Darth Cheney Emerges from Unknown Cave location to give speech repeating 9/11, 25 times, One short of Guiliani's record of 26, 9/11's in One Speech (Video)
Darth Cheney's Old Company Paid $83 million in Bonuses for Work That Electrocuted US Soldiers
The Department of Defense paid former Halliburton subsidiary KBR more than $80 million in bonuses for contracts to install electrical wiring in Iraq in 2007-2008. The award payment was for the very work that resulted in the electrocution deaths of US soldiers, according to Department of Defense documents revealed today in a Senate hearing. More than $30 million in bonuses were paid months after the death of Sgt. Ryan Maseth, a highly decorated, 24-year-old Green Beret, whose January 2008 electrocution death has been classified by DoD investigators as a “negligent homicide.” Maseth’s death had originally been labeled an “accident.” All of the bonuses were paid to KBR after DoD investigators had officially expressed concerns about the quality of KBR’s electrical work....
The Bush administration's Torture 13. They authorized it, they decided how to implement it, and they crafted the legal fig leaf to justify it
On April 16, the Obama administration released four memos that were used to authorize torture in interrogations during the Bush administration. When President Obama released the memos, he said, "It is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution."
Yet 13 key people in the Bush administration cannot claim they relied on the memos from the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel. Some of the 13 manipulated the federal bureaucracy and the legal process to "preauthorize" torture in the days after 9/11. Others helped implement torture, and still others helped write the memos that provided the Bush administration with a legal fig leaf after torture had already begun.
The Torture 13 exploited the federal bureaucracy to establish a torture regime in two ways. First, they based the enhanced interrogation techniques on techniques used in the U.S. military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program. The program -- which subjects volunteers from the armed services to simulated hostile capture situations -- trains servicemen and -women to withstand coercion well enough to avoid making false confessions if captured. Two retired SERE psychologists contracted with the government to "reverse-engineer" these techniques to use in detainee interrogations....
Climate Change Odds Much Worse Than Thought
The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that....
Melting ice could cause gravity shift
The melting of one of the world's largest ice sheets would alter the Earth's field of gravity and even its rotation in space so much that it would cause sea levels along some coasts to rise faster than the global average, scientists said yesterday. The rise in sea levels would be highest on the west and east coasts of North America where increases of 25 per cent more than the global average would cause catastrophic flooding in cities such as New York, Washington DC and San Francisco...
Google Ocean shows effects of climate change
The same satellite technology that allows more than 500 million users to view everything from the Grand Canyon to a neighbour's backyard is now helping them glide through the depths of the ocean, track a whale or compare reviews of their favourite dive locations. The developers of Google Ocean - built using visual satellite images, sonar waves bounced off ships and data pooled from scientists and individuals - say it could also help highlight the effects of climate change on the seas. But three months after its launch, the site has high-resolution images of less than 5 per cent of the sea, much of it from around the United States and Japan where research facilities are collaborating closely with Google....
Bush Pension Chief Charlie Millard, Who Lost $11 Billion,
To Senate: "I'll Plead The Fifth"
For practically his entire 18-month term directing the obscure Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation, Charlie Millard could not stop talking about his radical new plan to plow the majority of the agency's coffers -- which offer partial bankruptcy insurance to the retirement funds of 44 million Americans -- into stocks, real estate and private equity.
Well, that ended today.
Millard pleaded the Fifth three times before a Senate subcommittee convened to discuss the fund this afternoon, refusing to answer any questions about his controversial tenure, which began when Bush appointed him interim director in May 2007 and ended when Obama was sworn into office. There are some pretty good reasons for him to : last week four senators formally requested the Office of the Inspector General to open a criminal investigation into Millard's activities in response to a preliminary OIG report detailing the former Lehman Brother's executive's eyebrow-raising call logs during his time at the office. The report showed that Millard made hundreds of calls to Wall Street investment banks in line for lucrative contracts managing the fund's money under the new investment regime, and traded dozens of emails with a Goldman Sachs executive assisting Millard's post-D.C. job hunt after Goldman was awarded just such a contract.......
Are Wall Street speculators driving up gasoline prices?
Oil and gasoline prices are rising fast as Memorial Day weekend approaches, but not because supplies are tight or demand is high. U.S. crude oil inventories are at their highest levels in almost two decades, and demand has fallen to a 10-year low, but crude oil prices have climbed more than 70 percent since mid-January to a six-month high of $62.04 on Wednesday. Meanwhile, although refiners are operating at less than 85 percent of capacity, leaving them plenty of room to churn out more gasoline if demand rises during the summer driving season, the price of gasoline at the pump has climbed 28 cents a gallon from a month earlier to $2.33.
This time, Wall Street speculators - some of them recipients of billions of dollars in taxpayers' bailout money - may be to blame....
Day of reckoning looms for the U.S. dollar
The U.S. dollar's day of reckoning may be inching closer as its status as a safe-haven currency fades with every uptick in stocks and commodities and its potential risks - debt and inflation - are brought under a harsher spotlight....
Wary of U.S. debt, China shifts gears on investment
China has engineered a subtle yet significant shift in the investment of its foreign exchange reserves, a sign of how it is willing to act on concerns about financing an explosion of U.S. debt. Beijing has been far and away the single biggest foreign buyer of Treasuries over the past year, but this apparent vote of confidence belies how it has turned its back on long-term U.S. debt in favor of shorter maturities. China's move to the shorter end of the U.S. debt spectrum is a defensive tactic adopted by the wider market as well on the view that the United States will have to raise interest rates down the road to control inflationary pressures when the economy recovers from the financial crisis....
" The US Dollar appears to be acting like a Latin American Peso, losing over 15% of it's value in the last 45 days to the Canadian Dollar. If the US Dollar continues to slide against the Canadian dollar expect oil prices to rise back to $4.00 per gallon, or $100.00 per barrel by September 1st 2009. Since America imports over 50% of it's oil from Canada it is essential that the Fed intervene to keep the US Dollar stable against the Canadian dollar, or America faces extemely difficult times ahead with inflation being fueled by the weak dollar and the rising cost of gasoline." Willy Bova
China holds sway over US Dollar
"The U. S. should be afraid, very afraid. China is questioning the dollar's status as a reserve currency and, at US$1,000 an ounce, gold has become the world's de facto currency."....It is a chilling statement from an expert on both gold and China. But he is speaking the truth: In a G2 world (the United States and China), he who is the piper calls the tune, and China holds a US$2-trillion mortgage on the United States and is not happy. This country, along with others that lend money to the United States, such as Saudi Arabia, will determine the value of the U. S. dollar and gold. And they have spoken. They are not buying more U. S. treasuries and are buying gold as a new asset class. China announced that it was doing so quietly, and recent reports are that the Saudis and others have been buying bullion and hocked gold jewellery from around the world....
US housing starts plunge to record low
New US residential building fell to the lowest level since 1959 last month, signalling that the stricken housing market could have further to fall. Housing starts fell for the ninth time in 10 months, dropping by 12.8 per cent to an adjusted annual rate of construction of 458,000, commerce department figures showed on Tuesday. The decline dashed analysts’ expectations of an increase in new construction, but many took this as good news because the overhang of housing inventory needs to be slashed for a recovery to occur.....
The Truth about Option ARMs, Pick-a-Pay Mortgages, and Alt-A Loans: Looking at Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and JP Morgan. We are in the Eye of the $469 Billion Toxic Mortgage Hurricane and Silence is not Golden
Let me be abundantly clear. We still have a Pay Option ARM and Alt-A mortgage problem. This will hit in full force in 2010 and we are already seeing many mortgage holders having trouble with actual recasts brought on by negative amortization. Yet there is a crew of people saying that Alt-A mortgage products will not bring any trouble because of the low interest rate environment. Unfortunately the low rate misses the bigger issue. Low rates are helping but the problem that we will be seeing is the massive onslaught of recasts, not resets that will be occurring over the next few years. This is a big reason why we won’t see a housing bottom in California until 2011 at the earliest. Many of these loans were made to supposedly better qualified borrowers in mid to upper priced areas. These areas will begin to crack like an egg dropped on the floor late in 2009. The Notice of Default tsunami will guarantee this much....
Ventura enrolls Fox & Friends in waterboarding ’school (Video)
A day after “schooling” the hosts of ABC’s The View on waterboarding, Jesse Ventura took his case for prosecuting torture to Fox News. “You are worried about [the terrorists'] welfare,” accused Fox’s Brian Kilmeade.
“No. I’m not worried about their welfare. I’m worried about what our country stands for,” Ventura responded....
Why Republicans May Never Again Control Washington
You can stick a fork in the once mighty right-wing GOP. The Republican Party, to quote the hilarious Billy Crystal character in the magical film The Princess Bride, is "mostly dead." The majority has clearly swung to the center, becoming a much more moderate representation of the party. Statistics now show that more Americans have abandoned religion and the hot button social issues that used to be conservatives' bread and butter campaign themes. What's more, the evangelical wing, the party's core base just a few short years ago, has shrunk to negligible, insignificant levels....
Colbert: Cheney would take detainees for target practice (Video)
Stephen Colbert has found a solution to the question of what to do with detainees after the detention center at Guantanamo Bay is closed. Colbert noted that Cheney technically said recently that he would be willing to take 20 detainees. “Gee, great. They’re sending us 20 al Qaeda terrorists,” Cheney was quoted as saying on CBS in May.
“Did you hear that? Dick Cheney just volunteered to take 20 al Qaeda terrorists,” exclaimed Colbert. “We can send them to his ranch.”.....
Colbert: Rumsfeld figured troops already had ‘full armor of God’ (Video)
Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert suggested on Tuesday that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s addition of Bible verses to Iraq War briefings submitted to former president Bush was intended as a sure-fire way to add “a little pizazz.”...
U.S. to Expand Immigration Checks to All Local Jails
The Obama administration is expanding a program initiated by President George W. Bush aimed at checking the immigration status of virtually every person booked into local jails. In four years, the measure could result in a tenfold increase in illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes and identified for deportation, current and former U.S. officials said....
FBI Use of Patriot Act Authority Increased Dramatically in 2008
The number of FISA-court authorizations for national security and counter-terrorism wiretaps dropped last year by almost 300, a new Justice Department report to Congress shows. But the FBI’s use of so-called “national security letters” to get information on Americans without a court order increased dramatically, from 16,804 in 2007 to 24,744 in 2008.....
A War on Terror by Any Other Name
By John Cusack
Like many other American progressive-types (title for sake of argument), I voted for Obama and hope every day he'll facilitate the change he promised. A big part of the change progressives interpreted that promise to mean was to bring an end to the Bush administration's "War on Terror." The White House no longer uses the term -- but how much of a break has the new administration really made?.....
Pentagon Preps Soldier Telepathy Push
Forget the battlefield radios, the combat PDAs or even infantry hand signals. When the soldiers of the future want to communicate, they’ll read each other’s minds.
At least, that’s the hope of researchers at the Pentagon’s mad-science division Darpa. The agency’s budget for the next fiscal year includes $4 million to start up a program called Silent Talk. The goal is to “allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals.” That’s on top of the $4 million the Army handed out last year to the University of California to investigate the potential for computer-mediated telepathy....
Brazil and China eye plan to axe dollar
Brazil and China will work towards using their own currencies in trade transactions rather than the US dollar, according to Brazil’s central bank and aides to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president. The move follows recent Chinese challenges to the status of the dollar as the world’s leading international currency.....
Taxpayers May Lose Out in TARP Paybacks
Americans were promised a reward for rescuing the nation’s banks. In return for all those bailouts, the banks essentially granted stock options to the government — a potential jackpot for taxpayers once the crisis blew over. But now banks, eager to get Washington out of their hair, are pushing to undo those investments as quickly — and cheaply — as possible. If the Obama administration acquiesces, billions of taxpayer dollars could be left on the table....
Exchanges sense bonanza in OTC overhaul
Some of the big derivatives dealers breathed a sigh of relief when they saw the details of this week’s sweeping plan from the Obama administration to regulate over-the-counter derivatives. With parts of the $680,000bn market blamed for exacerbating the financial crisis, large swathes of which are opaque even to regulators, there had been draft proposals flying around Washington that would have had an even more far-reaching effect than the current plans. In particular, the proposals unveiled by Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, on Wednesday, include plans for “the encouragement of regulated institutions to make greater use of regulated exchange-traded derivatives”....
Don’t Believe the Hype -- Fructose Truly is Much Worse Than Glucose
New research shows that there are big differences in how the sugars fructose and glucose are metabolized by your body. Overweight study participants showed more evidence of insulin resistance and other risk factors for heart disease and diabetes when 25 percent of their calories came from fructose-sweetened beverages instead of glucose-sweetened beverages.
A study looked at 32 overweight or obese men and women. Over a 10-week period, they drank either glucose or fructose sweetened beverages totaling 25 percent of their daily calorie intake.
Both the groups gained weight during the trial, but imaging studies revealed that the fructose-consuming group gained more of the dangerous belly fat that has been linked to a higher risk for heart attack and stroke. The fructose group also had higher total cholesterol and LDL ("bad") cholesterol, and greater insulin resistance....
Ethanol Based Fuel Is Destroying Automobiles
....First, the primary job of the Environmental Protection Agency is, dare it be said, to protect our environment. Yet using ethanol actually creates more smog than using regular gas, and the EPA's own attorneys had to admit that fact in front of the justices presiding over the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in 1995 (API v. EPA).
Second, truly independent studies on ethanol, such as those written by Tad Patzek of Berkeley and David Pimentel of Cornell, show that ethanol is a net energy loser. Other studies suggest there is a small net energy gain from it.
Third, all fuels laced with ethanol reduce the vehicle's fuel efficiency, and the E85 blend drops gas mileage between 30% and 40%, depending on whether you use the EPA's fuel mileage standards (fueleconomy.gov) or those of the Dept. of Energy.
Fourth, forget what biofuels have done to the price of foodstuffs worldwide over the past three years; the science seems to suggest that using ethanol increases global warming emissions over the use of straight gasoline. Just these issues should have kept ethanol from being brought back for its fourth run in American history.....
The Best Of Letterman's "Cool/Not Cool": Obama Vs. Bush (VIDEO)
David Letterman has never been a fan of George W. Bush. During the former president's time in office, Dave mocked his use of language, his intelligence, his policies and his demeanor. Now, after his successor has proven to be a smart, deliberate and skillful speaker, Letterman has found a way to mock all of those aspects of Bush at the same time: Comparing him to Obama...
Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush
By Frank Rich
TO paraphrase Al Pacino in “Godfather III,” just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can’t. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration’s high ambitions....
Shaw Cable customers given option to give Fox News the heave ho
Some Canadian viewers still steamed over the Canadian military being trashed on a Fox News show two months ago will be able to exact a little revenge. Shaw is allowing customers to get rid of Fox News and opt for another cable channel. The Fox show "Red Eye" caused a national uproar when its participants took turns trashing Canada and its reliability as an ally in a segment that aired just before four Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan. Fox is beamed into the homes of about 700,000 Shaw customers.....
Outrage in Canada as U.S. Firms Sever Ties To Obey Stimulus Rules
Is this what the first trade war of the global economic crisis looks like?
Ordered by Congress to "buy American" when spending money from the $787 billion stimulus package, the town of Peru, Ind., stunned its Canadian supplier by rejecting sewage pumps made outside of Toronto. After a Navy official spotted Canadian pipe fittings in a construction project at Camp Pendleton, Calif., they were hauled out of the ground and replaced with American versions. In recent weeks, other Canadian manufacturers doing business with U.S. state and local governments say they have been besieged with requests to sign affidavits pledging that they will only supply materials made in the USA....
Your Credit Card Company Is Building A Psychological Profile Of You
The next time you apply for a credit card, your credit report and income will be only a part of the criteria used to determine your creditworthiness. For that matter, as long as you have the card, what you use it for will be noted and added to a growing set of data that makes up your psychological profile, which will then be referred to every time the bank deals with your or reevaluates your risk as a customer....
What Does Your Credit-Card Company Know About You?
Rudy Santana’s day began recently, as almost all his working days begin, with a name on a screen. The name that April morning belonged to a Massachusetts man in his mid-30s. He owed money on a credit card and a second mortgage, the screen told Santana, and was separated from his wife. He was behind in paying back $28,900.97 in debt. Which was why he was on Santana’s screen....
FBI Defends Disruptive Raids on Texas Data Centers
The FBI on Tuesday defended its raids on at least two data centers in Texas, in which agents carted out equipment and disrupted service to hundreds of businesses.
The raids were part of an investigation prompted by complaints from AT&T and Verizon about unpaid bills allegedly owed by some data center customers, according to court records. One data center owner charges that the telecoms are using the FBI to collect debts that should be resolved in civil court. But on Tuesday, an FBI spokesman disputed that charge....
‘Bush’ and ‘Cheney’ reunite on SNL to talk about their legacy (Video)
Will Ferrell returned to SNL to reprise his classic George W. Bush impression and scold Dick Cheney, played by Darryl Hammond, for his frequent media appearances defending Bush administration policies since Barack Obama’s inauguration. “Here’s my regret: That I didn’t have me a vice president like Joe Biden…. I need that kind of VP, who did dumb stuff to make me look smarter,” Ferrell’s Bush says to Cheney.....
‘Daily Show’ on the one line America will not cross
Barack Obama’s announcement that he will oppose the release of a fresh set of photos of detainee abuse has prompted complaints that his administration is already going back on its promises of greater transparency.
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, however, sees a deeper level of hypocrisy in the decision. After playing a series of clips of former Vice President Dick Cheney and other conservatives defending torture, he noted, “America’s war on terror has indeed tested our resolve. We’ve pushed the limits of our own principles. … Is there any line we still will not cross?”.....
FBI Probing SEC Attorneys for Insider Trading
Two enforcement lawyers at the Securities and Exchange Commission are being investigated by federal prosecutors and the FBI for possible insider-trading violations, according to a report from the SEC's inspector general. The criminal investigation, which was disclosed to SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro in a March 3 memo, came about after SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz conducted his own investigation into the matter and referred it to criminal authorities after discovering suspicious trading activity...
Our man at Bilderberg: They're watching and following me, I tell you
Now I've got too much to report.
I'll talk later about the strange secret circus of limousines, blacked-out windows, sirens, helicopters. No time to relate being detained for a SECOND time, for the crime of being half a mile from the Bilderberg hotel gates trying to take "arty" photographs of limousine wheels as they whisked past. Doing so little wrong that I was doing it while standing next to three policemen who were fine about it. Until the call came through on the radio and the motorbikes and squad cars squealed around me like a bad dream. I'll tell that story later. I have to talk now about what just happened.....
America's growing surveillance state
The US department of homeland security has once again run afoul of cultural and political conservatives. Last month, a leaked report on rightwing extremism sparked an outcry for suggesting that returning veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could become domestic terrorists – the next Timothy McVeigh. Now, another document has come to light, and conservatives are having another aneurism......
Nokia to build radio ID chips into phones for "inventory control"
Nokia, the world's biggest maker of mobile phones, plans to incorporate radio frequency identification chips in its handsets to track them from assembly through recycling. The company sees "numerous benefits" from using the chip tags "early in the process, and early in the process for Nokia means in the device itself," Jarkko Jaervilehto, a Nokia development manager, said Tuesday at an industry seminar in Vantaa, Finland.
Credit card companies piling on fees, raising rates ahead of new federal rules
It appears that credit card issuers are insisting upon exercising their right to abuse their customers in the name of higher profits. A survey of recent activities by the top eight credit card issuers reveals that since the Federal Reserve announced rule changes designed to curb unfair credit card industry practices last December, the companies have implemented even more onerous practices, raised interest rates more aggressively and increased the number of fees that they can impose on their customers....
Senators and Office of Inspector General Seek Criminal Investigation of Bush Official who lost $11 Billion of Government Pension Guaranty Fund
Remember Charles Millard? He's the former Bush-appointed director of the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation, and we expect to be seeing a lot more of him as congressional investigations into his brief but significant tenure at the agency gathers steam, starting with a scheduled appearance next Wednesday.
Some background: the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation insures a portion of the retirement funds of 44 million Americans to protect their savings accounts from the capriciousness of market conditions. Somehow, by the perverse illogic that defined the financial services industry of the past few years it came to pass that this fund would be run by a former Lehman Brothers executive who would plow the majority of its investment portfolio into the volatile stock market and the massively overheated real estate market under the pricey guidance of financial advisers at Wall Street's most prestigious investment banks, such that some such that billions of dollars would vanish in the course of months. An honest mistake, or was unethical behavior involved?
The Office of the Inspector General conducted an audit of Millard, who spearheaded this effort, and found no evidence he'd committed any actual crimes -- but enough "clear violations" of agency ethics rules to alarm Congress, which released the OIG's draft report yesterday and announced an investigation of Millard and said it had requested a criminal probe of him as well....
House committee investigating former Bush PBGC (Who lost $11 Billion) director's contacts with Wall Street
The former director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. had inappropriate contacts with Wall Street firms chosen to give investment advice to the agency, which insures the retirement benefits of 44 million Americans, according to a government watchdog report released Thursday...."Phone records and e-mails show that the former director was communicating directly with some bidders at the same time that he was actively evaluating their ... proposals — a clear violation of the prohibition of contact with potential offerors," the draft report said....
Historically, the PBGC has had a conservative investment strategy. However, in February 2008, during Millard's tenure, the PBGC's three-member board approved a new approach to invest a portion of a $48.4 billion investment portfolio more aggressively in stocks and alternative investments, the report said. The new strategy involves transferring up billions of dollars from fixed-income treasury securities to marketable equities, real estate and private equity.
At the end of its last fiscal year, the PBGC had about $11 billion less than it needed to meet $74 billion in obligations to pensioners down the road. The board — comprising the secretaries of treasury, commerce and labor — was convinced that more aggressive investments would help close the gap and prevent the need for a future taxpayer bailout. To help implement the new policy, the PBGC solicited the services of investment firms on Wall Street....
Bush Treasury Secretary Paulson Memo Warned Banks to Take Aid or Be ‘Exposed’
Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, describing nine U.S. banks as “central to any solution” of the credit crisis, told their leaders to take government aid or be forced to by regulators, according to a memo his staff prepared for a private meeting in October. “If a capital infusion is not appealing, you should be aware that your regulator will require it in any circumstance,” Paulson’s one-page list of talking points for the session with the banks’ chief executive officers said. “We don’t believe it is tenable to opt out because doing so would leave you vulnerable and exposed,” the memo said.....
Bush Admin's Real Torture Objective: Finding The Elusive Iraq-Qaeda Link?
Writing on The Daily Beast, former NBC producer Robert Windrem reports that in April 2003, Dick Cheney's office suggested that interrogators waterboard an Iraqi detainee who was suspected of having knowledge of a link between Saddam and al Qaeda....
Our man at Bilderberg: in pursuit of the world's most powerful cabal
Once a year, it is rumoured, the global elite gather at a luxury hotel to chew the fat and fine-tune their secret plans for world domination. We sent Charlie Skelton in pursuit....
Our man at Bilderberg: Close, but still no cabal
It's B minus one, the day before Bilderberg. And it is definitely happening: I've seen the guns. I thought it might be a good idea to go to the Astir Palace resort for lunch. See just what kind of a cheese omelette the president of the Federal Reserve is going to be enjoying. I didn't get far. At the gates, there were machine guns and men in loose jackets and guards checking under cars for bombs with those mirrors on sticks that morbidly obese people use to check whether they've taken their knickers off...
Bilderberg: One mention of Sylvester McCoy and it all kicks off
You know your day's gone badly when it ends with you being shouted at in a Greek police station. It wasn't meant to end this way. I'd gone for a gentle sunset walk, up by the Bilderberg hotel, to relax before the big opening day of the elite globalist shindig, watch Phoebus plunge headlong into the western sea, and (yes) maybe sneak a couple of short-lens pictures of the mounting security....
Letterman Top 10 Surprises in
Sarah Palin's new book "Lipstick on a Pig" (Video)
The news that Sarah Palin signed a book deal with HarperCollins to pen her memoir was met with shouts of glee from the comedy world and suicide threats from the literary world. Fortunately, on HuffPost Comedy we get to focus on the former. Last night, David Letterman devoted his top ten list to the former VP candidate, giving away the secrets of he impending tell-all....
Fed Dread (Who Runs the Federal Reserve)
By Elliot Spitzer
The kerfuffle about current New York Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Stephen Friedman's purchase of some Goldman stock while the Fed was involved in reviewing major decisions about Goldman's future—well-covered by the Wall Street Journal here and here—raises a fundamental question about Wall Street's corruption. Just as the millions in AIG bonuses obscured the much more significant issue of the $70 billion-plus in conduit payments authorized by the N.Y. Fed to AIG's counterparties, the small issue of Friedman's stock purchase raises very serious issues about the competence and composition of the Federal Reserve of New York, which is the most powerful financial institution most Americans know nothing about.....
Obama Administration Plans New Regulations for Derivatives
The Obama administration will detail this afternoon its plan to regulate the exotic financial contracts that helped fuel the global crisis and crippled some of the biggest names on Wall Street, such as American International Group, sources familiar with the matter said. The proposal, which will require congressional action, imposes a number of restrictions on the so-called dark markets that trade a broad range of these instruments, known as derivatives, without government oversight....
Brain scanning may be used in security checks
Distinctive brain patterns could become the latest subject of biometric scanning after EU researchers successfully tested technology to verify identities for security checks. The experiments, which also examined the potential of heart rhythms to authenticate individuals, were conducted under an EU-funded inquiry into biometric systems that could be deployed at airports, borders and in sensitive locations to screen out terrorist suspects.....
Beware, exorbitant cell phone use may cause brain tumor
hough the cell phone phobia is taking over the youth and over 91.4 million Pakistanis use cell phones today, experts are of the opinion that the cell phones emit Radiofrequency (RF) energy which may increase the risk of cancer for cell phone users. To date, many of the studies have focused on whether RF energy can cause malignant or benign brain tumors. The experts opine that the cell phone users are exposed to the radiofrequency (RF) energy, a non-ionizing form of radiation, emitted by the cell phones and due to the widespread use of this technology, there is understandable concern about the health implications of cell phone use....
FBI Investigating Sleazy Sore Loser Ex-Senator Coleman In Minnesota for Taking a Bribe
The FBI is investigating allegations that former Senator Norm Coleman had clothing and other items purchased on his behalf by a longtime friend and businessman Nasser Kazeminy, according to a source in Minnesota who was interviewed recently by federal agents.
E.K. Watkins, a spokesman for the Minnesota FBI, would neither confirm nor deny the report. The source provided details of the interview to the Huffington Post, in addition to copies of business cards left by the agents...
Did the swine flu evolve in a lab?
he World Health Organization and leading influenza research groups are investigating unpublished claims that the new H1N1 swine flu virus may have evolved in a laboratory, not in nature.
The Geneva-based agency was informed of the pending publication over the weekend by the author, a retired Australian virologist named Adrian Gibbs.It scrambled to draw in researchers from leading human and animal influenza laboratories around the world in a bid to determine if the claim has merit and if it does, whether that changes the advice WHO gives member countries on the threat posed by the new H1N1 swine flu virus...
In Attics and Closets, 'Biohackers' Discover Their Inner Frankenstein
In Massachusetts, a young woman makes genetically modified E. coli in a closet she converted into a home lab. A part-time DJ in Berkeley, Calif., works in his attic to cultivate viruses extracted from sewage. In Seattle, a grad-school dropout wants to breed algae in a personal biology lab.
These hobbyists represent a growing strain of geekdom known as biohacking, in which do-it-yourselfers tinker with the building blocks of life in the comfort of their own homes. Some of them buy DNA online, then fiddle with it in hopes of curing diseases or finding new biofuels.....But are biohackers a threat to national security?
Ponzi Scum Update: Records Show Billions Withdrawn
Before Madoff Arrest
About $12 billion was pulled out of accounts at Bernard L. Madoff’s firm in 2008, according to several people briefed on an analysis of Mr. Madoff’s business records. About $6 billion, or half, was taken out in just the three months before the financier was arrested in December and charged with operating an extensive Ponzi scheme, these people said.Those figures offer a bit of hope for Mr. Madoff’s thousands of defrauded customers. Under federal law, the trustee overseeing the Madoff bankruptcy can sue to retrieve that money from the investors who withdrew it....
When The DEA Came Calling, Allen Stanford Re-Routed His Plane
An anecdote in a new GQ Allen Stanford story sheds some light on yesterday's weird reports that the suspected Ponzi schemer secured himself ten years of SEC amnesty by being an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration -- and also the continuing puzzle of why the Stanford's "statuesque" CIO Laura Pendergest-Holt, who was formally indicted today, isn't cooperating with the government. Stanford wasn't just any DEA informant, he turned his plane around at the chance to rat out a Mexican drug lord! Also, Stanford was a bit cultlike.....
Ponzi Scum Stanford DEA Drug Informer
Evidence has emerged that the Texan who bankrolled English cricket may have been a US government informer. Sir Allen Stanford, who is accused of bank fraud, is the subject of an investigation by the BBC's Panorama. Sources told Panorama that if he was a paid anti-drug agency informer, that could explain why a 2006 probe into his financial dealings was quietly dropped.....
Why Would Laura Pendergest-Holt Take The Fall
For Allen Stanford's Ponzi?
Suspected Ponzi schemer Sir Allen Stanford's chief investment officer Laura Pendergest-Holt was indicted in Houston this morning for obstructing and conspiring to obstruct the federal investigation into Stanford's sham money manager. Aside from a new allegation that Pendergest transferred $4.3 million of bank funds into the bank's operating account after speaking to the SEC, the charges don't appear much different from those laid out in a criminal complaint filed against the photogenic 35-year-old overseer of Stanford's "Tier 2" investments in February. (That's not for lack of rifling through her underwear drawer, according to a motion filed by her lawyer.)
Why Are Oil Prices Rising?
Many are asking the question about oil prices: Is this deja vu all over again? Didn’t we just go through a several-year run-up in prices based largely not on fundamentals, but on traders bidding them up, ultimately to $147 a barrel? Only then to see them plunge to $32 a barrel?
If one puts stock in the plunge, then there appears to be air in the run-up today to a six-month-high of $60 a barrel. How much is anyone’s guess. The other day, one exceedingly smart oil analyst privately put it in the range of $5 to $10 a barrel....
Has Microsoft gone mental?
Here’s the thing: say you have invested a lot of time and money in shoving out yet another new Windows OS hot on the heels of, let’s face it, a not very well received new Windows OS in the shape of Vista. Then, obviously, you want people to try it, so some clever sort in marketing strategy says “why don’t we let users play with the release code of Windows 7 on as many different computers as they like, without restriction, for a whole year?”
You know what, it is actually a good idea. Until, that is, you get to the bit about what happens when that year is up. Or rather what happens before that year is up. Look, the smart money says that when you arrive at June 1st 2010, the day that the freebie expires, it stops working and offers an upgrade at a cost option or similar. Fair enough? Hey, even a little nagging during the month or so before to let people know that expiry is about to hit them in the face like a wet fish would be acceptable, and even sensible.
What is totally mental, and I mean running around the supermarket without your pants on shouting “where is the mustard” mad, would be to start shutting down the user PC every two hours until they upgrade to a paid for OS and to start this nutball feature THREE MONTHS before the thing actually expires.
Yet that is exactly what some loon at Microsoft thought would be a good idea, and that’s what is going to happen. Starting March 1st 2010 your PC will shut down every two hours...