GeekPol's evil twin

The Daily Howler is still saying that Shrub's getting a bit of a raw deal from pundits about his Harken stock deal. Either they conflate facts that shouldn't be mixed or they're just nitwits like Martin Peretz. So gleaning from the incomparable Howler, here's a small chronology...

1989 - Aloha Petroleum is acquired
6-22-90 - Shrub sells his stock in Harken. Thinks there'll be quarterly losses of $4 million
July 1990 - Losses of $23 million. Harken stock tanks for the time being
Between Bush sale and earnings report - accountants and auditors (of which Bush is no longer a part) meet
Summerish 1991 - Harken restates earnings as a result of SEC nailing them for smelly Aloha deal, stock tanks again.

Turkey has attached some conditions should the U.S. use Turkey to attack Iraq. Or, as the DU poster cheekily put it, "Turkey Names Price for Supporting Iraq Attack."

One wonders if the State Department has the Priceline supercomputer to process that request.

OK, that was bad of me. But seriously, would selling out the Kurds be a sticking point? Or is the Wolfowitz-Perle chickenhawk wing so hot for Saddam that the Kurds don't matter anymore?

Chris Nelson, thankyewverymuch. And not just for this...

Oh yes, the hive mind shared by Joe DiGenova (R-greasy lawyer)-Victoria Toensing (R-another greasy lawyer) is a danger to Americans, because its anti-American conservatism holds sway with the Shrubbery.

Alan Greenspan just has a way with words. The new phrase in addition to "irrational exuberance" is "infectious greed".

And after he turned that phrase, he had this to say...

"It is not," he added, "that humans have become any more greedy than in generations past. It is that the avenues to express greed had grown so enormously."

This puts the lie to the latest bit of Royalist spin that the Clinton schlong is always to blame. To hear them say it, you'd think greed didn't exist before the Big He opened his zipper for Monica, and previously virtuous bidnessmen just couldn't help themselves afterward.

Other interesting bit: When Greenspan spoke, the market indices rose, and members of the Senate noticed.

It's becoming a bit of a pattern. George W. Bush speaks, and the markets tank. [raises hand] Hello!? Correlation!

One wonders if the same people who get so jittery when Shrub speaks are also the same people who are driving that so-high-it's-silly approval rating.

Does Paul Krugman read BartCop.com?

Probably not, but these two kicker paragraphs near the end of today's New York Times column just say it all...

All of this showed Mr. Bush's characteristic style. First there's the penchant for secrecy, for denying the public information about decisions taken in its name. So it's no surprise that the proposed Homeland Security Department will be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and from whistle-blower protection.

Then there's the conversion of institutions traditionally insulated from politics into tools for rewarding your friends and reinforcing your political control. Yesterday the University of Texas endowment; today the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; tomorrow those Social Security 'personal accounts'?

Qualitatively, it's not much different from saying that Bush and Cheney needed to steal the presidency to get their mitts on that $5 trillion surplus to give to themselves and their friends, a consistent BartCop theme.

Way Too Much Sense points out that CNN does push polling now. Apparently, they could get 250 people (51% of their sample) to say that the Clinton schlong is to blame for accounting funny business. And here is the question they used to do it...

Some people have argued that President Clinton is at least partially responsible for the current business scandals because of the climate he set while in office by his own moral failings. Do you strongly agree, moderately agree, moderately disagree, or strongly disagree with that statement?

To quote Mr. Way Too Much Sense on his interpretation of how business responded to Clinton's schlong, "Smithers, it seems the Congress is more concerned with Clinton's dick than whether our profit/loss numbers are legit. Let's fudge them a little to inflate our stock price. Oh, what the hell, let's fudge them a lot. Summon the accountants!"

I don't quite agree, but his piece is (as always) worth a read. Bill Clinton could have been as chaste as Jimmy Carter; these accounting scandals would have happened anyway, thanks to the Republican (now Royalist) Congress' torpedoing of any strengthened SEC oversight role from Reagan-era relaxation. And now with the napping Chihuahua Harvey Pitt on the job, the occurrence of earnings fudging has only multiplied.