Human Rights Hypocrisy...

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs issued this statement on Thanksgiving:

"The United States is deeply concerned about reports of additional charges facing Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American scholar who has been detained in Iran without access to an independent lawyer since July 9, 2009. The charges against Mr. Tajbakhsh are baseless, and his original sentence on October 20 was an outrage. The Iranian government cannot earn the respect of the international community when it violates universal rights, and continues to imprison innocent people. We call on the Islamic Republic of Iran to release Mr. Tajbakhsh, and to respect the human rights of those within its borders.

If I were Iran I'd point out Gitmo and our recently conceived show-trials and venue shopping for "guaranteed convictions." And then say "STFU."

Wrought

This is such a great song.

What she said --

"We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term:"



It is true. We did not have "a" terrorist attack on the US.

We had eleven. Four planes were hijacked. Two hit the twin towers. One hit the Pentagon. The fourth was driven into the ground when the passengers revolted against the hijackers.

We had five anthrax letters mailed late September, 2001. We had two more in October. Sixty-eight people were sickened, in total. Five died.

Four planes. Seven letters. That's 11 attacks.

But I'm suspecting the confabulator is just pulling it out of her ass. Like all the right wingers. Facts and truth don't matter, just lie and tell everyone how great you were...

Funny how they don't correct her...

WKRP IN CINCINNATI TURKEYS AWAY

Happy Thanksgiving...

Guinness "Evolution"

Cannes Grand Prix TVC winner -- 2006

One of my favorite commercials of all time.

Worth stealing...

Close Encounters of the Redneck Kind from Marc Bullard on Vimeo.

Why football posters hate me...

...without calling him a single name, I let him know he's completely and utterly ignorant. I could have been worse, but name calling, when arguing with idiots, really gets boring. Though I have been known to let people know they're stupid and have small dicks...

Still, even being nice to a complete idiot, I'm sure there'll be a nasty reply for me... Maybe I'll get called an "egghead" or "professor." I'm sure it'll be completely immature and unoriginal:

I've been saying the same thing for the last 2-3 weeks but NOOOOO everybody wants to say it's Alex & the offense, that's where the 49ers problems are...NOT! The 49er D is horrible & just looking at that ranking of 29th in pass defense comfirms everything that I've been posting.

It only confirms you look at yardage stats that are, statistically speaking, so weakly correlated with winning and losing only people who don't know better rely on them. To put it another way, a way you might understand, YARDS are NOT points. Case in point: In 2006 a Cardinal fan was boasting (on the 49er message board) about his "high ranked" defense and offense and how the Cardinals were going to "break out" because they were such a "dominant" team. It is true that, by yardage, both the offense and defense were "top-10" (they were both 8th in yardage stats to be exact).

Yet the Cards with their Top-10 offense and Top-10 defense finished 5-11. Because they were 17th in points for and 26th in points against. Now, if YARDAGE won football games, they would have, according to the yardage totals found in the box scores, finished 13-3.

They obviously didn't finish 13-3 in 2005. They finished 5-11. So, once again, yardage stats are so weakly correlated with winning, or losing, that they're statistically meaningless. There are stats that are closer correlated to winning. Points for and points against are very good. There are some that are better than that, though most fans can't seem to conceptualize them... But I can't help that.

Anyway, you used the rather meaningless yardage stats to prove your point. Only you didn't "prove" anything but you don't understand stats. And that your opinion, while loudly and repeatedly expressed, is meaningless because it's based on faulty, incomplete and only weakly correlated statistical information.

Our pass defense is, in yards per attempt, ranked 19th. That is highly correlated with winning. Though it's only one of two passing factors used in the equation, the other is the YPA of the offense. But that starts getting into complex issues I'll forego.

But getting out of the more complex, to the readily available, perhaps the easiest way to explain, for you and the average fan to understand, our defensive performance against the pass is to look at the composite average QB rating against our defense. I don't like it as much as the "hard stuff," but not everyone took a boat-load of stats in college, whereas everyone with an Internet connection can look at QB-rating against and the stat is far more explanatory than yardage.

In that stat, we are 13th with an average QB rating of 80.3. Which is about 1.2 points LOWER than Alex Smith's. And about 0.4 points over Shaun Hill's.

Now, considering Hill was a failure and Smith is a whipping boy... You should be happy our defense, over the past 11 games has made the QB population it played the functional equivalent of Alex Smith and/or Shaun Hill. Sure some did well, some did abysmal while others fell close to the mean. That's inherent variability and I'm not pretending it doesn't exist.

Still, there's no reason to believe the 49ers have the "29th rated" pass defense. Clearly they've given up some yards... But there are a lot of other issues in pass defense. Like giving up TDs and making INTs and forcing incompletions. And we've been pretty good in those areas most of the season. Far better than your Cassandra complaint.

Corrupt Mortgage Lender gets thiers...

Sometimes greedy corporate bastards forget the Courts don't like liars:

A Suffolk judge awarded a Long Island family their East Patchogue house, wiping the slate clean on their mortgage debt and ruling that the bank holding their home loan had acted in a manner "so completely devoid of good faith that equity cannot be permitted to intervene on its behalf."

In a terse, no-holds-barred decision rendered Nov. 19, Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey A. Spinner blasted the actions of IndyMac Mortgage Services, a division of OneWest Bank F.S.B., and its representatives - and awarded the home to Diana J. Yano-Horoski and husband Greg Horoski.

"We never asked for this," Greg Horoski said Wednesday from the modest single-story home on Oakland Street. "I was shocked, honestly."

"It's not like we said, 'Judge, please throw the loan away.' We just wanted them [the bank] to be reasonable."

Of course they're not going to be reasonable. They are predators. Without the Courts (ie government) to protect these people dishonest, lying mortgage holders like this would win and people who, true they had some problems, would be helpless against their power:

Spinner wrote in his decision: "It was celeritously made clear to the Court that Plaintiff had no good faith intention whatsoever of resolving this matter in any manner other than a complete and forcible devolution of title from Defendant."

The lending institution, represented at a hearing on Sept. 22 by Karen Dickinson, regional manager of loss mitigation for IndyMac, asserted Yano-Horoski owed a debt in excess of $525,000 - and "freely concedes" that the property was worth "no more than" $275,000, Spinner wrote.

He noted that the lender claimed a balance due of $527,437.73, including an escrow overdraft of $46,627.88 for advanced taxes, though the outstanding loan balance was $283,992.48 as of Aug. 10 and the taxes were already paid from escrow.

Lies, lies and more lies. Lies that I've seen in my practice when I've done pro-bono work for the poor. Lenders will double and triple count amounts. They will flat-out lie about what is owed. And they will tell to the judge with a straight face because they know, too many times, the judge just doesn't understand it.

Lucky for this couple, the bank was so flagrant that it was easy to spot.

Darrowshire

Holy moly, but this is well done and depressing as hell...

Edward Woodward Dead at 79

British actor Edward Woodward, famous for roles in the Australian movie Breaker Morant, the classic crime show Callan, the series The Equalizer and cult thriller The Wicker Man, has died at age 79.

I never cared much for The Equalizer, though I watched a few episodes. Breaker Morant, however, I loved and hated. Based on a true story, it really doesn't have a happy ending. Not that one should expect that, after all it was part of the Australian "New Wave" war films such as Gallipoli, The Lighthorsemen, and the 5-part TV series ANZACS which were all pretty damn depressing, visiting not on the "glories of war" like John Wayne movie, but the loss of innocence and waste and toll of war on the promise of youth.

Anyway, it's quite a bummer. There are certain people, in certain roles, that one can identify with or make a tremendous impact on one's worldview. Even if it is just an actor in a semi-historical film.

Ni Hao (A Gold Farmers Story)

A video about gold farmers.

Arcade Original Pong

The way things used to be...

The Dust-Up over Mammograms...

New guidelines have been proposed. Essentially, moving the screening date back a decade, from 40 to 50, and going every-other year instead of every year. Much of the medical industry, lots of wing-nuts, and surprisingly many liberals as well, are in an uproar.

The doctors tell us that starting at 40 saves us one life out of every 1904 women scanned during that decade because of early detection. Yet despite having the most aggressive testing and prevention program in the world we also have the most amount of breast cancer in the world. At least the first world from where we make our comparisons.

The wing-nuts, of course, just want to make hay over "Obama care" and socialized medicine. They're not interested in anything but protecting the laizze-faire status of the medical industry.

Liberals, OTOH, seem to be ranting on the "it's a woman's choice" issue and too many are acting as if someone is trying to take away their right to get mammograms. While others are (probably quite rightly) are already screaming that this was a horrible report because the insurance companies will almost certainly seize upon this study to deny annual mammograms for anyone under fifty and, thus, it's a bunch of white, male executives dictating to women what they can and cannot do with their bodies.

In this there seems to be something missed, and what, at least partially, probably explains why we have this horrible breast cancer rate thanks to our overly-medicalized medical industry:

Radiation causes 1 death for every 2,000 women screened annually starting at age 40, according to a study published in 2005 in the British Journal of Cancer. Another study shows that each mammogram increases the risk of breast cancer by 2 percent. Mammography also saves women's lives, so that's why it's a trade-off.

Mammograms are dangerous in their own right. We're talking radiation here. We're talking about something to check for cancer that causes cancer. Not that brilliant, really when the screening is more dangerous for low-risk populations than the risk of the disease.

So, yes, there is a trade-off. But the trade-off is a BAD TRADE-OFF unless you're over 50 and you cut the screenings in half. Otherwise, it's just plain stupid and expensive.

And any doctor, who has honestly reviewed the issue, should be on board. Yet, listening to NPR this morning... Large chunks of them are not. And they give the same bullshit reasons as always which being heard with my skeptical accountant ears mean only one thing -- nobody wants to hurt the bottom-line profitability and they want to couch their greed in acceptable "medical risk and treatment" speak.

Let's face it, mammograms = money. And you can't buy the new Mercedes if you're not making billing targets in your million dollar practice.

Wing-Nut Welfare Recipient Complains About Obama Bowing...

It's funny how the wing-nuts get the vapors over Obama bowing to a foreign leader. Obviously, any sign of weakness means a stern rebuke, like this one:

"I don't know why President Obama thought that was appropriate. Maybe he thought it would play well in Japan. But it's not appropriate for an American president to bow to a foreign one," said conservative pundit William Kristol speaking on the Fox News Sunday program, adding that the gesture bespoke a United States that has become weak and overly-deferential under Obama.

Because, clearly it's unimaginable that a "real" President would bow to a foreign leader.

I think if little Billy Kristol had been born John Smith, he'd be night manager at a gas station. Not a nationally syndicated moron and national embarrassment.

LCROSS Impact Data Indicates Water on Moon

From NASA:

The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water.

Secrets the moon has been holding, for perhaps billions of years, are now being revealed to the delight of scientists and space enthusiasts alike.

NASA today opened a new chapter in our understanding of the moon. Preliminary data from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water during the Oct. 9, 2009 impacts into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus cater near the moon’s south pole.

The impact created by the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket created a two-part plume of material from the bottom of the crater. The first part was a high angle plume of vapor and fine dust and the second a lower angle ejecta curtain of heavier material. This material has not seen sunlight in billions of years.

"We're unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbor and by extension the solar system. It turns out the moon harbors many secrets, and LCROSS has added a new layer to our understanding," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Scientists have long speculated about the source of vast quantities of hydrogen that have been observed at the lunar poles. The LCROSS findings are shedding new light on the question of water, which could be more widespread and in greater quantity than previously suspected.

Permanently shadowed regions could hold a key to the history and evolution of the solar system, much as an ice core sample taken on Earth reveals ancient data. In addition, water, and other compounds represent potential resources that could sustain future lunar exploration.

Since the impacts, the LCROSS science team has been working almost nonstop analyzing the huge amount of data the spacecraft collected. The team concentrated on data from the satellite's spectrometers, which provide the most definitive information about the presence of water. A spectrometer examines light emitted or absorbed by materials that helps identify their composition.

"We are ecstatic," said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "Multiple lines of evidence show water was present in both the high angle vapor plume and the ejecta curtain created by the LCROSS Centaur impact. The concentration and distribution of water and other substances requires further analysis, but it is safe to say Cabeus holds water."

The team took the known near infrared spectral signatures of water and other materials and compared them to the spectra collected by the LCROSS near infrared spectrometer of the impact.

"We were only able to match the spectra from LCROSS data when we inserted the spectra for water," said Colaprete. "No other reasonable combination of other compounds that we tried matched the observations. The possibility of contamination from the Centaur also was ruled out."

Additional confirmation came from an emission in the ultraviolet spectrum that was attributed to hydroxyl, one product from the break-up of water by sunlight. When atoms and molecules are excited, they release energy at specific wavelengths that are detected by the spectrometers. A similar process is used in neon signs. When electrified, a specific gas will produce a distinct color. The ultraviolet visible spectrometer detected hydroxyl signatures just after impact that are consistent with a water vapor cloud in sunlight.

Data from the other LCROSS instruments are being analyzed for additional clues about the state and distribution of the material at the impact site. The LCROSS science team along with colleagues are poring over the data to understand the entire impact event, from flash to crater, with the final goal being the understanding of the distribution of materials, and in particular volatiles, within the soil at the impact site.

"The full understanding of the LCROSS data may take some time. The data is that rich," said Colaprete. "Along with the water in Cabeus, there are hints of other intriguing substances. The permanently shadowed regions of the moon are truly cold traps, collecting and preserving material over billions of years."

LCROSS was launched June 18, 2009 as a companion mission to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After separating from LRO, the LCROSS spacecraft held onto the spent Centaur upper stage rocket of the launch vehicle, executed a lunar swingby and entered into a series of long looping orbits around the Earth.

After traveling approximately 113 days and nearly 5.6 million miles (9 million km), the Centaur and LCROSS separated on final approach to the moon. Traveling a fast as a speeding bullet, the Centaur impacted the lunar surface shortly after 4:31 a.m. PDT Oct. 9 with LCROSS watching with its onboard instruments. Approximately four minutes of data was collected before the LCROSS itself impacted the lunar surface.

Working closely with scientists from LRO and other observatories that viewed the impact, the LCROSS team is working to understand the full scope of the LCROSS data. LRO continues to make passes over the impact site to give the LCROSS team additional insight into the mechanics of the impact and its resulting craters.

What other secrets will the moon reveal? The analysis continues!

That is so great! Good thing they didn't use the bible, as so many creationists do, as the ultimate authority on the moon. Because, according to the bible, the moon is just a smaller sun:

Genesis 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

Not going to find much water on the sun, now are we...

Another Phony Drug Study

Bought-and-Paid-For Psychiatrist helps drug Company hide side effects of a dangerous drug:

Chanile Hayes, a South Side resident, is among thousands of patients nationwide suing AstraZeneca for allegedly concealing Seroquel’s links to weight gain and diabetes. Hayes is a plaintiff in a 2007 case in New York County Supreme Court. Numerous e-mails and exhibits referenced in this story were filed in federal court in Orlando, Fla.

Reinstein is not a defendant in either ongoing case, but Orlando plaintiffs have cast him as a key figure: an influential promoter of Seroquel who was financially backed by AstraZeneca. They allege that Reinstein has claimed that the antipsychotic drug helps patients lose weight.

Hayes said she came under Reinstein’s care at a psychiatric hospital after she suffered a nervous breakdown nearly 10 years ago. She said she found it odd when Reinstein told her that taking Seroquel would help her lose weight.

“I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t taking it because he was a plus-sized man himself,” said Hayes, now 37. Hayes said she went from 140 pounds to nearly 300 within two years of taking the drug and later developed diabetes.

I don't know why she's not suing him. He prescribed the medication then didn't take her off it when she was suffering adverse effects. This is clearly, at least to me, gross malpractice.

Reinstein has done studies, funded by AstraZeneca and two other drugmakers, that found that various medications, including Seroquel, carry an unexpected yet welcome side effect: They help some patients shed pounds.

That claim runs counter to established research that links so-called atypical antipsychotic drugs, such as Seroquel, to considerable weight gain. Drugs in this class, approved for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, can have other serious side effects that include spastic movement disorders and fainting and can cause premature death among the elderly.

Obviously this drug, unlike the rest of it's fellows must have been made by magic flying ponies. How else could it avoid the common side-effects?

Unless, of course, someone was lying. Like Dr. Reinstein who was paid about $490,000 over a decade to promote the drug and was featured in it's promotional materials:

In a 2001 promotional telecast to 5,000 physicians nationwide, Reinstein said he had “jokingly kind of suggested to AstraZeneca ” that the drug could be used for “taking away excessive appetite.”

“There’s actually some nurses in some of our facilities who have actually requested (Seroquel) because they noticed it really did suppress the appetite, and they wanted to lose weight themselves,” Reinstein said, according to a transcript of the speech, sponsored by AstraZeneca and broadcast from Somerset Place, a Chicago nursing home.

Two years after the speech, the Food and Drug Administration, armed with mounting research, asked AstraZeneca to warn patients of Seroquel’s diabetes risk. The drug’s label now cautions that the medication is linked to diabetes and weight gain – with nearly four times more patients gaining weight on Seroquel than on a placebo.

Ah yes, big government cracking down on the poor pharmaceutical company. Bad big government. Bad! Everyone in Libertarian Paradise knows no company would ever do such a thing. The market knows all and would INSTANTLY punish them for their bad behavior.

In his response to reporters, Reinstein characterized Seroquel as “generally weight neutral, although some patients gain weight and others lose weight.”

“I would never recommend” that patients take antipsychotics “to lose weight,” he wrote, and “using any of these drugs involves careful attention to weight” and other risk factors.

Seeing as he recommended the very thing, and it's clearly part of the public record, it takes some serious damn gall to lie like that.

Some will say the drug Company is an innocent victim. Yet they're not. First, they likely had other studies that weren't as favorable but did not disclose them. It's called opinion shopping and, yes, drug companies do that. Second, even if they didn't opinion shop, they should have used two, or three, study administrators and compared results among them instead of relying on just one. To many times we have seen researchers phony up data for drug companies; this is not the first, it won't be the last.

What really gets me is that the Drug Company really should have acted differently, but clearly put profits ahead of people

:In a strongly worded 2001 e-mail, Georgia Tugend, the U.S. brand manager for Seroquel, reminded colleagues that research conducted by Reinstein and his partners “is often criticized by their peers in psychiatry.”

Some scientists have “significant and numerous issues … with the quality of research this group has produced in the past,” Tugend wrote, yet Reinstein’s group persists in “demanding research grants from us.”

At one point, according to an e-mail from an AstraZeneca executive, Reinstein and his partners had “blatantly threatened” to switch patients to a Seroquel competitor. Reinstein later denied that accusation during a deposition, testifying that he “cannot imagine” making such a threat.

Malcolm May, AstraZeneca’s U.S. sales director, had a much different reaction to Reinstein’s discontent: The company should be careful not to alienate a psychiatrist worth up to a half-billion dollars to the firm.

“I am not suggesting we kowtow to his whims, nor to support any unethical behavior,” May wrote in 2001 in an e-mail to fellow AstraZeneca executives. “I am suggesting … we need to be more responsive to his opinion and needs.”

They had the warning signs. The ignored them and danced around their unethical behavior with a "wink" memo because he was marketing gold.

Hidden Steriods!

Without the government to protect us, who would? Certainly not the businesses of America that would be more than happy to have us in working in sweat-shops, just like they do in their manufacturing facilities in third-world countries, while selling us defective and dangerous products:

[Posted 11/03/2009] Bodybuilding.com and FDA notified healthcare professionals and patients of a nationwide and international recall of all lots and expiration dates of 65 dietary supplement products that were sold through the Company's website, www.bodybuilding.com.

FDA believes that the recalled products contain the following ingredients that are currently classified, or the FDA believes should be classified, as steroids: "Superdrol," "Madol," "Tren," "Androstenedione," and/or "Turinabol." Acute liver injury is known to be a possible harmful effect of using steroid-containing products. In addition, steroids may cause other serious long-term adverse health consequences in men, women, and children. These include shrinkage of the testes and male infertility, masculinization of women, breast enlargement in males, short stature in children, a higher predilection to misuse other drugs and alcohol, adverse effects on blood lipid levels, and increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and death.

Customers who have any of the products in their possession should stop using them immediately and contact their physician if they have experienced any problems that may be related to taking one or more of the ingredients listed above. Any adverse events that may be related to use should be reported to the FDA's MedWatch Safety Information and Adverse Event Reporting Program online [at www.fda.gov/MedWatch/report.htm], by phone 1-800-332-1088, or by returning the postage-paid FDA form 3500 [which may be downloaded from the MedWatch "Download Forms" page] by mail [to address on the pre-addressed form] or fax [1-800-FDA-0178].

[11/03/2009 - Press Release - Bodybuilding.com]

So, basically, Bodybuilding.com was selling dangerous supplements by which the effectiveness of the supplements was greatly enhanced by the manufacturer putting steroids in them. Then somebody got caught and the retailer (and possibly manufacturer, it's not clear) released a typical press-release where the recall is portrayed as some noble action by the one of the perpetrators in the chain of toxic-business-practice in some nice Orwellian fashion...

When I read this... Not only am I not shocked, but I'm happy we live in a country that still has some, albeit insufficient, consumer protection. This kind of dangerous, life-destroying crap goes on like crazy in those "unregulated, free-market-paradise" second-and-third world countries.

All those economic 'freedoms' which really translate into: free to be exploited, used and then die poor with no recourse or dignity.

What burns the me the most... Most of the hardcore libertarians who endorse this "get government out of "x" position," and their children, would be better off in a 1950's America. A country that had high marginal-rate taxation, confiscatory estate taxation, social and corporate constraints on executive compensation (and behavior), a functional government not ruined by idiots (like the libertarians and fellow travellers) and strong unions to protect the working-class from exploitation.

They won't see it because facts and data don't matter to them. They have a third-rate economic philosophy made-up by a second-rate writer which they defend, despite it being intellectually bankrupt in it's foundation, like it's a religion. Despite it's completely failing in any sort of practical, the real-world application as a philosophy as the economic data is overwhelming against this economic free-for-all.

Capitalism is only "best" when there is a strong central government to keep it functioning as it "ought," not as is otherwise does. It should be clear to anyone who has been around the world, without strong regulation, this is what we'll have. And worse.

Or have we forgotten about the toxic pet food we manufactured out of contaminated imports? And the toxic drywall made in China? And the salmonella infested fruit and vegetables we've gotten from Mexico (irrigated with sewage-water which included human feces).

Download details: Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool

If you're an MMORPG player, the keylogger's are back at it again. Microsoft's free key logger removal tool here: Download details: Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool

FREE ENERGY - Air Powered Vehicles

Oh boy! I can't believe they are selling this... But I do believe people will fall for it... Stupid idea that it is...

First, it takes energy to compress air. So all we're doing is moving the environmental problem to where we can't see it. So, no real benefit there...

Second, we know that compressing air as a power source is very inefficient because it generates huge amounts of waste heat. This means we're going to use a lot of fuel to make the electricity used to compress the air. The basic formula is a bit complex, but to run a one-horsepower compressed air motor, the electric costs to run it is about $1,300 a year. That same motor, run directly from electric will run about $300 a year.

That's a $1,000 a year in direct energy cost differences. Highlighting just how bloody inefficient compressed air really is...

Third, we have electrical transmission inefficiencies. That's another 7.2%, at least in the US where we tend to run longer electrical transmission lines than in Europe. I don' t know if it's less efficient than transporting fuel, but it's not likely more as transportation and distribution costs are about 17% of your pump-price at your local Texxon... But much of that is labor and an additional level of businesses in the cycle.

A way to look at it though is... Every time you convert energy from one type to another, you're going to pay a cost in lost energy. The laws of thermodynamics do not change because you find them inconvenient and no conversion process will prevent these losses.

The more steps in your process, the more over-all loss.

So, when possible, always stay as close to your original fuel source as possible. Using gasoline directly is more efficient than burning gas to generate electricity to power a compressor to make compressed gas... By a huge, huge factor.

More truth from a Comedy Show...

...than all the mainstream press in America:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Formidable Opponent - Global Warming With Al Gore
http://www.colbertnation.com/
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

The sad part is, the reason industry opposes all this is because the Lords of Capitalism are so short-sighted. Why is Exxon an oil company? They should be an energy company. Going forward in finding new resources to exploit and leave oil for what it does best and is irreplaceable -- lubricants and plastics. There are many other things that we can burn, like hydrogen gas or using hydrogen fuel cells, to move cars, trains and planes.

Anyway, this show constantly high-lights the corrupted news media we "enjoy." We pretty much only see what is good for the Corporate Master and not what is good for us or the planet.

Beck Satire...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The 11/3 Project
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Stewart does a fantastic job of mocking the lunacy that is Beck... If only the real media were this critically honest in their reporting...

Why not Bush and Cheney?

We can only hope someday, in our lifetime, that some blogger writes this about Bush and Cheney:

Former Argentina's de facto President and Army chief Reynaldo Bignone listens to his attorney at the courtroom where he is accused of human rights crimes during the country's dictatorship, in Buenos Aires on November 4, 2009. Bignone, 81, the facto leader from 1982 to 1983, is charged with the kidnapping and torture of 56 people who were held in secret detention centers at the Campo de Mayo military base, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires during Argentina's 'dirty war' against leftists. In addition to the kidnapping and torture charges, Bignone is accused of having stolen children from some of the kidnapped detainees. Five other retired military officers also are being prosecuted during the trial, which is expected to run through early March 2010. By Juan Mabromata/AFP/Getty Images.

Until we leave the "permanent war" state, we're going to make more Bush's. More Cheney's. Until one day, people will get so sick of us that they'll embargo our country to its knees.

How Lord of The Rings Should Have Ended

This is SO true!

Missing Persons-- Long Before Lady GaGa

Sometimes I think there's been nothing new in rock for decades. Just derivative shtick...

Religious Quiz

I always find these cute:

How did the Belief-O-Matic do? Discuss your results on our message boards.

1. Secular Humanism (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (92%)
3. Nontheist (77%)
4. Liberal Quakers (74%)
5. Theravada Buddhism (74%)
6. Neo-Pagan (62%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (56%)
8. New Age (45%)
9. Taoism (44%)
10. Orthodox Quaker (38%)
11. Reform Judaism (38%)
12. Mahayana Buddhism (37%)
13. Sikhism (28%)
14. Jainism (27%)
15. Baha'i Faith (25%)
16. Scientology (24%)
17. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (22%)
18. New Thought (22%)
19. Seventh Day Adventist (21%)
20. Hinduism (20%)
21. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (17%)
22. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (17%)
23. Eastern Orthodox (15%)
24. Islam (15%)
25. Orthodox Judaism (15%)
26. Roman Catholic (15%)
27. Jehovah's Witness (12%)

I'm an athiest Unitarian. Has me nailed.

I smell a

lawsuit:

WASHINGTON — In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

Goldman's sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation's premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.

There's a little thing called "fidiciary duty:

A fiduciary duty is a legal or ethical relationship of confidence or trust between two or more parties, most commonly a fiduciary or trustee and a principal or beneficiary. One party, for example a corporate trust company or the trust department of a bank, holds a fiduciary relation or acts in a fiduciary capacity to another, such as one whose funds are entrusted to it for investment. In a fiduciary relation one person justifiably reposes confidence, good faith, reliance and trust in another whose aid, advice or protection is sought in some matter. In such a relation good conscience requires one to act at all times for the sole benefit and interests of another, with loyalty to those interests.

“ A fiduciary is someone who has undertaken to act for and on behalf of another in a particular matter in circumstances which give rise to a relationship of trust and confidence.”

A fiduciary duty is the highest standard of care at either equity or law. A fiduciary (abbreviation fid) is expected to be extremely loyal to the person to whom he owes the duty (the "principal"): he must not put his personal interests before the duty, and must not profit from his position as a fiduciary, unless the principal consents. The word itself comes originally from the Latin fides, meaning faith, and fiducia, trust.

And I don't think it'll be that hard to convince a jury that Goldman failed to keep their trust...

Of course if we lived in Libertarian Paradise, these things couldn't possibly happen... Because in Libertarian Paradise, everyone does the "right thing." Especially the business class, like John Galt... Oh wait, he's a fictional character in a silly novel peddling a sophomoric philosophy that boils down to: "I got mine, fuck you."

Well, Goldman got theirs. The rest of us got fucked. That worked out so well...