MAUREEN DOWD: Who’s Sorry Now?

[kevinmc]

WASHINGTON

There’s not much lately that we’d like to import from China.

Certainly not the yummy steamed buns stuffed with shredded cardboard soaked in a caustic agent used to make soap. Or the tasty toothpaste laced with an antifreeze ingredient. Or the scrumptious seafood with a chemical kick. Or those pet foods with kibbles and bits of poison.

But there is one thing made in China we could use: mea culpas of high officials.

Zheng Xiaoyu, a top regulator who helped create China’s Food and Drug Administration, accepted $850,000 in bribes from drug companies and became enmeshed in the mistakes that flooded the market with dangerous drugs. Before he was executed Tuesday, he wrote a short confession titled “How I Look on My Mistakes.”

“Thinking back on what has happened these years, I start to see the problems clearly,” he wrote in prison. “Why are the friends who gave me money all the bosses of pharmaceutical companies? Obviously because I was in charge of drug administration.

“I am confessing here that I loosened self-discipline, ignored the bottom line,” he said, adding that he had to confess his mistakes “as an act of saving my soul.”

We would skip the execution — although perhaps there should be ranch arrest for W., and Cheney could do community service passing out condoms at Gay Pride festivals.

But it is time for the lethally inept duo running the country to do some painstaking self-examination and confession. Just as the Communist Party helped the late Mr. Zheng compose his thoughts, I volunteer to ghost-write our leaders’ self-scrutiny:......

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/07/maureen-dowd-whos-sorry-now.html

[Robson]

1. Accountability is thin to non-existent in the USA

I'd be satisfied if the worst offenders just committed Hara-kiri on their own out of respect for their family and others. There wouldn't need to be government imposed execution.

[terisan]

2. Maureen Dowd needs to write her own confession.

Dowd was merciless in her absurd criticisms of Gore during election 2000 and very tolerant of Bush; guess she doesn't like what she has helped bring about.

[struggle4progress]

3. A Matter of Execution (Hoagland WaPo)

By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, July 15, 2007; Page B07

China's Communists always have been quick to execute political dissidents as a warning to follow the party's ideological line. Now the regime summarily executes people for being bad at capitalism.

Zheng Xiaoyu was put to death the other day not only for multitudinous sins but also to reassure foreign markets that China's manufacturing industry will no longer mindlessly poison some of its customers. With Zheng's execution, Mao Zedong's revolution has reached the stage of becoming a focused exercise in marketing -- skillfully gathering profits abroad to make the party rich and powerful at home.

Mao promised socialism with Chinese characteristics. His political heirs have delivered a fierce capitalism with Chinese characteristics. The Communist Party struggles to rein in the free-enterprise monster it has created through its quasi-ideological emphasis on wealth and consumption. To counter emerging threats to global market share, the government produced -- what else? -- a five-year plan to eliminate health hazards from its food and medical exports. It reinforced the message by executing the unfortunate Zheng. ~snip~

The official Xinhua news agency did not say how Zheng -- sentenced on May 29 -- was killed on Tuesday. So we do not know if he was shot in the back of the head, as is customary. Nor do we know if his family was then presented with a bill for the cost of the bullet that killed him. This cruel twist has long been standard practice for dissidents in China, which carries out more court-ordered executions than the rest of the world combined, according to human rights groups. ~snip~

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/13/AR2007071301708.html?hpid=opinionsbox2

[Joe Bacon]

4. We're waiting for your apology, Whoreen!

We will wait for you apology to Al Gore. Whoreen, we'll wait till hell freezes over, but we WILL get it!

[PurpleChez]

6. What did biznitch say about Al?

Because I loves me some Al Gore.

[hatrack]

5. Well gee-whiz, Maureen, if anyone could reasonably be expected to express regret, it's you.

After all, literally years of venomous screeching about the color of Gore's clothing and his (*heehee snickersnicker ain't it all so fucking FUNNY*) stiffness helped put the dynamic Cheney/Bush duo into office.

Oh, but if you're in the Kool Kidz Klub, you don't have to apologize. I forgot that this is one of the main advantages of belonging to the Kool Kidz Klub.

Convenient, huh?