So what SHOULD we call these guys?

Specifically the Untied Airline execs and Judge Eugene Wedoff (or, in the words of a former Untied Airline employee -- Judge Cheesedick Payoff) who decided that having absolutely NO HONOR was better than having NO MONEY and shit-canned the employees' pensions.

How about we call them two-faced, thieving, low-life, backstabbing, treacherous, traitorous, signifying sonsofbitches?

For a start.

Poor Untied Airlines, hasn't got a clue how to compete with Southwest or JetBlue without being given a huge head start, and even then ... so they have to figure it out -- NOW what should they do?

How about betraying, fucking over, and stealing from their employees -- the people who gave their working lives believing the executives had some sense of honor or decency? Believing that a contract was a contract, and that when the employee was too old to work or get another job, the company would honor its commitments? Rather than just buying a judge to let them run away to their offshore bank accounts.

Why in hell does it matter if Untied goes out of business?
Another airline will buy the routes and equipment.
And that airline will need more employees.
Only the name would change and the only people who lose would be the ones who had been riding high all along, the ones who rode the company into the ground because they didn't have a clue.

But they saw how George W Bush and his people bent over for Ken Lay and his people and decided they'd rather not face up to the results of their piss-poor management ability.

Jerry Garcia was right when he said: "The thugs always take over the revolution."

THEY'RE ALL THUGS.

Why blame MonkeyBoy and his Leg-breakers like Bolton and Cheney?

We have an unredeemed thug serving (for a little while) as Governor of California. A thug and a bully, and -- I do not say this lightly -- acting more and more like a 1930's Nazi than any other model around -- attacking the government of which he was a part, insisting that THE PEOPLE will not stand for the behavior of the people THEY ELECTED, and still bullying, threatening, doing everything but putting on his father's Brown Shirt.

We have an unredeemed thug/cheerleader in the White House acting like a cross between his video game heroes and the craven piece of shit he is -- crawling on his belly when in Latvia and Russia, licking Putin's boots in public (when you KNOW Putin bitch-slapped him in private, laughing at him and calling him a punk), waiting until he comes home to his safe White House nest to speak tough and harsh to THOSE people.

Remember (does anyone?) BEFORE 9-11? When the Chinese took down our plane and wouldn't give it back unless we apologized? And he did. And then, when we had it back, he did a revolting "Nyahh-Nyahh" from the safety of his bodyguards' embrace. Chickenshit, craven cowardly custard.

We have thugs running corporations -- from Ken Lay ("Oh I didn't know why I was getting rich") to Martha Stewart -- thugs and bullies.

And thieves.

Jean Medina -- the mouthpiece for the biggies who are hiding behind their boardroom doors. She smiles and tells us how much money they need to save -- even though they haven't changed jackshit about their piss-poor ability to compete with Southwest and JetBlue.

Jake Brace -- CFO (Chief FuckOver Officer) told us that Untied has NO CHOICE but to fuck the employees (because the bankers are the ones they're afraid of.

When I was growing up, there was a vestige of remainder from the rhetoric of the 30's, and I recall something about hanging the sonsofbitches from lamp-posts.

HL Mencken was a keen observor of those times, a man who understood politics and big business:

For example:

"Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."

"I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time."

But the one that seems most appropriate, i.e., more in harmony with the way things are being run in this country (and most others) is this:

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."

I have long held that the way to make change is to use the law.

But when the law has been bought, sold and re-written to protect the Board-Room Bullies, well, that's when you find people who have decided to meet them in the parking lot with tire irons.

Not that I advocate it.

But when the powers-that-be have shredded the law along with the incriminating documents for their own benefit, well, I just see that as the way things work -- it's the way Bush works. It's the way Ahnold works. It's the way Untied Airlines works. It seems it's the way it works for top to bottom and bottom to top. And it's the way -- you can count on it -- some older former Untied employees who have just lost their homes will work it.

remember another quote from another fellow who knew how things worked:

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and Corporate power."
Benito Mussolini