Please, Sue Me Too! July 5, 2009
Posted by naughtwirthreeding in Entertainment and Media, Humor, Life, News & Events, Politics.comments closed
By now everyone is familiar with the story surrounding Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s resignation, though the actual reasons for her premature departure remain a mystery. What came to light over the weekend was the statement by her attorney, Thomas Van Flein, in which he threatened to sue… well, pretty much anybody who said, wrote, or broadcast anything bad about Soon-To-Be-Ex-Governor Palin.
Last I checked, free speech was still the law of the land, am I right about that? The Fascist Four on the Supreme Court didn’t get that scuttled while I was at the dog park or anything, did they? No? Okay, so we’re good.
At any rate, the primary target of Van Flein’s ire appears to be Huffington Post blogger Shannyn Moore, who has reported on rumors swirling around the Governor-But-Not-For-Long regarding a contract that was awarded to construct something-or-other in Wasilla. The winning bidder then turned around and “helped” the Palins build their house (to the tune of thousands of dollars in free materials and labor). The word they are using is “embezzlement,” though I’m not sure it meets that definition exactly, but it’s certainly not legal no matter what you call it. The rumor, as reported by Moore on HuffPo, is that a federal investigation is underway and indictments could be forthcoming.
So now that the threats are flying and Soon-To-Be-Private-Citizen Palin has her lawyer knee-jerking at every twitch from the Progressive media, it’s probably appropriate for me to release the results of my in-depth investigative journalist reporting. I have undertaken a comprehensive study spanning nearly twenty minutes and citing almost a half-dozen anonymous and barely-credible sources to come up with the following information, which of course, is all true. Every word of it. I swear.
Sarah Palin worked as a live-in prostitute on an off-shore oil rig for nine years, contracting a total of forty-one different venereal diseases and obtaining no fewer than eight abortions — all while married to Todd, who strung her out on heroin and acted as her pimp. She was recently investigated for illegally importing llamas from Peru, taking pictures of herself performing sex acts with the animals, and selling the photos to off-shore porn interests. And she has also been involved for twelve years in a lesbian sex club that meets in a different city every month for wild orgies of at least twenty women at a time. She conceals her identity at these gatherings by impersonating Monica Lewinsky.
Sarah Palin also has a long history of quitting various offices, jobs, and organizations. The following is a selection from the list of over 150 organizations she has quit since her teen years: girl scouts, cheerleading, 4-H, Madame Baldprairie’s Pageant Prep Academy, waitress at Gawkers Topless Steakhouse, Wasilla Hockey Moms’ Knitting Guild, AA group counseling, PTA, Alaskans Against Renewable Energy, Kill, Baby, Kill! — Wolf Hunting For Moms and Toddlers, shift manager at Northwest Telemarketing, Americans Who Hate Americans Who Hate Us, and the Juneau Township Machine Gun Owner’s Association.
Finally, while Ms. Palin has raged against the exploitation of her children in the press, she has pushed them center stage for the coming years. Her book deal with Rupert Murdoch includes an option to pick up the forthcoming works by three of the Palin children. Oldest boy Track has penned a short story entitled, “My Sister The Slut,” a fictional work about a teenaged girl who gets drunk at parties six nights a week, and gets pregnant without knowing who the father really is. Oldest daughter Bristol will take her abstinence-is-best stance to the mainstream with her forthcoming, “Like Mother, Like Daughter: What my mom taught me about boys, sex and shotgun weddings”. And finally, youngest daughter Piper will be writing a children’s book entitled, “Daddy’s Gun Is Fun!” Illustrations will be done by an artist recommended by the National Rifle Association.
There you have it, the whole honest-to-goodness truth of all of the hard-hitting investigative journalism I could cobble together in the space of an hour. But it’s all true, I swear! All of it!
So Mr. Van Flein, I hope to be receiving your summons in the mail soon. If you are looking to contact me, please see the “About” page on this blog, and it will tell you where to go.
At Least That Many June 24, 2009
Posted by naughtwirthreeding in Entertainment and Media, Humor, Life, News & Events, Politics.comments closed
Boy, they’re falling down faster than they can set them up, aren’t they?
On Wednesday South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford returned from a bizarre trip to what turned out to be Buenos Aires, then held a press conference to admit his affair with an Argentinian woman that he’s known for close to a decade. He joins the lengthy list of Republican politicians who have pressed the self-destruct buttons on their political careers, giving in to their baser instincts for money, power, pleasure, or chemically-induced euphoria.
So long is the list, in fact, that it’s hard to keep up. Nary a week ago we had the Republican Senator from Nevada John Ensign confessing to an affair with a former staffer, now this. Looking back over just the last four years you find names like Foley, Cunningham, Tobias, DeLay, Stevens, Boehner, Murphy, Privette, Flory, Vitter, Allen, and on and on. And those are just the ones we know about! Chances are there are at least that many, if not more, with skeletons in the closet we just haven’t found yet.
To that end, I think we should make the best of what is surely a tragic situation and have a little fun with it.
Let’s start a betting pool.
We’ll compile a list of every GOP elected official from the state level on up, including governors and mayors too. We’ll allow people to bet on which official and what indiscretion, with bonus points for specifics: heterosexual or homosexual affair, which type of drug, how many millions in illegal contributions, etc. In the event of a tie, the person who made the prediction the earliest will win the prize.
Which brings up an interesting point: what are we playing for?
Hmm…
How about, whoever wins gets to take the place of the official involved in the scandal until their replacement is elected or appointed? Sound good?
I’ll get things started with three of my own:
First, a gimme: Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions is outed by a African-American transvestite who claims to have had an affair with him for the last nine years (starting when he was 15).
Next, North Carolina Rep. Sue Wilkins Myrick is indicted for allegedly laundering money from Afghan heroin gangs through her contacts in Taiwan using dummy accounts in the name of a church-based children’s theatre company.
And finally, Idaho Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter will be arrested upon returning from Canada for possession of four pounds of marijuana, hidden inside the lining of his signature black, ten-gallon hat.
I’m hoping Butch gets the cuffs slapped on first. It would be sweet to sign an executive order making everybody eat potatoes at least two meals a day to stimulate the economy.
Closer Watch on the Basket June 16, 2009
Posted by naughtwirthreeding in Entertainment and Media, Humor, Life, Money & Investing, News & Events, Politics, The Economy.comments closed
The American public is laboring under a very comforting, but nonetheless potentially catastrophic delusion about the financial markets. I’m here to make sure it stops.
When they turn on the television, they see ads with tweed-jacketed bankers shaking hands with matching-cardigan-sweatered couples to talk about saving for their newborn baby’s college education. They see pinstriped-suited investment brokers with early-fifties wrinkles and confident smiles talking about safety and security. They use words like, “confidence,” “dependable,” “value” and “honesty.”
Upon seeing this, America settles a little deeper into the recliner, and a warm feeling comes over them. Our money is in good hands, they think to themselves. We can be confident that our investment, our future, is being well cared for. I think there was one more cinnamon roll left over from breakfast today. And that’s the sum total of their opinion on the matter.
It’s all a lie. I have worked with these people. And if you think those actors in the commercials are the ones handling your money, you’ve got a lot of growing up to do.
Stock brokers: mostly compulsive gamblers, thinking nothing of betting $500 several times a week on various sporting events; many of them at least casual users of recreational drugs, most frequently cocaine; they get paid exclusively on commission, meaning they are most likely to advocate taking risks fifty to a hundred times what you would do if you were making an informed decision — so they can rake in the big dollars on the spread; and when push comes to shove, all they care about is that you buy something — anything — because they get paid on the trade volume… whether you make money or not.
Investment brokers: nearly all of them are paid by the firms whose products they represent, so your Merrill Lynch guy can only pitch you Merrill Lynch financial products — never mind that I can find you a dozen cheaper, better performing and less risky products just by throwing darts at the Wall Street Journal financial pages; and if you find yourself sitting down with one of these guys about every three years to “re-assess and change direction,” that’s because most of their commission agreements with investment firms only pay them for the first three years your account is open — and if they switch you to a new product, they can start getting paid commission on the new account. Nice, huh?
Commodities traders (these guys take the cake): things have settled down somewhat in the transition from open-call trading to online exchanges, but there is no faster way to lose very literally everything you own than trading commodities on the margin — yet these brokers will smooth-talk their way so effectively that they will have you thinking it’s so easy a fourth-grader can make a killing just by trading during lunch and recess; without knowing it, and without them telling you, you could be wagering two to five times your net worth on a quarter-point jump in pork belly prices. Many of these guys are the guys that were run out of “respectable” investment jobs by their employers or the FEC.
So now that I have disavowed you of the television stereotypes, I come to the most important part of this story, which is the following:
People who deal with buying and selling money for a living don’t care about you, don’t care about your kids, don’t care about your money, your house, your car, or your security; they don’t care about any of their other clients, the company they work for, the financial sector as a whole, or for that matter the health of the economy. None of them — NONE OF THEM — give a rat’s ass about anybody but themselves. Period.
I know this because people who do care about those things can’t work in the financial services industry and still look themselves in the mirror. I was there. I got out. It turned my stomach, and it will turn the stomach of any person with a conscience.
The opinion these people have can be summed up very succinctly. They think that the financial sector is just a game. They think that everybody out there cheats, lies and steals. They think that since everybody else does it, why can’t they do it too? They think that since other people get rich by ripping people off, there’s no reason not to. They think that since everybody else is just looking out for themselves, they should too. And that’s how they justify all of the outlandish fraud and embezzlement they perpetrate.
Think of any financial scandal in the past 30 years, then put the words I just described into the mouth of the perpetrator. Does it make sense now? This isn’t just me spouting off: this is the pervasive attitude in the industry.
So when President Obama talks about establishing new financial sector regulations and creating an integrated watchdog agency to oversee consumer credit and the creation of investment instruments and what-not, your only question should be, “What’s the NEXT step? What additional things are you going to do? What ability will they have to expand their power when the Wall Street weasels find ways to get around the laws again? And when is that agency going to get the power of law enforcement behind it — subpoenas, seizures, arrests, and arraignments?”
This isn’t about stifling innovation. This isn’t about fostering entrepreneurship. This is about keeping the bastards who use those buzzwords to cover up their shady deals from having more opportunity to steal our money. When you hear somebody object to additional financial sector regulation, you can be sure of one thing: they’re a criminal, or they take political contributions from a criminal.
No matter how much regulation is put in place now, no matter how extensive and how thorough, it will never be enough to stop the crooks from trying to cheat us again. No matter what we do today, we need to do more tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and the next, and the next.
If there is one thing that you should take away from the financial sector collapse it is this. People who deal with money for a living should never be trusted, ever. We as a nation are putting our eggs in their basket. It’s time for the government to start keeping a closer watch on the basket.
