S and P's Chickens Roosting?

According to the NYT, the Justice department  is going to sue S and P, a "ratings" agency, for fraud in its role in the financial collapse of 2008-9. Of course, all S and P did was rate Collateralized Debt Obligations, which proved to be highly speculative at BEST, as AAA, as high as US debt at the time.  S and P have had the supreme sneering insolence to downgrade the feds since then. Their excuse at the time was that they were only issuing "an opinion" which was no better than any body else's opinion, a self-evidently preposterous claim. One can only hope they get the 'justice' that we would give them, involving jail time and repayment of salaries and bonuses for the Sneering Plutocrats and their lickspittles, toadies, sycophants and lackeys. Because, make no mistake, the impact on our economic environment from this outrageous action was far greater than the impact on our environment from the Transocean/BP/Halliburton oil spill in the Gulf, and the feds charged BP upwards of 30 BILLION DOLLARS FOR THAT.

A GOP Pack of Baying Hounds

One commenter to a NYT article on Hagel's confirmation hearing described the nominee as seeming to be "not very bright." We awake from our self-imposee winter torpor to state unequivocally that  any comparison between Hagel and the room-temperature crowd of baying hounds that represents the Senate GOP inquisitors is immeasurably to Hagel's benefit. We have seldom witnessed such a crowd of chuffed-up baboons outside of the DC zoo. Throughout it all Hagel, who is every bit as right wing as the typical Republican, maintained a air of dignity tinged with a faint air of tristesse as what has become of the GOP. One only has to summon up the cretins: Imhofe, Cruz, Graham (and we say this with an air of sadness ourselves) and most of all, McCain, who has sunk into a mire of degradation such that we have seldom witnessed in a formerly respectable public figure. But perhaps his standing as near the bottom in his class at the USNA, should have foretold this.