Are they Nazi zombies, or zombies who were formerly Nazis?
Month: August 2010
It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
- Community National Bank at Bartow, Barlow, FL
- Independent National Bank, Ocala, Fl
- Imperial Savings and Loan Association, Martinsville, VA,
- Shore Bank, Chicago, IL
- Pacific State Bank, Stockton, CA
- Butte Community Bank, Chico, CA
- Los Padres Bank, Solvang, CA
- Sonoma Valley Bank, Sonoma, CA
Great googly moogly.
After two slow weeks, we just tied the record for most bank closings this year.
Not pretty.
So, here is the graph pr0n with trendline (FDIC only):
I would note that are now at the point where the utility of the least squares trendline is diminishing, but I’m keeping it here for historical purposes.
The Circle of Life
Heal the Bay has produced a video describing the migration of the common plastic bag.
And yes, that is Jeremy Irons narrating.
For the Sci-Fi Geek in All of Us
So completely not safe for work, except, perhaps if you work in a library.
Is Fox News a Terrorist Command Center?
National treasure Jon Stewart wants to know:
Krugman Channels Williams Jennings Bryan
Is it just me, or does his most recent OP/ED have some significant thematic similarities to William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech.
Here is the first ‘graph of Krugman:
As I look at what passes for responsible economic policy these days, there’s an analogy that keeps passing through my mind. I know it’s over the top, but here it is anyway: the policy elite — central bankers, finance ministers, politicians who pose as defenders of fiscal virtue — are acting like the priests of some ancient cult, demanding that we engage in human sacrifices to appease the anger of invisible gods.
Here is the last ‘graph of Bryan:
If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.
Note, I am not making accusations of any sort of misappropriation of work. I am suggesting that two people, attempting to address similar problems, deflation and recession, have, 114 years apart, come to very similar conclusions, and expressed them in similar ways.
In any case, both Bryan’s speech, and Krugman’s OP/ED should be read. They are both very good.
Brilliant!
I think that I injured myself laughing:
Outrage Over Plans To Build Library Next To Sarah Palin
PLANS to build a state-of-the-art library next to Republican catastrophe Sarah Palin are causing outrage across mainstream America.…………
Meanwhile President Obama has caused unease within his own Democratic party by endorsing the library and claiming that not everyone who reads books is responsible for calling Mrs Palin a f%$wit nutjob nightmare of a human being.
But Bill McKay, a leading member of the right-wing Teapot movement, said: “Sarah Palin is a hallowed place for Americans who can’t read.“How is she going to feel knowing that every day there are people going inside a building to find things out for themselves and have thoughts, right in the very shadow of her amazing nipples.”
(%$# mine)
No go read the whole thing. It’s pretty short.
Stewart Does Beck
Damn, he is good!
Trolling for Bribes
Hamid Karzai is planning to ban the operations of private military contractors (PMCs, aka mercenaries) by the end of this year:
President Hamid Karzai is planning to sign a decree this week ordering the disbanding of all private security forces by the end of the year, his spokesman said Monday.
But it is not clear how the move, which would constitute an extraordinary change in the security makeup of the country, could be carried out. There are at least 24,000 private armed guards in the country, some foreign but most Afghan, and there is no immediately available alternative for the array of crucial tasks they perform.
This being Hamid Karzai, my guess is that this will not be fully implemented in time or in a consistent manner, but that is like saying the sky is blue.
As to the motivations for his doing this, I see three main policy goals here:
- An attempt to ameliorate some of the outrage among Afghan citizens who are the ones on the wrong ends of the Mercenary’s bullets.
- He wants to ensure that whoever is allowed to continue will be people whom he has vetted as being supportive of him.
- Any mercenary operations allowed to continue will have to pay some sort of bribes to him and his family.
I am a cynic on such matters.
The Recent Comments Widget Still Appears to Be Fracked
It is still only updating intermittently,
Sorry.
A Few More People on the Right Side of 51 Park
And they are Democrats.
Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) is slamming conservative opposition to the Muslim community center project near Ground Zero in New York City — the city where he formerly resided for many years — calling the attacks against it “one of the most disgraceful things that I’ve heard.”
And Congressman Charlie Rangel:
Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) came out in support of the proposed Cordoba House Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero yesterday, saying that he’s “kind of proud that they’re sticking to their guns and saying this is where they would want to worship.”
Also, lesser plaudits to Nancy Pelosi, who suggested that the anti-Islamic Center movement might be AstroTurf, though she walked it back a bit later in the day.
Great Google Moogly!
Click for full size
It’s been too ugly for too long
H/t Calculated Risk
Remember how I said that unemployment has been stuck between about 450,000 and 480,000 initial claims a week?
Well, not any more, today’s numbers were up by 12,000 to ½ a million initial claims, with the 4 week moving average rose by 8,000 to 482,500.
Of course, since the article was written by a financial journalist, which means that they feel the need to be a cheerleader, and they are innumerate, they found someone to say that the 13 K drop, to 4.48 million, in continuing claims as, “an encouraging sign,” but later they note that the number of people on emergency benefits, “increased 260,105 to 4.75 million in the week ended July 31.” (the week prior to this one)
Let me explain this slowly for the financial journalists who might read this The people who are on continuing claims are in the 26-week window, if they go beyond that, they are no longer counter as having a continuing claim, they are counted as being on emergency benefits, so the falling number of continuing claims is not people getting jobs, it’s people being unemployed even longer.
In any case, this is really grim. The already inadequate stimulus is winding down, and job losses are once again accellerating, and we have an election in 2½ months, and if the Republicans take power, they will drive the country even further into the ditch.
Yes, a half assed stimulus, which was then watered down by the dickwads in the Senate was such a good idea.
Deep Thought
Dick Armey created an Army of Dicks.*
Jon Stewart does a good job teasing out the hypocrisy of the Congressman, former House Majority Leader, and über lobbyist Dick Armey casting himself as an anti-establishment foe of Washington .
Jon Stewart, Part 1 of 3
Jon Stewart, Part 2 of 3
Jon Stewart, Part 1 of 3
*The Teabaggers.
No Prosecution for Photographing Unclothed Teens in Their Houses
Because when a school does it, it’s OK:
Federal authorities announced Tuesday they will not prosecute administrators connected to a webcam spying scandal at a suburban Philadelphia school district.
Prosecutors and the FBI opened an inquiry following a February privacy lawsuit accusing Lower Merion School District officials of spying on students with webcams on the 2,300 district-issued MacBooks. The lawyers who filed the lawsuit claim the district secretly snapped thousands of webcam images of students, including images of youths at home, in bed or even “partially dressed.”
Zane David Memeger, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said he found no criminal intent in the alleged surveillance.
I cannot understand how there isn’t a trial of someone involved in this.
I guess that the prosecutor decided that high school students have no right to privacy.
Earlier posts are here.
But Will They Roll on Bush and His Evil Minions&trade
Polish prosecutors are considering charging the former Polish President and PM with war crimes for allowing the CIA to operate gulags in their country:
Polish prosecutors are considering bringing charges of war crimes against the country’s former prime minister and former president over allegations of secret CIA prisons.
Former president Aleksander Kwasniewski and former prime minister Leszek Miller, who held office between 2001 and 2004, may stand trial before the State Tribunal, a court specifically designed to try Poland’s top officials, Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza reported on Wednesday (4 August).
The court’s prosecutor wants to ask the speaker of parliament to initiate the criminal procedure against the two men. The case would first have to go to a parliamentary committee and then to the lower house of parliament, which would decide whether or not to press charges, the news report says.
One hopes that eventually we find someone who is willing to sing on this, and the Shrub and the Smiler will end up in the dock.
It does seem that this is all beginning to unravel, and perhaps we are near a point where revelations breed further revelation.
There Is a Congressman Crazier than Michelle Bachmann
Texas’s (where else) own Louie Gohmert.
Play him off, Jon Stewart:
2 Snaps Up to Senator Schumer
He just made the obvious point that the current H1B program does not serve the needs of the American people:
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) says that the H-1B program has created “multinational temp agencies” that undercut U.S. wages and discourage students from entering tech fields.
Schumer said the H-1B program has morphed into program used to hire foreign tech workers “willing to accept less pay than their American counterparts.” He spoke on the Senate floor in advance of its approval Thursday of $600 million for border security that includes an H-1B visa fee increase.
He’s right, of course. The program is not about finding people who cannot be found in the US, it’s about importing cheap labor.
The rise in the H-1B fees is perhaps the best part of the law, thought, of course, the foreign body shops are apoplectic about this, claiming that “The US is giving a very strong signal foreigners are not welcome.”
My heart bleeds borscht for them, but they should consider themselves lucky: I would set a soft cap of something like 50K a year visas, and raise the rates when the number of applications exceed this.
As an alternative, you could go with a bidding system, with something like quarterly auctions, which would raise the cost from a $2,500 fee
The new law added $2000 for firms that have more than 50% non citizen/green card workforces, which is still too low.
I Wish that I Lived In Pennsylvania Right Now
I want to vote for Joe Sestak, candidate for Senate,who just did his commonwealth proud:
Sestak chimed in, “As you know, I haven’t taken very good direction yet from party leadership. All that said, I strongly believe in the constitutional right of religious freedom and in the separation of church and state applying equally to everyone. Those are rights that I defended for 31 years in that fine U.S. Navy. This is an issue for New York to resolve as long as it respects those constitutional rights. … Let’s also step back and say, ‘Let’s stop playing politics with religion.’ “
When someone asked about the sensitivities of the Sept. 11 families, Sestak said, “Do I respect those sensitivities? Oh yeah. When I walked out of that Pentagon, 30 people who I knew never walked out of that building. My 9/11 is that Pentagon. Am I sensitive to their desires? Sure I am. But I also upheld the Constitution for 31 years. I lived with men and women of all religons and you know what? They’re all equal, and I believe that is what’s most omportant in this.”
Maybe I’ll write him in in 2012.
I’m not feeling to hopey changey about Dr. Dean today.
Before I add Heidi Montag to My List of They Who Must Not Be Named,
I must note that her plastic surgeon died in a car accident while texting and driving:
Plastic surgeon-to-the-stars Frank Ryan was killed Monday when his jeep rolled over an embankment off Malibu’s Pacific Coast Highway outside of Los Angeles. Authorities believe Ryan was distracted by text messaging at the time of the accident.
Ryan, 50, was known for performing extreme plastic surgery on Hollywood celebrities, including “The Hills” star Heidi Montag. Ryan reportedly performed ten procedures on Montag in one day, including work on her ears, chin, nose, and breasts.
You know, there is a segment of our society that I neither understand nor approve.
They are free to neither understand nor approve me as well.
Still these events evoke Zathras to me:
At least, there is symmetry.
Rest assured now. Ms Montag is on my list of They Who Must Not Be Named.
He’s Not the Wanker of the Day……
But only because Howard Dean gets that honor today.
Once again, it’s Chris Dodd, who continues to audition for his 7-figure lobbying gig, because after sending out signals that she was a great candidate, but not confirmable, there has been a groundswell of support that appears to be dragging the Obama administration kicking and screaming into nominating her. (I still don’t think that they will)
So now Dodd has taking a new tack, saying that he is unsure if she is qualified:
“If the president wants to name her and it goes through the hearing process, then fine, she’ll have my support,” Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) told the Hartford Courant editorial board. “But she has to tell me more than just she’s a good consumer advocate or that’s she’s got a great campaign.
“It isn’t just a question of being a consumer advocate. I want to see that she can manage something, too.”
Dude, you ran for President of the United States, and you never managed anything bigger than a a Senator’s office.
<Facepalm>