Political topic: Aren't we suppose to be over Race?

So when a Palin effigy gets hung by a rope, it is ok and not illegal.

But when an Obama effigy gets hung on a noose (I concede on a campus and not as a Halloween display,) it is a hate crime? And arrests were made...

hate is hate is hate no matter what color you are.

I read some quotes from various sources that they would take it on a case-by-case basis, which means if the person who hung Palin, whom they decided didn't break the law, hung Obama, based on history (horrible history), is more likely a hate crime.

Do you see the hypocrisy? Aren't we suppose to be blind to race now?

Kanye West: Robocop

I really like this new song. I know his new stuff is different with the autovoice or whatever they call it, but it's catchy. I think the drums really made Love Lockdown a real good listen.

It's a leak, you may be able to find it by clicking on the hype machine widget to the right, it's been in the top 10-20 popular tracks for last couple of days. It's a 160kbs radio rip but a good listen nonetheless!

If you Vote for Obama you are a Moron: My own take

"With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there." here

A quote from a great article I hope you will all read (I only linked the last page)

Why Obama will set this country back 30 years:

Give leverage back to the Unions. Take away the secret votes and that means Union thugs can knock on your door. Why worry about unions? Did you notice Congress today talking about giving Chrysler and GM another 10B dollars? Union. Thugs. and Mobs all over again

Why worry about the fairness doctrine? It's demanding that talk radio give equal time. We all know that talk radio is run by conservatives and tv is run by liberal. You don't see the GOP passing a fairness doctrine for tv, do you?

Radio will cancel all the talkshows you like to listen to, because no one listens to liberal talk radio. Except for NPR which is non profit so who cares.

You rights are going out the window. Thugs will be influencing and controlling us people.

Get educated.

Oh what? You can't because the MSM is running the news?

If you don't know what MSM is please get off my blog.

If the fairness doctrine passes, I may be required to cancel my blog under penalty of arrest.

Does that sound fair to you? 1984, much? Censorship, much?

Volkswagen vs. GM and Chrysler

This is why I don't short.

Chrysler is worth nothing.

Stock market up 10% today. Freeky. I just made that word up.

A reminder to always buy Japanese, even thought their stock market sucks too:

Shrimp 'N Grits

courtesy of the Charleston Watch:

Shrimp 'n Grits

Income Redistribution - A fulfilling experiment when personally applied!

Lee Walton

Last Thursday while walking to lunch on the corner of Market and East Bay, I passed what appeared to be a homeless man standing on the corner of Wentworth and East Bay holding a hand-made sign that read, “Vote Obama, I need the money.”, I laughed to myself and admired the man for his misplaced, albeit blatant honesty.... read the rest at the source

Love Lockdown: Kanye West

Wow, the whole song:

Will the Last Honest Reporter Please Leave the Lights On?

Thanks for this:


Do you know who Orson Scott Card is?

He's arguably the greatest living sci-fi author. Creator of Ender Wiggins, who is certainly one of the greatest sci-fi characters of all time. Read Ender's Game and see for yourself.

Anyway, OSC is also a wingnut liberal who appears to have found himself.

From OSC himself:

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457to] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

What if SNL did to Michelle Obama what they did to Palin?

I usually try not to quote Pat Buchanan, but he has a point:

---

What if 'SNL' mocked Michelle Obama?

---

Posted: October 23, 2008
7:17 pm Eastern

© 2008

Perhaps the only institution in America whose approval rating is beneath that of Congress is the media.

Both have won their reputations the hard way. They earned them.

Consider the fawning indulgence shown insider Joe Biden with the dripping contempt visited on outsider Sarah Palin.

Twice last weekend, Biden grimly warned at closed-door meetings that a great crisis is coming early in the term of President Obama:

"Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. ... Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said … we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

A "generated crisis"? By whom? Moscow? Beijing? Tehran?

This is an astonishing statement from a chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who has access to the same intelligence as George Bush. Joe was warning of a crisis like the Berlin Wall of July 1961, where JFK called for a tripling of the draft and ordered a call-up of reserves, or the missile crisis where U.S. pilots like John McCain were minutes away from bombing nuclear missile sites in Cuba and killing the Russians manning them.

Is Russia about to move on the Crimea? Is Israel about to launch air strikes on Iran's nuclear sites? What is Joe talking about?

If one assumes Joe is a serious man, we have a right to know.

Instead, what we got was Obama's airy dismissal of Joe's words as a "rhetorical flourish" and a media – rather than demanding that Joe hold a press conference – acting as Obama surrogates parroting the talking points that Joe was just saying that new presidents always face tests.

Had John McCain made that hair-raising statement, he would have been accused of fear mongering about a new 9/11. The media would have run with the story rather than have smothered it.

Contrasting McCain with his hero, Joe declared a few weeks back, "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and ... said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

Nice historical reference. Except when the market crashed in 1929, Hoover was president, and there was no television.

Can one imagine what the press would have done to Sarah Palin had she exhibited such ignorance of history. Or Dan Quayle?

Joe gets a pass because everybody likes Joe.

Fine. But Joe also has a record of 36 years in the Senate.

Has anyone ever asked Joe about his own and his party's role in cutting off aid to South Vietnam, leading to the greatest strategic defeat in U.S. history and the Cambodian holocaust? Has anyone ever asked Joe about the role he and his party played in working to block Reagan's deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe, and SDI, which Gorbachev concedes broke the Soviets and won the Cold War?

In the most crucial vote he ever cast – to give Bush a blank check for war in Iraq – Joe concedes he got it wrong.

Is Joe's record of having been wrong on Vietnam, wrong in the Cold War, wrong on the Iraq war, less important than whether Sarah Palin tried to get fired a rogue-cop brother-in-law who Tasered her 10-year-old nephew to "teach him a lesson"?

"I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know," says Joe humbly. Given his record, it is understandable Joe has forgotten so much of it.

Saturday, the New York Times did a takeout on Cindy McCain that delved back into her problem with prescription pills. Yet when Hillary's campaign manager, Mark Penn, brought up Obama's cocaine use on "Hardball," he was savaged by folks for whom the Times is the gold standard.

The people apparently had a "right to know" of Bush's old DUI arrest a week before the 2000 election, but no right to know about how and when Obama was engaged in the criminal use of cocaine.

The media cannot get enough of the "Saturday Night Live" impersonations of Palin as a bubblehead. News shows pick up the Tina Fey clips and run them and run them to the merriment of all.

Can one imagine "Saturday Night Live" doing weekly send-ups of Michelle Obama and her "I've never been proud" of my country, this "just downright mean" America, using a black comedienne to mimic and mock her voice and accent?

"Saturday Night Live" would be facing hate-crime charges.

How do we know? When the New Yorker ran a cartoon of Michelle in an Angela-Davis afro with an AK-47 slung over her shoulder, New Yorker editors had to go on national television to swear they were not mocking Michelle, but the conservatives who have so caricatured Michelle and the Messiah.

Is there a media double standard? You betcha.

$150K clothes vs. $150 Greek Column used Once to make B look like God

Pass it on.

So, putting up a ridiculous stage set that made Obama look like a fascist jackass, and then packing it away after one night? That was fine. $140,000-150,000 well spent. But spending the same amount on enough clothes for two months on the campaign trail? That's the biggest scandal since... well, since all the other Palin scandals that weren't.

Have they made an attack on Palin yet that hasn't backfired? Do they think we won't know when it backfires, just because they don't report it on NBC?

P.S. Oh, and now it turns out that the money was to clothe her whole family. How about that. But I'm sure if the Palins were running around in what they wore before she got picked, none of these brainiacs would've had anything bad to say about that.

Did you know Obama's clothes descended from the heavens on a glowing golden cloud? Also, he's a radical socialist and his own running mate said he'll start another world war. But whatever.

One More Take on The Spark of the Housing / Credit Crisis

My readers are smart enough to know why, but here's another simple take on why and how we got so screwed:


How Lending Standard Changes Led to the Housing Boom/Bust

There is a general lack of understanding as to how the Housing boom and bust occurred, and why it led to the subsequent credit freeze. The situation is complex, and that is why we are still explaining this 3 years into the housing bust.

Let me take another shot at clarifying this:

Underlying EVERYTHING -- housing boom and bust, derivative explosion, credit crisis -- is the enormous change in lending standards. I am not sure many people understand the massive change that took place during the 2002-07 period. It was more than a subtle shift -- it was an abdication of the traditional lending standards that had existed for decades, if not centuries.

After the Greenspan Fed took rates down to ultra-low levels, home prices began to levitate. More and more mortgages were being securitized -- purchased by Wall Street, and repackaged into other forms of bond-like paper. The low rates spurred demand for this higher yielding, triple AAA rated, asset-backed paper.

In this ultra-low rate environment, where prices were appreciating, and most mortgages were being securitized, all that mattered to the mortgage originator was that a BORROWER NOT DEFAULT FOR 90 DAYS (some contracts were 6 Months). The contracts between the firms that originated mortgages and the Wall Street firms that securitized them had explicit warranties. The mortgage seller guaranteed to the mortgage bundle buyer (underwriter) that payments were current, the mortgage holders were valid, and that the loan would not default for 90 or 180 days.

So long as the mortgage did not default in that period of time, it could not be "put back" to the originator. A salesman or mortgage business would only lose their fee if the borrower defaulted within that 3 or 6 month contractually specified period. Indeed, a default gave the buyer the right to return the mortgage and charge back the lender the full purchase price.

What do rational, profit-maximizers do? They put people in houses that would not default in 90 days -- and the easiest way to do that were the 2/28 ARM mortgages. Cheap teaser rates for 24 months, then the big reset. Once the reset occurred 24 months later, it was long off the books of the mortgage originators -- by then, it was Wall Street's problem.

This was a monumental change in lending standards. It created millions of new potential home buyers. Why? Instead of making sure that borrowers could pay back a loan, and not default over the course of a 30 YEAR FIXED MORTGAGE, originators only had to find people who could afford the teaser rate for a few months.

This was a simply unprecedented shift in lending standards.

And, it is why 293 mortgage lenders have imploded -- all of these bad loans were put back to them. Note that the fear of this occurring is what was supposed to keep the lenders in line. The repercussions of this is why Greenspan believed the free market could self-regulate. (After all, people are rational, right?) One of the many odd lessons of this era is that, under certain circumstances, companies and salespeople will pursue short term profits to the point where it literally destroys the firm.

If you want to point to the single most important element of the Housing boom and bust, this is it. Ultimately, these defaulting mortgages underlie the entire credit freeze. And, it would not have been possible without the Greenspan ultra-low rates, which made the teaser portion (the "2" of the 2/28) of these mortgages so attractive.

Contrary to the cliche, failure is not an orphan in the current crisis -- it has 100s of fathers. But these four are the primary movers, the key to everything else. The perfect storm of ultra-low rates, securitization, lax lending standards and triple AAA ratings -- these are the key to how we ended up with the previous boom, followed by a bust, and ultimately, the credit freeze.

If you Vote for Obama you are a Moron

I'm just quoting another blogger. Worth a read in three part.s

Obligitory Cat Post

If you look really close, she is sitting on my quarterly 401K statement. Fitting.

Sarah Palin on SNL

Pretty funny. I was worried about her hurting the campaign, but I thought it was good.

That's So Gay: Wanda Sykes

I realize with my pro-oil stance you may be shocked that I find using "gay" as a putdown, as in stupid, retarded, etc, whatever is offensive. I'm just human, ya know? Stupid is a bad word, and gay is a bad word. (Unless you know, you are actually gay)

More Thoughts On Oil

The article that was posted on the Chronicle has been deleted. I don't know if that means this wasn't added to the bill or they got tired of the thousands of comments from articulate posters saying, "raise taxes on oil mean raising taxes on the pumps!"

Really, I assume it went through and will post my comments below.

"The oil companies may not be able to duck a final punch from Capitol Hill.

Before approving a massive financial bailout package Wednesday, the Senate attached language that would hit the oil and gas companies up for higher taxes to help fund tax credits for renewable energy and other tax breaks.

The House is expected to take up the measure Friday.

The legislation would freeze the tax deduction oil and gas companies receive for their domestic manufacturing operations at 6 percent, while other American manufacturers will see that deduction rise to 9 percent in 2010.

That provision will raise $4.9 billion over 10 years.

The legislation would raise another $2.2 billion by tightening the rules applying to oil and gas companies' taxes on income earned overseas.

And the new measure would raise $1.7 billion by increasing what producers must pay to the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund from 5 cents per barrel to 8 cents per barrel starting in 2009 and then 9 cents a barrel in 2017."

Ok, why when we are complaining about gas prices the govt answer is to decrease the tax breaks of the corporations that drill here? They'll just stop drilling, they really are only drilling as a courtesy since North America is basically a mature land. The tar sands in Canada and shale in the midwest is just a hope, not a guarantee. If it costs more to drill, and the profit goes away, don't you think the companies will go away?

If you are reading this and really think the oil companies are responsible for the price at the pump, than get the hell off my blog now. You are too ignorant for me to respond to. (Ok, I'll give you this even though you won't believe me, most oil companies are divesting from gas stations because they are unprofitable. They are mostly independently owned).

Why is Microsoft and Harley Davidson and Ford and GM getting government money? The consumer is uneducated and stupid if they don't know what is going on. OINK OINK OINK.

My Political Post of the Night

Thanks, brepublican

We need Joe Six Pack and Joe the Plumber, Not Joe Stalin ! ! !

Well, here we are. The night of the third and final Presidential Debate and we are in trouble. The Market is tanking, McCain won't fight to win and Obama is getting ready to bring his Chicago style Socialist Political Thuggery to Washington. We have been hearing "Hope and Change" for so long now, but people actually have no idea what that means. Well this guy here will tell you all a little secret. Come a little closer and I will tell you......Are you listening? What it means is SOCIALISM AND WEALTH DISTRIBUTION YOU FOOLS ! ! ! ! Wake Up for the love of God. You Volvo driving, Chroc wearing, Politically Correct apologists have no idea what you are voting this country in to. Joe American does not need to be told what to do, how much we can make or when we can get medical care. We need to be left alone. Helping the most needy Americans is done everyday by PRIVATE organizations. We do not need the government, the same one that is corrupt and can't deliver on what we the people need, taking our hard earned dollars to give to people who do not work as hard or as smart as most of us do. I have an idea. How about having Joe Six Pack bring a poor lazy person to work to show him a skill he can use to make his own money. That seems to be a good idea. None of our tax dollars needed for that. I am sure we could all train someone to at least cut grass, put up a fence or paint a house. We do not need Barack Lenin crushing our hope or stealing our change, we need ourselves, our families and our faith to help us figure out how to be productive/contributing members of a free society. BE FREE ! ! ! !

Monday Columbus Day

I miss working for the government when every other day seemed like a holiday. Market is rebounding today, yay!

Sunday Night: Cowboys suck...

I really don't have much for you tonight folks. I mean the economy sucks, if you were living on credit than boo you, let's just have fun.

Zo of MACHOSAUCE PRODUCTIONS

I think I like this guy (Thanks Jim Treacher)

Oh My God! Are You Serious! The new Really?

love love SNL.

Don't Panic v2

Because Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was an awesome book (ok movie) and I just learned an easier way to post photos:

A Banking History of United States: Don't Panic

A Short Banking History of the United States

Why our system is prone to panics.

By JOHN STEELE GORDON

• 
  

We are now in the midst of a major financial panic. This is not a unique occurrence in American history. Indeed, we've had one roughly every 20 years: in 1819, 1836, 1857, 1873, 1893, 1907, 1929, 1987 and now 2008. Many of these marked the beginning of an extended period of economic depression.

The Granger Collection

President Andrew Jackson destroying the Bank of the United States. Lithograph, 1828.

How could the richest and most productive economy the world has ever known have a financial system so prone to periodic and catastrophic break down? One answer is the baleful influence of Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson, to be sure, was a genius and fully deserves his place on Mt. Rushmore. But he was also a quintessential intellectual who was often insulated from the real world. He hated commerce, he hated speculators, he hated the grubby business of getting and spending (except his own spending, of course, which eventually bankrupted him). Most of all, he hated banks, the symbol for him of concentrated economic power. Because he was the founder of an enduring political movement, his influence has been strongly felt to the present day.

Consider central banking. A central bank's most important jobs are to guard the money supply -- regulating the economy thereby -- and to act as a lender of last resort to regular banks in times of financial distress. Central banks are, by their nature, very large and powerful institutions. They need to be to be effective.

Jefferson's chief political rival, Alexander Hamilton, had grown up almost literally in a counting house, in the West Indian island of St. Croix, managing the place by the time he was in his middle teens. He had a profound and practical understanding of markets and how they work, an understanding that Jefferson, born a landed aristocrat who lived off the labor of slaves, utterly lacked.

Hamilton wanted to establish a central bank modeled on the Bank of England. The government would own 20% of the stock, have two seats on the board, and the right to inspect the books at any time. But, like the Bank of England then, it would otherwise be owned by its stockholders.

To Jefferson, who may not have understood the concept of central banking, Hamilton's idea was what today might be called "a giveaway to the rich." He fought it tooth and nail, but Hamilton won the battle and the Bank of the United States was established in 1792. It was a big success and its stockholders did very well. It also provided the country with a regular money supply with its own banknotes, and a coherent, disciplined banking system.

But as the Federalists lost power and the Jeffersonians became the dominant party, the bank's charter was not renewed in 1811. The near-disaster of the War of 1812 caused President James Madison to realize the virtues of a central bank and a second bank was established in 1816. But President Andrew Jackson, a Jeffersonian to his core, killed it and the country had no central bank for the next 73 years.

We paid a heavy price for the Jeffersonian aversion to central banking. Without a central bank there was no way to inject liquidity into the banking system to stem a panic. As a result, the panics of the 19th century were far worse here than in Europe and precipitated longer and deeper depressions. In 1907, J.P. Morgan, probably the most powerful private banker who ever lived, acted as the central bank to end the panic that year.

Even Jefferson's political heirs realized after 1907 that what was now the largest economy in the world could not do without a central bank. The Federal Reserve was created in 1913. But, again, they fought to make it weaker rather than stronger. Instead of one central bank, they created 12 separate banks located across the country and only weakly coordinated.

No small part of the reason that an ordinary recession that began in the spring of 1929 turned into the calamity of the Great Depression was the inability of the Federal Reserve to do its job. It was completely reorganized in 1934 and the U.S. finally had a central bank with the powers it needed to function. That is a principal reason there was no panic for nearly 60 years after 1929 and the crash of 1987 had no lasting effect on the American economy.

While the Constitution gives the federal government control of the money supply, it is silent on the control of banks, which create money. In the early days they created money both through making loans and by issuing banknotes and today do so by extending credit. Had Hamilton's Bank of the United States been allowed to survive, it might well have evolved the uniform regulatory regime a banking system needs to flourish.

Without it, banking regulation was left to the states. Some states provided firm regulation, others hardly any. Many states, influenced by Jeffersonian notions of the evils of powerful banks, made sure they remained small by forbidding branching. In banking, small means weak. There were about a thousand banks in the country by 1840, but that does not convey the whole story. Half the banks that opened between 1810 and 1820 had failed by 1825, as did half those founded in the 1830s by 1845.

Many "wildcat banks," so called because they were headquartered "out among the wildcats," were simple frauds, issuing as many banknotes as they could before disappearing. By the 1840s there were thousands of issues of banknotes in circulation and publishers did a brisk business in "banknote detectors" to help catch frauds.

The Civil War ended this monetary chaos when Congress passed the National Bank Act, offering federal charters to banks that had enough capital and would submit to strict regulation. Banknotes issued by national banks had to be uniform in design and backed by substantial reserves invested in federal bonds. Meanwhile Congress got the state banks out of the banknote business by putting a 10% tax on their issuance. But National banks could not branch if their state did not allow it and could not branch across state lines.

Unfortunately state banks did not disappear, but proliferated as never before. By 1920, there were almost 30,000 banks in the U.S., more than the rest of the world put together. Overwhelmingly they were small, "unitary" banks with capital under $1 million. As each of these unitary banks was tied to a local economy, if that economy went south, the bank often failed. As depression began to spread through American agriculture in the 1920s, bank failures averaged over 550 a year. With the Great Depression, a tsunami of bank failures threatened the collapse of the system.

The reorganization of the Federal Reserve and the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation hugely reduced the number of bank failures and mostly ended bank runs. But there remained thousands of banks, along with thousands of savings and loan associations, mutual savings banks, and trust companies. While these were all banks, taking deposits and making loans, they were regulated, often at cross purposes, by different authorities. The Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, the FSLIC, the SEC, the banking regulators of the states, and numerous other agencies all had jurisdiction over aspects of the American banking system.

The system was stable in the prosperous postwar years, but when inflation took off in the late 1960s, it began to break down. S&Ls, small and local but with disproportionate political influence, should have been forced to merge or liquidate when they could not compete in the new financial environment. Instead Congress made a series of quick fixes that made disaster inevitable.

In the 1990s interstate banking was finally allowed, creating nationwide banks of unprecedented size. But Congress's attempt to force banks to make home loans to people who had limited creditworthiness, while encouraging Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to take these dubious loans off their hands so that the banks could make still more of them, created another crisis in the banking system that is now playing out.

While it will be painful, the present crisis will at least provide another opportunity to give this country, finally, a unified banking system of large, diversified, well-capitalized banking institutions that are under the control of a unified and coherent regulatory system free of undue political influence.

Mr. Gordon is the author of "An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power" (HarperCollins, 2004).

Watching the Debate: Homeowner Bailout? WTF?

They are both saying we need to bailout the homeowners who can't afford their payments.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Let them foreclose. Bailout is a cop out. They bought homes they couldn't afford. Boo, let them lose their homes and move into apartments.

Every American does not deserve a home

If you can't afford it, too bad.

G-Mail Drunk Email control?? Y or N

"Gmail Prevents You From Harming Yourself While Drunk

You're in Google hands

Mail Goggles! What a good idea: After you lost your cellphone somewhere in LES earlier in the evening and now it's three am, it seems like a good time to email your boss and tell him that you "wdnt be cumming into work tomtoday…ish sick."

Now the guys over at Google are going to step in and save your job and also tons of future embarrassments by making you solve math questions to determine your sobriety before sending any late night emails:

Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?

First off: the name definitely should have been "Google Goggles" since that is just really fun to say. Secondly: What if you just really suck at math? Or if you are too drunk to send emails, but sober enough to remember to go into preferences and turn off the application?

Sorry Gmail, this is more polite party chit-chat fodder than an actual workable tool. Call us when you enable a Scrabulous function. "

(source: Jossip)

I win! I win! I win!

Got a check from the neighbor's wife today for the full $500! She wrote how disappointed she was in my lack of communication of the whole event. The moment her husband threw the tree over the fence, she lost my ability for communication. It's about the law after that.

Her husband (ASS) climbed onto my balcony, my PROPERTY, and tied a DEAD TREE to my house.

She actually in the letter suggested I got ripped off by the Tree guy. I DON'T CARE!!!!!!

There is nothing but trust and faith between the people who live next door to you, and they violated all of that in one stupid act.

I WIN!

Airborne Toxic Event: Live Versions

Second one is better. Even though it's not a real violin

More Pork: The US is Bankrupt

"This is how Washington works," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington research group. "A big pot of pork is their recipe for final passage."
The special provisions include tax breaks for:
* Manufacturers of kids' wooden arrows - $6 million.
* Puerto Rican and Virgin Is- lands rum producers - $192 million.
* Wool research.
* Auto-racing tracks - $128 million.
* Corporations operating in American Samoa - $33 million.
* Small- to medium-budget film and television productions - $10 million.

More, from CNET:

That includes, as the New York Post pointed out, millions in tax breaks and related pork for kids' wooden arrows, Puerto Rican rum producers, auto race tracks, and corporations operating in American Samoa. (The likely explanation for the latter: StarKist has a large tuna-canning operation in American Samoa. And StarKist's parent company happens to be located in the district of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.)
The bill has become, in other words, something almost unrelated to the business of bailing out Wall Street. The Beltway term for this is a "Christmas tree bill," meaning everyone gets to hang their favorite spending projects on it--though by the time Congress gets it through, it more closely resembles a slop bucket.
"We will not Christmas-tree this bill," Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat promised a few days ago. "The times are too urgent. Everyone has their own desires and needs. It's going to have to wait."
So much for that idea.
Here's a look a some of the green-tech measures:
• One-year extension for wind and refined coal energy tax credits. A production credit for electricity produced from renewable marine energy sources (meaning through wave power and river power, or by exploiting the differences in ocean temperature). Energy credits for "small wind properties," geothermal heat pump systems, and energy-efficient residential properties.
• New renewable-energy bonds. Up to $800 billion in energy bonds may be offered to the public, with a third from "public power providers," a third from governments, and the remainder from "cooperative electric companies."
• Tax credits for "cellulosic biofuels" and for "carbon dioxide sequestration." An extension of an alternative fuel credit. Tax credits for "new qualified plug-in electric-drive motor vehicles." Bicycle commuters get a nod, as do regulations aimed at "residential top-loading clothes washers."
IRS undercover operations: Privacy invasion? The bailout bill also gives the Internal Revenue Service new authority to conduct undercover operations. It would immunize the IRS from a passel of federal laws, including permitting IRS agents to run businesses for an extended sting operation, to open their own personal bank accounts with U.S. tax dollars, and so on. (Think IRS agents posing as accountants or tax preparers and saying, "I'm not sure if that deduction is entirely legal, but it'll save you $1,000. Want to take it?") That section had expired as of January 1, 2008, and would now be renewed.
Starting with the so-called Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1988, the IRS has possessed this authority temporarily, with occasional multiple-year lapses. A 1999 internal report said the IRS had 126 "trained undercover agents" working in field offices at the time. This is the first time that such undercover authority would be made permanent.
Sens. Max Baucus (D) and Chuck Grassley (R) have been pushing to make it permanent for a while, claiming (PDF) in April that: "Undercover operations are an integral part of IRS efforts to detect and prove noncompliance. The temporary status of this provision creates uncertainty, as the IRS plans its undercover efforts from year to year."
There's another section of the bailout bill worth noting. It lets the IRS give information from individual tax returns to any federal law enforcement agency investigating suspected "terrorist" activity, which can, in turn, share it with local and state police. Intelligence agencies such as the CIA and the National Security Agency can also receive that information.
The information that can be shared includes "a taxpayer's identity, the nature, source, or amount of his income, payments, receipts, deductions, exemptions, credits, assets, liabilities, net worth, tax liability, tax withheld, deficiencies, overassessments, or tax payments, whether the taxpayer's return was, is being, or will be examined or subject to other investigation or processing, or any other data received by, recorded by, prepared by, furnished to, or collected by the Secretary with respect to a return."
That provision had already existed in federal law and automatically expired on January 1, 2008.
What's a little odd is that there's been little to no discussion of the IRS sections of the bailout bill, even though they raise privacy concerns. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said this week: "I will continue to work with congressional leaders to find a way forward to pass a comprehensive plan to stabilize our financial system and protect the American people by limiting the prospects of further deterioration in our economy." He never mentioned the necessity of additional IRS undercover operations.
The bailout: Details, controversy, and loopholes As my colleagues over at CBSNews.com reported on Friday, the law authorizes the Treasury Department to create a so-called Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, as well as a separate insurance fund.
The TARP program permits the Treasury to purchase mortgage-backed bonds or any other "troubled assets" from financial institutions. The idea is that because banks have become so hesitant to lend to each other, this law will help unstick the gears of the modern financial economy.
Some loopholes exist. It's possible for a bank to buy $100 billion of bad debt--perhaps in the form of subprime mortgages that are becoming quickly worthless-- declare bankruptcy, and sell it to the Treasury Department for $120 billion, or $200 billion. In other words, although the Treasury Department is supposed to look out for the best interests of taxpayers, there's no law forbidding such profits in the case of firms involved in bankruptcy, receivership, or mergers.
The Treasury Department is authorized to "guarantee" home mortgages, essentially becoming a kind of co-signer, to reduce the number of foreclosures. If the home owner stops paying his or her mortgage, taxpayers would be on the hook. The Treasury Department can also eliminate a "reasonable" amount of a home owner's mortgage debt, under section 109 of the new law, which would likely delay the process of house prices falling.
In response to grassroots pressure from Americans upset about Wall Street executives cashing in, Section 111 is titled "Executive Compensation and Corporate Governance."
It does not include, however, any statutory dollar limit on how high executive salaries of TARP bailout recipients can be. Instead, it lets Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, come up with "appropriate standards." In addition, only the top five executives will have their golden parachutes limited; all the rest will remain untouched, even if their second-tier salaries and bonuses happen to be in the millions or tens of millions of dollars.
Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne made $61.3 million from selling his shares a day after the JP Morgan bailout. Daniel Mudd, CEO of Fannie Mae, was replaced last month; he made $11.6 million in 2007. Richard Syron was chairman and CEO of Freddie Mac from 2003 until last month. He made $19.8 million last year. Martin Sullivan was ousted as president and CEO of AIG this summer, and was paid a $47 million severance package.
While salaries of failed executives will have no statutory limit, TARP-participating companies will lose a tax deduction if they pay their top executives more than $500,000 a year. The $500,000 limit only kicks in if the company offloads over $300 million in assets through TARP.
Section 115 of the law says that the administration can, after notifying Congress and waiting 15 days, purchase and hold $700 billion of assets "at any one time." (It can buy and hold $350 billion without waiting.)
This, too, is a potential loophole. It permits the Treasury Department to buy up, say, $700 billion in 2008, sell those assets off gradually over the next year at a (probable) loss, and repeat the same process in 2009. Losses to taxpayers, in other words, could exceed $700 billion. Although the Treasury Department is instructed to try to avoid losses, the text of the law does not forbid that scenario.
If the TARP ends up costing taxpayers money, the president may ask Congress to consider enacting a law to recoup "from the financial industry an amount equal to the shortfall," presumably through higher taxes. But Congress is under no obligation to do anything; a mechanism to cover the shortfall does not exist in this law.
Even though FDIC coverage will be boosted from $100,000 to $250,000 per account through December 2009, premiums to banks may not take "into account" the higher account coverage. In other words, premiums can't increase for that reason.
Also:
• This may be just the beginning of bailouts. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Thursday that the state may need a $7 billion loan from the U.S. Treasury, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. That's because the state has spent more than it takes in through tax revenue, with an annual budget deficit of $14 billion or more, even though its individual income tax rate is arguably the highest in the nation.
• CBS News' John Bentley reports from Arizona that Republican presidential candidate John McCain is taking some credit for the bailout's passage: "I'm glad I suspended my campaign and went back to Washington to bring, and help bring, House Republicans to the table," he said on Friday. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama described the law as "absolutely necessary to prevent an economic catastrophe."
• Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who correctly predicted in 2003 that taxpayers would be "forced to bail out investors," said in a speech on the House floor that the legislation would "only further harm the economy" and was actually worse than the previous version. In a CNN interview, the former Republican presidential candidate said his colleagues are refusing to deal with the underlying problems and spending more tax dollars even though "this country's bankrupt."
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average (-22 percent year-to-date) and the Nasdaq composite index (-27 percent) closed on Friday down 1.5 percent, despite the bailout. Gold ended at $834.80 an ounce, slightly up for the day and the year. Crude oil futures ended at $93.88 a barrel, slightly down for the day.
• U.S. jobs fell by 159,000, a decline of 760,000 this year. Technology firms have also contemplated hiring freezes and some, including Hewlett-Packard and Dell, have already laid off employees, as my colleague Ina Fried reports in a separate article.

The Free Economy Works, Eff Off Government Help

A sign that the capitalism works just fine without Government intervention is Wachovia telling the Government backed Citi buyout to sit the f*uck down. We are going with Wells Fargo, thank you very much. What is Citigroup going to do? Cry? No: sue. bastards.

Our economy is going to get much much worse now we handed the keys to the castle to should-be-in-jail Secretary of Treasury Paulson.

"Beyond the bailout, news out of the banking sector sparked a stock rally early in the day. Wachovia had agreed to sell itself to Wells Fargo in a $15.4 billion takeover, scrapping a federally backed deal with Dow component Citigroup. Wachovia shares surged 58.8% and Wells Fargo slipped 1.7% while Citi was down 18.4%, the weakest performance of any Dow component.
Citigroup, in a statement, said Wells Fargo's conduct constituted a "breach" of Citi's earlier agreement with Wachovia. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said it stands behind the Citigroup-Wachovia transaction.
Despite Citi's protestations, Friday's deal was cheered by investors precisely because it was worked out without federal backing, a promising sign for investors hoping to see the broader market function on its own."

Bailout full of Pork and Fat Cats: We Are Doomed

1) The bailout bill calls for freezing tax deductions that oil and gas companies get for their domestic manufacturing operations while raising it for other industries.

"WASHINGTON — The oil companies may not be able to duck a final punch from Capitol Hill.
Before approving a massive financial bailout package Wednesday, the Senate attached language that would hit the oil and gas companies up for higher taxes to help fund tax credits for renewable energy and other tax breaks.
The House is expected to take up the measure Friday.
The legislation would freeze the tax deduction oil and gas companies receive for their domestic manufacturing operations at 6 percent, while other American manufacturers will see that deduction rise to 9 percent in 2010.
That provision will raise $4.9 billion over 10 years.
The legislation would raise another $2.2 billion by tightening the rules applying to oil and gas companies' taxes on income earned overseas.
And the new measure would raise $1.7 billion by increasing what producers must pay to the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund from 5 cents per barrel to 8 cents per barrel starting in 2009 and then 9 cents a barrel in 2017.
Oil industry leaders oppose those provisions but recognize they will probably pass both houses.
"Congress continues to talk a lot about producing more energy here in the United States, but now they want to pass tax increases that are actually going to discourage that new oil and gas production," said Mark Kibbe, a tax policy analyst for the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group.
"And that makes very little sense to us.""

2)A Pro-Hollywood provision would extend and modify temporary expensing rules (they were to expire at the end of this year) that are meant to discourage the flight of TV and film production to Canada and elsewhere by expanding the number and type of deductions that can be taken in the year of production.

3)In one of the more bizarre provisions of the $700 billion bailout bill, Senators tacked on a repeal of the excise tax on wooden arrows designed for children.

The provision was originally proposed by the two Oregon senators and "will save manufacturers such as Rose City Archery in Myrtle Point, Oregon, about $200,000 a year," according to Bloomberg News.

4) It's one of dozens of tax breaks benefiting Hollywood producers, stock-car racetrack owners and Virgin Islands rum-makers included in the broader legislation in an effort to win support from House Republicans, whose defection contributed to a rejection of an earlier version of the legislation two days ago on a 228-205 vote.

"This is how Washington works,'' said Keith Ashdown, chief investigator at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington research group. "A big pot of pork is their recipe for final passage.''

5)One proposal gives a research tax credit that will save $8.3 billion a year for companies such as Microsoft and Harley-Davidson.

HIMYM: Confrontation

I can't believe I haven't posted this before. Classic HIMYM from the whatever show doing Les Miserables Confrontation:

They Huffed and Puffed and Took all your Stuff

From my friend, Brepublican:

They huffed and puffed and took all your stuff
Can you smell that? It is America burning. Much like Nero our government is now drunk with power, corruption and demagoguery and watching America burn. The people we have elected to represent us have just screwed us. They have basically just said that it is okay to not be personally responsible for anything because the government will mike it all okay. Well you know what.... The government is not your mommy, it is not going to put you on its knee and kiss your boo boo. It is going to put you on its knee, turn you upside down and shake all of the money out of your pockets just before it takes your company's profits, in the name of socialism, causing them to have to let you go.
Government is supposed to be a minimally invasive organization that protects our rights and liberties, not one that treads all over them. The Congress is making it cool to be personally, socially or financially irresponsible. They are making it okay to "misspeak" and not stand for anything. This is crap!!!
When you wake up to this reality one day you will realize that I was right. But on that day it will be too late and you will be living in government housing, speaking Spanish and living in the North American Peoples Union.
You are being marched to slaughter right now in the name of political correctness, equality at any cost and redistribution of your wealth. Don't be the first two little piggies; be the last one in the brick house. Because the Democrats are coming to try and blow your house down so they can take and redistribute all of your stuff.

Obligatory Cat Post (Edited with More Xena Glory!)

Back at home, the next morning my cat was back to normal. My morning routine includes rubbing her belly while she stretches on the ground while I get ready. I'm usually done in 10-15 minutes and the last thing is perfume, shoes, and tv off. Whatever of the three triggers her, she knows I'm about to leave. She runs to the stairs and rubs her head back and forth on the posts while I walk down the stairs and pet her.

She is borderline psychotic. Her eyes bulge and she bites and lunges if I try to leave her. I have tried to document with photo but she moves too quickly to get a good pic. I play another 20 seconds or so then I'm off. here is my attempt to show my pics. I take one a day to see if I can get the perfect one.

HDL and LDL: Cholesterol Post

I got my blood results back today from my required physical. I have to say for whatever reason I have always had extremely high levels of HDL, or "good" cholesterol. Reading the internet says anything over 60 is considered extremely healthy and means a long healthy life and low risk for heart disease. I read one quote that says "extremely lucky people have HDL in 70s or 80s".

In fact, before the "ratio" was noticed I was always tagged as high because my cholesterol level was always 200 or higher.

So, what is my HDL? 122! It has always been above 100. I guess I will live forever. For the record my LDL is 63 which is good. Combined in the report is 199 (although 122+63= 185 last time I checked.). Exercise is good for you! (someone tell me how it is bad that my HDL is over 100. I can't find it anywhere)

Any of you want to share what your recent HDL and combined was?

My triglyceride level was 69, thanks for asking.

More facts.