eNo Smoking

This ain't no party. This ain't no disco...

in reference to:

"This ain't no nature show. This ain't no zoo shot. This is my backyard!"
- Guess who's coming to dinner? on Flickr - Photo Sharing! (view on Google Sidewiki)

A Term of Art

I think this is generally referred to as deliberately building error into the case. Or at least I would hope that the DOJ couldn't be that dumb.

If I were a gambling man, I would bet that this decision will not set well with Iraqi citizens. Perception is everything.

in reference to:

"The disputed evidence concerned statements the guards gave to state department investigators, which they were told would not be used to bring a criminal case. This limited immunity deal meant that prosecutors should have built their case against the men without using the statements. But Judge Urbina said prosecutors had failed to do so, and that the US government's explanation for this was "contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility"."
- BBC News - US judge dismisses charges in Blackwater Iraq killings (view on Google Sidewiki)

Ah,

We see here the twin harlots of performative speech acts and wishful happythink.

And the line above it is even better:

Prosecutors find themselves faced with a difficult question: Where does delusion end and dishonesty begin?

Why can't we simply have simultaneously both?

in reference to:

""Statements of optimism about the future . . . that turn out to be wrong are simply not actionable," the company wrote. "Even in times of market turmoil, the company need not presume the worst about its market prospects.""
- E-mails inside AIG reveal executives struggling with growing crisis - washingtonpost.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

More Bailout Money For GMAC "Bank": 3.5 Billion

Protip: Don't do business with allybank. They're simply a storefront for GMAC.

I used to run land title back in the early and middle '00s. On some of the foreclosure titles I did, I was astounded to see ditech.com dba GAMC Mortgage Corp give a second mortgage on a property. This second mortgage was generally for 80% of the property's assessed value. The first mortgage was generally one of two things 1) either for at least 125% of the home's value or 2) a legitimate Grade A mortgage that had been paid down to less than 80% of the value.

Either scenario demonstrates that GMAC mortgage brokers were idiots. There was no way in heck they were going to get all their money back on that second note, even when property valuations were still going up. I guess they simply wanted to take the promissory note/mortgage so they could go out and sell it as a mortgage backed security. I don't know.

I was even more astounded to hear in the Fall of '08 that the federal government was going to allow our not-yet-ready-for-retail-lending players to become an FDIC-insured institution. I remember thinking back then, Well, this mess is far from over if we're not going to honestly address GMAC's issues head on.

It's just absolutely mind-boggling what the bankers and the people on Wall Street have gotten away with and what they're continuing to get away with.

in reference to: The Coming Economic Depression: More Bailout Money For GMAC "Bank":3.5 Billion (view on Google Sidewiki)

The same warmed-over happytalk

These people will embrace anything that gives them a rationalization to shove their do-gooder horsecrap down an unwilling participant's throat.

As one of their former victims, I have to say society would be much better served if this malignant cancer known as the mental health movement were completely excised.

If you need help, visit your local sex worker. He'll cheer you up far better than these people, with far less financial and emotional cost.

in reference to:

"Personality Disorder: “Untreatable” Myth Is Challenged"
- Personality Disorder: “Untreatable” Myth Is Challenged - Psychiatric Times (view on Google Sidewiki)

Or a better way to put it

It's a solvency problem, not a liquidity problem.

in reference to:

"4) Banks are capital constrained not reserve constrained."
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: The Most Redeeming Feature of Capitalism is Failure (view on Google Sidewiki)

Whoa

That's not very efficient. And yet we in the West have far more calories of food than we know what to do with-- they make us fat.

in reference to:

"Some forms of modern industrial agriculture, combined with the transportation necessary to ship food produced, use more than 10 calories of fossil fuel to deliver one calorie of food to the market (Younquist 1997)."
- The Oil Drum | Long term agricultural overshoot (view on Google Sidewiki)

No, this is not the Democrats' problem at all

They must demonstrate to their fellow citizens that their perspective differs from the Republican perspective.

This is why the commentators to this article are so angry. Obama and Congress have become indistinguishable from Republicans in the matters of war, economics and now health care policy.

in reference to:

"Rather, let them take it as a sign that they must continue the hard work of slowly and steadily persuading their fellow citizens to embrace their perspective."
- William M. Daley - Keep the Big Tent big (view on Google Sidewiki)

Top 10 Reasons to Kill Senate Health Care Bill

And as if these reasons aren't bad enough, Yves also manages to lay out some other, really ugly points.

in reference to:

". Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations — whether you want to or not. 2. If you refuse to buy the insurance, you’ll have to pay penalties of up to 2% of your annual income to the IRS. 3. Many will be forced to buy poor-quality insurance they can’t afford to use, with $11,900 in annual out-of-pocket expenses over and above their annual premiums. 4. Massive restriction on a woman’s right to choose, designed to trigger a challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court. 5. Paid for by taxes on the middle class insurance plan you have right now through your employer, causing them to cut back benefits and increase co-pays. 6. Many of the taxes to pay for the bill start now, but most Americans won’t see any benefits — like an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions — until 2014 when the program begins. 7. Allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others. 8. Grants monopolies to drug companies that will keep generic versions of expensive biotech drugs from ever coming to market. 9. No re-importation of prescription drugs, which would save consumers $100 billion over 10 years. 10. The cost of medical care will continue to rise, and insurance premiums for a family of four will rise an average of $1,000 a year — meaning in 10 years, your family’s insurance premium will be $10,000 more annually than it is right now."
- “Top Ten Reasons to Kill the Senate Health Care Bill” « naked capitalism (view on Google Sidewiki)

Very mixed blessings

Full-time permanent employment by paternalistic corporations has also bred attitudes of trust and loyalty to their brands and their ides.

If our owners no longer wish to employ us, then why should they expect our continued loyalty to their products and viewpoints?

in reference to:

"In many ways, full-time "permanent" employment by paternalistic corporations has been a very mixed blessing. It has tended to breed attitudes of dependency and entitlement in us that are quite counter to the American spirit of ingenuity and self-reliance. And when this comfort and security are taken away, we don't do well because we've been somewhat disabled."
- Here's the real story on America's unemployment | Washington Examiner (view on Google Sidewiki)

Always a conspiracy

Yes, climactic changes have happened ever since this planet has been here. These changes are measured in geological time, in periods that last thousands if not millions of years. This is the problem. Our climate is beginning to change so abruptly and dramatically. To argue that the behavior of man does not play a significant role in this upheaval and to refuse to evaluate his consumption patterns as a variable in this matrix is absolutely absurd.

That being said, I am just as disgusted as a great many people about the proposed solutions to this problem. It's more of the same-- all talk and little action.

If I may put on my tinfoil hat, it would appear that the privileged understand that our resources cannot support all our population and they simply want cataclysm to occur so that in the end a select few can enjoy life afterward while the many perish. That's my conspiracy theory.

in reference to:

"Cyclical climate change is not in dispute: it is nothing more than the repackaging of the global warming agenda. Watch the action surrounding this topic if you want to see the biggest conspiracy of the century unfolding before your very eyes."
- Climate Change: A Cycle Made Into An Agenda (view on Google Sidewiki)

Government Health Insurance

This is exactly what I complain to my friends about, but they just don't get it. The dear government cannot force me to enter into a contract with a private party simply because I breathe.

I am galled enough that I am forced to buy car insurance from the blood-sucking insurance industry. This situation can only be excused by saying that driving is a privilege.

However, insuring for a privilege can in no way be compared to forcing some one to pay for the right to live and breathe.

in reference to:

"This "personal responsibility" provision of the legislation, more accurately known as the "individual mandate" because it commands all individuals to enter into a contractual relationship with a private insurance company, takes congressional power and control to a striking new level. Its defenders have struggled to justify the mandate by analogizing it to existing federal laws and court decisions, but their efforts do not withstand serious scrutiny. An individual mandate to enter into a contract with or buy a particular product from a private party, with tax penalties to enforce it, is unprecedented-- not just in scope but in kind--and unconstitutional as a matter of first principles and under any reasonable reading of judicial precedents."
- The True Intent of Health ‘Reform’ | FedUpUSA (view on Google Sidewiki)

From around 3:25 in the video

"You have to teach your men Afghan nationalism..."

This is so wrong. These men are from disparate clans and tribes. Their affiliations are tribal, not national.

The instructor seems to have even less of a clue about the situation than the hash heads.

in reference to: LiveLeak.com - The Sorry State of the Afghan National Army (view on Google Sidewiki)

Balloon Boy's Parents

They got lucky. A public caning would be to lenient for these fameballs.

in reference to:

"A US man who triggered a major alert by falsely claiming his son was adrift in a helium balloon has been sentenced to 90 days in jail - and his wife to 20."
- BBC News - US balloon boy parents are given jail sentences (view on Google Sidewiki)

BRIC has spoken. You will obey.

And I wonder where they picked up this attitude? Bravo, China. Those Mandarin lessons are going to come in handy.

in reference to:

"This is fast becoming China's century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a hindrance to the new superpower's freedom of action"
- How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room | Mark Lynas | Environment | The Guardian (view on Google Sidewiki)

Seroquel

I think this drug will turn out to be the Quaalude of our generation.

in reference to: AstraZeneca details position on Comparative Effectiveness policy (view on Google Sidewiki)

Bad Business

It's like OPEC are dope dealers who are smoking up all their profits.

in reference to:

"Massively underpricing — hence massively overconsuming — your own resource isn’t unique to the oil industry or to OPEC."
- Why you won't want to rely on OPEC down the road - The Globe and Mail (view on Google Sidewiki)

My people

Yah, the APA has always been on uneasy ground with the gay folk. Back in the 50s psychiatrists used to treat the mental illness of homosexuality with electroshock, insulin shock and lobotomies. When they changed their tune in 1973, there was absolutely no attempt at making reparations. We were all supposed to forget about such things.

From my experience with mental health professionals in the 80s and 90s, their attitude towards gay people really hasn't changed. They may say it's not a problem, but they still get testy when they discover that you take no interest in identifying with the institutions of the heterosexual monoculture. And then they find fault with things that are cultural norms for some groups in our subculture.

They just seem to want to talk out of both sides of their mouths, the way they do with most everything else.

in reference to:

"The APA has a legacy of uneasy relations with the lesbian, gay and transgender community, having included homosexuality in the DSM's list of psychiatric disorders until 1973."
- Is Something Not Quite Right With Stan - A Mental Health Blog: The DSM-V - Psychiatry at War with Psychiatry (view on Google Sidewiki)

Vive La Revolution!

I saw this comment on iranian.com:

Majid Tavakolli is one of the many students who were arrested during the National Student Day protest. While we must campaign for the freedom of Majid Tavakolli we cannot forget all the other students who were also arrested on that day and probably facing the same faith as Mr. Tavakolli.

I hope that we can campaign for as many students as possible rathern than making a hero out of one and forgetting about the rest.

I had to reply:

I certainly respect your wish to empathize with other protesters, but I don't think you're looking at this situation correctly. In fact, I think you're falling into the trap of your rulers. Let me explain why.

It was a powerful ruler that once said, The death of a single individual is a great tragedy, the deaths of millions, merely a statistic. He was a very smart but evil man. He understood that the narrative of an individual martyr can resonate with all people, A single individual puts a face on the struggle of the group and gives all members of that group a common reference point to interpret and fight for. As a member of that group, a single person experiences the sea of humanity as a very abstract, distant concept but seeing another individual just like him (or her) puts the struggle at a very concrete, tangible level. This man understood that individual heroes were very dangerous, destabilizing creatures.

We saw this phenomenon in the protests after the rigged election in the summer. Scores upon scores of protesters were shot on the streets, but it was the video of a single beautiful girl gasping her last breaths that riveted the world's attention. Your struggle had been distilled into a single face, a single tragedy, which everyone could identify with. Her public mourning and her image are still with us to this day.

Or if I can be more blunt and cynical and think like your political leaders, the deaths of hundreds of protesters in the streets were merely a sewage problem, but with the death of this single girl your leaders knew they had something far worse-- they had an image problem.

I mean in no way to denigrate all the other sacrifices made by all the other protesters and I mean to show you no disrespect, but sometimes when people stage a revolution, individuals are necessary for the cause because no matter how advanced man becomes, he still longs for an hero.

My prayers are with you all.

Saddam was the least of our threats

As the US was banging the war drums, I was aghast that we were going after this guy. Come on, sheeple, this guy was a bureaucratic leader of a secular state. He was a ray of sunshine in the region. He had less use for Islamic fundamentalism than the Western powers did. The American people couldn't understand that this was the reason why Shrub II's Daddy left him in power. His only mistake was that his retained service helped Daddy loose the election.

in reference to:

"it was the "notion" of Saddam as a threat to the region"
- BBC News - Tony Blair attacked over Iraq war 'justification' (view on Google Sidewiki)

Machiabelli is not for rank amateurs and pikers

Mr Blair is now, in effect, claiming that the means justifies the ends. There's just a slight problem here. We have yet to see the end of this foray. We are not victors. We cannot yet write the history on this excursion. If the people who claim that the means justifies the ends become the losers, the victors generally mete out some very harsh judgment for their hubris.

in reference to:

"And Carol Turner of the Stop the War Coalition said it was "extraordinary" that Mr Blair was admitting that he was prepared to tailor his arguments to fit the circumstances."
- BBC News - Tony Blair attacked over Iraq war 'justification' (view on Google Sidewiki)

It's the GIGO principle, stupid

We put a lot of garbage in and we're still getting a lot of garbage out.

in reference to:

"and that people would be "dismayed" that what was the "most significant foreign affairs initiative since World War II had been debated on a false premise"."
- BBC News - Tony Blair attacked over Iraq war 'justification' (view on Google Sidewiki)

The Real Affront

The real affront was the US support of Saddam throughout the 1980s during his war with Iran. This affront to the international consciousness was surpassed only by our arms dealing with the other side, with Iran, during this time period.

in reference to:

"I believe Saddam Hussein's regime was an affront to the international community, to the international consciousness because of the atrocities, the crimes, he has committed."
- BBC News - Tony Blair attacked over Iraq war 'justification' (view on Google Sidewiki)

He may have been an SOB, but he was our SOB

You need to ask the 1,000,000+ Iraqi civilians who are no longer with us if this situation is now better.

in reference to:

""I can't really think we'd be better with him and his two sons still in charge, but it's incredibly difficult."
- BBC News - Tony Blair attacked over Iraq war 'justification' (view on Google Sidewiki)

That's strange

Why didn't the Kurdish pogrom concern us when we launched the First Gulf War? And why does Turkey's ongoing brutality of its indigenous Kurdish population also not concern us?

in reference to:

"In 1988 Saddam attacked the Kurds in northern Iraq using chemical weapons."
- BBC News - Tony Blair attacked over Iraq war 'justification' (view on Google Sidewiki)

Green Tree Financial Services

Green Tree didn't exactly do Grade A commercial paper. It was more like bottom o' the barrel subprime suck. Perhaps these people should have gone with a more reputable lender. And if they could not have used a better lender, perhaps they needed to rent.

I'm not being harsh, just economically rational.

in reference to:

"Green Tree"
- Woman sues debt collector over husband's death - CNN.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Hippies vs. Activists

I totally empathize with Ms. Maldonado when she argues, ""I don't like any of this new age thing, that we need to be in touch with the earth and that."

I see this as an argument between the haves--that is, the privileged, pampered people from the cities and the industrialized West, the ones who want to return to nature-- and the have-nots, that is, the inhabitants of the Third World, many of whom are poor and who already are quite brutally in touch with the earth because their very subsistence depends on it. And I have to say the argument of the poor carries the day. They have every right to be righteously pissed. The spectre of climate change affects their lives with such immediacy.

The hearts of the hippies are in the right place, but they have to realize that for people like Ms. Maldonado, climate change is not a political abstraction but a tangible, day-to-day thing that profoundly affects their ability to eat, drink and breathe. It makes them incredibly fearful.

in reference to: Meanwhile, At the Other Climate Summit... | Mother Jones (view on Google Sidewiki)

I like these

Yank here. I quite like the self-service lines because:

1) I know my items will be bagged properly. The cold sweaty stuff won't be in with the dry things. Amazingly, very few baggers in the US understand this.

2) Any more a lot of our check out people have very bad attitudes, as though they're the ones being imposed upon. I don't get that attitude with a machine.

3) I'm personally fascinated with touch screen interfaces. They are far more difficult to design than some people might think. Any time I pass a touch screen I have to stop and play around with the escape sequences and all the other stuff inherent in these interfaces.

in reference to: BBC News - The problem with self-service checkouts (view on Google Sidewiki)

Criminal Investigation

I guess when he says "criminal investigation," he's not talking about the clown circus that was the Valerie Plame investigation. That was also a "criminal investigation" into a leaked CIA identity.

in reference to:

"For somebody to leak his identity as a CIA asset clearly merits a criminal investigation," Sloan said."
- Is Erik Prince 'Graymailing' the US Government? (view on Google Sidewiki)

That is so insane

The climate is changing due to use of fossil fuels. And this climate change will make extracting more fossil fuels more easy. Full speed ahead.

The same problem exists in Greenland. The melting ice, caused by consumption of fossil fuels, is making more fossil fuel available. It's the Danish that are salivating over this prospect.

in reference to:

"It is this, goes the theory, that underlies the Kremlin's ambivalent attitudes towards global warming; they remain lukewarm on the science underpinning climate change, knowing full well that if global warming does change the world's climate, billions of dollars of natural resources will become accessible."
- Was Russian secret service behind leak of climate-change emails? - Europe, World - The Independent (view on Google Sidewiki)

Jung

...Why would you be interested in reading about someone else’s psychosis?...

And why would you let a nut run the nuthouse?

...Is there comfort in viewing the craziness of another person?...

No, but some people certainly seem to get their kicks shoving their do-gooder horsecrap down the throats of unwilling participants whom they deem crazy.

I've never been a fan of Jung. He was never willing to break from the past, i.e. he embraced the God Delusion. I had always assumed that he had plagiarized his theories from his hapless mental patients, but we see now that he had his own autochthonous sources.

His mentor Freud was a much kinder, smarter man. Freud didn't lock people up. He broke entirely from the past and finally allowed people to discuss sex in polite company. The evolutionary psychologists are beginning to point out how correct he was in obsessing about sex. Reproductive privileges seem to be the be-all, end-all controlling component in man's evolution.

in reference to: Health Panda: Diary of A Mad Man? Carl Jung's "Red Book" Finally Published (view on Google Sidewiki)

This is what I like to see

Fair and balanced reporting with no value laden terms. Sadly, there's really no other source for such information from these remote regions. And it takes days after the fact for these people to post it!

in reference to:

"a fierce fire fighting between the Kadyrov's apostates supported by Russian infidels on the one side and the Mujahideen on the other"
- A gun battle took place in district of village Aktash-Aul of Dagestan - Kavkazcenter.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Blago

I live on the Indiana-Illinois border. Last year I was going to steal one of those "Welcome to Illinois" signs with Blago's name on it. I knew they were destined to become collectors' items.

in reference to: Rod Blagojevich: A strange trip for Illinois -- chicagotribune.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Flaming

Good Lord. I didn't know people needed an instruction manual to do this effectively.

in reference to: Guide to Flaming - flayme.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Long live the Cyborgs

This is a wonderfully pithy comment about what's going on these days:

The market is currently driven on a daily basis by algos that are doing essentially that; notice a tick, drive into it, stir up the other algos and draw in a few retail traders, calculate the asymptotic peak, sell early into the peak, dump on the down side as any humans jump in with late bids. Then tie up the lose ends, update a database table with another row of winnings, reset, resume search.

The entire process probably typically takes about 180 seconds, and with multiple threads running across the cloud then you could have -- Hell I don't know -- say a hundred of these events running concurrently, each generating -- let's see -- say $100-1000 profit on exchanges per event depending on who jumps on and how dumb they are. Representing maybe $10K cleared profit every 3 minutes across the whole cloud.

And on a good day with plenty of random volatility you could double that.

It's just like printing money. But it is a type of theft born of our lust for speculation over real investment.

And while the same technology could be used as you suggest, to notice unfair ramps, why would anyone use it that way when instead they could clear $10K a minute?

Hey, kids. It's Friday and you know what that means, IT'S BANK FAILURE FRIDAY

Only six today. According to people who pore over the numbers, at least one of them had a really nasty diff.

in reference to: FDIC: Failed Bank List (view on Google Sidewiki)

My 2 cents'

I love heroic couplets. If I remember right, one of the things that Pope was complaining about in The Dunciade was the admixture between the high and the low, the merging of the sacred and the profane. We have quite a bit of that today. Indeed, a synthesis between the two is considered healthy.

One of the things that leaves people screaming, I think, is that we have become so successful in mastering our environment, so successful in abstracting out the minutiaea of our physical world and manipulating them, but our bodies and consciousness haven't evolved as fast as our problem solving skills. We're still apes, but we now possess thermonuclear weapons. This leaves anyone with a lick of sense crawling out his skin.

in reference to: Harry Magnet's Blog: The Triumph of Dullness (view on Google Sidewiki)

<a href="http://ditech.com">ditech.com</a>

In my days of title searching, I found this lender was fond of giving a second mortgage for 80% of the home's value. The first mortgage, which was generally for 125% to 150% of the appraised value, seemed to be irrelevant.

in reference to:

"But often all it takes is a decline of 20% in a home's value to wipe out a second mortgage, which is typically piled on top of an 80% first mortgage."
- The deal: Junk mortgage story just gets worse - Dec. 1, 2009 (view on Google Sidewiki)