Category: interesting

No man or woman once impressed me with a Rolex or a Cadillac nor appeased me with a little white dog. Better status is on my mind. I think of putting greens beside the patio and I am sad, not for their happiness, but for yours.

Where did it begin, false pride? With you I’m sorry to say. Choose any Century. Fools and gold are always much too much for any civilization.

A PoleRouter had always the status of a high-quality luxurious watch. In the late 1950’s a steel PoleRouter cost as much as a Rolex Explorer. An 18k PoleRouter with a gold bracelet had nearly the price of a car.

We have worked so hard. Navigators, engineers, day upon day. So proud and good. Of course a gilt wrist proves it. But only for you.

The greater pride is living here well. Wear that. Impress me.

Bush has not one achievement.

Paul Krugman looks over his trillion dollar bailout plan and says, “No deal”.

I hate to say this, but looking at the plan as leaked, I have to say no deal. Not unless Treasury explains, very clearly, why this is supposed to work, other than through having taxpayers pay premium prices for lousy assets.

No quid pro quo. Sums up an era, don’t you think? Privatized profits. Socialized losses. “But we ain’t no Communists!” say our rouge cou.

Slate. Strong words in two pages display the McCain Health Care proposal as a hidden gift to his corporate friends.

If enacted, this proposal would cause a shift along the lines seen in the credit-card industry.

What makes no sense is to neuter state regulations while putting nothing in their place.

Letting South Dakota regulate America’s credit-card industry hasn’t worked out so well. Letting Arizona do the same for health insurance would be worse.

Hidden gift? We know what that is.

THE POLITIC OF HOPE

NOT HEEDED?
NOT NEEDED?

THE GAMES AND THE GEMS,
THE GIZMOS AND THE GADGETS,
THE GARMENT AND THE GLAMOR,
STILL FLOOD OUR GARDEN.
ALL IS WELL.

THEN WHY?

Why is the public forum quite convinced?
The quorum forms, is seldom minced,
The crush of cash and goods exchanges.
The manual’s writ, to wit, law rearranges
the how, the what, the when of cost.
This must be spent or all is lost!

We ask:
Epic yesterday, is it flawed,
resting on our shoulders?
Each and all of us is awed!

The Task:
Both formers and molders,
both material and number,
both conduit and by-way,
both vitality and slumber,
both you and I, we and they,

ALL MUST CHOOSE.
ALL MUST MUSE.
ALL MUST USE.
GRAPH THE CHART,
STOCK THE PART,
DREAM THE ART,
PULL THE CART,
PAY THE PRICE,
CARVE THE ICE,
SHOO THE MICE,
ATTRACT THE NICE.
IT’S UP TO YOU AND ME
IN THIS DEMOCRACY.

Where do we go?
And who will say so?
Is this what we’re waiting for
To open future’s door?

TRY:
WHAT PLENTY HAVE WE PLANNED?
WHAT RISK AHEAD IS MANNED?
WHAT SURE AVENUE, WHAT LAND?
WHAT MAINTAINED, WHAT SCANNED
TO BE USED,
NOT ABUSED?

Projections list what is not sure.
Archives inventory what is no more.
Accounts know what just went by;
Tax measures that decree, no lie!
O’ order, do not bend.
Our use-abuse will surely mend.
We try always, watchful, wary.
We know the time. We do not tarry.
We as people strive in honor.
Oh there’s slight, or greed, or con, or…
These are only sides of nature,
Things that color, shade the slate, or
Absolve in partnership with fate and maker.
We praise the giver not the taker!
In all this social beast
a person needs bread and yeast
to rise and fill,
surmise and frill,
balance a price
get a slice.
This is enough to say.
See this balmy day?
Instead,
no dread.
Aren’t we fed?
Aren’t we ahead?
Isn’t it said
It all works out in time?
Don’t tease me. All is fine.
You have yours. I have mine.
What more? Don’t threat of less.
We’re strong enough to face this mess.
What’s that you say?
Another shortage play?
An increase to pay?
Listen. I have too much to do today.
Go away.

OH, CITIZEN, IT IS NOT BUT DUTY WON.
NOT STRUGGLE BUT JOB WELL DONE
TO STRIVE THE DEPTH, TO SEE, TO KNOW;
TO PROVE ADEPT, TO PLAN, TO SHOW;
PROVIDE THE NEED,
SHUN THE GREED,
ASSURE WE’RE FREED.
HERE, I PLEAD
EACH HOLD A KEY,
A PART TO GUARANTEE
OUR GREAT LIBERTY.
NEVER LET IT BE SAID
WE ARE SUCCUMBED BY DREAD.
SPEAK, “DON’T TREAD!”
SHRIEK, “I’M LED
BY LIBERTY’S FORUM,
OUR PEOPLE’S QUORUM!
REASON IS OUR DAY!
JUSTICE IS OUR WAY,
WHISTLES ON THE EAGLE’S WING.
THIS IS WHAT WE DREAM AND SING!”

Then of all we’ve seen or ever knew
It rests on what we say and do,
Regardless the state of style,
The yard of cloth, the mile of smile,
Principal without remorse.
Vision is our course.

Face the trouble!
Burst the bubble!
Dissolve our pain.
Achieve our gain.

EACH CAN REACH,
SO REACH TO EACH,
THE BEST RESTITUTION
FOR ANY INSTITUTION.

NETWORK FROM MATRIX,
MATRIX FROM NODE,
TO COIN A MODERN ODE.
NURTURE YOUR CLAN.

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR, IF YOU CAN.

Unable to hide under Bush:

“At this point I should note that for the first time, both the United States secretary of state and secretary of defense have doctorates in Russian studies,” Mr. Gates said. “A fat lot of good that’s done us.”

US Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, speaking at Oxford.

Try and fathom the rationale for this list of CEO Compen$ation, only 25 with the wealth we’ve waited since Reagan to trickle.

If you don’t feel pissed on, you are in a coma!

Now, Bush dares, they need One Trillion Dollar$ from Ma and Pa Kettle to cover the incredibly irresponsible actions of Wall Street.

The American Dollar may soon be confetti.

Dumby up, America. Make tomorrow American.

I’ve often wondered what it was like to live through the (first) Wall Street Crash. Now I have some idea. What’s strange is the way, at each stage in the crisis, there’s a feeling that perhaps it has bottomed out. And then it gets worse again. Today we’ve seen the unthinkable happen — the US Treasury is running out of cash, and the markets are beginning to contemplate the possibility (still deemed extremely remote, but still…) of the US government defaulting on its loans. And it’s coming closer to home.

The end of American capitalism as we knew it?

Seafarers Provide.

Day 512 for Astronauts.

Create environment.
Sustain a crew.
Dangerous,
Isolated.
Brave.

Wind SE 8 knots, Course SSW, Speed 2 knots, Position 18° 38′ S by 105° 13′ W

My favorite cloud is a single white puff ball floating low in the sky drifting west on any tradewind.

You don’t need to go here, a NYTimes book review. I clicked because the title drew me.

The Best Mind of His Generation

The moods that Mr. Wallace distilled so vividly on the page — the gradations of sadness and madness embedded in the obsessive, recursive, exhausting prose style that characterized both his journalism and his fiction — crystallized an unhappy collective consciousness. And it came through most vividly in his voice. Hyperarticulate, plaintive, self-mocking, diffident, overbearing, needy, ironical, almost pathologically self-aware (and nearly impossible to quote in increments smaller than a thousand words) — it was something you instantly recognized even hearing it for the first time. It was — is — the voice in your own head.

smartness — wide erudition, mastery of trivia, rhetorical facility, love of argument for its own sake — could leave you feeling empty, baffled and dumb.

Me, at any rate.

A federal judge on Saturday ordered that Dick Cheney cannot destroy records. HA!

It’s you, America.
Now what?

America has entered a 50/50 era, a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College.

Manichaeism (in Modern Persian ???? ???? ?yin e M?ni; Chinese: ???) was one of the major dualistic religions, originating in Sassanid Persia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaean

Two kinds of people in this world.

Happy now?

ABC News Exclusive Dirty Detail

“An internal government document obtained by ABC News appears to contradict Sarah Palin’s most recent explanation for why she fired her public safety chief Walt Monegan, the move which prompted the now-contested state probe into ‘Troopergate’.”

ABC News Photo Illustration

Troopergate: Public Safety Commissioner Monegan traveling to Washington for $10 million for Alaska Rape Prevention – more rape than any State in the Union.

Troopergate: Her governor’s staff OK’d his flight.

Troopergate: In Sarah Palin’s legal filing, she fired Monegan because he had a “rogue mentality” and was bucking her administration’s directives.

Witnesses who refuse to testify can be found in contempt under Alaska law. But the full Legislature must be in session, which won’t happen until January. McCain sent a team of operatives to Alaska to “carefully coordinate” any information that’s released.

Troopergate: Walt Monegan refuses to go along with her personal vendetta.

America!
Stay outta her kitchen!

The document on top in her three-ring binder is a flyer from the John Birch Society.

Do the math.
Who needs math?

Which Party makes us money?

1. FRoosevelt: 267.2% increase.
2. Clinton: 118.1% increase.
3. Coolidge: 110.4% increase
4. Eisenhower: 68.7% increase
5. Bush (Sr.): 44.1% increase.
6. Reagan: 26.4% increase.
7. Johnson: 22.4% increase.
8. TRoosevelt: 18.1% increase.
9. Wilson: 15.1% increase.
10. Truman: 11.4% increase.
11. Nixon: 9.7% increase.
12. Carter: 0.2% increase.
13. GWBush: 0.5% decrease
before market crisis!
14. Taft: 1.5% decrease.
15. Hoover: 83.5% decrease.

Kennedy, up 12.5% in two years and ten months.

The debt ceiling will be over $11 trillion by the time Bush leaves office.

Republicans cost us money!

Which party, Democrat or Republican, puts more money in our pockets? [NYTimes]

Simply put, the United States economy has grown faster, on average, under Democratic presidents than under Republicans.

Say it nicely:

“There is a large historical gap in economic performance between the two parties.”

Vote cruel.

a modest proposal
for a new flag design

Don’t be alarmed. Paine is our pain. We can do that.

The Bush administration asked Congress for unchecked power to buy $700 billion in bad mortgage investments from U.S. financial companies in what would be an unprecedented government intrusion into the markets. [Bloomberg]

All our money.

Across the nation, homeless organizations are seeing the largest numbers in a generation, as people without jobs and homes seek shelter in cars or temporary encampments like those outside of Reno and in the cities of Portland, Fresno, Seattle, Chattanooga and Columbus.

Not one dollar.

The British papers sound an alarm – rising repossessions, soaring energy and food prices and job losses. Depression?

You wanna tune into genius? A little bit is good for the spleen according to latest research. Then tune into a Bay Area writer that grinds more words than sand under your shoe, tells it as he sees it, and scorns anybody not into tolerance and breadth. Now, that’s hate we can use.

Follow this fellow. For the sake of recognizing what honesty can do.

White women, no way!
Once pro-Obama, but now swoon for McPalin? Who the hell are you?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Every white woman I know is positively horrified. Wait, that’s not exactly true. It’s more accurate to say that every thoughtful or liberal or intuitive or open-minded white woman I know worth her vagina monologue and her self-determination and and two centuries of nonstop striving for equal rights and sexual freedom and exhaustive patriarchal unshackling is right now openly horrified, appalled at what the addition of shrill PTA hockey-mom Sarah Palin seems to have done for the soggy, comatose McCain campaign — that is, make it not merely remotely interesting and melodramatic, but aggressively hostile to, well, to all intelligent women everywhere.

Sisters. This is what he says, “You’ve got to be kidding me. They say: This is what we get? This could be our historic role model? Two hundred years (OK, more like 2000) of struggle, only to have this nasty caricature of femininity try to hijack and mock and undermine it all?”

“And thus did the harrowing wail go out…”
Have you had your harrowing wail lately?

McCain: The Most Reprehensible of the Keating Five
The story of “the Keating Five” – a scandal rivaling Teapot Dome and Watergate

By Tom Fitzpatrick
published: Phoenix New Times, November 29, 1989

You’re John McCain, a fallen hero who wanted to become president so desperately that you sold yourself to Charlie Keating, the wealthy con man who bears such an incredible resemblance to The Joker. Obviously, Keating thought you could make it to the White House, too.

He poured $112,000 into your political campaigns. He became your friend. He threw fund raisers in your honor. He even made a sweet shopping-center investment deal for your wife, Cindy. Your father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was cut in on the deal, too.

Nothing was too good for you. Why not? Keating saw you as a prime investment that would pay off in the future.

So he flew you and your family around the country in his private jets. Time after time, he put you up for serene, private vacations at his vast, palatial spa in the Bahamas. All of this was so grand. You were protected from what Thomas Hardy refers to as “the madding crowd.” It was almost as though you were already staying at a presidential retreat.

More: The Phoenix Gazette, September 12, 1993 [pdf]

Leave ’em alone. They don’t need oversight. They’re just playing under Bush.

Finger Pointing
The NYTimes somewhat timidly reports that economists are putting the blame for Wall Street’s errors on poor oversight in general and Bush in particular.

And while economists and other experts say there are plenty of culprits — Democrats and Republicans in Congress, the Federal Reserve, an overzealous home-lending industry, banks and also Mr. Bush’s predecessor, Bill Clinton — they do agree that the Bush administration bears part of the blame.

These experts, from both political parties, say Mr. Bush’s early personnel choices and overarching antipathy toward regulation created a climate, that, if it did not set off the turmoil, almost certainly aggravated it.

The president’s first two Treasury secretaries, for instance, lacked the kind of Wall Street expertise that might have helped them raise red flags about the use of complex financial instruments that are at the heart of the crisis.

To his credit, Mr. Bush accurately foresaw the danger posed by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and began calling as early as 2002 for greater regulation. But experts say the administration could have done even more to curb excesses in the housing market, and much more to police Wall Street, which transmitted those problems around the world.

Vincent R. Reinhart, a former Federal Reserve economist now at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute here, said that, in retrospect, “it would have helped for the Bush administration to empower the folks at Treasury and the Federal Reserve and the comptroller of the currency and the F.D.I.C.” — the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — “to look at these issues more closely.”

He said it would also have helped “for Congress to have held hearings.”

Instead, voices inside the administration for tougher policing of Wall Street found themselves with few supporters.

“I believe that the president is exhausted and the vice president has been marginalized, and what you now have is the Washington interests . . . dominating the administration,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said.

‘Washington Interests’ running the U.S.A.?
Wot? Send me your passport!
Do I hafta spell out what citizenship is…?
Fix it, America.
In America’s interest.

Who’s da rational now?

Joining the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, members of the APA have voted “No” to participation of its members at interrogation sites “…where it believes international law is being violated,”

Breaking with protocol established more than fifty years ago, the Executive Director of the United Nations Global Development Programme said in a speech at the Geneva Parity Council today, “It is time for economic policy directors to wake up, catch up and keep going with technological development programs while the U.S.A. encounters its first period of financial difficulty since the 1930s and World War II.

“Americans are not stopping and will not be down for long. The USA will restart quickly and repeat its domination of global markets if aligned and non-aligned member nations fail to implement competitive policy framework as rapidly as possible.

“Global competitors must not be confused about the American intention to penetrate market opportunity,” he said. “For example, examine what the United States has introduced to the marketplace even as the world is waiting for the outcome of the recent turmoil in financial exchange markets.”

Corru-Skeletal Technology is top engineering that other nations have failed to develop!

Thermo-Exhaust Technology is new and profitable already.

Why are so many nations slow to capture new technology?

Steam Exhaust Port patents reveal again that American technology is the envy of the world.

Where are global leaders in this new world economy?

Boxtopper Technology is arriving quickly and will conquer the European, Oceania and Asia markets quickly if policy and business leaders fail to pay attention to American technology innovation as aggressive exports are driven by the collapsing value of the dollar.

The U.N. Director added, “The threat of American technology is a threat to the balance of payments in every nation.”

Published today, the Global Export Competitive Index from the UN Council of Economic Parity revealed that member nations are encouraged to pay serious attention to undiscovered economic opportunity. If competitor regions fail to leverage the capital frontier after the ‘Bush Dilemma’, the sustained innovation offered by inventors and developers in the USA will quickly recover to dominate the fiscal horizon.

Transportation Security Administration officials renamed the TSA Operations Center to ‘The Freedom Center’ at a ribbon cutting ceremony attended by the State Department, Pentagon and Airport Security Contractors.

The Bush Administration drew fire from critics noting the White House Terror Security Directive issued to hub and connecting airports from the TSA Freedom Center are far too enjoyable for the American flying public.

Accountability for financial failure and negligence should fall on legislators, board rooms and individuals rather than policies and packaging.

As brigands stretch regulatory, fiduciary and ethical restraints beyond sensibility, the blame is too often placed on inanimate systems and procedures such as Derivatives or Swaps.

It’s not enough to escape liability under stupidity, greed or human nature repeating that “players in the Wall Street crisis did not fully understand the investments their own firms were making” because this is the indictment precisely.

Seriously now, because Democracy is History!

If financial behemoths like AIG are too large and/or too interconnected to fail but not too smart to get themselves into situations where they need to be bailed out, then what is the case for letting private firms engage in such kinds of activities in the first place?

Sadly without adequately naming names, Metafilter has posted a few explanations about the collapse of AIG:

How AIG fell apart is a good article giving an overview of Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) and the role they played in AIG’s struggle. CDS issues are a crisis that quite a few saw coming just a few months ago and one that was discussed here then, although AIG was thought be a special “safe” case among CDS issuers.

Indeed it now seems that AIG’s particular problem was that it had failed to hedge the CDSs they issued with CDSs acquired from other institutions, presumably on the premise that they were insuring assets too safe to fail.

Also included the $85B bridge loan made to AIG might not be enough to save the insurer.

Bank governors worldwide have made ready $200 billion for the struggling bank sector in only a few days while, without squeezing his lauded private sector friends further, the Bush Administration is tapping taxpayers for approximately $600 billion.

There are names and addresses of laissez-faire regulators asleep at the wheel while padding their lobbyist and donor allies. Many are on a ballot.

Hoist them on their petard and choose them away.

[wiktionary] He has no one to blame but himself, ‘hoisted by his own petard’.

False arrest is a fundamental breach of the Constitution of the United States of America. Freedom of Assembly is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution of the United States of America. Then soon, those that gave the orders to arrest groups of citizens during the Republican Convention will be found guilty.

This statement accompanies the video of the mass arrest of utterly peaceful concert goers at their picnic on Labor Day, the opening day of the Republican Convention. The Service Employees International Union is an organization of more than 2 million members.

BURIED TAPE REVEALS USE OF FORCE AND AN UNWARRANTED MASS ARREST OF BYSTANDERS DURING THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION

ST. PAUL, Minnesota (September 18, 2008) Video released today shows the indiscriminate arrest of a crowd of two hundred at the waterfront across from a concert on Harriet Island Regional Park during this month’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul. The video includes multiple angles of the event as well as an interview with the cameraman who buried his footage and was one of almost two hundred people arrested for rioting without probable cause.

More than eight hundred people were arrested in St. Paul during the Republican National Convention. This video shows that at least twenty percent of the eight hundred plus arrested were seized without due cause.

Oh, to be waxing nostalgic to our America just eight years ago.

Helping needy banks costly, says Administration

President George W. Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, acknowledged that the program will put a “significant amount of taxpayers’ money on the line.”

The administration is asking Congress to give it sweeping new powers to execute the plan – the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression, a plan that costs taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. [Bush News Promo]

Sweeping powers? Sounds good to me.

It’s time we swept out the puffery of false patriotism such as renaming TSA’s ops building the Freedom Center.

It’s time we aimed at the tabloid throat of Republican election engineering.

It’s time to refuse the anarchists of Evangelical Greed.

Just eight years ago, our nation had nearly a trillion dollar surplus. Before Bush, the Congressional Budget Office 2001 projection for the following ten years accumulated $5.6 trillion surplus for 2002-2011.

How has our SURPLUS become a DEFICIT?
One, philandering corporate welfare.
Two, upper bracket tax cuts.
Three, costly ridiculous security.
Four, adventurous war.

The Bank Health Care Plan?
Where is +$600 billion for this financial system bailout coming from? Obama says, “So let me get this straight. Run health care like they’ve been running Wall Street?”

Paul Krugman at the NYTimes warns, “You might want to be seated before reading this. Here’s what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”

Grow up and weep, America.