The Hidden Hand that Picks Your Pocket

ABC News reports that the CEO of Exxon is retiring with a 400 million dollar golden parachute on top of yearly compensation that reached 51 million dollars annually in 2005.
By the debased standards of multinational corporations, he earned it, slickly exploiting a volatile global energy market and making Exxon the most profitable company in the history of capitalism to the tune of 36 billion fat ones a year.

These are the people who must be praying each day, hard, long and down on their knees for Bush to drop a few tactical nukes on Iran.
The day after the mushroom clouds blossom and burst, they can all cash in and move their asses to preemo desert property on the Sea of Tranquility.
Meanwhile the rest of us will have to teams of oxen to pull our Hummers along.

Like Humble Elias has said before, its a very serviceable, pretty civilization we've built....whether it can survive Bush, Halliburton, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Exxon and all the rest is another story.

An Easter Moment or Two in the One True holy and Apostolic Church of Rome...

Yup Easter in Menotomy, and God's People (Certified by the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith at the Vatican) are still dressing for the most part like they are going to de-weed the garden after Mass.
Still and all that, I did espy one young couple who blissfully dressed up their one year old daughter in a huge classic Easter hat with the price tag hanging off the back liken unto Minnie Pearl.
if that ain't an Easter blessing then what the hell is?

Commonwealth Cultural Note:

the Globe reports that bronze commemorative plaques are being stolen all over town. Apparently the price of bronze is up so junkies have been lifting the memorials and selling them to scrap metal dealers and rare metals brokers.
It is pretty damn low to be stealing a memorial to a dead child or a war veterans plaque ...but what kind of a lowlife sleaze actually buys said item from some twitching shuddering wreck???
Trust me, the meth addicts and crackheads of Metro Boston do not have access to smelters and the like.

Sick and sad.

We've got a drug problem in this state and the usual hot air from out the corner office and Washington DC isn't helping any.

The Missing Man Game

Seymour Hersh's article in this week's New Yorker notes that the Bush Administration's plan for an attack on Iran has already been discussed with several GOP Members of congress "And at least one democrat".
As is always the case with articles like this, exact names are not forthcoming.
I wonder if that sole democrat might just be a certain senator from a New England State that shares a border with New York?
He being just exactly the very man the Bush Administration needs to sell operations like this.
Someone with experience backing up Bush to an increasingly sycophantic degree.
I just wonder who that person could be??
Hmmmmmmm...
***
The article itself discusses air strike possibilities at length, right up to and including the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Hersh reports little in the way of plans to deploy the infantry, therefore I'm guessing this notional attack on Iran is a sort of "super Osiraq" massive air strike scenario.
But I could be wrong.
From the sounds of things, Bush has already made up his mind for war and needs but a pretext and a calendar date. We will find out about his use of nukes when our geiger counters go off or something.
How much you wanna bet that Bush has October 28th 2006 already circled in red on his desk planner?
Another October Surprise this time with mushroom clouds and oil hitting $110 per barrel.
And then there is the spike in terrorism that we are so well prepared for in this country.
Y'know what folks, we've had a nice run, it has been a great civilization, especially the last hundred years or so. But if we cannot manage problems like this without the leadership of louts like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld then maybe we deserve whatever apocalypse we get.

Something stinks in the Corner Office at the State House...

it smells like, a spineless jellyfish left out in the sun way too long...like maybe four years too long!
Ah yes who else could it be but our own Willard Mitt Romney who is happily signing the health care bill today and line-item vetoing the fee provisions tomorrow.
Hell he was FOR the $256 per person fee last week, denied it was a tax and lauded the whole package as a fast way to insure one and all on a cost effective basis.
He even wracked up an admiring column from Newsweek's Joantan Alter....ooohhh national plaudits, sweet manna from heaven for poor power hungry governor.
Then the calls came in from Spartansburg and Hooterville...the wowsers were not pleased, the fee was a tax they cried so Mitt drew himself up to his full height, thrust out his chin and fell to his knees pleading and begging.
And the crowning insult? The Governor itemized his objections to the fee in an op-ed piece that ran in the Wall Street Journal!
A more viceregal act of disdain cannot be imagined.
Ah but now this is the problem with Mitt, something the Scot Lehigh's out there don't understand, Romney is not in the end a reliable negotiating partner. he is too beholden to out of state interests and his own carnal ambitions to ever keep his word to anyone in Massachusetts.
If there are any authentic conservatives out there reading this, take a long hard look at the type of arrogance and grandstanding that Mitt Romney mistakes for leadership. Honestly you don't want any part of this guy, you'll need to get everything in writing from day one, his word isn't worth shit not with his ambition telling him how to screw you on a deal.
(Apologies to William S. Burroughs)
Now undoubtedly the legislature will over-ride the veto giving the Governor more fodder for his childish anti-Massachusetts tirades. However thanks to his last minute stab in the back the bureaucracy will be saddled with the administration of a program the Governor has officially disowned.
And that my friends is not good public policy.
Humble Elias thinks this bill was premature, the Commonwealth needed to have a thorough debate within and without the coming guberatorial campaign on the health care issue. Romney has nothing to declare but his bad intentions on the matter, it would've been instructive for the candidates to speak out on the matter.
Too late now I guess...

Two quick Shout Outs...

Tough Enough is still blogging on the ever more important subject of John McCain's twisted path to the Presidency.
And Under the Golden Dome is proving an invaluable resource for the coming fall election...(Hey guys I got room in my links section...)

If...

the President has (as his partisans assert) the nigh royal authority to declassify information on a whim, then isn't this a powerful disincentive for the intelligence community to bring politically sensitive info to his attention? Especially info that materially influences the President's own political fortunes?
Wouldn't this imperial perogative lead to even more lying, dissembling and evasion in the lower ranks?
I mean, thank about it.
Granted President's have leaked and leaked abundantly for years...now they have legal justification for it?
Yipes...