A juggling technophile shares personal stories, challenges, humor and perhaps some political commentary.
The things that should never be discussed much less published by non-professionals.
College Humor delivered an embed that was too large so I couldn’t post it when it first came out. I have no idea how BoingBoing got this smaller one but I hope it works for everyone. If the video doesn’t play, watch it at CollegeHumor.com.
This video was created in response to Matt Damon’s exception commentary. Even though you have already watched it, you really should re-watch Matt Damon speaking after watching the College Humor video.
Dear Gov’ment, Barack, and John,
I think you are all doing a fine job! Please let the $700,000,000,000 bank bailout pass. You have my full support with one small request. Please ear mark a measly $250k, just a drop in the bucket, for me. My own $250k bank bailout will afford me to clear debts and invest in certain assets to be a far more productive citizen with a greater contribution to the GNP.
Thank you! And keep up the great work!
McCain canceled on David Letterman at the last minute to rush to Washington in order to solve our economic crisis but stopped for an interview with Katie Couric first. Dave was less than thrilled and less than complimentary.
Update 25Sept2008 8:20am: Wow! When I posted that video there were 300 views and 125 comments. Now there are 403,936 views and 985 comments! That’s incredible.
First off, isn’t civil unrest and crowd control part of the duty of the National Guard and the local police?
The Army unit may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. [0:36-0:41]
Does an active military unit on US soil sound reasonable to you in the name of national security? Has fear and brainwashing led you to not question your leaders? Watch this next video as people sitting in a park are handcuffed, pepper sprayed, beaten, and arrested and ask yourself if we really need the Army doing crowd control on American soil.
Mass Arrest on Labor Day in the Park RNC from GlassBeadCollective on Vimeo.
The story of the park and the buried tape comes from The Minnesota Independent and Twin Cities Indymedia. Watch a really big version at Blip.tv.
The bank bailout is unnecessary is Naked Capitalism’s assessment of Bert Ely’s comments from an interview at Institutional Risk Analytics.
A banking industry expert, Bert Ely, who has a stellar track record in predicting crises and calling false alarms says that the banking industry can handle this mess internally and does not need subsidies. [Source, Naked Capitalism, Banking Expert: Bailout Not Necessary, Industry Can Take Losses]
Update: Bailout has been planned for months and The New York Times says the Issue Is Payback, Not Bailout.
Update 25Sept2008: Billionaire George Soros says Paulson cannot be allowed a blank check.
Update: Ron Paul lectures Bernanke on the flaws of the bailout plan and the hazard of the attempt to fix prices versus letting them correct naturally in the free market.
Update: Newscoma points to another billionaire, Mark Cuban, who is harsh on the bailout. "The bankers that we hope will reflate the economy with loans to the people and companies who need it ARE THE SAME BANKERS THAT GOT US INTO THIS MESS." Watch for comments at No Silence Here.
PBS has a poll asking if you think Sarah Palin is qualified to be the vice president of the United States of America. The answer is no.
…if you wanted a random stranger to impregnate you, you had to at least leave the house and let him buy you a couple of beers first.
…In less than two weeks, I will be ovulating, which as everyone should know is primetime for baby making. The problem is that I don’t yet have a partner…I just need some good, hearty seed…I am 26 years old, 5’4″, 115lbs., long brown hair, well, you can see more details in the pic. I have most of a PhD in Biophysics and will be finishing my JD before the child is born… [Source, The Garage Sale Blog Network, My Biological Egg Timer is Ticking, Ticking, Ticking – Ship in a Bottle]
The skeptic in me thinks this is a great way to get some short-term, unqualified traffic to her blog. And of course, I just participated in helping her strategy work if that is the plan. Remember folks, short-term spikes in traffic does not necessarily result in fame, increased ad revenue, or long term readership; it often just causes extra cost in hosting.
I like to change the picture on my desktop from time to time. I have two monitors and the picture appears on each of them. The theme lately has been family so I have had a variety of pictures of the children and Cathy as my desktop. Today I thought I’d try on something artsy. I went looking for a picture and came across a very tasteful, black and white nude that the composition just seemed far more striking than any of the other photos on the site. 30 seconds later, Evan comes strolling up to my desk.
Dad, trying to get an application to cover up the picture, instead gets an hour glass: "Hi Evan."
Evan, 3 years old, very loudly: "Nice butt!"
Dad, watching hour glass: *blink*
Evan, making sure Dad heard, places emphasis on butt: "Nice BUTT!"
At least the boy has good taste! Now, time to find something more abstract…
The Huffington Post says yes. Interesting aside: McCain owns 13 cars; Obama owns 1.
The question is who, in this crisis, looked more presidential? Calm and unflustered. It wasn’t John McCain. [0:31-0:36]
Every day spent talking about Sarah Palin, or anything but the economy, is a win for McCain. [3:53-4:00]
John McCain showed his personality this week and made some of us fearful. [4:14-4:17]
The Huffington Post has more.
Worried that the dollar might tank and that the paper in your wallet might be worth more keeping the house warm than spending? Are you thinking, "I really should have a pile of gold in the house in case the economy really gets horrible."? Think again. In 1933 Ol’ Delano took measures to make sure you didn’t have that concern.
From: President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt
To: The United States Congress
Dated: 5 April, 1933
Presidential Executive Order 6102Forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion and Gold Certificates By virtue of the authority vested in me by Section 5(b) of the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended by Section 2 of the Act of March 9, 1933, entitled
An Act to provide relief in the existing national emergency in banking, and for other purposes
in which amendatory Act Congress declared that a serious emergency exists,
I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do declare that said national emergency still continues to exist and pursuant to said section to do hereby prohibit the hoarding gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States by individuals, partnerships, associations and corporations…
[Source, The Privateer Gold Pages, The Roosevelt Gold Confiscation Of April 5, 1933]
The last man out says there were explosions in the basement.
This is from Rosie.com
Update: A friend on IRC asked, "you seriously questioning the WTC was just planes or not?" From time to time I think of the open questions like Silverman’s insurance policy, the assessment that the towers needed to be torn down and rebuilt but was too costly an endeavor, the demolition style collapse of the buildings instead of toppling, and all the other babble from the conspiracy theorists. Now, I love a good conspiracy theory. Conspiracy for 9/11 almost writes itself. When I write conspiracy, it’s just creative writing often for satirical purposes. The truth of the matter is that 9/11 was the second attempt by terrorist to bring buildings down. The first attempt was with 1500 pounds of explosives in the basement in February 1993. Including explosives in the basement is conceivable for an effort that planned to organize 10 planes and at one point included simultaneous attacks on 2 continents before being scaled back to the 4 plans used on 9/11.
The commission found that the plot originally called for hijacking 10 planes and attacking targets on the eastern and western coasts of the United States.
The plot also called for hijacking and blowing up 12 airliners in Southeast Asia, but al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden scrapped that part of the plan because it was too difficult to coordinate operations on two continents.
Bin Laden scaled back the plot in the United States to the four planes that were eventually used in the attack.
[Source, CNN, 9/11 panel: Al Qaeda planned to hijack 10 planes, 17 June 2004]
I doubt it though. That day was horrible. I watched it broadcast live and as smoke billowed out from the towers I was amazed they were still standing. But like JFK’s assassination, I think people will believe strongly one way or another and that some questions will never be answered. None-the-less, I found Rosie’s video interesting.
UPS just delivered an envelop one inch thick from the IRS. Whee!
Commenter Horn56 keeps it real:
…Bush had nothing to do w/ bill that lead to the mortgage crisis and banks collapsing, but he’s not clean and innocent from this situation either.
To blame Clinton is to only look at date of who was in office. The bill was written by 3 republicans after 20 years and $300 million in lobbying, passed by the republican dominated congress and shoved into an “essential spending measure” Clinton had to sign. I believe only 6 democrats voted “yea” on this, and that was only after they added privacy stipulations to the sales of loans.
There was nothing in this that applied directly to how you can give a loan, it just made the banks feel more secure in giving loans to unqualified people thinking they now had a backing if the loan was not repaid. Of course with everything being sold on speculation now because of this change in laws, the money wasn’t really there to back anything. One deadbeat after another started to default on the loans they couldn’t afford and never should of been given, the backing was not really there…peace banks.
The fact that the main person that wrote this bill deregulating banks, who also wrote the legislation that deregulated energy and allowed oil to be sold the way it s now, was named as one of McCain’s top advisors… If McCain claims to not understand the economy, and the economic adviser he picked caused the problem, who exactly is going to fix it if he gets in?
It’s still a very funny picture and caption!
