Exclusive: Widespread cell phone location snooping by NSA? Chris Soghoian, CNet
Antitrust Document Exposes Rift New York Times
Palin, on the Ongoing Financial Crisis Menzie Chinn, Econbrowser
Let’s Give them a Hand Michael Panzner
Be on red alert for US market chaos Bill Flecksentein, MSN
Bove on WaMu: Problem is Simple, Too Many Bad Loans Calculated Risk
The stealth bailout, illustrated, in close to real time Brad Setser
Antidote du jour:
A grim antidote Yves. Very.
I am baffled by this image, but the broad concept of trust and risk and even love entered my mind, but love is too complex, so maybe companionship — but why the interspecies menage a trois? This must be yet another metaphorical sign that animals are taking the next step to work together to bring justice to wall street and washington — what else could this be?
In other thoughts, the story on FTC & DOJ antitrust is entertaining, but obviously they both dropped the ball on Bear Stearns and the latest crap by Paulson and Bernanke. FTC and DOJ are busy fighting each other and ignoring their missions. They should both take another look at Katrina and FEMA and then look in the mirror and shut themselves down, for being retards!
Oh my friggn God, please send this retard back to Alaska! Amen and please help America!!!
Re: : An Apostle of Alaska
We know the outlines—the moose-hunting mom who juggles BlackBerrys and kids.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/157696
I guess in reality, I hate to even allow her time in my thoughts and prayers, as I think that type of discretionary abuse on my part just feeds into this political crap, but oh my friggn God, please make this zealous hypocritical abomination return to where thou dropped her, so that we may live our days in peace and so not be challenged by such vile serpent-like illusions, which burn holes in my mind and give me feelings that are akin to a migraine headache. Come on man, if I see anymore of this crap, I'm gonna be sick, so please, please let thy polls, thy ratings and the general spirit of this great nation (before Bush, Paulson & Bernanke) reflect your wisdom and thereby smite this horrible aberration into some kind of form or entity that no will understand — and thus place this thing into a state where it will never return — you know, like put asunder and then smash this thing into little bits of atomic dust that are so little that words can't explain how to put them back together again — ever! Amen!!!! Thanks in advance Dude and I appreciate that you don't play dice with your universe!
Also see: Are we all going to die next Wednesday?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1052309/MICHAEL-HANLON-Are-going-die-Wednesday.html
The answer is a gargantuan machine – the largest, most expensive scientific experiment in history, the 'Large Hadron Collider', to be turned on next Wednesday.
The one in the middle has finally been caught by the two and was about to become lunch and dinner. Cute, I don’t think so.
The visual metaphors comments are always interesting, though I tend to see the photos as true antidotes rather than visual anecdotes about human happenings… animals in their own sphere — sleeping, playing, fighting, nestling, thinking their mysterious animal thoughts — apart from human influence or concern. We’re a nasty, narcissistic species much of the time and it’s a balm to the brain to see us out of the picture. Beautiful photo today.
Photo caption: Freddie, Fannie, and the American tax payer.
Regarding the NSA and location-snooping:
There is at least one Israeli company, Amdocs, that has apparently been up to this sort of thing for a long time. A search reveals no mention of this in the MSM, but then little which puts Israel in a less-than-glowing light is.
From the American Conservative:
The Spy Who Loves Us:
Pay no mind to the Mossad agent on the line.
….
Israel conducts much of its high-tech spying through its corporate presence in the United States. It is heavily embedded in the telecommunications industry, which permits access to the exchange of information. The Whitewater investigation revealed that President Bill Clinton warned Monica Lewinsky that their phone-sex conversations might have been recorded by a foreign government. That foreign government would have been Israel, where government and business work hand-in-hand in the high-tech sector, and many former government officials and military officers hold senior management positions. The corporations, in return, receive large contracts with the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces.
Two Israeli companies in particular—Amdocs and Comverse Infosys, both of which are headquartered in Israel—do significant business in the United States. Amdocs, which has contracts with the 25 largest telephone companies in the U.S. that together handle 90 percent of all calls made, logs all calls that go out and come in on the system. It does not record the conversations themselves, but the records provide patterns, referred to as “traffic analysis,” that can provide intelligence leads. In 1999, the National Security Agency warned that records of calls made in the United States were winding up in Israel. Amdocs also has an apparent relationship with some of the art students who were arrested in 2001. Several were provided with bond money by an Amdocs executive.
….
If any of the Constitutional challenges being talked about that might be filed contesting the GSE’s takeover by the Treasury stick then then a meltdown in the markets will occur.
No, Ms. Smith, NOT antidote du jour, though certainly expressive of an all-too-real aspect of life.
Is this photo as photo-shopped as the Gun-toting-Palin-in-the-bikini pic? (I am still not convinced that THAT is, though I concede the topless pic surely must be…)
And on to something all together different: On account of the fact that I construed “Yves” as a masculine name (as did my wife, we knew no better) I have sometimes referred to Mr. Smith; I should apologize (but only, I guess, for the analogical reason that some people might apologize to me for addressing me by my wife’s last name) and so. But in doing this, I rely upon the Setser post, from which I jumped to the Milken Institute to verify that no Mr. Smith writes this blog. Of course, in world where dissemblance and feignt of hand is the practical expression of the Zeitgeist, Irony, even that could be fraudulent….
Yves…good luck @ Columbia
cool stuff
Menzie Chinn is an idiot.