Zero Percent

Image by Getty Images via Daylifehttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/business/economy/30zero.html

"A growing number of analysts now predict that the economy is so weak that the Fed will have to reduce its official target to zero if it wants to jumpstart the stalled economy."

Detailed Market Analysis

Image via Wikipediahttp://finance.google.com/group/google.finance.694653/browse_thread/thread/71dfb56dba6f15d1

Who says the Usenet is dead?

Phones

It's hard to imagine how anyone could still be undecided, but if you are, maybe this will help.

Home Cooking

Image via Wikipediahttp://www.smh.com.au/news/world/cannibal-chef-guilty-of-murder/2008/10/18/1223750372845.html

"Morley said he had no memories of what happened after the attack, although he acknowledged he may have cooked a piece of his victim."

Clothes

Image by NewsHour via FlickrI think I'll use this argument from now on, for anything I disagree with; it's sexist!

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/15002.html

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan called the media "sexist" Monday for focusing on the $150,000 in committee funds used to clothe GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

"I find it sexist that you would talk about this," Duncan said during an interview on MSNBC. "Do you talk about how much a tie costs that a male candidate wears in the campaign? No. I find a double standard in this country and it's very disappointing."

...

Appearing later on the same cable network, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said his committee has not spent any money on ties or any other clothing for its candidates.

"We have not. We don't do that, and we have not," he said.

Media?

Image via WikipediaThis short video is very much worth taking a look at.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/27/10202/298/575/643204

"So you might have heard about Barbara West, that TV anchor from Orlando, Florida who asked Joe Biden some pretty crazy questions (such as whether Barack Obama was preaching Marxism and whether he wanted to turn the U.S. into a socialist nation), but you probably didn't see the questions she asked John McCain, and you probably didn't see the real doozy of a question that she asked Biden when they last interviewed, in September."

I've been thinking a lot lately about the continued evolution of American media. People have always believed nutty thing that are absolutely, well, insane, just on the face of them, things so obviously outrageous that no thinking person could do anything but dismiss them and move on. Political campaigns have always included these ideas. It seems that when people get really passionate about a candidate, or other issue, their critical thinking abilities, weak anyway, get completely shut down.

What I think is relatively new however is that mass media so completely buys into this craziness, as the video linked to above so clearly shows. This is not even pretend journalism. So why is it on TV as "news"? These interviews play like satire! And why do political figures treat these television shows as though they where news outlets? Or is this indeed what it means today to be a "news outlet"?

I don't know. But I believe America is in trouble if this is how decisions will be made.

Safe from Copyright Terror

Image via Wikipediahttp://randazza.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/homeland-security-keeping-you-safe-one-artist-at-a-time/

"Zempel was locked in a room while Homeland Security agents went through her laptop, camera, cell phone, suitcase, books, boxes of yarn and crochet tools, and sketchbook. Once the agents saw the sketchbook, apparently the threat level was elevated from “scared of everything” to “full on moron”. She finally was able to persuade the heroic agents that she was just a crochet artist. Here is the result of her threatening sketch."

We are idiots.

"We have turned into a nation of mewling cowards — prepared to sell our freedom for mere “security theater.”

ELIZA

Image by ☼ Helder via Flickrhttp://gizmodo.com/5068845/nasa-working-on-a-robotic-space-psychologist-astronauts-in-grave-danger

In the program, astronauts type their various psychological problems into a console, and a pre-recorded video therapist leads the astronaut through a series of likely solutions. The robot "helps astronauts identify reasons for their depression. Then the program helps them make a plan to fight the depression."

Why don't they just use emacs?

The Dow and The Election

Image by qthrul via FlickrExtra drama on Wall Street November 4th? Seems like a safe bet to me, on Novemeber 4 ot any other day in the near future.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14826.html

"The next president - and his team at Treasury, the Fed and the SEC - will be saddled with managing the uncertain aftermath of the extraordinary intervention, including the nationalization of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, as well as the partial nationalization of the nation.s largest banks.

"So forget PA, OH, and FL. This Election Day, the smart money will be looking at GOOG, VZ, UNH and WLP, the stock ticker symbols for Google, Verizon, United Health Care and WellPoint. All are companies that market analysts say will likely react to the election results."

I'll be more interested to see where the markets stand after 6 to 8 months of new policies, new policies assuming Obama wins the election. These are interesting times.

Bonus

Image via Wikipediahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reed/bonus-time-you-give-wall_b_136992.html

"It's not clear yet how deep the "bonus pool" will be. But looking at the year-to-date compensation estimates, count on it being pretty cavernous. One estimate of Wall Street pay, bonus and related costs goes up to $70 billion this year.

"Whatever the ultimate number, we all get the honor of pitching in. Remember your government is initially investing $250 billion into shoring up the nation's largest banks, including that longtime bonus-leader Goldman Sachs & Co. It's all part of the fed's $700 billion master rescue plan."

Eats

Image by adactio via Flickrhttp://www.foodprocessing.com/articles/2008/380.html

"Scientists at San Diego-based Senomyx and The Redpoint Bio Corp., Ewing, N.J., have come up with an idea that will make healthy foods taste as good as their fattening counterparts. The companies received patents on ways to convince the brain we are consuming foods that are far sweeter or saltier than they actually are, reports Scientific American. They are working with Nestle, Cadbury and Coca-Cola to develop healthy yet appealing products."

Faith

Image via Wikipediahttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/18/washington/18discrimination.html

"In a newly disclosed legal memorandum, the Bush administration says it can bypass laws that forbid giving taxpayer money to religious groups that hire only staff members who share their faith.

...

"But the memorandum goes further, drawing a sweeping conclusion that even federal programs subject to antidiscrimination laws can give money to groups that discriminate."

That's our Bush! Sure, we have freedom of religion, as long as it's the correct religion.

Funds

Image via Wikipediahttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/world/middleeast/17fuel.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

"The Democratic chairman of a House investigative committee presented documents to the Pentagon on Thursday alleging that a top Republican fund-raiser, Harry Sargeant III, has made tens of millions of dollars in profits over the last four years because his contracting company vastly overcharged for deliveries of fuel to American air bases in Iraq.

...

"Mr. Sargeant is one of several dozen people who are listed on Senator McCain's web site as raising $500,000 or more for him. He was the host of a fundraiser for Mr. McCain at his mansion in Delray Beach, Fla., this year."

Re: electric

Image by pittigliani2005 via Flickrhttp://editorial.autos.msn.com/landingpage1.aspx?cp-documentid=662733&landing=safety&icid=630&GT1=22010

"Nissan Motors recently announced plans to bring an affordably priced electric car to the U.S. market by 2010, raising the stakes in the race to develop environmentally friendly, zero-emission vehicles by being the first major automaker to commit to delivering an electric vehicle (EV) for a certain market by a certain date."

Don't they know that you can't build those because it will ruin the economy??

Maybe when Ford and GM have completely gone out of business, new companies in the US will finally get on with it.

More Joe

Image by Getty Images via Daylifehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/17/mccain-discovers-plumber_n_135552.html

"A day after making Joseph Wurzelbacher famous, referencing him in the debate almost two dozen times as someone who would pay higher taxes under Barack Obama, McCain learned the fine print Thursday on the plumber's not-so-tidy personal story: He owes back taxes. He is not a licensed plumber. And it turns out that Wurzelbacher makes less than $250,000 a year, which means he would receive a tax cut if Obama were elected president."

Joe

Image via Wikipediahttp://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/16/joe-the-plumber/

“I’m not sorry that we’re in Iraq. … We’ve liberated another country. I mean, you know, freedom. … I don’t know if you guys are Christians or not, but it’s like someone coming to Jesus and becoming saved. These guys have freedom. … Has it kept us safe? Absolutely. I believe in that 100 percent.”

-- Joe the Plumber

Teasing a Pitbull?

Image via Wikipediahttp://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/8/142945/812/292/624148

"Yeah, she's firing up the wingnut base. Who cares. The wingnut base is the easiest group of people on the planet to fire up. They get fired up when they think gays might steal their marriages. They get fired up when they have to press "one" for English. They get fired up when some black guy gets all uppity and runs for president. They get fired up when their sub-sub-sub-version of Christianity isn't the dominant religious ideal of the nation. Holding Sarah Palin in front of them is like teasing a dog through a fence, but that's about it."

Har

Surge Not

Image via Wikipediahttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/01/AR2008100100789.html?hpid=sec-world

Speaking in Washington yesterday, McKiernan described Afghanistan as "a far more complex environment than I ever found in Iraq." The country's mountainous terrain, rural population, poverty, illiteracy, 400 major tribal networks and history of civil war all make for unique challenges, he said.

"The word I don't use for Afghanistan is 'surge,'" McKiernan stressed, saying that what is required is a "sustained commitment. to a counterinsurgency effort that could last many years and would ultimately require a political, not military, solution."

Image via Wikipedia

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/5/1851/21840/455/618900

"In 1975, Ronald Reagan declared that the great majority of Americans were not capitalists. That may seem surprising, considering that most of us would consider America a capitalist society, but Reagan had a purist's approach to the subject. He said, "Roughly ninety-four percent of the people in capitalist America make their living from wages. Only six percent are true capitalists in the sense of deriving their income from ownership of the means of production."

"What the "Great Communicator" is trying to communicate to you here is that you're a peon. You work for a living. Real capitalists own for a living. But don't worry -- Reagan and his friends among the market fundamentalists had a fix in mind, one that was already underway."

All Clear

Image via Wikipedia* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're exotic and different.

* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you're a quintessential American story.

* If you name your kid Barack, you're un-American.

* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're 'colorful'.

* If you grow up with a single mom on food stamps, you're an elitist.

* If you marry an heiress who wears earrings worth $283,000 and you own nine homes and a private jet, you're a 'regular guy'.

* If you're 18, white, and get an underage girl pregnant, it's a 'blessed event.'

* If you're 18, black, and get an underage girl pregnant, you're a rapist and a registered sex offender.

* If you're a woman and you're selected for a job over more qualified candidates, you're a token hire.

* If you're a Republican woman and you're selected for the second most important job in the world over more qualified candidates, you're a 'game changer'.

* If you accept Darwinian evolution, you can't think for yourself.

* If you accept a creation story that even the Pope acknowledges as a metaphor, you're an independent thinker. (Ditto for the hard science behind the man-made causes of climate change.)

* If you're a Democrat and you choose a VP who had an aneurysm when Reagan was still in office, you're reckless.

* If you're a 72-year-old Republican who has had 4 bouts with cancer in the last 7 years and you choose a hockey mom unfamiliar with the Bush Doctrine to replace you as the leader of the free
world in the event of your demise, you're a maverick.

* If you get 18 million people to vote for you in a national presidential primary, you're a phony.

* Get 100,000 people to vote you governor of the 47th least populous state in the Union, you're 'well loved.'

* Graduate from Harvard Law School and you are unstable.

* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating 6 years later, you're well-grounded.

* If you are biracial and born in a state not connected to the lower 48, America needs nearly two years of constant daily media coverage to 'get to know you.'

* If you're white and from a state not connected to the lower 48, America needs 36 minutes and 38 seconds worth of an acceptance speech to know you're 'one of us.'

* If you spend three years as a highly effective community organizer, become the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 50,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a constitutional law professor, spend eight years as a state senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend four years in the United States Senate representing 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works, and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

* If your CV consists of a job as a local tv sportscaster, winner of the Miss Wasilla pageant, PTA member, four years on the town council and six years as the mayor of an Anchorage suburb with
fewer than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state that boasts a population slightly larger than Charlotte, NC and an island from which an uninhabited rock belonging to Russia can be seen under favorable weather conditions, you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If your wife is a lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't
represent America's.

* If your husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', has at least one DUI conviction, didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA , your family is a model for all Americans.

* If you refuse funds from lobbyists and special interest groups and ban them from your campaign, you're just another politician.

* If your top campaign advisors include 83 of the most powerful corporate lobbyists in Washington, you're a reformer.

* If your pastor rails against racial and socio-economic inequality in the United States of America, you're an extremist.

* If your pastor welcomes a sermon by a member of Jews for Jesus who preaches that the killing of Jews by terrorists is a lesson to Jews that they must convert to Christianity, you're a devout
fundamentalist.

* If you spend 18 months building a campaign around the theme of 'Change,' it's just empty rhetoric.

* If one week before your party's national convention you suddenly make your candidacy about 'Change,' that's the real deal.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 daughters and dedicating yourself to improving people's lives, you have no integrity.

* If you came back from a war to find that your wife had been disfigured by an accident, then cheated on her with a rich beauty queen, then left your family to marry the beauty queen just one month later, you're a man of steadfast 'honor'.

* If you teach responsible, age-appropriate sex education to protect children from sexual predators, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence-only policies, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're a paragon of moral virtue.

* If you raise 300 million dollars and build the largest donor base in American history with new technology, defeating the formidable Clinton political machine, you haven't accomplished much.

* If you answer a phone call from someone you met once, you're the new voice of the Republican Party.

* If you're a rich white beer heiress and you steal drugs to feed your addiction, it's a personal challenge you had to overcome.

* If you're black and poor and you even use drugs, never mind steal them, you go to prison.

* If you're a strong, intelligent, accomplished black woman who speaks honestly, you're 'angry'.

* If you're a white woman who ridicules the work of community organizers and equates herself with the most vicious dog breed, you're a breath of fresh air.

* If you speak to crowds of men wearing "Hottest VP Ever" buttons, it's a great step forward for women.

* If you point out the sexism inherent in this, you're a sexist.

* If you support an illegal war that has cost over 100,000 innocent civilians and 4,000+ American soldiers their lives, if you shoot defenseless wolves from airplanes and promote energy legislation that would wipe out endangered polar bears, if you believe in the death penalty, if you support the right of civilians to own assault weapons, and if you believe that a teenager who was raped by her father or whose life is endangered by pregnancy should carry it to term, you are 'pro-life'.

* If you believe that war should only be a last resort, if you believe in protecting all of God's creatures, if you feel that life imprisonment is more humane than execution, if you think that
assault weapons should be taken off the streets, if you believe that the aforementioned teenager's life should be saved, you have no respect for life.

Scambled

Image via Wikipediahttp://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/707994.html

"When you consider even national security issues with Russia, as (Prime Minister Vladimir) Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where - where do they go? It's Alaska," the Republican vice presidential nominee said in an interview last week with CBS News' Katie Couric.

...

"However, no Russian military planes have been flying even into that zone, said Maj. Allen Herritage, a spokesman for the Alaska region of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, at Elmendorf Air Force Base.

"To be very clear, there has not been any incursion in U.S. airspace in recent years," Herritage said."