Last week I dropped Lance Armstrong and his website on you. I said I'd do updates. I said I would become healthier and svelte (great word). I know Millions hang on my every word, that would be Fred Millions, an old friend, who doesn't so much hang as spit... But, never mind the technicalities.
So, it has been about a week... I went to the Doctor's office today and got prodded and poked... The scale showed 219: 5 lbs less than last week! I adjusted my el cheapo bathroom scale to show the same weight as the balance beam scale at the doctor's office so I can check it everyday to keep myself motivated.
Of course, the primary reason for this is to allow my medication to get my cholesterol back under control by eliminating most fat and nearly all animal fat from my diet - but I decided that if I had to, ugh, diet anyway I might as well try to get rid of the 50 or so extra pounds I've been lugging with me everywhere.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
about the current foreclosure crisis...
There is a lot of rant about borrowers who did something fraudulent and got a mortgage on a half million dollar house while having near zero income.
There might, indeed, be such cases, but those people would be "investors" looking to flip the house quickly in an UP market and not people buying a house in which to live...
We have seen the govt give away nearly a trillion dollars to banks, etc. which bought all those fraudulent notes (supposedly) in a effort (supposedly) to help the people of the US by stabilizing the economy and getting banks to again write mortgage loans.
We have not seen any value received for those dollars nor have we seen any help for real homeowners who are really caught in the double squeeze: lost income with which to pay the mortgage coupled with loss of value of the property making it impossible to refinance at a lower rate of interest, or to sell.
The outright gifts of hundreds of billions of our dollars to the banks and to Wall St undoubtedly were a great help to the bankers and financiers who received the largesse of the government, using our future tax dollars as a source, but there is not a hint of benefit to the millions of working class homeowners caught in this bursting bubble while attempting to live on fraction of their former income with rapid inflation of costs of living and tumbling value of their largest investment and 401ks that are worth a fraction of last years values.
The real beauty (?) of the situation is that it's not even possible to sell the house and cut the family's living expenses by moving into a lesser accommodation until conditions improve.
Instead we millions are caught in a situation where only bankruptcy will allow us out of the contracts we're in. This process will make many people a lot of money at the expense of millions of families made destitute and lacking even the credit score needed to rent a home.
I have read, with interest, for the past several months the crap put out by holier-than-thou people who are not in that situation - perhaps they haven't yet bought a home, perhaps they were lucky enough to have already paid it off or perhaps they have not yet lost one of the jobs they depend on to pay expenses or perhaps they are simply wealthy enough that losing 50% of their net worth or 75% or more still allows them to meet all obligations, whatever their situation - the one thing I've seen little expressed is common humanity.
The thing I have seen is a predatory glee, a sense of unbridled opportunism held in check only until they feel the property can be snatched up (stolen - is my thought) from the distraught people who are poised on the brink or who have already fallen into the chasm of foreclosure and bankruptcy and thus have made or will make these great bargain properties available to be exploited.
I'm happy for the good people who have, thus far, dodged the bullet - I really am - most of them are hard working people who provide jobs for many others and are entitled to the fruits of their labor. That being said, let me add that they are no more entitled to the fruits of their labor than are their employees.
The thing is that if this economy continues to slow, as it appears that it will, more and more of the comfortable middle class business owners will find themselves closing the doors of their businesses after having exhausted all that they had in trying to keep it going. At that point most of them will be in the same rough spot that so many now occupy, debt without means to pay. The thing that is different about small business owners (and large business owners) is that most consider themselves to be far above the common herd of mankind: "There are chiefs and there are indians." Nearly none will accept the idea that "the luck of the draw" had anything to do with their success, rather it was their innate business acumen which brought success. That's so true, until they, too, fail.
I may not lose my house, but like many, I have lost nearly half of my former household income - and what used to be a normal living expense has become a monthly struggle to meet which is added to the knowledge that it is worth less than the mortgaged value and might not recover for a long time. It cannot be sold except through a "short sale" and even that is difficult to secure.
For whatever reason, it seems that the lenders would rather foreclose than accept a short sale of the property - making it pretty much impossible to escape the court at some point for many families. I don't understand the reasons for the situation with the short sales but I'm confident that it has to do with the bottom-line of the lenders as that is all that matters to them.
This is a difficult and dangerous situation for the country as a whole, we are in the process of creating a new class in modern America - "the dispossessed" - which will number in the tens of millions before this sorry exercise is finished (if something of substance is not done quickly) and they - possibly we - will be cynical of government promises and hostile to big banking and other financial interests and aware that we have been sold out by the country as a whole for the profit of the few who were able to plunder the public treasury at will while our neighbors and former friends stood by and did nothing except call a real estate agent to check out foreclosures..
In the aftermath of the bankruptcy for many of the families involved will be the fact that with a sullied credit record employment will be much more difficult to obtain than it was before and even when the job market begins its rebound those people will be "damaged goods" relegated to less desirable positions as a result of having been driven to bankruptcy in this recession.
Not only that, but to add injury to insult, they will pay higher car insurance (people with lower credit scores have more claims?) and be required to post cash deposits for utilities and will be denied many opportunities which might otherwise have been theirs simply because they have damaged credit. As might happen to some, finding a job while having no permanent address, say camping in your RV at a convenient roadside rest area, is even harder.
Had the government really intended to solve this situation, they - all of them - would not have been stampeded like mindless cattle into hocking our grandchildren - more than they were before the fact - by handing out the money to the financiers without conditions or oversight, rather they would have deliberated and decided the benefits versus the cost of actions that might be taken and might have done nothing, or might have actually tried to use the money to help the people who actually needed help (not really likely)...
Had that happened, there would be a lot of bankers and Wall Street types in the soup lines with us commoners and the treasury would be a trillion dollars or so less in debt. The foreclosure crisis would be what it is and everything would still be as stated before, only they wouldn't need to raise taxes as much.
There is some hope that the new administration will figure out a way to keep us, in our millions, from being forced to default on our mortgage loans
but I'm afraid it's a slender hope, at best, as I don't see any understanding of what's at stake shining through the rhetoric coming from Washington, DC.
You can always buy gold, if you have any cash left after paying the 30% interest on your formerly 5% interest credit card balances. The gold merchants are looking for you, right now, trying to unload the stuff they've been stuck with since 1982. I always think it's amusing that they, who have the gold, want to exchange it for your soon-to-be-worthless, according to them, federal reserve notes... I'm missing something on that one.
There might, indeed, be such cases, but those people would be "investors" looking to flip the house quickly in an UP market and not people buying a house in which to live...
We have seen the govt give away nearly a trillion dollars to banks, etc. which bought all those fraudulent notes (supposedly) in a effort (supposedly) to help the people of the US by stabilizing the economy and getting banks to again write mortgage loans.
We have not seen any value received for those dollars nor have we seen any help for real homeowners who are really caught in the double squeeze: lost income with which to pay the mortgage coupled with loss of value of the property making it impossible to refinance at a lower rate of interest, or to sell.
The outright gifts of hundreds of billions of our dollars to the banks and to Wall St undoubtedly were a great help to the bankers and financiers who received the largesse of the government, using our future tax dollars as a source, but there is not a hint of benefit to the millions of working class homeowners caught in this bursting bubble while attempting to live on fraction of their former income with rapid inflation of costs of living and tumbling value of their largest investment and 401ks that are worth a fraction of last years values.
The real beauty (?) of the situation is that it's not even possible to sell the house and cut the family's living expenses by moving into a lesser accommodation until conditions improve.
Instead we millions are caught in a situation where only bankruptcy will allow us out of the contracts we're in. This process will make many people a lot of money at the expense of millions of families made destitute and lacking even the credit score needed to rent a home.
I have read, with interest, for the past several months the crap put out by holier-than-thou people who are not in that situation - perhaps they haven't yet bought a home, perhaps they were lucky enough to have already paid it off or perhaps they have not yet lost one of the jobs they depend on to pay expenses or perhaps they are simply wealthy enough that losing 50% of their net worth or 75% or more still allows them to meet all obligations, whatever their situation - the one thing I've seen little expressed is common humanity.
The thing I have seen is a predatory glee, a sense of unbridled opportunism held in check only until they feel the property can be snatched up (stolen - is my thought) from the distraught people who are poised on the brink or who have already fallen into the chasm of foreclosure and bankruptcy and thus have made or will make these great bargain properties available to be exploited.
I'm happy for the good people who have, thus far, dodged the bullet - I really am - most of them are hard working people who provide jobs for many others and are entitled to the fruits of their labor. That being said, let me add that they are no more entitled to the fruits of their labor than are their employees.
The thing is that if this economy continues to slow, as it appears that it will, more and more of the comfortable middle class business owners will find themselves closing the doors of their businesses after having exhausted all that they had in trying to keep it going. At that point most of them will be in the same rough spot that so many now occupy, debt without means to pay. The thing that is different about small business owners (and large business owners) is that most consider themselves to be far above the common herd of mankind: "There are chiefs and there are indians." Nearly none will accept the idea that "the luck of the draw" had anything to do with their success, rather it was their innate business acumen which brought success. That's so true, until they, too, fail.
I may not lose my house, but like many, I have lost nearly half of my former household income - and what used to be a normal living expense has become a monthly struggle to meet which is added to the knowledge that it is worth less than the mortgaged value and might not recover for a long time. It cannot be sold except through a "short sale" and even that is difficult to secure.
For whatever reason, it seems that the lenders would rather foreclose than accept a short sale of the property - making it pretty much impossible to escape the court at some point for many families. I don't understand the reasons for the situation with the short sales but I'm confident that it has to do with the bottom-line of the lenders as that is all that matters to them.
This is a difficult and dangerous situation for the country as a whole, we are in the process of creating a new class in modern America - "the dispossessed" - which will number in the tens of millions before this sorry exercise is finished (if something of substance is not done quickly) and they - possibly we - will be cynical of government promises and hostile to big banking and other financial interests and aware that we have been sold out by the country as a whole for the profit of the few who were able to plunder the public treasury at will while our neighbors and former friends stood by and did nothing except call a real estate agent to check out foreclosures..
In the aftermath of the bankruptcy for many of the families involved will be the fact that with a sullied credit record employment will be much more difficult to obtain than it was before and even when the job market begins its rebound those people will be "damaged goods" relegated to less desirable positions as a result of having been driven to bankruptcy in this recession.
Not only that, but to add injury to insult, they will pay higher car insurance (people with lower credit scores have more claims?) and be required to post cash deposits for utilities and will be denied many opportunities which might otherwise have been theirs simply because they have damaged credit. As might happen to some, finding a job while having no permanent address, say camping in your RV at a convenient roadside rest area, is even harder.
Had the government really intended to solve this situation, they - all of them - would not have been stampeded like mindless cattle into hocking our grandchildren - more than they were before the fact - by handing out the money to the financiers without conditions or oversight, rather they would have deliberated and decided the benefits versus the cost of actions that might be taken and might have done nothing, or might have actually tried to use the money to help the people who actually needed help (not really likely)...
Had that happened, there would be a lot of bankers and Wall Street types in the soup lines with us commoners and the treasury would be a trillion dollars or so less in debt. The foreclosure crisis would be what it is and everything would still be as stated before, only they wouldn't need to raise taxes as much.
There is some hope that the new administration will figure out a way to keep us, in our millions, from being forced to default on our mortgage loans
but I'm afraid it's a slender hope, at best, as I don't see any understanding of what's at stake shining through the rhetoric coming from Washington, DC.
You can always buy gold, if you have any cash left after paying the 30% interest on your formerly 5% interest credit card balances. The gold merchants are looking for you, right now, trying to unload the stuff they've been stuck with since 1982. I always think it's amusing that they, who have the gold, want to exchange it for your soon-to-be-worthless, according to them, federal reserve notes... I'm missing something on that one.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Trying to shape up
2008 was the worst year of my life, in almost every respect.
There have been quite a few years included in that life and a few of them have been pretty bad. 2008, though definitely thus far, has appropriated the black laurels as worst to date. On the positive side of the balance, it has ended. Therefore one must optimistically move onward with what is left and attempt to make this year better and maybe even outstanding as a good period.
For myself, I have decided to make it (2009) a new beginning and to reach for excellence, as the years go, by having it be the start of something positive. I know all about the downturns in almost everything, economy, personal finance and home values leap to mind and then there are the diminished employment prospects due to the aforementioned downturns. Those items, although certainly significant and daunting, are background to life itself and should be considered as such.
So - I have decided to become thinner and healthier in 2009 and to thereby reverse a long trend of becoming less healthy and less svelte ( a cool word not often applied to old men) by eating foods which are lower in fat and other potentially harmful substances. Lest you think that I have become geriatrically narcissistic in my advanced and hypertrophied age, I assure you that it is all due to a phone call from my physician's assistant informing me that in spite of the ongoing medication, etc. - my cholesterol level has started to increase again.
I was treated (in every sense of the word) ten years ago, to a quadruple coronary artery bypass which was offered as the only way to long delay my certain, but uncomfortably (then) imminent demise. I accepted with an unaccustomed alacrity, I'm not afraid to die - I'm just in no hurry - and had the surgery. It was not really a treat, in the sense of receiving something pleasant - unless one counts survival as pleasant, because it was scary and uncomfortable - particularly the removal of the abdominal drainage tubes.
The short-term Frankenstein aspect, provided by the metal staples in my right arm and right leg as well as my chest, was fun ( especially when watching a summer lightning storm from the patio - scared my poor wife, who insisted that I get inside before I added "electrocuted" to my other accomplishments) even though I couldn't get out much to show it off. The scars are still pretty impressive, though, even after ten years.
So anyway, here I am - fat, dumb and working on happy, when the doc's office calls and tells me my cholesterol is again becoming elevated. We discussed diet, we discussed medication (of which I already take too much) and decided to try diet modification. I have become lax, in the last few years, about the foods I eat, pretending to be, simply, a gray-bearded teenager. Not that I had become the triple cheeseburger at the fast-food stand twice a day variety but I was not a lot better. Today that has changed. Call it dietary epiphany if you like obscure words as much as I do. Otherwise just call it a revelation of the obvious.
The Doc sent me a letter showing the healthy foods which I should be eating and listing the unhealthy foods which I should avoid, I have 14 earlier letters showing essentially the same thing. I know that stuff, I even paid attention for a few years. But then I drifted into culinary non-compliance (once again - or maybe thrice again) and started eating too much fat, too much meat, too much sugar and all those other good tasting no - nos, did I mention cheesecake or chocolate.
Someone in the medical profession once told me that he thought that our problem is evolutionary in origin. We are omnivorous hunter-gatherers by heredity and we select for energy foods to allow us to live for days without eating and still retain the energy to run down and club a struggling moose to be the guest-of-honor at dinner.
The problem today is that we eat the stuff we like but don't go for days without eating and then we just drive to the closest supermarket to buy a chunk of pre-caught moose: no running down. Just sauntering cooly down and emerging with a week supply of moose to eat at one sitting, and more for the next day - and the next. It's not so much what we're eating as it is how often we eat it and what we do between those feedings that loads up the arteries.
I could, of couse, choose to run to the market every third day and buy my half pound steak to eat that day and then run there again every day but only buy and eat on the third day. That probably would help. Still: our hunter-gatherer forebears usually only lived long enough to procreate and to raise the offspring to about 8 or 9 years old before succumbing to some fatal incident. For that reason, if for no other, longevity of a mature individual human far past breeding age was really not a factor of importance in our genetic heritage. We, of course, have the leisure time to ponder the meaning of life rather than simply trying to preserve it until the next moose falls.
I, for one, have pondered long and hard the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Thus far I have arrived at no final conclusion and, therefore, desire more pondering time which, oddly enough, leads back to the reason for this whole blog entry. I'm too fat and my cholesterol is too high. Today I found a website, which you might already know but of which I was unaware.
Lance Armstrong sponsors it and might even write some of it if he has the time. It's about living longer and living better by, well, living better. Just follow the link above and you will see what he has there. There are tables of nutrition data and recipes along with other information on exercise as well as tools to help you - and me, too - get to the weight you want, whether you need to lose or to gain, in a safe and proven manner. I'm back to calorie counting and even more essential, for my body, watching my fat intake and I have used Lance's tools to compute what my daily calorie intake needs to be in order to achieve my publicly stated goals.
I need to lose fifty pounds. More would probably not hurt. That not withstanding fifty pounds is my current goal and I have selected 2.5 pounds per week as a reasonably number by which to gauge my progress. That simply means that I need to consume 912 calories, per week, less than what is required to maintain my current weight.
It sounds simple and it really is, but not so easy, first: the site provides a calculator to tell you what it takes, in calories, to maintain your current weight and then based upon your input it tells you how large a reduction is required to attune your to body to your goal. From there it becomes a process of food selection and learning how to maximize nutrition while at the same time providing yourself with food you will want to eat. If you are relatively young the benefit of doing it now will last a lifetime. If, like me, your only connection to "young" is your grandchildren doing it now it will still last a lifetime, just not as many years as it might have had you started earlier.
And it does not have to be unappetizing "cardboard" food, the site provides you the tools to make recipes for the foods you like, while understanding the calories and other things involved and also provides suggestions of how you might modify a recipe to lower the calories (if needed) or to provide more nutrition if that is your goal. It is a great resource and can be an aid in accomplishing your goals, whether dietary help or strength building information is your interest.
Tune in next week for more.
There have been quite a few years included in that life and a few of them have been pretty bad. 2008, though definitely thus far, has appropriated the black laurels as worst to date. On the positive side of the balance, it has ended. Therefore one must optimistically move onward with what is left and attempt to make this year better and maybe even outstanding as a good period.
For myself, I have decided to make it (2009) a new beginning and to reach for excellence, as the years go, by having it be the start of something positive. I know all about the downturns in almost everything, economy, personal finance and home values leap to mind and then there are the diminished employment prospects due to the aforementioned downturns. Those items, although certainly significant and daunting, are background to life itself and should be considered as such.
So - I have decided to become thinner and healthier in 2009 and to thereby reverse a long trend of becoming less healthy and less svelte ( a cool word not often applied to old men) by eating foods which are lower in fat and other potentially harmful substances. Lest you think that I have become geriatrically narcissistic in my advanced and hypertrophied age, I assure you that it is all due to a phone call from my physician's assistant informing me that in spite of the ongoing medication, etc. - my cholesterol level has started to increase again.
I was treated (in every sense of the word) ten years ago, to a quadruple coronary artery bypass which was offered as the only way to long delay my certain, but uncomfortably (then) imminent demise. I accepted with an unaccustomed alacrity, I'm not afraid to die - I'm just in no hurry - and had the surgery. It was not really a treat, in the sense of receiving something pleasant - unless one counts survival as pleasant, because it was scary and uncomfortable - particularly the removal of the abdominal drainage tubes.
The short-term Frankenstein aspect, provided by the metal staples in my right arm and right leg as well as my chest, was fun ( especially when watching a summer lightning storm from the patio - scared my poor wife, who insisted that I get inside before I added "electrocuted" to my other accomplishments) even though I couldn't get out much to show it off. The scars are still pretty impressive, though, even after ten years.
So anyway, here I am - fat, dumb and working on happy, when the doc's office calls and tells me my cholesterol is again becoming elevated. We discussed diet, we discussed medication (of which I already take too much) and decided to try diet modification. I have become lax, in the last few years, about the foods I eat, pretending to be, simply, a gray-bearded teenager. Not that I had become the triple cheeseburger at the fast-food stand twice a day variety but I was not a lot better. Today that has changed. Call it dietary epiphany if you like obscure words as much as I do. Otherwise just call it a revelation of the obvious.
The Doc sent me a letter showing the healthy foods which I should be eating and listing the unhealthy foods which I should avoid, I have 14 earlier letters showing essentially the same thing. I know that stuff, I even paid attention for a few years. But then I drifted into culinary non-compliance (once again - or maybe thrice again) and started eating too much fat, too much meat, too much sugar and all those other good tasting no - nos, did I mention cheesecake or chocolate.
Someone in the medical profession once told me that he thought that our problem is evolutionary in origin. We are omnivorous hunter-gatherers by heredity and we select for energy foods to allow us to live for days without eating and still retain the energy to run down and club a struggling moose to be the guest-of-honor at dinner.
The problem today is that we eat the stuff we like but don't go for days without eating and then we just drive to the closest supermarket to buy a chunk of pre-caught moose: no running down. Just sauntering cooly down and emerging with a week supply of moose to eat at one sitting, and more for the next day - and the next. It's not so much what we're eating as it is how often we eat it and what we do between those feedings that loads up the arteries.
I could, of couse, choose to run to the market every third day and buy my half pound steak to eat that day and then run there again every day but only buy and eat on the third day. That probably would help. Still: our hunter-gatherer forebears usually only lived long enough to procreate and to raise the offspring to about 8 or 9 years old before succumbing to some fatal incident. For that reason, if for no other, longevity of a mature individual human far past breeding age was really not a factor of importance in our genetic heritage. We, of course, have the leisure time to ponder the meaning of life rather than simply trying to preserve it until the next moose falls.
I, for one, have pondered long and hard the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Thus far I have arrived at no final conclusion and, therefore, desire more pondering time which, oddly enough, leads back to the reason for this whole blog entry. I'm too fat and my cholesterol is too high. Today I found a website, which you might already know but of which I was unaware.
Lance Armstrong sponsors it and might even write some of it if he has the time. It's about living longer and living better by, well, living better. Just follow the link above and you will see what he has there. There are tables of nutrition data and recipes along with other information on exercise as well as tools to help you - and me, too - get to the weight you want, whether you need to lose or to gain, in a safe and proven manner. I'm back to calorie counting and even more essential, for my body, watching my fat intake and I have used Lance's tools to compute what my daily calorie intake needs to be in order to achieve my publicly stated goals.
I need to lose fifty pounds. More would probably not hurt. That not withstanding fifty pounds is my current goal and I have selected 2.5 pounds per week as a reasonably number by which to gauge my progress. That simply means that I need to consume 912 calories, per week, less than what is required to maintain my current weight.
It sounds simple and it really is, but not so easy, first: the site provides a calculator to tell you what it takes, in calories, to maintain your current weight and then based upon your input it tells you how large a reduction is required to attune your to body to your goal. From there it becomes a process of food selection and learning how to maximize nutrition while at the same time providing yourself with food you will want to eat. If you are relatively young the benefit of doing it now will last a lifetime. If, like me, your only connection to "young" is your grandchildren doing it now it will still last a lifetime, just not as many years as it might have had you started earlier.
And it does not have to be unappetizing "cardboard" food, the site provides you the tools to make recipes for the foods you like, while understanding the calories and other things involved and also provides suggestions of how you might modify a recipe to lower the calories (if needed) or to provide more nutrition if that is your goal. It is a great resource and can be an aid in accomplishing your goals, whether dietary help or strength building information is your interest.
Tune in next week for more.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Obama Open Government Memoranda: New President, different approach.
by Michael Salla, Ph.D., Honolulu Exopolitics Examiner
On his first full day as President, Barack Obama issued two Executive Orders and three Presidential Memorandum that will start an era of transparent and Open Government. The White House Office of the Press Secretary released a statement outlining the sweeping changes to be implemented by the Obama administration. In his Presidential Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, and the Presidential Memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act President Obama instructed :
"... all members of his administration to operate under principles of openness, transparency and of engaging citizens with their government. To implement these principles and make them concrete, the Memorandum on Transparency instructs three senior officials to produce an Open Government Directive within 120 days directing specific actions to implement the principles in the Memorandum. And the Memorandum on FOIA instructs the Attorney General to in that same time period issue new guidelines to the government implementing those same principles of openness and transparency in the FOIA context."
President Obama emphasized that his Administration “is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.” ...
see more at: The Examiner
My comments:
The new President and the new government have many detractors. There are a great many people in this nation who are predisposed to consider any action proposed, or taken, by The President or his administration to be anti-American and in some way totalitarian socialism at work to subvert our national heritage, identity and well-being. It remains to be seen whether there is any validity to their position. I prefer to adopt a supportive, if reserved, position and await actions and events - without, however, abdicating the right to offer constructive criticism to the leaders of the new government.
It is, whether you approve or not, the government of all Americans - nationals of The United States of America, that is - and must, if you claim to be a patriot, be supported unless your claim that it is the beginning of a totalitarian dictatorship should prove to be correct. I might remind you, in fact I will remind you, that as recently as January 19th some left-wing websites were still preaching that President Bush and "Darth Cheney" would somehow contrive to circumvent the election and refuse to relinquish their offices. That has not proven to be correct, in spite of all the venomous rhetoric served up and swallowed by the leftist conspiracy theorists and their rapt followers.
That tinfoil hat leftist excreta having been put to rest, for now, we are now being inundated by parallel , if not identical, excreta from the tinfoil hat right. As a free-born American citizen, and- thank God -that is now the only kind we have, you have the right to disagree with your government and to say so. You might, arguably, have the right to malign the office holders unjustly and to accuse them of any kind of scurrilous action of which you can conceive including unjust ad hominem attacks, note that I said "arguably", that perceived right is the province of the courts - however, those actions are definitely not in the best interests of The Republic.
A more constructive course of action for a reasonable citizen would be to watch events and to communicate to your elected representatives, including President Obama, areas where you believe things are being done incorrectly or improperly - you might even consider offering ideas as to how things might be done correctly.
President Obama won this election by putting in place a communications network, over the internet and in person, which collected people who thought that the paradigm being followed by the administration of President Bush was missing the point, as far as they were concerned. It was not done by Bush-haters or McCain haters. It was not done by haters, period. It was done by millions of people, mostly working class, who felt that the government was concentrating effort, and tax dollars, in the wrong places, with the wrong priorities. It was done by the efforts of millions of people who were, and are, optimistic enough to care - and to act.
President Bush is justly proud that his efforts helped to keep us free from terrorist attacks in our homeland subsequent to September 11, 2001. The Obama campaign, as far as I know, did not belittle nor diminish that achievment and neither do I. Everyone is aware that it is possible, even likely, that the international terrorists against whom we are making war will seek to strike at us - in The United States - now that we have a new administration in charge. Electing Senator McCain would not have changed that. The terrorists will be probing for weak points and would have done so without regard to whom we had elected. Whether they will perceive that there is, in fact, an opportunity to strike effectively and will follow it up is at this point unknown.
Many question whether President Obama's administration will be able to defend against or follow up such an attack, should it occur, as well as a Republican administration would be able to do. I'm sure that the terrorists likewise are wondering. I think that President Obama's detractors do a major disservice to the nation by airing those doubts and in effect offering reassurance to the terrorists that they might succeed where they surely would not against a republican government. If you have doubts about our national readiness to prevent or to retaliate against such an attack - I urge you to communicate with your elected representatives: members of Congress, Senators and the office of the President in private rather than using newspapers or radio or television or the internet as a forum to sound off about our possible weakness or lack of preparedness.
There are people in the world, many of them, who are - for one reason or another - not friends of the US. Unfortunately a lot of them also live within our borders, I'm not - in this instance - talking about illegal immigrants, or any other group of immigrants, I'm referring to those among us who seem, always, to take the attitude that whatever the US wants or does is wrong. I'm not asking for a witch-hunt or any kind of latter-day pogrom, I'm asking for a little introspection by Americans who feel alienated from the government, populace and apparent aims of the United States.
This country is not, unfortunately, always right. We have made a lot of mistakes during our approximately two and a quarter centuries of self government. We - OK, our ancestors, - allowed slavery to persist, for economic reasons even though everyone knew - KNEW- that it was wrong. We, the part of us that is European in descent, for most of us that would be only one side of the family tree - nearly exterminated the Native Americans. A lot, if not most of us, are descended either from those slaves or from those Native Americans (often both) as well as from the Europeans and a lot of us are too new the the country to have ancestors who were involved in any way in any of it. There were a lot of ugly things going on in this favored land in colonial times and in early independence and right up to this very day some of it still rears its ugly head.
But, and this is a very large "but", we have the ability to change and to fulfill the promises made by the founding fathers of the nation, even if they might have been a bit hypocritical in the documents which they left us. We don't have to keep our brothers and sisters down in order that we might reach the top. We can all advance together and actually form that "more perfect union" and make available to everyone "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" - unfortunately we cannot guaranty that everyone will be a "rock star" with money for nothing and... well you know. But, you've got to admit that it does sound good. Unfortunately it does not work that way.
To be wealthy you have to either be very lucky- inheriting is good... Or you have to work very hard - and be very lucky, or you have to be very smart - and very lucky, or be very talented - and very lucky, or steal the money - and be lucky enough to not get caught. Ok, we failed all those, we missed the lucky part. Most of us are pretty smart and we work pretty hard and we are pretty talented at something, some of us are very talented but still didn't have the luck it took to make the big bucks. It's a sorry deal, but, no matter how many people are in the pyramid, there's still only one at the top.
Support your country, try to make it what it promises to be. Support your country as you would a beloved family member, not by hiding the faults, but by trying - in private, out of the view of outsiders, to counsel for correction. This Nation, and this People, is worth that consideration.
Monday, January 19, 2009
MAJOR SECURITY FOR PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION
From "The Scotsman.com"
Published Date: 20 January 2009
By Chris Stephen in New York
WASHINGTON DC is going into lockdown today for the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, the biggest single-day security operation the world has ever seen.
With crowds of up to four million predicted and most of the world tuning in, a 3.5sq mile area of the city will be sealed off, with entry possible only via airport-style metal detectors.
Further security cordons extend in concentric rings out from the Capitol building, with all bridges sealed off within an even larger area. Some 50,000 security personnel from 58 services will flood the city, in an operation costing $80 million (£55 million).
"It will be the most security, as far as I'm aware, that any inauguration's had," the homeland security chief, Michael Chertoff, said.
Drawing on the experience of the 2005 London Tube bombings, when the bombers used outlying stations as staging points, 1,000 plainclothes FBI officers in 155 teams will mingle with crowds at subway stations across Washington, hoping to spot would-be terrorists.
At the tip of the security spear are the so-called "Men in Black", a 100-strong unit of snipers from the Secret Service.
Armed with a customised weapon, the snipers are able to hit a target the size of a saucer at 1,000 yards.
From early this morning, they will be deployed in teams of two on rooftops along Pennsylvania Avenue to watch over the presidential motorcade.
When one of the team spots a threat, the other trains his rifle on the target while the spotter takes the role of "wind caller", advising on corrections for wind based on flags and chimney smoke – one reason the Secret Service says the more flags on display the better.
Pictures from Washington's 5,265 surveillance cameras will be fed into a central security command centre.
More than 8,000 state and federal police are in the city, with attention centred on the 1.9-mile Mall, where more than a million will gather to watch the swearing-in on giant TV screens.
An additional 10,000 part-time National Guard troops will be deployed, with 20,000 in reserve, along with an undisclosed number of regular troops.
Hoteliers, meanwhile, have received training on how to spot a terrorist threat, with the authorities mindful that the Mumbai attackers in November singled out hotels as "soft" targets.
Chemical, biological and radiological detectors, installed after 9/11, are already in place, and public buildings will be closed.
Coast Guard craft will patrol the Potomac river, and F-16 fighters will roam the skies, with all civil air traffic banned. "I think we are ready," Mr Chertoff said. "Part of my job is to hope for the best and plan for the worst."
For today, the "worst" includes not just the risk of a terrorist attack, but managing huge crowds and guarding against stampedes or injury during and after the noon ceremony.
Much of the security effort is focused on the internet, with unprecedented attention being paid both to al-Qaeda cyber traffic and messages sent by so-called white supremacists.
In August, a group of white neo-Nazis with sniper rifles were arrested at the Democratic Party's Denver convention.
The only public airing of neo-Nazi views has been the declaration by the National Knights, a faction of the Ku Klux Klan, that they will wear black armbands and display the US flag upside down to protest at the inauguration of the first mixed-race president.
'We should learn from King's vision'
THE president-elect yesterday brought a whole new level of interest to "watching paint dry".
Barack Obama helped paint a wall at a shelter for homeless teenagers in south-east Washington, an area marred by poverty and deprivation, to mark the public holiday celebrating the birth of the assassinated civil rights icon Martin Luther King.
The shelter provides training for the youngsters and places an emphasis on self-reliance, a virtue that Mr Obama extolled during his election campaign.
"Dr Martin Luther King's was a life lived in loving service to others," said Mr Obama, who, in earlier years, worked in similar projects for the unemployed of Chicago's South Side. "His was a vision that all Americans might share the freedom to make of our lives what we will."
He appealed to the nation to remember King through service to others.
"As we honour that legacy, it's not a day just to pause and reflect – it's a day to act," he said.
"I ask the American people to turn today's efforts into an ongoing commitment to enriching the lives of others in their communities, their cities and their country."
See original article
One hopes that the deranged and/or extremist element of the US population as well as their ilk from other lands will stay away from the capitol Tuesday, and that this historic event will be allowed to occur without untoward incident. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the election results this is democracy in action and is the will of the majority of the people of the land and should be respected by all for that reason. To president George W. Bush: Thank you for all the good you have done and best wishes for the future. To President-elect Barrack Obama: Congratulations upon achieving the highest office of the nation and best wishes for a successful term of office and for a satisfying future.
Published Date: 20 January 2009
By Chris Stephen in New York
WASHINGTON DC is going into lockdown today for the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, the biggest single-day security operation the world has ever seen.
With crowds of up to four million predicted and most of the world tuning in, a 3.5sq mile area of the city will be sealed off, with entry possible only via airport-style metal detectors.
Further security cordons extend in concentric rings out from the Capitol building, with all bridges sealed off within an even larger area. Some 50,000 security personnel from 58 services will flood the city, in an operation costing $80 million (£55 million).
"It will be the most security, as far as I'm aware, that any inauguration's had," the homeland security chief, Michael Chertoff, said.
Drawing on the experience of the 2005 London Tube bombings, when the bombers used outlying stations as staging points, 1,000 plainclothes FBI officers in 155 teams will mingle with crowds at subway stations across Washington, hoping to spot would-be terrorists.
At the tip of the security spear are the so-called "Men in Black", a 100-strong unit of snipers from the Secret Service.
Armed with a customised weapon, the snipers are able to hit a target the size of a saucer at 1,000 yards.
From early this morning, they will be deployed in teams of two on rooftops along Pennsylvania Avenue to watch over the presidential motorcade.
When one of the team spots a threat, the other trains his rifle on the target while the spotter takes the role of "wind caller", advising on corrections for wind based on flags and chimney smoke – one reason the Secret Service says the more flags on display the better.
Pictures from Washington's 5,265 surveillance cameras will be fed into a central security command centre.
More than 8,000 state and federal police are in the city, with attention centred on the 1.9-mile Mall, where more than a million will gather to watch the swearing-in on giant TV screens.
An additional 10,000 part-time National Guard troops will be deployed, with 20,000 in reserve, along with an undisclosed number of regular troops.
Hoteliers, meanwhile, have received training on how to spot a terrorist threat, with the authorities mindful that the Mumbai attackers in November singled out hotels as "soft" targets.
Chemical, biological and radiological detectors, installed after 9/11, are already in place, and public buildings will be closed.
Coast Guard craft will patrol the Potomac river, and F-16 fighters will roam the skies, with all civil air traffic banned. "I think we are ready," Mr Chertoff said. "Part of my job is to hope for the best and plan for the worst."
For today, the "worst" includes not just the risk of a terrorist attack, but managing huge crowds and guarding against stampedes or injury during and after the noon ceremony.
Much of the security effort is focused on the internet, with unprecedented attention being paid both to al-Qaeda cyber traffic and messages sent by so-called white supremacists.
In August, a group of white neo-Nazis with sniper rifles were arrested at the Democratic Party's Denver convention.
The only public airing of neo-Nazi views has been the declaration by the National Knights, a faction of the Ku Klux Klan, that they will wear black armbands and display the US flag upside down to protest at the inauguration of the first mixed-race president.
'We should learn from King's vision'
THE president-elect yesterday brought a whole new level of interest to "watching paint dry".
Barack Obama helped paint a wall at a shelter for homeless teenagers in south-east Washington, an area marred by poverty and deprivation, to mark the public holiday celebrating the birth of the assassinated civil rights icon Martin Luther King.
The shelter provides training for the youngsters and places an emphasis on self-reliance, a virtue that Mr Obama extolled during his election campaign.
"Dr Martin Luther King's was a life lived in loving service to others," said Mr Obama, who, in earlier years, worked in similar projects for the unemployed of Chicago's South Side. "His was a vision that all Americans might share the freedom to make of our lives what we will."
He appealed to the nation to remember King through service to others.
"As we honour that legacy, it's not a day just to pause and reflect – it's a day to act," he said.
"I ask the American people to turn today's efforts into an ongoing commitment to enriching the lives of others in their communities, their cities and their country."
See original article
One hopes that the deranged and/or extremist element of the US population as well as their ilk from other lands will stay away from the capitol Tuesday, and that this historic event will be allowed to occur without untoward incident. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the election results this is democracy in action and is the will of the majority of the people of the land and should be respected by all for that reason. To president George W. Bush: Thank you for all the good you have done and best wishes for the future. To President-elect Barrack Obama: Congratulations upon achieving the highest office of the nation and best wishes for a successful term of office and for a satisfying future.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
DRAMATEL
This a commercial clip that you should not miss!
You might need this service, or, someone might be planning to use it on you...
The ever observant Mac Tonnies has blown the whistle.
See it here: Posthuman Blues
You might need this service, or, someone might be planning to use it on you...
The ever observant Mac Tonnies has blown the whistle.
See it here: Posthuman Blues
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
HAPPY NEW YEAR and GOOD LUCK!
From toxic trash in China to mountain-sized landfills in Michigan, the world is awash in waste
By William Pentland Forbes.comThe largest garbage dump in the world is roughly twice the size of the continental U.S.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a continent-sized constellation of discarded shoes, bottles, bags, pacifiers, plastic wrappers, toothbrushes and every other type of trash imaginable, floating in the Pacific Ocean about halfway between Hawaii and San Francisco. The ocean's swirling currents have pushed the piles of debris, accumulated detritus of sea vessels and decades of under-the-radar ocean dumping, together in loose configurations just below the water's surface.
While nobody knows for sure where it came from or how to clean it up, the sheer size of the Garbage Patch has attracted attention to the world's seldom-discussed renegade waste problem. The remains of daily life are becoming a colossal problem with increasingly global implications. Some places are running out of space to put it, and others haven't even figured out how to pick it up in the first place. From toxic trash on the streets of Guiya (in India) to the mountain-sized municipal landfills in Michigan(USA), the world is awash in waste — but not always in the places you'd expect.Take, for example, the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico. Fertilizer and pesticide use by farmers in the Midwest and Great Plains states has gradually raised nutrient levels in the Mississippi's muddy waters to levels so high that algal blooms have appeared in the river drainage delta. These algal blooms deplete oxygen levels in the water to the point where it can no longer sustain fish, plants and microscopic species. Ergo, the "dead zone," an area that covers nearly 7,000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico.
Everybody knows chemicals dumped in the wild can cause serious problems, and keeping them stored is not necessarily much safer. For decades, Africa was a major dumping grounds for toxic wastes. Since at least the early 1970s, there have been multiple cases of illicit toxic waste disposal deals between Western companies and African countries.In 1987, for example, two Italian waste brokers, Gianfranco Raffaeli and Renato Pent, paid a Nigerian businessman, Sunday Nana, about $100 a month to store 18,000 drums of hazardous waste on his property in Nigeria. Nigerian officials discovered a cache of the illegal toxic waste, which contained high levels of PCB and dioxins, stored at the port of Koko.
Regardless of how they got there, mountains of obsolete pesticides like DDT, aldrin and chlordane remain stockpiled in poorly maintained storage facilities across much of Africa. Mali and Botswana have reported especially large stockpiles of industrial chemicals discarded as long as 40 years ago.
While some countries address legacy problems like abandoned pesticides, other countries are busy creating new ones for future generations. China and India are no exceptions.
Guiyu (China) is a cluster of interconnected villages located about an hour's drive away from the South China Sea in the northern province of Guangdong. In the past decade, Guiyu has grown from a rice farming community to an enormous hub for recycling and disposal of electronic waste, including everything from defunct hard drives to broken television sets. The amount of e-waste that flows through the "recycling" plants of Guiyu in a single year could create an acre-wide pile taller than the Statue of Liberty, according to an investigative report by Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and the Basel Action Network.
Truckloads of printers, fax machines, hard drives and all kinds of defunct electronics arrive daily in Guiyu from warehouses in the port of Nanhai, where the imported waste comes ashore in sea-going containers. Roughly half these computers and electronic components are recycled; the rest are dumped. Nobody knows for sure, but evidence suggests most of the discarded components are dumped locally, despite the substantial risk that the waste, laden with toxic lead, mercury and cadmium, will contaminate local soil and water supplies. Although Chinese officials have recently stepped up efforts to enforce a longstanding ban on e-waste imports, there has likely been more than enough damage inflicted to last generations.The city of Alang, which sits on the western coast of Gulf of Cambay in western India, is the largest ship-scrapping yard in the world. A ship that would cost millions to demolish in North America is worth millions in a place like Alang.
The Alang shipyards dismantle hundreds of massive vessels from all over the world every year. Old ships are run ashore during high tide on a roughly six-mile-long stretch of beach; later, when the tide recedes, thousands of low-wage workers descend on them and use crude tools to strip them apart. The industry provides 30,000 jobs in Alang and produces millions of tons of recycled steel every year.
But that isn't all it produces.Old ships are, more often than not, chock full of toxic chemicals, like insulation with asbestos and polychlorinated biphenyls in hoses, foam insulation and paint. In addition, most ships contain huge quantities of heavy metals like lead, mercury and cadmium. If ships are not properly dismantled, they contaminate the area where they are broken down.
Although India has wrestled the shipbreaking business from yards in Europe and North America by effectively eliminating high-priced environmental safeguards, Bangladesh is now capturing more of India's business by lowering environmental standards even more dramatically.
These kinds of competing regulatory systems have reinforced a race-to-the-bottom dynamic in the waste trade, which all too often champions disposal sites with poor environmental practices.
The global trade in trash rose from 2 million tons to more than 8.5 million tons between 1993 and 2001, according to data collected by the Basel Convention. And not all of those sites are outside U.S. borders.
For example, two mega-sized landfills in Michigan — Carleton Farms in New Boston and Pine Tree Acres, slightly north of Detroit — have cornered the the waste disposal market in the Canadian province of Ontario. Michigan requires operators to maintain landfills for 30 years after they close, while Canada requires operators to monitor landfills for at least a century, and in a few cases, forever. The result: In 2006, it cost roughly $100 US to dispose of a ton of trash in Ontario, but only $10 to dispose of the same ton of trash across the border in the U.S. Michigan landfills receive enough Canadian garbage annually to fill a football stadium.
"We love Canadian garbage," Norm Folson, site manager at the Pine Tree Acres Landfill in northeast Detroit, told a reporter from Canadian Architect recently. "Tipping fees pay our salaries and pave our roads. To us, Canadian garbage is like gold." The original article can be read here: Forbes
A little comment on this article:
The headline certainly caught my attention! Twice the size of the continental United States is a damned big clump of garbage! As the above picture illustrates, if you're familiar with the US, the waste clump is more like the size of California. Of course, California is larger than a lot of countries so that's still a damned big clump of garbage.
When I was in the Navy (USN) in the early 1960s it was common practice for ships in international waters to dump garbage overboard. Often it was first burned and then jettisoned but sometimes the burning was skipped. In those days, other than some chemicals, there was little that would persist for long and even less that would float - for long - or so we believed. Food scraps, which made up the bulk of the garbage, would be eaten by something or would decompose harmlessly (we were told) and wood and paper would not hurt anything while metal refuse would simply sink to the ocean bottom and corrode away. We had little or no synthetic materials such as plastics in those days which might float and resist degradation by natural means.
That should not be taken to mean that the practice was not in some way harmful, only that it was not considered to be an issue at the time.
Fast forward a couple of decades, though, and the situation had changed dramatically: plastics were everywhere, food containers, small radios, cigarette filters, packaging materials of all kinds and many other articles in common use. I was only in the Navy until early 1966 so I have no knowledge of when the realization came that the trash was no longer harmless to the sea. The ubiquitous plastics did not break down in the same time-scale as the earlier materials did and some were well nigh indestructible, certainly not "bio-degradable". I read, several years ago, about an ocean shipping container full of plastic ducks which was lost overboard at sea and the ducks were washing ashore all over the world for years and providing information about ocean current flow, not very bio-degradable ducks apparently.
Now we have disposable plastic cigarette lighters, plastic toothbrushes, plastic shoes and plastic nearly everything which for many years has been consigned to the deep - only to be rejected by "the deep" and kept at the surface, non-biodegradable, almost immune to saltwater and sunlight and inedible until we have at least one immense flotilla of jetsam (flotsam actually) occupying a large area of the world's ocean and growing exponentially which might someday allow us to build a floating bridge to Hawaii. I admit that I would like to be able to drive to Honolulu from the mainland, but this floating continent of junk is obscene. They all say that they have no idea what can be done about it. Of course, that is a bit disingenuous because the simple answer is obvious: go get it. What they're really saying is that they don't want it and have no idea what to do with it after they get it.
There are a number of ways to look at this issue: the United States Government, through DEQ has in the past, held manufacturers responsible for the ultimate cleanup and disposal of hazardous wastes resulting from materials which they manufactured such as automotive batteries and some chemicals, they have held dealers of some of those things responsible for cleaning dump-sites, even those which were approved at the time of the dumping, contaminated with some substances and have bankrupted several businesses in the process.
My view is that, since all of the plastics which float in the immense doldrum in the Pacific are ultimately made from petroleum, the Saudi Government, Iran and Iraq as suppliers of the oil and China as manufacturer of the junk should be held responsible for this pollution and made to clean it up and also fined - payable in gold or dollars - twice the cost of the clean-up while they are also required to take the stuff home with them. It seems only right to me. Of course, first we should figure out how we're going to live without imported oil or plastic ducks.
Any suggestions?
Saturday, December 27, 2008
I'm feeling much better, now.
The text in red below is from "Canada Free Press" and was originally published at Exopolitics.blog.com so I'm excerpting from an editorialized excerpt. See comments after reading...
“Barack Obama, through his selection of UFO Disclosure Advocate John Podesta as Transition team CoChair, has energized a core of the 49% of adult Americans who believe that Extraterrestrials are now visiting Earth to now see Obama as a possible “Disclosure President,” says exopolitics.blogs.com. “Another sector of opinion within the Exopolitics community believe that Obama may be used as a front man for a “Disclosure Management” psychological warfare operation by U.S. and other military intelligence agencies. Under this scenario, a false “ET Disclosure” would be rolled out with ETs as a hostile or authoritarian force, a strategy calculated to spread the arms race and war economy to outer space, and to foster a global totalitarian police state on Earth.”
“Dr. Wernher von Braun, a whistleblower, warned that the final charade of the permanent war economy after the collapse of capitalism, would be first a False War on Terror (via the False Flag Operation of 9/11): and finally a False War against the `Evil ETs.’”
Back to Grant Park on Election Night. While some were focused on the red and black dress Michelle Obama wore, others were photographing the Orbs.
“Amidst all of this grand speculation, we now have some photographic evidence of how dimensional intelligence in the dimensional ecology we live in may be viewing at least the celebrations on the evening of Nov. 4, 2008 when Barack Obama gave his Election night acknowledgement speech in Grant Park in downtown Chicago,” notes Alfred Lambremont Webre in Exopolitics.com.
“The Orbs at Grant Park are evidence of Dimensional Intelligent intervention in the Exopolitical process of the Obama administration. Strategically, as humans, we must learn to think multi-dimensionally as Extraterrestrials with Exo-consciousness and see our reality as these dimensional intelligences do. There is much to revealed about Obama’s Grant Park speech that will impact the disclosure process, of the Extraterrestrial presence and of advanced ET-derived technologies.
“All of this “disclosure” is for naught without the elevation of moral insight and cosmic consciousness by humanity.
“The most hopeful sign today of the Obama presidency has not been the John Podestas or any other human in his team. Rather, it has been these Orbs--dimensional intelligences--disclosing a profound message of hope and consciousness to come at Grant Park.
“We may have some cause to hope, albeit dimensional, that Barack Obama is something more than a mere tool of the Trilateralists, by the photographic evidence.”
Someone, who might have been guessing, once said that "78% of statistics are made up on the spot" or words to that effect.
One can hope that the reference to "49 percent of adult Americans who believe that extraterrestrials are now visiting the Earth" is that type of statistic! I can accept that 49%of adult Americans might consider it possible that extraterrestrials are now visiting the Earth, but, believe it is another matter entirely...
And then we have a quote attributed to rocket scientist Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) (see Wikipedia if you're not sure who he was) "Dr. Wernher von Braun, a whistleblower, warned that the final charade of the permanent war economy after the collapse of capitalism, would be first a False War on Terror (via the False Flag Operation of 9/11): and finally a False War against the `Evil ETs.’”
Dr. von Braun died long before the break-up of Eastern European Communism in the late 80s and early 90s. The alleged quote appears to support the idea that the US administration was responsible for the WTC attack of Sept. 11, 2001 and that the next step in the "great conspiracy" will be to acknowledge alien contact and to assure us that they are, in fact, hostile and poised to attack us.
I am one of those who thinks it highly unlikely that over twenty-four years before the event, Dr. von Braun knew and spoke of it. Did he know of alien contact with the Earth? Your guess is as good as mine.
Dr. von Braun was raised and remained a Lutheran and as far as I can see from historical sources was not a "whistleblower" but rather a man obsessed with building and firing rockets who would work for whomever could facilitate his obsession.
He accepted the need to be an officer in the NAZI SS in wartime Germany as a prerequisite to continuing his research with state support and arranged to be captured by US forces at war's end rather than Soviet forces so he could continue his research in the United States. I have not yet found any other references to his having prophesied concerning international terrorism or extraterrestrials, if you know of any please post in "comments".
Thursday, December 25, 2008
LV Housing Prices Fall, Foreclosures Climb
"Dec 10, 2008 4:29 PM EST"
Bloggers comments:
Hmmmm... House sold for $196,000 4 years ago. Bank has foreclosed on the unfortunate family which agreed to pay $196K and is offering the house for $32,000. Does anybody other than me see a questionable scenario here? If, just an "if" mind you, the bank had shown forbearance to the former mortgage slave, I mean borrower, by adjusting the principal to say $145,000 and/or lowering the interest rate to somewhere near current new mortgage rates, is there a good chance that the borrower might have been able and willing to continue paying for the house? How about if the bank had lowered the principal amount to $110K, or $100K does it seem likely that the original purchaser/mortgagee might have been able and willing to stay and pay?
Of course the bank did not do any of those things. What they did was to tell the delinquent borrower to pay up or else: "we will pitch you and your children, wife and hamsters out into the street you freaking deadbeat useless piece of offal spurned by scavengers and carrion eaters alike, you should kill yourself for being such a loser, have a nice day." So, the borrower, who probably had a very good reason (such as loss of job, medical emergency, or some such) for being a month behind in his mortgage became both hopeless and hostile toward the pitiless, mindless collectors who, almost daily, called (perhaps at his/her work)and demanded instant resolution (we'll take a check by phone) of a situation which he or she could not resolve that way.
Finally the day came when the borrower, knowing that there was no help anywhere, said something like "Why don't you just take the house?" Very soon thereafter the bank filed a foreclosure and simultaneously a move for eviction. The house became both empty and also an unpaying liability/or asset, depending upon whether you are an accountant or not, on the balance sheet.
Then another group of bankers came into the picture, those whose task it is to keep the bank liquid, who decided that since the market is depressed and money needs to be raised it would be a good idea to just dump the foreclosed properties for quick cash. Looking at the market conditions: 25,000 houses on the market - no population growth - few buyers, etc. they picked a figure out of thin air and published an asking price which they felt would get immediate action either for cash or from a borrower with a 700+ FICA ergo $32K. Result? Another family homeless and possibly breaking apart due to financial stress coupled with ruined credit and another bargain for someone who was lucky enough to have failed to qualify for a loan when the market was good. Also, a large, and unnecessary loss for the bank or investor who had held the original mortgage.
My feeling is that this scenario is caused by the ego of the collectors who have zero empathy for people in financial crises and who are only interested in the brownie buttons and/or commissions they derive from wringing the payment (as agreed) month after month from the agonizing borrower until finally the borrower succumbs to despair from the stress and gives up trying to meet the demands. The result is a loss to the bank which need not and should not have happened as well as a destructive loss to the borrower's family due to the loss of their home and credit. A little humanity and consideration of mutual interest in maintaining the borrower in the home inspite of slow payments or even a modification of the loan terms would be a better solution for everyone involved except the bargain hunter.
Just my thoughts... Feel free to explain - very carefully - where I'm wrong.
Las Vegas Housing prices have fallen to a point where they are nearly 19-percent below market fundamentals, according to a new report. In addition, foreclosures are expected to be at a record high.
The promise of "Home Sweet Home" turned sour for more than 28,000 homeowners in Clark County in 2008. The foreclosures continue to drag down the home values in Nevada.
Click here for information on upcoming foreclosure help
Click here for Federal Housing Administration's HOPE Program
"The banks have put them so ridiculously low, so it's bringing down all the neighborhoods," said broker Ronda Matthews-Wolfe, Jack Matthews & Co.
The foreclosure fallout means everyone's home is going down in value. A new report, Housing Prices in America, says the Las Vegas market is now undervalued by 18.8 percent.
"Why they really plummeted is because of the foreclosures, and the foreclosures have happened because people overpaid or got into these adjustables," Matthews-Wolfe said.
But there is a silver lining. More houses are selling. More than 2,100 homes were sold in November, although that is nearly 20-percent down from October, it is 125-percent higher than November 2007. Housing prices are also down 32-percent from a year ago.
"The price isn't all that bad either," said Bill Baldare, a home buyer. Many bank-owned homes are practical steals. Baldare is bidding on a foreclosed home listed at $32,000. The same home sold for $196,000 four years ago.
"Trying to buy a house now is way out of reach for a lot of people, including myself, but this seems to be what I've been looking for," Baldare said.
"I expect Nevada, California, Florida, and Arizona, which led this mess -- they are the ones with the most amount of subprime mortgages -- I see them to lead the market as far as recovery goes next year," said Alexis McGee, president of Foreclosures.com.
Bloggers comments:
Hmmmm... House sold for $196,000 4 years ago. Bank has foreclosed on the unfortunate family which agreed to pay $196K and is offering the house for $32,000. Does anybody other than me see a questionable scenario here? If, just an "if" mind you, the bank had shown forbearance to the former mortgage slave, I mean borrower, by adjusting the principal to say $145,000 and/or lowering the interest rate to somewhere near current new mortgage rates, is there a good chance that the borrower might have been able and willing to continue paying for the house? How about if the bank had lowered the principal amount to $110K, or $100K does it seem likely that the original purchaser/mortgagee might have been able and willing to stay and pay?
Of course the bank did not do any of those things. What they did was to tell the delinquent borrower to pay up or else: "we will pitch you and your children, wife and hamsters out into the street you freaking deadbeat useless piece of offal spurned by scavengers and carrion eaters alike, you should kill yourself for being such a loser, have a nice day." So, the borrower, who probably had a very good reason (such as loss of job, medical emergency, or some such) for being a month behind in his mortgage became both hopeless and hostile toward the pitiless, mindless collectors who, almost daily, called (perhaps at his/her work)and demanded instant resolution (we'll take a check by phone) of a situation which he or she could not resolve that way.
Finally the day came when the borrower, knowing that there was no help anywhere, said something like "Why don't you just take the house?" Very soon thereafter the bank filed a foreclosure and simultaneously a move for eviction. The house became both empty and also an unpaying liability/or asset, depending upon whether you are an accountant or not, on the balance sheet.
Then another group of bankers came into the picture, those whose task it is to keep the bank liquid, who decided that since the market is depressed and money needs to be raised it would be a good idea to just dump the foreclosed properties for quick cash. Looking at the market conditions: 25,000 houses on the market - no population growth - few buyers, etc. they picked a figure out of thin air and published an asking price which they felt would get immediate action either for cash or from a borrower with a 700+ FICA ergo $32K. Result? Another family homeless and possibly breaking apart due to financial stress coupled with ruined credit and another bargain for someone who was lucky enough to have failed to qualify for a loan when the market was good. Also, a large, and unnecessary loss for the bank or investor who had held the original mortgage.
My feeling is that this scenario is caused by the ego of the collectors who have zero empathy for people in financial crises and who are only interested in the brownie buttons and/or commissions they derive from wringing the payment (as agreed) month after month from the agonizing borrower until finally the borrower succumbs to despair from the stress and gives up trying to meet the demands. The result is a loss to the bank which need not and should not have happened as well as a destructive loss to the borrower's family due to the loss of their home and credit. A little humanity and consideration of mutual interest in maintaining the borrower in the home inspite of slow payments or even a modification of the loan terms would be a better solution for everyone involved except the bargain hunter.
Just my thoughts... Feel free to explain - very carefully - where I'm wrong.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
