Craig Crawford's Trail Mix

Let it fail? Is that $170 billion refundable?

Penguins...will they rule with an iron fist and a sharp-cracking pointer like Sister Mary Stigmata (THE PENGUIN) did in "The Blues Brothers"?

They're on a mission from God.

COSMO: Indeed, that was one helluva site on Jack Burns! Thanks...I'll send it to some show-fans.
Fourteen months ago XM radio aired a long interview with George and he told of the trip from Texas to LA with Jack.
It didn't take them long to catch the ear of some radio execs and then the sky was the limit.
I have been to Mt. Airy numerous times but I always thought the show was modelled after Dobson, North Carolina, which is only about 8 miles from Mt. Airy and actually resembles the show sets. Andy lives in Manteo now (pronounced MAN-tee-oh). It's a beautiful place---we used to vacation on the NC seaboard nearly every year.

Will Obama blast AIG on Jack Paar's--er---Jay Leno's show Thursday?
http://tinyurl.com/cmfffb

Dexter
Firstly, to me, Jack Paar was the best ever. Also a real gentleman.

Next: I used to travel extensively and whenever I found myself around Winston-Salem, I'd make my way to Mt. Airy and always eat at the Bluebird Diner on Main St. Andy told me that the diner on the show was based on the Bluebird. Of course, Pilot Mountain became Mt. Pilot.

Dex
Of course you remember when Jack teamed with Avery Schrieber. I think that's when Jack was his funniest.

NPR did a show from Mt. Airy last summer...Floyd's Barber Shop is still going, at least it was then. I ain't crazy enough to go the Mayberry Festival...first time I was in Mt. Airy was 1968 on the way to W/S for a baseball gig---the bus passed through Mt. Airy then---at the depot was a good-sized poster with a picture of Andy and "Mt. Airy, Home of A.G."
Now that I-77 replaces Route 52, ya gotta go outta yer way to get there. But...Dobson makes ya FEEL like you're there...it's small...none of the spread of Mt.Airy.

COSMO: Sure, Burns & Schrieber---laff-a minit!

Don't recall ever going to Dobson, but it sounds like my kind of town.

COSMO...you WILL enjoy this link!!
http://www.archive.org/details/No_Time_For_Sergeants

Dex
Great link. You know, when they made the movie 2 yrs later, that's where he first met Don Knotts as the nervous psychiatrist. They sure made a helluva team.

Has anyone figured out that Obama is unprepared to be President. His lack of experience is embarrassing at best.

COSMO: I never laughed so hard as when Private Will Stockdale rigged the toilet seats to salute in unison during inspection!. Also, in the movie, Nick Adams played Private Ben Whitledge. Ben was a far cry from Johnny Yuma, "The Rebel".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXzbmPARO9k

I love going out to the granite quarry, though I've heard it's closing.

There are also some good wineries to explore in the area. North and west of Winston-Salem is the best growing area in the state, and there are now over 70 wineries in the state. The conversion has been a godsend for tobacco and cotton farmers.

Most wineries are still boutique though a few are available in wine and grocery stores.

Back when i was touring the south, The Piedmont Triad wasn't a technical center and research park at all...now it has the biotechnology center.

http://tinyurl.com/96dum8

Mrs. Kennedy shows us the White House

...got lots of memories of Winston-Salem, don1...we stayed at the old Zinzendorf Hotel right beside the RJR cigarette factory...tours all the time...lots of free cigarettes!
years later everything moved out to Whittaker Park , by Wake.
Now Wake also owns Ernie Shore Field, where we played when it was a Red Sox Class A Carolina League team...but I didn't play for the W/S Red Sox...we were a travelling team.

Penguins?

Penguin Island (1908; French: L'Île des Pingouins) is a satirical fictional history by Nobel Prize winning French author Anatole France.
Penguin Island is written in the style of a sprawling 18th and 19th century history book, concerned with grand metanarratives, mythologizing heroes, hagiography and romantic nationalism. It is about a fictitious island of penguins that exists on the northern coast of Europe. The history begins when a wayward Christian missionary monk accidentally lands on the island and sees the penguins as a sort of Greek pre-Christian pagan society. Partly blind, he mistakes the penguins for people and baptizes them. This mistake causes a problem for The Lord (God) who normally only allows people to be baptized, so he resolves it by converting the penguins to people and giving them a soul. Thus begins the penguin history and from there forward the history mirrors that of France (and largely Western Europe including Britain). From the Migration Period ("Dark Ages") when the Germanic tribes incessantly fought among one another for territory; to the heroic Early Middle Ages with the rise of Charlemagne ("Draco the Great") and conflicts with Viking raiders ("porpoises"); to the Renaissance (Erasmus); and up to the modern era with motor cars, and even a future time in which a thriving high-tech civilization is destroyed by a campaign of terrorist bombings, and everything starts again in an endless cycle.

The longest chapter and probably most well known is a satire of the Dreyfus affair.

Scattered throughout are allusions to real historical people such as Columba and Saint Augustine, as well as fictitious characters who represent historical people.

Penguin Island is a critique of human nature from a socialist standpoint in which morals, customs and laws are satirized. For example, the origin of the aristocracy is presented as starting with the brutal and shameless murder of a peasant and the robbing of his land.

amazing how many leprechauns fit on the bottom of a bottle.

gorgeous day it was. corned beef cabbage and homebaked soda bread in the company of mssrs guinness and jameson, singing, dancing with james galway and the chieftains...

the faerie folk send

An Old Celtic Blessing

May the blessing of light be on you—
light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you
and warm your heart
till it glows like a great peat fire.

above from Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_Island_(book)

cosmo, re your 1:01 post.

lest we forget the very best and brightest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8AYUfBt1dE&feature=related

good morning
nice blessing patd- eirinn go brach.
We got out the spoons, it was a great night here too.

As usual Craig is staying one step ahead of his colleagues .

The American Institue of Gambling... AIG,, Cover the original Sin and those that just had paper to place a bet = No Way, No Pay

dance your troubles away with the Oceana Roll:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ighcJBKsUds

ABC's version of NBC's Daivd Gregory, Jack Trapper.

When did the White House know, and when did they know it.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/03/obama-adminis-1.html

Will Senator Dodd and President Obama return the money AIG gave to their campaigns?

http://www.examiner.com/x-268-Right-Side-Politics-Examiner~y2009m3d17-Obama-Received-a-101332-Bonus-from-AIG

Joke of the day.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was asked directly if Obama is satisfied that he found out about the bonuses in a timely fashion, Gibbs said: "Yes, the president is satisfied."

Then Gibbs finishes up with this zinger.

"The president certainly won't be satisfied until, moving forward, we have changed the way we do business in Washington, changed the way we do business on Wall Street, to ensure that there's a financial regulatory system that's in place in order not to find things like AIG happening again," Gibbs said.

Carlin and Burns left Foat Wuff for L.A. but Carlin was a new yawk city boy.......that "leaving texas for LA" was wondering me..........

Carlin was born in New York City, the son of Mary Beary, a secretary, and Patrick Carlin, a national advertising manager for the New York Sun. Carlin was of Irish descent and was raised in the Roman Catholic faith.
Carlin grew up on West 121st Street, in a neighborhood of Manhattan which he later said, in a stand-up routine, he and his friends called "White Harlem", because that sounded a lot tougher than its real name of Morningside Heights.

The bonus attack on the employees is just one grain of sand.

The real question with AIG is to call out every name of every company that “gambled” on swaps. As I understand AIG allowed insurance to be written on assets one does not own! And that this compounded the problem by multiples.

So let’s see the list of Company’s that simply played a gambling game. Congress and the SEC should require full disclosure and NOW so we know who and which corps played this "game" and then can know who to trust going forward.
And if we can let them fail - as they already have

well, well, well. good to know there are others out there with some foresight.

http://experts.foreignpolicy.com/

If you are a captive prisoner, torture works. What are you, a confined prisoner, going to do lie to your captors, and then have your captors learn of your lies. Your lies will only earn you another visit.

If it saves us from another type 9-11 attack, I say go for it.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-17/the-man-who-discovered-the-secret-torture-papers/

btw, kgc, took the progressive test and came out at 366....

took the progressive test '''failed it ''' trick questions'

Forget AIG! Did you see Obama's NCAA tournament bracket picks yesterday?!

The AIG "outrage" that flared after the disbursement of the bonuses, now comes the usual suspects----NYT Maureen Dowd jumps on the bandwagon---with a column filled with indignation at the administration actions or lack thereof.

"No Boiled Carrots"

The NYT Maureen Dowd link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/opinion/18dowd.html

Back in the 80s and early 90s I day traded stocks and options for my own account. When the market went against me, I took my hits. Didn't ask anyone to come pick up the pieces. And I did my own research and developed my own trading models. The only times I became irate were when I couldn't get rapid (less than ten seconds) execution of my orders.

If I could man-up, why can't the people around the AIG and other Wall Street scandals?

And the after the fact, late day response to the AIG dustup---a letter from Mr. Geithner to the Congress confirming that the government would subtract $165 m from the latest $30 billion loan to AIG.

"Outrage builds in Washington for recovery of AIG Bonus"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/business/19bailout.html?hp

two questions related to aig bonus booboo:

1. how does the automatic congressional pay raise compare to the $165 million bonus... these guys also share some of the fault and should not be rewarded either until they help solve the problem. sure they gave this year's raise up in stim bill, but what about next year?
2. which groups' and which states' pensions would also go bust if aig is allowed to fail just because of the bonus outrage?

patd

good call on the automatic congressional pay increases --no wonder you did so well on the progressive quiz!

2. which groups' and which states' pensions would also go bust if aig is allowed to fail just because of the bonus outrage?

That is a very good question, and that is the problem with AIG. Most people are totally unaware of the services AIG provides. If one only listen to the news you would think AIG as a whole is a crooked corporation, not knowing they not only insure pension funds, but also insure money market funds. As bad as things are with AIG, they just might be to big to fail.

mornin',

craig, great post - food for thought at a minimum.

TiR - sorry, but torture yields what the torture victim thinks will make the torture stop. If the truth is the answer, you're right - if not ...

Looks like pitchforks and torches are a good investment.

GET YOUR TORCHES HERE,

Jack

kgc, where are the mea culpas from the barney franks and chris dodds and their respective repub equivalents? why aren't the current and former financial committee chairs being questioned directly as to what they knew and when they knew it?

Sadly - This is another example of the Obama administration running by the polls.

The Bonus plan was documented and not something that was just added!

These are not new facts - what is new is CHANGE in how the Obama administration is dealing based on the political impact.

This information was known and common practice.

We still must have the names of the companies that AIG played the gambling games. Then and only then can you forsee the impact.

"pitchforks and torches are a good investment"

jack, tar and feathers too.
just don't forget to buy from local chickens

patd

Barney Frank was on CNN this morning (dueling with Kiren Chetry - he might as well have been talking to himself.)

His view -people do not want Congress in the business of abrogating contracts. Congress due to Hanky Pank was stampeded into the first round of bailouts but now as information comes out they are now questioning the business practices and spending policies of the companies. And the names of the bonus money should be made public.

The $165 million bonus money is more or less 1 tenth of 1 % of the money the gov't has given AIG. When it is presented like that means that 99.9% is being applied properly. Well except for that $20 or $30 billion AIG spent to bail out foreign banks.

Coreen - LOL at Geithner's response. I'm sure that AIG won't use any of the remaining $29B,835M to pay those bonuses. I may be wrong - probably won't be the first time today - but in the end the bonuses will be paid, the bailout funds will be paid, and this will be forgotten until the 2010 and 2012 elections when the repug candidates will trot it out, conveniently forgetting that the largest share of the AIG bailouts were as a result of Hank Paulson and Cheney's pet crawling running to congress like Chicken Licken, Henny Penny or Chicken Little (I never could keep that straight) before Obama ever got in on the act.

and be sure the rails they're ridden out on are fully subsidized amtrak tracks...

Fat Cat Rep's dumped in 06,
Fat Cat Dem's throw them out.... Dodds, B'B'Barney should be the first to go !!! With Nancy right there only behind Harry......

How can these people remain in such power - and offer such blathering statements -- SICK

"where are the mea culpas from the barney franks and chris dodds and their respective repub equivalents? why aren't the current and former financial committee chairs being questioned directly as to what they knew and when they knew it?"

Patd, do you believe in miracles. They do no wrong, so there will be no questioning of them by their peers. They are above being questioned. Sad isn't it.

kgc, my tirade on the congressional finance wizards isn't about the the bonus, it's about the bigger picture how we got into this mess in the first place. where were they (dems and reps), committee staff etc.??? on the campaign trails no doubt.

Gee Ping one might as the same of you...how can you go on posting talking points you got from Inannity and Limpballs

patd

well Chris Dodd was out getting a sweet deal from countrywide....and collecting a bunch of cash from Fanny and Freddie and many republicans likewise

this might make the obama administration face reality.
trying to do to many things at once you make mistakes.
and they've made a couple.
the pres should focus on stabilizing the financial institutions and ending the occupation of iraq'
at least make progress in these areas 'establish a track record of getting things done right' then he could
go on to next priority'
as long as washington is looking like a three ring
circus''clowns and all'' nothing will get fixed

Ping, isn't blaming Dodd and Franks like blaming the sheep after they follow the shepherds to the slaughter?

mqw
Historically , presidents need to take advantage of their first year because in the second year, congress starts worry about their own elections and (their own agendas...local pork)

Ping, isn't blaming Dodd and Franks like blaming the sheep after they follow the shepherds to the slaughter?

No it is like blaming the shepherd whose job it is to protect the sheep.

mqw - you apparently have more faith in the Obama administration than in the Bush administration, which proved that a singleminded focus and limited agenda is as much or more subject to mistakes as a broad one.

Pogo

Since I remain as cynical as ever---Geithner's letter (Bloomberg includes a little more of it)--to me is simply a weak response to the "outrage" that has reared up for an incident that was fully known and allowed to occur before the "wringing of hands" commenced.

I believe the $160 m bonuses have already been disbursed & it is unclear whether the $30 billion has or has not already been given to AIG.

I agree completely that all the faux indignation will be forgotten when a new diversion is sent out to deflect scrutiny of what is or is not being done to right the financial/economic crisis that continues.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a_TbsRunotbQ&refer=home

The San Francisco Police Officers Association's leadership has been told to muzzle it after signing a letter accusing onetime Weather Underground radical Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, of being behind the nearly 40-year-old bombing at a San Francisco police station that killed a sergeant.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/18/BA3J16ID29.DTL&tsp=1

"well Chris Dodd was out getting a sweet deal from countrywide....and collecting a bunch of cash from Fanny and Freddie and many republicans likewise"

bravo, kgc, you deserve an encore.

wonder what the total would be on all the various campaign contributions from the financial houses that are now in trouble.... maybe good pr for some of these political folks who ran to fess up and donate it to treasury.

The term, "outraged" has been used zillions of times in the last 48 hours.

I'm outraged at its overuse...

pogo
thought we had a much brighter single-mind this time'
i was hoping

The ying and yang of weapons. One plans to cut, the other plans to increase.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/03/17/gates_readies_big_cuts_in_weapons/

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/17/europe/kremlin.php

i'm outraged at this outrageous outrage

The type of mergers and acquisitions that created an AIG used to be illegal. There is more than enough blame and greed to go around on the creation of this monster. While it is principally a Republican philosophy, there were a whole lot of Democrats looking the other way while taking money to fund their campaigns that allowed it to happen.

Ping, blaming Dodd and Franks is just plain silly. If they are guilty of anything it is being soft headed or hearted enough to want the average schmuck to have something to show for their taxes.

Craig, AIG does need to be dismantled. In fact, the majority of these behemoth corporations parked in each others pockets need to be splintered. They simply are not good for the world. Cooperation between entities can be a good thing ... collusion is a different matter.

Even more than breaking it up, I would like to see Olbermann's spiel of "Why Daddy Went To Jail" come true. Unfortunately, if we are going to make an orderly breakup happen, these greedy bastards might have to stay employed instead.

"outraged" has replace "crisis". Within the next 2 weeks we will have a new much over used word. Takes our attention off of one mess and places it on the mess of the day.

KCG - Please now give more credit.. I have no time to listen to Rush or Sean Hannity. These are fact points from WSJ, other creditable news source and even the NYT!!!

And more important talking or blogging points found on this web site.

KCG
Why are you so reactive to protect them? This I do not understand. They have been around long enough that they have no excuse. They are so full of themselves it makes me sick

Right Ping
still waiting for you to tell me what social engineering was picked over sound financial decisions.

The Wall Street Journal and the NYTImes produce just as many talking points and many from the same sources...

just because you say it doesn't make it a fact

Dodd and Franks, oh for heaven sake lets not hold those who chair these committees accountable. How is it Dodd got such a sweetheart mortgage? And according to Franks, Fannie and Freddie were in great shape.

How dare you blame Dodd. He wasn't even in Washington most of the time. I seem to recall that he was living in a rented house in Iowa, pursuing his dream of being president. I'm glad he failed.

The media (Richard Cohen most recently in the Washington Post) tells us --no one knew this was going to happen...

hardly. lots of people knew and talked about it but the corporate (corpulent) media didn't want to act against its self-interest so they ignored the information and continued to venerate people like Alan Greenspan and Cramer -blech.

The combination of changes in the bankruptcy laws and changes in the mortgage laws beginning in 2006 changed the way the housing industry was financed and people impacted choose to ignore the obvious outcomes for their own financial gain --Jeb Bush. Now the bad debts have come home to roost and everyone is trying to pretend no one could have predicted it....

"The Wall Street Journal and the NYTImes produce just as many talking points and many from the same sources..."

Really? LMAO. So does PBS, MSNBC, DNC, RNC, etc.

I always watch to see which party is uttering the new talking point of the day. It is laughable, because one after another of these politicians will stand in front of the TV camera and repeat the same talking points over and over again. I guess they think we are so stupid and will believe they are the originators of these catchy comments. Oh he/she is so insightful, so thought provoking, but more likely so full of BS.

The mass media drives that coverage --it likes outrage and sensationalism

If you don't like talking points -- read Mother Jones or listen/watch Democracy Now

If you want better news it is available to people who take the time to find it.

Now onto something I need to do to help bail out our country's financial woes. My taxes.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211485

Ping, That is the bottom line. The amount of paper out there is in the trillions. Bringing it down to a soft landing is going to make the costs of all the on going wars look like playing in a sandbox.

We do need to know all of the parties concerned and how they are related to each other. This one is going to take a whole lot of sunlight to disinfect.

Here is more on the AIG bonus discussion---with conclusions that seem to escape those in Washington.

"Is AIG Insolvent?"

"The undoing of the AIG bonuses is much less important than sensibly re-regulating the financial industry and helping ordinary people weather the storm--but I still think there are important symbolic reasons for going after the bonus payments.

Plus, maybe all this populist rage will finally push Congress into action on some important reforms to hlep people not in line for bonus payments---like the primary-rsidence cramdown bill.

http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2009/03/is-aig-insolvent.html#more

mqw, government is an error filled exercise of addressing myriad problems simultaneously practiced by both parties. It seems to me that the actions being pointed to as mistakes may or may not prove to have been mistakes and certainly don't strike me as a result of inattention because of an administration working on too many problems at once. In fact, I can't tell from your post what you seem to think are mistakes or what problems you think have occupied the Obama adminsitration to the exclusion of addressing the global economic problems or the withdrawal from Iraq - both of which seem to have commanded the bulk of the Obama admin's attention in its days of infancy. Perhaps you could be a little more specific so that we can see whether we actually do agree on some of these issues.

Plus, maybe all this populist rage will finally push Congress into action on some important reforms to hlep people not in line for bonus payments---like the primary-rsidence cramdown bill.
Coreen

I think people should start saying if there is no cramdown for primary residences --then no cramdown for vacation property and second homes --
and take away the mortgage deduction for second homes too!
That will get the attention of members of Congress

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211487

TIR

That would be a good premise if it happened to be true. Unfortunately, it isn't. What usually happens is that the prisoner tells their captors whatever he thinks they want to hear in order to make the torture stop. At best it gets you a mixture of true and false.

Every single person who is involved in the field of interrogation says this is the worst possible means to use. On top of this, at the end of hostilities whenever that happens, the use of torture makes prosecution impossible something we are currently up against with many of the CIA black ops sites.

Of course, there is always Nuremberg. The United States hung people for acts that have been performed in our name in the Iraqi war. As much as seeing Cheney hung in the public square would please me, I would rather these acts hadn't happened in the first place.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211495

Flatus, They were playing with other people's money.

For further consideration---following in KGC's footsteps--the real question--
why aren't we this outraged over things that really do matter?

"AIG--my very own Rick Santelli moment"

http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2009/03/aigmy-very-own-rick-santelli-moment.html#more

David Gregory has a new blog with some interesting links this morning

http://www.davidgregorytv.com/

Okay, let's draft all these people into the Army. Put 'em in some dismal barracks in rural Kansas and keep them there until they unwind the positions they created. And, for the Brits who were involved, ask Her Majesty's government to draft them into the British forces sending them to serve with their mates in Kansas.

Don't have time right now to dig them up, but when coal miners went on strike during the War, some draconian measures were proposed to encourage them to return to work. Let's revisit those measures.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211543

Jamie, you channeling me? :-)

Flatus

lol
I love it.

Jack

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211548

Pogo, I've noticed that sort of thing tends to happen around here. :-)

flatus, be glad to join you and jack on that draft board.

I'm bored....gimme a draft.......

And before I leave to try to rebuild some of my own lost wealth, more sobering statistics to consider:

1. From 2007 to 2008 total retirement wealth in private & public sector pension plans & retirement savings plans dropped by $2.8 trillion.

2. In December, 2006, housing values reached a peak of $18.9 trillion. By December 2008, they had fallen by $3.9 trillion to $15.1 trillion.

3. Over the past year and half--from middle of 2007 through the end of 2008, when the crisis unfolded--the crisis in the housing market and in the stock market has cost American familes a total of $15 trillion in 2008 dollars.

Economic perspectives: Rebuilding the retirement dream; Our house in the middle of our street is no longer our house: Gone in 1.8 seconds
(by Christian E. Weller)

http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/economic-perspectives/

bored with all the outrage.....no outrage surfaced much in the last 8 years, but now the AIG folks get the bonus and everybody's outraged.....bonus outrageous contagious

by "everybody" I was referring mostly to politicians.....

Flatus! Dismal? Kansas? My homestate? Watch it....ROFL!

sturge, did you just call me a daft broad

Patsi, you know I said "dismal barracks", not dismal Kansas. :)

no.....i said you quaffed grog.......

"no outrage surfaced much in the last 8 years"

that's cause it was all used up during gore v. bush... and just when there was enough to make some noise it became treason to express it.

yeah, and now all these guys are going around saying how lucky america was that the supreme court decided to steal the election.......and actually being argued with on tv about it........instead of told to go sit in the corner and think about what they've done.........so to speak.........

If I were ruler of the UNIVERSE.

The folks over at the financial derivatives division in London would be more worried about keeping their butts out of prison for fraud then they would about their bonuses. The more I look at AIG's Swap default operation the more I see a giant ponzi scheme. They were selling a product that had no value and making promises that they could not keep. Some one needs to go to jail.
As we own 80% of the company it is our responsibility to separate the good assets from the ponzi scheme. Then sell the good assets, they are very valuable and we should get more for them than the current valuation on AIG stock.
We then need to bring all the parties affected by the ponzi scheme to the table and work out an equitable distribution of the remaining monies from the sale.
As all the other share holders we will loose all our equity but at least then we can stop throwing more good money after bad.

And while the Republicans are screaming about it be sure to keep loudly repeating until everybody understands this was another screw up by the Republicans that Obama is having to fix.

Jack

jack......I'm voting for you for ruler of the universe......can you have them send me an absentee ballot?

"Patsi, you know I said "dismal barracks", not dismal Kansas. :)"

Ha --I remember years back when we drove with my then-4 year old great niece out to Dodge...as we got into what Capote called the "tumbleweed tundra" -- Rachel stared out the window and said, "It's awfully blank here."

Ya know there is something to be said for Chinese justice. They tend to take such screwups as the folks previously mentioned at AIG and stand them before a firing squad. Improve the breed so to speak.

Jack

wish we did have the power to make whskyjack ruler of the universe, but we can add him to Best Comments: http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/best-comments.html

"The more I look at AIG's Swap default operation the more I see a giant ponzi scheme."

jack, was gonna say that the other day, but was afraid i'd get laughed at... great minds you and i, huh? let em laugh; however, you get credit for actually saying it first.

KGC...
I've lost count of how many times I've heard someone on NPR over the last 2-3 yrs talk about how when people who took out those funky mortgages can no longer pay them and when all those funky derivatives come crashing down like a house of cards the fecal matter would hit the fan big time.....

I read that article by Richard Cohen of the Washington Post that Dex linked to yesterday.... the comments were very telling..... everyone..... yes EVERYONE was basically telling the guy he was full of BS.....

plenty of people knew this was coming.... they just couldn't tell you exactly when....

jack, you da man.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211569

More channeling going on. This is what I laid out last night. It isn't some conspiracy theory. This is the way these bets on bets of unending profit from the credit default swaps was a Ponzi scheme.

TROUT: You ever meet anybody who was really smart?

KV: Only one: Saul Steinberg, the graphic artist who’s dead now. Everybody I know is dead now, present company excepted. I could ask Saul anything, and six seconds would pass, and then he would give me a perfect answer. He growled a perfect answer. He was born in Rumania, and, according to him, he was born into a house where “the geese peeked in the windows.”

TROUT: Like what kind of questions?

KV: I said, “Saul, what should I think about Picasso?” Six seconds went by, and then he growled, “God put him on Earth to show us what it’s like to be really rich.” I said, “Saul, I’m a novelist, and many of my friends are novelists, but I can’t help feeling that some of them are in a very different business from mine, even though I like their books a lot. What would make me feel that way?” Six seconds went by, and then he growled, “It is very simple: There are two kinds of artists, and one is not superior to the other. But one kind responds to the history of his or her art so far, and the other responds to life itself.”

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. From "Requiem for a Dreamer"

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1016-21.htm

Craig,

Jack and I tossed this one around yesterday.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/red-cross-undermines-cheney-ch.html#comment-211427

Sturg....

gotta love that Kilgore.....

I chuckled yesterday more than once listening to the folks at Sirius Left - I think it was Alex Bennett I was listening to earlier on who caught my attention - taking the position that the bonuses had to be paid because they were contracted for and that you can't break a contract, and on and on (and from this, don't get the idea that I think the bonuses are a big deal - I really don't, at least not in the amount they comprise - 1/10 of 1 % of teh bailout money). Well, news flash - contracts are broken every day, and people sue for performance, and there are defenses mounted, and most of those suits settle out of court for a compromised amount. And news flash 2 - we do not know what the terms of those contracts are, so we are talking out of our asses when we talk about whether the bonuses were owed or not. As for me, I'd be more than happy to defend AIG not paying those bonuses - I don't think there are a lot of juries you could seat that would be sympathetic to executives who drove a company to the position that required a $170B cash infusion from the government to avoid bankruptcy by coming up with a scheme to sell stuff that no one on that jury could likely ever understand as being something worth selling, much less that would justify the retention and rewarding of those executives, contracts or no.

Now, is that AIG's biggest problem? I'd have to say that any problem that can be fixed by the expenditure of 1/10 of 1% of a loan (OK, grant) to keep the company afloat is not that company's biggest problem. While it pisses us off, there's a big picture out there that this isn't even visible in.

i heard one of those congress-critters quote the "shocked to find gambling" line from "Casablanca" this morning.....

While still in a pichfork and hot tar frame of mind.

One of the mainstays for libertarianism to work is that those who commit fraud need to be punished. I haven't heard the libertarians weighing in on the AIG debacle.
Seems I'm hearing more about the responsibility of society to protect the system.

Jack

Ree, point of order. The only thing Stewart said Tucker was right about was that Stewart is a pompous ass - Stewart knew that long before Tucker pointed it out. And for God's sake, who is Tucker Carlson (other than a perfect example of the "It Takes One to Know One" club) to call anyone a pompous ass?

Uhhhh, Solar, if you're around - lunch

Bird Watch...

The Eastern Phoebe has arrived...a "tyrant flycatcher..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Phoebe

:)

1. But, Whskyjack is inexperienced. He's never been the wife of the Ruler of the Universe. ( ;>D)<

2. I think it was Lord_Bloggington who yesterday wrote that the average AIG bonus was $112k and the lowest was $1k.

I slept on it and had several morning coffees over it, so I am nearly awake enough to pontificate that it would be good to know the largest bonus, too. The other important bits of information would be the median, the and 2 standard deviations. For those of us who are more visually oriented, how do both the bell curve and the pyramid graph? Does anyone doubt that the top bonus is $75 M!LL!ON or more ?

$6.4 million, xr.

I wouldn't call it Ponzi. No laughter here. I think of it as bait and switch or false labeling. 99 iffy mortgages and one blue ribbon mortgage bundled together and labeled 5 Star. Nobody can convince me that people creating and trading these bundles aren't culpable and open to legal attacks both civil and criminal. And those who held law licenses or licenses to deal in securities or insurance, who als manufactured, sold, and swapped these financial frauds ought to be treated especially harshly.

IOW, these bastards are worse than the uneducated pigeon drop con man or the phisher. My opinion.

Who's getting rich? Can any of you financial wizards tell me that? Nobody knows what the f*** is going on, do they?

Sorry Ree -- I would rather set my hair on fire and put it out with a brick than listen to Laura Ingraham.

I remember Avery Schreiber when he was probably still in college. It must have around 1960 - 1. He did a skit that went something like this :

Schreiber in a sheet with a RR lamp raised as Diogenes, and with the lamp behind his back as the Generic Greek.

Generic Greek: "Hey, who are you?

Diogenes: "I'm Diogenes."

G.G.: "What are you doing?"

D.: "I'm looking for an honest man."

G.G.: "What are you doing with MY lamp?"

I include myself in the pool of ignorance, by the way, lest anyone be offended by my musings. I'm not calling for anyone's head on a platter, though. It's been a very irrational couple of months under the Obama regime... Rush Limbaugh, AIG bonuses, sleeveless dresses, Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart; these are the stories that have dominated the news cycles. Pathetic.

Pathetic is a good word for it, LordB....

Ping,

It seems that the criticism against Dodd re: the exec bonus stuff coming out of the Obama admin has another side that makes it look like Geithner is trying to cover his own ass.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/17/dodd/index.html

Now this does not excuse Dodd's Countrywide loan, but it is a different take on the AIG accusations levelled against Dodd.

Thanks, lord_bloggington. I sit corrected.

I remember when my four hours of hot and heavy yard/field work would bring me $2.20 plus lunch.
No benefits. I once fell 2 stories from a roof into a rosebush. $2.20 didn't even cover the bandages and mercurichrome, thank goodness that In only got stabbed by a couple of sharply pruned branches and needled by a zillion thorns. Thank goodness it was a rose and not a castor bean. Anyway 55c/hr.

Despite that, I find it hard to get heated up about $6.4 M!LL!ON bonus for an AIG superscam artist.

This has to be the only era in the history of the Cosmos when the guys who wreck their companies get rewards from the stockholders they've robbed. It's like commie brutes demanding that the family of the guy being executed pay for the bullet.

Well, not really like the family having to pay for the bullet, but you get my drift.

LA Times op/ed on AIG -- really good:

http://tinyurl.com/d3pbcq

XR

Rachel gave out the top bonuses last night or a couple of nights ago. I think the top ten or eleven guys got several million each and it dropped down from there.

Ping, You are still thinking way too small. A Countrywide loan is just pennies in the pot. The guys who really really made off like bandits are the hedge funds who bet against these derrivitives.

I don't know if they are related, but here is Henry Paulson about needed regulation

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2b1243c-1326-11de-a170-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

and John Paulson of Paulson and company who made billions selling short at Lloyds

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=axgiUuuNBeLA&refer=us

Hey, people are pissed, and have a right to be; I get it. Anger is by definition an irrational emotion, and irrationality won't solve a damn thing. Now let's figure out where the money's going, if not into thin air.

Jane Hamsher's article on Dodd and the executive compensation limits he would have imposed:

http://firedoglake.com/2009/03/17/treasury-attempts-to-blame-dodd-for-aig-bonuses/

And the WSJ (god, I'm quoting WSJ to criticize the Obama admin?) article on it.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123457165806186405.html?mod=testMod

Looks pretty clear to me.

liddy is now talking about $1.6 Trillion currently still at risk in AIG. The outrage over bonuses is getting the headlines, but those trillions of dollars are what Liddy is trying to untangle in such a way that it doesn't collapse most of the western nations banks.

Oh and AIG may be the biggest, but it isn't the only. I would have to dig to find out how many trillions of totally unsecured paper is floating around that could turn to sludge at any second.

Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo is a republican, but threw some bucks at Kerry and Senate Dems, also. His republican giving is the more numerous by far :
Bush-Cheney 2000
Bush-Cheney '04
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
Dreier for Congress Committee
Elizabeth Dole for President
Friends of Giuliani Exploratory Committee
Friends of Senator D'Amato 1998 Committee
George W. Bush for President
John Kerry for President
John McCain 2008
Mortgage Bankers Association of America President (1991-92)
National Republican Congressional Committee
National Republican Senatorial Committee
New Leadership for America PAC
Romney for President
Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee
Swing States for a Conservative White House PAC

TiR,

The bushcheney gang knew about it in September, 1 1/2 months before the election, and 4 months before Obama was inaugurated.

XR, no, in this case it's like making us pay for the bullett, pay the salary of the soldier who pulls the trigger, plus buy him a new vacation house on the Adriatic.

lord-bloggington,
All emotion is irrational, not just anger. However, no one ever made a decision based on rationality.

Rationality only comes into play when it is used to explain an action.

Pogo,

This really can't be blamed on President Obama. You can fault some of his handling of this mess since January 20, but the elements that went into its creation have been in force starting way back under Reagan.

You can even lay some blame on the laws that were put in place to try to clean up the S & L mess that came about when the old usury laws were abrogated and the ARMs took their place. Those new laws led to these outlandish compensation packages based in stock holdings rather than income. Throw in the bankruptcy laws and laws governing derrivities ... blah blah blah

The law of unintended consequences married overwhelming greed and this current mess is their child screaming to be fed. Obama may be attending the christening but he had nothing to do with the creation of the baby.

I stand corrected, and I have a correction for you, but I have other stuff to do at the moment. And dance!

Herman's Hermits - No milk today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClQepFF-Sr0

Hey, LordB, you left Meghan McCain's fat ass out - it's been featured pretty prominently in the news of late.

That's why I don't watch TV, pogo. Ok, seriously, gotta run. Have a good day all.

newpogo,

I sit corrected once again.

I've been having trouble with unruly and unco-operative metaphors lately. I guess I'd better retune all the engines in the metaphor pool.

"This has to be the only era in the history of the Cosmos when the guys who wreck their companies get rewards from the stockholders they've robbed. It's like commie brutes demanding that the family of the guy being executed pay for the bullet."

XR,

Would it be so. It isn't! It's been happening everyday for the past, must be close to, twenty years. And, it's shameful.

I'm getting tired telling people that the miscreants getting the substantial rewards at corporations, whether the corporations make money or not, aren't the entrepreneurs who worked night and day creating those companies; they are common employees!

Through overlapping boards, hand-picked directors, winks and nods, they've somehow convinced woefully undereducated shareholders that they are entitled to whatever they can get from the corporations for which they work.

When I say undereducated, I'm not talking about years of schooling; I'm talking about being too damned lazy to learn a damned thing about finance, accounting and economics.

It's pathetic. And, those shareholders' laziness is going to cost all of us our peace of mind and our retirements.

Meghan overfeeds the Donkeys?

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211611

Flatus, You have to consider that a large percentage of the shares, possibly even a majority, were held by pension and mutual funds investmenting often at the behest of a single buyer. The individual fund shareholder had virtually no control over the actions of these major funds other than the deduction from their paycheck to go into their 401 Ks.

BTW, Edward Liddy who has been brought in as CEO of AIG is doing a damn good job with his testimony. Still needs to be watched like a hawk, but he knows the field and isn't waffling and whining.

Craig

Can you do a thread on Greenspan,,,,,I think that this is all his fault in a way,,,,wasn't he advising Bush on all of this,and Clinton befre him,,,,thats 16 years????,,,and now he is hiding,,,he usually has his nose in this type of talks no? I have been saying for weeks now,,,that both Bush,,and Obama knew this was coming,,and did nothing about it,,,,,Bush had to know in the last 2 quarters of 08....and Obama in 09,,,

Pogo

You are a cold dude,,,,,,I was ready for you,,,,I turned all my clocks back 1 hour,,,and did meditation for one hour today,,just to be ready for your post around 11:45,,,I noticed that you will always post one around that time,,,,I was ready for you today,,, and here is the reason that you beat me to it

Since Im Solar,,,,this is what happened to me,,,,,,today,,,at precisely around 11:56:45seconds,,,there was a Solar interruption (this is a true happening every year) that made me very weak,,,this happens twice a year,,once in the spring,,,and once in the fall,,,it is called Sun Fade,,,it;s when the sun is portioned directly behind satellites,,,and I get a temporary black out.

What do you call a lawyer gone bad?
Senator.hahaha

Just to give some props to the Republican. Spencer Bauchus of Alabama is asking some darn good questions that is eliciting good information.

jamie, I'm not blaming Obama for the AIG collapse or the handling of it - that was in the works and far down the road to perdition before he was even elected - I am however blaming Geithner and Summers for trying to lay the blame for the bonus problem on Dodd when Geithner and Summers were in the thick of things arguing against the restrictions Dodd was urging. I lay the blame for the mess for the AIG collapse on AIG and its willing accomplices in the various administrations that didn't think oversight was sufficiently necessary to put in place, stretching back as you noted to Reagan, and lay the blame for the bonus BS on AIG and its willing accomplice, the Bush administration. I do lay the blame for letting Geithner and Summers try to shift the blame to Dodd for the bonus stuff on the Obama admin.

investmenting

Look what happens when you try to type two words at once.

Brain to finger operation just couldn't handle investments investing.

Solar - it was 12:00 - my stomach told me so. I answer to that higher calling (that and Mrs. P, of course, who trumps the call of my stomach). Well, you can try agaon tomorrow. :-)

nice little pie charting of countries getting aig bailout

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/03/17/whither_the_aig_bailout_funds#comment-68333

Oh, and Solar, the comment that I put up to give you something to noodle was at 11:52 - six full minutes before I announced my departure. But we shouldn't have this problem for another 6 months, right? (Oh, and feel free to take advantage of the fact that I am gone for an hour between 12 & 1, and anything you want to disagree with me about can go unrefuted for that entire hour. It's a gift just for you.)

Run, Sarah, run.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/18/obama-would-crush-sarah-p_n_176392.html

OK, here's a little somthing to gin up some interesting discussion on a slow afternoon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/us/18oyster.html

Mountain Oysters. I can't say that I've ever tried them.

Live video feed of House Financial Services hearing: http://tinyurl.com/cbv29p

"And so, it is right for us all to be angry with them. I am not quite convinced, however, that it is right that politicians in Washington should be indulging themselves in such righteous indignation. A lot of them allowed -- even encouraged -- the lax regulation that let the gambling spirit prevail in our financial markets and in the mortgage lending business. As they scramble to get in front of microphones and TV cameras to express their outrage, maybe they, too, should be feeling just a wee bit of shame for doing nothing while the pirates of Wall Street carried off their plunder and set fire to American dreams."

http://blog.seattlepi.com/davidhorsey/archives/164491.asp

Alright, this one is rich. Specter is considering running as an independent in 2010. That's not the rich part - here's the money quote.

“I’m staying a Republican because I think I have a more important role to play there,” he said. “I think the United States very desperately needs a two-party system. … And I’m afraid that we’re becoming a one-party system, with Republicans becoming just a regional party.”

Now how long ago was it that the Republicans controlled both houses of congress and the white house, with dreams of being a permanent majority? TWO years ago was it? And we've had one party controlling the WH and congress for what - 2 months? Not quite. Please - admit it Arlen, you've lost your support base and somehow think that overdramatization might help.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/specter-wont-rule-out-run-as-an-independent-2009-03-17.html

I missed the name on one Congress Critter on the committee who was really grandstanding about being a Contract Lawyer and hysterically waving the bonus information and screeching a Liddy about his constituents and their poverty.

Definite demonstration in how to be useless. You can get a point across and elicit information without being a total ass to a man who seems to be really trying to clean up this mess.

More than the bonuses, there needs to be further investigation in the payouts of supposed creditors. When it comes to the Lehman and bank payoffs there is something rotten in Denmark.

The Feds really need to keep those jail cells warm and ready for occupants.

Rick Sanchez on CNN is doing an excellent job of covering the hearings.

I can't get last week's Cramer v. Stewart show off my mind.
A cashed-out hedger who has a dynamic personality and provides entertainment by smashing oversized buttons and blowing air horns to promote or diss certain stocks comes on the set of a very somber Stewart and just plays the whipping boy so Stewart can seem all righteous-y.

If Cramer is so damned important , put a coat on him and send to Meet the Press .
Not only did Stewart capture the entire pol-blog force, he captured the entire pol-msm, too.
You watch CNBC for your financial survival? You take what they say verbatim? It seems people like Stewart WANT to!
Doesn't a person who buys stock search everything published and telecast and broadcast, consult a trusted broker, and then put his order in?
Are there people who watch Cramer's show and order his preferreds the next day at 9:00 AM?
So what if CNBC had an agenda to cheerlead and mislead---it's TV. The whole goddam market is run by crooks and smoke and mirrors.

I am not following anything on TV (mostly just what's on here, the Center of the Universe).

But I am alarmed to hear reports that employees of AIG including their children have been threatened with violence and murder. There is no justification for that under any circumstances.

Good News. Administration to support UN declaration decriminalizing homosexuality

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/03/18/administration_to_support_un_d.html?wprss=44

Dex, I think you'd find that more than a few people have relied on Cramer's picks - because he's an expert, ya know. Made shitloads of money riding the crest of a stock market tsunami (as if that was all that difficult to do). Of course he then got out while the getting was good and let CNBC pay him to provide entertainment.

I ain't saying he's good, and I ain't saying he's bad, but he can blather on and on as if he knows what the hell will happen with this stock or that or themarket as a whole, and who other than the idiots who don't see him as an entertainer rather than as a financial advisor and risk their money based on his schtick are ever going to notice? I give Stewart a gold star for pointing out the charlaton in Cramer and noting that on his show it's about him - not the stocks and not his viewers.

No, Ivy, there is no excuse for that - Madoff, though... just kidding. I suspect that those threats are mostly idle ones - I hope they all are.

Not that I care, but just to set the record straight on the exec comp limits proposed when the first TARP installment was being debated ...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/18/flashback-it-was-bush-gop_n_176442.html

Surprise - it was the Bush-Paulson cabal that argued against it. I got one word for you - LEGACY.

And another - Bye, now. (well, that's 2, but you get the idea.)

Jamie...

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211601

I believe that I linked to the numbers your talking about once, however don't know if anyone read it.

The figure was $541 Trillion Dollars.

xrep...

It's 99 bad, 1 good sliced over a thousand times and sold into the global economy.

Heads up on two upcoming shows on March 29.

If you have read the books you won't want to miss HBOs new series "Number One Ladies' Detective Agency."

If you haven't read the books, you won't want to miss HBOs new series "HBO Number One Ladies' Detective Agency"

Set in Botswana Africa and the previews look as if they are really holding close to the books.

Unfortunately the above conflicts with a new "Idol" style program on BBC America with a twist.

Andrew Lloyd Weber is looking for a new Joseph for a revival of "Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat" in London. The show is called "Any Dream Will Do" and judges will winnow through the tryouts to cast the part.
If you get BBC America, it is also starts 3/29.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211643

Idle threats, I hope you are right, Pogo. You of all people here probably know that just a few miles from where I sit is a church across from a park and next to a museum that testifies what can happen when leaders fail to reign-in their instigating rhetoric.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211645

AP That is too high. The truth is hideous enough. I think that if everything went totally into the tank which I don't think it will that the number is probably in the 100 trillion area.

Of course it could be any amount. The trouble with money is that it is only a symbol. It represents a thing and is only worth as much as everyone agrees it is worth. If the globe loses faith in the United States and our ability to pay, the dollar will be worth nothing.

It is the same for any currency of any nation which is why inflation, deflation and stagflation numbers are important.

jamie, thanks, great news on no. 1 ladies' detective. love those books and have read them all. looks like they were able to find a proper "traditionally built" number one lady to play the mma precious ramotswe role.

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20266421,00.html

Jamie...

I think you are wrong. Here is a link on the Derivative debt and a short part of the post.

"Peter Goodman, New York Times, reports that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was the driving force behind persuading Congress to allow convoluted investment contracts ( Derivatives ) to run unregulated and now they are the 900 pound gorilla in the room ~ which virtually no one wants to acknowledge.

Greenspan argues that the it was the people using Derivatives that got greedy (a hallmark of the Cheney/Bush administration) not the contracts themselves ~ but many feel that the contracts have spread significant doubts about how companies value them.

Quite simply, such derivative contracts allow financial services firms and corporations to take more complex risks ~ like issuing more mortgages or corporate debt and then they are traded, further limiting risk, but also increasing the number of parties involved if problems occur ~ as they most certainly have now with the crumbling mortgage and credit markets. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/business/economy/09greenspan.html?_r=1&;oref=slogin

But now we are talking about $ 531 trillion of unregulated debt that can bring down our whole worldwide financial system.

" The global financial system is on the brink of a systemic meltdown despite interventions by the US and Europe to stabilize markets, " the head of the International Monetary Fund said yesterday and now you know why ~ no one knows what to do about derivatives. http://www.stuff.co.nz/4724614a12.html"

http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2008/10/13.html

And here's a part on the coming collaspe of the Credit Card Market.

"And, by the way, the credit card companies also need to be regulated ~ Last week, while Congress was engineering a bailout package of the taxpayers’ money to rescue Citibank and save the economy, Citibank was sending out notices to its cardholders of a new and usurious policy ~ a policy that could drown consumers and help sink the economy. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21316.htm

Remember, the credit card crisis is just the second leg of a three stage collapse of the economy ~ the third stage being the 900 pound guerilla in the room, which no one wants to talk about, the 650 trillion dollar unregulated Derivative market."

http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2008/12/02.html#a2209

You notice from the above that the debt could be up to 650 Trillion Dollars as the date of this post.

Both posts make for some interesting reading with links to several articles on the subject.

some more to get bonus. this time fannie mae execs

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/economy-watch/?hpid=topnews

from above cited wapo article. note salaries that bonus is on top of:

"The executives include chief operating officer Michael Williams ($611,000), deputy chief financial officer David Hisey ($517,000), and executive vice presidents Thomas Lund ($470,000) and Kenneth Bacon ($470,000).

Each of these executives earned about $200,000 in retention payments last year and salaries ranging from $385,000 to $676,000."

"But now we are talking about $ 531 trillion of unregulated debt that can bring down our whole worldwide financial system."

AP, The reason that I am saying that the fear figures are too high is because there are assets to offset the debts just not enough should demand be presented all at one time. Not all of the derivatives are unsecured, they are just very long term which makes liquidity a major problem.

We don't want to get too far ahead of the game which is what a panic can do.

Jamie...

I see it different than you do, that is why AIG should not be allowed to fail. Though in reality they already have.

We don't have the money to cover all that debt that we have as a nation not the debt that all these banks and insurance companies have.

Like it on not that is the reality of the situation.

You and others call them fear figures, however the figures are real whether or not you or anyone else wants to believe otherwise.

Have a good day.

So here is Barny Franks response to the threats against AIG employees. First the threats:

"All the executives and their families should be executed with piano wire around their necks," Edward Liddy, chief executive of American International Group Inc, read from one note.

"I'm looking for all the CEOs' names, kids, where they live, etc.," he read from another.

Liddy, who took over at AIG in September, was testifying before a congressional subcommittee investigating why the giant insurer paid out $165 million in bonuses after getting billions of dollars in a federal bailout.

"I'm just really concerned about the safety of our people," Liddy said of his willingness to release the names of the bonus recipients.

Barney Frank, chairman of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, said their identities should be made public anyway.

"If we give in to these kind of threats we would never get information made public about a lot of things," he said, adding he would talk with law enforcement officials to determine the severity of the threats.

Frank called the threats "despicable" and said law enforcement officials should track down those who make them.

But he said the committee would move to issue a subpoena to find out who got the bonuses if AIG does not provide the names voluntarily.

The problem with having law enforcement track down these threats is analogous to a domestic abuse restraining order. The police get there just in time to investigate the assault or murder.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211658

Bowmanc,

Thank you. The sentiments in your closing paragraph is what alarms me because I agree with you. There is no restraining mob mentality once it has been given license. Plus, retaliation against some-one's family is collective punishment and unjust.

Posted by: anon-paranoid | March 18, 2009 4:28 PM :
"It's 99 bad, 1 good sliced over a thousand times and sold into the global economy."
****************************************
Ya, mislabeled and put into the food suppy.

Chemistry Professor to D.A. :
"I had no idea that combing those 2 substances would create a poison."

D. A. :
"So, why'd you toss it into Mr. Doe's well?"

Prof. :
"I needed the bonus money."

http://terrenoire.blogspot.com/2009/03/hey-buddy-want-to-buy-credit-default.html

The best explanation of the AIG credit default swap problem I've seen. Easy understandable and humorous. If profanity bothers you you may want to avoid it but I think I am going to use ABMC and ABMB from now on.

Jack

Posted by: newpogo.myopenid.com | March 18, 2009 3:20 PM :
"Specter is considering running as an independent in 2010."
**************************************
The grassy knoll looms ahead, and Arlen is in the Xhairs. Too late now to consider a career writing crime fiction.

This is starting to remind me of an old Gunsmoke episode. A big injustice takes place, then some firebrand shows up and get the crowd all worked up, so they get their torches, shotguns and rope.

Unfortunately in our present circumstances I am not seeing a Marshall Dillon or for that matter even a Festus, that can diffuse the situation and have justice prevail.

Now before you all go crazy, I understand that this is a more complex financial knot, but the underlying morality is not that different.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211655

I agree with those that suggested at this talk about AIG bonuses is just a distraction and an opportunity for a few pols to try and score some points with their constituents.

A little perspective on salaries and bonuses that to me emphasize where we put our value. From Forbes

Steelers QB = 25 mil
Celtic's Garnett = 25 mil
Actress C Diaz = 50 mil
Tiger's off the charts at 100+ million

I think those execs should just return the money they didn't earn.

Regarding Rocky Mtn Oysters. I prefer lamb fries to calf fries. However, I prefer calf tongue to both.

Tongue Joke
Cowboy Joe : "What's for supper ?
Cookie : "Beef tongue."
Cowboy Joe : "I ain't ever gonna eat nothing that's been inna cow's mouth."
Cookie : "So, whaddaya want then ?"
Cowboy Joe : "Oh I think I'll just have some eggs."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rutten18-2009mar18,0,3664448.column

"Today, slightly less than 8% of all American workers belong to a union. Half a century ago, when more than one in three American workers were unionized, the middle class was growing -- not simply because organized labor won better wages and benefits for its members but because the presence of a vigorous labor movement pulled everybody else's compensation up as well.

As union membership dropped, middle-class incomes -- and average families' share of the nation's wealth -- stagnated and then fell. Families compensated for their reduced opportunity at first by sending both parents into the workplace, then by working more hours and, more recently, by simply going deeper and deeper into debt. At the same time, the incomes and share of the national wealth held by people like the AIG securities traders grew exponentially."

Patsi
Thanks for this link earlier and you were correct this is really so good!!! I have been asking anti-union people about these facts in this article for so long....Never get any answers.....

You're right , Mr. Bowmanc. We should try to be more understanding. Maybe these boys come from broken homes and just need some counseling.

I’m still waiting for the administration to find someone who’s paid their taxes so they can work for Treasury.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211657

AP

I'm not saying that the debt isn't real. I am saying that there are assets to offset that debt. Unfortunately, it is long term assets that limits liquidity. If everyone holding the debt decided to demand payment all at once, then your figures would be true, but the majority won't simply because to do so would make the situation even worse than it is. That is why I call them fear numbers.

In the short term we need to prop up AIG and where possible unwind these derrivatives and peel off segments of the company into smaller profitable entities. That is what will give the assets time to mature or losses to be absorbed. This is what will prevent the global downfall that you see as a possibility.

XR,

They might deserve the rope, but not at the hands of a mob.

Craig thanks for the video link to the hearing

Very interesting testimony by the AIG CEO.

An amazing fact, about 20 people brought AIG to the point of bankruptcy. Apparently no one was in charge of risk assessment for the credit default swaps.

Jack

No connection to Antarcta, huh? Looks like AIG took a page out the playbook from the penguins in the movie Madagascar...."Smile & wave, boys. Smile & wave."

Let's release the names of the AIG execs who took the money & ran, then take & sell their first born.

wow, i gotta say my fears during the campaign that Obama was unprepared for this job could be coming true. was hoping i was wrong, and i still hope so..

If a grizzly bear had run against McCain, we'd be saying President Smokey right now.

Craig,

Please elaborate. This isn't Talent Night in DC, this is the future of our republic.

Frontier justice was always swift, but it wasn't always just.

ivygreen

Wake up, you're not in Kansas anymore.

Bow -- anyone in the public and especially in a public controversy will get these threats. The Dixie Chicks got HORRIBLE threats. Anytime you run for office, speak out or get on the news (like the Octomom) -- there will be the wacko fringe frothing. That doesn't mean anyone should discount the threats, just know that they will always be there.

Bowmanc,

There is no mob. It is a mere figment of your analogy.

Has anyone seen the t-shirt with Obama’s likeness & the saying, “Welcome Back, Carter”? Funny but sad. Hope it's not an omen.

Craig

Actually he did well today. He had the guts to stand there on the firing line and say, "My job. My problem". He didn't waffle, didn't throw anyone under the bus,

I think what we have here is a decent, wonky guy doing his damndest to handle the crap pile left over from the previous administration. Even more he is doing it while taking a lot of flak from pols who see his problems as their opportunity to gain points at his expense rather than helping him solve the problems.

Fortunately for the country, he seems to learn fast and has some good advisors.

...time to see what Brian Williams has to say about all this...NBC Nightly News is on NOW

In my opinion Congress is nothing more than a mob.

Dex

That toilet seat scene was hysterical. I remember the great Myron McCormack, the sergeant who had pessimism to spare and that hound dog face, always thinking that his world was about to end. Funny.., Funny…, Funny

Craig..I have had great reservations all along about Barack Obama's preparation to be in the White House.

There is still time for him to salvage things, but he needs to be President, not act like he is campaigning for the office each day.

Some unsolicited suggestions..

1, Take more care in selecting appointees..
2. Get rid of the Treasury Sec..this is turning into a big
embarrassment..
3. Talk less..listen more...
4. Give Joe Biden a more visable role. He exudes experience and competence..
5. Don't demean the office by appearing on Jay Leno and on crackpot talkshows like Ed. Schultz...
6. Don't feign ourage like you did yesterday about AIG..

I am sure that we are all appalled that those poor lads at Choate, St. Paul's, and Exeter might be attacked by those lads whose parents run HP, XOM, and Jet Blue.

#6..outrage not ourage

It seems like only yesterday that the mob, armed with torches and a noose was ready to lynch Iraq over some yellowcake.

I seem to remember a mob ready to lynch Obama 'cuz he was a Muslim.

Didn't some mob claim that Hillary murdered Vince Foster ?

Now some actual dirty business is uncovered, the culprits are known, and the Politically Correct fret about mob violence.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211685

yes, jamie, but i am learning disturbing details about his administration's prior knowledge of these AIG bonuses. more later. it's not good. tin ears for all.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211679

give me until my midnight post, bowmanc. developing ...

Mob??? Did someone say mob? Sign me up.

Stan Laurel: Three million dollars! Is that as much as a thousand?

Oliver Hardy: Why...man alive....it's TWICE as much!

watching his town hall, perhaps he can fix this.

XR,

So you don't think that some crazy won't decide that "I'm gonna get those bastards" because those rich people screwed me. Egged on by relentless news coverage. There is a danger of open class warfare starting, I do not think it should be encouraged.

CNN carrying Obama live now .. he's got to turn this around now

"I'll take responsibility. I am the president"

he's got that right

Yeah, Obama's got some WORK to do!

Bowmanc

You've got a point. Now, where can I find the relentless bastards so I can join in?

darn, he's dodging his team's role in drafting legislative language that allowed these AIG bonuses. hell to pay, folks.

Listening to Senator Dodd this afternoon, it struck that Obama must turn this around now or there will be big trouble for the administration.

Can we still blame Bush for all of this mess?

It's not as much Obama as it is his team. Geithner's got to be put on waivers.

fraid not corey, obama chose continuity instead of change, re: the financial bailout and Iraq. stunningly bad choices.

I don't root for Obama to fail, but it makes me think when I see someone who is so highly regarded having all kinds of trouble 2 months into the job. Makes me wonder, "Why would anybody want that job?"

I keep hearing the health care promises. Has anyone seen any evidence of congress getting behind any health package.

Keep in mind that members of congress are covered by one of the best health care packages anywhere...., Hmmmm

We had several candidates who would be ready on Day One to effectively be President.

Associated Press
Attorney general signals shift in marijuana policy

By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, March 18, 2009
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/03/18/national/w125254D78.DTL&tsp=1

The feds will only pursue those who violate state and federal laws --it sounds like progress but I guess the proof will be in the pudding.

ha, Cosmo, just wait for next week's debate about congressional automatic pay increases. outrage? we aint seen nothing yet.

Term Limits if the only way that we can purge what is wrong with these GREEDY people

Solar
I used to think term limits were a good idea but they aren't. It ends up giving too much power to lobbyists and staff because they are the only ones around over a period of time. The office holders become irrelevant.

Nice speech, he does talk purty.
Yeah, it is hard to get out of campaign mode and give us detailed explanations of just what the %#$@ are you planning and do you know how to get it done.

Jack

Craig,
Don't they usually pass those somewhere around 2:00am?

I guess that AIG won't have to spend any money on advertising. They've gotten a lot of free publicity this week. Of course, this has cut short Octomom's 15 minutes of fame.

"Penguins is practically chicken." - Bugs Bunny cartoon

KGC

I see,,,and good points,,,I did not think of it that way,,,,,,but don't give up on a good Idea,,,,whey can't we improve on both??

You mean like the mob's attack on Iraq ?

I am immune from your sly insinuations about class warfare. The class war ended and the poor people lost. For 30 years they have been losing the right to speak in public, the right to redress grievances in the courts, the right to privacy, the right to be secure in their homes, papers, and effects. Now, they havewn't a right to know who screwed them out of a dignified retirement, a home, a job, a sound currency, and you won't even grant them the right to know the names and addresses of the men who perpetrated these crimes ?

Should we prevent rape victims from finding out the names and addresses of the villains, because someone might be angry and vengeful ?

Man, talk about class warfare, you embody it.

Solar
Me either until term limits had been in effect for a while.
I think it would have been better to go with public financing and more restrictions on donations. I no longer think term limits is a good idea except for the executive branch.

...avoiding the commercial breaks by flipping back-and-forth between MSNBC and CNN.

xrepublican

It's amazing how you can take a sarcastic comment and do your instant storefront analysis. Have you always been this ignorant or, is it an affliction you've recently acquired?

Right on Craig and OD. And Cosmo Obama is responsible for the Geithner selection. There were enough red flags sticking out of the guy and Obama said he had all the confidence in him and says he still does.

I never thought that it was a good idea to have someone who was in the middle of this financial mess lead the cleanup. To me it would be like letting a draft dodger run the military. In a way we did do that and it didn't work out that well.

XR

Thanks,,,that is exactly what I was thinking when I read that class warfare remark.

Or, term limit lobbyists.

XR,

Get the Grand Jury going and indite these people, for breaking the law. If there is ample evidence it should be easier than inditing a ham sandwich, or some other pork based product.

Make no mistake. Geithner was a huge Obama error.

Whoa, did he just intervene a potential mob reaction on that poor school superintendent?

KGC

OK,,,then if I could have just one thing,,,It would be to limit,,,,very limited lobbyist then,,,since I think that this is the root of 90% of all of our problems??

Mr. deCritic,

Ad hominem attacks are outside of the guidelines.

You are free to reread them.

SolarCrete

'Ya know, we really shouldn't have term limits because we already do. The problem is the American people are so lethargic when it comes to voting that the incumbents, worthy or not, just keep bolstering their kingdom.

xrep

You’re a clown & obviously lost. Go find your circus and climb back into the little car.

Solar,

There are lobbyists and there are lobbyists. My problem is with the ones that represent huge corporate structures rather than people and causes. Truthfully I don't mind them meeting with their politicians. I object strenuously to them giving them money. A $100 dinner is one thing a $150,000 bundled contribution is another.

term limiting lobbyists --interesting notion --I think I'll mention to a few lobbyists I know -the sputtering alone will be worth it.

It's not my house, but Cosmo you're over the line. Discussion looks pretty good tonight, so why stoop to name calling and insults?

Cosmo

That which you just described are not term limits,,,forced term limits is what Im for,,,and you might not have a B frank go bad,,,a Chris dodd ,,and Charlie Rangle get special financing,,and they might not get the chance to get all that comfortable with the corps ,,,that invest in them so heavily,,,with money and PR .....so you just slapped me back into term limits,,,as for the lethargy of the voters,,,what new, and they are too be protected from themselves just like a new born?

Jamie,,,,,I agree thats why I left 10% open,,,if you want to make it 20% go ahead,,,,but let them talk to the body of congress all at the same time,,,not a one on one,??

You want class warfare? This poor, devastated woman, is living hand to mouth and mourns the fact that $43,000 a month is a hardship.

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-national/20090318/Expensive.Divorce/

Chris Dodd is to blame!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090318/pl_politico/30833

Solar
You can't go around trying to protect everyone from themselves. It's not that I'm arguing with you, I'm just extending my view.

Sometimes you just have to let people stand on their own. Otherwise how will they ever be able to?

The AIG debacle appears to have legs--will it claim anyone at Treasury?

"Treasury learned of AIG bonuses earlier than claimed"

Sources tell Time that although Geithner told Congressional leaders yesterday that he learned of AIG's bonus payments on March 10, the NY Federal
Reserve informed Treasury staff that the payments were imminent on February 28---10 days before Treasury staffers say they first learned "full details" of
the plan, & 3 days before the Obama Administration authorized the latest $30 billion.

Further the NY Fed warned Treasury staffers that the bonuses were a "hot button" issue.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1886138,00.html

This one worked out well for the new administration

Obama Drops Controversial Health Care Plan for Wounded Veterans

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jqcMrxSMmf0NEuM7AUqiF7jd_mlQD970NKUO0

On second thought, maybe it is Talent Night (or the Gong Show) in DC.

Bowmanc,

The Equal Treatment Clause of the Bill of Rights does not permit the unequal treatment of rich and poor people.

DC shoplifters, grafitti vandals in federal parks, and driving US vehicles while intoxicated are all violations of Federal Law, and the names and addresses of the accused are always published.

I say that it is class warfare to withhold the names and addresses of the accused, when the accused are well-heeled.

It seems to me, claims that the American people are a vicious mob out to destroy the innocent express a deep-seated fear and hatred.

I've watched term limits work here in the state and the city. Without term limits it seemed like all we had was crooks. With term limits it seems all we have are idiots.

So I guess it boils down to , do you want crooks or idiots.

Jack

Cosmo

That was a little bit of a joke,,,to say that we have to protect them,,,but Im still convinced that what you think is term limits,,,is not my idea of term limits,,,,,,and I don't mind if you argue with me,,,I might learn something,,,,,,but don't fuckin talk to me just like you did to XR,,,I happen to think that he is not only a very nice man,,,but fuckin smart to boot,,,thanks

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211737

Solar,

The whole congress for hundreds of lobbyists would be totally unwieldy. No real problem with one on one though I would prefer meeting with the members of committees that oversee their particular area.

Lobbyists often write, assist or alter legislation as experts in various fields. This can be a good thing or bad thing.

I see the problem in the fund raising area. Public financing or strict limits on individual contributions and not corporate or bundled donations allowed. The worst decision the Supremes ever made was deciding that a corporation was a human being.

Solar
How Classy.

Coreen, look at Geithner's picture in the article you linked. A typical picture of the guy and everytime I see his picture I think, he can't hide his lyin' eyes. I don't think I have ever seen anyone who always looks like he is guilty of something. Maybe it is just me.

Thanks Cosmo

Now please tell me how you would limit ,,or make a better congress critter after he is in office for 30 years???

decritic,

Oh dear. I guess, I hurt your feelings.

It is a marvel that you come to be Bowmanc's lawyer in this conversation, but I am sure that he can do better.

Janie

Thank you ,,,,and I do agree with all that you said,,,,but after all of this mess is resolved,,,,won't it be just a question of time before the same people do the same bs,,,,I keep thinking about the S & L bail out,,from Bush41's time,??

Accused, arrested, indited or innuendo? There is a difference, at this point there does not appear to be any violation of the law in the distribution of these bonuses. The mob is the shocked, I mean shocked, members of congress, who take umbrage, at the idea that bonuses were paid. Now I want the list of every Senator & Congressperson that has received contributions from AIG or any other financial institution that has received TARP or any other bailouts from the citizens of the US. I am heating up the tar and plucking the chickens in anticipation of a lengthy list public servants (or serpents) who need the tar & feather spa treatment.

Solar,
If the constituents still want their rep after any amount of years, it's THEIR choice. Get it?

xrep

Someone as diminutive as you, couldn't hurt my feeling with a hammer.

Janie=Jamie,,,,sorry

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211749

Solar,

Some Congress Critters can be in office for 30 years and serve the people wholeheartedly and well. Others can be in office for the same length of time and be total mediocrities fleecing the public purse. It is up to their voters to move them out.

I'm baaa-aaa-aaack!

Actually, I've been back since sunday night and just too tired to get into thinking and responding, but reading as much as I can to catch up.

But now I have to comment.

First it was 74 here in Santa Rosa and way too warm!

Next, Cosmo, you're really Brian, right?

I have no idea who Brian is but if he disagreed with most of you, he can't be all bad.

I'll say this, Cosmo has a way with words.

Bethy, I have thought the same thing for days but his philosophy didn't seem exactly the same but the barbs he throws sure are.

Cosmo

I get it,,,its their choice,,,,you are not teaching me anything yet,,,,we only have a two party system in this country,,,and we know that we need a third,,,and a fourth one,,,,but we still vote for one of the two,,,are all of these people naive,,ignorant,,there are a lot of things that I don't get, or won't except, I don't like to follow the crowd,,,when it's going over a cliff!

Hi Bethyboo,

Welcome home!

Natasha Richardson has died.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090319/ap_en_ce/obit_natasha_richardson;_ylt=ArvgXr_I_q0wodMkNKIiVXlxFb8C

Cosmo,

"...but if he disagreed with most of you, he can't be all bad."

That definitely is a Brianism so if you ain't him, you do have a soul brother out there.

"In my opinion Congress is nothing more than a mob. "

Hear, hear, Bow!

Corey,

That is very sad. By all reports she was a truly lovely woman.

Bethy,

Thank goodness, you're back.

Welcome back Bethy, were you on vacation?

Bethy

Welcome home...he is not Brian,,,,but just another person,,,that wants to bust the door down,,,instead of knocking on it.,,,but he is tamable,,,I can tell

Jamie,,,,once again I agree,,,,,,but the ones that don't serve us well are the ones that Im against,,,,and term limits is my way of getting out the bad ones,,,,,The good ones like Chuck Hagle up and quit,,cos they can't stand the shits any more

Bethy

It's not Brian, he has a totally different set of interest and knowledge. From the way he mistakenly believed that XR was addressing a bit of his silly snark, I believe he is just another old fart who just learned about the internet tubes. What you are seeing , if what he told us is the truth is a comedian or something like that. and what we see is what passes for comedy these days.. He has his good points but he is certainly testing Craigs rules of behavior.

Jack

Glad you're back Bethy!

Cosmo,

I've really enjoyed your posts since you've been here. I especially liked those between you and Dexter last night. Can I just say that if you have any respect for our host, Craig, you might want to read his comment guide. He's asked us to not get personal.

We've just gone through a transition here, quite recently, and have all been trying to follow the rules. If you don't, then we're going to be right back where we started.

Craigs new rules:
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/commenting-guide.html
"If you must attack, target the idea or the opinion -- but NEVER the person"

Bowmanc,

I agree. If there is no indictment, there will be no name or address to publish. I am only writing about those persons arrested, the guys in the Dodge City jail of your Gunsmoke analogy.

When the debates started, Obama was my fourth dem-choice, and as my candidates fell, I supported Obama, but I never supported all his statements and plans.
He's doing exactly what he said he would do in Afghanistan and Iraq, so I have to live with that. Obama's plan during the campaign was opposite Dennis Kucinich's---you must realize Dennis , if President, would have ALL US troops out of The Region.
Voters didn't want that at all, so now we have the War President Obama, and I do not fault Obama for fulfilling his promise.
Now this other thing...when I worked for a Fortune One Hundred Corporation, corporate sent a vice-president to speak to us as to why the corporation was paying some huge bonuses to execs when we were hit hard with concessions of wages and benefits and loss of vacation days, among other things. "To keep the best executives we must pay them..."
This was 20 years ago and nothing has changed.
This practice is so ingrained into the corporate fabric that even the fact that the ship was sinking and barely afloat with taxpayers' bailout cash could not sink into their heads: THIS IS WRONG AND WE CAN'T HAVE BONUSES THIS YEAR...nope! instead, WE ARE THE BRIGHTEST AND THE BEST AND WE DESERVE THIS MONEY!

Well...sorry, big shots...you just took the baby's last bottle of milk and poured it into your tea, and caused a tempest in that teapot.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211762

Solar,

Multiple parties work well in parliamentary systems. The way our government is set up, it doesn't seem to be able to actively maintain more than two parties above the State level.

Every once in a while a third party will form, but it usually gets its ideas absorbed into one of the major parties or one of the older parties dies in favor of the new party (Whig to Republican)

Guys,
I told you. I am a confrontationalist. I can't help it. Once I find a small. little sore spot, I seem not to be happy until I rip it open.

I really don't know who Brian is. Does anyone know what part of the U.S. he's from?

I don't mean anything personally unless I'm answering a personal attack on myself.

By the way, are cannibals the only one's who get fed up with people?

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211766

2 mobs.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211752

Solar,

History does have this tendency to repeat and repeat and repeat. All we can do is try to alter human behavior a bit for the better and hope the good guys take a few more rounds than the bad guys.

No -- Cosmo isn't Brian. His thought process is different, as is his writing.

Dexter
Did you see my answer to you about the toilet scene?

"I never liked a man I didn't meet." -George Carlin

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211758

Welcome back Bethy
Missed you! Your comment said just exactly what i have been thinking....

Hi Solar
You have made many good points tonight regarding term limits and in a perfect world they might work but I think public financing of politicians campaigns is a better way to go...Hey and I think your one classy guy by the way...HA, so take that Cosmo....

george carlin could do an exquisite lenny bruce.........

this is lenny in SF a few months before he became the deceased.......66, it was.....the year after mustang sally..........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCmfEWDU7pQ

This is so maddening!

http://www.freep.com/article/20090318/NEWS04/90318070/Cops+recognized+driver+upon+arriving+at+the+crash+scene

.....some mime group got busted........some freedom of speech issue or something.......

---lenny, knockin' on heaven's door

Tony

Tony

Hi Buddy,,,,,I would love to see public financing,,,and term limits,,,,,we could control the people in office,,,and financing to me,,would mean that it just might be possible to get a third party going,,,,as long as there are two party's that keep taking us to the cleaners,,,and raping us I will keep saying we need a third part,,,,,,how do you think that Cheney managed to do what he did,,,,,it took from the Nixon admin,,,to the Bush 43 Adm,,,to finally pass all of the laws that let the Haliburots and Madoff's to steal us blind,,,oh and lets not for get just one little bad apple in the lobbyist category Jack Abrmoff,,,now if he isn't a fine example of term limit needed,,,I will keep quiet

"Well...sorry, big shots...you just took the baby's last bottle of milk and poured it into your tea, and caused a tempest in that teapot."

Excellent!!!

This last weekend an old high school pal of mine in Kansas installed a wind turbine at the rural high school. It will nearly cover the energy needs of the entire complex. Very cool.

"I think it goes without saying. Some things are better left unsaid. The less said about it, the better." - George Carlin

OK
I've put the pitch fork up for the night.
Took time to listen to some of the hearings today with Liddy. I was suprised to here some decent question scattered in amoung the obviously clueless.
I was amused at how helpless all of the congress critters are. They all kept refering to 165 billion in loans and Liddy kept correcting them to a lower amount 80 billion. I suspect he has the right number.

From what he said the bonuses were for people closing out accounts and it looks like they were performance bonuses a bit like a performance bond. If you don't close the account down right you don't get the money. If so that is a lot better than giving them the money up front and hoping they don't screw you.

Jack

hey, don't you guys for a minute think that Cosmo is the one whose name is not worth mentioning. He is a provocative fella, but not that person. and to Cosmo, we welcome your quips and barbs, just understand that we strive for genuine dialogue beween honest souls here, no matter how foolish a goal that might be on the "internets"

The worrisome thing about Liddy's explanation, if true, is does the Obama people understand the importance of a performance guarantee. I would think they would be out front explaining the importance of having one. Especially when you are dealing with individuals who have already proved themselves untrustworthy.

Thanks for the welcomes - I was in the east seeing old friends, really really dear old friends, and enjoying the atmosphere of my favorite part of the country. I'll end up saying more about it as time goes by (you know you can count on that!) but I'll leave you with this teaser:

I met Stephen Baldwin! HA! I can hear you all screaming and choking!

Also saw the grand-daughter of my old friends playing the lead in Music Man in a high school production that was fabulous.

Have to go to a birthday party and stop to get the champagne first - it is a party after all.

My last word on the subject. I still think Cosmo is Brian and I remember him from some months back when he posted only once or twice. I think he writes exactly like Brian when he slams someone. I miss Brian and am sorry he can't stand to converse with us the way we like.
I'm just dreading more of the same as it was getting so nice to not have to skip any posts. But I'm out of it now - don't want to extend the agony.

It is nice to be back with youse guys - darn - there's that New Yawk tawk!

Also allow me to remind regulars that often times new visitors will come here assuming the flame-throwing conventions of other sites. With any luck they will get it that we are different, so long as we are gentle and patient about pointing it out to them.

taming the internet is a bitch

bethy

Go back and read the overnights. As Chloe said, Cosmos was a fun read.

Jack

Besides, he knows Andy, Barney, maybe even Aunt Bea and all those other Mayberry folks.

Jack

Posted by: COSMOdeCRITIC | March 18, 2009 8:37 PM : "I don't mean anything personally unless I'm answering a personal attack on myself."
****************************************
So you say, however, I did not make a personal attack on you.

yes whsk, i think Cosmo was a totally fun read last night. which is why i want to see him fit in -- in his own way

my dad taught me how to convert crazed beasts into first class hunting dogs (with rare but deadly exceptions) -- turned out to be one hell of life lesson

Here's the reason I know Cosmo isn't Brian. He accepted a mild smack from me about something I perceived as sexist...he shrugged it off and moved on.

I learned all about North Carolina from watching the Andy Griffith Show. Imagine my surprise when I first went there to see all the Black folks.

COSMOS: Yeah. I left just before you posted your thought and then again after your second comment about that scene.

Dear bloggers: Last night COSMOS and I had a bit of dialogue about Mr. Andy Griffith's rise to fame, to wit, his 1955 appearance on the stage as Will Stockdale in "No Time for Sergeants". To impress an inspecting officer, Will wired up the latrine seats to pop up simultaneously in a salute to the officer. It was truly one of the funniest scenes I have ever seen, especially since I saw it onscreen as a nine year old boy.

You causing trouble, Cosmo? Good; I could use some heat taken off me.

Yeah, and Brian never wrote more than a line or two, often ending with a gratuitous insult.

...however, the funniest comedian, TV , movies, appearances on talk shows, was Jonathan Winters...wanna fight about it?

Dexter, for my money, you and the Cosmo show last night was better than Mayberry -- You guys could go on the road

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHOy5gBJIm0

Didn't Will Stockdale spend a day or two in the stockade for that prank?

Alright, that's enough references to the name that shall go unspoken, folks. You are just asking for trouble.

Hear that, COSMO? The boss says we team up like Carlin & Burns, Schrieber & Burns, Burns & Allen (well...a little bit of a stretch there...) we'll make them forget all those people...oh, yeah...everybody HAS forgotten them!
I say we go on satellite radio and challenge Opie and Anthony.

I saw jonathan winters destroy that filling station in mad mad mad mad mad world in cinemax sitting in the movie theatre in dallas down the street from dealy plaza in march of 1964.......when i left there i went up the street a bit and saw jack ruby's mother raising hell on the dallas county courthouse steps.......

xrepublican...? ---I just don't remember the film version 's disposition of that prank...but I watched the entire stage recording last night online and no, Will did not get jail time for that.
BTW, the book by Mac Hyman, of the same title as the movie, is funnier than either the play or the movie.

I am constantly amazed by all the online free domain movies and mp3 recordings of stuff from the early days of TV and radio.

Dex and Cos.......or Cos and Dex?

one more comment about entertainment...the Will Farrell thing on W Bush is worth watching. (HBO)

Ran used to play some good stuff.......

sturgee...I'll take second mic...if you produce the show you can be third mic...

yeah i watched it Dex, but fell asleep. Farrell was too late with that show -- GWB is totally yesterday

that little girl singing with randy travis is doing pretty damn good

I really would have liked seeing what this (unspoken name here) wrote. You've got my curiosity flowing.

Also, I did know the whole Griffith show cast & Frances Bavier gave Andy more than a few headaches off camera. If you'll notice, the last couple of years in the shows run, you never saw Floyd the Barber standing. He had a stroke and all of the shoot was around Floyd seated. One thing, Andy was loyal to his "Family".

Thanks Craig. I will play nice with the other inmates.

christ...I just read some unflattering things about our host on Alexander Cockburn's site...Ishmael Reed dissects the Imus situation from 2007...
http://www.counterpunch.org/reed04242007.html

Hey cosmo......really dig your work in beetle bailey..........

Me and Opie Down By The Duck Pond

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XRXOjllwX4

Dexter,

"Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.

Craig...my wife had the Farrell show on and I felt exactly the same...who wants to see it NOW?
Then I left the room and heard her laughing hard, flipped on the little TV and there was "Condi Rice" acting kinda ...well...provocative...now that was funny. So I really didn't see the whole show yet, either.

"Thanks Craig. I will play nice with the other inmates. -- Posted by: COSMOdeCRITIC "

thanks pal, we inmates like to play nice -- except when we don't

COSMO...my final Mayberry request:
Tell us, sir, in your own words, exactly what investigators found when they discovered Ms. Bavier's body in that little house.

the inmate frolic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzL6-yyQK8g

I am still curious to know what attack I made on de Critic.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211819

Craig and Dex

I tried to watch the Ferrell show and just couldn't laugh. It either felt old or as painful as trying to watch the Cheney interview. Just not enough distance yet.

I will give Bush a compliment that unlike his twisted VP, he had the good grace to say that President Obama deserved his silence at present.

king john died alone in a small house........

I posted this earlier and I usually refrain from over-zealousness, but I found this show just absolutely fantastic.
http://tinyurl.com/96dum8

Mrs. Kennedy shows us the White House

When we were in Vegas a few years ago, I stopped at some memorabilia store. They had a "Mayberry" record for sale. It had the autographs of all of the cast of Andy Griffith on it. I would have loved to have it, but it was kind of expensive. I believe this place now has a motto of: "You must protect this house!"

Jamie, it makes ya wonder why the Farrell show was timed as it has been.
I, too, said "Why NOW?" to myself when it was brought to my attention. And I wouldn't have even see the few bits i did see if not for Mrs, Dexter laughing so loud at those bits.

Dex.
I'm about to go out for dinner, but let me give you my recollection.

She was found dead in her house in Siler City. She had become a hermit. The house was full of cats and what they seen to produce when litter boxes aren't around. I remember someone describing the scene as "A world of cat piss."

She also loved a certain Studebaker auto. It was found in the garage with rotted tires and the interior in shredsm presumably from the dozens of cats.

Aunt Bee was probably the most disliked member of the cast by the others. Andy once said that he was convinced she just disliked him.

See 'ya later.

http://tinyurl.com/cdy58j

Got the spirit? The Spirit in the Night?

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211822

Dexter

Someone should tell that writer than less is more. He through in the kitchen sink of references, slights, examples, sinners, and accused fellow travelers. He might as well have added that they were all rooting for the lions in the coliseum matches with the Christians.

Now Imus can be crude, crass, and mean and McGurk was just plain unforgivable, but to lump all of those people into one massive socially unacceptable, racially offensive blob was too amorphous to be effective.

Sorry about the typos

through = threw

of course.

"I am still curious to know what attack I made"
XR
A mistake I believe on his part. From what I can tell he assumed this comment by you to Bowmanc
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211720

Referenced this bit of snark by him
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211695

Or at least it is the only explanation I say for the exchange.

BTW I believe one of Craigs rules/suggestions is to reference the post you are replying to. so as to prevent confusion. Not nagging here just pointing out.

Jack

today the universe......tomorrow the world.......

lol

don't mind me......I'm just lurking out loud..........

Things that make you go Huh? division of human affairs. While listening to the radio today, they were talking about weird laws in various states. I found out that in state, it is legal to have sex with animals as long as the animal weighs less than 40 pounds

My only question is should the dogs and cats be very affraid and do they need to give consent?

Too Lazy To Work, Too Nervous To Steal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgibPw2c4uU

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211846

Anybody wanna buy a Chihuahua?

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211843

Lowering your expectations or giving parts back?

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211848

...slightly used.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211846

Jamie

You want to get me in trouble with Patsi again, don't you.
I could think of 2 or 3 replys to that, but it just ain't safe

Jack

Ya know, I've owned pit bulls , dobermans and other big mean looking dogs but the only dog that ever bit me was a Chihuahua.

Jack

Jamie: wasn't that Reed guy something? He surely must be a court reporter during the day...he didn't miss a thing, as he missed a lot of angles.
I wonder how many people sat and read every word of that piece...i know I put it on a fast scroll and slowed down to read about Craig, and David Gregory...see...Gregory really did go out on a limb for Imus but now Gregory is on the same I-shit-list as Harold Ford is ... and even though I followed the Imus transition from msnbc to WABC as closely as i could, I can not find out what the hell David Gregory did to piss-off Imus so bad---Imus calls him a weasel and other derogatories...maybe someone knows?---What Did David Gregory do to get on the Imus shit list?

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211853

...try half a Valium next time.

Whskyjack,

Ya, I hope to remember that in the future. Btw, I appreciate your effort.

Early in my Trail journey, I mistakenly flamed Flatus and someone else. I don't think that after my apology they held it against me.

It will be interesting to see whether or not the man can speak for himself. At least it will be interesting to me, if not to anyone else. Parenthetically, I don't remember he-who-must-not-be-named ever admitting a mistake or saying that he was sorry.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211853

...he did. Not often, though.

Interesting, lord-bloggington. I must have missed it.

Good night, M'lord.

Sweet dreams, everyone.

sorry is just a load of baggage.......

"BTW I believe one of Craigs rules/suggestions is to reference the post you are replying to. so as to prevent confusion. Not nagging here just pointing out. -- posted by: whskyjack "

thanks jack, it is just a suggestion, but drives me nuts when commenters don't do that. how are we supposed to know who or what you're talking about if you don't reference a quote or a link to the comment you're addressing???

far as i could see it, gregory went along with the nbc company line against imus..........

Worked up a small patch of the back yard where I've been trying to get some grass to grow. It is mostly clay so I added some spagnum moss and composted manure worked it together and expanded my vegtable garden. A few hills of taters, onions peas turnips and radishes. The wife is out of town so she ask me if I was planning on turning the whole yard into a farm.
I told her yeah and we'll get a milk cow to run next door on the bank owned property.
Maybe slop a couple a hogs too.

Jack

I guess coercive bestiality humor don't play with this crowd. Jamie started it. Oh well.

I thought the same, sturgee...but i can't find a word or inclination supporting that...

Jack,

Grow legumes and work the stalks back into the soil to amend it with organic matter and add nitrogen, as legumes are nitrogen-fixing plants. High in protein, too. You can get 2-3 crops of them in a season depending on when you start.

and if you're intention was to merely conduct a one-on-one dialogue with , an indivdual user, then exchange email addreses, for pete's said and tel authorities what tansired

otherwise tive the rest of us a clue about you're talking to

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211864

It just struck me as totallly inconceivable. What in the world could have happened that caused some legislator to write that law that way?

Good night all. I'm off to watch skunks on nature. Natural followup to watching politicians all day.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211868

You probably don't want to know.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/trailmix/2009/03/aig-too-big-to-exist.html#comment-211866

Yeah, it would work and I will plant some beans and peas. But I'm mostly working this strip up to get rid of the weeds and loosen the soil. I'm a lazy non organic gardener so I'll buy my organic material from the garden center and apply triple 12 fertilizer.. I put a little lime on it to , see if that will help.
Jack

Night all

The wife gets up early when she is on the road. When she is busy it is about the only time we have to talk.

Jack

Obama's townhall was a lot more informative than all this clamor about AIG. I am over all the outrage. Get as much money back as possible and let us know when it happens.

The thing about these bonuses is that corporate America has been receiving ever bigger (and more outrageous bonuses) for years.

The muckety mucks at AIG, Merrill and Goldman have been earning "Brewster's Millions" for years.