This morning, my email contained links to some rather interesting videos.
Our first clip takes us back to the hearings which surrounded the AIG bailout. As you will recall, AIG (which insured all of those toxic "assets") was effectively nationalized. Well, not really nationalized. Uncle Sam bought the company, but let's not call it nationalization, because that's the sort of thing that only those awful, awful Swedes would do.
Congressman Donald Manzullo of Illinois does the grilling here. He's angry about the multi-million-dollar executive compensation handed out to the guys who mis-ran a company that the American people now own.
Yes, he is grandstanding, but he is also making an important point. And it says something strange about our politics that one of the most conservative members of the House is making a point that lefties used to make. Don, I gotta ask ya -- where were you on the issue of obscene executive pay before?
Similar pay disparities took place at Goldman Sachs, of course. That fact brings us to our next video (sent to me by a former Burger King manager):
This classy production was put together by the good folks at War on Greed -- who, unlike Congressman Manzullo, are not new arrivals to this territory. They point out three facts:
1. Goldman Sachs owns Burger King.
2. Goldman Sachs blew $6.5 BILLION -- money that came from taxpayers -- on executive compensation.
3. If that money had been evenly distributed to all the BK employees, they would have received $18,000 apiece. Now that's a stimulus.
Our final video seems strangely related to the antics exposed in our first two productions.
"Rise and Fall of the Nazi Dinosaurs" was produced for a mere $20, yet it emerges as a profound meditation on what it means to be human. I believe that this film offers lessons for all Americans struggling to comprehend our current crisis.
7 comments:
Don may be the bow wave of the new, revamped GOP. After all, if the megabucks crowd all troops over to the Democrats (as they seem to be--witness Obama's unbelievable fundraising), where is the GOP to go except to the Left?
Besides, the GOP has known how to play the populist card effectively for decades. Who knows, in view of the pro-business Obama stance and the inevitable backlash his half-measures will produce, this time the GOP populism might actually be genuine. Sarah Palin's popularity and appeal were all based on that, it's only a matter of time before other Republicans figure out that's the way to go.
"Rise and Fall of the Nazi Dinosaurs" is one of Lang's seminal works.
That $20 video is more entertaining than most $20,000,000 Hollywood productions.
stevestads
You said it, steve. It hit all the action movie cliches -- including the switch to a "spacey" pop song shortly before our hero (or heroes) take a final, irrevocable plunge into action...
I bet Neel Kashkari has never been spoken too like that before. Ex-Goldman and tapped by Hank suggests that GS loved his ass, and that he is as sharp as a button. No one told him that the job (temporary before he went back to i-banking) was gonna be taking sh*t from every congressman in the US for allowing people to take bonuses that probably seemed small to him.
Harry
http://innerworld.ning.com/video/the-hyperdimensional-election
Alright, who painted in the snake oil huckster in Bruegel’s Triumph of Death?
Above, Anonymous posted the link to it. Hoagland’s show.
I’m not sure the link has the whole show, so I dug it up elsewhere. Turns out you can buy it for only $39.95…
Based on Hyperdimensional Physics, Hoagland successfully predicted the historic results of this election almost two years ago! In this production, based on further application of this HD Model, Hoagland now presents never-before-seen clues to what America and the world may expect from this incoming, unique "Hyperdimensional Obama Administration" -- including, what Barack Obama may finally do with NASA's decades of classified data on intelligent artifacts discovered on the Moon and Mars, as well as what could be in store for all of us at the end of Obama's first term ... in "2012."
and I’m embarrassed to say I have watched most of it (somewhere I got sick of Hoagland’s babbling and jumped ahead.)
I guess Hoagland doesn’t talk about much I haven’t looked at one time or another. I am mystified by the fact that as I watch and listen, I am laughing myself to tears so hard I can hardly breathe and at the same time the laugh is trapped inside me as I’m watching what must be the ultimate Aquarian Age Obot putting on his show, loving himself to death as the world upon which I and those I love depend upon for life itself is crumbling in slow motion.
Irony overload, I guess. Looonng ways past the needle being pegged.
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