Blabrmouth.com Weekend Update

Will The Real Rupert Murdoch Please Stand Up?

I am going to just come out and admit it, I love Rupert Murdoch. I love the way this guy plays the buy/sell game. He is a pirate with a pen. He is another in a long line of founders who like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sam Walton, and Michael Dell either know what’s

Housing Bill: Too Little Too Late for One

After a year of putzing around, we finally have a housing bill. By a vote of 272 to 152 (and I hope the 152 of you feel good about yourselves) the bill will become law pending President Bush’s approval and final passage in the Senate.

UAL Stock - Who is Buying This Mess?

I Then immediately checked my watch to see what time it was, then I checked the calender to see what year it was…yep, still 2008. Then I asked myself, who in the hell is buying up shares of UAL in this day and age? What short selling, trying to

Blackwater & Security - Like Oil and Hurricanes

It appears that the embattled security firm Blackwater is getting out of the security business. Seems they are upset that they have become the poster boys for anti-war proponents and since being in the protection game wasn’t really their

U.S. Future: Oil Dependency Not The Problem

The U.S. economy has hummed along for the last fifteen years outpacing the rest of the world by double digits. Things were good. Businesses expanded, homeowners realized massive increases in the value of their homes and they

Pandit’s Gambit: Bad for Business - Good for Baseball?

That’s right home gamers, Vikram Pandit, the embattled (French for about get canned) CEO of the world’s largest financial institution has been a busy little beaver trying to put lipstick on this pig of a stock since Citi

Blackwater & Security - Like Oil and Hurricanes

It appears that the embattled security firm Blackwater is getting out of the security business. Seems they are upset that they have become the poster boys for anti-war proponents and since being in the protection game wasn’t really their “call of duty,” they have opted out of this line of work. It’s going to be tough however to give it up since the firm has made over $1 billion dollars since 2001 “protecting” U.S. diplomats in Iraq, among other things.

Now,  I am all for a good middle of the night extraction followed by stuff blowing up, but while reading the bullet points of the announcement, I came across this little nugget;

In 2005 and 2006, security jobs, including protecting diplomats and helping secure New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, represented more than 50 percent of the company’s business.

I did a double take. What do you mean secure New Orleans? I knew we had the National Guard in place and there was a good bit of trouble stemming from riots and looting…not to mention people being abandoned and left for dead thanks to that idiot Michael “Brownie” Brown. But that’s another blog.

Then two little Latin words rang in the back of my head, Posse Comitatus. No, I don’t think in Latin, but here’s what it means;

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States.

Now it all makes sense! While Jimbo in the urban camo gear based out of Ft. Bragg can’t kick your ass, Billy Bob over here in civilian clothes can garrote you to death and leave your lifeless body in a heap and hit his numbers on Wall Street all in the same day!

As I said, I see the value in being able to send a team of five or six former Navy SEALS and Army Rangers into a drop zone to, and I am using air quotes “neutralize a target.” But the thought never occurred to me that we could do it to our own people. If that’s the case, maybe I could hire these guys to guard my daughter when she starts dating.