Catches Today: Sharpton/Robertson, Expelled, and the Pope

I saw a television advertisement this morning with Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson sitting together on a couch.  I'll let that sink in before I continue.  Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson were sitting together, looking as cozy as could be, explaining how the one thing they could agree on was environmentalism, protecting the planet.  I still like Albert Gore, Jr.

I also heard an advertisement for the abyssmal, Ben Stein narrated, anti-intellectual movie called Expelled, which takes the side of Intelligent Design.  The ad ended by saying "No Intelligence Allowed" but what I heard was "No Intelligents Allowed."

The Pope went on and on about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  He rarely strayed from that topic.  I don't find it completely defensible, I'm surprised the Catholic Church does.  He was quite the politician, never naming names.  We know he is against the Iraq War, as was James Pierpont (was that his name?) the Second, When he said that people's whose rights are trampled will rush to the arms of the militants, I thought "American occupation of Iraq" but, of course, any dictator could have been the antecedent.

UPDATE: I also caught a news flash (almost forgot) saying that South Korea decided to a deal on trade in US cattle flesh
scant hours before a meeting between the US President and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak at Camp David.  I mention this because I am amused at how confused Bush gets when the itinerary gets changed right before a meeting.  A cheer for South Korea!

Parenting: Responsibility and the Monster Under the Bed

Responsibility

Having a child is a responsibility to raise an adult
not an opportunity to act like a child.

At least in public, could adults act like adults around their children,
saving the regression for their private lives?
I'd like to at least be fooled into thinking I live in a civilized country.

The Monster Under The Bed

You have a kid who leaps to the bed,
to avoid the monster underneath
you take the kid, during the day, and a vacuum and thoroughly clean under the bed.


By having the kid watch you clean the area,
they'll see there is no monster
and even learned how much effort is involved in cleaning.


For those beds go straight to the floor
move them and vaccuum.

Kids are far more sensitive to smells than adults are,
and sublitus (is that Latin for "under bed?") is the least likely place to get cleaned.

Bangladesh

I know you are used to the cable news shows, where they spend untold hours talking about the word "bitter" or fake sex tapes or poll numbers, but the world marches on, and sometimes the marchers take over.

Bangladesh has an estimated 150 million people
In a country smaller than the size of Iowa.
Bangladesh is one of the world's poorest countries.
You know how the poorer half of the world lives on less than 2 dollars a day?
Well, most Bangladeshis are in the bottom half of that bottom half.

It was created as part of Pakistan,
as an explicitly Muslim country
at the end of British colonial rule[1]
and broke out on its own in 1971.

Bangladesh
right now
has two major shortages,
rice and clean politicians


Prime Ministers from both major parties are under house arrest
or in jail
Major political figures, and their children,
again, from both parties,
are regularly being dragged before courts.

The military,
led by a guy named Moeen,
has taken over
in the last few months
and is calling itself a "caretaker" government
Moeen said,
before he took over,
that Westminster-style parliamentary democracy
hasn't worked in Bangladesh and
isn't going to work.

One possible clue exists as to what Moeen has in mind
although he is promising to hold elections this year
he promised to hold them last year, too.

Between world record rice prices and
a major cyclone that hit Bangladesh this November,
the country is short maybe 1.4 million tons of rice
even after India's promise of some assistance.
10000 people were engaged in food riots there in the last week.
I know Fox, CNN and MSNBC had time for a story on a fake Marlyn Monroe sex tape.

So here we have a
poor
Islamic country where people are starving
even to death.

Considering the cost of things in Bangladesh,
I can't imagine that many things on Earth could as cheaply earn goodwill than helping to subsidize some rice,
or another more readily available and popular staple,
for these very poor people.

I understand about not wanting to be charitable on a regular basis
dependency theory
But even if you can say they had something to do with the price of rice
they had nothing to do with last year's cyclone.


Of course I'll point out
that I'm being a bit cynical here
I'm not saying we should be generous only because of the need
but also because they're Muslims
and a lot of the world's Muslims
have a really bad image of the United States.

It will probably cost about the same as one day in Iraq.

Extra Fact: Prices of rice have doubled, food riots have broken out in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cameroonm, Guinea, Haiti, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan and Yemen. Additionally, protests have occurred in Ivory Coast and Egypt.

[1] http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44059000/gif/_44059547_map_1947-2007_629.gif

Credit Default Swaps Scream "Insurance Fraud"

Are any of you homeowners?
Even if you aren't, you all know about fire insurance.
If your house burns down,
   and you didn't do it,
   a fire insurance policy is worth money.

What jumps to your mind
   when you hear
   about someone selling their fire insurance policy?
Only one things jumps to my mind,
   maybe I've just listened to too many 1940s and 50s radio dramas,
   insurance fraud.

That's exactly what the credit default swap market is all about,
   a stock market for insurance policies.
It's a little more sophisticated,
   as if you could divide up your fire insurance policy
   and sell little bits to different people.
But what's more amazing than that,
   this has to take the cake,
   you can sell as many copies of your fire insurance policy as you want!

Instead of being about a house burning down,
   it's about the value of a bond going down,
   something the banks call a "credit event,"
   like a rating agency downgrade,
   or outright default.

The banks who sell these policies,
   like I said,
   can sell as many copies as they want.

I don't think it takes a supra-genius
   to figure out what will happen
   if everyone in town
   stands to profit
   if your house burns down.

Extra Fact: 13% of all the people buying this excess "insurance" are unknown, their names are simply unreported.

Monroe Tape Story Faked.

It was all over yesterday's so-called "news."  Did every major cables "news" show discuss it?  Seems like it. 

Proof?  You can prove it for yourself if you research the history of Keya Morgan.  He's got a record of some pretty outrageous lies.

By the way, the mouthpiece of Bush Republicanism, Fox News, (should we rightly call it Murdoch Republicanism?) had Shepard Smith introduce the story by clearly calling it a "SUCK-sess story."  In case you were wondering what act was being shown.

Keya Morgan stands to profit from any buzz.

Fox Report and Endless Obama

Fox News ran a story during The Fox Report with Shephard Smith that a group of unnamed, "bipartisan" "Senators" want Iraqis to pay for the Iraqi "reconstruction" bill.

I may be no judge, but I think Shephard Smith is good at reading the news. I do not like the politics of the show, although the coverage of one story tonight certainly gave Pelosi the best of Bush.

The thing is, maybe someone at Fox News should watch a news station, perhaps Fox News would have done. See, Fox probably covered the Petraeus/Crocker hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee. If they had happened to watch the news, they would have seen Ambassador Crocker's opening statement, and they would have seen him saying that US funding of Iraq reconstruction was over. Done. He repeated this same fact later, in an answer to a question of Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

Obama's comments got an enormous amount of coverage. So far, more than all anti-Iraq War invasion speakers combined. Karl Rove gets particular bad marks for his hatchet job, where he expands Obama's remarks to include all rural people, instead of the people he was actually talking about, industrial workers whose jobs have been shipped overseas and they haven't come back for 25 years. Do any of those people cling to anti-trade or anti-immigration ideas?  You can bet your famn damily.  Dan Abrams on MSNBC, whose show I'd never seen before, copped the attitude that the media was making too much of the story, blowing it out of proportion, and then continued to host a panel discussion about it, and talk about it more than some other shows.

When I think of religion and losing wealth, I think of the Dark Ages. The Papacy was the biggest tax collector in Europe at the time, could pick Kings (sometimes) and could send the nations of Europe to war (sometimes).

UPDATE: Although all three of the 24 hour cable news stations extensively covered Obama's week old comments, not one of these "news" organizations covered any of Obama's comments today (speech at the Washington Convention Center) concerning those self-same comments.  He explained further, very specifically, again, referring to the same industrial workers who lose their jobs as firms move them overseas. 

Oh, and imagine what the news would look like if, for the last eight years, we parsed each time Bush said something really off the wall!

UPDATE2: So, if we are already done paying for reconstruction, what are Senators Nelson, Collins and Bayh talking about?  Well, part of it is the "reconstruction" fantasy, but part is this glorious idea, which I first heard of during the recent Petraeus/Crocker appearance on Capitol Hill.

Their bill also would require that Baghdad pay for the fuel used by American troops and take over U.S. payments to predominantly Sunni fighters in the Awakening movement. Plans are to propose the legislation as part of a war bill to cover spending through September.

Furtivefree

So I was walking by the Eighth Church of Christ, Scientist, and I see they have free copies of the Christian Science Monitor outside.  I've thought for a while that the CSM has some of the most balanced coverage of international news that you can get from America, and it has none of the taint of Christian Science weirdness (e.g. they don't believe in medicine).

So, they have a story on the bill that is supposed to help Main Street (re: foreclosures) to a degree that might resemble the Fed's bailout of Wall Street (re: Bear Sterns).  What's been holding up the bill, and which Bush has threatened to veto it over, is a provision that would allow Judges to adjust the terms of existing mortgages.  They say that will put too much uncertainty in the market.

What the article points out is if were your yacht or your vacation home the Judge would have that authority. 

At least the bankers and credit agencies got through that corporate sleaze bankruptcy bill a few years ago, you remember, the one that said even if you declare bankruptcy, credit card debt that might have been forgiven is now totally payable, even before child support!.

I'm not making this up

Schwab, the USTR, said the goalposts keep moving for a Colombia.  See, a year or more ago, all the Democrats wanted was some labor and environmental conditions, now they want an extension of unemployment insurance, too.  I guess that the goalposts have moved, but we weren't in a recession over a year ago, so the field has moved, too, eh?  This was on C-SPAN Friday, an hour long interview with a reporter from the WSJ and USA Today.

Speaking of recessions, this trade deal, like the dozen or so others the Bush administration has pushed through, is supposed to help the economy.  That's the same story we heard when the Bush administration and a Republican Congress passed all those tax cuts.  So, between you and me, do we have a good reason to be in a recession?  Shouldn't this be the most jazzed up economy since the 1950s, when we had 90% tax rates on the rich?

Bob Novak gets the prize today.  When he was asked about the failure to pass the Colombia trade deal (on Bloomberg's "Politcal Capital" show with Hunt) he said the failure was because of, I really am not making this up, an international communist trade-union conspiracy that controls the Democrats (at least on the trade issue).

Murdoch's Money-Laundering Connection

Years ago, Berlusconi (right wing) was busted for funnelling 6 million to the former Socialist Prime Minster of Italy (IHT).  The go-between was a guy named Tarak ben Amar, a Tunisian film producer.

So Business Week has a blog called "Fine on Media" and someone there checked out Rupert Murdoch's old cellphone, on display at the Newseum (BW). In the cellphone was Amar's number.  Fancy that.

I think Berlusconi and Murdoch represent a certain class of scum that, through cynical manipulation of the news, achieve power or money.  Scum is much to nice a word, since the future of the human race depends on accurate news, at least to some degree. 

Credit to Nick Denton for the catch.

Language & Conflict: China Alleges Uighur Plot Broken Up

I only bring this up because little news about the (allegedly al-Qaeda linked) Uighur (alternative spellings Uyghur and Uygur) rebels in China's (formerly Sinkiang) Xinjiang province hits the US newsstands.

China alleges it has stopped anti-Western terrorist plans, scheduled to occur during the Olympic games, to be committed by 45 Uighur terrorists.

The Uighur are a people who speak an Altaic language, like Turkish or Mongolian.  Xinjiang was briefly, in 1933, a country called East Turkestan.  Chinese is part of the Sino-Tibetan language family.

Municipal Bond Market

Municipal Bonds, or Munis, are often tax advantaged, with no Federal taxes, and rarely State taxes if the municipality is in the same state.  The total market is about 300,000,000,000 dollars.

I'm thinking that, when the baby boomers retire, the appeal of that tax loophole is going to disappear for them.

I have not found out what percentage of the total Muni market is held by boomers.

Petraeus Hearing Review

Crocker: US Funded Reconstruction is Basically Over, Deal With It (opening statement and response to Nelson)
Petraeus: Surge must remain open ended (response to Levin)
Petraeus: We separate out some of our twenty three thousand prisoners and we call these people "irreconcilables" (response to Inhofe)
Nelson, Collins and Bayh (all centrists) perhaps others, want Iraqis to pay more of our operational costs.
Petraeus: Support of American People "absolutely wonderful" specifically "all American citizens" which includes me.
Obama had the best question.  He asked something like "if there were no US troops in Iraq and the security situation was just like this, could we call it a success?" but then he hedged, and said something like "if only a few battalions were in Iraq".
McCain made the Shia/Sunni mistake about Al-Qaeda again, and fairly smoothely corrected himself.
Per usual, I was not satisfied with the American Senators.

Who is Obama, really?

Wait, I haven't checked LandoverBaptist.com in simply years! I knew it!. The title of that article is "Are Americans So Bored With Reality Television They'd Put a Black Islamic Extremist in the White House?"

More to the point, and possibly factual, and possibly total bullshit, is this account of Obama snorting some of the dread white powder, cocaine.  I tried it once.  The funny part of the story is where the two guys I knew (but ended up not liking) had gone up into an apartment to wait for the dealer, while I was waiting outside, leaning against a car, doing beatbox.  Three guys came by and two of them went up, while one of the guys says something like "I'm going to be out here with this guy." So he leans against the car and starts doing beatbox with me.  Some time later he shows me has some coke.  I'd never seen it before except in the movies and this one time, at band camp (met).  Larger than marble sized balls of powder.  Yes, he was the dealer my friends had been waiting for.  I ended up going up with him, where I met a guy who looked exactly like Kurt Cobain and sounded like Crispin Glover, he was managing the Pioneer Square Theatre at the time, Seattle's biggest rock venue.

Since the topic of cocaine doesn't come up that often on this blog (Read NarcoNews.com) I'll also throw in this youtube humor.

Is John McCain a Warmonger?

Yes, but it isn't nice to say so.

NY Times, Ignorant Fascists or Plutocratic Tools: You Decide

As everyone's noticed over the last couple years, figures from the Limbaughs to Governor Charlie Crist to President Bush seem dead set on picking Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee.  The Radosh has found that the NY Times is even pimping for these left-wing-king-maker-wannabees.  See, Richard Mellon Scaife has come out for Hillary:

“I have a very different impression of Hillary Clinton today,” he wrote in an opinion article published Sunday, amid her campaign for president. “And it’s a very favorable one indeed.”

His sudden conversion from fervid Clinton basher to lukewarm Clinton fan occurred after Mrs. Clinton, a Democratic senator from New York, sat down for a 90-minute interview with reporters and editors of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a newspaper owned by Mr. Scaife, the billionaire heir to the Mellon banking fortune.

Of course, if he really was having a "sudden conversion" (Paul to Tarsus?) he wouldn't have had the same damn conversion last year!.  From the February 2007 NY Times

Christopher Ruddy, who once worked full-time for Mr. Scaife investigating the Clintons and now runs a conservative online publication he co-owns with Mr. Scaife, said, “Both of us have had a rethinking.” “Clinton wasn’t such a bad president,” Mr. Ruddy said. “In fact, he was a pretty good president in a lot of ways, and Dick feels that way today.”