Friday, July 31, 2009
FED is feeling the heat........
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve is at least partially to blame for the economic crisis. It left interest rates too low for too long, and laxly regulated the megabanks. Given this reality, or at least this public perception, it's not surprising that there are plenty of economists and politicos with oodles of ideas for re-imagining the central bank's role and function...Link
'Seinfeld' reunion on 'Curb'......
The "Seinfeld" cast reunion on HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" this fall will be an extensive part of the series. The stars of the original NBC series (Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Michael Richards) will appear in five episodes of the HBO comedy -- along with plenty of other familiar faces (hello, Newman). The "Curb" story has "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David and the original cast agreeing to a series revival and follows the process of re-starting the classic sitcom...Link
The Death of Sharks........
Summer comes and all of the old fears and myths about sharks reappear as we hit the beaches. Shark attacks, thankfully, are very rare. What humans ought to be fearful about is the survival of an essential species. Humans kill 73 million sharks every year, nearly all for consumption, mainly in shark fin soup. The fins are cut off and the bodies dumped overboard, a barbaric practice known as finning. Commercial fishermen are taking more and more sharks for their meat as well...Link
The Dude phenomenon........
Eddie Chung, a former philosophy student who is accustomed to pondering life's deepest mysteries, is still stumped by something that shapes lives by the thousands: Why has "The Big Lebowski" become the most popular and all-consuming cult film since "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"? "I don't think," said Chung, a 38-year-old Southland filmmaker, "that's an answerable question. It's like asking, 'Why did Britney Spears become popular?' "...Link
Update - HR 1207 - 281 Co-sponsors........
Title: To amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
75% Favor Auditing The Fed............
So much for the ongoing secrecy of the nation’s independent central banking system. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of Americans favor auditing the Federal Reserve and making the results available to the public...Link
House-Grown, and Potent.............
California may be the center of the marijuana trade and the controversies over its legalization. But Florida has surpassed it in one important category: the Sunshine State is now the country's leader in indoor marijuana cultivation. It is a potent distinction because most of the marijuana grown this way is cultured hydroponically — that is, mostly without soil and with a carefully calibrated cocktail of chemicals and lighting — to create some of the highest level of highs on the market...Link
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
$130 Billion a Year on Energy........
Our houses leak, our light bulbs produce more heat than illumination, our big screen TV sets draw power when they are turned off, and that’s just the start of it...Link
Obama sees 'beginning of the end'.............
The United States may be seeing "the beginning of the end of the recession," President Barack Obama said Wednesday, as the world's biggest economy combats its worst slump in decades. "Here is what's true: we have stopped the freefall. The market is up and the financial system is no longer on the verge of collapse," Obama said, while citing improving job and home sale numbers. "So there is no doubt that things have gotten better. We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the recession."...Link
All Fats Are Not Created Equal.........
We need a little fat in our diets for good health, and some fats are better for you than others. Fatty acids, the building blocks for fat, are divided into three chemical classes according to their hydrogen content: saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated. Here’s a rundown...Link
Can't believe fraud lasted so long......
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Bernard Madoff, the financier convicted for Wall Street's biggest investment fraud, was surprised his $65 billion Ponzi scheme was not uncovered sooner, he said in his first interview since entering prison...Link
Incan Empire Aided by Global Warming...
July 28, 2009 -- A 400-year warm spell helped the ancient Inca to build the largest empire ever to exist in the Americas, a new study has established. Beginning around 1100 A.D., the increase in temperature served as a "perfect incubator" for the Inca's expansion, an international team of researchers report in the current issue of the journal Climate of the Past...Link
Update - S 604 - 20 Co-sponsors.......
Title: A bill to amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes.
Update - HR 1207 - 279 Co-sponsors......
Title: To amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
This dude is crazy..............
Perched on the brink of a 186ft drop, this was the moment when Tyler Bradt probably felt the urge to start frantically paddling backwards. Less than four seconds later, he was celebrating a world record for kayak descents. The 22-year-old American touched 100mph as he plummeted over Palouse Falls in eastern Washington...Link
Dick........
Vice-President Dick Cheney wanted to use the arrest of the Lackawanna Six accused terrorists as an advertisement of America’s might and resolve on the first anniversary of 9/11, says a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist...Link
A ‘full court press’ against the Constitution....
Speaking to MSNBC on Monday night, Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley said he believes former Vice President Dick Cheney’s push to have U.S. troops deployed to Buffalo, New York to arrest six alleged terrorists was just one example out of many in Cheney’s “full court press” against the Constitution. “This is sort-of like a dormant virus that lives in our democracy,” said Turley. “There are people who seem to long for authority, control, even domination.”...Link
Expected To Announce Senate Bid........
The son of Rep. Congressman Ron Paul, is planning a run for Senate in Kentucky. On Tuesday, Republican Sen. Jim Bunning announced he would not seek re-election in 2010. Bunning had been fundraising for his re-election campaign for months. In a statement, he blamed his campaign's demise on GOP leaders who, he said, have done "everything in their power to dry up my fundraising."...Link
Dodd, Conrad told deals were sweetened...
WASHINGTON – Despite their denials, influential Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd were told from the start they were getting VIP mortgage discounts from one of the nation's largest lenders, the official who handled their loans has told Congress in secret testimony. Both senators have said that at the time the mortgages were being written they didn't know they were getting unique deals from Countrywide Financial Corp., the company that went on to lose billions of dollars on home loans to credit-strapped borrowers. Dodd still maintains he got no preferential treatment...Link
This sounds promising.....
A startup based in Cambridge, MA--Joule Biotechnologies--today revealed details of a process that it says can make 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year. If this yield proves realistic, it could make it practical to replace all fossil fuels used for transportation with biofuels. The company also claims that the fuel can be sold for prices competitive with fossil fuels...Link
Monday, July 27, 2009
Open government or Transparency Theater?.
WASHINGTON - One of the nastiest running battles between Capitol Hill and the White House when George W. Bush was president concerned what the administration should disclose to Congress and how. The fight would flare regularly and then fade into a classic “he said/she said” stalemate...Link
Neither trusted nor liked...........
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is one of the most despised political figures in the country. And, frankly, she doesn’t give a damn. “No, I don’t care,” Pelosi told POLITICO last Thursday, laughing heartily as she walked beneath the Capitol dome and plunged into a crowd of tourists. Last week’s Public Strategies Inc./POLITICO poll brought grim news for Pelosi, revealing that only a quarter of Americans trust the San Francisco Democrat — putting her in the basement with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio)...Link
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Investigation into Bush administration...
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has called for both a criminal investigation and a blue-ribbon panel to look into "Bush administration abuses of power and misconduct."...Link
Marijuana rolls on in California....
OAKLAND, California (CNN) -- Richard Lee greets students, shopkeepers and tourists as he rolls his wheelchair down Broadway at the speed of a brisk jog, hailing them with, "Hi. How ya doin'?" In this nine-block district of Oakland, California, called Oaksterdam, Lee is a celebrity. Oaksterdam is Lee's brainchild, a small pocket of urban renewal built on a thriving trade in medical marijuana. The district's name comes from a marriage of Oakland and Amsterdam, a city in the Netherlands renowned for its easy attitude toward sex and drugs...Link
Pelosi's Door Revolves for Top Lobbyist....
The revolving door is wide open in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office just two years after she promised to crack down on the practice of congressional aides moving into lobbying shops and then back into government. Pelosi announced Monday that she is hiring one of Washington's top lobbyists, Richard Meltzer, to be her policy director. It is a position in which Meltzer, a longtime Pelosi friend, is certain to have tremendous input into the shape of legislation affecting the more than 200 clients he represented according to federal lobbying disclosure records...Link
'Ponzi scheme, an inside job’......
The Federal Reserve — the quasi-autonomous body that controls the US’s money supply — is a “Ponzi scheme” that created “bubble after bubble” in the US economy and needs to be held accountable for its actions, says Eliot Spitzer, the former governor and attorney-general of New York.Link
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Dick...........
Former Vice President Dick Cheney Cheney pressured George W. Bush and other top administration officials to deploy U.S. soldiers to a Buffalo NY suburb to arrest suspected terrorists, according to a report. Using American soldiers for domestic law enforcement purposes would have been unprecedented. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the armed forces from acting in a law enforcement...Link
Update: S 604 has 19 co-sponsors.....
Title: A bill to amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes.
Five-day ‘terrorism prevention’ exercise...
Law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the United States and abroad are preparing to go on high alert as part of a massive terrorism prevention exercise — the first of its kind here. Beginning Monday, security officials at all levels in the United States and four other countries will scramble into action in the wake of a fictional terrorist attack somewhere outside the United States...Link
Transparency and Open Government? Not yet.
Reporting from Washington -- Invoking an argument used by President George W. Bush, the Obama administration has turned down a request from a watchdog group for a list of health industry executives who have visited the White House to discuss the massive healthcare overhaul. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent a letter to the Secret Service asking about visits from 18 executives representing health insurers, drug makers, doctors and other players in the debate. The group wants the material in order to gauge the influence of those executives in crafting a new healthcare policy...Link
California Budget Deal Closes $26 Billion Gap.
LOS ANGELES — After several days of nearly endless debate, California lawmakers on Friday signed off on a budget deal that closes a $26 billion gap and shores up state finances, for now.Link
Friday, July 24, 2009
Feds won't support legalized pot.........
The federal government is not going to pull back on its efforts to curtail marijuana farming operations, Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Wednesday in Fresno...Link
Thursday, July 23, 2009
“I don’t know.”
[Alan Grayson:] “What’s that (the $553 billion amount)?”
[Ben Bernanke:] “Those are swaps that were done with foreign central banks. Many foreign banks are short dollars …”
[Alan Grayson:] “So who got the money?”
[Ben Bernanke:] “Financial institutions in Europe and other countries…”
[Alan Grayson:] “Which ones?”
[Ben Bernanke:] “I don’t know.”
[Alan Grayson:] “Half a trillion dollars and you don’t know who got the money?”
[Ben Bernanke:] “Um, um, the loans go to the central banks and they then put them out to their institutions to try to bring down short-term interest rates around the World.”
Update - HR 1207 - 276 Co-sponsors.........
Title: To amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Bush like..........
“Congressional Democrats warned President Barack Obama on Tuesday that he sounded too much like George W. Bush when he declared this summer that the White House can ignore legislation he thinks oversteps the Constitution,” the Associated Press reports. The AP adds, “In a letter to the president, four senior House members said they were ’surprised’ and ‘chagrined’ by Obama’s statement in June accompanying a war spending bill that he would ignore restrictions placed on aid provided to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.”...Link
Update: S 604 has 17 co-sponsors.......
Title: A bill to amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes.
Oakland passes landmark marijuana tax.
About 80 percent of voters chose to impose the tax on Oakland's medical marijuana facilities, according to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters. Some celebrated the news at Oaksterdam University by hand-rolling large marijuana cigarettes or stuffing cannabis into pipes. The school trains students for work in the medical marijuana industry...Link
Bernanke Fights Audit Threat To The Fed.
WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke faced a grilling in Congress on Tuesday about the role of the Fed, and spoke out strongly against a legislative proposal to audit the central bank. Speaking to the House Financial Services Committee, Bernanke tempered optimism that the economy is improving, noting that, "despite these positive signs, the rate of job loss remains high and the unemployment rate has continued its steep rise." He added the Fed expects inflation to remain subdued over the next two years...Link
TARP funds........
Ohio Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich wants to know: “If [the Troubled Asset Relief Program] isn’t about keeping people in their homes or providing credit to businesses, what is it for?” Expressing his frustration before the Government and Oversight Committee, the two-time presidential candidate suggested that the Federal Reserve may be paying banks to hoard money and avoid making loans...Link
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Hail the Austrians!.............
“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” ~ Mark Twain
The current economic collapse and financial system breakdown were forecast and explained by only one “school” of economic theory: the Austrian. The irony is that the other two “major schools” – the Keynesian and Chicago (Supply Side/Monetarist) – are fixated on empirical data yet incapable of recognizing that history refutes their theories. The two mainstream schools are really very similar with only a difference of opinion on the size of government and the amount of monetary inflation. But the continual failure of the ever elusive predictive mathematical models they both seek just doesn’t provide the intellectual spark needed to look outside their statist boxes. The abandonment of logic for faith in fantastical assumptions has induced an ivory tower-delusion on a grand scale. Luckily for us the Austrian Economic Theory has survived the Dark Ages of Economics and we have the intellectual tools to be able to rebuild a healthy, productive and prosperous society...Link
The current economic collapse and financial system breakdown were forecast and explained by only one “school” of economic theory: the Austrian. The irony is that the other two “major schools” – the Keynesian and Chicago (Supply Side/Monetarist) – are fixated on empirical data yet incapable of recognizing that history refutes their theories. The two mainstream schools are really very similar with only a difference of opinion on the size of government and the amount of monetary inflation. But the continual failure of the ever elusive predictive mathematical models they both seek just doesn’t provide the intellectual spark needed to look outside their statist boxes. The abandonment of logic for faith in fantastical assumptions has induced an ivory tower-delusion on a grand scale. Luckily for us the Austrian Economic Theory has survived the Dark Ages of Economics and we have the intellectual tools to be able to rebuild a healthy, productive and prosperous society...Link
Update: S 604 has 17 co-sponsors........
Title: A bill to amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes.
Update - HR 1207 - 275 Co-sponsors........
Title: To amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes.
Yummy.......
ROCK ISLAND, Ill. (AP) -- Authorities in northwestern Illinois are trying to figure out why a case of hepatitis A in a McDonald's food handler went unreported for more than three weeks. An estimated 10,000 people who ate at a McDonald's in Milan are being urged to get preventive treatment for the virus, which can cause fever and abdominal pain...Link
Monday, July 20, 2009
A still-energized grassroots movement...
Soon after he returned to the House after his presidential bid ended last year, lawmakers approached Ron Paul (R-Texas) with the same question. “How in the world did you raise all that money?” Paul laughed while recounting the story during an interview with The Hill. He said members told him, “You raised $7 million and you didn’t even ask for it.” “They wanted me to teach them how,” the 73-year-old lawmaker said. A year and a half after his White House bid sparked fevered devotion, Paul doesn’t know what the next step is for the movement he helped build...Link
Replacing the Dollar...............
China's swipes at the U.S. dollar have been spilling out of Beijing with almost mundane regularity. Every time there is an international economic summit, it seems that some Chinese mandarin reiterates the now familiar complaint that the greenback needs to be replaced as the world's de facto reserve currency. China usually suggests some "supranational" currency as a dollar substitute, to protect it against instability that could arise from any one country's errant economic policies. A favorite suggestion is the use of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), the unit of account at the International Monetary Fund.Link
Dick may get probed.........
Vice President Dick Cheney isn’t out of the reeds just yet. In a little noticed statement Friday, the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Intelligence and Investigations announced they will begin a full investigation into charges that the CIA misled congress about a covert spy operation that had been going on for nearly 8 years before it was canceled by CIA Director Leon Panetta last month. “The House Intelligence Committee will move forward with a full investigation that will explore certain CIA programs and the core issue of how the committee is kept informed,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), the committee’s chairwoman, said in a statement late Friday...Link
Washington doesn't feel the pinch......
The rest of the country has a new reason to hate the inside-the-Beltway crowd: Our economy is better than yours. At 6.2 percent, the unemployment rate in the D.C. metro region is lower than in any other major metropolitan area in the country — and far below the 9.5 percent national average. Members of Congress from harder-hit areas can’t help but notice the divide between the relative health of their part-time city and the pain back home. And it particularly rankles conservatives who’ve argued for a smaller federal government but now see it making up one-third of the region’s economy...Link
At least 16 killed in Afghan helicopter crash.
At least 16 civilians were killed on Sunday when a helicopter crashed near a military base in southern Afghanistan, the NATO-led force said, in the second fatal chopper crash here in a week...Link
Threatened to quit over waterboarding.
Two of the key designers of the Bush administration’s torture program ended up in a “tug of war” with their superiors about how far to go when coercing information out of suspects, says a new article in the Washington Post...Link
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Could Dick Go to Prison?......
So far, the summer has been mild in the Washington area. But for former Vice President Dick Cheney, the temperature is well over 100 degrees. He is sweating profusely, and it is becoming increasingly clear why. Cheney has broken openly with former President George W. Bush on one issue of transcendent importance -- to Cheney. For whatever reason, Bush decided not to hand out blanket pardons before they both rode off into the sunset...Link
iPot.
(LOS ANGELES) - This week Apple releases a new iPhone and iPod Touch application which allows users to locate cannabis resources worldwide including the nearest medical cannabis collectives, doctors, attorneys, organizations, and other patient services in the states, such as California, that have passed laws allowing medical cannabis -- also commonly referred to as marijuana...Link
Dr. No's moment..............
Worse still, he adds, Palinites are partisans: “If Obama was the only one who was guilty, they would be on his case all the time, but there is a lot of partisanship and I am probably less partisan and therefore she is going to appeal to partisan Republicans better.” As Paul sees it, such partisanship is the rough equivalent of an old Onion headline, “"Our local area sports team is superior to your local area sports team," Or as he puts it, “I think when it comes to foreign policy and monetary policy on big spending and watching out for the big corporations, Republicans are Democrats.”...Link
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Update - HR 1207 - 271 Co-sponsors........
Title: To amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Obama Approval Rating Slips to 57 Percent.
(CBS) President Obama's approval rating has fallen six points in the past month, a new CBS News poll finds, amid growing skepticism about his handling of the economy and questions about the impact of the stimulus package. The president's current approval rating, which is 57 percent, is still relatively high. But it has fallen 11 points from its peak of 68 percent in April, and has also dropped since last month's mark of 63 percent. His disapproval rating, meanwhile, has risen from 23 percent in April to 32 percent today...Link
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Healthcare Is "Not a Right"....
Healthcare legislation is quickly picking up momentum in Washington. Three separate committees in the House of Representatives are hard at work hammering out details of a bill. Votes are planned today in the Education and Labor and Ways and Means committees on a plan that majority House Democrats presented this week. The legislation seeks to provide coverage to nearly all Americans by subsidizing the poor and penalizing individuals and employers who don't purchase health insurance. Meanwhile, the Senate Health committee on Wednesday approved its own version of a bill. Their plan sets up a government-run insurance system to compete with private insurers, and like the House, requires many employers to provide insurance for their workers or face penalties and requires individuals to purchase their own insurance...Link
People Demand Transparency! Audit the Fed!
Congressman Ron Paul doesn’t think his bill to audit the Fed will get past the "power structure”"aligned against it, and here he includes the prominent economists who’ve lobbied the White House and Congress to stop the "politicizing" of the Fed. But the Texas Republican admits being surprised how much support his effort is getting...Link
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