After reading a bunch of threads about Obama federalizing the National Guard (it’s somehow connected to the FEMA camps), giving Interpol absolute and unquestionable power on American soils, and the fact that Obama’s name is really “Steve,” I have discovered what people do when they’re too old to masturbate.
And I have made a vow to exercise and eat my vegetables so that it never happens to me.
— Oggie at the Shortskoolbus BBS
Well, that explains my liberalism, and my strong right hand.
Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.
In addition to the fiscal meltdown going on in California, Governor “Ahnuld” has been talking up a water shortage that largely does not exist so that his billionaire friends can make a profit from a manufactured crisis:
We’ve been lied to for years now about the severity of California’s water shortage. The media and state officials have been ringing the alarm, warning that the state was in the grips of the quite possibly the “worst California drought in modern history,” when in fact the state nearly pulled in its average rainfall in 2009. The fearmongering is about to go into overdrive, as powerful interests start whipping up fears of drought to push through a $11 billion bond measure on the upcoming November elections, setting up the Golden State for a corporate water grab.
One of the big boosters promoting the drought scare is Gov. Schwarzenegger, who declared a state of emergency in early 2009, and promised to reduce water deliveries across the state by a whopping 80 percent.
Basically, 80% of water consumption in California is by agriculture, and this water is largely controlled by corporate farm cartels, and these get supplied water from the government at below cost prices, and frequently sell this resell water to the taxpayers at a significant markup.
Making farmers pay something approaching the real cost of supplying the water would solve this problem, because much of the shortage has been driven by corporate farms that have turned to water intensive crops, because they believe that they have the political pull to continue their back-door subsidy.
In this case, he is speaking for the Roma (Gypsies) because no one else will:
Continued discrimination against Roma in Europe not only violates human dignity, but is a major social problem crippling the development of eastern European countries with large Roma populations. Spain, which has been more successful in dealing with its Roma problem than other countries, can take the lead this month as it assumes the European Union presidency.
Good for him.
When “sensible centrist”, by which I mean that he some of his time trying to hew to the Washington, DC pundit consensus, Kevin Drum starts sounding like Leon Trotsky, something is amiss:
Like anyone, I’m pleased when I find someone to confirm my prejudices. And this is definitely one of them. Growth in a modern mixed economy is fundamentally based on consumer spending, and middle class consumers can increase their spending in only three ways: (1) real wage growth, (2) borrowing, or (3) drawing down savings. Only the first is sustainable. So if we want the American economy to grow consistently over long periods, we have to focus our economic machinery on median wage growth. We’ve done it before, we can do it again if we’re smart, and the result would be good for everyone: the rich would get richer, the middle class would get richer, and the poor would get less poor. The alternative is booms, busts, and continued social erosion. So let’s be smart, OK?
(emphasis mine)
He’s right, but the fact that he’s bucking the “Beltway Boyz” on this is telling.
Working for Mother Jones is good for Mr. Drum.
That number should give us a fairly good number for the GDP of the United States in 2009 as versus 2008.
The article claims weather, but much of the consumption is industrial activity.
Reports on electrical consumption are used as a secondary means of determining China’s GDP, for example.
It looks like they are on their way to losing the referendum, so the Icelandic government is looking at withdrawing the bill and renegotiating terms with the British and Dutch.
There are only 320 thousand people on the island, and the legislators have a pretty good idea on how the voters feel, because they know, and have talked with, a lot of them.
Fundamentally, the voters are showing a level of courage that the politicians are not, and refusing to be blackmailed.
It appears that Lisa Murkowski is trying to overturn the EPA’s notice of proposed rule making on carbon emissions:
Sen. Lisa Murkowski on Tuesday left open the possibility that she would seek a vote next week on stopping the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from going forward with regulations to limit greenhouse-gas emissions.
“I do not believe and I don’t believe that most of my colleagues in the Senate believe that the EPA is the entity that is the best suited to develop climate-change policy for this country,” Ms. Murkowski (R., Alaska) told reporters. “I’m trying to get a time-out. I’m trying to allow the legislative process to proceed. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to have a vote that will allow for that discussion.”
You know, somehow I think that the folks who don’t come from oil (and coal) producing states might be a wee bit receptive, and there’s also the whole veto thing to deal with.
During the Russian-Georgian war in 2008, Bush and His Evil Minions™ considered military strikes against Russia:
As Russian tanks rumbled into Georgia in 2008, a post-Cold War turning point was at hand.
George W. Bush’s national security team considered launching air strikes to halt the invasion. …………
…………
Thus we learn that “several senior White House staffers” urged “at least some consideration of limited military options,” such as bombing the mountain tunnel that served as Russia’s main supply line.
What part of the phrase, “Russia has around 10,000 nuclear warheads in its arsenal,” didn’t these guys get?
Great googly moogly!
And yes, the artist has gotten death threats, so go to Mark Fiore’s site, and buy his stuff, so that he can spring for additional security.
H/t Jollyreaper at at the by-invitation-only Stellar Parthenon BBS.
The economy is so bad that:
- I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.
- I ordered a burger at McDonald’s and the kid behind the counter asked, “Can you afford fries with that?”
- CEO’s are now playing miniature golf.
- If the bank returns your check marked “Insufficient Funds,” you call them and ask if they meant you or them.
- Hot Wheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM.
- McDonald’s is selling the 1/4 ouncer.
- Parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children’s names.
- A truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico .
- Dick Cheney took his stockbroker hunting.
- Motel Six won’t leave the light on anymore.
- The Mafia is laying off judges.
- Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen..
- Congress says they are looking into this Bernard Madoff scandal. Oh Great!! The guy who made $50 Billion disappear is being investigated by the people who made $1.5 Trillion disappear!
And, finally…
- I was so depressed last night thinking about the economy, wars, jobs, my savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc., I called the Suicide Lifeline. I got a call center in Pakistan, and when I told them I was suicidal, they got all excited, and asked if I could drive a truck.
He can always be counted on to say something hurtful and stupid, and this time, it’s the earthquake in Haiti.
He’s saying that the Haitians made a pact with the devil to drive out the French, and so they are cursed, which is why their country is poor, wracked with violence and instability, and struck by natural disasters.
What he is really saying, and I need to credit Juan Cole for this insight is that the Blacks of Haiti, much like the Blacks of New Orleans that he also attacked, are defying god because they are revolting against God’s will by refusing to be slaves.
It’s the Curse of Ham, a and comes from the story of Noah in Beresheit (Genesis) and was used by evil men who took up the role of clergy to justify slavery and the slave trade in pre Civil War days, because one of Ham’s sons Canaan, was cursed to be a slave.
It’s clear that in his heart of hearts Robertson believes this story: He thinks that black people in general are cursed because they have rejected the role that God has given them, that of a slave.
A transcript of what he says: “
And you know Christy, something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, uh you know Napoleon the third and whatever. [Actually, you moron, it was Napoleon the first] And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. [No, local priests who practiced african religions issued a blessing] They said we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True Story, and so the Devil said OK it’s a deal. And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they’ve been cursed by one thing after the other desperately poor. That island is Hispaniola is one island. It’s cut down the middle. On one side is Haiti on the other side is the Dominican republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc.. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island.
(H/t Username4242 at Daily Kos for the transcript)
He also studiously ignores the history there, where both the US and France conspired to keep their respective boots on their neck, starting with Thomas Jefferson, because as a slave holder, he was terrified at the prospect of a successful slave revolt.
To quote Christopher Hitchens, as much as it pains me, “If you gave him an enema you could bury him in a matchbox.”
H/t Calculated Risk
The Federal Reserve has released its “Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions”, better known as the “Beige Book”, and there has been a small improvement.
I’m not sure where the improvement is, since transportation indices continue to disappoint, with the American Association of Railroads’ report on carload traffic showing the lowest level since 1988, and if goods aren’t moving, then people aren’t buying.
Meanwhile the trend in mortgages, with refinancing increasing and mortgages for purchases falling, continued this week.
Overseas, the GDPs of Britain and Germany both suffered the largest drop since before the 2nd World War, -4.8% and -5.0% respectively, while in Japan, machinery orders fell sharply in November.
In the world of US government finance, the US budget deficit doubled year over year in December, which probably had something to do with bond prices being mixed, with the 10-year bond falling slightly, and the 30-year bond rising slightly. (Yields move in the opposite direction of prices)
In energy, oil fell below $80/bbl, on reports of increasing US fuel inventories.
In currency, the dollar was mixed, down slightly versus the Pound and Euro, but up slightly versus the Yen.
A company called SarcMark has developed a proprietary punctaion mark to denote sarcasm.
That is like such a good idea. 
Yes, that is the symbol, and it’s looks like, but isn’t a bit of Hebrew cursive.
This is clearly an essential part of any repertoire, and well worth the $1.99 the maker wants to charge for its use.
Sorry, but if you need to mark it as sarcasm, something is lacking in either the writer or the reader of the phrase.
The folks at 4Chan declared last Friday to be Pr0n Friday at Youtube, because they objected to the termination of the account of a user.
Only, Friday rolled around, and nothing happened, not even a falsified death notice involving gay prostitution and meth.
So, what happened? Well, nothing happened. Friday was just like any other day.
So, what did geniuses at Google, Youtube’s parent, do to address this?
Did they come up with a technical method to kill all of this? Was there some sort of highly sophisticated algorithm developed to spot nipples, penises, vaginas, and pubic hair?
Well, no, they didn’t, what they did was far more basic and more effective: They had some of their employees log into 4chan, and when people bragged about the pr0n posts, they took them down.
No link yet, just online chatter.
Instead of trainwheels, the bike has a gyro stabilized front wheel.
There are three levels of stabilization, which helps to wean kids off of the need for assisted stabilization gradually.
Once again, the conservatives tried to subvert marriage….I see a pattern here.
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, and perhaps the stupidest man in England, has come out against the proposal:
Boris Johnson threw down the gauntlet to shadow chancellor George Osborne today, urging him to rule out extending the supertax on bonuses.
The Mayor is seeking reassurances that Gordon Brown’s tax would not be imposed by a Tory government. The showdown comes after Mr Johnson claimed that up to 9,000 bankers could leave London to escape paying.
Mr Osborne has said he does not oppose the tax, and the Conservatives have not ruled out imposing it again if they win the general election.
If the Tories come out against the tax, they may very well snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
On a more utilitarian note, when a rich banker leaves for Switzerland (only Switzerland does not want them either) it means that that 2500 square foot penthouse flat in London becomes 4, or 5 more modest flats, increasing the supplies of housing, and drives down rents, making London a better place for the Londoners.
The rich bankers, and the expat tax dodgers who live in London in very large numbers, don’t make London better, they make it worse: They push out the middle class, and productive industry.
One of the things that was interesting in the New York Times profile of Roger Ailes, at least it is if one tries to follow the comings and goings of Rupert Murdoch, his family, and News Corp, is the fact that a member of the Murdoch family, Matthew Freud.
Well, one Murdochologist, Michael Wolff, says that this is the beginning of a process that will have Ailes out in the next 12 months or so:
When Tim Arango, the New York Times reporter who got the statement from Freud, called and said he was doing a story on Ailes’ rising power, Freud would have consulted with the rest of the family. James Murdoch would have said to his father something along the lines of, “this is untenable, this idea that Roger is the center of the company.”
Murdoch, who protects nothing so much as his own primacy at News Corp., and who always likes somebody else to do his dirty work, would likely have said, in his particular patois, “umm…goddamn…grump…son-of-a-bitch…they’re gonna say that? Who put ‘em up to it? Okay, okay, do what you want to do.” By which he would have meant: “Blow a rocket up his ass.”
The process of losing your job at News Corp. takes about a year. They talk about you, and isolate you, and then you understand that you’ve been exiled from the tribe.
I’m hoping that it is true, Ailes is an evil man who has hurt the country more than most, but I’m inclined to believe that it’s not: Particularly during this downturn, Fox News is Murdoch’s money cow, and he can’t kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
Google set up a Chinese search page, Google.cn, in 2006 to accommodate the censorship demands of the Chinese government.
At the time, it said that it would, “carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services.,” and thatif it determined that it was, “unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”
Well, it’s reconsidered its approach, and it is telling the government of China to go Cheney itself.
The proximate cause appears to be sophisticated, and repeated efforts by the Chinese government to hack the Gmail accounts of Chinese democracy activists, as well as similar, and pervasive attempts to hack other businesses with similar goals.
The money phrase is this:
These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
They just gave the Chinese government 3 weeks to shut them down.
It is possible that this may be a game of chicken, as is the case with Google news and AP stories, but I am inclined to doubt this.
If they have any understanding of China at all, they must understand that this public statement, and the associated loss of face for the Chinese authorities should they accede to Google’s demands, will result in the shuttering of their site, and their operations, in China.
Full statement after the break:
A new approach to China
1/12/2010 03:00:00 PM
Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.
Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.
Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.
We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this U.S. government report (PDF), Nart Villeneuve’s blog and this presentation on the GhostNet spying incident.
We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China’s economic reform programs and its citizens’ entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.
We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”
These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.
Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer