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Wednesday, May 16, 2007 12:00 AM

Wolfowitz won't resign? Good

Why should he -- or the Bush administration -- get a face-saving exit deal? The World Bank should fire his ass. Plus: My favorite things on Salon right now.

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Wednesday, May 16, 2007 04:07 PM

Bushco and the Sopranos do have an odd similarity...

Ya know, Omerta and all, except when you need the witness protection program. And, like the Sopranos, in Bushland you either end up in jail or you're whacked.

I think it's great that Wolfie refuses to resign.

World Bank to Wolfie: "Make our Day"

And the graet unravelling continues...

Wednesday, May 16, 2007 04:40 PM

Gotta agree

This is a great week for a free press. Too bad it isn't on the mainstream media. But then I stopped watching that freak show years ago.

Kuddo's for "Who Wants to Be a Waterboarder." Wish I'd thought of that one. I was joining in Wonkette's live blog when the best I could come up with is SNL's "Que es mas macho?"

Wednesday, May 16, 2007 05:28 PM

He shouldn't resign. He didn't do anything wrong.

I am 100% against the Iraq war and should be feeling that anything done to one of its principals is correct. But I can't because having read all points of view on the Wolfowitz-World Bank issue, I believe that he is right (for once, unbelievably it may seem.)

The massive third-world corruption machinery needs to be shut down. It won't hurt the people in the third world because they never get the benefit of the funds allocated for them. It all goes to the Swiss bank accounts of the corrupt third-world leaders. Please don't pretend to me otherwise. And, we, the middle-class of the developed world, have to pick up the tab. And the World Bank class get major benefits indirectly from all this endless corruption from the fees that they receive for processing all these merry-go-round fund transfers and their salaries.

Wolfowitz is actually trying to do something about this. And he must be trampling on some well-guilded toes. Because everybody in the World Bank corruption engine wants him out. And, at this level, a girlfriend-in-a-nice-job scandal is nothing more than an excuse. If this is the only thing that they can find on the guy, he must be pretty clean ethically. Because everybody has their girlfriend in well situated somewhere in the machine. It's one of the reasons that the World Bank was set up in the first place. Mistress protection. So what!

So yes, Mr. Wolfowitz, until I learn otherwise, my instincts are telling me that you are doing the right thing by targeting all this massive corruption in the global financial NGOs.

And tell Bono, that if he is serious about debt relief for the people of the third world, then he ought to be talking to the Swiss about all the stolen money from third-world development projects that is in their banking system. Instead of asking us to write it all off, so they can begin the process of taking it right out of my paycheck another time around.

Keep pissing them off, Paul. Do something good here and we'll reconsider your reserved place against the proverbial wall come the revolution.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007 05:53 PM

Simonetta

...is really onto something here:

Use a poison to cure a poison.

The illness is the solution.

Corruption roots out corruption.

It's positively homeopathic.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007 06:40 PM

Teletubbies Tinky Winker.

I love how the Telly-Tub's say to The World Bank Criminals, "Bye bye, by, by, no, buy, bye-0-bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, and no cry c.i.a. crocodile tears."

O, d.e.a. Sorry, no sorry. I read the WA-war/Po and some of the today's N.Y.T.'s. What days we live in and share. Tubby Tubby says, "Naughty night, by, by, bye, bye."

And only to emerge again from a green 'turf' hillside to say, "Buy no lie, by, by, bye, bye, bye bye, by buy, no lie lie, by bye, buy by, blue bird twinkle fire, bye bye."

And on, and on, and on. But then the TeleTubs Tin Tang Winker say again, "By, Bye, by...Sleep tightly...No let the blueberry bed-bugs bite, bite, a bitty, or bite a Teletubbies Tinker Wonky.

Poor Worfernswatzer. "By, by, by, by, by, bye, bye, bye, bye."

I just was pinching off winter dead blueberry twigs, and poison oak, barren branches, and drank wild honey suckle.

The black honey locust tree is beginning to bloom cream blossoms. Ten it will say, "bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye..."

I could do "Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye," half the night tinkering and winking to fellow deletable-tubs? Why? No bye bye, but stay. It could not hurt. gads, but bye. Bye, bye, no by.

Thursday, May 17, 2007 12:37 AM

Simonetta, you are essentially correct - but it doesn't have to be swiss

i remember one day citibank wrote off a huge parcel of loans. it seemed to me they didn't even peep. to me a tax loss is *something* - but not something *desireable*. i mentioned it to a nigerian student i knew who had connections with the government. he said, this is how it works. the bank gives the loans to the general in charge. he in turn bribes the lesser generals. they all make new accounts at citibank. yes it loses *something* but not that much. the money remains in the bank, just under different names. along with the tax write off it comes out on top. it's disgusting - but now understandable.

Thursday, May 17, 2007 04:26 AM

Don't let the door hit ya

I think Wolfowitz is not only (shockingly) asking for exoneration in spite his obvious personnel code infraction, but is stalling to get the $400,000 bonus he is (was?) slated to receive on June 1. He never was "fit" to lead the World Bank or anything else. He'd have to change more than his management style to win over the employees there. He'd have to morph into someone decent.

That the Bush administration continues to express support for dishonest, dangerous numbnuts like Wolfowitz and Gonzalez (just to name a couple in the news now) is shocking but no longer surprising. Bush rewards him for his part in this abominable "war" in Iraq by giving him a cushy job at the World Bank and he f@%*&s that up, too.

I too want him to be fired. Put his stuff in a cardboard box and send him out the door.

Now on to Tinky Winky . . . . I wish our brave military folks in Iraq had the luxury of reading something fun right now as I do. Instead, for their own greedy, misguided purposes, Wolfowitz, Bush and others have stuck our men and women in a country that we had no business invading. Send Wolfowitz packing and BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW.

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