Words Fail Me category archive

Clinical. They are all clinical.

Via Brendan. Follow the link and read the rest of Brendan’s post.

Glomarization mounts a protest against action based on ignorance.

Aside: As her post implies, folks who do not understand what happened then cannot get it right now.

It’s called “history.”

It is beyond appalling that the legal apologist for Bushie torture and concentration camps is rewarded with a newspaper column.

Given that the field of principled, moral conservatives with personal and political integrity is very small, the Shrinquier, if it wanted someone to join Santorum and Ferris, both of whom give intellectual lightweights a bad name, could have done a lot better than this.

I think I shall be sick.

Addendum, the Next Day:

Will Bunch weighs in.

When it’s in Alabama.

In bridge, we bridge players call this a “reneg.”

It’s not a joke. It’s a bill.

These are the people who put the “nut” in “wingnut.”

It is not good to take a day off from the net to straighten up the house. Coming back and finding all that assembled stupidity all at once is just too much.

Jesus.

“Saddam might . . . strike again”?

Saddam never struck the first time.

Glomarization sums it up:

Republicans lie. Every last one of them, all the time.

She left out, “Every time.”

Brendan makes a video:

(Ya know, he’s a got a point there.)

Over at Phillygrrl’s place.

A carrion eater is a creature, such as a hyena, that comes along and eats the remains after a predator, such as a lion, had finished with it. Lions seldom morph into hyenas in the wild.

In nature, defrocked lions seldom re-invent themselves as hyenas. Not the case in what passes for busine–oh, I give up. If I write any more, I shall break my own ban on raving profanity.

Fairly or not, Countrywide Financial and its top executives would be on most lists of those who share blame for the nation’s economic crisis. After all, the banking behemoth made risky loans to tens of thousands of Americans, helping set off a chain of events that has the economy staggering.

So it may come as a surprise that a dozen former top Countrywide executives now stand to make millions from the home mortgage mess.

Stanford L. Kurland, Countrywide’s former president, and his team have been buying up delinquent home mortgages that the government took over from other failed banks, sometimes for pennies on the dollar. They get a piece of what they can collect.

Via Balloon Juice.

Look!

Over at Google.

Some executives got bonuses and

they. did. not. even. destroy. the. company. and . demand. a. bailout!

Who woulda thunk!

Read more »

Who woulda thunk?

Oh.

My.

Goodness.

Teh stupid

Via the Booman.

Steven D analyzes.

Because “too stupid for words” was already taken.

H/T Karen for the link.

Incompetence is not its own reward.

The bonus reward for destroying a company: $121,000,000.00.

Merrill Lynch & Co.’s top four bonus recipients received a combined $121 million just before the firm was acquired by Bank of America Corp., according to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

In all, Merrill “secretly and prematurely” awarded $3.5 billion in bonuses, with Bank of America’s “apparent complicity,” Cuomo said in a Feb. 10 letter to Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the House Committee on Financial Services.

Pay for performance my anatomy.

This is beyond disgusting.

Crusading against the facts of life and death in Italy. The lady in question has been in a coma for 16-years.

The usual crowd of fantasists insists on keeping the empty shell of her being “alive”:

Justifying his campaign to save Englaro’s life, the prime minister (Silvio Berlusconi–ed.) added that, physically at least, she was “in the condition to have babies”, a remark described by La Stampa newspaper as “shocking”. Giorgio Napolitano, Italy’s president, has refused to sign the decree, but if it is ratified by the Italian parliament doctors may be obliged to resume the feeding of Eluana early this week.

But, in a moving interview with the Observer, Eluana’s father Beppino said last week that the doctors were carrying out his daughter’s wishes by allowing her to die. “If she couldn’t be what she was (before the accident in 1992) then she would not have wanted to live”.

Addendum:

Commentary from P. Z. Myers, via the Canadian Cynic.

Oh, my.

I guess it’s good that Mr. Obama is not an enthusiastic bowler.

Via Phillybits.

Reuters (and everyone else) is reporting the President Obama wants to cap executive compensation at businesses receiving bail out money.

This is a direct consequence of those same businesses’ showing a level of irresponsibility, arrogance, and greed that would make the Emperor Nero jealous.

What caught my attention in the Reuters story were comments from Wall Streeters, particularly this one (emphasis added):

LAUREN SMITH, ANALYST AT KEEFE, BRUYETTE & WOODS

“There is certainly a possibility” of talent flight from the big firms to the smaller investment banks if there are compensation limits. . . .”

Go here.

Then riddle me this:

Shorter New York Times:

Wall Street says

We just made up whacky investments, seduced the ratings agencies into our velvet-lined handcuffs, ignored due diligence, sold boxes of air for real money, ran Ponzi schemes, drained our employers’ treasuries with fantastickal bonuses to pay for our houses in Greenwich and the Hamptons, and generally gobbled up all the cookies that investors trusted us to protect in our cookie jars.

But, golly gosh gee, Mr. Interlocutor, we had nothing to do with what happened.

It’s not our fault.

Addendum, after Sausage and Eggs:

Words still fail me.

But they didn’t fail John Cole. Or his commenters.