GRIM REAPER TAKES VATICAN TO COURT

How in God’s name did The Vatican ever get sovereign status?

Oh, that’s right, they got it in God’s name.

Well guess what Pope?  At least the Dutch have demonstrated that they recognize the utter farce of giving The Vatican and it’s minions sovereign immunity, when Belgium police recently raided church property to seize evidence, and then held local Catholic bishops in custody in order to interrogate them regarding sex abuse of children by it’s clerics.

Then on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court was silent on The Vatican claim that is was entitled to hide behind the shield of immunity, allowing a Federal Appellate Court’s ruling against the Church to stand.   Finally, their day of legal reckoning is near at hand.

As we like to say here in America, “See you in court, Pope.” 

Oh, and Hell is not too far behind.  

Remember: Bring your own ice.

VATICAN CITY - a monument to religious exploitation and corruption

The Vatican’s Prosecutor for Clerical Sex Abuse had the utter temerity to announce that it’s pedophile priests will suffer eternal damnation in Hell for their sins.

It’s time the Vatican look in the mirror, if they want to talk about eternal damnation.  Besides, the Pope already vicariously damned humanity some ten years ago in his declaration titled DOMINUS IESUS.  Does he not now possess the spiritual courage to turn his own judgment upon himself?

Any mea culpa (apology) forthcoming – and rumors have it that the Pope is preparing one - should best fall on deaf ears.  It would be like O.J. Simpson admitting today that he murdered his wife.  We can choose to forgive.  But in situations like these, we should never forget who offered the apology; sociopathological humans are only interested in preserving their own well-being – most often to the detriment of all others.

Want further proof?  Here is another Vatican document from 2000, that serves to underscore the hypocrisy of these men and their institution – the INTERVENTION BY THE HOLY SEE DELEGATION AT THE II CONFERENCE ON THE COMMERCIAL EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN. 

It’s so pathetic, you are not sure whether to laugh or cry.  Brace yourself.  Here are some select quotes from that document:

“Children are by nature lovely, innocent, and trusting of adults, yet some of them are today increasingly robbed of their very childhood . . . [they] are never consenting sexual partners; they are always victims.  The Convention on the Rights of the Child underlines this fact: the best interest of the child is always the key.”  (So why did you bury these allegations on at least one occasion, stating that “the good of the universal church” was an important consideration - as in more important than the best interest of children)?

“Sexual abuse is evil, a criminal act, and punishable.”  (So why didn’t you affirm this universally-accepted principle over the past fifty years, by ordering the clergy to immediately report any allegations of sexual abuse of children by your priests to legal authorities)?

“We must gather much more political will to combat these crimes against our weakest, and we must strengthen both international law, instruments of extradition and extra-territoriality.”  (One must then conclude that Jeffrey Lena, the U.S. lawyer representing the Pope and The Vatican, has not been apprised of this position given that he has raised the doctrine of sovereign immunity as a defense against any and all legal liability in the matter of John V. Doe v. The Holy See)?

Once we see human beings as objects, once we forget that they have been created by God with an unalienable dignity, they can simply be used and abused. Sexual abuse of children is the logical extreme of such a view of the human being.  (So after intentionally objectifying human beings for over one thousand years in furtherance of it’s agenda to wield spiritual power over mankind, and for its own financial gain, we should not be surprised that The Vatican’s tolereance of the sexual abuse of children by its own clergy was a “logical extension” of that view?  That actually makes perfect sense in this context.)

“We must foster . . . ‘the reinforcement of positive cultural, religious and moral values and practices, which protect and promote the rights and the dignity of both girls and boys’.”  (So where were those values and practices for the past one thousand years)?

Memo to the Pope and the Vatican:  Some human beings have now expressly decided to eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge.  In our quest, we have awakened to the understanding that it is high time for the viper to slither down from the apple tree, and crawl back under the rock from whence it came. 

Metaphorically speaking, the Devil’s identity has been sufficiently revealed.

It’s time for you to go (back) to Hell . . . forever.

DID WATCHING PORN CAUSE THE FINANCIAL CRISIS?

This author was highly critical of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) limp-dicked response to the Bank of America bailout scandal  – here, here, here, and especially HERE - which was finally settled several months ago. 

Federal Judge Jed Rakoff was incensed at the SEC’s handling of that case – and he publicly admonished SEC lawyers and regulators in a series of blistering critiques at their apparently cozy relationship with BoA executives and lawyers in trying to reach a settlement in that matter.  Click on the link above to read the judges comments. 

At least Judge Rakoff demonstrated that he has balls, and he vicariously told the SEC in no uncertain terms that they need to grow some testicles.  I guess they got the message, in light of their recent case filed against Goldman Sachs.

And speaking of SEC testicles . . .

While Bernie Madoff was screwing his investors out of $50 Billion, and Goldman Sachs was screwing the rest of the world out of whatever money remained, SEC lawyers and high-ranking officials were watching porn stars screw one another.

And then we all got screwed – up the A$$!

Responding to the scandal, SEC spokesman John Nester released a statement that said, “each of the offending employees has been disciplined or is in the process of being disciplined.”
 

WAIT A MINUTE!?!

Doesn’t SEC Chairman Mary Shapiro realize that is exactly what these naughty boys want - punishment?  Wonder if she used her bare hand, or a whip?

“Oooh, Mary baby . . . I’m a such bad boy.  Pleezzze, spank me real hard.  Pleeezzze?!?”

What a bunch of jack-offs – both literally and figuratively speaking.

On a final note:  one of the SEC porn-watchers was a female staff accountant .  An chance someone from the SEC can send me her email address and phone number?  :)

P.S.  To Senator Chuck Grassley and all of you other Republicans trying to use this as political fodder for undermining financial reform - this porn scandal happened on former SEC Chairman Christopher Cox’s watch.  He was a Bush Republican appointee, confirmed by a Republican-controlled Senate!

“You shall not merely be deported. You shall be killed..And this will be your punishment for your killing of our saviour.”

              – Slovakian Catholic Archbishop Karol Kmetko, responding to Jewish plea for assistance from Nazi persecution (March of 1942)
 

The Vatican has now reached a all-time low in it’s attempts to silence critics of its vain crusade to exculpate itself from any responsibility for 50+ years of a perpetual international criminal conspiracy to cover-up the widespread existence of pedophiles among it’s clergy.

This author posted several recent entries, here and here, providing undeniable proof demonstrating the Church’s willful and wanton actions to conceal evidence of these incomprehensible moral and legal crimes against children all over the world.  Moreover, the Vatican and it’s proxies further facilitated these reprehensible acts by allowing pedophile priests to continue in their vocation, thereby allowing them to further sexually molest other innocent children. 

All in the name of God.

In response to it’s indefensible and unconscionable acts, the Vatican is now comparing criticism of it’s scandalous behavior to anti-Semitism.   So like changing water into wine, I now have been miraculously converted into the likes of an anti-Semite merely because I have assisted in exposing the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy?

How utterly despicable. 

Notwithstanding historical evidence of anti-Semitism within its own ranks, coupled with a papal apology for the Church’s contribution to the Nazi Holocaust, what is most paradoxical are the uncanny similarities in which two of the greatest crimes against humanity – the Holocaust, and now this global Catholic pedophilia conspiracy – were both denied by their respective perpetrators.  In the case of the former, by the German people; in the case of the latter, by The Vatican.

The comparisons stop there.  In the case of the German people, at least they voluntarily worked up the courage to accept responsibility when faced with the overwhelming evidence of the horrific crimes committed by their government while they idly stood by and did nothing.  Their ongoing repentance has garnered a remarkable forgiveness from the rest of the world as time has gone on.  Germany has even gone so far as to criminalize anti-Semitic behavior, as well as Holocaust denial.

In contrast, these cowardly ploys by the Vatican to demonize it’s detractors only further serves to demonstrate the deep denial that masks the manifest socio-pathological condition that envelopes this evil organization.  One can expect nothing less from such a spiritually-corrupt, and morally bankrupt institution.  The hour is now way too late for any apology.

The Vatican’s acts speak for themselves.

 ATTICUS FINCH (Gregory Peck) in “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

Hardly!

Why?  Because she advocates the use of fear that rises to the level of McCarthyism, as demonstrated in the recent video released by her political organization, Keep America Safe. 

A significant number of well-respected Conservatives have deeply criticized the video’s characterization of current Justice Department lawyers as Un-American because of their previous legal representation of suspected terrorist detainees.  One of the greatest callings in the American legal system is defending both the unpopular and the guilty. This role is epitomized by the lawyer Atticus Finch in the movie “To Kill a Mockingbird“, rated as the best courtroom movie of all time by the American Film Institute.

Liz Cheney is a lawyer.  If she attended her classes in law school, she should have a basic understanding of the Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court precedent, as well as the principles of American Jurisprudence, all of which ensure due process for everyone who is charged with a violation of the laws of the United States, regardless of citizenship.  Her failure to grasp those most fundamental principles of the American justice system only further undermines any semblance of credibility regarding her legal or political opinion. 

One of her former law professors, the esteemed Richard A. Epstein, of the University of Chicago School of Law. said it best:  “There’s something truly bizarre about this.”  Which only begs the question:  Is she a moron, or just pathologically shameless and void of any conscience?  Maybe it runs in the family?

Most importantly, however, is the real reason why Liz Cheney cannot “Keep America Safe”. 

If she relies on the argument that America was much safer from an attack by terrorists during her father’s tenure with the Bush Administration, one need look no further than the Presidential Daily Brief of August 6, 2001, titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”, in order to completely discredit this notion.  Her father publicly admitted in May of 2002 on Fox News that he read the brief, and then attempted in vain to dismiss it’s warnings as inconclusive, while simultanously advocating that the brief not be released for public disclosure.   Interesting . . .

As this author has pointed out in the post titled “Failing to Connect the Dots: The Lights Were Blinking Red“, that evidence is the most damning indictment of Dick Cheney’s part in the collective negligence of the Bush Administration’s failure to prevent the attacks on 9/11.  No wonder he did not want you to read it’s contents.  To compound matters even further was their colossal failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden at the battle of Tora Bora, Afghanistan in December of 2001.  Simply put, Dick Cheney obviously has no valid standing to criticize the Obama Administration’s policies regarding terrorism and the prosecution of terrorists.

By extension, as well as by her own volition, neither does Liz Cheney. 

Case closed.

DOES THIS STONER LOOK UNBEATABLE TO YOU?

If you accept the conclusions underlying the U.S. drug policies opposing the use of marijuana, then you should find this story a little ironic. 

If you do not accept the conclusions underlying the U.S. drug policies opposing the use of marijuana, you still should find this story a little ironic.

It seems Lance Mackey, the current consecutive three-time Champion of the Alaskan Iditarod dog-sled race, openly admits he uses medical marijuana while he races.  In a competition where they have never previously drug-tested the participants – although they have had a policy prohibiting the use of alcohol or illegal drugs - the organizers of the Iditarod have now declared that they will administer random drug testing during the race  (Note: the dogs have been tested for performance-enhancing drugs [PED's] since 1994).  

So now marijuana is a PED?

Look.  I have serious doubts about whether riding on a snow-sled in sub-zero temperatures for fifteen straight days while stoned out of your freakin’ gourd gives anyone a distinct competitive advantage.  If anything, I would think there is a much higher (no pun intended) likelihood they might find the guy frozen to death out in the middle of the Arctic while his dogs are trying to lick that stupid smile off his face.  After all – according to opponents of legalizing marijuana -  smoking pot makes one both lethargic and unmotivated, as well as affecting their judgment and ability to think.

Conclusion:  If you cannot beat a person who is stoned for three straight (pun intended) years in the Iditarod, you need to just “throw in the towel” guys.

Or taking up smoking pot.

S.E.C. LAWYERS’ GRADUATION CLASSES: 1999-2008

If you hired a security guard to watch your house, and it kept getting burglarized – even after someone told him countless times who the thief was – would you let him keep his job?

Stupid question, you say?  Really? 

So why do we keep the same morons on our government payroll to watch the financial markets?  Now that is a good question.  And there really is a simple answer.  The foxes make sure to instruct their under-lords to have those dumb sharecropper farmers whom they pay beggars wages to for working their land, to keep that same old deaf and blind dog guarding the chicken coop.  This metaphor should not be lost on anyone.

Bernie Madoff may be a household word – and one of Time magazines 2009 Top 100 people who affected the world.  But Harry Markopolus is just another quiet hero in a global financial market run by pimps and whores.  Markopolus has a new book coming out today called, “No One Would Listen“.  The book chronicles the story of how Markopolus doggedly pursued a fraud case against Bernie Madoff from 1999 through 2008 by trying to get the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawyers to investigate Madoff’s House of Cards.  All to no avail. 

WTF you might ask?  At least that’s what I have been saying since this story first broke in early 2009 when Markopolus testified before Congress (you can read his testimony right here), and then was interviewed by CBS’s 60 Minutes. 

 This is beyond a comedy of errors.  This is Dumb and Dumber, The Three Stooges, and Beevis and Butthead all working in concert to unwittingly thwart one another while the criminals continued to steal from us with unbridled impunity.  Now is that not a terrifying image?  Meet your S.E.C., America.  Wall Street owns these guys.

Starting in 1999, Markopolus made several attempts to give the most fundamental proof of Madoff’s fraud to numerous investigators at the S.E.C. - all of which was either willfully or woefully ignored (Markopolus calls them “idiots” – that is too kind, don’t you think, Sarah Palin? I would have called them retards).  By 2007, he was fed up with their wanton stupidity, and decided to document it by submitting a nineteen (19) page memorandum to the S.E.C. outlining the basis for his claim.  That too, was ignored.

View the complete 60 Minutes interview with Markopolos - or just watch the real BOMBSHELL from minute 7:25 to 8:18 of the interview.  That brief one minute segment is incomprehensible.   And you wonder why so many investors were “Madoffed” by Bernie?

So after all this, has anything changed?

Hell no! 

Harry Markopolus is still trying to settle his first big whistle-blower case, he has spent years living in fear, and yet he remains undeterred in his dogged pursuit of financial racketeers and corporate fraudsters.  Of course, his new book should help keep his wife and young boys fed until payday comes.  Ironically, Markopolus refers to himself as a “$50 Billion dollar failure”- because he could not get the S.E.C. to listen.  One might conclude that he is being flippant, since he all but beat them over the head with his evidence.  However, he is serious about characterizing this as his “failure” - he honestly takes it very personally that all these people were hurt by Madoff’s fraud in the face of the S.E.C.’s utter incompetence.  

You just have to love this man.  After all this, the crooks and the “police” shirk responsibility, and the hero feels guilty?  And you wonder why it seems the world has started spinning in the other direction?

Meanwhile, back at the S.E.C., they are still re-disorganizing the deck chairs on the U.S.S. Financial Titanic, and there should be smooth sailing on the calm seas of Neo-Capitalism all the way back to port.  No need to worry.  They have their securities regulation minions fast asleep on night watch while the next massive financial iceberg awaits in the darkness.  And brace yourself, because this next one’s really going to be a doozy folks. 

In the meantime, bring them some Dom Perignon, the exquisite pate’, and that rare Russian escargot they just had imported, all paid for with your financial bailouts.  And don’t forget to put that on a silver platter. 

Oh, they almost forgot to mention it.  You can ignore the water rising on the Italian marble dining room floor.  That’s just from the watered-down financial regulation reform we are about to get from Wall Street’s wholly-owned public subsidiary, Congress.  They have the S.E.C working on that minor leak down in the hull right now. 

One Final Note: please do not bother counting the number of lifeboats.  Those seats have all been reserved.

Enjoy the cruise. 

P.S.  They saved several seats in the lifeboats for the S.E.C. lawyers.  You didn’t really think the Financial Terrorists were going to row those things themselves, did you?

THE ONE MAN WITH BIG ENOUGH BALLS TO TAKE ON WALL STREET

Calling the Security and Exchange Commission’s legal settlement with Bank of America (BoA) “half-baked justice at best“, U.S. District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff reluctantly signed-off on the agreement between the two parties on Monday, writing in his order that “[t]his court, while shaking its head, grants the S.E.C.’s motion and approves the proposed consent judgment.”

 Judge Rakoff is a true American Maverick, and a champion for American public shareholders.  

I am not talking about some half-baked Sarah “Pretender” Palin maverick.  This man is the real deal – and you can take that to the bank.  Just don’t deposit it with Bank of America.  Because when it comes to the truth, BoA  – like the rest of the Wall Street Financial Terrorists – has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it simply cannot be trusted.  

On several occasions this author has commented, here and here regarding the ongoing feud between that  limp-dicked, impotent icon of American investor protection - the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.) - and Judge Rakoff, over this settlement of Bank of America’s failure to disclose critical information in it’s SEC stock disclosure filings regarding the Merrill Lynch merger. 

BoA shareholders were entitled to know the scale of Merrill Lynch’s liabilities, as well as the size of the bonuses that were to be paid to Merrill’s top executives, before approving the merger.  However, none of that was disclosed in the filing, and BoA is blaming it’s former top legal counsel for it’s ostensibly innocent error in judgment. 

During one of those previous court hearings, the Judge voiced his utter contempt for claims by both BoA and the SEC that none of the BoA executives were culpable for the material non-disclosure.  He was further incensed over the irony that it would be BoA’s shareholders who would ultimately be the ones who were financially punished because the bank would have to pay the fines out of it’s profits, thus further diminishing the value of the shareholders stock.  The judge lamented this fact, having preferred that BoA’s top executives pay the fines.   Nonetheless, he begrudgingly approved the settlement.

Judge Rakoff is also currently presiding over a pending civil matter against J.P. Morgan Chase.  In the order he issued on January 28, 2010 in that case, the Judge wrote that “JP Morgan thereby violated, at a minimum, the covenant of good faith and fair dealing” when it obviously attempted to structure a deal with one client in an effort to position itself so as to benefit another client in the same industry – a clear conflict of interest.  The judge noted that “such an end run, if not a down right sham , is not permissable . . .”, insinuating J.P. Morgan committed fraud.

Felix Salmon, a well respected business writer and blogger, wrote a good analysis of Morgan’s corrupt business dealings in the matter titled How J.P. Morgan treats its clients: scandalously and in bad faith.  As another writer so eloquently put it, “[w]e have entered a period of grotesque decadence in the financial and business dealings of those who brought us the great financial calamities.”

In the final irony in the BoA case, both the S.E.C. and Bank of America expressed just how pleased they were with the settlement.  I’ll bet they were.  Now the question becomes, when will the S.E.C. lawyers who worked on this case retire from “government service”, and take jobs with BoA or one of the other of the Wall Street Terrorist Organizations ?  Anyone want to take a bet that this doesn’t happen? 

I welcome any and all takers.  And I will be laughing all the way to the bank when I win that bet.  Just hope you were smart enough to hedge that wager Goldman Sachs-style by betting that I won’t be depositing my winnings in BoA.  Because I won’t.  Judge Rakoff would be disgusted with me, and rightfully so.

Thank Goodness We Have At Least One Man With Balls On Our Side! 

Now the rest of you government weenies and politicians - grow some freakin’ testicles.

It would take a really big washrag to wipe that huge grin off my face right now. 

Click here and here – then read ScrewedUS.com Memo to Dick Cheney.

Don’t you just love life’s little ironies?

THE RISE OF THE CORPORATE-AMERICAN [from TOM TOMORROW'S "MODERN WORLD" - published at Salon.com]

Here are the clones your U.S. Supreme Court truly elevated to the status of human beings in order to finally ensure that justice prevails – in other words, that Freedom of Speech and the political system can be bought and owned by the highest bidders. 

Now how soon do the other four seats on the court go up for sale?  Our corporations deserve to speak with one voice, and they now have the right ($$$) to make sure it’s the only voice heard!

Enjoy your democracy while it lasts, America.