The Perfunctory Hero

Just Getting Started

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 01:45:10 GMT

Who told you this was coming?

Concerns about credit, housing wipe $1.3 trillion from S&P 500's financial companies in 2008

NEW YORK -- U.S. financial companies have lost more than $1 trillion in value this year, and yet another decline on Monday shows concerns aren't going away soon.
Banks and brokerages began the week lower on the same fears that have been proven toxic since last summer in the ongoing credit crisis. The financial sector was hit with a confluence of troubles on Monday: cautious remarks from a Federal Reserve official and new capital concerns at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The drop in names like Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch caused the financial section of the Standard & Poor's 500 index to lose almost $150 billion in value on Monday, according to the rating agency. That means S&P 500's 85 financial components have lost some $1.3 trillion since the sector reached a high last October.

Even more startling is that shares of 35 of the companies, which include insurers, have lost more than half their value so far this year. The financial sector used to be the index's main driver, and many economists believe that the broader market will rise or fall on their health. "Some would argue that perhaps the sell-off in financials is overdone, but at the same time there is just much uncertainty out there about write-offs, loan losses, and how bad the housing market is," said Jim Herrick, a director of equity trading at Baird & Co. "For a period of time the pain was in the big money center banks, but now it's spreading."

Fannie and Freddie fell sharply after Lehman Brothers analyst Bruce Harting said the two government-backed lenders might need to raise billions of dollars in new capital. Both are facing a proposed change to accounting standards that would require financial services firms move bonds backed by pools of loans, also known as securitizations, off their balance sheets. If this rule is passed, it would end Freddie and Fannie's primary source of generating new revenue. Harting said Fannie Mae would need to raise $46 billion in cash to meet capital requirements, while Freddie Mac would need $29 billion.

The broader financial sector was hurt after San Francisco Federal Reserve President Janet Yellen said problems in the housing market and banking system could get even worse before the economy recovers. Global banks and brokerages have lost nearly $300 billion from investments in mortgage-backed securities and other risky investments since the credit crisis began one year ago. And there are fresh signs that Wall Street's biggest investment houses are having trouble navigating through volatile markets.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the world's biggest investment bank, disclosed in a regulatory filing that it lost at least $100 million on nine trading days during the second quarter. Goldman reported that total trading revenue in the second quarter fell 17 percent to $4.87 billion, according to the filing. The firm, known for aggressive trading tactics that can cause big swings from week to week, still far surpassed many of its rivals on the Street. That has put more focus on Merrill Lynch, which will report its quarterly results next Thursday.

John Thain, Merrill's CEO, is said to be examining the sale of stakes the brokerage has in asset manager BlackRock Inc. and in Bloomberg LP. Money raised would be used to offset big write-downs expected at the brokerage. A spokeswoman declined to comment about numerous media reports. However, Thain in the past has said he is open to selling the stakes if Merrill can fetch a good price. Howard Silverblatt, S&P's senior index analyst, said financial stocks will likely continue to be hurt until some signs develop that show banks and brokerages have a better grip on credit problems. Merrill's earnings next week could provide that.

"There's still lots of uncertainty out there," he said. "And, the financials need to turn around if the whole index wants to recover."

And the real pain hasn't started yet. :)

Economics Lesson: The Market

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 21:12:57 GMT

I always get a chuckle when I see people's misconceptions of what "the market" is. Let me define it for you simply: the market exists wherever there is an exchange. An exchange takes place wherever there was a choice and an opportunity cost and a person acted (made a choice -- chose an alternative). Since all goal-oriented human action involves choice (all resources are finite; think: the time which constitutes your lifespan), the market is omnipervasive.

The "Free Market" exists when people make choices while being free from threat or coercion by other people.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

I'm Sicilian Now

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:15:52 GMT

I don't celebrate Worship the Government Day anymore. I celebrate October 19th, 202 BC.

Ouch, DOW!

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:11:41 GMT

Looks like the DOW has given back all the gains made in the last 10 years. Not only that, but given the present value of the dollar, it appears the DOW is really at 1996 levels.

Loose monetary policy: it caused the First Great Depression, too. Hold on, people. Your life is about to change.

Can't figure it out...

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:56:07 GMT

Can anyone see a trend here? It's like... you print a lot of money out of thin air and each unit of that money becomes worth less so the commodities priced in that currency rise in price to reflect the lower value of that currency, as predicted by the Austrian School of Economics. Holy fucking shit, the laws of supply and demand do hold even in the face of government manipulation! whip_lash, remember the 1000 times I told you to buy Gold and Oil, and short treasuries and the dollar? It's like... how would you put it... I know what the fuck I'm talking about and you don't.

All your neoclassical buddies like Laffer said this wasn't going to happen. And now that China is not importing our inflation as much as they were, the end is near.

Remember that Dumb Motherfucker You Laughed At In Highschool?

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:14:51 GMT

You know, the one who was dumb as a box of rocks, unathletic, and maladjusted? Yeah him. He's probably a cop:

Undercover NYPD Officers Frame 4 On Drug Charges
NYPD Investigating Incident, Officers Placed On Modified Duty

NEW YORK (CBS) ― Undercover police officers who arrested four men on drug charges are under investigation after surveillance video proved the men they arrested committed no crime. Drug charges against brothers Jose Colon and Maximo Colon, along with two of their friends have been dropped. The undercover NYPD officers are seen on video dancing in the street, then attempting to frame four innocent men.

"I asked police officer why are you arresting me," said Maximo Colon. "Never did I get an answer." The investigators swore under oath they bought drugs from the four men. Jose and Maximo colon say that didn't happen. "The cops are supposed to help us," said a shaken Jose Colon.

Defense lawyers say the surveillance cameras proved their clients were framed. "It was nauseating," said defense lawyer Rochelle Berliner. Two hours of video showed no contact at all between the four men arrested and undercover officers - proof that lead prosecutors to drop charges against the four men, and even declare in court the men did not commit the crime.

Defense lawyers say it's disturbing but not uncommon. "As defense attorneys you know it exists more often than government wants you to believe," said Brad Wolk.

In the 6 months it took to clear the Colon brothers names, they lost their business and their savings.

As a result of his ordeal, Maximo Colon has lost trust in police officers. The two men are now involved in a civil suit against the city and hope to one day rebuild their lives. The NYPD is investigating the officers involved in this incident. Two of the officers are reportedly on modified duty.

I will say it again: fuck the police. They're police for one of two reasons: they can't do anything else, or they like being a thug. Don't trust them, and if they attempt to frame you, kill them so you don't end up bankrupt.

I Love Shit Like This

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 12:52:39 GMT

I sure hope those micro blackholes evaporate quickly!

Will The CERN Destroy The Earth?

MEYRIN, Switzerland - The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on in August. But some critics fear the Large Hadron Collider could exceed physicists' wildest conjectures: Will it spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth? Or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump?

Ridiculous, say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN — some of whom have been working for a generation on the $5.8 billion collider, or LHC. "Obviously, the world will not end when the LHC switches on," said project leader Lyn Evans. David Francis, a physicist on the collider's huge ATLAS particle detector, smiled when asked whether he worried about black holes and hypothetical killer particles known as strangelets. "If I thought that this was going to happen, I would be well away from here," he said.

The collider basically consists of a ring of supercooled magnets 17 miles in circumference attached to huge barrel-shaped detectors. The ring, which straddles the French and Swiss border, is buried 330 feet underground. The machine, which has been called the largest scientific experiment in history, isn't expected to begin test runs until August, and ramping up to full power could take months. But once it is working, it is expected to produce some startling findings. Scientists plan to hunt for signs of the invisible "dark matter" and "dark energy" that make up more than 96 percent of the universe, and hope to glimpse the elusive Higgs boson, a so-far undiscovered particle thought to give matter its mass. The collider could find evidence of extra dimensions, a boon for superstring theory, which holds that quarks, the particles that make up atoms, are infinitesimal vibrating strings. The theory could resolve many of physics' unanswered questions, but requires about 10 dimensions — far more than the three spatial dimensions our senses experience.

The safety of the collider, which will generate energies seven times higher than its most powerful rival, at Fermilab near Chicago, has been debated for years. The physicist Martin Rees has estimated the chance of an accelerator producing a global catastrophe at one in 50 million — long odds, to be sure, but about the same as winning some lotteries. By contrast, a CERN team this month issued a report concluding that there is "no conceivable danger" of a cataclysmic event. The report essentially confirmed the findings of a 2003 CERN safety report, and a panel of five prominent scientists not affiliated with CERN, including one Nobel laureate, endorsed its conclusions.

Critics of the LHC filed a lawsuit in a Hawaiian court in March seeking to block its startup, alleging that there was "a significant risk that ... operation of the Collider may have unintended consequences which could ultimately result in the destruction of our planet." One of the plaintiffs, Walter L. Wagner, a physicist and lawyer, said Wednesday CERN's safety report, released June 20, "has several major flaws," and his views on the risks of using the particle accelerator had not changed.

On Tuesday, U.S. Justice Department lawyers representing the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation filed a motion to dismiss the case. The two agencies have contributed $531 million to building the collider, and the NSF has agreed to pay $87 million of its annual operating costs. Hundreds of American scientists will participate in the research. The lawyers called the plaintiffs' allegations "extraordinarily speculative," and said "there is no basis for any conceivable threat" from black holes or other objects the LHC might produce. A hearing on the motion is expected in late July or August.

In rebutting doomsday scenarios, CERN scientists point out that cosmic rays have been bombarding the earth, and triggering collisions similar to those planned for the collider, since the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago. And so far, Earth has survived. "The LHC is only going to reproduce what nature does every second, what it has been doing for billions of years," said John Ellis, a British theoretical physicist at CERN.

Critics like Wagner have said the collisions caused by accelerators could be more hazardous than those of cosmic rays. Both may produce micro black holes, subatomic versions of cosmic black holes — collapsed stars whose gravity fields are so powerful that they can suck in planets and other stars. But micro black holes produced by cosmic ray collisions would likely be traveling so fast they would pass harmlessly through the earth. Micro black holes produced by a collider, the skeptics theorize, would move more slowly and might be trapped inside the earth's gravitational field — and eventually threaten the planet.

Ellis said doomsayers assume that the collider will create micro black holes in the first place, which he called unlikely. And even if they appeared, he said, they would instantly evaporate, as predicted by the British physicist Stephen Hawking. As for strangelets, CERN scientists point out that they have never been proven to exist. They said that even if these particles formed inside the Collider they would quickly break down.

When the LHC is finally at full power, two beams of protons will race around the huge ring 11,000 times a second in opposite directions. They will travel in two tubes about the width of fire hoses, speeding through a vacuum that is colder and emptier than outer space. Their trajectory will be curved by supercooled magnets — to guide the beams around the rings and prevent the packets of protons from cutting through the surrounding magnets like a blowtorch. The paths of these beams will cross, and a few of the protons in them will collide, at a series of cylindrical detectors along the ring. The two largest detectors are essentially huge digital cameras, each weighing thousands of tons, capable of taking millions of snapshots a second. Each year the detectors will generate 15 petabytes of data, the equivalent of a stack of CDs 12 miles tall. The data will require a high speed global network of computers for analysis.

Wagner and others filed a lawsuit to halt operation of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state in 1999. The courts dismissed the suit.

The leafy campus of CERN, a short drive from the shores of Lake Geneva, hardly seems like ground zero for doomsday. And locals don't seem overly concerned. Thousands attended an open house here this spring. "There is a huge army of scientists who know what they are talking about and are sleeping quite soundly as far as concerns the LHC," said project leader Evans.

Isn't that how it always goes? Huge army of people who know what they're doing fuck up everything because their own arrogance and self-interest are more important than the lives of other people? Think "The Best and The Brightest" who were going to "fine tune" the economy from Washington D.C.

I'm no luddite. I think this machine is pretty fucking cool. I just think that since it has some possible spillover effects which would greatly overwhelm any liability insurance they're carrying on this thing, maybe there should be some kind of global vote requiring 75% or more approval.

No Wonder No One Wants To Grow Up

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 11:20:56 GMT

Sleep 18 hours per day as your servants take every care not to disturb you.
Get fed warm milk by your servants.
Get bathed by your servants.
Get your ass wiped by your servants.
Don't even have to use your own effort to burp -- they do it for you.
Showered with kisses all day long.

It's my dream life. Too bad I'm the servant.

This is why you have kids...

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:26:10 GMT

What's a healthy, quiet, white female infant from good stock go for on the market? Should I be looking at Africa, Asia, or the Middle East?

Status Report

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:34:02 GMT

Her Supreme Worshipfulness and daughter are now home.

From the LOL, America Files: For Whip_Lash and Ernunnos

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:28:41 GMT

Texas Real Estate Slump Lets Mexicans Take It Back

Women dressed as cowgirls stand next to a sign that reads "Texas for Sale" at a real estate expo in Monterrey, Mexico, on June 12, 2008. Photographer: Emilio Vasquez Moreno/Bloomberg News

LOL America

Human Beings: Intelligent Design? It Doesn't Seem Like It

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:49:53 GMT

You know, I've been meaning to write this post for a while now, but this week's birthing process is the new inspiration. Is it just me or does it seem like in all the animal kingdom, human beings have the most design flaws? Maybe I don't have the sample size to work with and maybe it's because in the wild, animals with design flaws die (so we never see them and don't get a chance to count them in the stats), but ask yourself this:

1. When is the last time you heard about an eagle or a hawk with 20/200 vision instead of 20/3 or whatever?
2. When is the last time you saw a monkey make a tree jump and miss because his depth perception wasn't working right?
3. When is the last time you opened a dog's mouth and saw a snaggle-toothed grill instead of perfectly positioned teeth?

The average human has imperfect teeth. The average human has worse than 20/20 vision. There's the appendix, a by product from a leftover time (?) which merely serves as a means to send people to the hospital these days. The tonsils have a purpose, but quite often cause more harm than good. Then there's childbirth. Sure, in the animal kingdom babies get eaten. But are the mothers' cervixes (ces?) too small? Do they require c-sections?

Something seems... off about humans when compared to other animals. Is that just my perception or is there something too this?

Additional Information and My Thanks

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:14:21 GMT

Thanks for all your well wishes and sarcastic comments.

Well, the birth was not without incident. Let me preface by stating that Iliana is an only child, end of story, forever and ever, amen. I will not let Crystal go through that again, and I'd sooner go to war again than suffer that kind of anxiety again for even one more minute.

Crystal was in real labor for about 24 hours and her cervix never dialated past 6cm; thus, the baby went into tachycardia for a couple of hours as Crystal's contraction kept thrusting the baby into an unopened cervix. We're talking heart rates in excess of 200 beats per minute for prolonged durations. The doctor decided that the baby could beat her little heart out and give up if we didn't get her out of there asap via caesarian section. So we did. And the baby's heart relaxed and her blood pressure relaxed and now she's fine.

Slamming the baby into her cervix for several hours was agony for Crystal. There's pain and then there is what Crystal experienced. Her c-section hurts, but she is already walking on her own. Those labor pains were indescribable. There were times when I thought I might start punching holes in the wall watching her suffer. I am a pussy in that regard -- I will take any pain you want to throw at me -- I'll run with bad knees, run up a mountain til I puke and keep going... shit, I'd even do dead lifts with a hernia. I don't care. But I cannot stand to watch someone I care about suffer and be helpless to assist them. I will never go through that again. It's too much. I forbid it.

Anyway, I was very satisfied with the quality of care Crystal and Iliana (Greek for Trojan) got in that 3rd-world hospital. The surgeon was called at 4:00am by the doctor, and he arrived by 4:30, and then they went into surgery and the next thing I know, out came Illy. To be fair, the hospital looks like something Stephen King would write about, but what they skimp on in maintenance they make up for in competency.

So Illy weighed 2.94k at birth which is about 6.47 pounds. She is an Italian citizen. She does not cry. At all. She scratches herself and tries to pull her covers over her face (to suffocate herself? Is Crys that ugly???), but she won't cry. She has a much stronger grip than I expected. And she farted on Crys once, which I rewarded her for.

Ok, that's all for now. Thanks again for all your support!

Iliana Barnett

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:44:14 GMT

b. 5am 6/24/08

Theology Query

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:34:29 GMT

Ok, you know how Lucifer is said to have led a revolt of sorts in Heaven against God? Like 1/3 of the angels followed Lucifer in his fight against Michael, who eventually vanquished them, right?

Question: What exactly was the game plan there -- Lucifer's strategy? Suppose he had defeated Michael and the good guy angels... what was the next step, toss God off the throne? How does that work exactly? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but God can just blink them all out of existence without... well, even blinking, right? So what exactly was the idea here? Was this just the stupidest blunder in all of history or was Lucifer rightly counting on God saying something like, "Hey, ok, you earned it. Here, take the throne."

Anyone?

You Would Think This Is Common Sense

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 11:37:30 GMT

Note To Spouses/Significant Others:

If your spouse/mate asks you to increase your life insurance and/or change him/her to the sole beneficiary,

1. Don't do it, and
2. Don't lie to him/her and say you did do it, if you didn't.

What you should do is immediately cancel any life insurance policy you have and leave a notarized letter with an attorney which is to be delivered to police on the occasion of your death; the letter should state that your spouse/SO should be their prime suspect because of said request.

Oh yeah, and you should also immediately end the relationship.

Here's what happens if you fail to follow my advice:

Bridegroom Gabriel Watson charged with wife's scuba-dive murder

An American tourist was charged with murder yesterday for allegedly drowning his bride of 11 days on a scuba diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef during their honeymoon. Christina Mae Watson, 26, died while diving on a shipwreck near the northeastern Australian city of Townsville while her husband looked on. Daniel Watson, 31, of Birmingham, Alabama, had claimed during police interviews that his wife had panicked a few minutes into the dive. He said that as she thrashed around in the water, she grabbed hold of his mask and pushed it off his face. He later described seeing her, with her eyes wide and arms stretched out towards him, sink into the deep.

Mr Watson was an experienced diver who had completed a diving rescue course and was acting as a “dive buddy” for his wife, who was a novice. Despite his training, he told police that he decided to go for help rather than attempt to rescue his wife. One of the leaders of the dive trip pulled Mrs Watson to the surface, but attempts to resuscitate her failed. The incident in October 2003 was captured by another member of the dive party who stopped to photograph his dive buddy with an underwater camera. In the background Mrs Watson can be seen in the murky depths as the dive master swims towards her. Police believe that Mr Watson turned off the air supply of his wife until she was dead, or nearly dead, then turned it back on and let her sink to the seabed. The murder charge followed several months of inquiry by a Queensland coroner, who finally ruled yesterday that there were suspicious circumstances to the death. Mr Watson was not in court to hear the indictment against him and no plea was entered on his behalf. His lawyer argued that there was no motive for murder.

But Mrs Watson’s father, Tommy Thomas, claimed that his daughter had told him before the wedding that her fiancé had asked her to increase her life insurance and change the policy to make him the sole beneficiary. Mr Thomas told the court that his daughter decided to lie to Mr Watson and pretend that she had made the changes.

I'm really not sure why you'd lie about making the change. What's the upside to that? The incentive is still there for your murder, but now the case against your spouse/SO loses some motive when investigators look at the sum he/she is set to inherit.

Harry Brown

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:46:25 GMT

Harry Brown, 2000:

"No. You know, I know, everybody watching this show knows that four years from today, whichever of them is elected, government will be bigger, more expensive, more obtrusive, and more oppressive. If you vote Republican or Democrat, you are giving up. You’re saying 'I'm never going to be free. America will never be a free country again. I will never get smaller government. So I’m just going to vote for the one I think will take me to hell at the slowest-possible rate.'"

US Energy Policy

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:02:25 GMT

Funny if it weren't true:

America doesn't even remotely resemble the country I grew up in.

Blog Recommendation

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:41:44 GMT

Strange Maps

Pretty cool site. Here's an entry that really caught me by surprise:

Herman Sörgel’s Atlantropa is the craziest, most megalomaniacal scheme from the 20th century you never heard of.

Sörgel (1885-1952) was a renowned German architect of the Bauhaus school, and a philosopher reflecting on culture, space and geopolitics. On the future’s horizon, he saw the emergence of three global superpowers, one uniting the American continent, another a Pan-Asian block, and Europe – possibly the weakest of the three.

His solution was to engineer Europe out of its problems. Sörgel based his solution for Pan-European power and self-sufficiency on the observation that, although significant amounts of water flow into the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar (from the Atlantic Ocean) and the Dardanelles (from the Black Sea), its level stays the same, through evaporation. Hence his proposal to dam the Mediterranean at both ends, using the reduced inflow to generate massive amounts of hydroelectricity (110,000 Megawatt via several dams, of which 50,000 MW via the Gibraltar dam alone) and in the process create new land, which not only could be used for colonisation, but would also connect Europe to Africa. Thus would be created a new supercontinent, Atlantropa (giving the former easy access to the latter’s raw materials).

Sörgel first publicised his ideas in his 1929 book Mittelmeer-Senkung, Sahara-Bewässerung, Panropaprojekt (‘Lowering the Mediterranean, Irrigating the Sahara: the Panropa Project’), reiterating and specifying them in Atlantropa (1932). Later versions of the project included plans to create a series of giant lakes in Central Africa (Sörgel’s father, significantly, pioneered hydroelectricity in Bavaria).

It continues at the webpage. Here's the European map:

Even Better Government

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:26:44 GMT

What's better than a voter turnout of zero (0)?

Village re-elects dead mayor

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - The residents of a Romanian village knowingly voted in a dead man as their mayor in Sunday's municipal election, preferring him to his living opponent. Neculai Ivascu, 57, who ran the village for almost two decades, died from liver disease just after voting began -- but still won the election by a margin of 23 votes. A local official said the authorities decided to keep the poll open in case Ivascu's opponent, Gheorghe Dobrescu, won, avoiding the need for a re-run. "I know he died, but I don't want change," a pro-Ivascu villager told Romanian television.

Listen up my American friends: you should get Incitatus on the ballot in all 50 states. If he can't beat McInsane or Black Jesus, then you know it's time to gtfo.

Commodities vs Stocks in the era of inflation

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:55:17 GMT

SOCCER

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:57:25 GMT

So as you all know, soccer is huge here in Europe and more and more I've found myself becoming enamored of it. I've learned a lot about the sport since I've been here, and I've come to respect it for its dual aspects: game of athleticism and game of strategy. Soccer calls on a wide array of physical talents which most sports don't. Since your hands are a no-no, you're required to perform miracles with your feat and head. Speed is a must as is eye-foot coordination. It borders on inhuman to be able to run at a full sprint while "dribbling" a soccer ball then stop on a dime and use fancy footwork to maintain control of the ball as the defenders converge on you. Soccer also requires a high tolerance for pain, moreso than maybe any other sport save rugby. You're constantly getting kicked in the legs, headbutted in the chest, or worse, tripped while running full speed -- and you don't wear full body armor like they do in American football. When you see a soccer player fall to the ground grasping his leg, you can be sure it's a catastrophic injury.

But more than a game of athleticism, soccer is a game of the mind not unlike chess. The superathletes constantly have to rearrange their formations while sprinting. This is because even more than American football, soccer is a game of field position. Teams which can keep the ball in the opponent's territory tend to score more and be scored on less.

Anyway, Italy plays France on Tuesday and there's a lot of bad blood between the two teams. If you remember, Italian troops invaded Cisalpine Gual in July of 1978 and took Paris in December of that same year. That's the first and only time a foreign flag ever flew over the French capitol. Obviously, the United Nations sanctions against Italy brought the occupation to a close in the Spring of 1984, but five years of bitter tyranny and the theft of millions of bottles of Bordeaux wines have left a bitter enmity.

One can only hope the battle stays on the field when these superpowers collide tomorrow.

Good Government

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:53:18 GMT

ernunnos is always talking about how good government is possible and he likes to post stories which prove this point, even though he rarely gets that opportunity. Well today I'm doing it for him. Here is an example of good government (see highlighted text):

Voter turnout for tiny North Dakota town: Zero
By JAMES MacPHERSON – 8 hours ago

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Pillsbury Mayor Darrel Brudevold said voter turnout in the city's primary election usually is fairly high. "I dare say a half-dozen people usually make it to the polls," he said. That represents about a quarter of the residents in the Barnes County farming community, in southeastern North Dakota.

But on June 10, no one showed up. Not even those on the ballot.

Brudevold ran unopposed for re-election. His wife, Ruth, and Dan Lindseth faced no challengers for their alderman seats. "Everybody has got a job and they're busy," Brudevold said. "It just worked out that nobody seemed to go down there to the polls." Only about 11 people live in Pillsbury proper, and the remainder of the residents live on farms outside the city. There is no precinct in town, so residents must drive about 12 miles to neighboring Sibley to cast their votes. Brudevold's wife, Ruth, runs the beauty shop and is the town's postmaster. She said she was too busy with work to make it to the polls.

Brudevold said he intended to vote, but that he had crops to tend. He said he assumed at least one person would show up to vote. But since no one did, Brudevold said he'll ask state election officials what to do next. Brudevold, who has been mayor for a dozen years and was an alderman before that, said he doesn't think the current five-member body will change. Barnes County Auditor Ed McGough said those in office can stay there and appoint people, including themselves, to the jobs until the next election.

"I presume things will stay the same," Brudevold said. "We're just a little village, and when you're elected to one of those jobs, well, once you get it, you got it."

The council meets about five times a year, Brudevold said. Members are each paid $48 annually, and a good portion of that goes for doughnuts at the meetings or gas to get there, he said. Brudevold said he has no need for a gavel because attendance at the meetings is lackluster at best. "Not everybody usually makes it to the meetings, so it really doesn't get out of hand," he said. "The only time we really get people to show up is when we want to raise taxes — then everybody shows up."

That's about as good as government gets.

Donnie Darko

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 10:51:40 GMT

I want to shoot in the face every single person who recommended this abomination of cinema to me. Only an asshole of colossal proportions releases a movie that you can only make sense of if you:

See the director's cut which gets released 3 years after the original movie and has previously unreleased (important) footage, and

Visit the website to read a non-existent book written by a fictional character, and

Listen to the director's commentary on the director's cut dvd (released 3 years later).

And now a sequel is in the works. Good luck with that, fuckface.

Tim Russert: AMF

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:42:44 GMT

I guess the disappointment from hillary's loss overwhelmed his weak heart.