I will note only in passing that Timmy conflates "detailed loan data" with loan records. Only an examination of the records would show the scale of the accounting control fraud, since the computer data already has the fraud "priced in", as we might say.
Geithner's article is a real piece of work. He tries to convince his readers that banks will be able to "de-stress' themselves without taxpayer help, by selling off non-core businesses and converting "other forms of capital" into common equity. But...
Banks will also have the opportunity to request additional capital from the government through Treasury’s Capital Assistance Program....
Isn't that a sweet way to phrase it? This is all about opportunity. You're not against opportunity, are you?
I see nothing here about what, not so very long ago, was called moral hazard. Nothing about those obscene bonuses. Nothing about making the bastards who got us into this mess feel pain.
There's another potential problem. Geithner:
Some banks will be able to begin returning capital to the government, provided they demonstrate that they can finance themselves without F.D.I.C. guarantees. In fact, we expect banks to repay more than the $25 billion initially estimated. This will free up resources to help support community banks, encourage small-business lending and help repair and restart the securities markets.
Trouble is, Congressman Brad Sherman (who has opposed the Geithner bailout) thinks that this practice may be illegal
Sherman points to language in the Emergency Economic Stability Act -- the bailout bill that created the Troubled Asset Relief Program -- that specifically states that revenues and proceeds from sales of troubled assets "shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt."
In other words, the taxpayer is supposed to get his money back.
It occurs to me that half of this $25 billion could solve GM's problems. Must the cash head back into the banks...?
If you mean the bank bailout, I think it’s a disaster, crony capitalism at the absolute worst.
Larry Summers and Tim Geithner came up with a plan to bail out the banks that is actually a disguised bailout for the hedge funds — where the government is not bailing out the hedge funds directly because they can’t sell that, but hedging the hedge funds to buy the toxic assets of the banks — instead of nationalizing the banks and breaking them up, which is what needs to happen. This is very different from what FDR had the guts to do. He used that progressive movement, he used the rage at the banks, to pass Glass-Steagall. And there’s no excuse for the fact that there’s been no serious re-regulation of the financial sector. The idea that you would somehow hand out trillions of dollars to the banks and then regulate them months later is crazy. You have the leverage when you’re handing out the money. “You say you want a bailout? Well here are the new rules.”
Yeah, I noticed the same thing a while back. The Obots are very quick to blame eeeeee-vil Bill Clinton for the end of Glass-Steagall, even though it was not his fault. But when you mention that Obi and the congressional minions have done nothing nothing nothing to re-impose the regulations that would have prevented this crisis, what do the bots say?
You know... In the good old days the ordinary folk - when they had a bellyfull of the crooks - would take the scheming thieves out, tar and feather them, and ride them out of town on a rail.
Some of the really bad ones were just hung.
I suppoese it was a simpler world back then.
PS: I wonder what Nancy Pelosi would look like in basic black - with feather accessories?
Some quotes from Mike Whitney at Global Research: Lenders nationwide are sitting on hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes that they have not resold or listed for sale.... We believe there are in the neighborhood of 600,000 properties nationwide that banks have repossessed but not put on the market," said Rick Sharga, vice president of RealtyTrac.... ...only 30 percent of the foreclosures were listed for sale in the Multiple Listing Service. ...banks are actually servicing the mortgages on a monthly basis to conceal the extent of their losses.And the commercial real estate market is a can of worms that hardly anybody seems to want to talk about.
Its all disgusting, and has been for a while. You already know the answer - Obi is a bankster, bought and paid for.
However its important to understand something. The time value of money. The Banksters need to stall. If they stall long enough they get to keep the dominant position and pass the bill on to the American people. Simply cos their current operations are incredibly lucrative. The deal with the Fed and Obi's Admin is making them more money than they have ever made before and at their customers expense . The only problem is they are hiding simply enormous losses on past lending. Give them 5 years and they will have made most of it back, provided they dont lend any more money in the meantime- and trust me, they wont be doing much lending.
Dont be slaves America. Take your country back! You dont need the existing bank managers and bonds holders. Take your banks into into public ownership! After all, you have already bought them!
Harry
posted by Anonymous : 12:11 PM
Another great article Joe...
Back in 1996 the family I was in explained in detail 911 only then we were told it was something huge that was going to start everything and the economy collapse. There is actually more planned that hasn't happend yet and hopefully they won't be able to pull it all off. It will be the end of all of us if this is allowed to happen.
Meet the family: Mexico drug plane used for US 'rendition' flights: report - Sep 4, 2008 http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j6QonBKKMo2gw1e3ql-xUcQEZbVg
I'm thinking that Wikipedia should have an entry on me. However, I would like to fill the biography with ludicrous, insulting, hilariously wrong misinformation. Any suggestions?
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Uhh... wouldn't that match most of the information already posted in Wiki? You could claim to have invented any number of advertising icons that were then stolen by corporate America. One of your characters could be a giant talking tampon that was nixed because people confused it with a former president.
posted by MrMike : 9:13 AM
Let the boiz at Rumproast do it. They're experts at "ludicrous, insulting, hilariously wrong misinformation."
I'm thinking of something along the lines of Vonnegut's Mother Night, with your identity hopelessly confused as a possible double- or triple- agent, complete with an assortment of other bizarre characters further muddling the issue of who you actually are. I'd also strongly suggest some link to "Exlax" Jones or "Peon" Planet to really stir things up, but that might entail a long string of edits and counter-edits over your entry.
I just sent you a message on reddit regarding a new forum I set up there. Sorry for the blatant self-promotion, but here's the forum:
"One of Joe Cannon's ancestors is actually the man who invented the cannon (which was subsequently named after him). Initially, he embraced this, however, like Alfred Nobel (the inventor of dynamite) he regretted this later in life, and attepted to redeem his name with philanthropic endeavors devoted to ending war...however, the most well-known of these, Cannon for Peace, was widely misinterpreted, and thus quite short-lived."
Sergei Rostov
posted by Anonymous : 6:09 PM
Great idea. Should mention one of your main claims to fame, that is proving that Barbara Bush was descended from Aleister Crowley.
Let's see, what else?: "Joseph Cannon,perhaps best known for his calm, rational and even-handed approach to the issues of the day, is proprieter of the well-known blog Cannonfire." Hmm...contains one assertion that is actually true (Cannonfire is your blog) so maybe it needs work.
Be sure to multiply your site statistics by a factor of 100 at least. Who's gonna know?
Perry, it would be funnier to see if my many enemies would take the horsecrap seriously, and the only way to arrange that is to use Wikipedia.
That said, I must thank you for the link. Loads of fun. Did you see the entry for Andrei Tarkovsky? Perfect! I wish, though that they had mentioned that the hot girl in Solaris was the daughter of the guy who made "War and Peace."
It could actually be very elaborate. You could do what Lovecraft did in his books and create a whole fictional world of books, newspaper articles, reference materials, and imaginary events etc that refer to you and seem to lend credibility to the version of the story you present.
The internet actually lends itself to this because you can create links from the wiki bio to the web sites about the supposed articles books etc that you then create.
To be fair there would have to be clues scattered all over everything so once the thing was exposed anyone who believed it would seem ridiculous.
posted by snowflake : 10:53 AM
Your fake bio should say you went to school with the Jesuits, but later left the Church although in later, friends wondered you picked a lapsed Jesuit priest as your main intellectual sparring partner. You are now officially agnostic, but "is widely thought to be" a secret, say, Unitarian. More fruitfiul ambiguity can be added by stating that in your early twenties, you became a member of the Republican Party, but a while later left in disgust at their right-wing policies/because of a personality clash with a Republican Senator/was expelled because of pronounced libertarian tendencies. The exact reason is, of course, "disputed and has regularly been a matter of public debate". Finally, you are divorced from a half-Jewish female ex-officer of the CIA who was later cashiered by the Agency while investigating Palestinian terrorist/Israeli intelligence infiltration of hedge funds on Wall Street. You still exchange letters and phone calls, but "the exact nature of the relationship is a matter of some controversy". lmollerrasmussen
Correlation is not causation, of course. But here's the argument for correlation and causation. In other words, this piece argues that the drug war not only happened after the implementation of NAFTA and free trade, it happened because.
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I think it was a result of Ronnie Raygun's war on weed. When RR made it hard to import weed the smugglers turned to a smaller, more valuable product to import - cocaine.
We've been hearing about "narco-terrorists" ever since. The action moves around to avoid the cops. Wherever the action is there is violence as successful capitalists try to create monopolies by eliminating the competition.
The Mexican goverment is responsible for the welfare of its own people; no treaty or agreement can supercede this. Further, as I recall, under NAFTA the Mexican government was required to do what goverments are obligated to do in any case - build and maintain an infrastructure that enables the creating and sustaining of sufficient good jobs for its people - and it wasn't doing that.
Tinker-Salas admits here that the Mexican government abandoned its obligations, but then says it couldn't have maintained them. Well, the fact is, it was required to, both by its being the goverment of Mexico, and by the agreement, and therefore it was empowered to do whatever was necessary to make sure this occurred. So it wasnt NAFTA's fault, but in fact the lack of effort on the part of the Mexican goverment to do what it was constituted for in the first place and the lack of the implementation of *all* of NAFTA provisions by the Mexican government which is to blame.
Murphy of PUMAPAC sent me this email, and I'd like to pass it on to you. This message concerns the drive for single-payer health insurance, and thus demands to be read by everyone, not just those who feel comfortable wearing the PUMA label.
What kind of a democracy are we living in when the ONE group that should be considered the PRIMARY stakeholder in the health care reform debate, the American PEOPLE, is not even allowed a seat at the table?
Poll after poll show that the majority of American citizens favor some sort of single-payer, public option health coverage. Small business owners want it. Families want it. Sick people who have been dropped from their insurance companies’ rolls want it. Grown children who are caring for parents who became ill before they reached the Medicare age want it. MILLIONS and MILLIONS of Americans want real, universal, affordable health coverage.
WHY does this Senate Finance Committee so smugly dismiss our concerns, our interests, and our voices?
Here’s some political realism for you: Because they have been bought and paid for by the for-profit industries that make BILLIONS of DOLLARS a year milking money from American citizens.
Tell Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus that the American people are SICK and TIRED of Pay to Play !
Learn more here, and please contact the Senate Finance Committee today.
Why are there no advocates for Single Payer or Universal Health Care included in your discussions of health care reform?
Could it be that the Finance Committee of the United States Senate is a Pay to Play system just like Rod Blagojevich’s Illinois?
Max Baucus, Chair: $2.7 MILLION dollars in one election cycle Chuck Grassley, Ranking Republican: $1.8 MILLION dollars in one election cycle Orrin Hatch: $1 MILLION dollars in one election cycle Kent Conrad: $800,000 in one election cycle Blanche Lincoln: $800,000 in one election cycle Mike Enzi: $800,000 in one election cycle John Ensign: $700,000 in one election cycle Jim Bunning: $600,000 in one election cycle Mike Crapo: $600,000 in one election cycle Tom Carper: $500,000 in one election cycle Olympia Snowe: $375,000 in one election cycle
That’s $10.7 MILLION dollars paid DIRECTLY to eleven members of the Senate Finance Committee by the for-profit health care industry in just the last election cycle alone.
No more Pay to Play in the U.S. Senate! Real Health Care Reform NOW!
Since when Murphy "I Voted for McCain" of PUMAPAC care about health care ? She should petition the person she voted for...
posted by Anonymous : 6:40 PM
I thought there would be a clown like you, Anon. A-HEM. A lot of people voted for McCain who never thought they would vote for a Republican, and many of those people now want single-payer.
It looks like most of this is water under the bridge so I don't mind adding that RedSea has some seriously weird British Islamicist links and both coke jets were connected by the same law enforcement folk. DH at MadCow did great work here but hasn't published smoking gun for connecting flights yet.
posted by arbusto205 : 8:07 PM
Oh! Was voting for Obama considered a vote for Health Care? I had no idea!
You'd think if it was that important to him then he would be giving Sen. Baucus a little more guidance.
The O-bot defenders of the Immaculate Deception don't know weather to spit or go blind. They try to play the What Would Hillary DO? game.
posted by MrMike : 9:05 PM
Anon bleated "She should petition the person she voted for..."
Did I miss a memo that only people who vote for the winner in an election are still citizens with a right to representation and ability address their grievances to elected officials?
Clearly I was woefully misinformed about how this whole Democracy thing works.
I support single payer, although perhaps another reform might also yield a good result.
What I don't understand is the difference some evidently see from the Clinton years.
The dreaded 'progs' are supposed to have been wrong when they ignorantly insisted upon single payer back in the Clinton years (a non-starter idea, politically, since it was impossible to get enough support, according to some).
What has changed NOW that makes it any more do-able? I would think the same political calculus is in play.
XI
posted by Anonymous : 9:30 AM
XI:
*Sigh*
Ok, for the benefit of other readers, the "some" who said single-payer wasn't possible in 1993-4 is everyone who was involved in the political process surrounding it at the time (that is, if they cared about it at all).
The differences bewteen now and then? This time it became a real issue in the primaries and campaigns (one sign of this is that Obama cared enough about it to ridicule the very idea of it in speeches to supporters, while at the same saying in his general-public TV ads that he was for it; one of his dominant traits is that he ridicules and lies whenever he thinks it will result in him having more power, just like wingnuts do).
Back then, except for the progs and right-wingers (around 1/3 of the populace) no one cared enough about universal health care to fight for or against it. But after two recessions only 2 1/2 years apart where millions lost their coverage with their jobs and didn't get it back when employed again, years of suffering under HMOs and massive increases in premiums, coupled with a decade of corporate-malfeasance scandals, a supermajority of the public now cares enough to want the sort of health care which doesn't involve the insurance companies, i.e. single-payer. Add to all this a Democratic majority in the House and supermajority in the Senate elected in part on the promise of UHC (it was what, the number three issue?) and this creates an opportunity which wasn't there in in the early 90's.
The progs were wrong in insisting on single-payer to the exclusion of anything else when single-payer wasn't politically possible. Now that it has more than a good chance, they should be stepping up and joining the majority in fighting for it, instead of letting Obama and the Dems completely off the hook.
Where are those green shoots? No dough, no job, no health care A warm and clear day!
posted by Anonymous : 10:49 PM
Oh, there are rules...and humorous social commentary is called something else...renga...maybe not, that may be a chain poem...I can't recall, sorry!
But the American version of the haiju is the cinquain...
5 lines, syllable count as follows: 2, 4, 6, 8, 2
We've no debtor's prison but rank untouchables by scarlet credit score, to mark out-castes.
posted by Zee : 5:09 PM
Here are my contributions. I would have offered them to Corrente, but I'm too damn lazy to register.
Who is your Daddy? Shut up, don't you know better? Bow to your masters. ----------------------- Don't you get it? To be a victim by choice sets a great example. ----------------------- My whole family is out of work. Who to blame? We must be lazy. ----------------------- We should thank the banks for our meager existence. Who are we to judge? ------------------------ Who says you are smart? You have fucked up everything. Why aren't you in jail? ------------------------ Who gets my money? Elaborate Ponzi Schemes. Pass me my pitchfork. ------------------------ I once had a job. Now I have desperation. Congratulations. ------------------------ Mission Accomplished. Break our backs, exploit our labor. We like it like that. ------------------------ Where are the trials? The social contract? broken. We are all to blame.
I'm not sure whether others share my interest in political myths. Even so, I plan to pursue the topic from time to time, because it is of unrecognized importance.
A few days ago, we examined (and debunked) a swine flu conspiracy theory. Today, I would like you to contemplate the following words, allegedly spoken by Jeb Bush, brother to our most unbeloved former president:
The truth is useless. You have to understand this right now. You can't deposit the truth in a bank. You can't buy groceries with the truth. You can't pay rent with the truth. The truth is a useless commodity that will hang around your neck like an albatross - all the way to the homeless shelter. And if you think that the million or so people in this country that are really interested in the truth about their government can support people who would tell them the truth, you got another think coming. Because the million or so people in this country that are truly interested in the truth don't have any money.
Many, many sites (most of them featuring the work of "progressives") attribute these words to the former Florida governor. See, for example, here and here, not to mention this page on the official Obama campaign site. The quote's appearance on TV.com appears to have given it credibility and increased visibility.
But did Jeb Bush actually say it?
This DU page from 2004 carries the quote, along with the following background information:
Well, according to George Bush's little brother and Florida governor Jeb Bush, some people just can't handle the truth. Jeb once told retired Naval Intelligence Officer Al Martin (cited in Bushwhacked, Sept. 2002, by Uri Dowbenko)...
A review of that book appears here. We learn that those words were allegedly said to Martin "in 1986, during a visit to Jeb’s Bush Codina Realty office in Miami".
And who is Uri Dowbenko? Well, he's an abstract artist. My favorite Dowbenko painting is amusing titled "The Origin of Specious Theories." Alas, Dowbenko appears to have a quite a weakenss for such theories.
Here, Dowbenko gives a very positive review to Jim Marrs ghastly Rule By Secrecy, a book that resurrects every debunked concoction ever to infest the libraries of paranoia. Marrs uncritically accepts all of the classic conspiracy hoaxes -- the "Silent Weapons" hoax, the Iron Mountain hoax, the Illuminati hoax, not to mention the fanciful inventions of Trevor Ravenscroft. Marrs even tries to sneak in the notorious "Protocols of Zion" hoax. Tellingly, Marrs draws from Eustace Mullens, an elegantly fey Nazi with a long history of bogus assertions, as demonstrated here (and in Morris Kaminski's classic book The Hoaxers).
If Uri could devour Marrs' book without smelling the gullibility, then I have serious reservations about the man's judgment. Alas, Dowbenko's own writings demonstrate that he has a positively Marr-tian affection for some of the dodgier "truths" to be found within the conspiracy underground.
And what of Al Martin, the intelligence officer who (allegedly) gave the quote to Uri? As you may know, he too has a fairly substantive internet presence. His writings are somewhat conspiracy-oriented, although, unlike Dowbenko, he keeps his feet planted on planet Earth, or close to it. I have yet to see him traffic in the kind of fraudulence that Marrs finds irresistable. (On the other hand, I'm not as familiar with his work as some of you might be.)
Martin does claim to have known Jeb back in the 1980s...
All through the 1980s, when Jeb Bush ran the Bush Realty out of Miami at 1390 Brickell Ave. (before he ran Bush Codina Realty in 1992-1993), he represented himself to clients, banks, insurance companies and mortgage brokers as a licensed realtor. In fact Jeb Bush is not a licensed realtor in the State of Florida nor has he ever been.
His application for a realtor's license in the State of Florida was repeatedly rejected due to "outstanding criminal investigations of his business activities conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement."
This assertion is important -- if it is true. I suspect it is.
But we still don't have our quote. A commenter on Snopes claims to have seen the same text attributed to Oliver North. My own googlings have uncovered no web pages in which North is said to have said those words.
So. Did Jeb say it or not? Here's the argument for "not":
1. We have no direct testimony from Al Martin on this score -- just an indirect ascription to Martin by Uri Dowbenko. And to be frank, I don't trust Dowbenko.
2. The quote is long -- too long to commit to memory. Are we to believe that Al Martin secretly recorded his conversation with Jeb?
3. The quote seems rather too literary. I cannot easily believe that any member of the Bush clan speaks off-the-cuff with such erudition.
Unless Martin comes forward and confirms the quote -- and also provides some explanation for objection #2 -- I will classify it under the heading False Quotation Syndrome. (My favorite FQS example is this speech, attributed to Lincoln. It will continue to be attributed to Lincoln long after you and I are dead.)
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First we have to define what truth is. Imo, truth is never known because there are infinite pieces to it and therefore it's impossible to know. “An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.” -- Ghandi What we call truth is not truth. A cup filled with water from the ocean, is not the ocean. My understanding of truth, is that truth is the happening, the "Is". If I say: "I'm eating", the statement is a very small part of the truth. Mao said that a lie repeated becomes truth, a contradiction to the statement from Ghandi. I think Mao is wrong. The Sun did not revolve around the Earth, even if the Pope and generations believed the error. I've heard people say that there are "many truths". No such thing. There are many errors, but only one truth.
I read that quote some years back, and not from any of the sources you've cited that currently make the claim. If I recall correctly, I read it on a website that featured contributions from Martin on a several times a week basis, or possibly in the one book of his I bought (current whereabouts unknown, unfortunately).
Now, even THAT doesn't make it true, except as a true quote of Martin's. I believe it is entirely true that Martin has claimed this is a quote or near-quote from JEB (John Ellis Bush) back in the roaring '80s.
Whereas Martin may or may not verge way off into the hinterlands of conspiracy land, his primary message is one of complete conspiracy anyway. He claims that he was attached to the CIA from ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence), and the work he did for them was specializing in financial crimes, to defraud investors to make money for the covert ops side of the Agency.
XI
posted by Anonymous : 3:54 PM
XI, I'm grateful for this info.
I should make clear that I don't know whether Al Martin's claims are true. I've nothing against the guy. I just don't know enough to render an opinion.
But as near as I can tell, he restricts himself to CIA stuff. I think that spook stuff is far easier to digest than all of that Freemasons-run-the-world crap you get from most conspiracists.
I second Xi but unlike him/her have a copy of Martin's book "The Conspirators" to hand. The trouble is it's around 360 pages long and is unindexed, so my efforts will be a bit hit-or-miss.
The book is poorly written but contains an eye-popping amount of detail that, even if partly true, says much about the state of the country. The Bush family even gets a few chapters of the book to itself, so it would have come as no surprise to readers of the book that "George Jr." presided over the eceonomic shenanigans we now see emerging from the woodwork. Similarities between now and the Savings and Loan fraud are probably no coincidence.
Mike Rogers
posted by Anonymous : 11:00 PM
I've found what could well be the source of the quote -- and the words are actually those of Al Martin:
The truth is not profitable. You cannot eat it. You can't live on it. You can't deposit the truth in the bank.Page 200 of The Conspirators, Second Edition, 2002.
What Martin reports Jeb Bush as actually saying is that "... there are no heroes, and there are no tooth fairies." The thing about not being able to eat the truth, etc, is Martin's interpretation of Jeb Bush's words.
Incidentally, if you haven't read "The Conspirators", I heartily suggest you do so. In spite of its lamentable lack of structure and Al Martin's awkward style of writing, it might well give you some further insight into the corruption that infects the US body politic.
Mike Rogers
posted by Anonymous : 5:15 AM
Al Martin once claimed that Poppy Bush said his job was to promote "the continuous consolidation of money and power into higher, tighter and righter hands." I would so love to use that quote, because it sounds so much like the Bushies, but I've never been able to verify it.
I have a rewrite for the "truth" statement:
Hope is useless. You have to understand this right now. You can't deposit hope in a bank. You can't buy groceries with hope. You can't pay rent with hope. Hope is a useless commodity that will hang around your neck like an albatross - all the way to the homeless shelter. But the leaders have nothing to fear from the hundreds of millions of people in this country that are devoted to hope, because those millions will never bother to get up off their asses and force their government to do what's right for the greatest number of us.
Dowbenko is either on drugs or suffers from mental illness. His rambling and nutty monologues he bludgeons complete strangers with is evidence of this. I met the guy one time and asked him to please steer clear of me in the future. I don't think he is capable for discerning truth from his own imagination.
Sorry for a non-political post. A few of you may be able to help me with this problem.
I'm helping to build a computer for someone -- a good system, capable of doing high-end Photoshop work while a video plays on a separate monitor. We're thinking of using the 64-bit Windows 7 beta. The advantage of 64-bit is, of course, the ability to use more than four gigs of RAM.
The motherboard has already been purchased, and it has one oddity: It can use four gigs of RAM dual channel or eight gigs single channel. (Dual channel is supposed to work twice as fast, although in practice the improvement is small.) So the question comes down to this: Which is better -- dual channel memory, or twice the memory?
Googling reveals that a number of people on a number of sites have asked that very question, but the responses never address the issue. You know how geeks are -- always talking about everything under the sun except for the matter at hand. So please, I beg you: This is not the time to say "Get a Mac" or "Switch to Linux."
Don't buy a Mac unless you just like driving overpriced equipment. As for your memory question-- I haven't built one in a while so I don't know the answer specifically, but on a practical level, especially with video apps, it seems I always get more benefit from more RAM, regardless of the other circumstances. The one exception I can think of using a 3D accelerator, but then that is a very specific application.
I'd run over to MaximumPC and see if you can post the question, they are knowledgeable, very geeky, and responsive.
I'm sorry I don't have an actual answer to your question but I've got some ideas:
Have you checked the Adobe site to see the Photoshop requirements?
Also, Adobe has extensive forums and I've found the answer to some pretty obscure questions there. Posting to forums will often bring really good answers.
Oh, and sometimes writing out the questions gives me ideas for other search terms to try in Google.
Basically, you need to know the memory speed and cpu fsb speed. If the memory is lower, you may find dual channel to be useful. However, it is pretty rare for it to be twice as good as single channel. The real question to ask is where the bottleneck on the system is. Basically, it is really system and task specific, hence why there aren't clear cut answers (you should also make a distinction between nerds and geeks, they really aren't the same thing).
Lastly, there is triple channel architecture for the intel core i7's, don't know if that is what you have, but it again is slightly different from single/dual channel.
Joseph, what happened to your contact info? I thought you might find interesting Scott Horton's latest, which claims that Vincent not only did not saw off his own ear, the deed was done by Gauguin.
Joe, Sweetie is a geek (yes, he really knows what he's doing) and he says, go with the dual channel, but questions using the 64-bit OS unless all applications are 64-bit. If you'd like to pick his brain a bit more, email me and I'll hook you two up.
Know little technically, actually nothing, to be more honest.
However, bought 64bit Vista on last comp. due to fact that 64bit allegedly can use entire 4g memory. Plus, predictions that all will go to 64bit.
Whereas, 32 bit supposedly cannot use all of any stated memory. Have a year old 32bit, 4g, Vista, but not savvy enough to know if there is a definitive difference.
So far, no conflicts or problems related to 32vs64 bit programs or software.
Chris Hedges has emerged as the most articulate liberal critic of the Obama era. What can I do but quote?
What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us? His administration has spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed effort to reinflate the bubble economy, a tactic that at best forestalls catastrophe and will leave us broke in a time of profound crisis. Brand Obama has allocated nearly $1 trillion in defense-related spending and the continuation of our doomed imperial projects in Iraq, where military planners now estimate that 70,000 troops will remain for the next 15 to 20 years. Brand Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, including the use of drones sent on cross-border bombing runs into Pakistan that have doubled the number of civilians killed over the past three months. Brand Obama has refused to ease restrictions so workers can organize and will not consider single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. And Brand Obama will not prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes, including the use of torture, and has refused to dismantle Bush’s secrecy laws or restore habeas corpus.
Brand Obama offers us an image that appears radically individualistic and new. It inoculates us from seeing that the old engines of corporate power and the vast military-industrial complex continue to plunder the country. Corporations, which control our politics, no longer produce products that are essentially different, but brands that are different. Brand Obama does not threaten the core of the corporate state any more than did Brand George W. Bush. The Bush brand collapsed. We became immune to its studied folksiness. We saw through its artifice. This is a common deflation in the world of advertising. So we have been given a new Obama brand with an exciting and faintly erotic appeal.
Obama, who has become a global celebrity, was molded easily into a brand. He had almost no experience, other than two years in the Senate, lacked any moral core and could be painted as all things to all people. His brief Senate voting record was a miserable surrender to corporate interests. He was happy to promote nuclear power as “green” energy. He voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He reauthorized the Patriot Act. He would not back a bill designed to cap predatory credit card interest rates. He opposed a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872. He refused to support the single-payer health care bill HR676, sponsored by Reps. Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers. He supported the death penalty. And he backed a class-action “reform” bill that was part of a large lobbying effort by financial firms. The law, known as the Class Action Fairness Act, would effectively shut down state courts as a venue to hear most class-action lawsuits and deny redress in many of the courts where these cases have a chance of defying powerful corporate challenges.
While Gaza was being bombarded and hit with airstrikes in the weeks before Obama took office, “the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs’ and other hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel,” according to Seymour Hersh.
The junk politics practiced by Obama is a consumer fraud. It is about performance. It is about lies. It is about keeping us in a perpetual state of childishness.
There's much more on the other side of the link. You'd think that after compiling this ghastly resume, Obama would have finally shocked his bots awake. No such luck.
On a recent Democratic Underground thread, Cynthia McKinney's piece on "Obama Buyer's Remorse" was excerpted. (Interesting that she too utilizes the terminology of consumerism.) Her words reflect those we heard from Hedges:
And now that the Obama Administration has used its Justice Department to argue in court in favor of those who ordered torture, and to defend Bush Administration policies of torture, rendition, warrantless wiretapping, and extra-legal treatment of so-called “enemy combatants,” most of whom have committed no crime (like six-year Guantanamo Prisoner number 345, Sami El-Hajj, who was on the Dignity with me as I tried to make it to Gaza). On these issues, the Obama Administration is consonant with the Bush Administration. No wonder Bush et al have more to worry about from the “small-d” democrats in Spain than from the “big-D” Democrats in Washington, DC.
The first sentence in that quote isn't really a sentence; it's an introductory clause. Still, the facts presented by McKinney are inarguable.
Which doesn't stop the DUmmies from arguing -- and from imitating the ostrich:
I have no remorse. I think my President is doing a good job.
why should I bother to read something that I will disagree with and will not convince me otherwise?
Just completed my quarterly remorse check. None was found. Ms. McKinney is mistaken, as national polling clearly indicates.
It's been a little over 100 days and it's amazing the shit that's starting to show up on DU more and more. Who fucking needs this? There's being critical, and then there's this BULLSHIT being splattered all over DU. Go lament with the freepers if you're so disgusted with Obama. They'd love to have you.
There's a whole sub-set of political-circuit people who made their living traveling the country getting paid to criticize Bush. Now that he's gone, they're critics without a target, i.e. without a paycheck...unless they find a new one.
Permanent critics, out of their niche but still milking the cow.
She's tossing a pebble at a battleship. No damage reported.
I'm happy with my vote and I'd happily vote for Obama again!
He seems to be conducting his White House pretty much as he conducted his campaign -- No Drama Obama, smartest man in the room. All those folks who hope he'll fail -- for them, the dynamite goes boom in their faces.
The dynamite will boom all right -- in all of our faces. Back to Hedges:
But the longer we live in illusion, the worse reality will be when it finally shatters our fantasies. Those who do not understand what is happening around them and who are overwhelmed by a brutal reality they did not expect or foresee search desperately for saviors. They beg demagogues to come to their rescue. This is the ultimate danger of the Obama Brand.
I am always reluctant to express an opinion on economics for the same reason that I am reluctant to express an opinion on quantum physics. Accordingly, I suspend judgement on Obama's economic program. If it works, I'm all for it. If it doesn't, I'll blame Bush. OK,if it doesn't I'll blame Obama but with sympathy for the position Bush put him and all of us in.
I agree with some of the critiques of Obama from the left, on the other hand if Obama wasn't being criticized from the left I would begin to think that Sean Hannity was right and Obama is a radical Leftist. Purist doctrinaire leftists are as bad as their equivalents on the right. Nonetheless, putting pressure on Obama from the left is essential.
I would like to see Obama severely restrict the State Secrets privilege.
Much as I admire Sibel Edmonds, why doesn't she at this point just put everything she knows in a book? I doubt the Obama administration would indict her and if they try to stop publication that would draw more attention to her. I wish a little more of Daniel Ellsberg had rubbed off on her.
Cynthia Mkinney has lost all credibility with me. She's a whack job, and believe me I know something about crazy black women. See:
I haven't visited DU since I was banned for first-degree satire. It's definitely the place to go if you enjoy hearing Democrats called cowards again and again and again.
And again.
And again. If any of you go there, please thank them on my behalf for helping get another neocon into the White House.
His administration has spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed effort to reinflate the bubble economy, a tactic that at best forestalls catastrophe and will leave us broke in a time of profound crisis.What else does anyone need to know?
Besides the fact we won't get single payer health care? I knew it was trillions but didn't realize it was 12.8 trillion.
The choice was between Obama and McCain. You think McCain would be better ?
So far Obama sounds and looks like Clinton. Otherwise, please remind me what part of the US corporate agenda was revolutionized by Clinton in his first 100 days ? Overall, he reduced the military budget (not in the first 100 days), but it's not like he shrank the empire either.
If "progressives" started to work on changing the process of electing a president instead of only complaining, they might achieve something. Otherwise, what else do you expect from a president and a political establishment who received billions from corporation to get elected ? that they will go against the interest of the hand that feeds them ?
posted by Anonymous : 1:20 PM
PUMAs protested the process. We said he was a conservative who represented the status quo, that fat cats owned him.
The choice was Clinton who made universal health care the centerpiece of her campaign who promised universal health care and Obama who gave 12.8 TRILLION to banks and nothing to us.
The point Joe and Hedges are making is that what Obama is actually trying to do is almost completely at odds with what he said he was going to do (and what he and Obots still pretend he is doing). Bill Clinton did (or at least tried his best to do) what he said he was going to. With him, what you saw was pretty much what you got. With Obama, what you see is what what he wants you to see...what you get is something else entirely.
Sergei Rostov
posted by Anonymous : 4:22 PM
It was said back in February of 2001 (i.e. the start of Bush's time in the WH) that the MSM was making sure his approval numbers were inflated to 1&1/2 times their actual value because he was in their favor, and only after it turned on him did his numbers match the reality. Given this, and given that this is Obama's position now, his actual approval rating would be in the low 40s.
At least *some* Obots are now starting to say "that is a lie!" rather than saying "yes, that's true, but I still support him!" A "hopeful" sign.
Also, check this out: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090504/klein
If The Nation is noting and saying things like this, more to the good.
I would love to see a set of poll results done to the same group of the general public before and after being apprised of the established facts noted by Hedges.
Sergei Rostov
posted by Anonymous : 4:40 PM
Thanks for posting, Joe. Hedges is a favorite commentator of mine, even when I disagree with him. He's very thoughtful in how he writes -- powerfully and intensely but quietly -- and that's rather rare. And I agree strongly with this essay. In fact, I want to carry this link around and offer it when people ask me why I just can't buy the hype. Okay, in part, it's because I'm a contrarian. But the other part is this essay. "An image-based culture, one dominated by junk politics, communicates through narratives, pictures and carefully orchestrated spectacle and manufactured pseudo-drama." Word. From the start, the BO triumph was a triumph of the empty image.
As a former regular member of the D-list blogosphere 7-11 that is DU, I agree: go for the grins and chuckles. Then, it's endlessly entertaining. It's especially entertaining to see them realize, every now and then, that they have nothing bu vaporware. They chose the empty image and what have they got besides their own smug fandom? (To be fair, there are some DUers who are angry at the failure to hold Bushco accountable, among other things.)
This $12.8 TRILLION dollar figure, while probably accurate as phrased and if it is properly understood, is misleading.
It includes the $5.3 trillion in mortgages owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The government has always been the presumed backer of last resort for these institutions. This guarantee has been made explicit, adding that amount to the total, although no money has been spent.
The amount insured under the FDIC has increased 250% (a government guarantee), and the government has extended full guarantees to all monies in the money markets. Trillions of dollars in added guarantees are involved in both cases, but again, no money has been spent, and no banks have been enriched or gotten any of this money in any form.
So apparently, the vast majority of this alleged figure didn't go to the banks or AIG, but rather to make what were already implicit guarantees explicit, in the interest of stabilizing trillions of dollars poised to exit depository accounts and money markets. These were likely entirely appropriate and necessary, and I have never heard any dissent from these measures.
Aggregating all these figures and implying these huge sums are paying off the banksters is journalistic malpractice. For the costs of that are well known, and far smaller.
XI
posted by Anonymous : 12:27 AM
Its so revealing when those that support Obama point to poll numbers. "76% of those polled think Obama is doing a good job", so I do too. Isn't that typical. Everybody just wants to belong to the popular crowd. Just like High School.
Today's brilliant cartoon comes from this site, which I order you to visit every day for the rest of your life. The reference goes to an NYT editorial that aroused the anger of Paul Krugman:
The Obama administration sat by last week as 12 Senate Democrats joined 39 Senate Republicans to block a vote on an amendment that would have allowed bankruptcy judges to modify troubled mortgages.
Senator Obama campaigned on the provision. And President Obama made its passage part of his antiforeclosure plan. It would have been a very useful prod to get lenders to rework bad loans rather than leaving the modification to a judge.
But when the time came to stand up to the banking lobbies and cajole yes votes from reluctant senators — the White House didn’t. When the measure failed, there wasn’t even a statement of regret.
Obama has done more caving than Batman. I'm no longer surprised by his turncoat tactics. (In fact, I'm pleasantly surprised when he does something principled.) But what the hell has happened to Congress? All of this shit was supposed to stop after the great 2006 party switchover -- yet the shit continueth. Perhaps even worseneth.
Let's look at another example.
Sibel Edmonds has an important article in the BradBlog today. She too thought that the corruption would end -- and the investigation of corruption would begin -- once the Dems attained power. Well, now they have it all: The presidency, both houses, and very soon a 60-seat majority in the Senate. Obama even has a chance to undo the damage done to the Supreme Court.
So why isn't everything all better? Not only did we not get a pony, they keep handing us horseshit.
In 2004 and 2005 I had several meetings with Rep. Henry Waxman's (D-CA) investigative and legal staff. Two of these meetings took place inside a high-security SCIF, where details and classified information pertaining to my case and those involved could be discussed.
I was told, and at the time I believed it to be the case, that the Republican majority was preventing further action - such as holding a public hearing on my whistleblower revelations. Once the Democrats took over in 2006, that barrier was removed, or so I thought.
In March 2007, I was contacted by one of Rep. Waxman's staff people who felt responsible and conscientious enough to at least let me know that there would never be a hearing into my case by their office, or for that matter, any Democratic office in the House. Based on his/her account, in February 2007 Waxman's office was preparing the necessary ingredients for their promised hearing, but in mid-March the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, called Waxman into a meeting on the case, and after Waxman came out of that twenty-minute meeting, he told his staff 'we are no longer involved in Edmonds' case.' And so they became 'uninvolved.'
Now, maybe Pelosi and/or Waxman suddenly decided that Sibel Edmonds has limited credibility. I happen to know that a few within the journalistic community have quietly grown tired of her.
But I also know that Congress has done nothing to lift the gag rule against Sibel Edmonds. That single fact tells me that Edmonds' own suspicion is closer to the truth: The Jane Harman case proves that both parties in Congress are wading knee-deep in crap. Dems can't expose Republican crap without exposing their own crap.
Thus, Congress won't determine whether former House Speaker Dennis Hastert took a pay-off from the Turkish government while in office, even though Hastert now openly lobbies for Turkey. That situation stinks of corruption, but Pelosi won't look into it, for reasons which former CIA analyst Phil Giraldi understands quite well:
How many other congressmen might have similar relationships with foreign countries and lobbying groups, providing them with golden parachutes for their retirement?
How many politicians -- Demo and Repub -- have broken the law compelling the registration of foreign agents? Not to mention the laws against simple bribery? Isn't it a form of bribery when you agree to take your big pay-off after retirement?
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How can anyone judge whether Sibel Edmonds is credible or not so long as she is gagged?
Give her creds for persistance if nothing else and let the woman speak her piece.
Every time I remember how happy I was when the Dems won Congree in 2006 and how thrilled I was that a woman was finally Speaker of the House, I wish I was still limber enough to kick me in my own ass.
posted by kenoshamarge : 4:20 AM
I'm right there with ya, Marge. The H1N1 (swine)flu distraction worked better than any one of those 12 senate "democrats" could have hoped. As Condi might have asked, "Who could have predicted..." the Dems would turn against their supporters? I've said it before and I'll say it again, "I am sick to death of these criminals". Get rid of them ALL.
posted by leslie : 5:26 AM
Interesting you write this. I spent at least 6 hours yesterday following trails and tangents after searching Sibel Edmonds+AIPAC. Got extremely depressed--Sibel is a better fighter than I am. (Everyone should actually READ her piece at Bradblog, by the way.)
Sibel gave an interview just April 10. You can either listen or download it here:
Amen, kenoshamarge. The brief happiness, and arggg - if only I was limber enough. OMG, I used to post on DU. At least I was still limber enough to pull my head out...
posted by Anonymous : 11:15 AM
You order me to visit a website for the rest of my life?! IMPERIALIST!! FAKER!!! CLINTON SHIL!!!!
Ahem, kidding. Nice art/post.
posted by Nibbles McGee : 7:26 PM
Jamiol only posts once a week, so there's not much point in visiting his site every day.
There are many Heros working endlessly covering many facets of this huge problem. Sibel is one of them and is doing what she can, when she can, and as often as she can to help us all understand how horrible and huge this problem is. If we don't heed her warnings and the warnings of others, we will find ourselves in the worst situation ever. Our Founding Fathers did their best to give us a Great Country but over time, something else has crept in with an interest to take us over. We all need to come together and learn as much as we can about what is happening to us in the hopes we can put an end to it's evil goals.
Sibel covers an area of importance. There are many others to learn about. It's acting as one huge criminal system against us and for our children and their children we need to get involved.
Marty Didier Northbrook, IL
posted by Anonymous : 2:07 PM
Wanna bet whose the biggest contributors are to those turncoat Dems????????
A swine flu conspiracy? Let's take a closer look...
The swine flu epidemic -- I'm not sure whether we should use the term "pandemic" -- has given rise to several conspiracy theories. One popular theory traces the origin of the disease to the Spanish flu of 1918 -- a true pandemic which killed over 60 million people. That outbreak, we are told, allegedly resulted from an early American experiment in biological warfare.
In other words, Uncle Sam did it.
Allegedly. Let us stress that word. I've uncovered evidence indicating that this widely-spread theory constitutes a bizarre attempt at disinformation.
The theory comes in two parts. First, we have the proposed link between swine flu and "the Spanish Lady." Second, we have the putative biowarfare origins of the most deadly flu ever to hit mankind. Let's consider these assertions separately.
Part one of the theory is valid. See, for example, this piece in Science Daily, which draws from the research of Dr. Juergen A. Richt, published in the May, 2009 edition of the Journal of Virology.
Their research supports the hypothesis that the 1918 pandemic influenza virus and the virus causing the swine flu were the same. Richt said the virus was able to infect and replicate in swine and cause mild respiratory disease. The 1918 virus spread through the pig population, adapted to the swine and resulted in the current lineage of the H1N1 swine influenza viruses.
This time around, H1N1 doesn't seem to have the killer instinct. I'm grateful for that, although I cannot easily understand our good fortune. Time suggests that we owe our success to more frequent hand-washing. Accept that explanation if you will.
Now let's get to the tricky part. Where did H1N1 come from, way back in 1918?
This CBC story argues that the swine flu virus originating in that period came from human beings. Previously, researchers suggested that transmission went in the other direction -- that people got it from pigs.
The 1918 pandemic began in the United States, a fact which may surprise those familiar with the term "Spanish Lady," the nickname for the disease. That sobriquet derives from the fact that the full deadly scope of the flu was first reported in the Spanish press, which did not operate under wartime censorship.
The disease originated in Fort Riley, Kansas, where 26,000 men underwent training.
The story includes imagery straight out of Hollywood: On May 9, 1918, a black cloud -- created, at least in part, by the burning of manure -- enveloped the camp and blocked out the sun. Two days later, 100 men took ill. The disease soon spread to other military camps. When the "doughboys" set out for Europe later that month, they brought the flu with them.
(Nota bene: Some have posited an alternative theory in which the flu originated in Asia. However, the Fort Riley scenario has far more adherents.)
Now let's get to the deep-dish conspiracy stuff.
The "Uncle Sam diddit" theory traces to this widely-republished and widely-cited piece by Henry Makow, who wants you to know that he has a PhD. Although many left-wing and right-wing websites have referenced his article (especially in recent days), the origin point appears to be Rense.com.
Not promising. I've met nine year-olds less gullible than Rense.
Who is Henry Makow, PhD? His personal website, www.savethemales.ca, is devoted to "exposing feminism and the New World Order." The current headline reads "Lucifer's Rebellion Gains Momentum." Previous headlines include "Illuminati Defector Details Pervasive Conspiracy" and "The Devil's Work: Feminism and the Elite Depopulation Agenda."
In this YouTube video, Makow interviews an alleged ex-Illuminati bigwig named Mary Ann. Apparently, Ginger's roommate caused many of the world's problems.
Again: Not promising. I wish that left-ish bloggers would research guys like Makow before citing them.
At any rate, here's his argument that America deliberately caused the 1918 pandemic (and thus indirectly caused the current problem):
In 1948 Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo, told his CIA interrogator that the most devastating plague in human history was man-made.
He was referring to the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 that infected 20% of the world's population and killed between 60 and 100 million people.
Well, if you can't trust a guy like Mueller, who can you trust? Of course, we need to know how Mueller came across this information:
At a 1944 Nazi bacteriological warfare conference in Berlin, General Walter Schreiber, Chief of the Medical Corps of the German Army told Mueller that he had spent two months in the US in 1927 conferring with his counterparts. They told him that the "so-called double blow virus" (i.e. Spanish Flu) was developed and used during the 1914 war.
"But," according to Mueller, "it got out of control and instead of killing the Germans who had surrendered by then, it turned back on you, and nearly everybody else." ("Gestapo Chief: The 1948 CIA Interrogation of Heinrich Mueller" Vol. 2 by Gregory Douglas, p. 106)
Makow goes on to quote this interrogation at length. Mueller, we are told, said that British scientists originally concocted the pathogen.
Naturally, when I read these words, I wanted to learn more about the book which Makow summarizes.
Gregory Douglas apparently is a pseudonym for his nephew with whom he left his papers. Normally a hoax would not run to thousands of pages. The Interrogation is 800 pages. The Memoirs are 250 pages. The Microfilmed Archive apparently covers 850,000 pages. Finally, the material I have read is incredibly well informed, authoritative and consistent.
Alas, Makow leaves out the most important information: Who stores this archive? How do we know that these claims are on the level?
We need answers to these questions for one important reason: We have no hard proof that Heinrich Mueller lived beyond 1945.
Although Mueller is widely believed to have died during the conquest of Berlin, his fate has engendered almost as much controversy as did the post-war career of Martin Bormann. If you will permit a quote from Wikipedia...
He is the most senior member of the Nazi regime about whose fate nothing is known. Possible explanations for his disappearance include:
* That he was killed, or killed himself, during the chaos of the fall of Berlin, and that his body was never found.
* That he escaped from Berlin and made his way to a safe location, possibly in South America, where he lived the rest of his life undetected, and that his identity was not disclosed even after his death.
* That he was recruited and given a new identity by either the United States or the Soviet Union, and employed by them during the Cold War, and that this has never been disclosed.
In the 1960s, Adolf Eichmann told his Israeli interrogators that he thought Mueller was still alive. He offered no substantive data to back that allegation.
According to Wikipedia and other sources, a defector named Michael Goleniewski once told the CIA that the Soviets had captured Mueller. Alas, Wikipedia does not mention that Goleniewski was a nutcase who also claimed to be the Tsarevitch Alexei, having escaped (a miracle!) from Ekaterinberg after being cured (another miracle!) of his hemophilia.
(In the '70s, Goleniewski frequently appeared on television in New York; he came across as a charming eccentric. He also published a lot of crank conspiracy material -- I used to possess a few samples -- of the sort that makes guys like Henry Makow seem rational.)
This far-right site has a story on Mueller's alleged post-war career. The site, alas, is TBRNews. We've run into these fellows before: They are Holocaust deniers who attracted some attention in progressive circles when they published a fake series of "insider" reports from the Bush White House. (This humble site may have been the first to expose the bogus nature of the "Voice of the White House" reports.)
According to TBRNews, Mueller lived for a few years in Switzerland under the name of Schwartzer, until he was recruited by Bern CIA station chief James Kronthal in 1948.
Makow also mentions Kronthal (who really was the CIA station chief in Bern in 1948). That fact, in itself, provides evidence of nothing beyond the obvious surmise that Makow reads TBRNews.
TBRnews, drawing from "archival" material unavailable to non-insiders, gives us a rather full description of Mueller's post-war career:
The CIA offered him a job. He took it and used his position to ingratiate himself with the President of the United States and the Director of the FBI as well as to marry into a wealthy and influential Washington family. He had no hesitation in exchanging information and confidences with a high-level Soviet agent although his raison d¹etre was to assist his new employers in tracking down and exposing the same people. At one time, he had the same agent to dinner with two of the senior members of the CIA and, from his notes, thoroughly enjoyed the irony of the situation. In fact, it could be said that Müller always seemed to enjoy the ironical side of his work, took nothing seriously and filled his journals with comments and asides which the complaisant and conventional view with genuine horror and, more often than not, great disgust.
In Washington, Müller lost no time in climbing the social ladder and filling his Georgetown home with a fortune in art stolen by the Germans during the war. Some of this art, which included portions of the famed Amber Room, he sold off for the private purses of his co-workers in the CIA. He once gave a small, very private dinner for the President to which Müller wore all of his Third Reich and Imperial decorations and while sitting across from President Truman, discussed the activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy, a man to whom Müller was supplying inside information to aid him in his reign of terror.
Müller had known the British-Soviet spy, Harold “Kim” Philby...
TBR goes on and on like that. It's all very intriguing, especially to those who (like me) have read a lot of books about early cold war espionage. But there's an obvious problem:
No proof. Many huge claims: No evidence.
We have no evidence that the Mueller journals exist. All the TBRNews references go to this rare book by -- you guessed it -- the elusive Gregory Douglas. The volume was published by R. James Bender, which seems to specialize in large, worshipful volumes devoted to German militariana. I suspect that the people who buy these books also root for the bad guys when they see The Sound of Music.
To judge from the handful of Amazon reviews, the Douglas volume transcribes a communique "proving" that FDR engineered the Pearl Harbor attack. There's also "proof" that the Holocaust did not exist, along with much talk of made-by-the-USA flying saucers.
We can't dismiss the possibility that someone has used reports of Mueller's survival as an excuse for putting history into rewrite.
The same Douglas -- who may or may not be Mueller's nephew -- also wrote a JFK assassination book called Regicide, which draws its argument from a cache of "official" U.S. documents made available to no other researcher. Other JFK investigators (including pro-conspiracy guys) have denounced these documents as frauds. Even Jim Fetzer mistrusts Douglas, and Fetzer's the kind of guy who would believe you if you told him that Cocoa Puffs are imported from Mars.
I think that we all get the picture by this point.
As far as I know, a Mueller archive may indeed exist -- somewhere. Alas, Makow, Douglas and TBRnews won't tell us where. Although Mueller may have survived the war, the CIA (in answer to an FOIA request) insists that they never made contact with him.
The CIA file on Heinrich Mueller, chief of Hitler's Gestapo and a major Nazi war criminal, sheds important new light on U.S. and international efforts to find Mueller after his disappearance in May 1945. Though inconclusive on Mueller's ultimate fate, the file is very clear on one point. The Central Intelligence Agency and its predecessors did not know Mueller's whereabouts at any point after the war. In other words, the CIA was never in contact with Gestapo Mueller.
Is the CIA file an elaborate hoax? Maybe. On the other hand, that file has one point in its favor: It exists in hard copy. You can go to an actual building with an actual address -- the National Archives are located at 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC (although the folks there may tell you to go to the building in Maryland) -- where you can sit in a chair and read Record Group 263.
Can the same be said of the elusive Mueller archive? Does it truly exist? Are the documents genuine? If so, then perhaps Henry Makow, PhD., will be kind enough to supply us with an address.
Until he does, I call bullshit on his swine flu story. Nazi bullshit, to be specific.
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Joe, you mention Gregory Douglas, whom I first tripped over at "The Truthseeker" site, wherein the occasional article by Makow can also be found.
You might be interested in Douglas' "Conversations with the Crow" (Robert Trumbull Crowley) at http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/category.asp?id=68&order=of, which is a supposed revelatory series of conversations between Douglas and Crowley, former head of the CIA's Clandestine Operations Division, but which Douglas agreed to publish only after Crowley's death.
Another related link entitled "The Crow: Crowley Files of 1996" can be found at http://www.crow96.20m.com/.
If the "Conversations" are faked, it's a pretty good job of fakery--the text reads very like conversations typed directly from a taped recording.
Joseph, since reading your post I've been consulting some of my old text books in Microbiology, Immunology and Virology. The time line seemed to be impossible that the 1918 flu pandemic could have been man made. What I found is that by 1918 we did in fact have the Germ theory of disease and Koch's postulates of such. We also had a very primitive concept of viruses. I know that the Tobacco mosaic virus is the very first virus discovered and that was way, way, way later.
As for the origins of the Spanish Flu pandemic I think that is so far fetched it is beyond belief. A really sharp individual would have had to recognize what it was and then they would have to ship all of the ill people to Europe and intentionally place them in enemy hands without ever coming in contact with our own troops. Seems both implausible and impossible. If they knew enough that they thought the infected soldiers would be a danger they would have certainly isolated them at the point of origin and quarantined the entire area.
There just seems to be no way that the military would risk infecting our own soldiers with such a thing. It would border on incompetence of an extreme level because if our soldiers all died off due to the flu then our national sovereignty would be jeopardized. The whole argument just doesn't make sense to me.
Another thing, without a full grounding of DNA and RNA theory there is no way to manufacture or manipulate viruses and the technology to do so was not invented or many years. We all know the story behind the double helix and the supposed discovery by Watson and Crick in 1953 after they stole Rosalyn Franklin's pictographs which clearly demonstrated the double helix. Until then, nobody really had a clue.
On Heinrich Mueller, the only suggestion apart from Gregory Douglas that he survived and was taken under the wings of American inteligence, at least that I have seen, is in Joseph Trento's "The Secret History of the CIA". On p. 29: "The American Army even recruited and evacuated the Head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Mueller." Trento cited CIA files in the possession of Robert Crowley. Trento knew Crowley very well. As I recall from email exchanges with Trento, he was very skeptical of Gregory Douglas but did not exclude the possiblility that Douglas may have met Crowley.
As I recall, Douglas, whoever he is, is also behind TBR News.
The tobacco mosaic virus was first isolated in the 1890s, but the technique of culturing viruses wasn't developed until 1931 (with, interestingly enough, the influenza virus). That alone makes this theory extremely unlikely - although I suppose it would've been possible to "culture" different strains of flu in live pigs and/or birds even in the early 20th Century.
I just don't buy it. It's not completely impossible, but it's wildly unlikely.
You don't have to understand the mechanisms of infection just to select for different characteristics. Pasteur managed to culture attenuated rabies virus in the 1880s without even knowing what a virus *was*.
As I said, culturing a more virulent strain of flu in living swine or birds would've been possible, but it would also have been pretty difficult. Since the same techniques could also have been used to produce a vaccine, one would have expected the developers of such a "weaponized superbug" to have inoculated our own and allied troops.
The theory just doesn't make sense to me, even if you ignore the highly dubious sources.
I have seen 2 of Gregory Douglas's books online in PDF format: "Gestapo Chief: The CIA and Heinrich Mueller" and "The CIA Covenant: Nazis in Washington". A quick search turns up no live torrents, but they're around.
-Tom
posted by Anonymous : 12:48 PM
Peter: My suspicion is that Douglas did know Crowley, but that doesn't mean that Crowley gave Douglas documents not available to anyone else. I think it is possible that Douglas is using this association as a way of adding verisimilitude to forgeries.
In this light, it is instructive to visit this site...
http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/home
...which I learned about via Covert History. That blog is devoted to presenting nuggets of history concerning various individuals on the far right. Much of the info was derived via FOIA. It's particularly instructive to read the reports on Eustace Mullens and Dan Smoot.
The bottom line, with far-right conspiracy guys, is this: Reality is malleable. When the historical record does not say what you want it to say, simply come up with a fake document.
The gonzo right is positively ADDICTED to forgeries. That is their signal defining characteristic.
Now, about the history of virii and CBW: I will admit that it seems very, very unlikely that the U.S. could have gotten into the business of biowarfare in 1918. On the other hand, you may recall a previous post which discussed the possibility of using chemical and biological weaponry during the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. I'm still not sure if such weapons really were fully developed or not. But they were considered a serious option.
I wonder: Would you have to know precisely how a virus works in order to use a virus as a weapon?
(I'm speaking theoretically, here. I still very strongly doubt that the Muller story has any basis in fact.)
Clearly, you do NOT have to know what a virus is in order to use it. If I'm not egregiously misinformed, many Native Americans were given blankets in which smallpox victims had previously died. And weren't plague-infested corpses hurled over walls in Medieval Europe during sieges? I'd say we were acquainted with the idea of communicability well before the modern age.
Of course, that should not be read as an argument endorsing the theory you describe. IMO, even if you had all the 800 pages of interrogation, 250 pages of memoirs and 850,000 pages of microfilm described, it would still only prove that Mueller wrote in his memoirs (sometime after 1948?) that Schreiber told him (in 1944) that he was told (in 1927) that the Americans had originally created the flu (in 1914). In that chain of communication, how many opportunities might there be for someone to bullshit someone else?
posted by Hoarseface : 4:03 PM
as said before there was no way 1918 to genetically engine a "killer virus" : at that time viruses were discovered but could only be traced through indirect methods. The first electron microscope came around the mid thirties and could at max magnify 400 times. Without the DNA theory there wasn't even a ground, the only genetics they knew about was Mendel's. Of course a new virus strain could have arisen by accident in lab dabbling with viruses, tissues and bacterias, but not as a controlled process. I call complete bull.
posted by leloup : 4:45 PM
besides people didn't die of the virus....
they died in majority of bacterial infections due to poor hygiene and weakened bodies (and lungs) AFTER the flu episode itself was over. Since there were no antibiotics at that time, there was no cure when a serious opportunistic bacterial infection had developed.
posted by leloup : 4:54 PM
Interesting stuff, but I think you hit the nail on the head when you point to the fact that they are big claims with very little backing them up. Unfortunately, the books cited don't sound promising.
Are you sure the only reason the name "Spanish Lady" stuck (and caught on) was because the disease had first been reported in the Spanish press? Like if it had been reported somewhere else first, the US media would similarly have taken the geographical handle and fixed it on, without any thought to anything so base as presenting the plague as being of foreign origin?
And that Israeli scientist who wants the current virus to be renamed "Mexican"? Maybe he ain't got no ulterior motive; he just thinks it was first reported in Mexico? :-)
How you name something is really important. In Britain at the moment, by the way, the main line is that the government must buy more vaccine. Are they doing enough? is the question being asked by every sleepwalking moron who thinks they're awake. Yeah, sure, buy more vaccine! Or else we're all going to die!Of course there can't be any connection between those who cause and advertise a problem and those who call for and sell a solution. Can there? b
As expected, accused AIPAC spies Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman have received their get out of jail free card.
"Thank God we live in a country where you can defend yourself against an injustice like this," Rosen, 66, said yesterday. He said the case was politicized and pushed by government officials "who have an obsession with leaks . . . and an obsession with Israel and the theory that it spies on America."
Theory?
Read the Complaint -- which I summarize here -- and then tell me if Rosen and Weissman engaged in a purely theoretical exercise. Here's a sample from my summary (the earlier post links to the original, which will demonstrate the accuracy of my precis):
February 14, 2003: Rosen encouraged Franklin to seek a position on the NSC. Rosen said that he would do what he could to make sure that Franklin got the sensitive position. In other words, a promise of career advancement helped to hook Larry Franklin.
March 10, 2003: The three met at Union Station, then switched restaurants three times before ending up at an empty eatery. The indictment does not state what the trio discussed during these strange maneuvers. Sports, probably.
March 13, 2003: Rosen disclosed what he knew about the Iran document to an official at a D.C. "think tank." That would be the Saban Center -- yes, run by that Saban. (Of whom, more below.)
March 17, 2003: Franklin faxed a classified document from his Pentagon office to Rosen. This was an appendix to the document mentioned on February 12.
If the year were 1986 and if Rosen and Weissman belonged to a USSR friendship committee, everyone in the country would have no problem recognizing this spy ring as a spy ring. The exact same actions would be (correctly) seen as damning and beyond exculpation.
The Motion to Dismiss does not claim that Rosen and Weissman are innocent of espionage. Rather, it emphasizes the likelihood that a trial would reveal classified information to the public. In other words: Jane Harmon might not be the only politician named in a flurry of embarrassing revelations. In a single word: Blackmail.
Always remember that when Pollard spied for Israel, the Israeli Prime Minister handed our secrets over to the Soviets to facilitate immigration of Soviet Jews. The interests of Israel -- and of any other nation -- do not coincide with our own.
Remember, too, that Larry Franklin (the official who handed Top Secret data over to Rosen and Weissman) is doing a long stretch in the pokey. If this spy ring were merely a matter of theory, then why is Franklin in jail?
As I have observed previously, Franklin's crime was Spying While Goy. You and I would do time if caught telling a DOD employee to hand over Top Secret Documents in exchange for a promise of career advancement. AIPAC personnel may do what you and I may not.
No, I will not apologize for the previous paragraph. I have spoken the plain truth and you damn well know it, even if you will not admit it.
The finale of this case is ludicrous on its face. Thus, the New York Times and the WP feel compelled to hide that face and to disguise the facts. This NYT story presents a shockingly skewed view of the scandal -- a view which excludes all mention of the skullduggery outlined in the indictment.
Advocates of civil liberties and of open government asserted that the defendants were being singled out for activities that were part of the accepted and routine way that American policy on Israel and the Middle East had been formulated for years, with people exchanging information.
Apparently, it is "accepted and routine" to switch locations four times during one meeting for fear of being overheard. Apparently, it is "accepted and routine" to pass copies of classified documents. Apparently, it is "accepted and routine" for AIPAC to release classified U.S. government information to reporters, when doing so benefits Israel.
I hate to link to HuffPo, but Yale Professor David Bromwich has a pretty good response to the nonsense published in the Times. Bromwich argues that dropping charges against AIPAC means that the Obama administration has accepted AIPAC's view that Israel's interests and those of the United States are one and the same. This view holds that Israel is not an ally in the same way that (say) the U.K. is an ally. Instead, Israel must now be considered part of the United States. Israel, Arizona, New Hampshire -- same thing. Hence, Israel cannot -- by definition -- spy on the US, despite all the Le Carre-esque maneuvers executed by Rosen, Weissman and Franklin.
This premise appears all the more absurd when one notes, as I have noted in the past, that the growing Jewish fundamentalist movement in Israel is increasingly anti-American, or at least anti-"West." These fundamentalists feel estranged by our values and ethics, preferring a culture of female submission, theocracy and racism. Allow me to repeat a couple of examples (and your can find many more if you search):
In some parts of Israel, women are required to sit in the back of the bus. A newspaper editor characterized a petition to change this practice as an attempt "to impose Western secular culture on us."
A Jewish "modesty patrol" in a Jerusalem suburb tossed acid in the face of a 14 year-old girl who committed the crime of wearing pants.
Rabbis told Israeli troops assaulting Gaza that theirs was a holy war -- a jihad, if you will -- against Gentiles. This fanaticism resulted in the deliberate murder of civilians.
The growing tendency toward ultra-Orthodoxy in Israel is, essentially, a reaction against the West -- against the culture of the United States.
We may find a further example of anti-American antipathy in this attack piece by a pro-Israel writer. (I've linked to it before.) The author begins with an attack on Rahm Emmanuel:
He knows that Israel is not going to be blackmailed into a two state solution. He knows Israel doesn’t need the U.S.’s $3 billion. He also knows that his boss doesn’t give a shite about any of those things. He just wants the Arabs and Islamists to love him; hence his bow of subservience in front of the Saudi king.
In other words, fuck you and your money, Uncle Sam. But it gets better:
Nope, they see Israel as a leech sucking America’s ass for that $3 billion which, in reality, represents about 1-2% of Israel’s GNP, and comes with a number of strings that have held the Israeli military, intelligence gathering, and economy back for quite a long time. The time to finally tell the U.S. to keep the change has arrived. At her height Israel was a free agent with no allies. She is now in a position to create alliances with far greater strategic and economic benefit than the United States has ever provided.
The loyalty on display in these two passages goes to Israel, not to the United States. It's not a question of dual loyalty: There's nothing "dual" about it. America has value only insofar as it can be of help to Israel.
Moreover, I think that this contemptuous attitude extends well beyond the confines of one crankish pro-Israel blog.
Scour the internet. Look closely. You'll see that the above-quoted words reflect a vituperative anti-U.S. attitude which is gaining ground throughout Israel and the fundamentalist Jewish community outside Israel. For tactical reasons, they still pretend to be our friends. But when they think long-term, they don't see much future for America. So they've made new pals: China and India.
America, in their view, holds Israel back from instituting a Final Solution to the non-Jewish problem. Would China give a damn if every the Israelis murdered every Palestinian?
The bloodthirsty killers who engineered the Gaza and Lebanon campaigns, the Israeli hard rightists, the ultra-Orthodox, the fundamentalists: These people view Uncle Sam as an annoyance. They long for the day when they can turn away those irritating Jesusmaniac tourists from Alabama. They long for the day when they can openly pronounce that Israeli values and "Western" values are as alike as a hawk and a handsaw. They long for the day when they can shout Screw you, Uncle Sam.
One day, they will do just that -- and those poor, duped, perpetually misinformed Jesusmaniacs will feel the shock of the century.
When that day comes, when the despisers of "the West" become sufficiently vocal and undisguised, AIPAC will no longer be able to maintain the fiction that Israel is the 51st state. Then and only then will the sayanim lose their spying privileges. Of course, the Israelis won't care at that point, since the United States will no longer be a superpower.
But until der Tag, until the day when Israel can drop the petticoat and show what's underneath, AIPAC pretends that Israeli and American interests are identical -- and guys like Rosen and Weissman will have carte blanche. Added note: The despicable Atlas Shrugged blog (remember how they championed the "birth certificate" canard?) offers the news about Rosen and Weissman under this headline: "Jew Hating AIPAC Case Dropped."
The case was anti-Semitic entrapment anyway by that vicious, Jew hating, FBI agent, David Szaidy
Pamela Geller and her cronies are sick. (Note that the AIPAC cheering squad never quotes from or links to the indictment, as I do.) Pam posits brazenly an absurd theory that other sick-bloggers only hint at: They believe that a cabal of anti-Semites exists within the FBI and other branches of the U.S. government. That paranoid notion does much to explain the anti-"West" animus discussed above.
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If I'm not mistaken, Larry Franklin is Jewish. Other than that, this is one fine piece. Can you imagine if the American-Chinese Public Affairs Committee was having our congress bow down to it next week?
posted by Anonymous : 9:43 AM
Larry Franklin has been reported to be a devout Catholic.
- a previous poster
posted by Anonymous : 10:21 AM
It disturbs me that the most powerful and influential lobby in the United States advocates for a foreign government.
I would feel that way (or worse) no matter what government it was.
Severely ill Jonathan Pollard rots in an American jail for the SOLE REASON HE IS A JEW. The median sentence for his offence is 2-4 years. He was given an INCOMPETENT lawyer. He was given life and spent the first 7 years underground - destroying his health. FREE POLLARD NOW!
The Jew-hate NEVER stops! It is against the law in America to discriminate based on race or religion, yet this law is broken when it comes to Jews. The U.S. demands a Muslim TERROR State in Israel that will reduce tiny Israel at mid-section to 9 miles wide INDEFENSIBLE, Auschwitz borders facilitating a Second Holocaust of Jews.
Based solely on race-Jews and religion-Judaism, the U.S. want hundreds of thousands of Jews kicked out of their own land-Judea, Samaria, Golan and Jerusalem and their Holy Land surrendered to jihadi Muslims bent on Jewish annihilation.
Where are the lawyers??? It breaks U.S. law to wickedly discriminate on the basis of race and religion!That's turning the crazy up to 11
"There are very compelling reasons why the mere receipt and transmission of classified information by non-government employees should not be criminalized"
Much as I respect Greenwald, it seems to me that this is not what we're talking about in the AIPAC case. Instead of passive receipt, we are discussing two individuals who lobby on behalf of a foreign government and are accused of soliciting a cleared government employee to steal classified information so that it may be passed on to that foreign government. That's not "mere receipt and retransmission" that's "running an agent". Regardless of one's fundamental views on Israel (and I pretty vehemently disagree with Joe about this), that is espionage, pure and simple. It ought to prosecuted as such.
Sextus, Thanks for the comment. You cleared away a lot of the clutter and summarized the essence of much of my quandary usefully. Why Greenwald can't agree with what you say, I don't know; it seems glaringly obvious to me and I agree with it.
Well, I had to give in to my compulsion to look into my question more. Snipped and lightly edited for brevity from the comments pg 12,13 at Greenwald's:
--------
I thought it was illegal. Weren't Julius and Ethel Rosenberg tried, convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917, and executed for obtaining and passing along classified government information?
When a journalist publishes classified information he publishes for all the world to see, you're right.
That is not the same thing as obtaining classified information for the purpose of giving it over to an agent of a foreign government. (Curiously, none of the reporters Rosen and Weissman talked to published anything about the classified info.)A reply, poster’s emphasis:
They were convicted because they were part of an espionage ring collecting classified military information from government employees and defense industry workers -- who were spies-- and then passing that on to Soviet handlers, not the press. They did not give the data to journalists; they were soliciting spies for a foreign government and passing what those spies gave them to agents of another state. (Or at least Julius was; whether Ethel was materially involved is a more murky issue.)Then Greenwald responds:
But that's pretty much what the AIPAC officials are accused of doing.
Then again, it's what investigative journalists are accused [by Bush admin., when this prosecution started] of doing, too - giving our secrets to Al Qaeda, etc.
I'm not sure what legal distinctions can be meaningfully drawn between handing classified information to an agent of a foreign government and putting it on the front page of a newspaper where those foreign governments can obviously read it. -- GlennGreenwald http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/02/goldberg/permalink/b89defee2f31f231c9975e492250baf0.html
---------------
Seems to me that some befuddlement is bound to occur in the mind of anyone who studies Constitutional Law in the U.S.A. Whatever Paul Krugman is to economics, who is that to constitutional law? (Doesn’t seem to be Glenn Greenwald) I’d like to read some.
One of the documents that was passed to the Israelis was an unclassified CIA assessment of Iran written by Flynt Leverett.
He left the Agency and published a version of that document in the New York Times.
The Bush administration screamed bloody murder about the release of state secrets, and RE-classified large large sections of that document. Leverett's piece was censored for the print edition and later internet editions.
You may recall the incident. The idea of re-classifying material previously considered open infuriated a lot of journalists.
What infuriates ME is the assertion that AIPAC may see that which the readers of the NYT may not.
Of course, Rosen and Weissman also passed along Top Secret material. The exculpatory pieces written about the pair never mention that fact and never link to the actual indictment.
Bella: First, thanks for all the concern over my hell-hound Bella. She has finally begun to rally, although her tummy remains tender. Within a week, she should regain her ferocity of old.
At times like this, I'm glad I didn't reproduce. Friends have told me how anxious they feel when a kid is sick and nothing further can be done but to wait out the illness. If a dog had me frantic enough to claw the wallpaper -- well, I don't know how parents manage to keep their equilibrium.
The earlier post evinced an interesting debate over doggie diet. One reader stumps for BARF -- Bones And Raw Food -- while another insists that his pooch does fine on vegetarian cuisine. You can lose yourself for days researching pet food, as with just about any other topic. For now, I'm taking reader Lori's suggestion (seconded by the vet) that my dog should maintain a bland diet of (cooked) chicken and rice.
Zodiac:Another Zodiac candidate has come forth, and this one appears rather more interesting. In this case, we have actual evidence, in the form of old film showing an actual dead body -- which means that we do have a crime, even though it may not be a Zodiac crime.
Just as long as it's not Artie Allen. The evidence against him never added up to much (in my view) -- and Graysmith's second book was hardly as compelling as his first.
Twitter twits: That post was my way of addressing a larger question. Is privacy a thing of the past? Do the young care about it? Are such concerns only for us Ancient Ones?
My mind goes back to the opening of Juno -- a nearly perfect film, except for that first scene. It rankles me. As you may recall, the film begins with our 16 year-old heroine in a convenience store, taking a series of pregancy tests while the dweeb behind the counter offers caustic commentary on her condition. At one point, a similarly-aged customer asks Juno if her nipples hurt.
Even in the free-for-all '70s, even in Hollywood, young people did not discuss potential pregnancy with nameless dolts populating convenience stores. I do not advocate treating unwed motherhood as a shameful matter, but I do consider it a personal matter. Do you want to inhabit a world in which strangers feel free to ask about the state of your nipples?
Argyll and beyond: I'll return to this important matter in future articles, even though the original post attracted little attention.
I understand now that I wrote the preceding post backwards. The lede should have been "Prominent Mormon uses goat's blood to extend life." If that opener doesn't fetch attention from the more paranoid fundamentalist sites, I've lost my touch.
Seriously, I hold no animus toward Alan Osmond, and I hope that he will answer my emailed questions about his relationship with Immunosyn.
Now let's zoom out for a wider view.
In more general terms, I'm continually stunned to learn just how much money was siphoned from this economy by Ponzi schemes, pump-and-dump stock plots, and other forms of fraud. Indeed, the whole range of financial trickery that evolved out of the mortgage bubble constitutes a variant of pump-and-dump.
Americans don't make anything any more. That's the problem. We don't make TVs or drums or motherboards, and pretty soon we won't make cars.
So we sell each other our debts, because debt is the primary thing we have left. We sell each other our land, because India and China cannot make American property. We sell our religious faith every time we pay a preacher to tell us what we already believe. We sell our cheap little dreams of vengeance every time Hollywood makes an action movie. We even sell our genitalia -- or rather, our loneliness -- as evidenced by all those pathetic internet ads for dating sites.
The modern American economy depends on the commoditization of things -- sex, soil, psychoses, soteriology and scams -- that the original inhabitants of this land never would have considered items of commerce. Neither Adam Smith nor Karl Marx could have predicted this absurd form of capitalism.
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good news about your bella. just an extra thank you for continuing to shine your light on the absolute premeditation and "malice aforethought" re the sickening plunder of this country. well done!
posted by ain't bea : 5:35 AM
I'm a big fan of the coke jet stories. The post got my attention.
I'm so glad Bella is getting better.
Boston Boomer
posted by Anonymous : 6:21 AM
First thing came to mind when you posted about Bella was the Chinese wheat gluten contaminated with rat poison that got into pet foods. The second thing was a comment made by a Canadian guy I know while we were a Chryslers at Carlisle meet 15 years ago. He said the only industry left in the lower 48 was yard sales and insurance. The third thing is why did Obama appoint some of the guys that helped steal the horse to repair the barn door? And when is that door going to be repaired so this doesn't happen again. Or is he waiting, hoping we will forget so it can be back to monkey business as usual on Wall St?
posted by MrMike : 6:30 AM
Good news about Bella. Since her tummy is still tender, I'm convinced it was pancreatitis, my abdomen is sore to the touch for a week after the initial pain and nausea subsides.
posted by Anonymous : 10:36 AM
I'm glad to hear that your Bella is doing better Joe.
So, so, so glad that Bella is better! And yes, a bland cooked diet sounds just right for her tender tummy. My mom had a beloved Siamese cat that she started feeding homemade chicken and rice in broth to for a stomach condition and the cat did so well on this, she continued to feed it to her the rest of her (Kitty's) life.
