INTERESTING: Is there a “thumb on the scale”?

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/taylor-swift-love-life-17371914

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/taylor-swift-glamours-cover-girl-17371916

A fun experience was interrupted by the garish “commercials” pro-Obama anti-Romney 47%.

This brought an interesting thought: is ABC’s website providing propaganda support?

How is that accounted for to its stockholders?

Reported to the FEC?

Just seems odd to me. Revisited the site at random and got the same ad. Considering that the underlying story is “youth oriented” maybe this is an another “thumb on the scale” attempt. 

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GOLD: Western Economies Are Screwed

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

http://www.businessinsider.com/deutsche-bank-issues-a-terrible-warning-on-the-health-of-the-global-financial-system-2012-9#ixzz276ey6kNP

DEUTSCHE BANK: Western Economies Are Screwed, And Investors Face A ‘Disturbing Paradox’
Matthew Boesler | Sep. 20, 2012, 12:54 PM 

*** begin quote ***

In a new report entitled Gold: Adjusting For Zero, Deutsche Bank analysts Daniel Brebner and Xiao Fu paint an incredibly dark picture of the bind the global economy is in right now.

*** end quote ***

Regardless of who wins the US elections, we are faced with a situation of Japan in the 80’s. It will take two generations to unwind the excesses of the past half decade.

  • A rotation out of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency will effectively put the USA politician’s on a fiscal “diet”.
     
  • Gas prices are going to cripple the middle class.
  • The public pensions will cause a crisis as there are far more takers than makers.
  • The “free riders” and those on the dole, including Social Security, will make final discipline impossible.
  • The class warfare will end with the makers, like the Little Red Hen, just stop making; can’t take what isn’t made.

At some point in time, “We, The Sheeple” will recognize that they are being killed; not merely shorn.

That’s when the merry go round stops.

Gold, or nickels, is your best bet to survive.

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INTERESTING: Couple sues game show

Monday, October 1, 2012

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2208220/Couple-sues-Fox-game-losing-580-000-despite-answering-question-correctly.html

Couple sues Fox game show after losing $580,000 ‘despite answering question correctly’
By Hugo Gye
PUBLISHED: 00:44 EST, 25 September 2012 | UPDATED: 05:31 EST, 25 September 2012

*** begin quote ***

A couple who appeared on a short-lived Fox game show are suing the producers two years later, claiming that they were denied more than half a million dollars despite answering a crucial question correctly.

Andrew and Patricia Murray, who are both airline pilots, were contestants on Million Dollar Money Drop in December 2010.

They now claim the question which lost them the chance to win $580,000 was incorrect and was ultimately a ‘trick question’, according to TMZ.

*** end quote ***

Entertaining when they blow it. 

Interesting if they recover.

Is there an insurance company behind the lawsuit?

Did they have a hand in the staging of questions that would keep the payoffs low?

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FLASH: 2 Americans killed by our “allies” in AfPak?

Sunday, September 30, 2012

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_AFGHANISTAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-09-30-05-14-29

Sep 30, 11:43 AM EDT
US and Afghan forces clash, leaving 5 dead
By HEIDI VOGT and RAHIM FAIEZ Associated Press

*** begin quote ***

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A firefight broke out between U.S. forces and their Afghan army allies in eastern Afghanistan Sunday, killing two Americans and three Afghan soldiers and pushing the number of U.S. troops killed in the long-running war 2,000.

The fighting started Saturday when what is believed to have been a mortar fired by insurgents struck a checkpoint set up by U.S. forces in Wardak province, said Shahidullah Shahid, a provincial government spokesman. He said the Americans thought they were under attack from a nearby Afghan army checkpoint and fired on it, prompting the Afghan soldiers to return fire.

*** end quote ***

Sorry, but are our girls and boys doing in AfPak!

Ron Paul had it right. We can just march out. And, be quick about it.

# – # – # – # – #  2012-Sep-30 @ 13:35  

Sep 30, 11:43 AM EDT

US and Afghan forces clash, leaving 5 dead


AP Photo
AP Photo/Brennan Linsley
World Video
 
Latest News
US military deaths in Afghanistan hit 2,000

US and Afghan forces clash, leaving 5 dead

Afghan forces also suffer from insider attacks

Taliban release video on Afghan base attackers

Panetta: US surge troops out of Afghanistan

 

Interactives
Afghanistan: Shining a light on the dark
Efforts to rebuild Afghanistan
Afghanistan War’s 1,000 U.S. Troop Casualties
AP Photographer Caught in GunFire
WIlling to fight, unable to read
AP journalists wounded in Afghanistan
U.S. troops under attack
Marine allegedly faked injuries to get freebies
Buy AP Photo Reprints
 
Multimedia
US troops spending Christmas

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A firefight broke out between U.S. forces and their Afghan army allies in eastern Afghanistan Sunday, killing two Americans and three Afghan soldiers and pushing the number of U.S. troops killed in the long-running war 2,000.

The fighting started Saturday when what is believed to have been a mortar fired by insurgents struck a checkpoint set up by U.S. forces in Wardak province, said Shahidullah Shahid, a provincial government spokesman. He said the Americans thought they were under attack from a nearby Afghan army checkpoint and fired on it, prompting the Afghan soldiers to return fire.


HARDWARE: Having computer hardware problems with the trackpad on my macbookair. Argh! Falling back to alternate hardware. Service will be spotty!

Sunday, September 30, 2012
ADMINISTRIVIA: Having computer hardware problems with the trackpad on my macbookair. Argh! Falling back to alternate hardware. Service will be spotty.

# – # – # – # – #  2012-Sep-30 @ 10:02  


GOVERNACIDE: Death at the hands of the police

Sunday, September 30, 2012

From: john 
To: Luddite
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 9:33 PM
Subject: TheBlaze.com – Houston Police Officer Fatally Shoots Unarmed Double Amputee in a Wheelchair

I thought you would like this story from TheBlaze.com

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/houston-police-officer-fatally-shoots-unarmed-double-amputee-in-a-wheelchair/

care to comment about your “friends” in blue?

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On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 8:20 AM, Luddite wrote:

After looking at another one of these, I think where we differ is that you tend to look only at the victim, rather than the circumstances surrounding? Have I summed it up correctly?

# – # – # – # – #  2012-Sep-23 @ 09:34  

No, I am “shocked” — as in “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” Captain Renault in Casablanca — at the result. And, the pattern that keeps repeating over and over and over. The “King” and the “Sheriff’s men” keep abusing the poor Saxon serfs. Where’s our “Robin Hood”? Where is our “George Washington”? Where is our “Zorro”? Unfortunately, we each have to become our own.

I think Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and others have demonstrated the path. Peaceful non-cooperation.

Take a small example, “speed limits”! On every road every day in the USA, the drivers demonstrate a complete disregard for the diktats of the “King”. Tax law is another; the underground economy is huge. Drugs is another.

Us old stuffed shirts have to join “The Resistance”. Maybe we don’t have to blow up bridges and trains like the French did to the Nazis.

Maybe we just refuse to cooperate?

Peacefully, firmly, and, of course, picking our battles.

But all the while, burning with a “revolutionary” fire.

Remember Churchill and Solzhenitsyn

“…if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” -Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 1, The Gathering Storm (London: Cassell, 1948, 272, on the British guarantee to Poland in Spring 1939.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? . . .” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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IPAD: Why isn’t the loyalty card app on the ipad?

Sunday, September 30, 2012

why isn’t the loyalty card app on the ipad?

seems strange to me.

#####


GUNS: Shotgun Holds Off Home Intruders

Saturday, September 29, 2012

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/63-year-old-cancer-patient-armed-with-a-shotgun-holds-off-home-intruders/

Crime
63-Year-Old Cancer Patient Armed With a Shotgun Holds Off Home Intruders
Posted on September 22, 2012 at 12:46pm
by Madeleine Morgenstern Madeleine Morgenstern

*** begin quote ***

Smith said police believe the two picked the front door lock with a credit card and that they found a chair in the woods outside used for staking out the home.

“It’s not a fun experience,” Smith told WOOD. “You don‘t really know what’s really going on and it’s not, it’s not what you might think. It’s not like the movies, you know it‘s pretty serious when you’re holding a gun on somebody.”

He continued, “You don‘t know if they’re gonna pull a gun out or try to take your gun away from you or get you in a corner when you’re forced to shoot them. And I was trying to keep that from happening.”

*** end quote ***

He’d have done them a favor by blowing them away.

Yeah, I know that’s a terrible thing to say. Would they be so charitable to him? Or to his wife if they caught his wife at home alone?

Breaking into a home is very serious.

Note that it took “five minutes” for the police to get there. The gun was there when needed.

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POLITICAL: France has a top rate of 75%

Friday, September 28, 2012

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/28/us-france-budget-idUSBRE88R0AK20120928

France taxes rich and business to slash deficit
By Daniel Flynn and Leigh Thomas
PARIS | Fri Sep 28, 2012 7:49am EDT

*** begin quote ***

(Reuters) – President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government unveiled sharp tax hikes on business and the rich on Friday in a 2013 budget aimed at showing France has the fiscal rigor to remain at the core of the euro zone.

The package will recoup 30 billion euros ($39 billion) for the public purse with a goal of narrowing the deficit to 3.0 percent of national output next year from 4.5 percent this year – France’s toughest single belt-tightening in 30 years.

But with record unemployment and a barrage of data pointing to economic stagnation, there are fears the deficit target will slip as France falls short of the modest 0.8 percent economic growth rate on which it is banking for next year.

*** end quote ***

Here’s a country that’s going be a laboratory for high tax rates.

Better them than us.

The USA has growth rate below 2 and the true unemployment rate (U6) above 15%.

The Gooferment deficit, debt, and spending are spinning out of control; the Senate doesn’t even deign to do a budget.

I’m no fan of either party’s offering. But four more years of European style Gooferment is going to push the economy over the edge.

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MONEY: Understanding the tax on stupidity

Friday, September 28, 2012

http://www.ricedelman.com/cs/pressroom/pressroom_detail?pressrelease.id=3268

Against All Odds

For Immediate Release
September 21, 2012

If you insist on playing the lottery, make sure you know the true risks and downsides.

*** begin quote ***

When you step outside your home, are you afraid of being struck by lightning? Of course not. You know the chances are remote.

But you were more likely to be hit by lightning twice than you were to win the top prize in the Mega Millions lottery jackpot when it paid a record $640 million recently. Indeed, you were 176 times more likely to be struck and killed by lightning than to win that jackpot, four times more likely to be killed by fireworks and nine times more likely to die from a television falling on your head.

Just so we’re clear, I’m not a big fan of buying lottery tickets. Essentially they are a tax on the stupid. Because of the infinitesimal odds against winning, you’re giving dollars to the government for nothing in return.

*** and ***

Sadly, those who spend hundreds of dollars annually hoping to become an overnight multimillionaire will never achieve the riches they seek. But if they instead placed that money into the average stock mutual fund every day for 45 years, they would indeed become wealthy.

It’s true: $3 invested every day for 45 years, assuming it grows at the historic 10% annual return that the S&P 500 Stock Index has earned on average since 1926 according to Ibbotson Associates, would be worth nearly $1 million.

*** end quote ***

An excellent and perceptive argument against the chronic lottery player.

Some folks are “lucky”. But many “gamblers” I know, even “lucky” ones, avoid the lottery in any form because they are “not lucky at it”.

Most persuasive part of Rick’s indictment is that $3 / day makes you a millionaire in 45 years!

I didn’t realize that. Wish I had 45 years ago.

I do remember some NYC bank had the adage “small leaks sink great ships” embossed on its passbook savings. Maybe it should have been “three bucks a day makes you a millionaire in 45 years”.

Do Americans save ANYTHING any more?

I also noticed today driving through a “poor  section” of town that everyone I saw was smoking. Hmmm, a causal relation?

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