Thanks to shoddy work done on the cheap, no doubt. According to a separate report, Houston based KBR is also hiding its money in an off shore tax haven to avoid paying its fair share of U.S. taxes.
What a fine, stand up firm.
Diarist Meteor Blades over at Daily Kos wrote an expose about KBR's appalling faulty electrical work in Iraq.
"It was horrible -- some of the worst electrical work I've ever seen," said Jim Childs, a master electrician and the top civilian expert in an Army safety survey. Childs told CNN that "with the buildings the way they are, we're playing Russian roulette.
Mr. Jake DeSantis, an executive Vice President for AIG wrote an editorial in the New York Times today.
Take this job and shove it, Mr. Liddy, says the former top executive. Mr. DeSantis will give his bonus, i.e. our taxpayer dollars, to those suffering from the "global economic downturn."
After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company - during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 - we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.
Um, Mr. DeSantis, dude, you don't get it. That money is not yours to give.
W. sure was well versed in the fuzzy math for which he had ridiculed Al Gore back during the 1999 Presidential campaign cycle. Between the removal of all regulatory checks and balances, coupled with the failure to include all of the federal spending dollars in the national budget, the American people, yet again, have been misled, swindled and scammed by the Bush Administration and his Republican Party.
Thanks to the sources cited in my most recent diary on the make believe of trickle down nothing economic black magic, we are reminded that Phil Gramm, while serving in the U.S. Senate, had engineered the dismantling of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. The Glass-Steagall Act had been passed in 1933 as a means to stem the wild and rampant speculation of banks that led to the Great Depression.
Governor Perry outed himself for being the out-of-touch moron he truly is. He carefully tends to his flock of fat cats but he refuses to lift a finger to improve our schools, save or create jobs or help jobless Texans gain access to unemployment and health insurance. Perry and the remaining dregs of southern Republicans continue to exist in a parallel universe completely detached from the majority of their constituents. Hopefully the elections in 2010 and 2012 will sound the death knell for the sorry lot of them.
Yesterday in the Houston Chronicle I read an article written by Clay Robison that reveals pay to play continues ho' hum, as usual in Texas. No one is squawking or screeching about it either, unlike the case in Illinois and consequently Washington, D.C. I wonder why?
(Remember, we're talking about a dufus who was both a judge, and an Atty Gen for Texas, and he wanted a promise that torture wouldn't be prosecuted. - promoted by boadicea)
The Judiciary Committee confirmed Attorney General Designate Eric Holder today but not before Senator Jackass had a chance to seize the lime light and mortify the daylights out of rational, law abiding, educated and well-informed Texans.
According to a report posted on Daily Kos diarist McJoan wonders how we can expect bi-partisanship in Washington when there are two jackasses in the Senate who believe the United States should commit torture.
Mr. Cornyn said he based his opposition on two issues: what he said was Mr. Holder's unwillingness to demonstrate a full commitment to fighting terrorism and his role in facilitating the pardon eight years ago of Marc Rich, a financier who fled the country to avoid prosecution.
So, refusal to engage in criminal behavior, i.e. torture, means Holder is not committed to fighting terrorism? Senator Jackass needs to crawl outside his delusional bushie bubble. Jackass dude, the new team is back on the same page as its pre-W predecessors. We are a nation of laws and not one of dictators, crooks, dumb shits and jackasses.
As we all know, this week is the last of the G.W. Bush Administration. Given a national Democratic landslide election and George W. Bush's recent approval rating, there is little doubt that there is more than a tad of dancing taking place in a plethora of streets throughout the U.S. and the world.
For much of their eight year term in office, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have remained tightly entrenched behind iron gates. They avoided the press and media as much as possible. They steered clear of the public and chose to helicopter in and out of their homes and offices whenever feasible. And yet for the past two weeks both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have been parading around on the Sunday morning talk and political news circuits. In their final days in office both men desperately tried their darnedest to re-write history. I imagine at this time, after Bush's farewell address, both men are securely ensconced back in their delusional bubbles in undisclosed locations.
With regard to Presidential exit interviews, former Press Secretary Scott McClellan is one of many who offered commentary on Bush's farewell address.
"It's hard to talk about moral clarity when you have tarnished our government's moral standing in the world," McClellan said. "If you look at the speech it was really a feel-good farewell speech. It was designed one final chance to burnish his legacy by highlighting his humanity, showing his humanity, his compassion, his inner decency and good intentions."
But "there are really two problems they don't seem to get," Bush's ex-press secretary remarked. "First of all, the public trust. The president long ago sadly lost the public trust. They are no longer listening to what he has to say or buying what he is selling. Unless he is willing to come out and talk candidly about his own mistakes, his own policy mistakes, and address those issues openly with the American people they are not tuning in."
