Be Less Boring

Here's an interesting Rolling Stone article about how basically Goldman Sachs is primarily responsible for the financial mess we're in today. Be sure to watch the videos on each page, as they explain a lot of things that are left out of the article.

It's a very distressing article because it points out that Goldman Sachs basically owns the government. They were the single biggest donor to the Obama campaign. They donate millions to Senators and Congressmen. There are former Goldman Sachs officers in very high government offices. Some of the government employees tasked with overseeing Goldman Sachs are themselves former Goldman Sachs employees. So, there's very little hope of any improvements in the laws that would help to control Wall Street in general and Goldman Sachs in particular.

As one of the videos points out, people are afraid to talk about Goldman Sachs in the same way people are afraid to talk about organized crime. One doesn't have to think very hard to figure out why. The Internet bubble of a decade ago, the housing bubble of the past decade, the surge in oil prices last year, it was all orchestrated by Goldman Sachs.

The real reason Lehman Brothers was left to fall into brankruptcy while so many other investment banks, including Goldman Sachs were getting government handouts and special treatment? Lehman Brothers was Goldman Sachs main competitor and the man making the decisions about who got bailout money was then Treasury Secretary Paulson, a former Goldman Sachs executive.

The government gave AIG a ton of money that they then used to pay off billions in debt to Goldman Sachs, which also got bailout money, something it didn't qualify for until it was allowed to convert from an investment bank into a bank holding company overnight, something that would have taken any other company months of regulatory paperwork and hearings, as well as shareholder votes to do. An the icing on the cake for Goldman Sachs was the elimination of their primary competitor, Lehman Brothers; a win-win-win situation for Goldman Sachs that puts i in an even more powerful position than it ever was before.

Now, as all the cap and trade/carbon offsets nonsense really gets rolling, Goldman Sachs will be in the best position to capitalize on it and will be aided by new government regulations that are in the works to make it not only required but controlled in large part by Goldman Sachs with little or no government oversight.

And it's all paid for by you and me, the taxpayers. Doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy? Me, either. It makes me want to puke.

Oh, and before you go blaming Bush for all of this, most of the deregulation that made the financial crisis possible happened during the Clinton administration. Goldman Sachs has a long history of supporting Democrats, like the ones in control right now. Sleep well, America, if you can.

It would seem that President Obama studied the methods of the Bush/Cheney regime very carefully and is taking their methods to even higher levels to give himself ever greater powers beyond those granted by the Constitution.

MSNBC political correspondent, Rachel Maddow calls Obama out for decrying the Bush administration's policies regarding suspected terrorists in custody while at the same time announcing his own plan to incarcerate certain of those suspects--those who cannot be prosecuted due to lack of or tainted evidence--indefinitely without any legal recourse. In effect, Obama plans to imprison people because they MIGHT commit a crime.

The most chilling part, to me, comes at about 6:45 in the video when Obama says, "Right now in distant training camps and crowded cities there are people plotting to take American lives." Right there he's using fear to justify his actions, just like Bush and Cheney always did. Well, Mr. President, who are these people plotting to take American lives? If these training camps exist, why aren't we bombing them? If we know of people in crowded cities plotting against us, why aren't we incarcerating them, instead of holding suspects whom we can't possibly convict of any crime? Or were you, perhaps, taking a little literary license or just making shit up?

Be afraid, people, be very afraid, not of mythical training camps or big cities, rather be afraid of your own government. Keep a very close eye on on President BushObama.

What with poisoned cat food, lead paint on toys, power supplies that burst into flames, and a host of other problems, products made in China and sold in America have gotten a bad reputation. Apparently it's no better in China, itself.

This building in Shanghai was still under construction when it fell over. No, it didn't collapse, it fell over. If I were the people in any of the identical buildings nearby, I'd be moving out immediately or at least planning re-arrange the furniture to take advantage of a horizontal layout with skylights.

Are you a bacon lover? Does your lover love bacon? Are you a pair of bacon lovers? Have I beaten all the life out of that pun yet?

Soon you'll be able to bring the delicious flavor of bacon into the bedroom with Bacon Lube. That's right, bacon flavored personal lubricant. It brings a whole new meaning to the KY in Porky.

Yeah, I've got more puns and jokes on this theme, but they get increasingly perverted/bad/disgusting from here, so I'll spare you.

It's always nice to find money you didn't know you'd lost. That's why every year or two I make it a point to search through the New Hampshire Abandoned Property List. Today I found listings on there for a couple of relatives and sent the links off of to them so they could claim their property. A few years back I found a listing for my grandmother. She died almost 30 years ago and somehow a life insurance policy had been missed by her heirs for all those years. It wasn't a huge amount but I'm told it worked out to about $1200 for each of her surviving children. So far I haven't found any of my own property on the list and that's a good thing. Still, the few minutes of my time every now and then has recouped some coin for my family and someday it might recoup some for me, so I keep doing it.

The US Treasury provides a way to check if there are US Savings Bonds associated with you. Several weeks ago I did a search on their Treasury Hunt site to see if there were any bonds with my name on them. My main motivation for this was because I remember someone giving me a US Savings Bond when I was a kid but couldn't remember whether I'd ever cashed it in or not. The Treasury Hunt indicated that I appeared to have an unredeemed bond, so I filled out their form to get more information. The results came in today saying I had a mature Series E bond somewhere.

I knew I didn't have the bond in my possession, so I was contemplating going through the claim process for lost or stolen bonds. It looks to be doable but I hate paperwork, so I figured I'd check with my parents. Armed with my meticulous memory for money, I sent my dad on the chase. He found the bond exactly where I thought it would be and I'll get it from him the next time I see him. It's mature and no longer collecting interest and is overdue to be redeemed. It's only a $25 bond, so its not like I'm going to retire on it, but the money will serve me better in a new investment than it does as a 33 year old piece of paper sitting in a drawer all but forgotten.

Lots of people waste a lot of time and money gambling on slots, cards, and lotteries in a futile attempt to get rich. Sometimes finding money is as easy as clicking a few links to find what you didn't even know was missing.

Depleted Cranium has a couple of posts that caught my eye today. The first is about the hypocrisy coming from the Global Warming Panic Squad, as I like to call them. Those are the people who insist on shoving it down our throats that we're somehow killing the planet with greenhouse gasses, regardless of any real, verifiable scientific research.

Apparently, after years and years, decades, in fact, of shouting about global warming and climate change on every possible medium and even giving a Nobel Prize to one of the most famous, albeit least credentialed, GWPS members, they still don't think Americans are aware of the issue. So, they're spending millions of dollars to put up huge billboards in prominent big-city locations to alert whomever happens to a) be in those locations and b) happens to look up. My guess is that's a remarkably small segment of the population and that they'd reach more people with a single 30 second Super-Bowl ad, but that's just a guess.

It's just too bad that those people who are so worried about environmental problems that they must be all in our faces about it couldn't figure out that those millions of dollars they're wasting to tell us what we already know could instead be used to solve or at least curb many, many climate and environmental problems around the world. Ah, but you see, that's how scams like the Global Warming movement work. They're not about solving problems, they're about causing panic so people give them lots of money. They've done a remarkable job so far. We're spending trillions on green jobs, biofuels, alternative energy, carbon offsets, CFLs, hybrid cars, and everything else they've heaped upon us in recent years. The fact is, however, that most of these "solutions" to global warming/climate change/greenhouse gasses are not really going to solve the problem. They only serve to reduce the guilt people feel thanks to all the in-your-face blame-storming by the GWPS.

Hey, let's all just save a step or two. Just give me your money instead, and I'll assure you that everything will be just fine. I know this because I am the Chosen One and I can assure you that I'm an expert on the matter. Everything is going to be all right as long as you give me money.

The next piece from DP that caught my eye was about how Swiss scientists now have to take a plant's feelings into consideration before they can do research on it. Fuck global warming, the real harbinger of doom for our planet is humanity's obsession with anthropomorphizing everything and then trying to protect everything as if it were human. My god, we're an arrogant race! Sometimes I'm ashamed to be human.

If this trend continues, it's a slippery slope to the point where we'll have PETP, people for the ethical treatment of plants, insisting that we forgo eating plants, wearing clothes made of cotton, hemp, linen, or bamboo; even the biblical fig leaves would be right out. Then we'll all be naked and hungry. It'll be a race to see if we starve or freeze to death first because we already can't eat meat or wear fur and really, without plants there's just not much left.

Let's just straighten this out once and for all, shall we?

Plants are not sentient beings. Plants don't have feelings. They don't have dignity. Plants don't love, don't hate, don't even feel ambivalence. Plants don't dream of a brighter future. They don't have hopes or expectations. Plants don't play, laugh, sing, cry, pout, or mope. Plants don't feel sad or happy or blaze. Plants don't have any emotions at all. Plants are NOT human so stop treating them as if they were!

As far as I can tell, most of the female celebrities on Twitter share some remarkably common traits.

- They tweet often, sometimes dozens of times in a row because they can't fit everything they want to say into 140 characters.
- They all have shrinks or therapists.
- Most of them tweet each other.
- They follow their kids/siblings/spouses Twitter feeds.
- They complain a lot.

There's a moose on the loose
And a goose in the sluice
Swinging noose on a spruce
Until Luce drew a deuce
Then Bruce called a truce
Want some juice? What's the use?
Too obtuse! No excuse.

The garden is doing fairly well. We've had a lot of radishes lately. The Pink Beauty radishes do a lot better and have more zing to them than the standard Cherry Belle that everyone around here plants. Most of the Cherry Belles never bulbed and they're already going to seed.

The mesclun mix has been overwhelming. We eat some almost every day but still can't keep up with it. The same goes for the Mizuna, which has started to go to seed already. Only about half of the arugula I planted actually came up; I'm not sure why. I love the stuff.

We had our first harvest of bok choy a few days ago and it was quite yummy.

The broccoli is looking great so far. Beans have sprouted but, as usual, every cutworm and leaf-eater in the area is hammering them, so we'll be lucky if we get much out of them.

The potatoes are looking great so far. If the beetles don't get them, we should have a good crop.

We're a matter of days away from our first ripe tomatoes. There are a few orange ones and I have to keep reminding Wonderful Girlfriend that orange is not red and they're not ready until they're red. She's anxious for fresh tomatoes and so am I, but good things come to those who wait.

The Sugar Ann peas are flowering already. The snow peas that were supposed to be a dwarf variety that only grew 12-16 inches high are already almost waist high and show no signs of slowing down.

Carrots and onions don't seem to be in any hurry to grow and the garlic doesn't seem to have changed much in weeks.

We're just about swimming in baby spinach. I'm expecting Pop-Eye to show up any minute now.

I spent a few hours weeding yesterday, especially around the carrots, onions, and garlic. I've got plastic down in the parts of the garden where I put transplants, but that doesn't work out very well in places where you sew seeds directly, so weeding becomes necessary once in a while.

I'm eager for more stuff to be ready for picking, but I'm enjoying what we've got so far very much. So far, so good. Oh, so good!

Millions Face Blanks Screens In TV Switch reads the NYT headline.

Given the state of Television today and the banal tripe that's so popular now, I have to wonder if they'll notice the difference.

Really, the digital transition was announced over a decade ago, before the technology to make it happen even existed. It's been talked about in newspapers, magazines, and on the Internet for years. There's been a non-stop advertising blitz for more than a year warning people about the change and telling them what, if anything, they need to do. There have been community forums to answer questions and I heard about one town today where the local fire department has volunteered to help people set up converter boxes and answer any questions about the transition.

If, at this point in time, anyone is not yet ready for the transition to all digital broadcast, I can only assume that either they don't care or they won't notice. Either way, I don't think it'll be a problem.