Stewart Parnell is a rat-bastard

Who is Steward Parnell? The rat-bastard that Bush appointed to the federal peanut advisory board, whose company continued to sell peanuts fully knowing that they were contaminated.

The following is by my fellow blogger over at They Gave Us A Republic, grolaw.

The AP is reporting that his Texas plant had the strain of Salmonella present along with rodent feces, dead rodents and bird feathers contaminating the peanuts.

I could easily post this man’s exact home address and I could say that burning him alive inside his home is warranted – but that would deny the civil and criminal justice system that we must cling to in order to avoid the whole of US Society unraveling and making the crazy survivalists seem rational.

No doubt about it – Stewart Parnell is a rat-bastard who ought to be destroyed by horrible and swift retribution – but he won’t be.

He has killed at least 8 and sickened over 600 – the man is a sociopath. Imagine the penalty for killing 6 and wounding 600 in any other type of crime? But, he’s a wealthy man and because he is wealthy he does not play by the same rules as 98% of the rest of us must.

Maybe, in a few years, he’ll pull an OJ and will finally get to see the inside of a cell – but the Maddof news keeps coming (another $25 meg scooped up by spouse just months before the Ponzi Scheme became public) and he’s still free.

Steal $100.00 and go to jail. Steal $50 Bl and go to luxury condo. Kill one person in a robbery and face life without parole or execution but kill 8 and sicken 600+ and retreat to your luxury home in the horse country.

Why does the state of our country remind me of France under Louis the XIV?

What the hey. Let them eat cake! Peanut butter and salmonella cake, that is.

: : : : : : : : : :

UPDATE

The peanut processing company at the heart of a national salmonella outbreak is going out of business. The Lynchburg, Va.-based Peanut Corp. of America filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Virginia Friday, the latest bad news for the company that has been accused of producing tainted peanut products that may have reached everyone from poor school children to disaster victims.

In layman’s terms, that means the company may avoid civil liability for the harm it caused.

In China, however,

The chairwoman of the dairy company that manufactured tainted baby formula was ordered to spend the rest of her life in prison, while two lesser-known figures got death sentences in China’s largest food-tampering scandal.

Friday Open Thread

Here’s a scene – the lunchtime ‘rap’ -  from the film “Bulworth” with Warren Beatty. Classic, brilliant film!
H/T: Crooks & Liars

(From YouTube):

Beatty put his finger on the sore spot in (American) politics: money corrupts, as does power, and most often the two go hand in hand. Written off by some as “unrealistic” Beatty chose the only format that could work to bring the message home, without preaching: satire.

By letting the story border on the absurd in places, by walking that very thin line between politically correct and politically incorrect he vented his frustrations about the state of politics – even the state of the nation.

I haven’t seen this film in years. It came out in 1998, and yet, it could have come out last week.. Nothing seems to ever really change when it comes to politics and money. Of course this is just a film, but how refreshing (and hilarious) to see a politician break out and just tell it like it is..

New Deal or No Deal

Another excellent animated cartoon by Mark Fiore! Priceless.
Way to go Mark!

Click on graphic to view at source.

Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin! Open Thread

And as a special acknowledgment of this occasion, we present one of many Darwin Awards:

(18 January 2001, New Zealand) The west coast of New Zealand is threaded with narrow, windy roads that climb and descend the hills at improbable angles. A Christchurch driver with little patience for those dangerous curves was preparing a hot cup of tea in her car when she learned one last lesson about respect for the road.

Nothing, but nothing, could keep her from her afternoon tea that day. Well all right, one thing could keep her from her tea. Karma. While she was trying to brew a cuppa, her car plunged over a precipice and into a creek. The woman was found dead three days later, still holding a box of teabags, with a mug wedged against the steering wheel and a thermos of hot water beneath her feet.

There were no brake marks on the road.

Happy Darwin Day to y’all.

But.. but.. but….

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Jeff Danziger, Syndicated Political Cartoonist

Fiscal conservatives…

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle Editorial Cartoonist and Animation Artist.
For Nick’s animations, visit Nick Anderson: Animation Archives.
For Nick’s cartoons, visit Nick Anderson.

“Please Do Not Call It A Bonus”

Are you freaking kidding me?!

Two Wall Street firms that received at least $60 billion in government bailout funds will be rewarding their financial advisers with controversial retention payments, the terms of which one senior executive described as “very generous” in audio obtained by the Huffington Post.

The soon-to-be-merged financial giants — Morgan Stanley and Citigroup’s Smith Barney — announced the payments during an internal conference call last week, but warned advisers against describing them in terms that would cause PR headaches.

“There will be a retention award. Please do not call it a bonus,” said James Gorman, co-president of Morgan Stanley. “It is not a bonus. It is an award. And it recognizes the importance of keeping our team in place as we go through this integration.”…

WHY in the heck do we continue to prop these greedy guys idiots up??

: : : : : : : : : :

A near miss?….

Why did we never hear anything about this in the news (corporate media)..?

Keith talks to Dan Gross about what happened when the financial market first started to melt down last September. Yikes…

Countdown: The Near Miss on Complete Financial Collapse

: : : : : : : : : :

A picture worth a thousand words…

This chart rather puts what we are experiencing in perspective.. It sort of says it all…

Click on photo to enlarge…

: : : : : : : : : :

Communist Quiz…

Monty Python – Communist quiz sketch featuring Marx, Lenin, Che, and Mao. LMAO!!

H/T: Paul Krugman

“Dr. Doom and The Black Swan”

Common Dreams: Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan author, try to discuss the economic collapse –and what to do about it. They argue that the problems facing the global economy are profound and radical, and will require radical steps. And yet, the airhead CNBC ‘journalists’ seemed to be asking them for stock tips while Roubini and Taleb try to discuss fundamental solutions.

Bill Gates and Michael Dell lined up to hear these guys in Davos, and waited hours to get in to hear them..

Nouriel Roubini was the guy who predicted this enormous economic disaster – long before it arrived. He saw it coming down the pike. The numbers he talked about earned him the title “Dr. Doom“. He was laughed at and dismissed. Yet, he was right on the money – literally..

On Sept. 7, 2006, Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University, stood before an audience of economists at the International Monetary Fund and announced that a crisis was brewing. In the coming months and years, he warned, the United States was likely to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence and, ultimately, a deep recession. He laid out a bleak sequence of events: homeowners defaulting on mortgages, trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities unraveling worldwide and the global financial system shuddering to a halt. These developments, he went on, could cripple or destroy hedge funds, investment banks and other major financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The audience seemed skeptical, even dismissive. As Roubini stepped down from the lectern after his talk, the moderator of the event quipped, “I think perhaps we will need a stiff drink after that.” People laughed — and not without reason. At the time, unemployment and inflation remained low, and the economy, while weak, was still growing, despite rising oil prices and a softening housing market. And then there was the espouser of doom himself: Roubini was known to be a perpetual pessimist, what economists call a “permabear.” When the economist Anirvan Banerji delivered his response to Roubini’s talk, he noted that Roubini’s predictions did not make use of mathematical models and dismissed his hunches as those of a career naysayer.

But Roubini was soon vindicated. In the year that followed, subprime lenders began entering bankruptcy, hedge funds began going under and the stock market plunged. There was declining employment, a deteriorating dollar, ever-increasing evidence of a huge housing bust and a growing air of panic in financial markets as the credit crisis deepened. By late summer, the Federal Reserve was rushing to the rescue, making the first of many unorthodox interventions in the economy, including cutting the lending rate by 50 basis points and buying up tens of billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities. When Roubini returned to the I.M.F. last September, he delivered a second talk, predicting a growing crisis of solvency that would infect every sector of the financial system. This time, no one laughed. “He sounded like a madman in 2006,” recalls the I.M.F. economist Prakash Loungani, who invited Roubini on both occasions. “He was a prophet when he returned in 2007.”…

Now, he is saying that It Is Time to Nationalize Insolvent Banking Systems.

: : : : : : : : : :

They’re coming to take you away hahah, ho ho, hee hee, hah hah.

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World

A Call to End All Renditions

by Marjorie Cohn (Posted at TheZoo by permission)

Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian residing in Britain, said he was tortured after being sent to Morocco and Afghanistan in 2002 by the U.S. government. Mohamed was transferred to Guantánamo in 2004 and all terrorism charges against him were dismissed last year. Mohamed was a victim of extraordinary rendition, in which a person is abducted without any legal proceedings and transferred to a foreign country for detention and interrogation, often tortured.

Mohamed and four other plaintiffs are accusing Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. of flying them to other countries and secret CIA camps where they were tortured. In Mohamed’s case, two British justices accused the Bush administration of pressuring the British government to block the release of evidence that was “relevant to allegations of torture” of Mohamed.

Twenty-five lines edited out of the court documents included details about how Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel as well as other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding “is very far down the list of things they did,” according to a British official quoted by the Telegraph (UK).

The plaintiffs’ complaint quotes a former Jeppesen employee as saying, “We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights – you know, the torture flights.” A senior company official also apparently admitted the company transported people to countries where they would be tortured.

Obama’s Justice Department appeared before a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Monday in the Jeppesen lawsuit. But instead of making a clean break with the dark policies of the Bush years, the Obama administration claimed the same “state secrets” privilege that Bush used to block inquiry into his policies of torture and illegal surveillance. Claiming that the extraordinary rendition program is a state secret is disingenuous since it is has been extensively documented in the media.

“This was an opportunity for the new administration to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay the course,” said the ACLU’s Ben Wizner, counsel for the five men.

If the judges accept Obama’s state secrets claim, these men will be denied their day in court and precluded from any recovery for the damages they suffered as a result of extraordinary rendition.

Turley pleads for prosecution of Bush crimes

Last night on Countdown (MSNBC), Keith Olbermann interviewed Constitutional Law professor Jonathan Turley.

Raw Story

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has suggested a bipartisan panel to seek the truth about accusations of criminal wrongdoing by the Bush administration. Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley discusses why Leahy wants this panel to have the power to grant immunity and serve subpoenas.

If you have not seen this interview, you must watch it. Nobody could say this any more clearly than Professor Turley:

“Truth commissions generally have been used by emerging democracies, often third world countries that have nascent legal systems, countries that are trying to create new governments. They’re not associated with the government that’s supposedly the leader of the rule of law. We don’t have any question about the obligation to follow these treaties.

There’s no question that torture occurred here. There’s no question it was a war crime. And so, the only reason to have a commission of this kind is to avoid doing what we’re obligated to do under a treaty. And the fact is, that these members of Congress view this as a very inconvenient time to fight on principle. But they would do us all a favor if they’d save the money on another useless commission.

Let’s just take the old 9/11 Commission Report, rip off the cover, put a new cover on it, and call it a day. Because it is shameful that we would be calling for this type of Commission.

Everyone knows what we’re doing. We’re in violation of our obligations now!

We were supposed to investigate. It’s not up to President Obama. It’s not up to Senator Leahy. We’re obligated to investigate.

This whole discussion in front of the world is basically saying that we’re not going to comply with the promise we made, not to ourselves, but the world.”

: : : : : : : : : :

Open up a nice frosty can of whoopass!

Created for TheZoo by Paul Jamiol
All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World

: : : : : : : : : :

Feeding the pooch…

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle Editorial Cartoonist and Animation Artist.
For Nick’s animations, visit Nick Anderson: Animation Archives.
For Nick’s cartoons, visit Nick Anderson.

Wow…Just Wow!

From Steve Benen at Political Animal:

Yesterday, AFSCME and Americans United for Change unveiled a pretty good ad in support of the economic stimulus plan. The new national television spot tells viewers, “We’re in an economic crisis and Republican leaders are playing politics instead of doing what’s right. Call the Republican leadership; tell them ‘no’ is not an option.”

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who is featured in the pro-stimulus ad, responded today, sending journalists a video message.

Just imagine what any journalist would think when receiving this from the HOUSE MINORITY WHIP’S office!

This is VERY Not Safe For Work!

Steve goes on to say:

I can’t help but be curious what the response would be if a member of the Democratic congressional leadership promoted a video attacking, say, Focus on the Family or the National Rifle Association with a profanity-laced video. I assume it would be a fairly big deal.
…
I do, however, have two questions. One, does anyone really expect President Obama to make headway negotiating with the Republican leadership when this is their level of discourse? And two, by the standards of the media establishment, will Cantor’s conduct carry any political consequences?

Fukkin-A, man. How do we honestly expect Obama to work with the fukkin’ 8 year old mentality that is the GOP?

: : : : : : : : : :

Stump’s Wednesday Open Thread

No, that isn’t Stump. But it is a Sussex Spaniel, for those of us who’d never even heard of the breed. Ten-year-old Stump came out of retirement to win Best In Show at Westminster.

Wow! In human years, he’s almost 70!

Sommer said Sussex spaniels can live to be 15. The previous oldest winner at Westminster was an 8-year-old Papillon in 1999, and Stump was the first of his breed to capture the silver bowl.

Stump barely made it past 5 or so. He left the show ring in 2004 and later nearly died from a mysterious medical condition. The vets at Texas A&M saved him.

“It was miraculous,” Sommer said.

A nearly full crowd at Madison Square Garden cheered loudly when judge Sari Tietjen pointed to the new champion. She picked Stump from a field of seven that included a giant schnauzer that was the nation’s top show dog, a favored Brussels griffon, a Scottish deerhound named Tiger Woods, a standard poodle with 94 best in show wins, a Scottish terrier and a puli.

Hooray for the old dog!

Compassionate Conservatism?

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Paul Jamiol, Jamiol’s World

Born Again Conservative.

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Matt Davies, NY Journal News

Glimmers of rebirth..?

Change? Republicans can do “Change”

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Jeff Danziger, Syndicated Political Cartoonist

Stewart: Hope ‘died less than three weeks in’

Jon Stewart looks at Republican attempts to block President Obama’s economic stimulus plan.

Mimicking the Republicans and their wailing over the Stimulus Bill, Jon Stewart says:

“This bill will kill the economy and f*ck it in the eye.. And afterwards, this bill and Hitler will laugh and laugh.. And do you know WHY Hitler likes this bill..?”

Then he shows a video montage of various Republicans listing items from the bill they were condemning, including funding to USDA facilities for modernization:

“PLEASE..!! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a peanut butter, spinach, tomato and Chinese toy sandwich to finish…”

Tuesday Open Thread

Peanuts? Dirty peanuts? If you can’t trust peanuts, what or who can you trust?

Federal food regulators describe a massive salmonella outbreak traced to a Georgia peanut butter plant in 2007 as “a wake-up call.” But that realization did not lead officials to scrutinize at least one other peanut processor: the Peanut Corporation of America in Blakely.

They didn’t even know the plant made peanut butter.

That gaffe by the Food and Drug Administration illustrates a fundamental weakness in federal oversight of the nation’s food supply, according to food safety experts and consumer advocates. The FDA, critics say, lacks the resources and the wherewithal to take a comprehensive approach to regulating the food industry and tends to deal with outbreaks of food-borne illnesses as isolated episodes rather than as interconnected elements of a broad threat to food safety. . . .

Federal inspectors last visited Peanut Corp.’s Blakely plant in 2001, when it discovered equipment exposed to pesticides, dirty duct tape on broken machines, dead insects near peanuts and gaps big enough for rodents to enter.

For most of the time since that inspection, the FDA considered peanut products low-risk for salmonella contamination because the manufacturing process uses little water that would allow the bacteria to thrive. Then salmonella from ConAgra Foods in Sylvester, the maker of Peter Pan peanut butter, made more than 600 people ill in 2007. The latest outbreak, traced to peanuts on Jan. 9, has been worse: eight dead, 127 hospitalized, a total of 575 people in 43 states sickened.

Is the FDA a failed bureaucracy, or has it been gutted deliberately over the years of Republican control?

FDR’s First Fireside Chat

This speech describes our current situation in plain English!

For an audio clip, click here.

For the complete text:

Can’t watch…

All cartoons are posted with the artists’ express permission to TPZoo.
Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle Editorial Cartoonist and Animation Artist.
For Nick’s animations, visit Nick Anderson: Animation Archives.
For Nick’s cartoons, visit Nick Anderson.