Paul Newman - The final summation from "The Verdict", screenplay by David Mamet, directed by Sidney Lumet

[Frank is giving his summation to the jury]

Frank Galvin: You know, so much of the time we're just lost. We say, "Please, God, tell us what is right; tell us what is true." And there is no justice: the rich win, the poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing people lie. And after a time, we become dead... a little dead. We think of ourselves as victims... and we become victims. We become... we become weak. We doubt ourselves, we doubt our beliefs. We doubt our institutions. And we doubt the law. But today you are the law. You ARE the law. Not some book... not the lawyers... not the, a marble statue... or the trappings of the court. See those are just symbols of our desire to be just. They are... they are, in fact, a prayer: a fervent and a frightened prayer. In my religion, they say, "Act as if ye had faith... and faith will be given to you." IF... if we are to have faith in justice, we need only to believe in ourselves. And ACT with justice. See, I believe there is justice in our hearts.

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" ...as Putin - rears his head - and, ah, comes into the airspace of the United States of America - where do they go? It's Alaska, it's just, right over the border...."

Sweet lord I just want to wrap my arms around her and whisper in her ear "Shhhhhhh. Shhhh. Quiet now. Just, please, be quiet. Stop. Go home. Please, just go home and do something else with your life while you still have a shred of dignity left...."

Can you see the little piggies....

Image by Ewing Galloway (1881 – 1953) ALLPosters.comTuesday, September 23, 2008 - 2:48 PM PDT
CEO pay: What those involved in the financial meltdown made

East Bay Business Times
by Mike Sunnucks and Chris Casacchia

As Congress considers a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street and the banking sector, there are calls to restrict the pay and severance packages for CEOs at investment houses, banks and mortgage lenders poised to be benefit from the plan put forward by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke.

Executives from some of the major investment and commercial banks involved in the financial upheaval and bailout earned hefty paychecks last year, according to proxy statements outlining their salaries, bonuses and stock options:

Lehman Brothers Chairman and CEO Richard Fuld Jr. made $34 million in 2007. Lehman (OTC: LEHMQ) filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection earlier this month.

Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), which Sunday gained Federal Reserve Bank approval to become a bank holding company, paid its chairman and CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, $70 million last year. Co-Chief Operating Officers Gary Cohn and Jon Winkereid were paid $72.5 million and $71 million, respectively.

American International Group’s chief executive, Martin Sullivan, got a $14 million compensation package in 2007. He was ousted in June. The insurance giant (NYSE:AIG) is on the receiving end of an $85 billion federal bailout. Edward Liddy took over as AIG’s chief executive earlier this month.

Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack earned $1.6 million. Chief Financial Officer Colin Kelleher got a $21 million paycheck in 2007. Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) also received approval to become a banking holding company, a shift that allows Morgan and Goldman to bring in bank deposit assets which offer more-solid financial footing.

Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain was paid $17 million in salary, bonuses and stock options in 2007. Merrill (NYSE: MER) is being acquired by Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC).

BofA CEO Kenneth Lewis earned $25 million in 2007.

JP Morgan Chase & Co. Chairman and CEO James Dimon earned $28 million in 2007. Chase (NYSE: JPM) acquired troubled investment house Bear Stearns earlier this year with the federal government promising to take on as much as $30 billion in Bear assets to help get the deal done.

Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd received $11.6 million in 2007. His counterpart at Freddie Mac, Richard Syron, brought in $18 million. The federal government announced earlier this month it was taking over the mortgage backers with Herbert Allison to serve as Fannie CEO and David Moffett the new CEO at Freddie.

Wachovia Corp. Chairman and CEO G. Kennedy Thompson received $21 million in 2007. He was succeeded by Robert Steel as CEO in July. Steel is slated to get a $1 million salary with an opportunity for a $12 million bonus, according to CEO Watch. Wachovia (NYSE: WB) is one of the banks that could be sold in the midst of the financial crisis.

Seattle-based Washington Mutual (NYSE: WAMU) will pay its new CEO, Alan Fishman, a salary and incentive package worth more than $20 million through 2009 for taking the helm of the battered bank, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal.

CEOs of large U.S. corporations averaged $10.8 million in total compensation in 2006, more than 364 times the pay of the average U.S. worker, according to the latest survey by United for a Fair Economy. In 2007, the CEO of a Standard & Poor’s 500 company received, on average, $14.2 million in total compensation, according to The Corporate Library, a corporate governance research firm. The median compensation package received was $8.8 million.

The Puget Sound Business Journal, a sister publication, contributed to this story.

All contents of this site © American City Business Journals Inc. All rights reserved.

Art Imitates Life - Dance a Little Sidestep

Augh. Our Presidency, our candidates - it's all a goddamn musical comedy....

"There are times, believe it or not, when policy makers actually need to, like, work on making policy,"

President Bush walking out to make a statement outside the White House in Washington on Thursday. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press)

Bush addresses Wall St. crisis - briefly

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Published: September 18, 2008

WASHINGTON: On Thursday, the president spoke.

It was brief, just two minutes. His brow was furrowed, and his words were careful: "The American people can be sure we will continue to act to strengthen and stabilize our financial markets and improve investor confidence." Then, having imparted no specifics, he once again slipped out of sight.

In the increasingly surreal world of the White House, the appearance was a sign that all pretense of normalcy is gone. All week long, with Wall Street engulfed by what analysts are calling the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, President George W. Bush had mostly stayed out of sight, except when trying to maintain the façade of business as usual. To be sure, other presidents - most recently Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton - have been careful about what they say in public when Wall Street is in turmoil.

But by all outward appearances, Bush has been reduced this week to almost a bit player in his own government, as Washington has reoriented itself away from the White House and toward the Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson Jr., and the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke.
On Monday, as Americans absorbed the news that the venerable investment bank Lehman Brothers had been wiped out, Bush received John Kufuor, the president of Ghana, at the White House. The sun-dappled South Lawn was awash in color that morning, as a full military honor guard and Revolutionary fife and drum band marched across the grass, entertaining the leaders before they exchanged the customary pleasantries.

"Your tenure has been full of events and challenges, some very mind-boggling and hair-raising," Kufuor told Bush, raising more than a few eyebrows. "You are a survivor," the Ghanaian leader told the American president. "And my hope is that history would prove kinder to you."

That evening, after the Dow industrials had plunged 500 points, Bush, his wife Laura and more than 100 of their guests dined on Maine lobster and ginger-scented lamb during a state dinner in the African leader's honor. Then, in their tuxedoes and ball gowns, they repaired to the Rose Garden to watch actors from Disney's "The Lion King" perform a medley of songs under the cool, dark Washington sky.

On Tuesday, with the insurance giant AIG headed for disaster, Bush flew to Texas to inspect hurricane damage. As he flew over the devastation in his helicopter, Marine One, a press helicopter following him adjusted its flight path to allow photographers on board to capture the image of Bush's chopper in perfect alignment with the wreckage below.

On the ground in Galveston, Bush met behind closed doors with state and local leaders, and emerged surrounded by a crowd of them, holding the hand of Galveston's mayor, Lyda Ann Thomas, as he walked past television cameras that his aides kept a safe distance away.
"Mr. President!" a reporter shouted. "What are you going to do about AIG?" Bush looked straight at the cameras and kept walking as he shouted back.
"We're here talking about the people of Galveston, Texas," he said. "They've got a great mayor, and they're working hard."

And so it went, until Thursday, when it became clear that Bush would have to show himself to the public, after the White House press corps had begun agitating to know just what, precisely, the president was doing.

The day earlier, Bush had kept up another seemingly ordinary schedule: separate meetings with General David Petreaus and the president of Panama, hosting the annual White House Iftaar dinner, in honor of American Muslims.

"There are times, believe it or not, when policy makers actually need to, like, work on making policy," his press secretary, Dana Perino, explained.

But by 11 p.m., the White House put out the news that Bush would no longer spend Thursday traveling to Alabama and Florida, where he had planned to attend two Republican fund-raisers and, in Alabama, to tour a facility that converts sewage and other waste to energy. Instead, he huddled inside the White House and emerged just after 10 a.m. to explain himself: "I've canceled my travel today to stay in Washington, where I will continue to closely monitor the situation in our financial markets, and consult with my economic advisers."

Oh, that trickster Allah!

Fla. police use Taser on nude man walking a dog

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 15, 2008
Filed at 4:13 p.m. ET

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- A 40-year-old man walking his dog in the nude was Tasered by police when he refused to follow an officer's commands. David McCranie of the Tallahassee Police Department said an officer on patrol spotted the man shortly after 8 p.m. Friday.

The man was asked what he was doing and told the officer, ''Allah told me to watch a Bruce Willis movie and walk the dog,'' McCranie said.

McCranie said using the Taser was the only way to subdue the man without having to hurt him. The man was then sent for mental-health evaluation and treatment.

Hejira - Joni Mitchell

I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
There's comfort in melancholy
When there's no need to explain
It's just as natural as the weather
In this moody sky today
In our possessive coupling
So much could not be expressed
So now I'm returning to myself
These things that you and I suppressed
I see something of myself in everyone
Just at this moment of the world
As snow gathers like bolts of lace
Waltzing on a ballroom girl

You know it never has been easy
Whether you do or you do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of extremities
Or stick to some straighter line
Now here's a man and a woman sitting on a rock
They're either going to thaw out or freeze
Listen...
Strains of benny goodman
Coming thru' the snow and the pinewood trees
I'm porous with travel fever
But you know I'm so glad to be on my own
Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger
Can set up trembling in my bones
I know - no one's going to show me everything
We all come and go unknown
Each so deep and superficial
Between the forceps and the stone

Well I looked at the granite markers
Those tribute to finality - to eternity
And then I looked at myself here
Chicken scratching for my immortality
In the church they light the candles
And the wax rolls down like tears
There's the hope and the hopelessness
I've witnessed thirty years
We're only particles of change I know, I know
Orbiting around the sun
But how can I have that point of view
When I'm always bound and tied to someone
White flags of winter chimneys
Waving truce against the moon
In the mirrors of a modern bank
>from the window of a hotel room

I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
Until love sucks me back that way

Yes, I was scared...

...it was a scary time.

The first few hours of that day I was pretty sure that we might be in the middle of a battleground and we'd have the shit bombed out of us. I called my cousin in Atlanta to make sure her husband, a pilot, was not flying. I woke my mom up in Seattle to tell her that I was okay, though she did not yet know what had happened, and was still half asleep when we said goodbye. I left messages for my dad in Ohio and brother in Wisconsin. I wanted to talk to somebody, anybody, because I thought I might die alone in my apartment. The phone calls stopped for a long time because the lines were jammed. My roommate came home from work and she and I drank screwdrivers at noon, and she fell asleep on the living room floor in front of the tv. I don't think I went outside at all that day, except once to go onto the roof, and to make a couple calls on my cell phone to people I knew who worked or lived near the Towers. On the roof, I saw the smoke coming from downtown, and F-16s overhead. We taped the windows to seal us off from "biological agents" that might be in the air. I don't remember eating. I did not sleep more than two hours at a time that night, turning on the television by my bed to see if the next bad thing had happened. The F-16s screamed by on the Hudson and the sound sent me further into shock. My stepmother asked me to get newspapers the next day so my little brothers could "have a piece of history." I walked for six blocks trying to find the New York Times on September 12th. I never once walked towards Times Square, but instead walked West and South and saw almost no one.

I lost no loved ones, no close friends or acquaintances. I knew survivors who had been there, been in the buildings, lost a father, lost a friend or a co-worker. Fifteen guys in my local firehouse, Engine 54, Ladder 4, Battalion 9, "The Pride Of Midtown" died there.


Some guys - mostly cops, FDNY, newspaper reporters - are so sick and tired of reliving that time that they sigh and roll their eyes and say, "enough fucking already with 9/11"....I can't begin to fathom what they have been through, and do not blame them for their disgust and hatred for this anniversary. I regret the wine-driven instances when I have brought the subject up with those who were there, at the pit, in the buildings, - who the fuck am I to ask probing questions and display my sorrow to these men and women?

Today I was downtown doing some legal paperwork at Surrogate's Court, and there were dozens of policemen around the courthouses on Centre Street...as I stopped for a bite at the outdoor food kiosk, I asked a patrolman waiting for fries if there was some sort of protest I was hearing echoing through the canyons of the judicial buildings, and he nodded slowly. I asked what they were protesting and he looked blank for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders ever so slightly and mumbled, "9/11, I guess."

Colbert - Giuliani Standup

Ahhhhhhhhh. Cannot get enough of this. Few days old, but still damn good....

Error is boundless.

Meditation on Statistical Method - J.V. Cunningham

Plato, despair!
We prove by norms
How numbers bear
Empiric forms,

How random wrong
Will average right
If time be long
And error slight,

But in our hearts
Hyperbole
Curves and departs
To infinity.

Error is boundless.
Nor hope nor doubt,
Though both be groundless,
Will average out.

Astroland is No More

After 46 Years, Game Over For Astroland
By: NY1 News

The historic Coney Island amusement park, Astroland, is ending a 46-year run today as it closes up shop for the summer -- and for good.
Co-Owner Carol Hill Albert says she was unable to work out a lease extension with developer Thor Equities, and that she has no choice but to shut down.
Thor says its disappointed with the decision to close the park, but that's little consultation to the Brooklynites and advocates who oppose the major development plan for the beachfront area.
"It's just a damn shame that the City of New York and the developers who bought the property on Coney Island can't do something to preserve the heritage and the legacy of what this place was and the way we want it to be," said Brooklyn Borough Historian Ron Schweiger.
For many New Yorkers, Astroland is synonymous with their childhoods.
"We come here as much as possible and I feel like they're tearing down my whole childhood, my whole life, my legacy," said long-time area resident Terry Rosenzweig. "Everything I have is here. That's why I'm trying to capture everything I can – my last moments of my life growing up here on Coney Island today."
Even though Astroland is closing, fans of the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel shouldn't worry.
Both of those rides are covered by separate leases and are expected to reopen next year.

Legally Brown: The Search For The Next Piragua Guy

Jerry Reed - RIP

Dear Mailman...