Gulf’s dolphins pay heavy price for Deepwater oil spill Guardian (hat tip reader John L) :-(
Nature deficit ‘harming children’ BBC
Global Warming & Climate Change Myths Skeptical Science (hat tip Lambert). This is awesome.
Cyberwarfare takes Heidegger’s ideas to their logical end Guardian (hat tip reader John L)
Drones and Operational Maneuverability Global Guerillas (hat tip Lambert)
Yellow dust storms from China spread faster Korea Times (hat tip Lambert)
Planning a trip to Canada or the Caribbean? US Immigration may have other ideas… Independent. If I were British, I would hate America for this alone (as well as my own government for agreeing to this nonsense).
Europe’s Periphery: A postmodern version of Britain in the 1930s? Yanis Varoufakis
The Economist sees (and raises) Michael Pettis, Credit Writedowns
Enemies: A History of the FBI by Tim Weiner – review Guardian (hat tip Lambert)
How successful cities are like marijuana Grist (hat tip Lambert)
Supreme Court Decision Tree Mark Thoma
Federal judge dismisses HuffPo bloggers’ suit Daily Kos
The Era of Big Box Retail Dominance Is Coming to an End Bloomberg
Minimum wage work leaves no margin for getting ahead or protecting your family Daily Kos (hat tip reader Carol B). I’m surprised this isn’t obvious.
What does it take to justify murder? Larvatus Prodeo
How to Prevent a Financial Overdose Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times
Fannie and Freddie Charitable Donations? Adam Levitin, Credit Slips
Charles Biderman and Chris Martenson: The Problem With Rigged Markets Jesse
Financiers and Sex Trafficking Nicholas Kristof, New York Times. OMG, Goldman has a 16% stake in the site that is the BIGGEST in the US in under-aged prostitution! You cannot make stuff like this up.
Antidote du jour (hat tip reader herman s):
74 comments
Comments are closed.
Regarding Global warming and climate change myths.
First I believed in reasoning of Global Warming proponents, then I found reasoning of skeptics to be more compelling, then I have found that both sides are compelling, which is contradictory.
Now, unless I will have full access to raw measurement data, methodology and complete computer models I don’t believe any side. I simply don’t know which side has it right (if any side has it right) and I can’t verify any of them.
So for me the climate change debate is also over, and my conclusion is that most likely both sides are lying to some extent, since on both sides there is a lot of money involved.
At first I thought it was good that you are trying to see the truth through this process of myth sorting. Then I was sad and disappointed that you can’t see where the preponderance of facts and reason lies, to come down strongly on one side or the other.
Then I thought maybe you are lying, and making up the whole internal debate story. Yep, I’m going with lying. It makes me feel better. The alternatives are too hard to accept.
Since farming / animal domestication started some 7 thousand years ago, the terraforming started. We now move more earth than all the natural weathering processes combined per year.
Only 7 thousand years, from stone to steel, that’s massive change.
A great little doco ‘Columbian Exchange’… Americas roots tell a tail.
Skippy… Yet for some, its humans small, earth big and that’s – that.
Yet, 10,000 years ago, with man’s impact on the Earth very low, somehow, a two mile high glacier over Manhattan thawed.
Whats your point, ice melts if warm enough? Much more exciting is the glacial lake that busted and its waters ran half way across America and hundreds off miles offshore. The geologist that worked it out was a pariah for a bit and then when he was proven out a vaunted member again.
Any way, the point is, as humans we have overtaken the largest natural system of geological change ie erosion and are pulling away.
Skippy… now there is some change you can bank on…. eh.
You forgot about earthworms.
[Actually, that’s when I knew Italy was not going to be my ultimate home: very hard to find any worms in the soil.]
Well, Rex, you may think that the problem with Yulek is “lying”; but, I think it is more likely to be “stupidity”.
Occam’s razor at work!
Looks like a great link, but I’ve given up arguing with my brother-in-law and conservative friends over this – facts don’t matter to ideologues. The fact that virtually all the “climate skeptic” viewpoints are misleading, observations taken out of context or outright lies bounce right off them. They are unconcerned that the money behind the “skeptics” is all Koch bros and API. The fact that the insurance companies and the DOD take climate warming seriously means nothing.
You can’t use reason with a zealot.
True dat.
With a large tablespoon of narcissism: surely Yulak pictured himself being interviewed in prime time as he composed this great treatise for our benefit.
Who’s more stupid, Yulek, or climate change advocates who blindly follow a certain former pol who Gulfstreams from climate conference to climate conference, warning about CO2 emissions, while his homestead is 3x the size of what it was a decade ago?
A: any sucker who’s still at the level of who to believe than what the facts are. As such you’re entitled to a belief, but we need to reserve the word opinion for those who make an attempt to understand the science.
I’m like Gore: I spend a lot on energy to keep myself comfortable. But, in your rush to paint me as a hypocrite and then use that as an ad hominem attack against global warming arguments, consider:
– If it’s legal, what I do with my own money is none of your business.
– Like Al Gore, I run an office in my house. Are you comparing my electricity usage to the median shack in one of the poorer states in the nation?
– I don’t spend my loot on other comforts. It’s unfair to examine my home cooling expenses without looking at the overall picture — and comparing Al Gore to others in his income/wealth bracket.
– Most importantly, beyond me unnecessarily justifying my lifestyle to you, I’m not asking for a free ride. I’m not asking to be treated differently. I’m want to pay more for my electricity, to obtain it sustainably. But, I’m not going to do it if you’re not forced to do it with me, because reducing my demand alone merely makes more supply available at cheaper prices to the rest of consumers who will gladly waste it like they do now.
I agree with Yulek and aek, both lying and stupid.
Astrologers have forecast the weather for centuries. Back a century ago, one of the leading astrologers, Sepharial, predicted one could prove astrology by means of weather forecasting alone. He forgot to consider that you can’t prove anything if no one will hear the proof.
The greatest weather forecaster of the 20th century, a now-obscure man named George McCormack, went around forecasting weather months and years in advance, for HALF A CENTURY with press releases, news items, his own weekly and then monthly journals and by any and all other means which came to hand, all to open scorn and ridicule. In 1947 he painstakingly hand-published his work in 100 3-ring binders (the copy I chanced across, the pages were individually hand-typed), most of which were discarded long ago. I will have it in print in print by the end of the month, Amazon will have it.
You CANNOT make a judgment about “global warming” without consideration of astrological factors. Is the world warming? Is it cooling? Work with the transient astrological factors and then tell me, as I frankly don’t know. When outer planets (Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) bunch up in the sky, when they make certain formations, extreme weather, which can be decades long, will customarily result. Factor in the planets and then you will know. You are otherwise making wild guesses. Despite radar and satellites and thousands of ground stations, weather forecasters are no better now than they were 75 years ago: They can usually make an accurate forecast 24 hours in advance. Weekly forecasts, then and now, are largely imaginary. These are the people you trust? Not if you have a choice!
McCormack’s thesis is that at the moment of seasonal ingress (ie, the exact moment of spring, summer, fall and winter), astrological charts drawn for that moment, for a given location, that show planets at the very top and very bottom of the chart, those planets will determine the weather for that location for the season in question. Got that? Secondly, charts drawn for the Sun’s ingress into the other tropical signs will fine-tune the seasonal picture. Weekly forecasts are set by the quarters of the moon. (These are all Tropical positions, I have personally shown the Sidereal zodiac to be, well, fake, but that’s another story.)
So you’re wondering about the recent US heat wave. McCormack says two things. One, Mars in closest approach to the earth generates heat as a result. “Closest approach” means Mars retrograde. Mars went retrograde on January 23. It made its closest approach on March 3. It will go direct on April 13.
Secondly, those places on the earth where Mars was at the very top of the chart (the MC) or the very bottom (the IC) at the moment of ingress will also have heat. As it happens, when the Sun entered Pisces on February 19, Mars was directly overhead the US eastern seabord. Bingo. Close approach, combined with directly overhead, record temperatures. On those same critical dates, but 90 degrees to the east or west, Mars was nowhere near the “hot areas” and so weather was very different. Europe had a fiercely cold winter.
Everything was reset on the spring equinox, which was March 20, 2012, at 1:15 am EDT. Mars was directly overhead a line running north and south through eastern Colorado. Still retrograde. Now the heat has shifted to the plains and at a time of year with rising temperatures in general, the heat in the midwest is intense. This combination is also – to weather astrologers, but not to the Weather Channel – a well-known recipe for fires. There was, literally, no excuse for the “controlled burn” which has cost – so far – three human lives.
The “Weather Sage” tells me she is frightened that some day the Weather Channel will figure out astrometeorology and take her business away. Relax, I said. You’ll know the Weather Channel has taken up astrology when they have their own home-grown forecasting model which, unlike all the other models, will actually be right, again and again, a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month in advance. But they won’t have this model, because the scientific bias against knowledge is so intense that no amount of pleading, no amount of evidence, no amount of proof, and, critically, no amount of dead humans will change its mind. The US Weather Bureau is literally killing people with its crappy forecasts. Each and every year.
The “Enlightenment” (so called) began around 1650 as a reaction to the 30 Years War, which had ground to a close in 1648. It had nothing to do with “science”. It was a city-led reaction against the devastated countryside of Germany, it was a book-read literate population reacting against oral tradition, it was the pre-French academy (France was largely spared the 30 Years War) scoring against the devastated Germans, who had traditionally kept the arid and superficial French in check. In this the French enlisted the English, or rather, suckered them in. You will be surprised to learn that, right from the start, Science knew exactly what was “right” and what was “wrong”. It was easy. Ignorant city people decided the countryside was wicked and evil and “superstitious” and so banned them wholesale. Banned them outright. The world has been living in city ignorance ever since.
City folk are bright and smart and slick and, personally, that’s where I’d rather live. But city folk are as dumb as a bag of hammers and always have been. It’s city folk who think food is manufactured in factories, who don’t know that a moon that rises at midnight is in its last quarter, who think that crops grow and cattle breed on command. It’s city folk who are ignorant of the world, it’s city folk who think the world is a machine and that they have control it. Country folk know better. Country folk are in touch with the earth itself, they have no choice in the matter.
God save us from city stupidity. The world needs the countryside, and if this smells of city Democrats vs: country Republicans, you can make out a very good case that that’s exactly right. As representatives of an ancient struggle, both parties are evil, but in different ways. City Democrats are still as dumb as a sack of hammers, while “country” Republicans are manipulative and mean. Both city and country people are easily manipulated, have always been, but by different means.
Meanwhile, if you want the weather, hurry me along to get McCormack’s book published, learn the rudiments of real knowledge, and do it yourself.
Astrology is bogus. For one thing, astrologers would have discovered (through the astrological effects) Uranus and Neptune before astronomers did. For another thing, astrology is like predicting the day’s events based on highway traffic in distant cities, rainstorms and droughts in faraway lands, etc.
Astrology is a working definition of complete non sequitur.
So, the the merchants of doubt claim another victim.
And this article describes how conservatives have lost their trust in science.
http://news.yahoo.com/conservatives-losing-trust-science-study-finds-114401347.html
Of course, their distrust doesn’t apply to transvaginal ultrasound technology.
Thanks for the link. Oreskes describes the situation well, but she de-emphasises the part that doubt genuinely plays in science. I actually have a lot of sympathy for Yulek’s “plague on both your houses” point of view. I get irritated by the dogmatism that AGW (and evolution) advocates sometimes demonstrate. After saying that, I think that AGW is probably true, and so is evolution. But “probably true” isn’t certainty.
The “merchants of doubt” capitalise on this difference. What they leave out is the need to make a decision. Every day, we make decisions based on what a lawyer might call “balance of probabilities”. That doesn’t worry us, we think that is a rational thing to do, and it is. We aren’t even absolutely certain that we won’t die today, yet we still get out of bed and go to work. Yes, death today is possible but it’s not likely enough to prevent us doing all sorts of things which are premissed on life continuing – the more likely event. In most choice circumstances, if we required absolute stone-cold certainty, we would do nothing.
“Merchants of doubt” abuse this distinction by implicitly demanding absolute certainty as a requirement for action. It isn’t, and a moment’s thought about our everyday decisions shows how unrealistic that demand is. But it’s the deliberate confusion between “balance of probabilities” and absolute certainty which is the problem, not the value of doubt.
I once had a AGW skeptick tell me that his noble ex-lordship Christopher Monckton was winner of a Nobel prize.
Truly, there is no hope with these people.
You can have access to all the data and all the computer models, most of which were paid for with the tax dollars of US, UK, and other citizens of the world. They are all posted at http://www.realclimate.org for your edification and enjoyment.
At the same time when considering the arguments of both sides, realize that the denial side is paid only to deny, that they are paid by people who make money from poisoning you as part of polluting the environment-they aren’t on your side, and that they are using the same playbook they used to lie about tobacco, asbestos, failed pharmaceuticals that kill swathes of people around the world, and they know they are harming the public on purpose and rationalize it out after the fact by saying that everyone knew they were lying, just like the tobacco and asbestos guys.
It isn’t a scientific debate between two equal sides-it is a science debate on one side and a public relations operation on the other.
Very well said. When the dangers to everyone’s future are so clearly apparent, the complacency and nonsense of the ‘the science isn’t proven’ lobby is remarkable. As for Dave of Maryland, last time he gave us the benefit of that rant, someone commented that he’s delusional. Good word for it.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/
Heh.
A Message from a Republican Meteorologist on Climate Change:
http://www.shawnotto.com/neorenaissance/blog20120329.html
Somebody better tell this guy Republicans don’t believe in science.
Is that a wiener dog?
looks like, and a big one too… (not the dog of course…)
Assuming AGW is real, it and other environmental destruction is largely a result of our money system that REQUIRES exponential growth just to pay the interest.
Let’s hack at the root of evil, eh?
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” Henry Thoreau from http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/2702
Valissa had a cartoon that illustrated Thoreau’s point a few days back.
Yeah, about Weiner. I’m getting very curious about what Ames has up his sleeve with S.H.A.M.E. the Shills. He mentioned penetration at firedoglake. And whatta you know, hot on the heels of the latest FBI entrapment disgrace comes a firedoglake book salon with a Big Journalist who wrote about the FBI. This is not just any journalist, this is a journalist who parrots the totalitarian “tension between liberty and security” slogan, repeats it insistently like the propaganda it is. A journalist who’s all “Doie, Idunno!” about the Inspector-Clouseau buffoonery of the Amerithrax investigation, that historic war pretext I mean terror attack. A journalist who concludes, Yeah, FBI used to be a psychopathic Stasi-style fealty cult brainwashed clean of law and morality, nothing but illicit sneaky weasel spies, but Mueller turned em right around, yup, and now they’re fine, yessirree! Poor Tim Weiner. It must have been like Take Your Child to Work Day when he showed up for his hard-hitting interviews, Fightin crime with Dad, Timmy? Good boy, here’s a shiny badge for ya!
In re passenger lists for those who never so mach as land inside US territory. Can’t our people hack into airline computer systems? WHy would they need to ask? After all the Utah big brother station from hell is supposed to have everything, isn’t it? I’m not saying other countries or airlines operating flights outside of all US territory should comply, but can’t airlines easily and automatically forward this info from ticketing/check in?
Can’t any of these countries say NO to these ridiculous, fascist demands? After all these demands are from Homeland Security which just ordered up to 450 million .40 cal bullets! Nobody orders up to 450 million bullets unless they intend to shoot a lot of people!
Each and every day this week I have been thankful for NC… you all have done yeoman’s work. In what probably seemed like a slow news week to most Americans… a daily blog reading person like myself who should find little to nothing shocking anymore has been stunned usually a couple of times a day or more at the relentless Shock Doctrine taking place on all levels.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/atk-secures-40-caliber-ammunition-contract-with-department-of-homeland-security-us-immigration-and-customs-enforcement-dhs-ice-2012-03-12?reflink=MW_news_stmp
How does anyone pretend the enemy is not systemic and within in the USA anymore? How can anyone pretend we are about to be represented when a million petition signatures to a gov’t agency are erased and then considered to have been a little over 300?
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/03/fda-deletes-1-million-signatures-for.html
The answer is… it will not happen until we throw them all out, in jail… storm our own Bastille… We need to do it before the next 450 million bullets are in the wrong guns… pointed at us!
Re: Cyberwarfare takes Heidegger’s ideas to their logical end
“the US air force announced last year that it is now training more drone “pilots” than fighter and bomber pilots combined…..”
2016: Americans, despite having no jobs and no healthcare, despite massive organ disruptions (particularly in their liver and kidneys) due to a steady diet of GMO roundup ready crops, despite NDAA, despite trillions missing from customer bank and money market accounts….
…nevertheless take time to celebrate their country’s cyber victory over the terrorist Uzbeks of Uzbekistan and the assassination by drone of the terrorist Uzbek leader Islom Abdug’ aniyevich Karimov:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd0rf95ZXx8&feature=related
Violent clashes in Frankfurt City after anti-capitalist mass demonstration. Pictures here:
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/rhein-main/frankfurt-randalierer-verletzen-polizisten-schwer-11704050.html
http://www.fnp.de/fnp/region/hessen/krawalle-polizist-bei-frankfurter-demo-schwer-verletzt_rmn01.c.9728092.de.html
http://www.fr-online.de/frankfurt/ausschreitungen-in-frankfurt-krawall-gegen-das-kapital,1472798,14584678.html
Interplanetary reporting comes to Google.
Yawn. Facebook is planning the same thing. Except they aren’t sure if they should still call it Facebook.
Since it’s a modern April Fools Day we only run the risk of being spoofed like every other day. But wow! Gretchen Morgenson’s article “How To Prevent a Financial Overdose” was to believe in. Professors Posner and Weyl have done us all a great service explaining why we should only allow socially beneficial financial products to be traded and how to protect social interests. Thanks.
O hey look a link trashing Elisabeth Warren.
When Warren supports throwing some banksters in jail I’ll take her seriously.
This site predicted before she threw her hat in the ring that she was not as “progressive” as her fanbase assumed. She is probably still the lesser evil v. Scott Brown, but she is no Great Progressive Hope. If she were, she would almost certainly have taken a course of action which would make it less necessary for her to play nice with the Democratic party.
Well, it is unfair of Lambert to make fun of the blank protest signs on Warren’s website. My high-level insider contacts in the Democratic Party showed me the uncropped picture, and the signs display prudent national security principles that every decent progressive will certainly concur with,
Uranium/deuterium neutron doom for the filthy Arab swine!
Death from above for the Yemen vermin scum!
A chicken in every pot and a Nakba in every garage!
Zion, Blut und Boden, Grenzenlose, Oy Gewahlt!
Occupy Boston dissolves:
http://www.occupyboston.org/2012/04/01/press-release-occupy-boston-dissolves/
OccupyWallStreet.org calls for re-election of Goldman Sachs:
http://occupywallst.org/article/reelect-goldman-sachs/
NYCGA endorses Ron Paul:
http://www.nycga.net/ (scroll down a bit)
April 1… Had me going there for a minute!
Nice! Thanks RanDomino!
these Right wing idiots are quite amazing to see themselves show how stupid they are when they write such ignorant and stupid things. i suppose they have never had an aquarium or terrarium. how easy it is to kill fish in an aquarium by adding too much food or chemicals. that this is so easy to see and see what happens by “messing” with the stuff put into the water, it just shows how stupidly they want to believe in idiots and rich Koch dreams of stealing. gosh, i just hope they don’t use science related things like Electricity, medical surgery, fly in airplanes, drive cars/mechanical engines and all the other “stuff” science “gave them, that they choose to believe in.
such idiots, that i have to live in the world with such dangerous and murderous thugs!!!!
Regarding dolphins:
Oh really, you mean that animals don’t like living in toxic sludge?!!
But how could this be?
We’ve been told that there the Gulf Oil spill has been totally cleaned up and contained, right?
Just like Fukushima, right?
Just like Katrina, right?
To believe a single word the US goverment/corporations say at this point in history is to be a utter and complete idiot.
19 hijackers…
There was a count, a recount….
Global warming is a myth….
Syria’s a peaceful uprising….
Russians hate Putin…
Iran has nuclear weapons…
The Dow should really be above 13,000….
Until a majority of US citizens start to realize that they live in the most repressive and mind-controlling regime in the history of human civilization nothing will change.
February Cs fallout at Fukushima up 70% on previous month:
http://ex-skf.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/radioactive-fallout-in-futaba-machi.html#comment-form
Kyoto crowd barracks speech by Environment Minister Hosono:
http://ex-skf.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/goshi-hosono-is-being-shouted-down-by.html
Said by people resident in Japan to be kind of unprecedented that their fellow citizens would holler at a representative of the political elite in this way.
Great list jsmith, you left out Iraqi WMDs…
messing with the air, water and land we need to live and thrive in is something other animals don’t do. but humans’ greed proves Global Weather Change is not “provable” by using common sence, much less scientific metholds that we all benefit from.
I do wish there was a God just to punish these idiots, but alas, we shall all do down together. until they find a way to make money on Global Weather Change
“until they find a way to make money on Global Weather Change”
Isn’t that what disaster capitalism is all about?
until they find a way to make money on Global Weather Change Bernard
Haha! What do you think all those bird choppers (windmills) are about?
There are plenty of people making money off the (bogus?) CO2 threat.
On Global Warming and Climate Change Myths. While it is a nice chart it is meaningless to the debate. Global warming has become like evolution. It is no longer about rational debate. How you feel about it is a cultural signal, your belief in it signifies what tribe you belong to. It is the Forces of Brightness vs the Earthtone Coalition (Stephenson Reamde). Who ever has the biggest gang will win.
Think about that. The stakes are very high. If you spend all your time looking for reasons to attack people who you agree with most of the time, you are going to lose and the other side will win. This is not Portlandia.
>> Global warming has become like evolution.
Yes, in that you have to be f****** stupid to take the side of the predominantly non-scientists.
Exactly. You can “win” the temporary political debate, but Nature bats last. True science (as in: what happens in the real world) is beyond politicization.
IT IS MY GAME. YOU ONLY THINK YOU ARE PLAYERS.
I don’t think most of the people on either side of the Great Anthropogenic Global Warming throwdown are particularly serious about it.
Politically speaking, you don’t really need to convince anyone that the GAGW theory is true, you just need to get them to support clean/ efficient energy and etc. There are any number of good reasons to do this.
But that’s not what we get. What we get is endless reiterations on how stupid and anti-science the odious right wing is, which for its part, just knows their antagonists can’t actually evaluate the scientific claims any more than they can.
Thus far, I’d say they’re about even. And they’re both doing exactly what it is that they really want to do.
Biderman/Martensen — Rigged Markets Podcast
Very interesting interview overall and Mr. Biderman makes lots of good points and insightful comments.
But inevitably, as in all things financial, comes a moment when the pundit’s inner psycho bursts through the surface skin of his mind and discredits everything he has or will say. And you think (even if you’re an atheist): Jesus Christ, is every financial commentator out there insane?
In Mr. Biderman’s case its the old “goverment can’t do anything” bromide, delivered as always with a dripping scorn that leaves no trace of contemplation.
It got me thinking of my hometown. There was a very good public school system that sent kids to the Ivy League and top schools. There was a very good trash collection system. If you took a crap or a piss and flushed the toilet, it went into the sewer system, got cleaned up at a treatment plant, and sent on its way. They came down the streets with trucks and vacuumed up piles of leaves in the fall. And in the winter they plowed the streets. The public library system was quite good, with a main library and 9 or 10 branch libraries. The police were effective and well-mannered. The firefighters put out fires.
It’s hard to think of anything that wasn’t done well. You never thought about it, because it was always done well. Year in, year out. It was a nice place.
All government-run, paid for by taxes and other local government fees.
Put that all up for private bids and we know what would happen. You’d eventually pay three times as much for half as much. And the half you’d get wouldn’t be half as good as what you got before. All in the name of efficiency.
It can be bad either way — government-run or private. For reasons that usually totally escape the pundits that yack about it. What a waste of time, listening to them. And even complaining about them. But I like waisting time, from time to time.
Sorry to have wasted yours. :)
I hear ya, craazy.
Listening to that Biderman guy just makes me mutter under my breath, “Joseph!..what an ignorant snit that Biderman is!”
Is that the same Mr. Biderman that used to be on Seinfeld? They let anyone masquerade as a financial expert nowadays. Bet he runs a mutual fund too, and it’s probably losing money.
Then that martensen guy. Closet gold bug there. Like we are gonna pay government employees in gold and expect anything to get done. I mean, Day Old Crackers, we’ll be cleaning up after them!
I want to support Martenson for some of the good that he has done in alerting people to crash dynamics, but he seems to still think that the money system itself is not the cause of the issue, just gov. and private “overspending”.
He doesn’t seem to get that the overspending is unavoidable: programmed in, baked into the interest-based money cake.
Or maybe he’s just cruising nicely with the income he has from gold-buggy doomsterism and doesn’t wanna to jinx anything.
Or maybe we create a huge amount of credit because at low interest rates we need to lever up a huge amount to make the “investment” worth anything.
It’s always fun to to swap the horse and cart, or vice versa, to test presumptions.
Besides, who said interest makes us run out of money? I spend all mine back into the money supply. Then if I come up short the Fed is happy to pick up the slack and increase it’s balance sheet.
Yup, Crazier;
Our wonderful private medical system/insurance extortion system is working so well that we now rank 37th in the world and spend 1 1/2 times as much as the next big spender nation. Ain’t free markets wonderful?
Re; Romney, or “Rmoney” in the kid photo last week.
My 8 year old grand-daughter just beat me on T-V’s 1-100 quiz show guessing the president’s salary ($400,000).
Why would someone making $20 million/year without lifting a finger want grey hair for $400,000?
He “likes to fire people.”? Maybe he wants to fire on people!
It will really help my faith if Romney is elected. The Bible predicts the “Beast” will claim to be God and becoming gods is a part of Mormon theology.
For my kid’s, don’t wish it; “Honni soit qui mal y pense.”
Oops! Sorry! I don’t wish it but I can’t help thinking these maybe the End Times.
But, Beard, at least we’ll end the Fed! ;-)
It will really help HIS [Mitt’s] faith if he is elected.
There have long been Mormon prophecies of taking over the presidency and “saving” the Constitution. These stemming from their secession period.
I don’t think people really know enough about how nutty Mormonism is, I mean REALLY nutty, as in “Mitt will become a God of his own planet” nutty.
Much interesting material at exmormon.org. Fascinating insights into their bizarre and exclusive rituals (no mere mortal can enter their megachurches), as well as their enormous RE holdings and tax-free business investments. Your 10% tithe must be BEFORE taxes, darlings.
What people shy away from as impolite is not merely that Willard is a Mormon, but that he is THE Mormon.
Who do you think, exactly, is FUNDING a person who is so quantifiably unlikeable? With Newt, we knew it was that Adelson guy from Vegas.
1. You get to be in history books even if you did a terrible job
2. You get great perks, like parades and hot and cold running limos and Air Force One and big parties. And you can get to meet pretty much anyone you want save Castro.
3. You get a great pension
4. You can cash out on it later if you care. What, didn’t Bill get an $8 million book advance and Hillary $4 million? And Bill gets $250K plus expenses for speeches (if not more).
Dynamite, Yves. Santorum’s $174,000 salary transformed to over one mil. after defeat. Paybacks, what a system! Gingrich’s boy (and his ilk) could buy Clinton’s whole lot.
RE: How to Prevent a Financial Overdose; By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1349364
From page: 43
“So what seems like an age-old commitment to deregulated financial markets is in fact an “invented tradition”130 that goes back only 15-20 years. With the benefit of hindsight, the deregulation of financial markets that began in the 1990s was a serious mistake.”
The paper is 47 pages, I only gave this paper a skim reading thus far, abstract and conclusion. However, I must say, I am in shock. This is from the University of Chicago? Indeed, the world has been turned upside down – next cats and dogs will be living together eh? Whoda-thunk-it?
gs_
Apologies, wrong link above, paper is here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2010606##
Global warming, ugly truth department. Global warming will hurt the third world more than the first, the rest of the first world more than the US, and the 99% more than the 1%. The 1% know this. They will do better, and the rest of us worse, in a world which is denying global warming. Just like they will do better, and we worse, in a world without single payer healthcare, a world with student debt, mortgage debt, credit card debt, ethanol subsidies, yadda yadda. And as long as enough useful idiots think they’re just one lottery ticket away from the 1%, they’ll keep getting away with it.
We were inspired. I hope all NC readers appreciate our April Fool’s post proving how the Lottery is the best investment strategy, along with some choice new tech investment recommendations.
http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/lottery-best-investment-strategy-april-1st-2012
keeping faith is more important than facing facts, which is why i don’t even bother with the lunatics who don’t believe in humans’ part in the whole Global issue. just when i see stupid posts like that in this blog, i don’t have the patience for such stupidity. these people need to find some other place to be willfully ignorant. i will not partake of their “willfull Ignorance.”
read that the whole pretension is a part of keeping the “illusion” they choose to believe in. after reading about how colledge grads refuse to believe in reality after they take the Conservative kool aid, i wonder how they can keep up such pretensions. i mean, driving a car, taking medicine, flying in airplanes, using elevators, air conditioning, electricity, the internet… and so on. the list is endless. and every now and then i see a George Bush/Cheney bumper sticker. yesterday i saw a “why worry, God’s in charge!” sticker on a car. The whole “get out of “Jail/Responsibility” card these lunatics absolve themselves with. Like this is some kind of Monopoly Game!
definitely a civil/culture war been underway for years now. to see even such a total abdication of reality by so many. wish i had a phaser from Star Trek to “zap” them or transport them to Mars where they can ask “God” for forgiveness.
There is some evidence that cattle in ancient Egype were selected for temple rituals based on the pattern of spots of their tongue, and that this religious based selection helped domesticate the beasts over time. So what does the pattern on that puppy’s back suggest with regards to canine domestication?
The article on Global Warming & Climate Change Myths gave a poor representation of the concerns some climate scientist have with the betrayal of climate change. What I think you can say is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it will, all things being equal trap warmth causing warming. The problem is that things are not always equal, you see warming changes the pattern of cloud cover, which depending on what type of cloud it is can act to increase radiation absorption or reduce it by reflecting sunlight away. Its a complicated feedback mechanism which also affects ozone production and its transportation northwards from the equator. Where I see disagreement is surrounding the quatitative effects of the positive and negative feedbacks to increaseed CO2.
The other area of concern is the focus on CO2 to the exclusion of other factors like CFC’s. You see the banning of CFC’s may also have contributed to global warming. You also have to look at other factors affecting CO2 like warming perhaps causing plankton formation to migrate away from the equator or to move into ice free areas. Again its complicated with mechanisms that can affect global warming in both positive and negative ways. For me there is room for improvment in the modelling of these factors.
My own conclusions are that it would be unwise for the human race to ignore emissions of CO2, or any other emissions come to that, but that genuine climate scientist concerns with particular aspects of global warming are ignored, whether it be that global warming could well be worse or better.
The article on Global Warming & Climate Change Myths is full of disinformation. Just one example, #24 on extreme weather was just debunked by the new IPCC Special Report on Extremes http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/
“Long-term trends in economic disaster losses adjusted for wealth and population increases have not been attributed to climate change, but a role for climate change has not been excluded (high agreement, medium evidence).”
(“Did he just say that the IPCC debunks Climate Change? WTF?”)
I know you don’t believe it, that’s why I supply the link.
great blog a lot of time has been done here im new to the internet so i found these blogs very helpfull , thanks