Comments on: Oh-oh! Cheney featured in an Arthur Andersen's promotional video

Oh-oh! Cheney featured in an Arthur Andersen's promotional video

magullo — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 10:10:20 -0800

Oh-oh! Cheney featured in an Arthur Andersen's promotional video Priceless quote: "I get good advice, if you will, from their people based upon how we're doing business and how we're operating over and above the just sort of normal by-the-book auditing arrangement" . This is getting close to surreal.

By: mikegre

mikegre — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 10:17:50 -0800

*yawn*

By: slater

slater — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 10:17:56 -0800

By: Red58

Red58 — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 10:29:22 -0800

Of course it's not surprising - but a smoking gun is always good to find. I'd love to see Cheney and Bush get pinned for all their pro-business and anti-everyone else efforts.

By: Outlawyr

Outlawyr — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 10:32:58 -0800

That is, if you will, over and above hilarious.

By: nofundy

nofundy — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 10:33:04 -0800

Even Cheney has his moments of complete and total honesty and this is one.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 10:33:44 -0800

*yawn* Oh come on, milkgre. You've got to admit that the words "operating over and above the...normal by-the-book auditing arrangement" are high-larious in the current context.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 10:35:12 -0800

OMFG

By: pardonyou?

pardonyou? — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 10:43:44 -0800

When I read "...good advice, if you will" I picture Cheney making those quote signs in the air and winking: "Andersen gives me 'good advice,' if yaknowwhatImean" And mikegre, you should consider keeping your yawns to yourself.

By: BarneyFifesBullet

BarneyFifesBullet — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 11:04:19 -0800

As usual, we have to go to the BBC for information. It's funny seeing Larry Klayman go after Bush.The Freeper crowd aren't such big Judicial Watch fans these days.Klayman used to be their hero. This

By: BarneyFifesBullet

BarneyFifesBullet — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 11:06:15 -0800

Forgot the link...

By: momus

momus — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 11:11:26 -0800

The WSJ broke this story a while ago. Had good fun with it, too. That's saying a lot considering the source.

By: donkeyschlong

donkeyschlong — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 11:12:52 -0800

Imagine how many canaries would emerge from Tricky Dick's windpipe if one were to perform the Heimlich Maneuver on him.

By: DragonBoy

DragonBoy — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 11:38:32 -0800

Dick Cheney: Tricky Dick II? Just who in this administration is not a crook?

By: th3ph17

th3ph17 — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 11:40:32 -0800

setting up a dummy company: $$[actual amount hidden in accounting books] buying the dummy company to create a loss: $$[more than you spent on setting it up in the first palce] selling your stock before it crashes: $$[lots more than your employees & shareholders] having the documentation shredded: What documentation? not being busted cause you are either the president or a good buddy: Priceless. for some things in life there is Arthur Anderson. for everything else, its good to be da prez. [another nail pried out of the coffin of a tired old meme]

By: thomcatspike

thomcatspike — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 11:41:36 -0800

per the article Halliburton - describes how Andersen gave advice "over and above" what would normally be expected from auditors Halliburton is his company, right. So if I paid for a service and they served me ethically what news is this, since I paid for it, the truth. Maybe he paid extra for the ethics. And speaking of I mentioned (about Cheney on Larry King) this before and I'm still waiting. Some of these threads would be tighter if we stringed them together.

By: thomcatspike

thomcatspike — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 11:43:06 -0800

add "loose" before threads

By: TBoneMcCool

TBoneMcCool — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 11:49:13 -0800

So I wonder what's worse: having an administration in bed with a bunch of arrogant corporate thieves, or having an administration that somehow believes that the American public won't notice.

By: jcterminal

jcterminal — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 12:06:50 -0800

yet another reason to laugh at all those idiots with the 'bush/cheney' stickers on their cars.

By: skallas

skallas — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 12:17:17 -0800

Will voters care? Or even notice? Cheney could take a dump right now on the White House lawn and it wouldnt make much of a difference it seems.,

By: y2karl

y2karl — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 12:30:45 -0800

I'm just worried how poor cheneychick is taking this...

By: evanizer

evanizer — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 12:41:59 -0800

He'll probably weasel his way out of the 'scandal' the same way your pals Bill and Hillary managed to squirm out of Whitewater-based wrongdoing.

By: UncleFes

UncleFes — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 12:47:44 -0800

Speaking as a guy who works with financial consultants of all stripes...? Accounting is an art, not a science. Our eminently buyable legislature has created a monstrous and hideously complex tax code, cobbled it to a set of accounting "standards" that are both open to variable interpretation and continually evolving, and put a fairly toothless and undermanned regulation system over it all to guard it. In the meantime, the flood of regular-guy (meaning, fairly unsophisticated) investors and those who feed on them (analysts, brokers, day-trading facilitators) took five years of 20%+ annual rates of return off tech stocks that thrived precisely because of the previously-described environment. But this environment has been decades in the making - there isn't a president, VP, congressman, or senator that hasn't taken money from somewhere. Democrats? Republicans? Nah, they're all the Green Party, but not the one with Nader. It's disingenuous to decry the "criminals" of Enron, WorldCom, and Anderson when not long ago it was these companies and others like them that were filling the pockets of both Congress and a great many Americans. Now that the gravy train is over, it's a crime? Pfui. It was a crime before, most of us just took our 401(k) payoff and could barely be bothered to hold our noses. Call Captain Renault, it's time to round up the usual suspects.

By: riviera

riviera — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 12:48:48 -0800

He'll probably weasel his way out of the 'scandal' the same way your pals Bill and Hillary managed to squirm out of Whitewater-based wrongdoing. I hope that by 'the same way' you mean 'after a hugely expensive multi-year investigation that places every peccadillo of Cheney's existence under painful, microscopic examination, while dominating the interest of the media', evanizer. Otherwise, you're talking shite.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 13:02:09 -0800

He'll probably weasel his way out of the 'scandal' the same way your pals Bill and Hillary managed to squirm out of Whitewater-based wrongdoing.
oooh! i HOPE so! i'm dying to find out who's wearing the stained blue dress in THIS scandal! i suspect it's asscroft!

By: th3ph17

th3ph17 — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 13:06:00 -0800

oh y2karl, a link that that just before lunch? arrrg. i think skallas is right though...i live in a pretty heavy duty Bush supporting area, and everyone just sort of blinks at you and won't say anything. No difference. They can do whatever they want right now as long as they stick to their ever massage-oily under the table treatment of their Moral Majority and Corporate supporters...they are fine. and riveria, i will even start to believe in a god so that i can pray to her if it would keep me or anyone else from having to view Cheney's pecadillo under a microscope. Something like please god no.

By: muppetboy

muppetboy — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 13:35:43 -0800

"As usual, we have to go to the BBC for information." Yeah, I generally read BBC first. US media smacks of Politburo propaganda these days. It's not very realistic.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 13:47:32 -0800

Well said, UncleFes. Today's hero is often tomorrow's heel.

By: Ty Webb

Ty Webb — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 13:58:32 -0800

evanizer:He'll probably weasel his way out of the 'scandal' the same way your pals Bill and Hillary managed to squirm out of Whitewater-based wrongdoing. Yeah, 8 years and $70 million later. You call that squirming out? Let's hope it takes at least that long for Cheney and Bush to "squirm out." Fes: Now that the gravy train is over, it's a crime? Pfui. It was a crime before, most of us just took our 401(k) payoff and could barely be bothered to hold our noses. You seem to be offering this as an excuse, but I read it as a condemnation.

By: matteo

matteo — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 13:58:55 -0800

I want to make a confession: I am passionately and uncontrollably in love with Dick Cheney... ...In a funny way, the undisclosed-safe-location weekends just add a frisson of stolen pleasure to the roiling emotions we share. There. I've said it. I can't hide it anymore. Susan Orlean in the New Yorker. Kinda fun.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 14:40:33 -0800

By: y2karl

y2karl — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 14:45:14 -0800

And I beg you, don't even mention the Men of Enron. With them and me, it's more of an animal thing, more of an actual physical need, an ache so intense it almost hurts. I happened to mention this ache to my internist the other day—just casually, of course, so as not to alarm her, and also because I recently got new health insurance and didn't want to have to name a date of onset of this ache, because it might be construed as a preëxisting condition, which means, of course, that they (my insurance company, not the Men of Enron) would give me nothing for it. That isn't the issue, anyway—I'm not looking for the co-pay or even eighty-per-cent coverage after the deductible; it's different from that—it's wild, it's mad, it's hunger. It's a huge thing; it's bigger than just my urges for K. and J. and A.; it's them, of course, but it's also the he-men in the Death Star/Fat Boy energy-trading unit and the smoldering hunks in accounting and LMJ II. I don't know who I want the most among them, and I don't care, when I feel like this. It's springtime. I am Love. I need nothing more. I suppose it's possible--according to my latest porn spam, 103,875 folks have signed up for Extreme Animal Action, so you never know...

By: UncleFes

UncleFes — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 15:09:26 -0800

You seem to be offering this as an excuse, but I read it as a condemnation. It is the latter, of the ease with which money creates silence in the face of corruption and perfidy, the bloated combination of cupidity and arrogance that marks our purported leaders, and the rodentine speed with which they turn on their benefactors when the river of cash stops flowing.

By: ljromanoff

ljromanoff — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 15:12:25 -0800

All Bush and Cheney did with Harken/Aloha and Halliburton was commit fraud and lie about it. I'm glad your all-knowing clairvoyance is in full effect and we won't have to bother with all those nuisances like gathering evidence or having trials. Maybe you should apply for a job in John Ashcroft's office, he could use someone like you.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 15:51:06 -0800

LOL! Touche! If Ashcroft will let me write the lyrics to his DOJ singalongs, I'm there!

By: Summer

Summer — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 16:23:28 -0800

Yeah, I generally read BBC first. US media smacks of Politburo propaganda these days. It's not very realistic. It's funny, this is all over the UK new bulletins today, even on Sky. I can't imagine most people here either know or care who Cheney is or what he's done. The media just likes it when American officialdom fucks up. The LA police beating is also big, big news here too.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 18:16:19 -0800

just wait until the LA police beat dick cheney.

By: KirkJobSluder

KirkJobSluder — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 21:11:47 -0800

skallas is right, the majority of the voters will not care and probably not even notice. If there was no public outrage over the intelligence and policy failures of 9/11, why would there be any over this? 3000 people died but no one was fired and it doesn't look like there will be an independent investigation. All Bush and Cheney did with Harken/Aloha and Halliburton was commit fraud and lie about it. The American people simply will not hold the government accountable for their failures and misdeeds. Consequently the government, meglomaniacs by definition, can and will do whatever they want. It's really quite sad. I don't know. It is fairly easy to explain away the intelligence failures as simply a bureaucratic failure based on bureaucratic incompetence dealing with too much information. And this is not the first time that the government failed to connect the dots and prevent an attack (Pearl Harbor). It is quite a bit more difficult to justify cooking the books of a large Corporation in order to create a phantom profit as an honest mistake.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 23:51:27 -0800

True, but the consequences of the intelligence failures were much more severe and I find the lack of a demand for an independent investigation suprising. And you could argue that the book cooking was business as usual. I'm just dismayed by the apathy towards all these events by the majority of the public, and I'm afraid it gives a green light to the baser instincts of those in power.

By: niceness

niceness — Thu, 11 Jul 2002 04:08:02 -0800

Voter apathy will be swayed by an economy in crisis one would hope. Bush's speech was supposed to steady the markets but succeeded only to make things worse: confidence in mistrusting markets can't be restored by a President who's 'brand-attributes' are big-business and ignorance. The more Bush talks business the further he highlights his hypocrisy - he's flaky. And he can't exactly leave it to his colleagues to do the talking (Colin Powell might be stretching it a bit). And the markets keep on falling. But wait. What could possibly keep a story this big off the front pages? Good job George kept a 'war' on the back-burner - always knew it would come in handy before the next election.

By: nofundy

nofundy — Thu, 11 Jul 2002 05:22:08 -0800

So I wonder what's worse: having an administration in bed with a bunch of arrogant corporate thieves, or having an administration that somehow believes that the American public won't notice. To state the obvious, that's one choice we don't have to make with this regime.