HOW COME NON OF THESE BASTARDS AREN'T IN JAIL? N O W!!!!

Matt Taibbi's New Takedown Of Goldman Sachs Is Out

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It's been almost two years since Rolling Stone first published Matt Taibbi's takedown of Goldman Sachs, "The Great American Bubble Machine."
Yes, the story which gave birth to the one of the most vivid (and hyperbolic) sentences ever: "The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
Unfortunately for Goldman, it stuck.
So they can't be too excited for the latest issue of Rolling Stone, in which Taibbi's latest Goldman assault features.
"The People vs. Goldman Sachs," is already online.
The story argues that the Senate subcommittee’s report on the financial crisis "is enough evidence for Goldman Sachs to stand trial."
And we can't say, after the "Bubble Machine" opening paragraph, that we're surprised by the opening to the latest piece:

They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.

Somewhere deep inside Goldman HQ, Lucas Van Praag and his crew, are hunkering down

As the NBA Playoffs press on, can we ignore the Miami Heat?

As we hit the one-year anniversary of what the PD's Bill Livingston has dubbed "Quitness Day," it seems more and more likely that our former friend LeBron James is going to have the last laugh.
And the whole thing is making me sick.
As I wrote last week on WFNY, what a difference a year makes. Monday night, because the Indians had an off-day, I made the ill-advised decision to watch Game 4 of the Heat-Celtics series from Boston. With Miami up 2-1, the Celtics really needed to grab this one to keep their hopes alive for winning the series. It was a close one throughout, but as the game grew longer, I found myself increasingly reacting as if I was watching one of my own teams. My hatred for the Heat has reached a peak level, even worse than the day LeBron came back in December to disgrace us, and I even uttered "this is more proof that there is no such thing as karma" after that night.
The worst part about the game? LeBron James was spectacular. We've seen this before, but it used to be fun when he was using his forces for (what we thought was) good and not for evil.
So there I was, openly and loudly rooting for Kevin Garnett, my alltime LEAST favorite athlete until last summer. Did he come through for me, or for any of us for that matter? Of course not. Not only did he go 1-10 from the field in the most important game of the season, but he failed to set the pick on the final play in regulation which was set for Paul Pierce to get to his sweet spot for a game-winning, buzzer-beating shot attempt. Oh, and he was abused by noted softie Chris Bosh the entire second half and overtime. On top of all of that, KG looked old doing so. Monday Night's OT loss looked like the end of the road "The Big Three" in Boston.
A year too late of course.
This is the perfect storm for LeBron, and that is depressing as a Cleveland sports fan. His Heat team caught a tired and injured Celtics club that made questionable moves at the trade deadline that hurt their chances this year. The Chicago Bulls look a lot like the Cavs teams of previous few seasons – one great player surrounded by role players who have played tighter in the postseason. Need proof? They are having trouble with the Atlanta Hawks. In the West, the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Lakers have flamed out in epic fashion. The top-seeded San Antonio Spurs were upset by the eighth-seeded Memphis Grizzlies and like the Celtics, looked slow and old while doing so.
There is a clear changing of the guard in the NBA, and it's nauseating.
The fact that LeBron James may be vindicated just one season after he quit on the city of Cleveland is everything that is wrong with the NBA. He had a plan, long in place while we were all blindly loyal to him, defending his actions at every turn, and he executed it (and us in the process). As much as I loved the grit and fire of what Dan Gilbert said in the infamous Comic Sans note, imagine how ill he is going to be if the Heat finishes off this potentially easy walk to a title? LeBron will have played the ultimate "F you" card on him.
Can this really be happening to us? Can LeBron really have this easy of a path to a title in his first year in Miami? Is this going to be worse for Clevelanders than watching Art Modell hoist the Lombardi Trophy with a team that should have been ours?
I don't mean to depress all of you, I just want to properly prepare you for what could be happening. So what should we do?
I would advise completely tuning out the NBA (other than the lottery which comes up on May 17^th) until the June draft. Concentrate on the best thing going in our town right now: the first place Cleveland Indians. Try to forget about that team down south with its three divas who may be cutting down some nets in the near future.
Its either that, or turn yourself into a big time Dallas Mavericks fan.

WHAT THE WEST WING IS READING - Ruth "The Truth" Marcus column on the WashPost op-ed page, "Boehner's unreality check": "It is all but impossible to get this done in the available time. It certainly can't be accomplished on Boehner's unbending, no-new-taxes terms. And if the speaker truly believes that it would be 'more irresponsible' to raise the debt ceiling without instituting deficit-reduction measures than not to raise it at all, we're in a heap of trouble. Even more alarming ... is the incoherent, impervious-to-facts economic philosophy undergirding Boehner's remarks." http://wapo.st/mGVI2Q

--N.Y. Times editorial, "Republican Demands and the Debt Limit: Mr. Boehner misdiagnosed the problem and offered rhetoric for the cure": "There is no way to solve the country's fiscal ills without an accurate diagnosis and rigorous prescriptions for a cure. Mr. Boehner's speech was devoid of both." http://nyti.ms/mPs2IF

--A TOUGH NEWS STORY - "Boehner's Views on Economy Contradicted by Indicators, Studies," by Bloomberg's James Rowley and Mike Dorning: "Boehner, giving Wall Street leaders his prescriptions for growing the U.S. economy and reducing the nation's debt, built his case on several assertions that are contradicted by market indicators and government reports. ... Boehner's statement ... that government spending 'is crowding out private investment and threatening the availability of capital' runs counter to the behavior of credit markets. ... The cost of borrowing is low by historical standards. ... Boehner ... said the 2009 stimulus program 'hampered job creation in our country,' a view at odds with the Congressional Budget Office's findings last August. The stimulus package increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million and cut unemployment by between 0.7 percentage point and 1.8 percentage point, according to CBO." http://bloom.bg/lvzyrY