Saturday, September 20, 2008
must read--The complete (though ever-changing) elite consensus over the financial collapse - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
"What is more intrinsically corrupt than allowing people to engage in high-reward/no-risk capitalism -- where they reap tens of millions of dollars and more every year while their reckless gambles are paying off only to then have the Government shift their losses to the citizenry at large once their schemes collapse? We've retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses. Watching Wall St. erupt with an orgy of celebration on Friday after it became clear the Government (i.e., you) would pay for their disaster was literally nauseating, as the very people who wreaked this havoc are now being rewarded.
More amazingly, they're free to walk away without having to disgorge their gains; at worst, they're just "forced" to walk away without any further stake in the gamble. How can these bailouts not at least be categorically conditioned on the disgorgement of ill-gotten gains from those who are responsible? The mere fact that shareholders might lose their stake going forward doesn't resolve that concern; why should those who so fantastically profited from these schemes they couldn't support walk away with their gains? This is "redistribution of wealth" and "government takeover of industry" on the grandest scale imaginable -- the buzzphrases that have been thrown around for decades to represent all that is evil and bad in the world. That's all this is; it's not an "investment" by the Government in any real sense but just a magical transfer of losses away from those who are responsible for these losses to those who aren't..."
Friday, September 19, 2008
Benson News
"Here's a picture of Benson after we got home at 7pm this evening. He's comfortable and not in any pain but he hates the cone around his head :( His eyes will be red for a couple of weeks but the surgeon assures me that he is not feeling any pain, he just looks a little sore.
We go for another check up tomorrow!
Ana-Maria"
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Lipstick Traces
"I know that many times, in my life, while living it, someone would come up and, because of I had good readiness, in terms of how I was wired, when they asked that—whatever they asked—I would just not blink,
because, knowing that, if I did blink, or even wink, that is weakness, therefore you can’t, you just don’t. You could, but no—you aren’t.
"I know that many times, in my life, while living it, someone would come up and, because of I had good readiness, in terms of how I was wired, when they asked that—whatever they asked—I would just not blink,
because, knowing that, if I did blink, or even wink, that is weakness, therefore you can’t, you just don’t. You could, but no—you aren’t.
That is just how I am.
Do you know the difference between me and a Hockey Mom who has forgot her lipstick?
A dog collar.
Do you know the difference between me and a dog collar smeared with lipstick?
Not a damn thing.
We are essentially wired identical.
So,
when Barack Obama says he will put some lipstick on my pig, I am, like, Are you calling me a pig? If so, thanks! Pigs are the most non-Élite of all barnyard animals. And also, if you put lipstick on my pig, do you know what the difference will be between that pig and a pit bull? I’ll tell you: a pit bull can easily kill a pig. And, as the pig dies, guess
what the Hockey Mom is doing? Going to her car, putting on more lipstick, so that, upon returning, finding that pig dead, she once again looks identical to that pit bull, which, staying on mission, the two of them step over the dead pig, looking exactly like twins, except the pit bull is scratching his lower ass with one frantic leg, whereas the Hockey Mom is carrying an extra hockey stick in case Todd breaks his again. But both are going, like, Ha ha, where’s that dumb pig now?
Dead, that’s who, and also: not a smidge of lipstick.
A lose-lose for the pig.
There’s a lesson in that, I think.
Who does that pig represent, and that collar, and that Hockey Mom, and that pit bull?
You figure it out. Then give me a call.
Seriously, give me a call..."
Monday, September 15, 2008
Huge petrified log unearthed in the Harewood Mall
"A huge petrified log unearthed in the Harewood Mall parking lot will become a showpiece in the mall's redesign.
The mall's owners will include the three-metre-long log, believed to be the 75-million-year-old remains of a palm tree, in a plaza for the rebuilt mall.
Although the plans haven't yet been finalized, the mall's owners, Bosa Ventures of Vancouver, plan to incorporate the log into the redesign.
"I talked to the planning department and Dale Bosa and our landscape architect and we have a plaza area and we were planning to bury this on end, sort of set it up as a bit of a sculpture, angle it over," said Rick Jones, a principal of the Urban Design Group, the architectural firm working on the mall redevelopment.
Bosa is doing a major makeover on the shopping centre, to be known as University Village Nanaimo. The work called for having to tear up the parking lot and Knappett Industries discovered the fossil buried in front of Value Village..."
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