Bad Deeds for 11-25-2009

 

Bush Press Secretary Forgets 9/11 Attacks Occurred Under Bush – In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity Tuesday night, the onetime Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino claimed there had been no terrorist attacks under President George W. Bush. Either Perino was deliberately lying — or she forgot about the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United States: Sept. 11, 2001. In addition, a July 4, 2002 shooting at Los Angeles International Airport was determined by federal investigators, the Department of Justice and the FBI to fit the definition of terrorism. She also forgot about the anthrax mailings and the D. C. Sniper.

Despite being tapped by President Obama last week, for a key post on a board overseeing government-sponsored international broadcasting, former Bush spokesperson Perino (and current Fox News contributor) hasn’t stopped attacking the Obama administration on Fox.

 

Republicans Led Push for Louisiana Funding That Ended Up in Senate Health Bill – You’ve heard the story: To “buy” Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-LA) vote to bring the Senate health bill to the floor last Saturday, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) inserted a provision that would deliver up to $300 million in federal Medicaid payments to Louisiana.

Mainstream reporters gave it ominous names like “The Louisiana Purchase,” and right-wing pundits like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh labeled Landrieu “the most expensive prostitute in the history of prostitution.”

But few have mentioned that it was Louisiana Republicans — including Gov. Bobby Jindal and Congressman Joseph Cao — who have been the most aggressive advocates for the measure that’s now put Landrieu in hot water.

 

Investment Bank CEOs Cashed in Before Wall Street Meltdown – The CEOs of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, the two investment banks that collapsed during last year’s financial meltdown, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation even as the company’s shareholders lost everything, says a new report from Harvard Law School.

The top five executives at Bear Stearns made a total of $1.4 billion from bonuses and equity sales between 2000 and 2008, while the top five executives at Lehman Brothers made around $1 billion during that same period — the period during which the companies ran up the bad investments that would see them collapse in 2008, according to “The Wages of Failure” (PDF), a report from Harvard Law School’s Program on Corporate Governance.

“The people who invested in these companies should feel betrayed,” Nell Minow, a compensation expert at the Corporate Library, told NBC’s Lisa Myers. “The whole idea of capitalism is that the people provide the capital and the executives take care of it for us. In this case, the people provided the capital, and the executives took it.”

Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne personally made $388 million in the eight-year period leading up to the bank’s collapse, while Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld made $541 million. Boomberg news service notes that “shareholders who held their shares throughout the period analyzed in the report lost most of their initial investment.”

 

People on Terror Watch Lists Have Bought Guns or Explosives 865 Times Over the Past Five Years – Suspected terrorists, those on actual watch lists, successfully bought guns or explosives in the good ole US of A 865 times over the past five years. Why? Because of the Terror Gap. That is the space in our law created by right wingers with celery-stalks-for-brain-stems, bed-wetting Blue Dogs, and neglectful progressives that allows those on watch lists to pass background checks when purchasing weaponry that kills. You can’t get on a plane–but you can buy a freakin’ explosive.

Conservatives are in a corner shivering over the prospect of KSM being tried in New York, but if a member of Al Qaeda buys a cache of guns the FBI won’t know about it and any background information given when purchasing said weapons is destroyed faster than you can say Nidal Malik Hasan or Eric Rudolph.

 

Sarah Palin Issues Thankfulnesses List – 😉 One day before Thanksgiving, Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin today issued the following “thankfulnesses list”:

• I have thankfulness that we have a President who is learning to celebrate our American holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas also, even though he didn’t have either of those days when he was growing up in Kenya.
• I have thankfulness that we live in a country where we have the freedom to speak, even though Todd has never done so actually.
• I have thankfulness that little Falcon was found safe and sound in that box, being that I was worried sick about him flying around in that balloon.
• I have thankfulness for all of those Jewish settlements on the West Bank, seeing that Jewish people will be flocking to the Holy Land to celebrate Thanksgiving.
• I have thankfulness also for the new drapes I installed in my house to keep the Russians from peeping in.
• I have thankfulness that Levi posed in Playgirl, and I’m sure all the gay men who read Playgirl have thankfulness for that also.
• I have thankfulness also that Levi’s mom has been put in prison so I don’t have to worry about her selling drugs to Willow or Piper.
• And finally, I have thankfulness for all of the good people who read my book, and for the person who wrote it also.

Regards,

Jim