each to pad that meager crowd with drunks, misfits of all stripe, and some mentally freewheeling residents of the county’s nursing homes. By the time I finally got the mic, the fire was pretty much out of the crowd’s belly and they were beginning to slip away.
But it sure felt great to be on stage again with the cameras rolling. Except, after I finally made it to the podium, those media assholes started packing up and leaving. Dammit, I had some good material prepared, some real zingers saved up for the Democrat Party. I decided to keep the jokes for some other occasion and, instead, led the crowd in singing “The Yellow Rose of Texas”. The damnedest thing though, no one in the crowd seemed to know the words. I’ll bet Rick and Newt had to bus the tea baggers in from Nebraska. Jesus, the Republicans certainly have stepped off a cliff…
nato
April 15, 2009 at 5:53 pm
8You obviously don’t understand finance, Adam. If nobama hadn’t stolen the election, Sarah Palin would’ve been
queenPresident and solved this whole economy mess for us by drilling for oil and wolves and whatnot in the Arctic. Between that, and treasury secretary Trig Palin’s economic stimulus plan, we’d all be living the American Dream*.If it weren’t for you Prius-driving, latte-sipping liberals, we wouldn’t have to hold our massive teabag rallies (there were literally tens of people out here. I didn’t count the figurative people, so the number is much higher if you include them as well) out here under April’s golden showers.
*Actual dream sold separately. May cause blindness and night terrors. Not available in California, Hawaii, and Mississippi. Do not operate heavy machinery after exposure to dream. May contain lead, asbestos and/or heavy metals. Not fit for human consumption. Discontinue use if rash develops.
SallyMutantCuppa
April 15, 2009 at 8:53 pm
9I think Li’l Ms Luzianne, Sri Assam, Madame Lapsang-Souchong, and Earl Grey should sue their asses for libel.
hedera
April 15, 2009 at 9:08 pm
10I’ve been quietly fuming for months about Goldman Sachs. You don’t even make the point that Goldman Sachs people got us into this: Hank Paulsen. Larry Summers (under Clinton, when they repealed Glass-Steagall and passed the Commodities Modernization Act which excepted derivative instruments from federal regulation. I may have the act name wrong.). Robert Rubin, also under Clinton. All of these people worked for Goldman. Goldman is the quintessential Old Boys’ Network, and they’re in it for the power; the money is secondary.
There were rumors that Bear Stearns and Lehman failed because Goldman Sachs was involved in cutting credit to them; you do realize that neither firm was insolvent? They died because they operated on leverage, and suddenly they couldn’t borrow any money; and from what I read, Goldman was one of the ones who cut them off. I am seriously fried about this; I lost big money when Lehman went down.
Unfortunately, since they own Congress in fee simple (look into campaign donations to Senator Chris Dodd), we’re unlikely to be able to do much about it. Maybe the torches and pitchforks are a good idea.
Prediction for their next act: the minute they’ve paid back the TARP money, they take the firm private and become a partnership again. Then they don’t have to account to anybody.
Chris Harlan
April 15, 2009 at 11:27 pm
11Hedera, give House of Cards a read and you will not see Bear as much of a victim.
Zee Man
April 16, 2009 at 3:54 am
12hedera, you’ll love this. My financial advisor rolled a large chunk of my IRA into a Lehman bond fund (without consultation) in June just in time for the mega meltdown. Well……my former financial advisor, I should say.
Fork Pitcher
April 16, 2009 at 2:45 pm
13Justifiable financial manipulator-cide keeps coming to mind, figuratively speaking…
hedera
April 16, 2009 at 4:14 pm
14Chris, I don’t mean to imply that Bear Stearns was an innocent victim of the nasty men at Goldman. Bear was in that position because of their own bad decisions, plus the extreme amount of leverage they, like GS, used to operate under. But remember - what took them down was a run on the bank - their creditors refused to lend to them, and if they couldn’t borrow, they couldn’t operate. And the biggest creditor who did this? Goldman Sachs. I’ll have to take a look at House of Cards.
Zee Man - my financial advisor and I, in full consultation several months prior to the meltdown, put a large chunk of my IRA into a Lehman Brothers bond. Not a bond fund. I’m now on the senior creditors list, waiting to see how many cents on the dollar I’ll get back. And I bought off on the decision; I can’t complain about the advisor.
Jake
April 16, 2009 at 5:32 pm
15Since the President has decided not to pursue the CIA personnel that tortured detainees at Gitmo and elsewhere, I guess this means the Obama Administration will be prosecuting the people who came up with the bogus legal rulings that made it “okay” to torture. Unless they won’t even do that. Is there something in the Democratic DNA that prohibits backbones? WTF?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103177115
cooper
April 17, 2009 at 3:59 am
16I know what you mean, Jake. Our home town paper buried the story about CIA torturers on 11A. My thought - Germany is still, this very week, actively trying to bring to trial “Ivan the Terrible”, a guard at the Sobibor Concentration Camp during WWII. Of course, he’s lived in America for over 50 years now and we are aggressively fighting his extradition. And now it looks like Mr. Obama is not at all interested in punishing our own torturers who were only following orders. WTF, indeed. “Change we can believe in”? I don’t see no stinking change.
dee
April 17, 2009 at 4:23 am
17Warning! Self-Serving Announcement!
Hey cooper (and anyone else who’s in the Charlotte area tomorrow) — the Concert by Musicians and Choirs of the Thomas Jefferson District will take place at the UU Church on Sharon Amity Road on Saturday at 7 PM. There are only 5 church choirs taking part this year (which is down from our usual dozen or so) but the program looks like fun and some folks from my church are performing solos (though not me — I am muddy alto at best). Y’all come!
cooper
April 17, 2009 at 7:01 am
18dee, thanks for the invite to the program. My weekend is booked already. They should have had this concert last Sunday, when I was in your fine city. I blew a chaste and brotherly kiss in your general direction sometime after a delicious but paralyzing midday meal. I hope it found the target. Thanks again.
It's Pat!
April 17, 2009 at 8:15 am
19It’s Prom weekend here in Minne-so-green-ta. So I’ll be at the after-prom party held in the local bowling alley, watching a bunch of kids go nuts through the night.
P.S. Norm Coleman is no longer a Senator, he just won’t acknowledge it. One more thing for our nutty rep Bachmann to piss and moan about. Where do these people come from?
gregory
April 17, 2009 at 8:31 am
20Apparently, Pat, some of them come from MinneSOta. Michelle Bachman is a very generous gift to Keith Olbermann and to the rest of the world. Who do we thank?
Vinnie
April 17, 2009 at 6:17 pm
21Yestuhday wuz da Pope’s birt’day - 82 years old. How ’bout dat! Anselmo has been very busy dese last few weeks, so His Eminence Archbishop Bernard Law wuz in charge of da celebration. He did an OK job up until dey rolled in a huge cake and started singin’ da “Happy Birt’day” song to da Pope. At de end uv da song, uh 12 year old altar boy jumped out uv da cake, wearin’ nuttin’ but uh loin cloth an’ uh sombrero.
Bernie clapped ent’usiastically an’ jumped up an’ down an’ t’ought it was da grandest t’ing. Nobody else made uh sound. Cardinal Luigi finally broke da silence, suggested dat maybe da Pope wuz gettin’ tired an’ we shood just end da party. Guido an’ me stayed behind an’ helped cleaned up da joint. Dey didn’t even take time ta open none ov da presents.
Cindy
April 18, 2009 at 1:09 pm
22I heard what I took to be double entendres on NPR in stories about all these tea baggers this week, so I went to my trusty Urban Dictionary to find out what it means. My word, we humans are a very imaginative species, aren’t we? And a very trusting species, as well, I should think.
Zeke
April 18, 2009 at 2:00 pm
23Concetta, I think we’re now 2 week old Zeppolis.
Jerry, The King of Comedy!!!
April 18, 2009 at 3:30 pm
24My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I said I want a second opinion. He said okay, you’re ugly too. (ba-dum!)
G. Carlin
April 18, 2009 at 4:13 pm
25Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for that shit.
K. Vonnegut
April 19, 2009 at 4:32 am
26True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class has been running the country.
Just Jay
April 19, 2009 at 3:44 pm
27How is that we have become a country where 5,000 people show up on a work day to protest taxes, but not a single voice is raised when 40,000 of the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society lose access to medical care?
Jay
Roger
April 19, 2009 at 7:15 pm
28Good question, Jay. Or the 47 million of us without health insurance. The way you fall off the middle class bandwagon and into the abyss in our country is to lose your health insurance.
hedera
April 19, 2009 at 9:15 pm
29I may regret this, but I’m going to step in to defend President Obama’s choice not to prosecute the CIA ops. I think he’s trying to walk a very careful line here: he’s disclosing large numbers of documents (infuriating Dick Cheney, isn’t that fun?), he’s making it plain that we Won’t Do That Again, but he doesn’t want to start a witch hunt which will (inevitably) draw off resources and energy from the much more urgent tasks of putting the economy back together and doing something about the health care system.
He’s also avoiding having to rebuild the country’s entire intelligence system from scratch, because if he started prosecuting guys who were operating under White House orders, the existing personnel would probably quit in a body. You may argue that the country doesn’t need an intelligence system; but I don’t think the Pres thinks so.
Personally, I think he made the right call. (I find myself thinking that a lot lately - the only exception is that wiretapping business. Everybody has one flaw.) He’s said, in about as many words, that he wants to focus on the future, not the past; and I think he’s right.
hedera
April 19, 2009 at 9:16 pm
30And it is a relief to be able to assume, in general, that the President is actually thinking about what he’s doing!
Zee Man
April 20, 2009 at 3:49 am
31hedera, there is no question that Obama has a lot on his plate, however he took an oath to defend the Constitution. That should trump his hope to fix health care, economy, etc, though these are obviously very crucial tasks as well. I don’t see the intelligence community resigning on mass because of an investigation to weed out war criminals. And if we do lose some of them, how good have they actually served us in the past decade or more - think “being blindsided by 911″? I’m in the “government”. Trust me, they won’t quit on mass. “Looking back” at wholesale violations of the Constitution by the previous administration is really a way of “looking out” for our laws, our ethos, and our way of life.
gregory
April 20, 2009 at 8:45 am
32In other news -
I guess we’ll never again see green in the forecasts, huh? Or maybe yellow is the new green.
Mary
April 20, 2009 at 10:30 am
33To get back to that economics thing…I’m mad as hell!!! Anyone catch “60 Minutes” last night or the latest ‘Mother Jones’? Not only are our children/grandchildren going to be saddled with enormous debt, those of us over 50 won’t be able to retire anytime in the next 20 years.
You don’t need to be an economics prof to know we’ve all been robbed!!!!!!!
Murray
April 20, 2009 at 2:54 pm
34Adam you should work for Fox.
Your incoherence, lack of facts, internal inconsistency, demagoguery, cluelessness and complete removal from reality make you one of the gang. Oh, wait a minute, you already have.
Damn.
I knew from listening to “The Daily Show” that Tea Bagging had to be something bad, so I Googled it.
Jane said “Not on your life”
Damn.
Hedera, I think I agree with you. How’s the saying go? When you are up to your ass in alligators, it is hard to remember your object was to drain the swamp. On balance I agree with Barak 95% of the time as opposed to 0.01% of the time with Darth Vadar. (George Lucas pointed out to Moreen Dowd in her column today that Chaney is the Evil Emperor, a politician who pulls the strings while W is the young warrior who falls under his spell).
Damn.
Jake
April 20, 2009 at 2:58 pm
35Maybe it’s just me, but that seems excessive. Like maybe they really got off on doing that.
Murray
April 20, 2009 at 3:08 pm
36Khalid, Khlid… it’s time for your 3:00 waterboarding.
Just Jay
April 20, 2009 at 5:55 pm
37hedera (#29) The main problem I have with Obama’s decision is that it implies moral relativism, and impacts our ability to take action when it’s Americans on the receiving end. For example what if the U.S. had captured Iraqi guards who subjected American POWs to the same sort of treatment. If those guards produced memos from the equivalent Iraqi officials stating that those treatment methods were legal should that prevent us from taking any further action? Are there any absolute standards that can’t be excused under the color of law? Are war crimes only for the losers?
Jay
Jerry, The King of Comedy!!!
April 20, 2009 at 6:09 pm
38You have to stay in shape. My mother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She’s 97 now and we have no idea where she is. (rimshot!!)
Just Jay
April 20, 2009 at 7:01 pm
39hedera (#29) Thank you for posting your opinion. It has lead me to think very hard, and I have decided that releasing the memos, without prosecuting the agents is the worst possible combination. It gives official imprimateur to all kinds of nasty business. For example, if the Iranian government had issued a legal opinion that it was not illegal for an Iranian citizen to kill in response to a fatwa, could that opinion be used by an Iranian citizen who killed Salman Rushie to avoid prosecution? If, as I’ve heard from several sources recently, we should not prosecute lawyers for the actions of people who take their bad advice, and we now say we won’t prosecute people acting in good faith on the advice of a lawyer, does that mean that all Bernie Madoff would have had to do to avoid prosecution would be to get a lawyer to approve his “investment strategy”? Doesn’t that also mean that any human rights abuses approved by the government of the citizens doing the abuse are no longer crimes?
I hope you don’t think I’m berating you, I am just trying to sort out the true impact of the Obama decisions and to get your opinion. Please contradict me if I’ve gone overboard.
Thanks,
Jay
Jerry, The King of Comedy!!!
April 21, 2009 at 8:29 am
40Former President Bush has hit the “speechifying” circuit, trying to bulk up his bottom line. I read W gave a speech recently where he was interrupted 22 times by applause and 78 times by some really tough 3 syllable words. (ba-dum!)
waterfowler
April 21, 2009 at 10:12 am
41Maddow claims I’m some sort of pervert.
Garfalo claims I’m a racist redneck.
Now the DHS claims I’m a right-wing extremist.
I must be one dangerous man.
Ann
April 21, 2009 at 12:41 pm
42Adam’s back in great form! Disappointingly infrequent, but still funny!
Jake
April 21, 2009 at 1:47 pm
43wf, Glenn Beck thinks you’re a great American.
Bill O’Reilly thinks you’re a great American.
Newt Gingrich thinks you’re a great American.
Rush Limbaugh thinks you’re a great American.
George W. Bush thinks you’re a great American.
Neil Cavuto thinks you’re a great American.
Sean Hannity thinks you’re a great American.
Rick Perry thinks you’re a great American.
Maybe it’s just me, bro, but I’d be more worried about that, than what a few harmless lefties think of you. And me? I don’t really think you’re “desperado” dangerous or anything, but then I’m not really a leftie.
It's Pat!
April 21, 2009 at 1:55 pm
44WF, you also must be famous. I try not to join any club that would have me as a member. If anything we are all a little bit of everything, and what it really comes down to is how far will we go down a path?
Remember the name of this blog - it’s what drew me in.
And Just Jay - I think Hedera is correct in that BHO is making the best of a very bad situation. He has to keep our intelligence teams in place, and work from the ground up in reform. None of this is going to be improved over night.
David
April 21, 2009 at 4:24 pm
45waterfowler,
DHS never said any such thing about you. Janet Napolitano pointed out that there is a problem with some former military folk who are attracted to right wing extremism. That has been true at least since the Reagan administration, when the problem with the connection between soldiers at Ft. Bragg and the KKK was first brought to light.
Dangerous you are not. You are a responsible citizen who’s primary goal seems to me to be a good father. You are just wrong on a couple of issues. I am assuming you are not homophobic, the contemporary manifestation of the anti-black mindset that used to plague our Southland.
I don’t even think you are actually a redneck, except possibly in the old, now long gone meaning, which was a white person who worked out in the sun and valued family, responsibility, and work well done. I grew up among Southerners with sun-induced red necks. Some were racist, some were not. Sadly, rednecks now identify with reactionary impulses, and the worst of the lot have co-opted the Stars and Bars as an anti-minority, anti-full civil rights for all Americans of every gender identity war banner.
gillian
April 21, 2009 at 5:28 pm
46I guess Jerry is busy polishing up his one liners, so I’ll take care of the Tuesday Night comedy dump this week. Don’t worry, I still know how to do this.
BTW waterfowler, I hope that’s not you in the Colonial Tri-Corner hat in the last frame. If it is, I’ll have to agree with you (which I always hate to do!). Maybe you are a bit on the dangerous side.
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2009/04/21/tomo/index.html
SallyMutant
April 21, 2009 at 10:42 pm
47It’s April 22, so, Adam:
Bless your comic book and all who sail on her.
gregory
April 22, 2009 at 3:46 am
48Let’s see, the Shrull Kill Krew release date is on Earth Day. Adam has always been the master of irony.
waterfowler
April 22, 2009 at 4:18 am
49Happy Earth Day. Learn something.
http://www.drroyspencer.com.
cooper
April 22, 2009 at 3:58 pm
50Happy Earth Day to you, too, wf. But, friend, buddy, pal, you gotta do a bit of research on your Global Warming deniers. Dr. Roy Spencer pockets are stuffed by Exxon Corporation, The Heartland Institute, The George Marshall Foundation and other corporations with skin in the ain’t-no such-thing-as-man-made-global-warming-game. Dr. Spencer hangs with Rush Limbaugh and appears in Glenn Beck “documentaries” on global warming. Maybe in your book that adds credence to what he says, but I’d bet you’re the only here that thinks much of those
bozosentertainerspersonalities. To quote Deep Throat, waterfowler, you gotta “Follow the money”. Punch each of your little rednecks in the shoulder for me.tribolumen
April 22, 2009 at 8:49 pm
51The gist of the drroyspencer site seems to be that global warming isn’t real. In fact, it’s so painfully clear that global warming isn’t that an average internet reader with no scientific training and no experience in climatology can tell that it’s not real by looking at the author’s web site.
If Dr. Spencer is correct, that would seem to require that one of three things also be true.
1) The vast majority of trained scientists who actually do know something about the Earth’s climate think that global warming is real because they can’t see what the average reader can see.
2) The aforementioned vast majority of trained climate scientists think global warming is real because they all have the wrong data, but Dr. Spencer has the right data.
3) The vast majority of trained climate scientists are lying.
All of these three things are extremely unlikely. That in turn suggests that Dr. Spencer is incorrect. His credibility is not helped by a reliance on unsourced charts and unpublished data.
hedera
April 23, 2009 at 2:57 pm
52I thought that might start a discussion. And in the intervening 4 days, it begins to look as though there may be some prosecution, not of the CIA agents who followed orders, but of the people who authorized the orders.
Here’s what bothers me about all this. I smell a witch hunt. This country has a history of witch hunts; a history of deciding that those who don’t agree with us are not merely wrong but immoral, and maybe even evil - and therefore must be destroyed. This started in Salem, but the latest manifestation of it was the Bush administration’s attitude toward Muslims, including ordinary American citizens who happen to be Muslim.
I agree fully that the Bush administration, after 9/11, acted out of fear to use tactics that I feel were a gross betrayal of our Constitution (”cruel and unusual punishment”) and of the ideals of the country which ratified the Geneva Convention. I don’t support those tactics. I don’t even agree that they made the country safer; when a man is willing to die to kill you, there really aren’t very many ways to stop him. But I don’t think it will benefit the country to create a witch hunt to destroy men who did what they thought was best to protect the country I love as much as they do. They were wrong. They’re no longer in office. We aren’t going to do that any more. Isn’t that enough??
And speaking of the Constitution, try to remember that it contains a prohibition (section 9) against ex post facto laws. You’ll find a definition of ex post facto here. If we try, now, to prosecute people for actions they thought were legal when they did them, we come very close to an ex post facto law; which is unconstitutional.
If we use the enemy’s tactics to defeat him, we lose, because we become the enemy. The only true way to win is to do so without compromising our principles.
Concetta
April 23, 2009 at 3:14 pm
53hedera, please. Let’s not compromise our Constitution by letting the Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, et al make a mockery of our legal system and violate US and International laws against torture. Not prosecuting them would set legal precedence, allowing future presidents to do the same whenever they felt like it. The next gang of torturers may be led by someone more sinister than the most recent simpleminded, hapless moron.
Jim (OJNTNJ)
April 23, 2009 at 4:35 pm
54From the link Hedera kindly provided:
“1st. Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action. 2d. Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was, when committed. 3d. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed. 4th. Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different, testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offense, in order to convict the offender.”
While I appreciate the link and new research tool, Hedera, I have to disagree with your assessment. As I see it, that definition is a textbook refutationof the laws the Bush administration passed in order to contravene existing U.S. law and international treaties with respect to prisoners of war.
hedera
April 23, 2009 at 9:04 pm
55Concetta, the person who bothered me in the recent gang of torturers was not the simpleminded, hapless moron - it was Darth Cheney.
I’m actually quite conflicted over this. It’s true that the Bush-Cheney Gang trashed the Constitution, big time. Shouldn’t we have challenged them about it then?? When they did it? Some people did object - but the American People, as a collective group, basically cheered them on. Congress, in particular, rolled over and played dead through all this. In a democracy, if the majority agrees with you, are you right? I think it’s pretty obvious that I don’t agree with that; but - when the people who make the laws don’t challenge your behavior, doesn’t that mean the behavior is accepted as legal?
And now that a different group of people is making the laws, is the same behavior suddenly illegal? That right there is an ex post facto law.
Strictly speaking, the Bushies didn’t pass any laws to contravene existing U.S. law and international treaties with regard to prisoners of war. They merely created a new category of person, the “enemy combatant,” and declared by executive statement (which is not a “law” although it has the force of one) that the existing laws and treaties didn’t apply to this category. Ingenious, if warped.
The real reason nobody was willing to take on the Bushies over their romp through the Constitution was that anyone who tried to would have been smeared all over the media by Karl Rove’s propaganda machine as an Islamofascist traitor. Or something equally slimy. Nobody was willing to stand up and take that; and that’s why they got away with it.
The real problem is that taking them to court now won’t change the fact that they were allowed to get away with it, then. By the American people. That would be us.
David
April 24, 2009 at 9:06 am
56I am of two minds on this, but then my mind has been bipartite for as long as I can remember. But I do agree very much with your concluding paragraph, hedera. Those last two sentences really are the bottom line for this democratic republic, a construct whose authority ultimately resides with its citizens, and therefore where the ultimate responsibility for its actions lies.
I was appalled when Ronald Reagan suggested that it was necessary to get the government off the backs of the people. That is the only place it belongs, except that I prefer the notion that it rests on our shoulders.
Jim (OJNTNJ)
April 24, 2009 at 9:16 am
57For more information on “enemy combatents” and the Military Commissions Act, go to this Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_(military) (you may need to cut&paste).
The actions of the Bush administration with respect to the prisoners of war are continuing their slow and tedious slog through the court system. That path has been continually strewn with obstacles from those involved, but many of the detainee laws have already been overturned.
Fear is a great motivator, and when two of the three branches of government possessing heightened political clout by virtue of majority, whose conscience has been superceded by greed, they used that fear to their own ends. It was receipe for disaster and is nothing less than evil. Today we’re reaping what they sowed and it’s turned out they sowed poison.
Mr Mu
April 24, 2009 at 6:12 pm
58This is in many respects an imperfect comparison, but maybe Obama remembers what the CIA did to Carter when he tried to ask for some accountabiliy.
Pope Benny 16
April 25, 2009 at 8:20 am
59Well, this is certainly disappointing. Vice President Joseph Biden, good Catholic that he is, has warned Obama off of doing the chest bump with me when we meet. Vincente has been giving me bump lessons for my recent birthday. He says for 82 years, I’m really quite good at it. He points out that I have a good vertical leap. I don’t believe him, but he’s such a sweet lad to say that.
I guess I’ll be reduced to reading Bible verses to Barack and flogging the virtuous life. “Ya gotta dance wit’ da one wot brung ya,” as Father Guido would say. (I’ll have to ask His Eminence Archbishop Emeritus Bernard Law what that means.)
Dale
April 25, 2009 at 5:12 pm
60I, too, am of two minds on the torture memo issue. One mind says that there absolutely needs to be accountability and investigation–not of the 20-year olds on the ground but of the authors of the policies (this mind also notes that the whole avoiding old laws by inventing new categories who don’t seem to mentioned is an old trick, see “subversives” in Argentina) and that this is in no way a witch hunt because the “witches” in this case are real and clearly identified by evidence…and the other mind says SUMMER! TULIPS! DOGS! CHILDREN! BASEBALL!
David
April 26, 2009 at 6:53 am
61Very good point, Mr. Mu. And who was the CIA director who “fixed the damage Carter did to the CIA”? I suspect the combination of Obama’s choice for CIA director and his commitment not to permit punishment of the rank-and-file might be how he has innoculated himself against what happened to Carter. I also understand that Obama has been in contact with Carter regarding the Middle East. About time Democrats moved beyond the idiotic marginalizing of Carter.
Acronym Jim,
You are dead right about the systemic poisoning. Slowly but surely, if the public will stand behind the bringing to bear of justice at the top, perhaps the carcinogenic agents responsible will finally be forced to stand in the public dock for what they did. And that ultimately means two people: Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. But only if public opinion will support it can real justice ever be brought to bear. Otherwise, the best we can hope for is that the cancer itself be killed and our immune system be bolstered to the point that this can never happen again.
Unfortunatley, all of the above require a meaningful, effective fourth estate.
Jerry, The King of Comedy!!!
April 26, 2009 at 12:28 pm
62Two attorneys were walking out of a bar just as a beautiful young lady enters. One attorney turns to his associate. “Boy, I would like to screw her!” The other attorney thinks for a second and said “Out of what”? (ba dum!)
David
April 27, 2009 at 6:47 am
63Just make that one of the geniuses in charge of a high-powered capitalist enterprise, preferably at the moment a financial institution, and I’m with you, Jerry. Not that there’s anything inherently evil about capitalism. As Thoreau noted, the problem is with the board of directors.
David
May 1, 2009 at 8:19 am
64Wealth is the global oligarch. The rest of us are merely players in the grand game. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.
mrNybel
May 1, 2009 at 1:24 pm
65one upon a time - in the bad old days of predatory Capitalism, the fat cats protected themselves and each other with interlocking directorates (”You sit on my board, and I’ll sit on yours”)
now they just do the same thing with insurance (”I’ll buy your dubious investments and you sell me insurance in case they go south”)
So the gov’t gives AIG $$$$ because all those insurance claims turned the insurance firm into Humptaig Dumptaig…and then GSachs gets a big payoff for their bad derivatives. I am a long-ago English major. When work was criticized as derivative it meant the writers were a bunch of cheaters, plagiarists, thieves
David
May 1, 2009 at 7:06 pm
66Yes, mrNybel. Always was, always will be.
Once the triage is complete and the hemorrhaging stanched, it will be time to go after the perps. Kind of interesting that the criminal enterprises were/are the essential engines of the global financial system, and so we cannot shut down the syndicate, only try to transform it. But it was always more inclined toward criminal enterprise than anything else. Exploit the third world after first exploiting domestic labor for 2 or 3 centuries, pillage natural resources and kill anyone who got in the way, periodically have wars, which along with pestilence and famine are, as Dos Passos noted, good growing weather for the House of Morgan.
Obama knows all this. I’m just waiting to see how much of it he can transform, given the incredible momentum and power of the ba$tard$. And how much transformation the general public will embrace. But he is quite deliberate, quite even-handed, and plenty smart, along with being possessed of a quiet killer instinct (just ask the ba$tard hedge fund$ who tried to play him for a sucker regarding the Chrysler bailout). He just might pull it off.
Just imagine, capitalism as a societally regulated mechanism that actually improves the human condition. It has not other excuse for existence, at least not in the modern world, if it ever did.
And greed is bad, not good. The greedhead mantra was one of the strangest of all perversions, embraced by conventional religious folk, and set in motion with a vengeance starting with the Reagan administration. As a colleague at my community college, a centrist Democrat from Illinois’ cornfields who taught chemistry (a graduate of Notre Dame/masters from the University of Illinois) said to me, Reagan worshipped wealth. Some follower of the teachings of Jesus. Especially loved all those fundies who roamed the halls of the White House with their jewel-encrusted crosses. That is certainly what the guy in sandals was all about.
Chris Harlan
May 1, 2009 at 7:20 pm
67Well said, David.
hedera
May 1, 2009 at 9:25 pm
68It has nothing much to do with Jesus, David, but the Calvinist tradition particularly has a strong feeling that if you have success in the world, and get rich, it is a sign from God that you are one of the predestined ones, and therefore you will go to heaven no matter what you do. On the other hand, by this way of thinking, people who do not get rich are obviously not favored by God, and therefore they must be sinners, and it’s appropriate for God’s chosen to beat on them. I think this is where the idea that poverty is some kind of a moral failing comes from. Unfortunately a lot of early American culture came out of the Calvinist tradition - thank God the Founding Fathers had gotten past that!
David
May 3, 2009 at 11:04 am
69Ah, yes, the Calvinist tradition, which is still utterly entrenched in Appalachia, and which has succeeded in looping around the founders and the enlightenment thinking which informed our founding documents and arrived full blown and in charge for the first 8 years of the 21st century at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and on the Republican side of the aisle in Congress, not to mention some real boneheads on the Supreme Court, and moreso down through the federal and some of the state court systems, plus the majority of the slave state governorships and legislatures. Sweet Jesus, who if You are, must be weeping unceasingly.
SallyMutant
May 10, 2009 at 10:15 pm
70OMG! Dijon mustard, everywhere, all weekend.
David
May 13, 2009 at 3:28 pm
71Mustard plasters do relieve congestion…