Borders Bookstore has filed for bankruptcy and closed 225 stores, putting 6,000 employees out of work. The company is in debt and doesn’t have enough assets to pay off its creditors.
But that didn’t stop the CEO from asking the bankruptcy judge for $8.3 million in executive bonuses, including $1.7 million for himself. That’s on top of the 87% raise he gave himself last year, even though employee raises have been frozen for several years.
Rewarding failure, one CEO at a time.
“Republicans are obsessed with abortion. If they really wanted to protect the weakest, most helpless people, wouldn’t they protect the Democrats?” – Bill Maher
“I’m not going to pay taxes. When they say I’m going to prison, I’ll say no, prisons cost taxpayers a lot of money. You keep what it would have cost to incarcerate me, and we’ll call it even.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Today President Obama changed his slogan from ‘Yes, We Can’ to ‘Have It Your Way.'” – Bill Maher
“Republicans and Democrats have agreed to a deal. After intense negotiations, they agreed on a budget deal and a short-term funding extension to keep this country not moving forward.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“After intense last minute negotiations, a deal was reached that will avoid a government shutdown. The Democrats and Republicans worked together on this one with one common goal … to screw each other.” – David Letterman
“The good news is, the government is up and running, the same as before. The bad news is, the government is up and running, the same as before.” – Jay Leno
“I’m so glad the government is still running. If it stopped, who would give me my parking tickets – Santa?” – Jimmy Kimmel
“I almost didn’t come to work today. I’m so depressed we still have a government. And we could have blamed it on the Democrats.” – Stephen Colbert
“To avoid a shutdown, the government cut $39 billion from the budget. The first thing to go was ‘Real Housewives of D.C.'” – Conan O’Brien
“The Bravo Network has canceled ‘Real Housewives of Washington, D.C.’ At last a government shutdown we can feel good about.” – Jay Leno
“Glenn Beck retired or got fired… and a lot of people are asking who will now speak for the raving lunatics who startle you outside of a parking garage?” – Bill Maher
“The only real difference between Glenn Beck and Paul Revere is that when Paul Revere told you the British were coming, they were, in fact, coming.” – Jon Stewart
“I was devastated. In fact, last night I went home and finished off a whole pint of George Soros’ Caliphate Crunch. Rum raisin with chocolate-covered micro chips.” – Jon Stewart
“It was so lovely today in New York that Charlie Sheen was bombing in the park. So beautiful Southwest Airlines put in screens. So nice in D.C. that President Obama was fanning himself with his birth certificate.” – David Letterman
“Obama said in an interview that he really misses being anonymous. If he wanted to remain anonymous he should have run for vice president.” – Jay Leno
“President Obama says he misses being anonymous. You know, back when he could blend in with the other Hawaiian Barack Hussein Obamas.” – Conan O’Brien
“A new poll shows that only 19 percent of Americans strongly approve of President Obama’s performance. The other 81 percent don’t own gas stations.” – Jay Leno
“Gas has gone up 20 cents just this week. Shouldn’t we stop calling it crude oil at this point and call it obscene oil?” – Jay Leno
“The Pentagon announced that openly gay soldiers will begin serving this summer. When people asked why this summer, the Army said, ‘Because ‘Glee’ will be in reruns.'” – Conan O’Brien
Happy Tax Day!
Taxes are one of the most politicized and misunderstood parts of our country. Both parties and the media are awash in tall tales and myths about taxes, so here are some little known but absolutely true facts to help clear things up:
UPDATE: Michele Bachmann repeated the claim that the top 1% pay 40% of all federal taxes; PolitiFact rated her statement False for the same reasons given above.
After Republicans worked so hard to let the birther nonsense die down — Karl Rove even tried to blame it on the Democrats, speculating they kept the rumors alive so Republicans would look stupid — Donald Trump stirs up the birther pot again. And that brings out all the wingnuts, including Sarah Palin, who agrees with Trump and says “more power to him“. And not to be left out, Arizona passes another idiotic law, requiring all presidential candidates to show proof of citizenship before they are allowed on state ballots.
UPDATE: Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona takes a potentially bold step against her party’s wingnuts by vetoing the “birther bill”. It remains to be seen if the Arizona legislature will override her veto.
“Donald Trump said he can’t make a final decision about whether he will run for president or not until this season of ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ is over. Which is maybe the best excuse from a guy who might run for the presidency ever — I am unable to decide on whether or not I will run for President until I decide whether Latoya Jackson or Jose Canseco will be my new Apprentice.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Trump said he can’t run because he has the #1 show on NBC. Which is kind of like having the nicest house in Haiti.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Maybe he should ease into this, by running for a lower office first, like President of the Hair Club for Men.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Trump is doing well in the polls. He’s in second place among Republican voters. Among Tea Partiers, he’s in first place. Although to be fair, in the Tea Party poll, Chuck Norris is in second place and third place is an AK-47.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Donald Trump came in second place in a poll asking people who they want for president. I wouldn’t get too excited. It was a poll of Democrats.” – Craig Ferguson
“If Donald Trump wins, my guess is America will look a lot like it did in ‘Back to the Future 2,’ when Biff was in charge.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Democrats and Republicans in Congress are still fighting over the budget. If they can’t agree, there will be a big government shutdown. What we really need is a big government shut-up.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“A lot of people wonder what a government shutdown would be like. I think a lot more people wonder what a government running properly would be like.” – Jay Leno
“If the government shuts down, all non-essential workers will stop coming to work. Here’s my question: Why do we even have non-essential workers?” – Jimmy Kimmel
“If the government shuts down, 800,000 federal workers could get a call saying they’re ‘non-essential.’ Wouldn’t it be weird if 800,000 people got the same call that I get from my dad every day?” – Conan O’Brien
“If there’s a shutdown, federal meat inspections may be delayed. In other words, Taco Bell will not be affected.” – Conan O’Brien
“President Obama said today that Americans are just going to have to get used to higher gas prices. To which Dick Cheney said, ‘That’s change I can believe in. I like this Obama guy.'” – Jay Leno
“The White House confirmed that President Obama got a letter from Moammar Gadhafi. They wouldn’t confirm the contents of the letter, but it did end with the question, ‘Do you like me? Check yes, no, or maybe.'” – Conan O’Brien
“One of President Obama’s oldest friends has just been arrested for soliciting a prostitute. You can tell he’s a friend of Obama’s. Although he hired the prostitute, his grandchildren are going to have to pay for it.” – Jay Leno
“A new study found that families with two daughters are the happiest. Unless, of course, their dad currently has a 42 percent approval rating.” – Jimmy Fallon
“President Obama revealed that up until a few years ago, he was still paying off his student loans. In response, China was like, ‘Oh, so you DO know how to repay loans.'” – Jimmy Fallon
“America is producing fewer Caucasian babies. I suppose China is beating us at that too.” –Stephen Colbert
“It turns out that Bristol Palin was paid 260,000 dollars in 2009 for her work with abstinence awareness. You know what they say: Those who can’t do, teach.” – Jimmy Fallon
“Glenn Beck announced that he is ending his daily show on Fox News. He didn’t want to end it. He just ran out of conspiracy theories.” – Jay Leno
“Toyota says they’re going to start integrating Microsoft technology into their vehicles. It’s perfect for the person who wants a car that crashes every 10 minutes.” – Conan O’Brien
Want a quick update on the budget wars? Or just surprised that the government didn’t shut down after all? Jon Stewart explains it for you:
Just go read Matt Taibbi’s new article “The Real Housewives of Wall Street“. Do it now. If you don’t read it, then you should lose your right to complain about any government spending.
The article details how the Fed has given out more than a trillion dollars in welfare to the rich. Free money, but only if you are stinking rich and have friends in high places. They even gave money to the wives of rich people, who then sheltered this money in the Cayman Islands.
And you don’t even have to be an American. They threw $5 billion at foreign automakers, at a time when we were trying to save US automakers, $9.6 billion to the Central Bank of Mexico, and $35 billion to the Arab Banking Corporation of Bahrain, whose majority shareholder is the Central Bank of Libya. That’s right, your tax money went to Muammar Gaddafi, the murdering tyrant of Libya.
Why didn’t you know about this? Because until now, the Fed has operated with almost complete secrecy and no oversight, even though it controls a budget almost as big as the rest of the government combined. But a new law has forced the Fed to open their books for the first time, and what we are finding is stunning. Says one senator’s aide “Our jaws are literally dropping as we’re reading this.” Yours will too.
If the Tea Party ever wanted something real to scream about, this is it.
Ironically, if Congress does absolutely nothing, it will mostly solve the deficit crisis. Mainly because Bush’s tax cuts will expire automatically at the end of next year.
Obama taught constitutional law in Chicago, and campaigned on making respect for the rule of law one of the cornerstones of his presidency. He also promised to end the excesses of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism and increase government transparency.
And yet, his actions say otherwise. His administration has gone after whistleblowers with a vengeance, most notably Army Private First Class Bradley Manning. In fact, many legal scholars, including Laurence Tribe, who taught constitutional law to Obama at Harvard and was a legal advisor to the Obama administration until three months ago, think that the government’s treatment of Manning is illegal, unconstitutional, and could even be considered torture.
Tribe, along with more than 250 of our country’s top legal scholars have signed a letter protesting Obama’s treatment of Manning, who has been held at a military base since July and is facing a court martial on charges that he leaked classified information. The harsh treatment of Manning has also been denounced by human rights groups, including Amnesty International, and is being investigated by Congressman Dennis Kucinich and by UN Special Rapporteur on torture Juan Mendez to see if it violates US and international rules concerning the treatment of prisoners. But the military has not allowed any of them to visit with Manning without supervision and monitoring, which means that anything Manning says could be used against him during this trial.
This is the kind of treatment we used to denounce in totalitarian governments like the USSR. Things have gotten so bad that even China is criticizing US human rights abuses, and getting away with it. When did we lose the moral high ground?
Even Stephen Colbert falls out of character and cracks up laughing:
Colbert followed up by tweeting more statements not intended to be factual:
Jon Kyl actually prefers Hydrox to Oreos. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement
Jon Kyl = ax2 + bx + c #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement
Jon Kyl developed his own line of hair care products just so he could test them on bunnies. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement
Jon Kyl was sent from the future to kill Sarah Conner. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement
Jon Kyl cheated on Sandra Bullock. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement
Jon Kyl bought a SodaStream so he could drink *carbonated* tears of the poor. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement
“We’re heading for a government shutdown. This is serious. Without the government who will fail to inspect our airplanes? Who will fail to secure our borders? Who will put us 14 trillion dollars in debt?” – Jay Leno
“If Congress can’t agree on a budget by midnight Friday, the government will shut down. Democrats are demanding to tax all of the people’s money and use it to fund abortions, while the Republicans want to sell the country to Exxon Mobil and relocate gays to Puerto Rico.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“The White House may have to lay off all nonessential workers if the government shuts down. You know: interns, pages, Biden…” – Jimmy Fallon
“All government services may be shut down next week, which could really make the DMV inconvenient.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Members of Congress will still get paid if there’s a shutdown. So it will be just like it is now. We’ll be paying them to do nothing.” – Jay Leno
“A lot of public beaches may also be shut down, which could severely whiten John Boehner.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Due to the budget impasse, the federal government may shut down next week. There will be another season of ‘Jersey Shore,’ but the U.S. government is still up in the air.” – Conan O’Brien
“The most embarrassing part is that by the weekend, our government could be shut down, but Moammar Gadhafi’s government could still be working.” – Jay Leno
“The White House says we’ll be staying in Libya longer than expected. I didn’t see that coming.” – David Letterman
“The original estimate for Libya was two weeks. Now they’re predicting about 12 years.” – David Letterman
“Fox News announced today that Glenn Beck will leave his show later this year. It’s nothing personal. He just wants to spend more time with the voices in his head.” – Jimmy Fallon
“Glenn Beck has announced that he is leaving his show on Fox News this year. Even more surprising is that he’s leaving to marry his life-partner, Abdul Gonzales.” – Conan O’Brien
Mitt Romney announced today that he taking the first step in a run for the presidency. Interestingly, his announcement came in the form of a video.
I think any time he states his positions during the Republican primary, we should examine how they compare to his life-long held positions. Luckily, we have an earlier video from 1994 where he states them for us:
The funny thing is, I actually agree with Romney’s former positions. He doesn’t discuss his opinion about health care reform in the old video, but we already know that Romneycare is pretty much the same as Obamacare.
Exhibit A is Paul Ryan’s Republican Budget Proposal, which destroys Medicare as we know it, defunds organizations that tend to support Democrats, and increases the deficit by giving even more tax cuts to the wealthy.
When my mother became senile and we took over her finances, we discovered that she had been repeatedly conned by companies whose sole business seemed to be preying on the weaknesses of seniors. One company was pulling money directly out of her checking account for “magazine subscriptions” that were more expensive than if she were paying newsstand prices. Others were charging exorbitant premiums for questionable insurance policies.
I was reminded of this when reading about the new Republican budget proposal from Paul Ryan that (among other things) eliminates our current Medicare system and replaces it with a giant giveaway to the health insurance companies.
One of the most fundamental tensions in our politics is that senior citizens are, simultaneously, the demographic group that most benefits from the welfare state and the one most sympathetic to the right-wing push to abolish it. The only age group in which McCain beat Obama was voters 60 and older. Part of the reason Democrats fared poorly in 2010 is that voters 60 and older made up 34 percent of the electorate, up from 23 percent in 2008. Senior citizens were also the group most opposed to Obama’s Affordable Care Act, with 58 percent now in favor of repeal.
This produces all kinds of bizarre, contradictory results, like the iconic Tea Party protester who warned the government to keep its hands off his Medicare.
The Republican Party plays both sides of this game. In 2003 they passed Medicare Part D, a multi-billion-dollar deficit-increasing giveaway to the pharmaceutical companies in the guise of a massive entitlement program that was purely designed to buy senior votes. They attacked Obama’s health care reform effort, claiming it would cut $500 billion from Medicare. Not to mention the (totally false) “death panel” hysteria.
But now they are going to gut Medicare in the name of deficit reduction. Will seniors fall for this con?
UPDATE: Matt Taibbi has a brilliant rant on just how dishonest and calculating Ryan’s budget proposal actually is. A few choice quotes:
The Republicans, quite smartly, recognize that there is great political hay to be made in the appearance of deficit reduction, and that white middle class voters will respond with overwhelming enthusiasm to any call for reductions in the “welfare state,” a term which said voters will instantly associate with black welfare moms and Mexicans sneaking over the border to visit American emergency rooms.
Never mind that each time the Republicans actually come into power, federal deficit spending explodes and these whippersnappers somehow never get around to touching Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
The last ten years or so have seen the government send massive amounts of money to people in the top tax brackets, mainly through two methods: huge tax cuts, and financial bailouts. The government has spent trillions of our national treasure bailing out Wall Street, which has resulted directly in enormous, record profit numbers – nearly $100 billion in the last three years (and that doesn’t even count the tens of billions more in inflated compensation and bonuses that came more or less directly from government aid). … But the issue is being presented as if the debt comes entirely from growth in entitlement spending. It’s bad enough that middle-class taxpayers have been forced in the last few years to subsidize the vacations and beach houses of the idiots who caused the financial crisis, and it’s doubly insulting that they’re now being blamed for the budget mess.
Abortion Bush Campaign Finance Cheney Climate Clinton Congress Conservatives Corporations Corruption Deficits Democrats Drugs Economy Education Election Elections Energy Environment Fox News Gays Guns Health Immigration Lies McCain Media Middle East Obama Palin Protests Racism Religion Republicans Romney Spying Supreme Court Taxes Tea Party Terrorism Terrorists Torture Trump Unemployment War
