ch.annel2-i.s-n.ow-a.ngry

Bush compares today’s wars to World War II efforts

President Bush, linking the wars of his tenure to the deadliest one in history, is asking the country to commit anew to postwar rebuilding.

He links the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to postwar Germany and Japan six decades ago.

Fuck, I don’t even know where to begin. The AP even aids and abets.

Today’s wars aren’t over yet. As reconstruction unfolds, the enemy keeps fighting - not national militaries but a complex mix of militias and terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Another difference: It remains in debate within the country whether the pre-emptive Iraq war has bolstered U.S. security or weakened it. Bush has expressed no doubts it was warranted.

Another difference: Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan started these wars. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan, as a nation of peoples, had anything to do with one another before this war except being neighbors. Repeat after me: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11 other than al Qaeda apparently was living there (and we couldn’t even get them despite torching the whole country??). Well, al Qaeda’s apparently living in Pakistan, why haven’t we bombed the fuck out of them? Probably no oil.

In dubya dubya two, people were literally on their way stating they were going to take over the world and steamroll anyone who got in their way, and hundreds if not thousands of people died daily. Over 10 million all told.  If Russia had decided to throw in with Germany, we’d have all been fucked. In Iraq and Afghanistan, one attack, one, by neither of those governments or their people (bin Laden is Saudi, after all) that killed less than 3,000 American citizens has now led to four and a half thousand deaths of more American citizens (yes, Bush has sent more Americans to their deaths than al Qaeda ever will - and this al Qaeda-in-Iraq BS, well, if they really are real al Qaeda, they’re there because we invaded, if not they’re just citizens righteously pissed because we invaded their country).

America lost 400,000+ citizens to WWII - do we really want to compare these current wars to that one?

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.

This, coming from a bunch of people whose only qualifications were raising enough money to win a popularity contest and look good at the same time?

The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.

Only, that’s illegal, because WE HAVE NO JURISDICTION IN OTHER COUNTRIES. Contrary to what the Bush administration, and now Congress, apparently, believes, we do not have the right to go fucking about in other countries’ business. We do not have the right to kidnap their citizens, nor slap them with antitrust laws. Also, and repeat after me here, Countries Are Not Companies. They have armies. This distinction, however, is fast becoming blurred, and when governments go for-profit we are all fucked until we tear it down.

The legislation also creates a Justice Department task force to aggressively investigate gasoline price gouging and energy market manipulation.

“This bill guarantees that oil prices will reflect supply and demand economic rules, instead of wildly speculative and perhaps illegal activities,” said Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, who sponsored the legislation.

Well, actually, Mr. Kagen, if you have been fucking paying attention, you would know that, currently, oil demand outstrips supply by about 10% worldwide. Also, the BRICs of the world are seeing amazing amounts of oil thirst. Guess what? We, as world leaders, have taught the rest of the world what to emulate when you want to dominate economically and politically. Will they follow in our footsteps? Well, they’d be fucking dumb not to, from a certain standpoint. Why should they have let us shit all over them for much of our history and then turn around and be like, “Oh, well, your gas prices (which are still just a fraction of what people pay for gas elsewhere in the world barring a few subsidied countries like Venezuela) are too high, so we’ll stop driving so your Imperial Americaness can continue despoiling the world’s skies with your monster SUVs at what you think ought to be a reasonable price.”

The lawmaker said Americans “are at the mercy” of OPEC for how much they pay for gasoline, which this week hit a record average of $3.79 a gallon.

Solution: EVs. Even a shit-hot Tesla Roadster clocks at 2 cent per mile. The equivalent of 60 cents a gallon if you have a nice car like my ‘97 Honda that gets 30/35 mpg city/hw.

The Bush administration has announced proposed new guidelines that call for a fleet average of 31.6 miles per gallon by 2015.

Honda had that. 11 years ago. Technically 12 because a ‘97 was sold in ‘96. I tell you what, filling up an 11.9 gallon tank and paying over $40 hurts like shit, but my prior car got maybe 17 mpg, and had a tank that cost about $25 bucks to fill up 8 years ago (when gas was $1.40 a gallon, just before Herr Bush was sworn in). Now it would take an uncomfortable percentage of my paycheck, like scarily close to 80 bucks (I tried to figure out how big the tank on a 83 cutlass supreme brougham was but google apparently doesn’t know, some other models say 17 gallons so I ran with that).

Maybe, instead of trying to sue the shit out of OPEC and cutting off our noses to spite our faces (because, really, what are they gonna do, say “OK, we were just fuckin with ya but we’ll be nice now” or “Well, we weren’t fucking with you, but now we’re going to charge double to ship to America”), maybe Congress should investigate why gas and oil prices skyrocketed coincidently with the arrival of Prez Bush on the scene, after years of relative stability.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that leading someone to believe you have child pornography to show or exchange is a federal crime, brushing aside concerns that the law could apply to mainstream movies that depict adolescent sex, classic literature or even innocent e-mails that describe pictures of grandchildren.

 So pretending to be a 14 year old wanting to have sex with someone is okay, but pretending to have pictures of a 14 year old wanting to have sex with someone is now a federal crime.

The new law sets a five-year mandatory prison term for promoting, or pandering, child pornography. It does not require that someone actually possesses child pornography.

 Hello thoughtcrime!

I wasn’t even going to mention this, but it’s so fucked up I had to.

In January, when Ms. Kennedy was temporarily out of the office at JPMorgan because of surgery, her boss called to say her job had been eliminated. She did not return to her office and ended up asking the bank to send her the photos of her son that she kept on her desk.

At some banks like Bank of America, many laid-off employees are not allowed to return to their desks, because the banks fear departing employees will try to take valuable colleagues or clients with them.

Officials at all of the Wall Street firms declined to comment.

Cowardice, pure and simple. No, not the rampant firing, fucked up though it is, is a fact of life that the bills have got to get paid and you do what you gotta. But calling someone when they’ve just had surgery to fire them is just low. And BofA, fearing suddenly ex-employees are going to take colleagues away? To where, the soup kitchen? The unemployement lines? And the clients? To where, their new job of looking for a job? It’s not like every other bank out there is in a mad hiring rush to scoop these people up, EVERY bank is laying people off, some more than others. If you do some math, Citi’s laid off more than 30,000.

Already, the industry cuts have moved beyond low performers to people for whom the future looked bright just months ago. Analysts say the reductions announced so far will not be enough and that more may come later in the year, before employees are scheduled to collect bonuses.

Gonna milk ya, then hang you out to dry. I mean, these people know the ax is coming, so they’ll either work themselves desperately to the bone trying to hold onto their jobs, or just not care. Those that work themselves to the bone will be exhausted, unemployed and not have that bonus they overworked themselves for, and those that don’t care will just be unemployed job-seekers, and somehow, mysteriously the unemployment figures will barely change.

Banks and brokerage firms generally pay out about 50 percent of their revenue to employees as salaries and bonuses. Last year that percentage leapt to 70 percent, even as business began to dry up.

Wouldn’t that more likely be because business began to dry up? When salaries and bonuses stay the same, but revenue drops, the percentage of revenue that those salaries and bonuses make climbs.

the media to lag. I saw this interesting quote on Calculated Risk a moment ago:

Note: A wild two weeks indeed as subprime blew up in early February.

Some might be thinking “Oh, well, the media wasn’t that behind, they’ve been barking about it for a few months now.”  Only they were talking about ‘07. So it seems a bloodbath in HELOC (Home Equity Line Of Credit - basically borrowing against money you’ve already paid for the house you’re still paying a mortgage on) is in the offing.

There’s a problem with the way credit works in our economy, and that problem is fractional reserve lending. It comes up time and time again in the Shedblog,  Fractional reserve lending is the practice of lending out more money than a bank actually has on-hand. So, lets say a bank has a million dollars in savings deposits. Well, they can lend out, say, 10 million (I’m just guessing here, it’s way too early in the AM for actual research, I’m just making shit up to illustrate a point), trusting the borrows to pay that back before their depositors come asking for their million dollars in deposits back. The bank is now net -9 million, but is making hecka profits in interest payments, as long as those loans keep paying. The trouble is when people stop paying. That is happening now. That happened right before the Great Depression too, by the way. Sure, it makes for a great-looking economy while things are still cooking along, because that bank created 9 million dollars worth of spending money that goes into others pockets and wends its ways through the gears of capitalism, greasing things up for smooth sailing. But it can come crashing back down, and suddenly a bank is worth less than zero even though depositors technically still ‘have’ a million dollars at the bank. FDIC insurance covers them up to $100,000 per depositor, but guess where that money comes from? You and I.

And, of course, the bank’s upper echelons have still pocketed millions in salary, bonuses and what-not from doing such a great job up until the point of collapse.

Keith Hennessey, a top economic-policy adviser to President Bush, says “gut-level public opinion” backs the White House.

Funny that they pay attention public opinion in these matters, but not in matters of Iraq nor Afghanistan.

Holy crap. Wow. Everything you see is like man-made. I saw this giant orange feature speckled with dark little dots. Now, I’m studying microscopy at school, so I’m used to looking at things in the google maps perspective, seeing things and then drilling down to see what else is there. Using google maps for me is a little like sitting at a giant microscop peering down at planet earth in a petri dish - but I digress.

So I see this huge orange feature. 70 kilometers (50 miles) wide and about 100 kilometers (65 miles) tall. I’m thinking, desert? Wrong. Cities, grown together and flung across the landscape. It’s where Suzhou, Fuyang and Huaibei lie. Almost every feature you see on this map is a giant manmade fractal - only the water and mountains are natural. Zoom in anywhere and you will see house after house or field after field. Even places that look like mountains at a zoom of 20 miles turn out to be lichen-like human settlements. I never really thought about it, but having as many people as China does, there really wouldn’t be many places left untouched by man.

Things are not OK.

“I fear we might start eating one another. We will never stop protesting until traders accept the notes.”

I guess Ted Turner was right. Only he predicted 50 years from now, not tomorrow.

Though agriculturally fertile, the violence and anarchy in Somalia makes it dependent largely on food imports.

Sad fucking world. Go read Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix.

Local authorities and traders held crisis meetings in Mogadishu on Tuesday in a desperate move to quell the growing anger among residents of one of the world’s most impoverished and well-armed cities.

Correlation? Probably obvious, but under the radar for some voters.

U.S. crude oil futures rose to a new record high for a second day on Tuesday, with crude oil futures for June delivery touching a record of $120.70 a barrel.

London Brent crude oil futures set a new record of $119.03 a barrel.

Supply disruptions in Nigeria have helped push oil to new peaks. Royal Dutch Shell’s production from Nigeria, for example, is down by about 164,000 barrels per day.

Strikes and attacks by militants on oil installations have caused a succession of supply problems in the OPEC member country, the world’s eighth-biggest oil exporter.

Weakness in the U.S. dollar has also contributed to oil’s rise, as this had boosted the price of commodities denominated in the U.S. currency.

FUN!

UBS, the largest Swiss bank, said Tuesday that it expected to cut about 5,500 jobs, including 2,600 in its investment banking unit, as it announced a first-quarter loss of about $10.9 billion.

FUCKED!

UBS wrote down $19 billion in soured American subprime mortgage securities and other investments in the first quarter, bringing its total write-downs since the beginning of the credit crisis to about $38 billion.

40$ bil in less than a full year, more still to come, and currently all our fault. Wait until the rest of the world starts feeling the pop after their bubbles that were blown from ours pop.

Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida has been fighting to cut 10 cents from the state’s gasoline tax for two weeks in July. Lawmakers in Missouri, New York and Texas have also proposed a summer break from state gas taxes, while candidates for governor in Indiana and North Carolina are sparring over relief ideas of their own.

Oh, RIGHT, cuz paying $3.90 a gallon as opposed to $4.00 is SO FUCKING SIGNIFICANT. If you have a 12 gallon tank like my and you’re completely dry, you fill up - you save $1.20!!!!! HOLY SHIT! I’m fucking rich again! I can spend that buck twenty on coffee! But only because Starfucks is lowering their prices!!!!! We’re in great shape! Economy’s coming back, food is good, oil supply is totally in the positive and prices are coming down across the board!

Right?

Oh, no, wait, that last paragraph was total fucking bullshit.

We’re boned.

Nevertheless, MADD has called upon the Entertainment Software Ratings Board to reclassify Grand Theft Auto IV as an Adults Only game, effectively banning the game from sale in the U.S. since neither Sony nor Microsoft allow the sale of AO games on their respective consoles in America.

Nearly 13,500 people die in drunk driving crashes each year, with another half million injured in alcohol-related crashes, asserts MADD.

13,500! That’s incredible. That’s hardly anything compared to cancer. And they are acting like Grand Theft Auto is going to start causing drunk driving, suddenly, as if it hasn’t existed since before cars were invented? Can you imagine drunk horseback riding and drunk carriage driving? Heck, you’ve probably seen simulations of it in some movie or another. Did that make you want to go out and drink and drive away from wagonjackers? (That’s all carriage thieves were, to use modern parlance.) Why don’t we focus on something really huge, instead of the human beings will to experience something crazy with no consequences attached? We’ve been telling myths to one another, huge crazy shit that we loved to dream about, since the dawn of time. This is just the latest expression of that.

When you drink and drive in Grand Theft Auto, the cops will chase you down if you get caught. You stumble about and fall down. The car jerks around erratically and the game is already hard enough to control when your character is sober. It’s like a nightmare of video game interaction. The controls just suck.

Wiki sez: Cancer causes about 13% of all deaths.^[2] According to the American Cancer Society, 7.6 million people died from cancer in the world during 2007.^[3]

To do some quick math, if 7.6 million is 13% of all deaths, then all deaths is about 58.52 million worldwide. That means drunk driving deaths is 0.0023% of all deaths.

Bush predicts the economy is going to ‘come on’

Reminds me of the Family Guy episode where Peter goes before Congress to champion cigarettes and uses the “Come on. Come onnnnn,” good ol’ boy entreaty to get his way. Disaster ensues.

Seriously, can anyone believe this crap?

Employers cut far fewer jobs in April than they did in March, although it was the fourth straight month of slashed payrolls. The unemployment rate dropped slightly, from 5.1 percent to 5 percent, which was a better-than-expected showing.

So we lost fewer jobs than the in any of the last three months, but despite losing 20,000 jobs unemployment dropped? I don’t think enough cocaine is imported to the US to foster that belief.