www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2BfqDUPL1I

Because of shit like this:

During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.

The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller’s cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts. Wachovia was put under immediate investigation for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme. Of special significance was that the period concerned began in 2004, which coincided with the first escalation of violence along the US-Mexico border that ignited the current drugs war
Criminal proceedings were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual, but the case never came to court.

In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year’s “deferred prosecution” has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. It paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine.

More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn — a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico’s gross national product — into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.

[...]

“For the time period of 1 May 2004 through 31 May 2007, Wachovia processed at least $$373.6bn in CDCs, $4.7bn in bulk cash” – a total of more than $378.3bn, a sum that dwarfs the budgets debated by US state and UK local authorities to provide services to citizens.

So, if I sell an ounce of coke I’ll get ten to twenty years in pound-me-in-the-ass federal prison. If I launder $365 billion dollars worth of drug money then I’d only have to pay $50 million dollar fine. And I’d pay the fine with the $54 billion dollar government bailout.

Goddammit, why can’t I run a fucking bank? I’m educated, I’m white, I can pretend to be doing God’s work. What do those assholes have that I don’t? Oh, that’s right. I’m not well connected.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=55p_4-CdY1w

Que standardize test fraud in three….two…..one….GO!

Someone pinch me because I must be dreaming:

CNN has exclusively learned that Rep. Michele Bachmann will form a presidential exploratory committee. The Minnesota Republican plans to file papers for the committee in early June, with an announcement likely around that same time.

But a source close to the congresswoman said that Bachmann could form the exploratory committee even earlier than June so that she could participate in early Republican presidential debates.

“She’s been telling everyone early summer,” the source told CNN regarding Bachmann’s planned June filing and announcement. But the source said that nothing is static.

“If you [debate sponsors] come to us and say, ‘To be in our debates, you have to have an exploratory committee,’ then we’ll say, ‘Okay, fine…I’ll go file the forms.’”

Three GOP presidential primary debates are planned before and during early June: The first one on May 2 at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California and another on May 5 in South Carolina. CNN plans a GOP presidential primary debate in New Hampshire in early June.

I cannot wait until the 2012 Presidential election. Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Herman Cain, Fred Karger, Buddy Roemer, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, and the “Rent Is Too Damn High” guy are all running for the Republican nomination.

Can you imagine the crazy shit that’ll go down during the Republican primary? Who will praise Jebus more? Who will say they are against abortion the most? Who will blame the gays for ruining the plant the most? Who will talk about the Left Wing media the most? Who will praise Israel the most? Will Newt Gingrich get caught in another affair? Will Donald Trump have to declare his 723 bankruptcy? Will Mike Huckabee’s son torture another dog? Will Mitt Romney leave the Mormon Church?

This is like I woke up early on Christmas to find Jesus and Santa butt fucking each other while Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman make out.

Fuck, I’ve got the strangest boner going on right now.

And here I was thinking they hated us because we unleashed thousands of Jersey Shore clones into the world:

Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of “trophy” photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed.

Senior officials at Nato’s International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US protests around the world.

[...]

In one incident in May last year, the article says, during a patrol, the team apprehended a mullah who was standing by the road and took him into a ditch where they made him kneel down.

The group’s leader, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, then allegedly threw a grenade at the man while an order was given for him to be shot.

Afterwards, Gibbs is described cutting off one of the man’s little fingers and removing a tooth.

[...]

In a statement, the army said it apologised for the distress caused by photographs “depicting actions repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States”.

Holy fucking shit. These assholes tossed a grenade at an unarmed man, shot him in the head, cut off a finger, ripped out a tooth and the only thing the army can say is “Sorry”?

Why aren’t these assholes being held at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia? Why aren’t they being held as a “maximum custody detainee” and held under a “Prevention of Injury” assignment? Why aren’t they being held in a 6 x 12 foot cell with no windows, a bed with no sheets and no pillow?

Oh that’s right, these guys only killed brown people for sport. They didn’t allegedly pass classified information to Wikileaks that embarrassed the government.

Silly me.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3Eg8F3rap4

And he had huge fucking balls of steel.

If you aren’t watching Community then I hope you choke on an elephant’s foreskin.

I wish I got emails like this. [Matt Taibbi]

Goddammit Texas. [Firedoglake]

I wonder if Peter King’s going to hold hearings on this. [Crooks and Liars]

I knew it was all about the oil. [Empire Burlesque]

Fuck Wall Street in their goddamn mouths. [Zero Hedge]

It's okay, he's white.

Glad everything worked out in the end:

An American CIA contractor who shot and killed two Pakistani men was released from prison Wednesday and left Pakistan after more than $2 million in “blood money” was paid to his victims’ families, defusing a dispute that threatened an alliance vital to defeating al-Qaida and ending the Afghan war.

In what appeared to be carefully choreographed end to a crisis that had stoked anti-Americanism to new heights, the U.S. Embassy said the Justice Department had opened an investigation into the killings on Jan. 27 by Raymond Allen Davis.

[...]

Antagonism was especially sharp between the CIA and Pakistan’s powerful Inter Services Intelligence, which says it did not know Davis was operating in the country. One ISI official said the agency had backed the “blood money” deal as a way to soothe tensions.

[...]

The Davis affair had been a staple for right-wing Islamist parties, who rallied around it as another example of U.S. brutality and their government’s subservience to Washington. They had urged the families to reject any “blood money” and called on the government to hang him.

Protesters took to the streets in major cities after nightfall, briefly clashing with police outside the U.S. consulate in Lahore, where officers fired tear gas at men burning tires and hurling rocks. Some called for larger protests Friday after noon prayers.

“I am not ready to buy that the families have struck a deal,” Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief turned cheerleader for right-wing causes, said on a popular TV talk show. “This is shameless surrender. We are being sold and not even told about, I appeal the people not only to condemn it, but also rise against it.

Three things:

1) How the fuck can Hillary Clinton deny that the U.S. made any payments, but not dispute the fact that the men’s families were compensated? Isn’t that the same thing as a teacher denying a female student gave him a blow job, but not disputing the fact that the student had a cum stain on her shirt when she left his class?

2) I love how the AP makes it seem like only fanatic right-wingers in Pakistan are upset over this. Can you imagine the crazy shit that would happen if two U.S. citizens were murdered in Time Square by a deep undercover ISI official? Rednecks, liberals, gang bangers, prostitutes, crack heads, and pedophiles would be coming out of the woods, mansions, slums, cars, cardboard boxes, and play grounds trying to get a piece of the spy.

3) Once again this proves that nobody gives a fuck about brown people.

These rich cocksuckers need to shut the fuck up:

Despite the stock market’s positive performance over the past couple of years, the Fidelity survey found that 42 percent of millionaires still do not feel wealthy, compared to 46 percent, who said they didn’t feel wealthy in 2009. In fact, among those who classified themselves as not feeling wealthy, the investable asset level needed to begin to feel wealthy is $7.5 million.

Jesus fucking Christ on a crispy cracker. I would give my unborn illegitimate son’s left testicle to be a millionaire. Hell, I’d give my daughter’s right ovary just to say I was a hundred-thousandaire.

So what do these asshats have to complain about? They’re not getting enough back in taxes? They can only buy three beach homes? They can only provide their mistresses with C-cups?

I’d love to see how these pampered cuckolds would act if they were forced to work 60 hours a week. I’d love to see their faces when they realize the pension they’ve been working so hard for is gone because some 25-year-old coke fiend blew it all in the derivatives market. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when they had to tell their wives and kids how they lost their job because the company they’ve been working for for 20 years decided to move overseas.

But more importantly, I’d love to see the look in their eyes right before a struggling, unemployed father of three blows their fucking brains out.

This is fucking nuts.

While we were venting our outrage at shenanigans in Wisconsin politics, in fact while Republicans were planning last night’s attempted coup, the Michigan state legislature quietly passed a bill giving the Governor of Michigan martial control over the state. Except instead of using actual military, the Governor is more likely to use private security. But make no mistake–rights would be suspended.

Here’s how it works:

The governor, on his own initiative, can declare an economic emergency in any town and appoint an administrator. The administrator can be any person, including a corporate person.

The administrator has the power to do anything in the name of economic stability, including void contracts, void collective bargaining agreements, dissolve the town council, dissolve the school board, fire anyone including elected officials, hire private security, unincorporate the town, and sell off public property.

The people of the town have no say in this. They can neither demand nor turn away the administrator. That is because this provision is meant to be used against the people.

Could someone with a background in law tell me how the hell this is legal? And could someone from Michigian tell me how the fuck Rick Snyder got elected governor?

Never mind. I found the reason.