Yo, Barack! Hey, John! I know you’ve been busy, cruising around the country, giving those same ol’ stump speeches over and over again. (Doncha get tired of that? We sure do.)

Park for a minute and tell us something. After you’re elected president, what are you gonna do with those buffoons running the Minerals Management Service that collects each year oil and gas royalties of $10 billion from oil companies? The Interior Department’s inspector general says top officials there have been involved in “financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.”

And while you’re at it, what about Nancy Nord, the acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission? You plan to let her keep on defending “trips she took that were paid for by the industries that her agency regulates“? You gonna let her keep on telling Congress that her agency does not need a larger budget to police the the industries that produce the nation’s consumer goods?
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Y’know, these days, so many people with so many different motives are trying to tell me in so many ways what the “truth†is that I wonder whether I’d recognize a “truth” — any “truth” at all.

I give up. I’ve collapsed under the oppressing weight of lies, prevarications, deceits, “policy adjustments,†rhetoric, no-longer-operative statements, attack ads, Perino-isms, cunningly packaged spin, and Rovian stump speeches with the rhetorical content equivalent to the unflushed contents of a toilet bowl.

Would someone please make possession of a Teleprompter a federal crime, punishable by listening to Rush Limbaugh 24/7 for life? Or Al Franken, for that matter? Can we stop the incessant harangue so reminiscent of “Father Knows Best” or, in the event Sarah Palin is speaking, “Mother Knows Best”? Or Hillary or Bill: “We Know Best”?
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— a letter to the editor of The New York Times from Candida Pugh of Oakland, Calif.; Sept. 10; emphasis added.

— Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the exit pay packages of Daniel H. Mudd of Fannie Mae and Richard F. Syron of Freddie Mac who, The Times’ Eric Dash reports, are eligible for as much as $24 million in severance, retirement benefits and deferred compensation; Sept. 10.
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— from “The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule” by Thomas Frank; p. 39; emphasis added.

— statement from Republican presidential candidate John McCain after the Labor Department reported that the national unemployment rate rose to a five-year high of 6.1 percent last month as American companies cut about 84,000 jobs; Sept. 5.

— statement from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama following the jobs report release; Sept. 5.
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This Olympics, 2008, we mortals have been in the company of gods. Michael Phelps. Eight golds. Seven world records. Usain Bolt. Two golds. Two world records.

No-one who watched Usain Bolt actually break stride, look around, slow down and beat his chest in victory 15 METRES BEFORE THE LINE could have any doubt that you are watching a supreme athlete.

Athletes are the supreme example of physical genius. Full Story »

If you’re a CEO whose company has shorted its customers on quality and safety, you’re breathing a little easier today.

If you’re a politician who has traded favors with the über-rich in exchange for campaign cash, you’re relieved.

If you’re a government official who has allowed ideology or bribes rather than dedication to public service to shape your decision-making, you’re home free.

That’s because there will be fewer journalists nosing around on your turf.

Gannett Co. is eliminating 1,000 jobs across its newspaper operations, including 600 layoffs. That includes 84 dailies such as The Arizona Republic and the Detroit Free Press as well as nearly 900 non-daily publications but not USA Today, reports the Chicago Tribune. That means fewer journalists available to defend the public’s interest.
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Yahoo! (YHOO) is a famous listed company. At the height – back in 2000 - of the Dot Com bubble, their shares were worth almost $120 each. Heady days. Heady days.

Anyhoo, that was then. The company is a little less sanguine these days, trading range-bound around $20 a share. Unimaginative management can think of little more than rearranging the furniture in the hopes that something exciting happens. Full Story »

 George Carlin, who died early this week at age 71; June 23
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Nearly two decades after the Exxon Valdez ran around on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, the U.S. Supreme Court has taught Exxon (now ExxonMobil) and corporations everywhere a lesson:

Don’t pay off legal judgments. Stall, stall, stall for 19 years.

Courts have held that Exxon must pay $2.5 billion in punitive damages for spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil that soiled 1,200 miles of Alaskan coastline. In 1994 a jury found Exxon Valdez captain Joseph Hazelwood and Exxon to be reckless. Hazelwood, who had been drinking before the single-hulled tanker hit the reef, had left the bridge as the vessel faced a difficult turn. The jury awarded $287 million in compensatory damages and originally $5 billion in punitive damages (later halved by another court).

But Exxon shouldn’t have worried. The business-tilted Court whacked the already-reduced $2.5 billion by four-fifths.
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As the season known as The Most Important Presidential Election Ever nears its apogee (or nadir, depending on your opinion of politics), news organizations ought to be putting as much time, treasure, and talent as possible covering the non-horse race aspects of the campaign  important stuff beyond “who’s gonna be veep,” such as whom the candidates would appoint to what, legislative initiatives they’ll champion, Supreme Court litmus tests, energy and tax policies and the like.

The stakes in this election, pundits say, are the highest ever. (I heard that when Richard Nixon first ran for president.) So what does the Associated Press do to reliably keep us informed of the ins and outs of the really important stuff in presidential politics?
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 Stanley Mouse, artistic partner of Alton Kelley; the pair created hundreds of classic psychedelic rock posters and threw “the world’s first psychedelic dance-concerts at Longshoreman’s Hall in September 1965, essentially starting the San Francisco scene”; Mr. Kelley died this week at age 67; June 3.

 Eric Dezenhall, the head of the crisis public relations firm Dezenhall Resources, on Dunkin’ Donuts’ decision to remove an ad from its Web site featuring celebrity chef Rachael Ray after conservative bloggers complained her scarf resembled a keffiyeh, labeling it “jihadi chic“; May 30.
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 Stephen Viederman, a New York shareholder, after “Exxon Mobil’s chairman and chief executive, Rex W. Tillerson, defeated a shareholder effort … to take away one of his jobs at an annual meeting punctuated by a debate of the company’s policy toward renewable energy and global warming”; May 28.

 from a statement by Troy A. Clarke, the president of G.M.’s North American operations, announcing that “19,000 hourly workers  a quarter of a unionized work force that already has been drastically pared down  have accepted buyouts“; up to 16,000 of these $28-an-hour workers may be replaced by “entry-level” non-assembly workers making $14 an hour; May 30; emphasis added.
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 from a report by the American Association of University Women, “whose 1992 report on how girls are shortchanged in the classroom caused a national debate over gender equity,” that debunks the notion of a “boys’ crisis,” saying, “Girls’ gains have not come at boys’ expense”; May 20.

 Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., who has led the Senate’s efforts to expand education benefits for veterans, on President Bush’s threat “to veto a bill that would pay tuition and other expenses at a four-year public university for anyone who has served in the military for at least three years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001″; May 22.
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