April 2009
39 posts
The Next Unbelievable Bailout
Quote of the Day: “Utopia is not one of the options.” — David Bergland, Author, DC Downsizer
Subject: Another bailout, more corporate welfare
Here comes yet another bailout, and more
corporate welfare. The Obama administration wants to use your tax money
to bribe banks to renegotiate second mortgages. Projected price tag: $50 billion.
This may benefit some banks, and some...
Cincinnati Superhero Patrols Streets Fighting...
Cincinnati police have a new ally in their fight against crime, whether they want it or not.He
calls himself Shadowhare, and he wears a mask and a cape to conceal his
true identity. He’s Cincinnati’s own version of a superhero fighting
crime and injustice where he finds it.”We
help enforce the law by doing what we can in legal standards, so we
carry handcuffs, pepper spray …...
WatchBarry Schwartz: The real crisis? We stopped being wise
Swedish factory fined $3,000 for robot attack
Evil geniuses take note: a near-fatal robot attack only costs an organization about $3,000 in Sweden these days.
Swede online rag The Local has reported that a factory north of Stockholm has been fined 25,000 kronor (£2,100) after a malfunctioning bot nearly killed one of its workers.
The robo-assault reportedly took place in 2007, when a man attempted to repair a defective machine used to lift...
Yorkshire man wakes up Irish after brain surgery
A Yorkshire man woke up from brain surgery to find he’d turned from
a flat vowelled, thrifty dalesman into a blarney kissing, ‘Danny Boy’
singing, happy-go-lucky Dubliner.
The Daily Mail reports that 30 year old Chris Gregory spent
three days on life support, after a blood vessel in his brain ruptured.
While the staff were relieved to see him come round, they were
non-plussed...
Blown-away Chihuahua reunited with owners
WATERFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Tinker Bell has been reunited with her owners after a 70-mph gust of wind picked up the six-pound Chihuahua and tossed her out of sight.
Dorothy and Lavern Utley credit a pet psychic for guiding them on Monday to a wooded area
nearly a mile from where 8-month-old Tinker Bell had been last seen.
The brown long-haired dog was dirty and hungry but otherwise...
Audit the Fed!
Quote of the Day: “With the monetary system we have now, the careful saving of a lifetime can be wiped out in an eyeblink.” — Larry Parks Executive Director, Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education (FAME)
Subject: NEW CAMPAIGN! Audit the Fed!
Congressman Ron Paul wants to audit the Federal
Reserve. His bill to do this (HR 1207) already has 55 listed
co-sponsors,...
World Bank launches new infrastructure funds
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The World Bank launched two new funds with
expected financing of $55 billion over the next three years to try and
ensure that infrastructure projects in developing countries do not dry
up in the financial crisis.
The bank’s Infrastructure Recovery and Assets (INFRA) platform and
the Infrastructure Crisis Facility (ICF), managed by the bank’s private
sector...
Quote
“The interests of the IMF represent the big international interests that seem to be established and concentrated in Wall Street.”
— Che Guevara, Marxist revolutionary, 1959
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Monetary_Fund#IMF.2FWorld_Bank_support_of_military_dictatorships
Defense Department to Release Prisoner Abuse...
The Department of Defense announced late Thursday that a “substantial number of photos” depicting abuse of prisoners at
prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan will be released. The photos are being released in response to a Freedom of Information
Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2004. At
least 44 pictures will be released on May 28, making public for...
The Counterfeiting Numbers
Quote of the Day: “Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world.” — Alan Greenspan, former Chair of the Federal Reserve speaking before the House Banking Committee in May 1999
Subject: The Counterfeiting Numbers
Counterfeiters create new money, illegally. The Federal Reserve (FED) does the same thing, legally.
The legal counterfeiting is worse than the...
A Question of Values
Quote of the Day: “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money” - Alexis de Tocqueville
Subject: A Question of Values
In 2005 Representative Tom Osborne of Nebraska
thought the Central American Free Trade Agreement was a bad deal, but
the Bush Administration threatened to punish his district in the...
Food Is Made From Yucky Stuff
Quote of the Day: “Being the state means never having to say you’re sorry.” — D.A. Ridgely (Source: Positive Liberty blog, March 23, 2009)
Subject: The Incredible Cost of Utopian Food Safety Plans
Crops grow in dirt. Animals don’t take showers or use toilets. Food is made from yucky stuff.
This means there’s always a risk of
contamination. We can reduce...
Teenage hacking menace jailed for 11 months
A teenage hacker who ran a botnet of compromised machines and made fake 911 emergency calls has been jailed for 11 months, The Boston Herald reports.
The 17 year-old, from Worcester, Massachusetts, referred to in court
papers only by his initials DH or online nickname DShocker, confessed
to using a botnet to run denial of service attacks against adversaries
from the online gaming and IRC scenes....
Math is everywhere
Looking once more at my old apartment number, it was neat to realize it actually forms a pattern…
12358
1 + 2 = 3
—- 2 + 3 = 5
———- 3 + 5 = 8
FIBONACCI SEQUENCE!
Obama Stands Nuremberg on its Head
President Obama’s decision to spare CIA torturers from prosecution stands the Nuremberg principles on their head. ‘Good Germans who were only following orders’ are not exempt from the bar of justice. Individuals must be held responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Justice Robert Jackson, Chief United States Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, declared in his...
Antarctic ice is growing, not melting away
Ice is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap. The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent’s western coast.
Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth’s...
Ancient, frozen ecosystem produces blood-red ice...
A microbial ecosystem has been trapped under an Antarctic glacier for
over a million years. Researchers have now figured out what fuels these
bacteria thanks to a shift that has brought bright red, iron-rich ice
to the surface.
Benjamin Urmston
...
Safety Net or Dragnet?
Quote of the Day: “Government
welfare programs — if they should exist at all — should be limited to
helping those who really need assistance. They should be safety nets,
not dragnets that capture everyone.” — Mark Skousen, “Econopower,”
page 55
Subject: Safety Net or Dragnet?
What politicians call a “social safety net,” isn’t....
Voluntary cooperation vs. violence
Quote of the Day: “All political power comes from the barrel of a gun.” — Mao Tse Tung
Subject: Voluntary cooperation vs. violence
If not for the threat of government violence —
of arrest, incarceration, and the loss of all your property — how
would you choose to spend your money. Would you rather …
Give money to the Department of Housing and Urban...
Logic
Logic has been defined as the study of the rules of correct thinking. It
concentrates on the principles that guide rational thought and discussion. The
most fundamental concept in logic is that of an argument. An argument must be
distinguished from “arguing”, which is a debate or disagreement
between different people. The logical concept of an argument is: a set of
statements, one of...
Hairdresser turns robber into sex-slave
A hairdresser from the small Russian town of Meshchovsk has subdued a
man who tried to rob her shop, and then raped him for three days in the
utility room, Life.ru reports. The incident occurred on Saturday, March 14. The working day was
coming to an end at a small hairdressers, when a man armed with a gun
rushed in and demanded the day’s earnings.
The frightened employees and customers agreed to...
Omegle... a free anonymous chat service
http://omegle.com Nice little free service where you can chat with a stranger from anywhere around the world. Though intriguingly there are many from China.
My mother's view in retrospect
Today I had what I believe is often a fairly common conversation between parents and their kids regarding politics and social issues. As would be expected, forms of doubt do arise from time to time. Not all information received is completely true and sometimes it takes more than one source to get a real perspective on certain things. So, I was disappointed to hear my mother does not, and is not...
Half of America's Primary Care doctors may be...
Quote of the Day: “Going into
this project we generally knew about the shortage of physicians; what
we didn’t know is how much worse it could get over the next few years.
The bottom line is that the person you’ve known as your family doctor
could be getting ready to disappear - and there might not be a
replacement.” — Lou Goodman, PhD, President, The Physicians’...
WatchPick up a phone!
WatchBarry Schwartz: The paradox of choice
The Myth of Good Intentions
Quote of the Day: “The economy is so bad the Mafia has started laying off judges.” — anonymous Internet joke
Subject: The myth of good intentions
A bill with a nice-sounding title, such as the
“Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA),” passes Congress.
Later, when its defects come to light, even the law’s victims assume
that the bill had “good...
Quote
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. [Thomas Jefferson]
Agency says bailout will cost taxpayers more
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer Pete Yost, Associated Press Writer
–
Sat Apr 4, 10:31 pm ET
WASHINGTON – Bailing out the financial sector will cost taxpayers $167 billion more than originally anticipated, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate.
The
original figure in January was $189 billion,...
Troll-b-gon
Where are all them comments? lol. Ran out of IP addys?
Mexican Drug Lord Officially Thanks American...
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera reported head of the Sinaloa cartel in
Mexico, ranked 701st on Forbes’ yearly report of the wealthiest men
alive, and worth an estimated $1 billion, today officially thanked
United States politicians for making sure that drugs remain illegal.
According to one of his closest confidants, he said, “I couldn’t have
gotten so stinking rich...
Mother-in-law survives rocket attack
A desperate husband tried to kill his mother-in-law with an anti-tank missile launcher after claiming she’d turned his wife against him.
Bosnian Miroslav Miljici wanted revenge after blaming his wife’s mum for the break-up of his marriage.
And when his mother-in-law survived the rocket attack on her home, he tried to finish her off with a machine gun, a court in Doboj, Bosnia, was...
Oops! The real number may be $101 trillion!
Quote of the Day: “I, however,
place economy among the first and most important republican virtues,
and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.” — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Source: letter to William Plumer, July 21, 1816
Subject: Oops! The real number may be $101 trillion, plus a bunch of other stuff
Somewhere in the blizzard of budget numbers and
grand...
