As Long As The President Said It Was Okay...

This is a concise video laying out the whole argument of torture and why it is wrong. It also shows graphically what we as Americans allowed to happen over the past 8 years. It is a half hour well spent, IMO.

Pig Flew

Here is my contribution to the debate and bio-terrorism alert...

Birdie birdie in the sky
Why do you do that in my eye
I will not laugh I will not cry
I’m just glad that pigs don’t fly


And watch out for republican flu...(hint: its more deadly)



.

Smart Freedom, Not More Rope

Hey, the world is changing. It will not be the same. Mixing Terrence McKenna, teachings from Kundalini yoga, wilderness awareness experiences, economics, Mormonism, and the recent conference I attended presented by the California International Bankers Association, 2012 is going to be a big year. If we are lucky, citizens are going to own the insurance markets, car manufactures, and every other "over-leveraged" capitalist industry. And the pandemic is global, with the pathogen being the IMF and World Bank.

If we are lucky, we are not going to be "communists" in the sense that the Catholic Church today was once as oppressive as today's Taliban, which they were during the dark ages. One of our biggest objectives should be in avoiding the post-soviet privatization, where billionaires were politically created by merging mafia with government. But if everyone owns stock that they can freely buy and sell, those citoyens are then responsible for the actions of their businesses in their communities.

The capitalists have sold the world enough rope to hang them many times over. Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is not to use that rope.



This post written in Berkeley, CA (go figure). Regardless of how crazy you think Berkeley is, is it not an expression of freedom? So maybe Berkeley should be studied as a model.

"We All Want Our Children to Be Well Adjusted..."

"...it is just that there is nothing for them to be well adjusted to."

We Are In The Birth Canal...

What Water Shortage?

Think you might like to try waterboarding for sport? This guy made a bet that he could go 15 seconds...






...and you read their magazine fro the articles. So why do you watch the videos?

What Does the Road Look Like Going Forward?

Elizabeth Warren of Harvard University and the head of the Congressional Oversight Committee for the TARP funds addresses what she calls the BIG QUESTION -- one that has to be answered within the next six months: What does the road look like going forward?

Then the good professor gives a history lesson in finance beginning with GeoWashington ending with today's uncertainty.

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Derivative markets . . .an understandable explanation

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit . In order to increase sales, she decides to allow her loyal customers, most of whom are unemployed alcoholics, to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).

Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now pay later" marketing strategy and as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar and soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit.

By providing her customers' freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Her sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the alcoholics as collateral. At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then traded on security markets worldwide. Naive investors don’t really understand the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, their prices continuously climb, and the securities become the top-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses.

One day, although the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the bank (subsequently fired due his negativity), decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. Heidi demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Therefore, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations and claims bankruptcy.

DRINKBOND and ALKI BOND drop in price by 90%. PUKEBOND performs better, stabilizing in price after dropping by 80%. The decreased bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans. The suppliers of Heidi's bar, having granted her generous payment extensions and having invested in the securities are faced with writing off her debt and losing over 80% on her bonds. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 50 workers.

The bank and brokerage houses are saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock negotiations by leaders from both political parties. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by a tax levied on employed middle-class non-drinkers.

Finally an explanation I can understand!

(H/T Richard A.)

Words Added to Sticks And Stones

From ABC News:

Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover was 11-- hardly old enough to know his sexuality and yet distraught enough to hang himself last week after school bullies repeatedly called him "gay."

Sirdeaner L. Walker found her son, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, hanging by an extension cord on the second floor of her Springfield home on Monday night. Walker said Carl, a sixth-grade student at the New Leadership Charter School, had been taunted and threatened by classmates for weeks before he killed himself.
She said that she contacted the school repeatedly over the last six months to ask teachers to intervene after learning her son had been targeted by students. Walker said her son’s classmates called him gay on a daily basis, made fun of his clothes and threatened to harm him, according to the Springfield Republican.

The 43-year-old, who had just returned from a church service for her son, said Carl was a Boy Scout who played football and basketball. Walker found her son’s body when she went upstairs to check on him on Monday.

Watch the video here.

Coming Around The Bend

It is like everything is done. And everything that can still be discovered becomes instantaneosly processed, proved, and allocated. The excitement has become mundane. Yet here we are, on the precipice of reality, and there is no there there. We have failed a humans to come to terms with our existence. Even James Dobson says the culture wars are over. The victory and loss seem empty. All we have to look forward to is eternal boredom?

What's that Wall-E?


What if the key is backward? What if our reality starts with death and progresses toward birth? This would make sense in a quantum physics world. And if symetry is required, it is the same coming and going, going and coming. So we don't know what is happening except that we are at one end of the chronic infundulum. Stretching back and forth between earth and the dogstar Beetlejuice. Existing in a flashlight beam shown in a room of mirrors.

If time is backwards, and we start old and get young, that would make a lot of sense in terms of rituals like baptism, de-education or brainwashing into purity. And how happy you are as an old person directly affects whether you are happy as a child.

$14,765,596 Per Second

Over the past 20 months, the US Government and Federal Reserve have spent over $14 million per second propping up the nation's financial system. Over those months, the total bill reached $12.8 trillion. BTW, that is about equal to our GDP. Wheeeeeee!!!!!!

Via Bloomberg.

Threats: Foriegn & Domesitc ( & Financial)

Der Spiegel is reporting that the Russian banking sector is about to break free of Putin's bandage and start bleeding. Remember what happened after the 1998 Russian financial crisis? In the US, it was not fun and games.

Elsewhere in Der Spiegel, Austria is tipsy, not because of Schnapps, but because that countries banks are deeply exposed to high-risk loans in Eastern Europe.

And in Strasbourg, home of NATO and a bunch of EU offices, things have turned black and white. Well, there are a few rainbow flames too. Basically the city of Strasbourg is on fire. Given the kidnappings of factory managers, the riots in London, the riots in Strasbourg, can't we label the EU as a haven for terrorists?

Elsewhere, the German head of French firm Total says we are running out of oil. Of course, the French hate freedom so much they don't want to be free from oil.

And the Germans said "Nein!!!" to Monsanto. Genetically-modified korn is now illegal in Germany. At the same time, they have said "Jawohl!!!" to no-clothing-not-optional hotels.

BTW, Spain is faltering. Maybe that is why they ran to charge Gonzales, Yoo, Bybee, and other Bushies - in order to generate some good news.

Did I mention that the country of Greece is facing bankruptcy? What about the global food crisis?

Where is Superman when you need him?

Only You Can Prevent Homosexuality!!!

Legos Versus Logos

Since I was a young boy, I have always been in awe of Bertel Thorvaldsens's Christus. Not the original, which I have never seen, but the copy in the Mormon Church's Visitor Center on Temple Square. They copied it in marble, cubit for cubit.

From Sweden, we get this report of a newer, plastic Jesus.

Members of the congregation donated nearly 30,000 Lego bricks to build the 5ft 8 high statue, said Per Wilder, the pastor of the Oensta Gryta Church in Vaesteras, about 70 miles west of Stockholm.

"This work began a year and a half ago so we saw that the initiation date was fitting in well (with this year's Easter holiday)," he said.

"It is a fantastic installation and it will be there as long as we think it is in a good spot."

The model was based on the Danish sculptor, Bertel Thorvaldsens's, 19th century work 'Christus', which depicts the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The pastor said the statue would remain permanently at the church and there were no plans to sell it to raise funds.

I am glad religion continues to redefine creativity.

The Crime of The Century

It seems to me that what has happened is that we have been swindled. The marketeers in New York have created increasing risk and pretended to mitigate those risks through diversification, and by so called creation of liquidity (yeah, in your pants). Then these risks were repackaged, "innoculated", and sold as safe. They were toxic shit sold as creme brulee.

The chefs controlled the accounting firms, the regulators, the rating firms, the major media, and the business schools. Q.E.D.

Revenge of the Killer Ants

On a dark and stormy night, not far from here, there was a mad scientist who had mistreated as a child. He was only looking for love...

Truth Be Told - Probablistic Circular Logic

Jesus said the truth will set you free.

Buddha sat under a bodhi tree until he found truth.

Charles S. Peirce said that we can not know truth, we can only alleviate the irritation of doubt.

Quantum physics teaches that we can predict or experience, but not both.

Maybe this is a truth that will set us free.

Abi Dhabi Doo

As we try to pick a system under which we want to live, how does this one sound? Remember, if you are not part of the discussion, you will only get what they have to offer:

Karen Andrews can't speak. Every time she starts to tell her story, she puts her head down and crumples. She is slim and angular and has the faded radiance of the once-rich, even though her clothes are as lined as her forehead now. I find her in the car park of one of Dubai's finest international hotels, where she is living, in her Range Rover. She has been sleeping here for months, thanks to the kindness of the Bangladeshi car park attendants who don't have the heart to move her on. This is not where she thought her Dubai dream would end.

Her story comes out in stutters, over four hours. At times, her old voice - witty and warm - breaks through. Karen came here from Canada when her boyfriend was offered a job in the senior division of a famous multinational. "When he said Dubai, I said - if you want me to wear black and quit booze, baby, you've got the wrong girl. But he asked me to give it a chance. And I loved him."

All her worries melted when she touched down in Dubai in 2005. "It was an adult Disneyland, where Sheikh Mohammed is the mouse," she says. "Life was fantastic. You had these amazing big apartments, you had a whole army of your own staff, you pay no taxes at all. It seemed like everyone was a CEO. We were partying the whole time."

Her husband Daniel bought two properties. "We were drunk on Dubai," she says. But for the first time in his life, he was beginning to mismanage their finances. "We're not talking huge sums, but he was getting confused. It was so unlike Daniel, I was surprised. We got into a little bit of debt." After a year, she found out why: Daniel was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

One doctor told him he had a year to live; another said it was benign and he'd be okay. But the debts were growing. "Before I came here, I didn't know anything about Dubai law. I assumed if all these big companies come here, it must be pretty like Canada's or any other liberal democracy's," she says. Nobody told her there is no concept of bankruptcy. If you get into debt and you can't pay, you go to prison.

"When we realized that, I sat Daniel down and told him: listen, we need to get out of here. He knew he was guaranteed a pay-off when he resigned, so we said - right, let's take the pay-off, clear the debt, and go." So Daniel resigned - but he was given a lower pay-off than his contract suggested. The debt remained. As soon as you quit your job in Dubai, your employer has to inform your bank. If you have any outstanding debts that aren't covered by your savings, then all your accounts are frozen, and you are forbidden to leave the country.

"Suddenly our cards stopped working. We had nothing. We were thrown out of our apartment." Karen can't speak about what happened next for a long time; she is shaking.

Daniel was arrested and taken away on the day of their eviction. It was six days before she could talk to him. "He told me he was put in a cell with another debtor, a Sri Lankan guy who was only 27, who said he couldn't face the shame of his family. Daniel woke up and the boy had swallowed razor-blades. He banged for help, but nobody came, and the boy died in front of him."

Karen managed to beg from her friends for a few weeks, "but it was so humiliating. I've never lived like this. I worked in the fashion industry. I had my own shops. I've never..." She peters out.

Daniel was sentenced to six months imprisonment at a trial he couldn't understand. It was in Arabic, and there was no translation. "Now I'm here illegally too," Karen says. "I've got no money, nothing. I have to last nine months until he's out, somehow." Looking away, almost paralyzed with embarrassment, she asks if I could buy her a meal.

She is not alone. All over the city, there are maxed-out expats sleeping secretly in the sand-dunes or the airport or in their cars.

"The thing you have to understand about Dubai is - nothing is what it seems," Karen says at last. "Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job. They lure you in telling you it's one thing - a modern kind of place - but beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship."

Where Are We Going to Keep the Chickens?

America is devolving into a third-world nation. And if we do not immediately halt our elite’s rapacious looting of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be helpless to ameliorate. Our anemic democracy will be replaced with a robust national police state. The elite will withdraw into heavily guarded gated communities where they will have access to security, goods and services that cannot be afforded by the rest of us. Tens of millions of people, brutally controlled, will live in perpetual poverty. This is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism. The stimulus and bailout plans are not about saving us. They are about saving them. We can resist, which means street protests, disruptions of the system and demonstrations, or become serfs.

This is from Chris Hedges recent post at TruthDig.com.

As the thieves get richer, and we find out that our rendering unto Caesar isn't going to pay off, we need to think about where we are going to keep chickens, goats, cows, and other domestic animals in our urban environments. Either that, or we need to start hyper-miling, er I mean hyper-caloring. In other words, what are the easiest foods to grow that have the most sustanance in terms of growth and resource efforts. What can we eat that is the most nutricious on a human level for the environmental stress on the planet? Six billion people with pitchforks will not be pretty if there is not enough food to go around. And if you are still sporting that AIG t-shirt from that golf junket last July, why not paint a bullseye on your forehead.

Basically, our economy is shambles, the earth is wounded, and the smart people are babbling like the guys in Ward 3. The not so smart people are holding tea parties -- pinkies up I say! Labels, agendas, slogans, and schools of thought will take years to implement. We need something quicker. We need action building a new society from the ground up. The sooner we do this the fewer people are going to die. We don't want another two or three generations wounded and scarred at the dna level before we can start building a better world. Lets start with the basic american principles of honesty, sacrifice, and pulling together for the community. So it has to start with the community. If you build a better society, they will come. If not, it is game over. The Camusian imparitive on a global scale.

Everything You Wanted To Know About Twitter

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Take Home Quiz: What is the difference between profit and value? Answer in the comments.

Like Sulfer From the Brim of the Devil's Volcano

Don't touch the Queen! John Oliver explains the role of the Queen in a modern democracy.

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New American Gothic

Politico is reporting that Obama told a meeting of Bank CEOs “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

Fill Full

Recently, an Ivy League professor studying the world religions traveled the world interviewing enlightened teachers. In Japan, a renowned Buddhist priest greeted the professor as well as all visitors with a tea ceremony. Graciously, the professor sat down as the master placed a cup and saucer on a small stool before the guest and began to pour. The cup soon filled with tea and began to overflow. The tea soon filled the saucer and began to flow onto the stool and then the floor. The professor, who had been patient and respectful, jumped up and shouted “its full, can’t you see it can’t hold anymore?” The Zen master replied “You are like the cup. How can I teach you if you have no place to put it?”

Jon Stewart is a Prophet

Don't believe me? Would you have recognized Jonah in Ninevah? Or Elijah? For sure Mohammed. I mean if you had been there.

The CrossOver is Starting to Happen...

Some elders who believe in the innocence of Rosebud are spoonfeeding this stuff about Geithner. They must really be scared. The entire system has to be rebooted and that process has never been tested. It was never supposed to happen this way. So now they start telling the truth. Even though we can't handle it. Because they are scared shitless if we find out after the reboot has begun. That is when those typically face pitchforks, anarchy, and armageddon. Not pretty.

In exchange for calmness, they are starting to offer truth. Geithner was too friendly, too cozy, and understaffed (maybe by design). Serious men with serious pedigreed backbones held everything together by wrapping their balls round the system and screaming. They were rewarded handsomely. When they over-reached, they lied like chameleons. Everything is okay, they say. We have too much to lose to have done that. You have no choice but to trust us.

The banks runneth is over. The reports are coming out proving fictitious entities are neither immortal or impartial.

To move off that game plan, they are offering the family jewels. Michelle Obama touched the Queen, and the Emperoress accepted the support embrace. Honest kabuki. Elizabeth's head will not be impailed on a pole by London Bridge. The great families are ready to accept democracy in exchange for their mortality.

The great white hope is a black man.

The WaPo article has too much access and too high a level for it the result of hard work. Deep Throat had a bench of willing cocksuckers behind him. Finally someone called bullshit. And whoever that person is, I say thank you.



Update: Politico is reporting that Obama told a meeting of Bank CEOs “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

The U.S. Embraces the Red State Strategy

From Calculated Risk:

In case you were wondering, red is bad, the redder the badder. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank calculates an aggregate statistic showing how the economic indicators are working or not (over the past 3 months). On a bright spot, things in Wyoming, Louisiana, and Alaska suck less than for the rest of the county.

Whatever you do, don't look at this graph. It gives new meaning to the phrase Less Than Zero.

And I accidently thought there were some bringt spots on these graphs, until I realized those were just the borders.

The Arc of the Covenant

What is in your ark?

Support Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project

http://www.912project.com/

If that isn't clear enough, this will help.

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In Celebration of Fools

Story One




Equipped with a BB-gun to control altitude and a small American flag mounted on the chair, Kent Couch flew his lawn chair tied to a number of balloons 200 miles from Central Oregon to Idaho. Mr. "Lawn Chair" Couch is a hero of fools. God Bless Him.

Story Two


In today's Financial Times, Yu Qiao, a professor of economics at Tsinghun University in Beijing is concerned that Asia will be the victim if the U.S. bond bubble bursts. Basically, Mr. Qiao rightly observes that as investors don't trust stocks and corporate bonds due to the past decade's over-inflated values and the recent popping of those bubbles, "smart" money has gone into U.S. government bonds in droves -- thereby creating a new bubble. He says:

Analysts have warned of the dangers of the US Treasury bond bubble that developed in late 2008. Although insurance against sovereign debt default may reduce credit risk, it is unable to safeguard the real value of dollar-denominated securities. If this bubble burst, east Asians would be victims. Their economies directly hold more than $1.6 trillion of US sovereign debt, or 25 per cent of the total held by the public. Including direct holdings, Asians may hold half of the outstanding public-owned Treasury bonds. China, by some estimates, directly and indirectly holds more than $1.2 trillion of US Treasury bonds. If the dollar collapsed, the consequences would devastate Asians’ hard-earned wealth and terminate economic globalisation.

Interestingly, he cites the early 1970s collapse of the Bretton-Woods monetary system that was created after WW2 as a similar event when the United States sold out the global financial market for national gain.

The provision of stable, reliable and viable dollars may be subordinated to short-term US interests, posing a risk to global monetary stability. In the long term, America may seek to resolve its economic mess by devaluing the dollar at best and a default at worst. This is depicted in a Chinese proverb: “Drinking poisonous liquid to quench thirst”. History points to examples such as the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s. It is the foreign holders of US obligations denominated in dollars that would end up paying.

What caused the collapse of the Bretton Woods system? Republicans fighting unpopular wars. Nixon & Vietnam, in particular. The US Government needed to pay for the war, and they were running out of gold which they promised to exchange with governments for dollars. Well, dollars were being printed like crazy, and no other country wanted to hold them. In 1971, Germany was forced to accept a pile of schiesse and they said "Never Again" and the balloon popped. The dollar fell, the economy damaged, and inflation went up up up. In 1980, St. Ronald Reagan blamed everything on the demonized Jimmy Carter and the Republicans were reborn as the party of honesty and integrity.

If, as Marc at Adored By Hordes says, "History does not repeat itself, it rhymes", look for the Chinese to get really pissed when this current mess bursts. They will blame Obama, not Bush.

Mr. Qiao introduces what Asians need to do to protect themselves, but chickens out when it comes to enforcement claiming ignorance.

The basic idea is to turn Asian savings, China’s in particular, into real business investments rather than let them be used to support US over-con are vulnerable to any fall in the value of the dollar, equity claims on sound corporations and infrastructure projects are at less risk from a currency default. But Asians do not want to bear the risk of this investment because of market turbulence and a lack of knowledge of cultural, legal and regulatory issues in US businesses. However if a guarantee scheme were created, Asian savers could be willing to invest directly in capital-hungry US industries.

He then enumerates all the guarantees the US government should introduce to make sure the Asians are secure in their investments. Trust the Americans once again - the defenders of freedom, democracy, and capitalism. They have such a good track record. As soon as such an agreement was put in place, the Darth side would reneg if given power (or take it by force). If I were the Chinese government, I would bypass the U.S. Treasury altogether and lend directly to American industries and American homeowners. Give zero interest rates on loans, with repayments pegged to a Chinese-monitored international basket of currencies. This would put political pressure on the US not to print money and inflate the debt away.

But then again, the Chinese have pretty much forgotten their supposed idealism of equality, throwing that baby out with Mao's bathwater.