"President Bush explained his bailout strategy Tuesday, saying he
abandoned free market principles to save the free market system. He's
wiretapped Americans without warrants, gone to war without a declaration,
ignored due process and nationalized the economy, citing emergency power.
Saddam Hussein had a better case for overthrowing him."
- Argus Hamilton
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Oh, you silly scientists, so you didn't think 8 years of George
DubyaDoofus Bush was enough, huh?
http://www.timeanddate.com/time/leapseconds.html
You had to go and add on a whole 'nother second at the end of 2008?!?!?
WHY US!!! WHY?!? WHY?!?
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Understatement of the.... decade?
"I came with the idea of changing the tone in Washington, and frankly,
didn't do a very good job of it."
- President George W. Bush
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Where's Mine?
http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/bs/2008/bs081218.gif
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THE ONION'S 2008 IN REVIEW: THE ECONOMY
http://www.theonion.com/content/amvo/the_onions_2008_in_review_the
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen nearly 6,000 points since
reaching its all-time high of more than 14,000 last year. What do you
think?
Curtis Langford, Systems Analyst
"I'm sure that'd be even more terrifying if I knew what the points
represented."
Cindy Greenlagh, Systems Analyst
"C'mon, I've seen this happen a thousand times. The stock market crashes,
and then twenty years and a world war later, everything's fine."
Ryan Timms, Systems Analyst
"This sounds like a perfect time to hatch my poorly conceived,
undercapitalized business venture, so that when it fails I can blame the
economy."
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
"The current administration, of course, is winding down, not just
President Bush, but everybody is sort of talking about the eight years.
Yesterday, Dick Cheney was interviewed by ABC News, and he reflected on
his eight years in office. Yeah. And he turned into a bat and disappeared
in a puff of smoke."
- Conan O'Brien
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EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!
http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/tmdho/2008/tmdho081216.gif
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"Dick Cheney stressed the importance of energy independence in an ABC
interview Tuesday. The vice president is very concerned about ending our
addiction to oil. He has switched to a solar-powered shredder for the
remaining month of the administration."
- Argus Hamilton
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It Would've Been Legal....
http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/nq/2008/nq081218.gif
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Goldman Sachs's Tax Rate Drops to 1%, or $14 Million
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aznONFlyupOI
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which got $10 billion and debt guarantees from
the U.S. government in October, expects to pay $14 million in taxes
worldwide for 2008 compared with $6 billion in 2007.
The company's effective income tax rate dropped to 1 percent from 34.1
percent, New York-based Goldman Sachs said today in a statement. The firm
reported a $2.3 billion profit for the year after paying $10.9 billion in
employee compensation and benefits. ...
The rate decline looks "a little extreme," said Robert Willens, president
and chief executive officer of tax and accounting advisory firm Robert
Willens LLC.
"I was definitely taken aback," Willens said. "Clearly they have taken
steps to ensure that a lot of their income is earned in lower-tax
jurisdictions."
U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who serves on the
tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said steps by Goldman Sachs
and other banks shifting income to countries with lower taxes is cause for
concern.
"This problem is larger than Goldman Sachs," Doggett said. "With the right
hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding it offshore." ...
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My new lawn sign:
WILLING TO MISMANAGE AND FAIL FOR BAILOUT
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Doctor Decline
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/12/10/fioredecline.DTL
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"Wall Street rallied Tuesday when the Federal Reserve reduced interest
rates to nothing. The commodities market also jumped. Oil rose to
forty-four dollars a barrel on the Chicago Exchange and the price of a
U.S. Senate seat soared to over a million two."
- Argus Hamilton
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Watching Out For You
http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/ta/2008/ta081217.gif
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
Bernard Madoff, A Disaster Foreseen
http://tinyurl.com/4oqk9c
The more I learn about the Bernard Madoff and his alleged Ponzi scheme,
the more it reminds me of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. ...
As in the Challenger case, there were early warnings about Madoff. As we
have learned ever since last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission
was warned about him repeatedly especially from one knowledgeable Wall
Street-type named Harry Markopolos who in 1999 actually accused Madoff in
a letter to the SEC of running a Ponzi scheme.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, the SEC opened an investigation into
Madoff in 2006 but closed it after being misled by him into believing he
wasn't doing anything that was major-league illegal.
An enforcement system that relies on the truthfulness of conmen is a
system with faulty o-rings. ...
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
They're Illegal?!?
http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/tt/2008/tt081217.gif
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
"But you know something? Shouldn't the first clue have been the guy's
name? Madoff, you know, as in 'made off with the money,' you know? I mean,
who were his partners, Pilfered and Swindled?"
- Jay Leno
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
Scheme Cost BILLIONS!
http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/crmlu/2008/crmlu081217.gif
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
UAW, GOP Blame Each Other
http://tinyurl.com/6cwzed
The conflict between the UAW and Republican congressional leaders
continued escalating Sunday, with each side pointing fingers at the other
about who was to blame for the failure of a rescue plan for the Detroit
Three.
Although the White House continued working toward a rescue plan, Sen. Bob
Corker, R-Tenn., told "Fox News Sunday" that "the bill would have passed
with 90 votes" had the UAW "just agreed to be competitive by the year
2009."
Corker said that he had talked to the White House about a deal he had
reached with the UAW. That plan would have required a two-thirds cut in
the debt of each automaker, forced the UAW to take stock for payments to
its health-care trust for retirees and required the UAW to accept pay
equal to what foreign automakers offer their U.S. factory workers sometime
next year.
The UAW rejected Corker's proposals and timetable for pay cuts, and Senate
Republicans blocked the compromise plan worked out between the White House
and Democrats. ...
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Lineup
http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/wpswi/2008/wpswi081215.gif
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
Just wondering.... how many Wall Street execs were forced to take a pay
cut when that pretty little bailout package landed in their pockets?
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
$700 Billion Bailout Celebrated With Lavish $800 Billion Executive Party
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/700_billion_bailout_celebrated
Amid the bleak backdrop of imminent economic collapse, worried observers
got some good news last October when executives from the nation's top 10
failing companies celebrated the historic $700 billion government bailout
with an ultra- extravagant $800 billion party aimed at restoring
confidence and bolstering their resolve.
"It's never ideal for private corporations to rely on public funding, but
we would not have been able to survive another week without letting loose
and throwing this massive bash," Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain said aboard
his newly purchased $22 million yacht, the Excelsior. "We can only hope
it's not a case of too little too late." ...
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Arrrrrr!!!!
http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/bs/2008/bs081217.gif
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
So, tell us, Sen. Bob Corker (R-VW), why you are pushing so hard to bring
UAW wages down to the same level as "non-union automakers"?
It wouldn't have anything to do with the wheeling and dealing you did as
mayor of Chattanooga, TN, would it?
GOVERNMENT HELP FOR VW
http://tinyurl.com/5mln2m
City, county, state and federal governments have pledged to provide $577
[m]illion worth of tax breaks, worker training and infrastructure
improvements for the $1 billion Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga. The
incentive package is the biggest among $3.58 billion of incentives
provided for 20 foreign-based auto companies since 1980.
* Tax credits in current dollars* -- $239.2 million
* Site preparations and infrastructure -- $208.8 million
* Training and recruitment assistance -- $81.2 million
* Land -- $40 million
* Welcome center -- $6 million
* Marketing -- $2 million
Source: Good Jobs First, University of Tennessee Center for Business and
Economic Research
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
Chattanooga Choo Choo
http://www.atlantic-times.com/article.php?recordID=3
What is a burden for some might be a blessing for others, goes the old
saying. And it could prove to be very true in the case of the failing U.S
auto industry. As the big three, Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, find
themselves on the verge of bankruptcy, struggling with structural change,
a harsh economic downturn, unsteady fuel prices and fading consumer
loyalty, Germany’s biggest carmaker could become a beneficiary of the
crisis. ...
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Equality?
http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/tmssa/2008/tmssa081215.gif
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
"The White House scrambled to create an auto industry bailout Sunday. The
clock was ticking. If the U.S. auto industry collapses under President
Bush, Hank Aaron will come on the JumboTron and congratulate him for
breaking Herbert Hoover's record."
- Argus Hamilton
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Foreign Auto Makers Won Billions in Government Subsidies
http://washingtonindependent.com/22236/cars
To hear Southern Republicans tell the story, the financial burdens facing
Detroit's automakers are self-made troubles to be settled by the laws of
Adam-Smith capitalism.
"We don't think it is the role of government to intervene," Sen. Jim
DeMint (R-S.C.) told the Fox Business Network last week. "We need to let
the market and the laws work the way they are already in place."
Yet this argument -- that the government has no business interfering in
free markets -- ignores an increasingly frequent tradition among Southern
states, which have fronted billions in local taxpayer dollars in the past
two decades to attract foreign auto plants. Those incentives, arriving in
the form of tax breaks, training for new employees and even land, have
enticed BMW to South Carolina, Mercedes to Alabama and Nissan to
Tennessee. The result of the government subsidies has been the steady
emergence of the South as an auto-manufacturing powerhouse. Some are
dubbing it the "New Detroit" -- a region where real estate is cheap and
the labor's not unionized.
Not coincidentally, these Southern states are represented by the same
coalition of GOP senators who led the fight against the recent Detroit
bailout proposal. That legislation would have provided $14 billion in
emergency bridge loans to General Motors and Chrysler, both of which say
they lack the finances to survive the month. Rallying behind the animated
opposition of GOP Sens. Bob Corker (Tenn.), Richard Shelby (Ala.), Mitch
McConnell (Ky.) and South Carolina's DeMint, Senate Republicans killed the
legislation. ...
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Selling Seats....
http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/crmth/2008/crmth081216.gif
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George W. Bush is leaving the presidency the same way he left all the
other businesses he's been involved in:
In massive debt, in dire straits, and for someone else to fix.
=--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--= =--=
"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1.
Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from
them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify
themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider
them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of
the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in
every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will
declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins
and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and
Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still
and pursue the same object. The last one of Aristocrats and Democrats is
the true one expressing the essence of all."
- Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824
***********************
Year In Review: GOODBYE TO ALL THAT
http://action.credomobile.com/comics/2008/12/year_in_review_part_one.html
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