{"id":504,"date":"2005-03-15T20:54:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-16T01:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=504"},"modified":"2005-12-09T10:14:51","modified_gmt":"2005-12-09T15:14:51","slug":"witless-for-the-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/witless-for-the-defense","title":{"rendered":"Witless for the Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bernie Ebbers, former WorldCom CEO got his ass handed to him<\/a>, with the jury finding him guilty on all 9 counts of fraud. His defense was two-pronged:<\/p>\n

A) Say that your CFO was a coke-swilling scumbag, or rather, say that your CFO’s coke-swilling scumbag ways make him an unreliable witness;<\/p>\n

B) Say that you were a terrible CEO, who was virtually deaf, dumb and blind, physically and mentally feeble.<\/p>\n

Problem with this strategy was that Ebbers was somehow coherent enough to plan and execute the rollup strategy that took his rinkydink company to the point of becoming the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.<\/p>\n

I mean, listen to his testimony, and you wouldn’t want to let this guy park your car, much less be the chief executive officer of a major telecom company.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, he’s going to get jail time. And members of the board are facing shareholder suits.<\/p>\n

In other legal news, CNN actually felt it was headline-worthy that the crazy-ass guy who shot a judge, a deputy sheriff, a court reporter and a federal agent this weekend won’t be getting bail<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bernie Ebbers, former WorldCom CEO got his ass handed to him, with the jury finding him guilty on all 9 counts of fraud. His defense was two-pronged: A) Say that your CFO was a coke-swilling scumbag, or rather, say that your CFO’s coke-swilling scumbag ways make him an unreliable witness; B) Say that you were … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Witless for the Defense”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-88","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":372,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm","url_meta":{"origin":504,"position":0},"title":"ObservationsI've now spent a minimum\u2026","author":"Gil","date":"September 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"ObservationsI've now spent a minimum of several days in three European capitols in the past 5 weeks. Here are two things I've noticed:Europeans only have two kinds of Coca-Cola: Coke and Coke Light (Diet Coke). A couple of places had Vanilla Coke, but it was rare. This contrasts with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":488,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/goodbye-cherry-coke","url_meta":{"origin":504,"position":1},"title":"Goodbye, Cherry (Coke)","author":"Gil","date":"February 3, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I have a new favorite drink, largely because of the insanely funny commercial.The official VM girlfriend and I simply call the stuff \"ROY! ROY-ROY-ROY!\"","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1416,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/response-and-responsibilities","url_meta":{"origin":504,"position":2},"title":"Response and responsibilities","author":"Gil","date":"March 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"For a month or two, Slate has been running excerpts from Clive James' new book, Cultural Amnesia, which it describes as a \"re-examination of intellectuals, artists, and thinkers who helped shape the 20th century.\" The excerpts are presented as A-Z profiles, and some are compelling enough that I put the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0393061167","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1848,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/coffee-break","url_meta":{"origin":504,"position":3},"title":"Coffee break","author":"Gil","date":"January 10, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"There were two significant (and probably related) coffee announcements this week: McDonald's plans to add coffee bars to its stores, and Starbucks founder and chairman Howard Schultz has taken back his CEO role. I don't have a horse in this race, since I prefer Dunkin Donuts' coffee (unless there's a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1055,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/dog-hair-etc","url_meta":{"origin":504,"position":4},"title":"Dog, hair, etc.","author":"Gil","date":"July 29, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Surprise, dear readers! Amy & I are down in Louisiana, having surprised the official VM mother-in-law for her brithday yesterday! While we did keep it a secret from almost everyone, I'm starting to think we could've told them all we were coming, since no one would believe that people would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Orleans"","block_context":{"text":"New Orleans","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/new-orleans"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":814,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/gayyyyyy","url_meta":{"origin":504,"position":5},"title":"Gayyyyyy","author":"Gil","date":"January 24, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Hmm,\" pondered the Coca-Cola executive, \"we know Gil Roth is a big fan of Cherry Coke. How can we change the packaging to make him feel like a complete fairy when he buys a bottle?\"","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}