Fuhgetaboutit

“You say, ‘I don’t remember.’ You can say, ‘I can’t recall. I can’t give an answer to that, that I can recall.’” – Richard M. Nixon, brainstorming with aides on how to tailor grand jury testimony

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald indicated last week he may call Vice President Dick Cheney to testify about his “state of mind” when he gave instructions to his former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who has been indicted for perjury.

It is of course, Scooter’s state of mind that is an element of the offenses with which he is charged. He claims that his misstatements regarding conversations he had with Judy Miller, Joe Cooper and Tim Russert are the products of a faulty memory.

A key element of Libby's defense is that he was too preoccupied with heady, national security issues to leak Plame's CIA affiliation to reporters as a way to strike back at her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for his criticism of the administration's push to invade Iraq.

When Presidential buddy, and convicted criminal Kenneth “Kenny-boy” Lay testified in his own trial, he said he didn't remember being told about any rules governing the use of loan money by banks to buy stock.

“I don't recall them ever coming to my attention we were not in compliance with any of those loan agreements,” Lay said. “I can't categorically say somebody didn't, but I sure can't recall.”

Lay said even though he received periodic reports about the loans, he didn't really read the entire documents and focused primarily on the remaining balances “to have something in my head.”

He denied trying to be deceptive. “It was not part of my consciousness at that time,” he said.

The jury didn’t believe that the guy who was some kind of business genius could be so ignorant of banking regulations and laws.

You may wonder how people so willingly unknowing could achieve any kind of success in the world. This might be a good time to review the life and times of King George W.

Bush was a principal in Arbusto Energy, Inc., and it was going bust-o in 1984, when a “white knight” stepped in to save it. That was Spectrum 7 oil company, and two years later, it was going down under Bush’s stewardship. That company was saved by Harken Energy Corporation, and Prince George ended up as a director on the audit committee.

People ridicule Bush for never changing his mind, but there is a certain consistency to the man – everything he touches turns to shit. And so it was in June 1990 when Bush learned that Harken Energy Corporation was about to hit the skids. With this information in hand, he sold is shares at $4 bucks a pop, which netted him a cool $835,000, according to the Washington Post.

When Harken announced the unexpected second-quarter losses, and the stock price tumbled. This left Bush, a Harken director and member of the firm's audit committee, exposed to accusations of insider trading: dumping stock before the company's troubles became public knowledge. Bush also failed to report the sale to the Securities and Exchange Commission until eight months after the required deadline. The SEC launched an investigation.

Bush claimed he did not know of Harken’s impending financial disaster. He forgot to file the SEC reports, and because he sounds so goofy one might be tempted to believe this of the Harvard Business School graduate. But it is not true, and neither is the claim that he was exonerated by the SEC investigation.

So what did Prince George do with the $835,000 of ill-gotten gains from the illegal sale of stock? He paid off a small loan that he took out to purchase in to the Texas Rangers.

Back on November 10, 2005, in Condemning Bush, I wrote about how Prince George used his political connection to make the owners of the Texas Rangers, including himself, fabulously rich. The trick was to get the City of Arlington to take land by means of imminent domain and give it to the baseball team to build “The Ballpark at Arlington.”

The bottom line is that there is not a dime’s worth of difference between Ken Lay and George W. Bush, except for the fact that the latter was only slightly better connected.

By the way, after 7 years of investigations, there was no evidence whatsoever of any wrongdoing connected with President and Mrs. Clinton in the Whitewater matter.

In case your forgot.

“… and tell ‘em Big Mitch sent ya!”