My heritage. My People.

Up until yesterday (Feb. 2, 2009), the Mormon Church directly lied about its contributions to the "Yes on 8 campaign designed explicitly to strip existing rights from perfectly decent humans who happened to have genitalia of which you (that's you all my Mormon friends, family, and random readers) disapproved. Congrats.

Here is a report with a spokesman from the Mormon church, from Nov. 9th, after the election, saying that they spent no money at all on Prop. 8.

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/politics&id=6496949

Money quote: "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints put zero money into this," Eaton added." Turns not not so. The donations start in June and continue until the election. All previous to the date mentioned by the Mormon spokes-liar.

The Mormon church's point is what? Lying is just hunky dory unless actual financial or criminal penalties are attached? Good to know. I'll keep that in mind.

Contrary to popular belief, teenagers are not complete idiots.

This report (hint, read) by the New York Times shows that Teenagers don't engage in sexually risky behaviors any more than their predecessors did. Trust your kids, as long as you raise them to not be idiots.

Another comic by Snapdragon, plus I hate Tom Daschle.

I'm planning on worshipping Darwin

Suggestions for headwear?

Stimulus Package Spending

I have been hearing a lot of Republicans complaining about the anticipated stimulus spending. They typically sum it up by saying that when you are in a deep hole, first you need to stop digging. Actually, if the hole you are in is deep enough that you cannot simply climb out, then digging is an excellent way out! No, you don't dig through the center of the earth; you dig a ramp that you can walk up! The key thing is to change the direction of the digging.

So if I try to force this metaphor, I would say we do need the government to spend a lot, but that they have to choose different things to spend on. They need to choose investments for the country that really pay off. Hoover Dam was an extremely expensive project, but it has paid for itself many times over. ( In addition to providing energy, it protected a vast region of sunny fertile ground from regular flooding that impeded successful agriculture.) Better flood protection for New Orleans could have saved a bundle. Investing in alternative energy and scientific research would have payoffs for the future. Improving our educational system and providing tuition assistance could pay off as well, as could timely maintenance of bridges and infrastructure and new mass transit initiatives.

If, on the other hand, they mostly fill a bunch of potholes, and build some new roads that contribute to sprawl, we are going to hit an economic wall in a few years. It's kind of like the government is a teenager that has stolen our (the parent's) credit card, and run up thousands of dollars in spending. If we discover that the teen has bought an education, or a vehicle for going to work, or a computer or even a lawnmower, we will figure that they will be able to pay it pack eventually. If on the other hand they spent it all on incessant text messages (bureaucratic excess), nail extensions(inaugural glitz), beer, tattoos and sparklers, (War in Iraq) we will realize that that money is simply gone.

The real problem with this second metaphor is that it misses one tragic aspect of our true situation. Rather that a teen stealing from his/her parents, it will be us foisting this economic mess on our children if we (& our government) don't get it right.


(Anyone having trouble visualizing digging an exit ramp should read Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton, the source of the above pic.)

My most favoritest ever Economist, Nouriel Roubini

sez things aren't as bad as I think; possible recovery in 2010--Yippee!!!!!1111 Plus, awesome accent.



No, actually, Mr. Roubini has suffered deeply from getting everything right about the current crisis; so, naturally, he's totally ignored by the mainstream media.

Plus!!!! Bonus!!!!! He totally agrees with me about the US banks. Insolvent, baby. We all need to read more recent Swedish history. Edit. As in dump the current managment that paid themselves absurd amounts + extra bonuses, actually rifle through the books to figure out what they're worth, and them sell them for the reasonable price. Minus evil management.

Please, Somebody Tell Me This Is Not A Legal Dodge

In an attempt to protect assets from civil litigation, Former Lehman exec, Fuld, sold his 13.3 million dollar home to his wife for $100 just last November. Seeing as how the sh!t had already hit the fan at Lehman's, how can this possibly be a legal way of shielding this asset?

Oh, and just so you know, Fuld received $22,000,000.00 in compensation in 2007 from Lehman's, so that house was just pocket change. How many people do you know who can afford their entire house on a fraction of one year's salary, and a $13,000,000 one at that?

Our legal system is slow to process cases, especially when wealthy defendants can use their resources to slow everything down. I wonder how long Madoff will be living in his luxury home. And how long will the Fulds keep their Florida mansion? Transferring the title to his wife ought to slow things down a bit, huh?

Ron Asheton -- May Flights of Angels Sing Thee to Thy Rest

"His sound was the tone of the stars at night. And he listened as much as he played." -- Iggy Pop.

RIP Ron Asheton, an original Stooge. Now I wanna be your dog.



Ron Asheton's the Guitar Player. Pay no attention to the guy in the front who neglected to put on his shirt.

--love,

Djinn

A comic offering from Snapdragon.

Bush spied on average citizens in the name of terror.

Are you a terrorist? Me too! Why? Because we're just run-of-the-mill citizens! Wow. My life is so much more exciting than I realized, and worthy of being spied-on by the US government. Woo Hoo! Can you say Stazi? Thought you could.

See it here: an NSA analyist discusses the evil, evil details.



Interesting point: Specific groups targeted: US News organizations, reporters and journalists. Ah ha! Take that! Liberal Media. What was reported on? "It would be everything." Hmmm. "This is something that is happening all the time."

"The agency would tailor some of their briefings to try to be deceptive." "When the defense committes on the hill come calling [we'd say] you can't look at it because it is an intelligence program. When the intelligence committes come calling you say it is a DOD program."

If, as Mr. Tice notes, everything was captured, then the communications of the Democrats running against the Republicans was also captured and available for use. This is not only the way to tyranny, it is tyranny in the flesh.

Much more here.

Now Bush is out of power, he has much less, uh, POWER, and all this hidden evildoing is seeing the light of youtube.

Your hard-earned tax dollars at work: making really really rich people even richer.

You may recall Bank of America just received 20 FICKING BILLION dollars (yes, the horror of CAPS LOCK must be unleashed) to make up for losses from purchasing Merrill Lynch. Merrill Lynch, just prior to being absorbed, and ahead of schedule by a couple of months, awarded all and sundry top officials bonuses and salaries to the tune of FIFTEEN FICKIN' BILLION DOLLARS.

Capitalism at its finest. Bankrupt not only your company but the US economy, make a killing. Using OUR MONEY. I want my personal killing; I'm cheap, I admit. How about a Million?

Bush, Rummy, War Crimes. The World, if not us, has been paying attention.

From The Telegraph (UK).

Manfred Nowak, the UN's special rapporteur on torture, called on the US authorities to pursue the former president and his former defence secretary for the treatment of prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba.

"Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation," he told German television.

He said that the US had ratified the UN convention on torture which requires "all means, particularly penal law" to be used to bring proceedings against those violating it.

"We have all these documents that are now publicly available that prove that these methods of interrogation were intentionally ordered by Rumsfeld," Mr Nowak claimed.

"But obviously the highest authorities in the United States were aware of this."

No trips out of the country for Bush, or Rummy, or Cheney, not that they'd want to go.

An American Horror, An American Hero.

This Human Rights Watch report details how he US has killed just about 100 detainees in custody in the "War on Terror." Even under the liberal standards of the Bush administration, if a man is tortured to death, it's torture.

How bad has it been? Glen Greenwald writes today about how a prosecutor at Guantanamo (and a bronze star receipient) was so disgusted by the nonexistent case against his teenage detainee (sample detail--after "brutal and continuous abuse" the kid signed a confession in a language he didn't speak)that he first demanded that the kid be released, and then resigned in protest.

Pres. Obama, according to the New York Times, will sign an executive order today closing Guatanamo cites and secret CIA Prisons. It's a start.

The Banks are Insolvent, Duh.

If those banks out there swallowed up $350 billion with nary a burp, what insane brain-dead rich important stupid-head thinks another $350 billion will have some magical effect? It will be delivered by Unicorns, perhaps? Really? Really?

How did Obama put the people responsible for this mess in positions of responsibility to get us out? Will it work? No. And why is Tim Geitner being quizzed about a paultry $35,000 in back taxes?

Notice, no links. The analysis can be performed as a thought experiment.

H/T Bosch plus this site for the pic., The Unicorn of Earthly Delights, or something.

Why the economy nose-dived, in one easy-to-read article.

Here.

Basically, money market managers and their clients have mutually exclusive interests. That is, the worst the manager (because he exposes his clients to unnecessary risk), the wealthier (because clients flock to the funds with the bigger returns). So, all the money lemmings to those funds most likely to fall off a cliff, as we have just witnessed. Good to know now.

From the article:

Let’s say for instance that you’re managing a hedge fund which invests in stocks. ... you can generate an average return of 6% per year, and so can most of your equally qualified competitors who have access to the same talent pool and knowledge base as you do.

But then one of your competitors realizes that he can automatically increase his return to 9% by selling something called “out of the money puts” on the market. This means that the competitor’s fund essentially sells insurance against the market crashing dramatically. In normal times his fund will gain the premium from selling this insurance which boosts his returns.

However, in the rare event of an extreme market crash his investors will lose everything. ...

When investors see a fund manager generate a higher return than his competitors, they will move their money into that fund and out of the other ones....

The managers who have the discipline to understand and avoid [such] tricks will not be able to compete on the basis of their returns over a few years, and will eventually lose their funds and their jobs.