COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Guandique is an illegal alien who had been offered a form of amnesty by the U.S. government.


In a statement released in response to questions from Human Events, the Eastern Region Office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service said: "Our records indicate that Mr. Guandique entered the United States illegally but was eligible for an immigration benefit because of the designation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for nationals of El Salvador. He filed for that benefit and received work authorization while that application was pending. The application has subsequently been denied because Guandique failed to submit fingerprints."

President Bush decided to grant TPS status to illegal aliens from El Salvador on March 2 of last year after meeting with Salvadoran President Francisco Flores. According to a 1990 immigration law, the attorney general can certify illegal aliens as eligible for this status whenever he determines "they are temporarily unable to return to their homelands" because of a war or natural disaster. In January and February 2001 there were earthquakes in El Salvador that killed hundreds of people. Bush determined that TPS status should be extended to Salvadoran illegal immigrants as a means of providing additional financial aid to the stricken country. "This will allow them to continue to work here and to remit some of their wages back home to support El Salvador’s recovery efforts," Bush said at the time.

A few days after the President’s decision, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft issued regulations indicating that any Salvadoran who had been in the United States before February 13, 2001 could apply by September 9, 2002 to stay in the U.S. under TPS. While their TPS application were pending, they could apply for permission to legally work in the United States. Ashcroft estimated there were 150,000 potential applicants for the program.

Guandique was one of them—and, although the INS will not say when he applied, it must have been within weeks of beginning his crime spree.

To be sure, no evidence has tied Guandique to Chandra Levy. As Chief Ramsey told CNN, "We can’t make the leap from that [Guandique’s crimes in Rock Creek Park] to anything to do with Chandra Levy." But the circumstances of Guandique’s crimes and the way he was handled by U.S. law enforcement, raises questions about how criminal and immigration laws are enforced in our nation’s capital.

Washington is a more dangerous city because of criminal aliens. Guandique’s brief, violent residency in the city demonstrates the point.

His first recorded encounter with the Washington Metropolitan Police Department was on May 7, 2001 (six days after Chandra Levy disappeared). At 1:15 PM that day, a woman returned with her daughter to her apartment on Somerset Place, NW. This is on the eastern edge of Rock Creek Park.

"She heard a noise coming from her bedroom," says a police report filed that day. She investigated and found a man "hiding in the corner." She screamed, the man fled. She called the police and described for them a suspect who was "a hispanic male wearing a striped yellow shirt, black pants."

The police discovered that the burglar had entered the victim’s home by breaking the deadbolt on the door and that a gold ring was missing from the bedroom. A few minutes later they found a man walking down the street who fit the description of the burglar. They discovered a gold ring in his pocket. The woman "positively identified" him as the man she had seen in her apartment.

The suspect could not speak English, so a Spanish-speaking officer interpreted for him. His name was Ingmar Guandique, he said, and he was born in El Salvador on August 21, 1981. He had no Social Security number and "refused" to tell police the name of any "family, relatives, friends or associates." He did not call anybody from jail.

The next day, the District’s Pretrial Services Agency (PSA) interviewed Guandique. This is the only agency that ordinarily investigates a suspect’s background on behalf of the District of Columbia’s government before a judge determines whether to release the suspect on bail.

Guandique told the PSA interviewer he had lived in Washington for one and a half years. He said he lived on the same block of Somerset Place as his alleged victim. He said he had not used drugs in the past month. He said he had been employed for three months as carpenter by a company whose name does not appear in local telephone or business directories. Before that, he said, he had worked in "rock construction" for an unnamed contractor, and as a "rock cutter" for another unnamed employer. He was not married, he said, but had one child who did not live with him.

PSA could not determine if any of this was true. The agent noted: "The provided references were unavailable to verify the defendant’s information."

That same day a judge released Guandique on his "personal promise" to return for trial. On the release form, the judge checked off boxes indicating he was to verify his address with the PSA, and "Refrain from committing any criminal offense."

Six days later Guandique was stalking Rock Creek Park. His victim was a 30-year-old professional woman.

"I went to Rock Creek Park, in the District, for a run at about 6:30 in the evening," she later wrote the judge in the case. "I was wearing a bright yellow Walkman radio with earphones and started jogging from the parking lot at Pierce Mill. About 200 yards into my run, at the next parking lot, I noticed a young Hispanic guy sitting on the curb watching as I ran by. I made a mental note, but kept running."

Guandique ran after her. He kept after her for five or six minutes.

"As I slowed, this runner jumped me from behind," she said. "We wrestled and it became clear he was physically attacking me. I twisted around, in the ensuing moment, and realized my attacker was the young male I had noticed watching me in the parking lot. Also when I had twisted around I saw that he had a small knife in his hand."

She fought for her life, grabbing Guandique by his lower jaw and pulling as hard as she could. He bit her finger then ran away. She ran in the other direction, and came across two other runners who brought her to a police station.

Five weeks later, Guandique, still free on his "personal promise," showed up to sign a plea agreement in the burglary case. The government charged him with second-degree burglary. He admitted it. The judge scheduled a sentencing hearing for August 9. He walked back onto the streets.

Eleven days later he was in Rock Creek Park again. This time his victim was a 26-year-old attorney. She, too, was wearing a Walkman.

"On Sunday, July 1, 2001," this victim later wrote the judge, "I went for a run in Rock Creek Park with my fiancé and I will never forget what happened that day. Being attacked from behind by a man with a knife is the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me. When my attacker dragged me into the ravine, holding a knife against my throat and covering my mouth, I thought and still think today that he was going to rape me or try to kill me. I feared for my life. What struck me most was that within ten seconds, I was off the jogging path in the woods, struggling to scream and out of sight of any passersby."

"Until that day," she said, "I never realized how quickly someone with the advantage and a weapon can put a person in a position of total isolation and helplessness."

When she continued to scream, Guandique fled. She immediately reported the incident to the U.S. Park Police. They captured him on a street near the edge of the park.

The next day, the District’s PSA interviewed Guandique for the second time in two months. Now he said had been living for 15 days at an "unknown" address in Langley Park, Md.—meaning he had moved since he was released on his "personal promise" to return to court and to certify his address with PSA. Indeed, he had moved to this "unknown" address only days before pleading guilty to a felony, for which he was not immediately imprisoned.

Now, he said he had been working for two months as a carpenter for an unnamed employer. Before he had said he had been working for three months as a carpenter for a specific employer. Before he said he had worked once as a "rock cutter." Now he said he had worked once as a "grass cutter."

Perhaps these were botched translations.

But his answer to the drug question was unambiguous. Before he said he had not used drugs in the month before his arrest. Now, the PSA said, "Defendant reports current alcohol abuse. Defendant indicates drug use within the past month."

Before, PSA had not been able to verify his claims. Now PSA said it had verified his claims through an unidentified "friend" to whom Guandique had referred them.

At the time of Guandique’s first arrest on May 7, the police had run his thumbprint through the FBI’s criminal database. This showed that the then-19-year-old alien had not previously been arrested in the United States.

On July 2, at the second PSA interview—twelve days after he had agreed to plead guilty to burglary—the PSA still concluded he had "no prior convictions in the District of Columbia."

This time, however, the judge did not release Guandique on a promise. He was held without bail. In September, he pleaded guilty to two counts of assault with intent to commit robbery.

Prior to his February sentencing, his two assult victims wrote their letters to the judge.

"I do not doubt for a minute that he purposefully stalked me as a hunter tracks his pray," wrote the first victim. "I know in my gut that, given the chance, he would not hesitate to repeat his crime on some other woman and it scares me to think what would happen if she was not prepared with some sort of self defense."

The second victim came to the same conclusion. "I feel certain that this man will attack other women if he is not incarcerated," she wrote.

The prosecutor repeated the point. "There is no reason to believe that the defendant will cease this [sic] attacks on women if released to the community," she told the judge in a sentencing memorandum. "Rock Creek Park alone could provide him with a constant stream of victims."

Guandique, for his part, according to the prosecutor’s memorandum, "steadfastly denies possessing a knife during the attacks." At one point, she said, "he insisted that the victims may have mistaken his bracelet for a weapon." The prosecutor dismissed this claim as "ludicrous" in light of the "level of certainty" in the independent and uncoordinated testimony of the victims.

"In a debriefing," the prosecutor said in her memo, "the defendant represented that his attacks in May and July were both motivated by the simple desire to obtain a Walkman Radio."

In issuing her sentence, Judge Noel Kramer called Guandique "predatory." She gave him two ten-year sentences to be served concurrently. Another judge gave him nine months for the burglary, also to be served concurrently.

After his prison term, he can be deported. If our borders are not secured by then, he can come back.

On May 22, Chandra Levy’s body was found in Rock Creek Park not far from where Guandique attacked his two victims.

Chandra, too, had been wearing jogging clothes and a Walkman.



182 comments:

  1. He should have been:

    Deported

    Shot and dumped into a ravine

    Given to the Palestinians to eat their young

    Pick anyone

    ReplyDelete
  2. Deported?

    That just leaves him free to return. That is not a punishment as much as an inconvience.

    Real world immigration tactics, used by the Republican administration for the past 8 years. Well exemplified by the handling of Ingmar Guandique.

    Betcha an Amero he was a born Catholic.

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  3. rat: Betcha an Amero he was a born Catholic.


    wow that's some crystal ball ya got there rat,,,

    ReplyDelete
  4. We need more surveillance devices.

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  5. There was an article in yesterday's paper about the wolves and elk again. The estimates of number of wolves was low, as was the estimate of number of elk killed. Both earlier estimates misrepresented what is happening which is, basically, elk genocide. Also, the folks at Fish and Game have owned up to the fact that, contrary to their earlier predictions, the wolves are choosing elk as their primary targets, rather than deer, which was what the geniuses had predicted.(on the basis of what, one asks--surely if you are a wolf it makes more sense to take down one elk rather than four or five deer, saves your energy) In short, we have wolved our way out of our elk herds, and any (human) elk hunting season. Now they are into trying to calculate the amount of economic loses, lack of hunters and related money spend in the community, numbers of cattle(and horses) killed etc etc. The various bureaucracis are fighting mightily among themselves over this carcass of an issue. What to do, what to do? The upshot is, that those who carried the sign "Save The Wolves" will have to write on the back "Save The Elk" and turn the sign around.

    More madness. From thoughtlessness.

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  6. From the first name you'd think he might be a wayward Swede, but I wouldn't bet an Amero on it.

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  7. OMG! Whit is unfrozen Burl Ives!

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  8. bobal said...
    "Do you know how the Swedes sink a Norwegian submarine?

    They send a diver down, and knock on the hatch.

    Hardehar, there's an old rivalry, tween us.

    ---
    The hatches open outward, there's no way you could open them underwater.
    ...this I learned with due diligence @ BC

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  9. As Kevin James says,

    "Stop the phoney ICE Raids,
    Stop arresting and deporting illegals with your media events."

    ...leave the illegals alone, and arrest the US Employers.
    "

    Problem Solved.

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  10. Well, since she's probably got dibs on his kidneys, I say we feed him to Trish.

    ReplyDelete
  11. At the Olathe Nike Site, I loved Olathe NAS supplied Liver and Onions.
    Unfortunately I'm not in Kansas anymore, Binkey.

    ReplyDelete
  12. ...and illegal meat ain't Kosher.

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  13. Well, wi"o", 6 out of every 10 Salvadorans are Roman Catholic.

    Makes it a better than even bet.

    Then a little more Google search and ...
    My grandmother lived and died in El Salvador. Her maiden name was Guandique. She lived in Berlin, then San Vicente. My mother said that the Guandique family (my great grandfather) came directly from Spain and settled in El Salvador.

    That's Berlin, El Salvador.
    But the family Guandique, having originally immigrated from Spain, a country where the propensity is towards Roman Catholisizm. With the CIA reporting that 94% of Spainards are Roman Catholic.

    Which make the odds of Ingmar Guandique being born a Catholic well over 85%.

    If we are going to stereotype folk by their religions, let's not quibble about what the religion of most North American headchoppers is. They are by birth, culture and upbringing, Catholics.

    Does not require a crystal ball to determine the realities, just a little time on the INet.

    Just a statistical search for the truth.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Burl Ives being the Freemason, not Ingmar Guandique.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Or was that whits' photo, in Burl's stead

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  16. That's a far better photo, whit.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Ingemar is no longer with us:

    Having suffered from Alzheimer's disease and dementia since the mid 1990s, his health deteriorated until January 30, 2009, when he died from complications following pneumonia.

    ReplyDelete
  18. What are the stats re:
    Male/Female Alzheimers?
    ...or does violence against women make that a non-starter?

    What percent of pedophiles in the USA were raised Catholic, 'Rat?

    ...so many questions.

    Many Filopino Catholics believe in what us Protestants would call magic.

    ReplyDelete
  19. He had common sense before his brains got beat out:

    "Johansson's introduction to the sport's limelight was inauspicious.

    He was disqualified for running from the eventual Olympic gold medalist, Ed Sanders, during the final of the 1952 Helsinki heavyweight competition. Johansson maintained he was not fleeing Sanders, but rather was trying to tire his huge opponent for a planned third round onslaught.

    Nevertheless, his silver medal was withheld for this poor performance, but he was presented with the medal in 1982.
    "

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  20. Retired life
    Ingemar Johansson and Floyd Patterson became good friends who flew across the Atlantic to visit each other every year.

    Johansson made several films in Sweden and appeared as a Marine in the Korean War film All the Young Men (1960).

    In the 1960s along with other business interests, Johansson co-promoted boxing cards in Sweden, including several with ex-champ Sonny Liston (1966 and 1967). On April 22, 1966, he boxed a five-round exhibition with European Heavyweight Champion Karl Mildenberger for his first co-promotion.

    By the 1970s he resided in Pompano Beach, Florida, for part of each year and ran in marathons (including the Boston Marathon) all over the world until the mid-1980s. During the 1990s Johansson and Patterson would attend boxing conventions and also sign their autographs on boxing memorabilia. They continued to be friends until the onset of Alzheimer's disease incapacitated them both

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  21. There's hope for Trish!

    - FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful -

    Obama announces plans to weatherize nation's borders to cut energy cost.

    ReplyDelete
  22. AMERICA'S HIGHWAYS, IS EVERYTHING CLOSE ENOUGH TO THEM?

    ReplyDelete
  23. And I learned it from someone else.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Will Condit Make a Comeback?
    What a Condundrum for the Condom Crowd.

    ReplyDelete
  25. "I loved it when he turned on his commenters a couple of years ago and lectured them on their obsessive fault-finding, and much worse, when it came to anything even remotely associated with the US abroad. It never occurred to him that he'd been encouraging it all along - that that was, for many regulars, one of the draws of his everyday commentary."

    I wish I saw it. It might not fit him exactly, but I've always loved the self-absorbed people who fret and grandstand about our image abroad, while simultaneously doing everything they can to aggravate it. And by love I mean they'd be among the first people I'd stab in the eye with a pencil. If I wasn't so peaceful.

    That said, with regard to Lang, I've found there's usually more to be learned from the assholes laying it all out as they see it, than the self-conscious politicians mouthing platitudes, and going on to get along. And I can respect the former quite a bit more to boot.

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  26. Doesn't mean I don't grind my teeth at times when dealing with them, though.

    ReplyDelete
  27. You think THEY'RE self absorbed!
    I worry about MY image abroad.

    ReplyDelete
  28. 41. slade:


    Is this the Stephen Fowler thread?

    For shame. Look for another caricature. The woman in that video IS obese and she’s got quite the mouth on her - the kind that enjoys embarassing other people as much as Fowler seems indifferent to it. Another nasty little post-modern dichotomy - which is worse the sh^t sandwich or the pissy martini-et?


    Feb 21, 2009 - 11:10 am

    42. NahnCee:


    Slade, Fowler is a Brit being objectionable to an American — in essence, by putting down the woman, he’s putting down EVERYone in America who’s overweight. I can’t believe you’re on his side simply because the woman is zaftig. If you’re not a racist, you’re certainly a fatist and that’s equally stupid and short-sighted.


    Feb 21, 2009 - 11:35 am

    43. slade:


    NahnCee, what’s stupid and short-sighted is reducing wretchard’s attempts to contextualize events into a bigger picture without populating the stage with lowest common denominator steroetypes. I must assume that I am not the only reader of this site who notices the backhanded contempt emanating from The Dark Side leftie who occasionally slips in with a rhetorical shiv. More often than not, the cut is dull but the point is made - with me - that the gravity and seriousness of the oppositional view is being marginalized by the extremity of the rhetoric and the cartoon quality of the sterotypes. Looks to me like psychops is experimenting with video soundbites.

    As far as being a fatist is concerned, guilty. I don’t fly much anymore but last few trips were like walking through some Fellini hell of truly and seriously fat slobs dressed in their finest neon spandex. The issue is not giving a rat’s @ss about appearance. Stupid and short-sighted.

    ReplyDelete
  29. "And by love I mean they'd be among the first people I'd stab in the eye with a pencil. If I wasn't so peaceful."

    In theme, this fantastic song.

    To be teamed with, this one.

    "You think THEY'RE self absorbed! I worry about MY image abroad."

    Doug, I have it on good authority you are loved abroad. In fact, we're hated precisely because we don't listen to you. Especially in Latin America.

    ReplyDelete
  30. "...I've found there's usually more to be learned from the assholes laying it all out..."

    No, no, no. No more assholes. Please.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Now folks are accused of being "fatist", always figured nahncee was a piglet, seems I was right.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Man, that thread is a keeper!

    57. NahnCee:


    slade - do you have an explanation for the foul children repeating what they’ve been taught? Mouthing what they’ve heard Bimbo Mommy and Brit Daddy saying over the kitchen table in the morning? Did the “producers” somehow arrange for the kids to be brainwashed enough to “play along”, too?

    You said a seriously stupid thing and you’ve been frantically backpedalling ever since. Once you start to hide behind Jerry Springer — comparing the rest of us to Springer’s audience — then you’re showing the same spiteful snide towards American flyover country as this British bozo.

    You can either fess up to being an egocentric male chauvenist pig yourself, and promise to try to reform, or allow the rest of us to understand that about you and in the future remember it’s your mindset as we read your comments on other issues.


    Feb 21, 2009 - 7:04 pm

    58. programmer:


    Q: What’s purple and commutes?
    A: An Abelian grape.

    ReplyDelete
  33. British Bozo..

    I've yet to meet a Britain that wasn't a bozo.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Wiki:

    Mark Steyn (born 1959) is a Canadian writer, political commentator and cultural critic. He has authored five books, including America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, a New York Times bestseller. He is published in newspapers and magazines, and also appears on radio shows such as those of Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt.

    Steyn, a Canadian citizen, now resides mainly in New Hampshire in the United States. He is married with three children..

    ReplyDelete
  35. Nancy Lobotamy visits Pope.

    Headline:

    Dope Meets Pope
    Pope says “Nope”


    - Miller Caller

    ReplyDelete
  36. "The US government may have to nationalise some banks on a temporary basis to fix the financial system and restore the flow of credit, Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has told the Financial Times".


    "It may be necessary to temporarily nationalise some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring"

    "The U.S. banking system is close to being insolvent"

    "The subprime mortgage mess alone does not force our hand; the $1.2 trillion it involves is just the beginning of the problem. Another $7 trillion -- including commercial real estate loans, consumer credit-card debt and high-yield bonds and leveraged loans -- is at risk of losing much of its value".

    "Nationalization is the only option that would permit us to solve the problem of toxic assets in an orderly fashion and finally allow lending to resume".

    Even Republicans may back U.S. bank nationalization

    "Experts say a meaningful bank nationalization -- one that would involve the federal government taking a majority stake in hundreds of banks -- would cost more than the $350 billion available to Obama under the second half of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
    On top of that, the United States is considering expensive bailouts of the auto industry ($39 billion) and the housing market ($275 billion) at a time when the Republican minority is howling about the cost to taxpayers".

    ReplyDelete
  37. Look, almost every weekend we "Nationalize" a bank, or two. By Monday they've been "un-nationalized," and the assets put in stronger hands.

    Citi ain't special. It'll just take longer. Don't be surprised if you wake up Monday morning to rumors of Citi's demise (and/or Bank of America.)

    One of these boogers would have been a big meal to digest. It'll take banks from all over the world to digest them both. Maybe Bank of America can be saved. What a freakin mess.

    The silly part is that Citi is, actually, solvent. But, when your most important asset is "Trust" you just can't withstand the damage that Citi's done to itself.

    Sayonara, assholes.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Sensitive:
    Tried to post this in response to your Rodney King comment, but once again was blocked @ BC.
    Maybe I should take on Slade and Nahncee to regain my privileges?
    ---
    Sensitive:
    Miller Caller said a 1958 Movie of "1984" did a better job of describing warped news than did a later one. (1972, I think)
    Has anyone watched it?
    The Movie


    1984 Version
    1984 - The Movie

    ReplyDelete
  39. Trust no government., 17 April 2000

    Author: Doug Galecawitz (dougg@evilnet.net) from Lisle, IL

    So you feel like renting a movie. After a slow drive to the video store in which you try to avoid the police from extorting you, you enter a video store with enough security cameras to see parts of you that you've never seen. You would rent some porno but today you'll be paying in credit card and you sure don't want that census taker knowing you've seen all 50 volumes of clamlappers. So instead you rent 1984. The zit face behind the counter scan your card and instantly your personal information and spending history is all over the internet. When you get back home you pop in the tape, you would have a joint, but the government has decided that pot isn't in your best intrest. Neither is beer, cigarettes, fatty foods, caffine, red meat, abortions, pornography,flag burning, sex in general or any of the other things you use to enjoy. You sit down to watch your movie and relax the rest of the night when storm trooper-like police bust down your door and carry you away. Seems renting 1984 set off an alarm in all local police computers and got you on the thought police's wanted list. You should know better then to oppose your government in any way, shape, or form. You would fight back but all those gun laws eventually equled up to a ban on the second amendment. Sound like an impossible world? Sounds fictional? Watch it then take a look at the world around you. Your half way there. Enjoy what freedoms you have left before they're gone. I'm sure one day this movie will be considered illegal.

    ReplyDelete
  40. The silly part is that Citi is, actually, solvent.
    ==

    I doubt it. The only reason they're "solvent" is because they manage most of their toxic stuff off the books. That's not going fly much longer, as lawsuits start to expose this chicanery.

    ReplyDelete
  41. Did I post about the 3/4 of a QUADRILLION the Bank of International Settlements reports?
    Derivative Swaps between banks.

    - Why Iceland is Melting -

    Its three largest banks, Kaupthing, Landsbanki, and Glitnir quintupled in size since 2004, and Bloomberg estimates they now hold assets worth 12 times Iceland's gross domestic product.

    To put that in the perspective of our own struggling economy, that's the same as if the combined assets of Citigroup, Bank of America, and J.P. Morgan Chase totaled some $160 trillion. Instead, they total around $7.4 trillion.

    What's happened now that the global credit crunch has hit Iceland's lenders is that its banks can't cover their debts, and the country's economic structure is not equipped to repay them either. Its population is a mere 320,000—just a touch bigger in size than Cincinnati, Ohio.

    "What we have learned from this whole exercise is that it is not wise for a small country to try to take a leading role in international banking," Geir Haarde, Iceland's prime minister, told reporters yesterday. "We are too small to sustain a banking system that has become too big."

    ReplyDelete
  42. Southern California taxes just went up again.

    One percent sales tax to 9.25% in L.A.

    Vehicle registration fees, already high, just doubled.

    Add another .25% to income tax. Up to about 9.6% top rate.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Trish,
    Mat was inspired by Jack Palance!
    ---
    Man In The Attic(1953)

    Interesting remake of the classic suspenser "The Lodger," with Jack Palance as a troubled pathologist who has killed a number of women after they spurn him.

    When he falls in love with the daughter of his boarding house's owner, her life is in danger.

    With Constance Smith and Frances Bavier. 82 min. Standard; Soundtrack: English Dolby Digital mono; photo gallery.

    ReplyDelete
  44. Took a trip up to Cabela's in Post Falls, Idaho to look over the weaponry. Really nice store, you can watch the steelhead swim around in this big aquarium. Place has got anything you want, and stuff you've never heard of. And stuff that I haven't seem for awhile.

    Of the armaments, the only thing I bought, other than ammo was This Wonderful Piece, arming up for the warmer weather's coming battles.

    Did you know:

    Flies are enemies because they are one of the biggest disease carriers in existence?

    Flies carry BACTERIA that can cause TYPHOID, TUBERCULOSIS, and many other diseases?

    One fly can carry over 33 million disease carrying micro-organisms on the inner and outer surfaces of its body?

    There are over 87,000 species of flies?

    The fly is one of the fastes flying insects there is?

    A fly's vision is sharp only 24 to 26 inches out?
    (this is the secret of Flyshooters success, knocks those little buggers down like jihadis in Pakistan by UAV--they literally never see it coming nor knew what hit them)

    One successful hatch can be well over 2 million?

    One season can breed 25 generations?

    In China (under Mao) millions of people were organized to reduce and possibly eliminate the fly population
    (didn't work, the flies won, the commies lost)

    (But they didn't have Flyshooter The Original Bug Gun)


    "LET'S ALL COMBAT THESE DANGEROUS GERM CARRYING INSECT INVADERS!"

    A Great Gift!

    Over 10 Million Sold!

    Faster Than A Fly Swatter!

    Flyshooter The Original Bug Gun

    Never aim at yourself or others.
    Never leave swatter loaded.
    Swatter is designed with daggers to kill flies.

    BUG REMOVAL TWEEZERS INCLUDED

    To help from touching germs on dead insects.

    I can testify this is the weapon of both yesterday and tomorrow when it comes to killing our pesky flying invaders.

    Less than $5 Dollars American.

    Protect yourself.

    Buy one now. In fact, buy two or three now.

    *Note*: The retrieval string that attaches the swatter warhead to the gun frame is inadequate--too short. You will have to modify this by using a much longer string, to reach out and touch those you hate across the room.

    ReplyDelete
  45. Also bought a C Crane AM/FM Shortwave Radio, as advestised on Coast To Coast. Thought I was getting the one with the hand crank, but didn't due to an error and confusion of the moment.

    However, having tried it out, it does seem so far like a good radio.

    Says 'Made in China' on the box, of course.

    ReplyDelete
  46. "The FlyShooter is so much fun, you’ll open your windows and let flies in... just so you can whack-em!

    ReplyDelete
  47. OCTODADDY? Man Says He Made Sperm Donations...

    OctoMom: It's not him!

    ReplyDelete
  48. The FlyShooter is so much fun, you’ll open your windows and let flies in... just so you can whack-em!

    I'll get one for mom. Mother's Day is just around the corner.

    ReplyDelete
  49. » Canadian Takes On Tanzanian Slaughter

    Last spring, he said, he began to hear about albinos in Tanzania being murdered for their body parts. More than 40 have been killed since 2007, sometimes right in front of their families, by gangs of men who hack off legs, heads or genitals and run away with them.

    In the last two years, rumors have spread in East Africa that potions made with albino blood, shoes made of albino skin, tendrils of albino hair woven into fishing nets and amulets with albino body parts will make people rich.

    Traditional healers have told an undercover BBC reporter posing as a businesswoman that they could get her an albino corpse for $2,000.
    ---------

    Tamil Tiger Kamikazes
    An injured man is taken to a ward in the main hospital of Colombo on February 20, 2009 after he was wounded following a rebel Tamil Tiger attack. Tamil Tigers carried out a kamikaze-style attack in Sri Lanka's capital late tonight, smashing a light aircraft into the main tax building, killing two people and wounding 50, officials said. Sri Lanka's air force said anti aircraft guns shot down one of the light aircraft that had flown over the tightly-guarded capital while the remains of the second was found inside the Inland Revenue building, which caught fire. By Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP/Getty

    ReplyDelete
  50. Oops. The trajectory of great minds.

    ReplyDelete
  51. They work Linear, I had one years ago. And, they're fun as hell.

    Cops Take Man's Anti Obama Sign

    Sign said "Abort Obama". And if he survives the abortion, to the 'Comfort Room' with him.

    ReplyDelete
  52. aha, now that we're spending like more than your just normal drunken sailors, the Big Zero wants to balance the budget on the backs of the 'rich'.

    Watch for stocks to sell off again, next week.

    And I didn't have to throw darts at the stock page to come to that conclusion.

    ReplyDelete
  53. "Albino" sounds too close to "Nordic" for my ears.

    ReplyDelete
  54. I saw an albino ground squirrel once.

    ReplyDelete
  55. Grenade attack wounds 5 in Mexican beach town
    12 hours ago

    ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — Assailants in an SUV hurled two grenades at a police station in the Pacific resort town of Zihuatanejo on Saturday, wounding one officer and four civilians.

    Police and soldiers stepped up patrols and set up extra checkpoints after the attack in the popular beach town north of Acapulco, according to the Guerrero state Public Safety Department.

    Three taxi drivers, a woman and a policeman were hurt

    Grenade attacks have become a fixture in Mexico's brutal cartel-related violence. Last week, five civilians and an officer were wounded in a grenade assault on a police patrol in western Michoacan state.

    In central Mexico, gunmen wielding AK-47s opened fire on two restaurants Saturday, killing two people. The first attack occurred in the town of Acelia and the second in at a highway eatery south of Mexico City.

    Police were trying to determine the motive and whether the two attacks were related.

    Gang violence is surging in Mexico despite the deployment of 45,000 soldiers across the country to root out drug cartels. Beheadings, attacks on police and shootings in clubs and restaurants are a daily occurrence in some regions.

    ReplyDelete
  56. Obama has said fixing the U.S. economy is his top priority. He has acknowledged that his success or failure in that will define his presidency.

    "We can't generate sustained growth without getting our deficits under control," Obama said in his weekly radio address in which he also announced immediate implementation of tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans as part of the effort to stimulate the economy.

    An administration official said Obama was proposing to cut the deficit, which private economists project will rise to $1.5 trillion this year, through a mixture of tax increases on wealthier Americans and spending cuts.

    "The deficit this administration inherited was $1.3 trillion or 9.2 percent of GDP. By 2013, the end of the president's first term, the budget cuts the deficit to $533 billion or 3.0 percent of GDP," the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

    "Most of the savings will come from winding down the war in Iraq, increased (tax) revenue from those making more than $250,000 a year, and savings from making government work more efficiently and eliminating programs that do not work," the official said.
    ...
    A second administration official confirmed a Washington Post story that said Obama would propose boosting tax collection from about 16 percent of the economy this year to 19 percent in 2013, while federal spending would drop from about 26 percent of the economy to 22 percent in the same period.

    He said Obama would let tax cuts implemented by his predecessor George W. Bush for Americans earning more than $250,000 expire on schedule at the end of 2010, when the tax rate would rise from 35 percent to more than 39 percent.

    Obama told Americans in his radio address it was vital to get "exploding deficits under control as our country begins to recover."

    "On Thursday I'll release a budget that's sober in its assessments, honest in its accounting, and lays out in detail my strategy for investing in what we need, cutting what we don't and restoring fiscal discipline," he said.

    Courtesy of Reuters.com

    ReplyDelete
  57. Dialing for Dollars is trying to find me ...

    ReplyDelete
  58. Stimulus Watch

    Shows projects by state, and by town.

    Just click on your state, then your town.



    Check and see if you are getting shortchanged. If so call Unca Obama.

    ReplyDelete
  59. Description City State Jobs Cost Program Type Vote Ratio
    Lewiston partnership project, road and utilities throughout site lewiston ID 0 $3,000,000 Streets/Roads -7
    Snake River roundabout lewiston ID 0 $2,300,000 Streets/Roads -8
    Highway 128 realignment lewiston ID 0 $2,000,000 Streets/Roads -5
    Twelfth Avenue extension lewiston ID 0 $1,900,000 Streets/Roads -8
    Park Avenue extension Lewiston ID 0 $1,800,000 Streets/Roads -5
    Community park traffic mitigations lewiston ID 0 $1,500,000 Streets/Roads -8
    17th street safety project lewiston ID 0 $1,500,000 Streets/Roads 1
    Port subdivision lewiston ID 0 $1,300,000 Streets/Roads -4
    Bryden Avenue widening lewiston ID 0 $1,200,000 Streets/Roads -8
    sidewalks to link schools and neighborhoods lewiston ID 0 $1,000,000 Streets/Roads -3
    sewer plant upgrades for federal requirements, reliability lewiston ID 0 $4,000,000 Water 7
    storm sewers downtown to prevent flooding, meet npdes lewiston ID 0 $4,000,000 Water -1
    golfcourse, airport water line ext. lewiston ID 0 $2,500,000 Water -14
    raw water pump intake lewiston ID 0 $1,300,000 Water 1
    Community park sewer lewiston ID 3 $800,000 Water -3
    waterline replacement downtown lewiston ID 0 $500,000 Water 1
    Southport water main ext. Lewiston ID 4 $500,000 Water 0
    airport east end water, ww ext. lewiston ID 0 $300,000 Water -2
    airport parking lot expansion Lewiston ID 0 $250,000 Airport -5
    normal hill parking garage lewiston ID 4 $8,500,000 CDBG -6
    public library lewiston ID 2 $6,000,000 CDBG -2
    twin cities food acquisition & site clearance lewiston ID 0 $5,000,000 CDBG -11
    Community park grading, site prep Lewiston ID 0 $5,000,000 CDBG -5
    municipal solid waste compost facility lewiston ID 4 $3,000,000 CDBG -3
    orchards neighborhood park lewiston ID 1 $1,800,000 CDBG -6
    public works maintenance facility lewiston ID 2 $1,500,000 CDBG -4
    5th street marina and dock lewiston ID 0 $1,000,000 CDBG -12
    skate park lewiston ID 0 $500,000 CDBG -18
    book mobile lewiston ID 2 $200,000 CDBG -19
    Radio repeater, all weather access Lewiston ID 0 $5,000,000 Public Safety -4
    fire station and public safety training facility lewiston ID 12 $3,000,000 Public Safety 1
    remodel 3 fire stations lewiston ID 12 $1,500,000 Public Safety -2
    upgrade EOC, police training center & communications lewiston ID 0 $1,000,000 Public Safety -5
    Transit Maintenance/Parking Garage Lewiston ID 2 $2,000,000 Transit -11

    Lewiston, Idaho Projects Submitted

    ReplyDelete
  60. Pick up and Call Unca Obama Now, Rat, Right Now!

    ReplyDelete
  61. twin cities food acquisition & site clearance lewiston ID 0 $5,000,000 CDBG -11

    The old Twin Cities Food plant--processed green peas--last harvest a few years ago--green pea harvest was a tradition here--just what the hell is that doing in there?

    It's a totally private operation, vacant now, let them sell it--though they can't find a buyer--on the open market. That's what the market is for. If it needs some cleaning, they are responsible.

    I'd sure like to figure a way to some bucks out this, myself.

    ReplyDelete
  62. Blog Archive » Guns, Gold, and Secession
    SgtMom • 17p
    And for all intents and purposes, Utah as a Mormon settlement was pretty much an independent political entity for a good chunk of the mid-19th century.

    I've just finished a long historical novel trilogy about the German settlements in Texas (The Adelsverein Trilogy - it's on Amazon.com at present!) , for which I did a lot of research - and a large percentage of Texas' citizens at the time were not terribly keen on secession, either - and resented being dragged kicking and screaming out of the Union. For one thing, it deprived the frontier of the protection of the Regular Army, and for another, it deprived cattle ranchers of a market - selling their cattle to the Army. Just another weird sidelight on a more complicated state than you might think...

    ---

    SgtMom • 17p

    Heck, I raised the funds to publish my first historical ("To Truckee's Trail" - it's on Amazon if anyone is interested) through a POD publisher by appealing to fans at my original website. Many of them were long-time fans, had read sample chapters, had followed my unsuccessful attempts to interest an agent (any agent!) or to get it published by those few mainstream publishing houses which entertain submissions from un-agented, relatively unknown authors. So what the heck - I went the do-it-yourself route, because there were enough people who believed in it, who believed in me and were willing to put their money where their mouth was. It's sold over the last three years - God love them, the Truckee City Historical Association has bought a box of twenty for their museum bookstore several times. And the regular fans were just as supportive when I launched the follow-up books: The Adelsverein Trilogy. One of them even gave me the perfect tag for it ; "Barsetshire with cypress trees and lots of sidearms". Its about the German settlements in the Texas Hill Country, back when that part of Texas was the wild and woolly frontier. Honestly, given the current state of affairs in publishing, in music and in Hollywood, going independent is the only way to go.

    ReplyDelete
  63. Larsen linked this disgusting article about the guy that only knows tax cheats and what he has planned for us Dupes that don't get a free pass like his rip-off friends.
    Obama Targets Budget Deficit

    ReplyDelete
  64. "Known as the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy party, they were an admirable group of people who employed strong decision-making skills, democratic for the times, even in their darkest hours. They started the trip with a much larger group of Oregon-bound travelers, then split from them at Ft. Hall, Idaho, forging their own route southwest through the mountains. Stephens, an unmarried blacksmith, mountain man, and hunter, was chosen to be the leader of the party. The doctor, John Townsend, was accompanied by his wife Elizabeth and her orphaned brother, Moses, an adolescent whom they had raised as their own child. Martin Murphy, Sr. was the head of a large family which made up three wagons. Six other families filled out the wagon train.

    It is believed that John Townsend, who went on to become the first licensed physician in California, kept an account of the trip, but none has ever been found.
    "

    ReplyDelete
  65. From the Author
    I had always kicked around the notion of being a writer - I had scribbled the usual sorts of juvenilia and kept a journal for about a decade - and had gotten the customary degree in English, but instead of trying to get the usual sorts of jobs that one can get with a degree in English, I enlisted in the Air Force. Oddly, enough, that turned out to be a useful experience, because I was constantly being tasked to write something. My military specialty was as a radio-television broadcaster, so here I had news stories, or radio spots, briefing papers, letters of instruction, performance ratings - a wide variety of material to write. I retired from the Air Force in 1997, and kicked around in some corporate/administrative jobs, while I pitched magazine articles... not with any particular luck. In 2002, I was offered an opportunity to write for a military-oriented weblog, Sgt. Stryker's Daily Brief (now just The Daily Brief). That was terrifically useful, both because it offered an outlet for writing about anything I wanted to write on, and because it gave me readers and fans. (insert Sally Field girly-squeal here "You like me! You really like me!) My first book, "Our Grandpa Was an Alien" came out of a body of memoir-essays I wrote for The Brief, all about my eccentric family and growing up in the 1950's and 60's. The readers really loved them, and kept asking "so when is your book coming out, then?" My second book, "To Truckee's Trail" also came out of a series of essays for The Brief - but those were historical.

    About the Author
    As a writer, Celia Hayes is passionately interested in the history of the American frontier. She was brought up in an eccentric, baby-boom family, which provided rich materiel for her memoir "Our Grandpa Was an Alien". She earned a degree in English Literature (California State University Northridge, 1976) before an un-slaked thirst for adventure and foreign travel led her to enlist in the United States Air Force.

    She trained as a radio and television broadcast technician, and served for 20 years in Greece, Spain, Japan, Korea, Greenland and Ogden, Utah, in a wide assortment of duties which included midnight alt-rock DJ, TV news anchor, video-production librarian, radio and television writer and producer, production manager, and base tour guide. She is now retired from the military and lives in San Antonio, Texas

    ReplyDelete
  66. 60. slade:

    The budget also puts in place the building blocks of what administration officials say will be a broad restructuring of the U.S. health system, an effort aimed at covering some of the estimated 46 million Americans who lack insurance while controlling costs and improving quality. - Washington Post budget article

    ---

    What never got resolved during the campaign is whether Obama’s intended plan includes the estimated 20 million illegals currently stateside. Dick Morris argued that it does. Obama’s people said no. Morris doesn’t usually make stuff up so it strikes me as a slippery issue.

    ReplyDelete
  67. Hmmm,..

    http://www.stocktock.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/spx-daily2.png

    ReplyDelete
  68. dRat will like this one:


    Bank Leverage Ratios... GE Boomin'

    As you can see, Morgan Stanley and Goldman have cut their leverage significantly. Citi is in worse shape. BofA and Chase are treading water. GE is the scary one.

    http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/2009/02/bank-leverage-ratios-ge-boomin.html

    http://snipurl.com/cfga4

    ==

    The higher they fly, the harder they crash.

    ReplyDelete
  69. The higher they fly, the harder they crash.
    ==

    Or maybe not. GE is heavily invested in renewables. This might save their skin.

    ReplyDelete
  70. If you think G.E. looks bad, these two banks are worse. Far worse. The BigCharts.com reading here shows it all. Citi shares are off more than 60% in the same period, and B of A is down more than 70%.

    Citi trades around $2.00 today, and it closed 2008 at $6.69; and B of A trades around $3.30 today, and it closed out 2008 at $14.08. GE closed out 2008 at $16.20.

    Warren Buffett gave an endorsement to G.E. with his investment late last year. Buffett did not buy the common stock in the deal, but if you look in his full holdings he does still own a decent amount of G.E. common stock. He owns Bank of America too.

    GE is massively tied to financials because of its exposure to the sector. We cannot even fathom a guess as to what percentage that will be in the future. GE ended 2008 with $172 billion of infrastructure equipment and service backlogs. Energy Infrastructure was 21.1% of its 2008 consolidated revenue, technology infrastructure was 25.4%, NBC Universal was 9.3%, and capital finance was 36.7%.

    The company has not yet cut its dividend. We are certain it will. And now the rumors are that it is going to lose its Triple-A ratings from Moody’s and/or S&P. If you look at G.E. stock, it is not at all acting like the ratings agencies really believe that it is a Triple-A rated security.


    Under $10.00… Is GE Really A Bank? (GE, BAC, C)
    Posted: February 20, 2009 at 12:04 pm

    ReplyDelete
  71. re: CTL

    I guess I'm just hopelessly naive.

    From algore's $5/gal gasoline back in the '92 election 'til today I just don't understand why this gov't, either R or D, hasn't made energy independence priority #1...

    ReplyDelete
  72. Four words, gnossos:

    car/oil/military mafia

    ReplyDelete
  73. One more (naive) mid '70s Guatemala memory.

    It was simpler days then. As Linear mentioned. The surfer dudes and their vans would come later. As would the eurotrash windsurfing social disaster tourists.

    But, back then, it was the tiki bus, hitching on top of an onion truck, or walking.

    The indigenous folk, maybe 80% of the population, seemed to me to just want to be left alone.

    There were "organizers" from the east. And there were the "do good" ngo's. Mostly met, in my opinion, with a sort of curious indifference.

    The governing class, characterized at the time as re-settled Nazis were, it seemed, of earnest German stock. And could not understand why the native population did not want to be led into consumerist utopia.

    One of their efforts was to attempt to graft "democracy" atop the varied indigenous cultures.

    So, one day I was going over to San Lucas to get some honey, each village having a special commodity of some sort it seemed. And I was accompanied by one of the vacationing tourists that passed thru. This nice enough guy said he was a political reporter from the NY Times. With some Latin American angle. But you never knew...

    So we get to San Lucas and the army is herding the locals into the square in front of a pennant bedecked flat bed truck. Music is playing.

    Always up for an interesting digression we stop to see what's next.

    Turns out to be a sweaty, hand held loudspeaker campaign speech. As I remember it was a guy running for the presidency. He was hand waving, emotional, dramatic.

    Now most of the locals spoke an indigenous dialect with enough "market spanish" just to get by... And that was about all the spanish I had as well.

    The guy on the truck, though, was speaking pure spanish, and very rapidly. I couldn't follow even a little and was just enjoying the theater when my friend started laughing.

    I asked "What's up?" and he said "That guy is just reciting an old Nixon campaign speech!"

    I'll never know if it was true or not. My traveling companion said "Look around at the cameras. This is just for effect."

    ReplyDelete
  74. Doug,

    It looks like you might owe Charles an apology:




    Engineered Osmosis: Revolutionizing Saltwater Desalination

    Written by Timothy B. Hurst
    Published on February 22nd, 2009

    A Cambridge, Massachusetts-based desalination start up has closed on a $10 million round of funding to develop its proprietary technology to produce clean, potable water from salt water using one tenth the amount of energy used in traditional desalination plants.

    As we reported last month, Yale researchers Rob McGinnis and Dr. Menachem Elimelech have developed a proprietary desalination system called Engineered Osmosis that they say could produce clean drinking water from seawater or other wastewater at half the current cost. Now that their new company— Oasys Water—has secured Series A funding, it can proceed with the development of its potentially revolutionary commercial desalination platform.

    Company officials claim the Engineered Osmosis (EO) process can produce drinking water at less than half the cost of current desalination methods by eliminating the need the for high-pressures used in modern Reverse Osmosis systems, thereby cutting electricity and fuel demands by more than 90%.

    The result is a reduction in the economics of seawater desalination that will ultimately bring the cost of producing water from the ocean below the cost of conventional surface water, such as that used in California's aquaduct system.

    "Water shortages are no longer a 'far-away' problem," said Aaron Mandell, President and CEO of Oasys, in a statement. Mendell noted that the ongoing drought in California, coupled with the fact water production is already the single largest use of California's electrical grid, makes such developments so timely.

    Company officials also see the tremendous potential EO can have in parts of the developing world, where severe water shortages are on the rise, resulting in large-scale political and social conflict. According to the World Health Organization, 2.4 billion of the world's 6.8 billion people now live in highly water-stressed areas.

    "Oasys has developed a truly disruptive technology to address the growing global water crisis," said Jim Matheson of Flagship Ventures, one of the projects financiers.

    As with so many of the promising clean technologies, one only hopes that the excessive demand in global markets does not prevent Engineered Osmosis and other low-energy intensive desalination technologies from getting where they could have the greatest impact

    http://cleantechnica.com/2009/02/22/engineered-osmosis-revolutionizing-saltwater-desalination/

    http://snipurl.com/cg2b4

    ==


    Them yids just never give up..

    ReplyDelete
  75. Karl Marx 1867

    "Owners of capital will stimulate the working class
    to buy more and more of expensive goods,houses and
    technology,pushing them to take more and more expensive
    credits,until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid
    debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have
    to be nationalized, and the State will have to take
    the road which will eventually lead to communism.

    (Das Kapital,1867)

    ReplyDelete
  76. I see your Mirage and raise you a Kfir!

    ReplyDelete
  77. Friday, February 20, 2009 2:06 PM

    MEXICO CITY -- The U.S. State Department has renewed a travel advisory warning Americans about an increase in violence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

    The alert does not recommend staying away from the country or any particular part of it, but advises American to stay away from prostitution and drug-dealing areas.

    It recommends visiting only legitimate business and tourist areas.

    The alert issued Friday says violent crime is particularly worrisome along the U.S.-Mexico border, where automatic weapons and grenades have been used in clashes between police and drug traffickers.

    More than 6,000 people were killed in drug violence in Mexico last year.


    Good idea.

    Better, stay away altogether.

    See the USA
    In your Chevrolet....

    ReplyDelete
  78. The government will stimulate the working class through Fannie and Freddie and cheap credit to buy more and more or expensive goods and houses, the banks will be forced to issue credit cards, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of the banks, which will have to be nationalized, and the State will have to take
    the road which will eventually lead to communism.

    ReplyDelete
  79. Yep, that works too, Bob. What's the river?

    ReplyDelete
  80. I'll bet on Marx as the superior visionary.
    Sorry Charles.
    (The Infinitely Energized Rabbit needs no consolation)

    ReplyDelete
  81. How about if I stay clean wrt Drugs, and just enjoy a little recreational prostitution?

    (R and R, as they say)

    ReplyDelete
  82. Prevention Threat Recognition: Enhancing border control and increased awareness of drug trafficking organizations may help to control the U.S. drug market.

    Prevention Threat Recognition: Is drug trafficking a problem in your area? Do you have gangs in your area that may be affiliated?

    ...

    Here is some of the more recent news:

    Authorities arrested a man accused of dissolving as many as 300 bodies in bubbling vats of acid for a Tijuana-based drug lord ( “El Pozolero,” named after a local stew)


    Closing in on Chaos

    ReplyDelete
  83. James Mann, a Johns Hopkins scholar who wrote a history of U.S.-China relations, viewed Clinton's remarks as part of a further downgrading of the importance of human rights in American policy toward China over the past two decades.

    "I agree that, to some extent, she's being honest, in the sense that merely including something in the talking points for diplomacy doesn't necessary lead to change and is sometimes designed more to mislead the public back home than to influence the interlocutors," Mann said.

    But he wondered if this honesty was now a general principle in the administration's approach to the world. He asked: "Is Hillary Clinton going to not mention women's rights to the Saudis because they already know what we think?"


    Own Style

    ReplyDelete
  84. High Yield "Time Bomb"

    FT reports:

    The amount of speculative-grade debt maturities will increase in the next three years, Moodys said, from $26bn in 2009, to $44bn in 2010, and $120bn in 2011.

    http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/2009/02/high-yield-time-bomb.html

    http://snipurl.com/cg7zk

    ==


    I love this comment:
    "We're all subprime now!"

    ReplyDelete
  85. Grand Rhonde River coming out of the Blues, one of my favorites.

    By that rock there is one of the best fishing spots on it. Used to be world class for steelhead before the dams.


    Best of all he loved the fall
    The leaves yellow on the cottonwoods
    Leaves floating on the trout streams
    And above the hills
    The high blue windless skies
    Now he will be a part of them forever

    Ernest Hemroidway- Idaho - 1939


    Always did like that little poem, often think of it.

    ReplyDelete
  86. I think Karl Marx ought to be ashamed of himself for all the trouble he's caused everybody.

    ReplyDelete
  87. UPSIDETRADER

    February 22, 2009
    To Big to Save and Will Sovereign Nations Be the Next to Fail?

    Some sovereign nations may crack and go the route of insolvency according to Nouriel Roubini. He states in a recent Bloomberg interview that some Eastern European banks are simply to big to save, in other words, the liabilities are 5 to 10% greater than the GDP of the country. So what he thinks may be next up for the Eurozone, is what he calls "cross border burden sharing", whereby a Germany would help save Greece or England helps save Hungary or the Ukraine. In the U.S. right now, bank liablities are about 150% of GDP, in the U.K. it's 500% in Switzerland 1000% and Iceland which went bust, well, it was about 1200%. Very scary stuff so stay tuned.

    http://www.aweber.com/b/1ul0x

    http://snipurl.com/cg8rs

    ReplyDelete
  88. Never been in that area, Bob. Probably closest I ever came was Walla Walla. Looks nice.

    ReplyDelete
  89. A lot of it has a lots of timber around that's not shown, and there are some smaller rivers that flow into it that are beautiful. Walla Walla is on the other side of the Blues from the Grand Rhonde.

    ReplyDelete
  90. Likewise, in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Caracas, Florence, Montevideo and Paris, Jews have been beaten on the street, synagogues have been firebombed and desecrated, and Jewish institutions, businesses and homes have been attacked.

    And for what reason? Because Israel, a sovereign nation, sought to defend itself from the constant barrage of Hamas missiles threatening its cities.

    Today, the sense of urgency has never been greater. We are fortunate to have a commitment from some leaders, those who gathered in London and others who have taken the time to understand the nature of the threat.


    Global Pandemic

    ReplyDelete
  91. Amsterdam, Antwerp, Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Caracas, Florence, Montevideo and Paris,..
    ==

    I'll never understand why these cities have not yet been torched to the ground.

    ReplyDelete
  92. Those were the cities you wanted US in America to emulate, mat.

    Now you want to burn them ...

    Wish you'd make up your mind.

    ReplyDelete
  93. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  94. He just said that to give Trish more ammunition.

    ReplyDelete
  95. Cairo's Khan el-Khalili has been targeted before as well. In April 2005, a suicide bomber killed two French citizens and an American.

    One of Egypt's highest religious officials, Sheik of Al-Azhar Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, called Sunday's attack "cowardly and criminal."

    "Those who carried out this criminal act are traitors to their religion and country and are distorting the image of Islam, which rejects terrorism and prohibits the killing of innocents," he said.


    1 Killed

    ReplyDelete
  96. Seems you've become disenchanted and unhappy with the way men are socialized in your Utopian cityscape enviorments.

    Wonder if their behaviour is caused by their Cityscapes or are the Cityscapes effected because of their behaviours?

    ReplyDelete
  97. Those were the cities you wanted US in America to emulate, mat.
    ==

    You're right. To the crematorium!
    But first we'll need them gold teeth.

    ReplyDelete
  98. She said that each side needed the other to ensure the well-being of its economy: “We are truly going to rise or fall together. We are in the same boat and, thankfully, we are rowing in the same direction.”

    Some dissidents were less impressed. Yu Jie, a prominent member of an unofficial house church, said he had been confined to his home for the duration of her visit.

    Another said that police who had tailed him for a week disappeared when Mrs Clinton left.


    Beijing Visit

    ReplyDelete
  99. Video says Mat just wants a Hug.

    ReplyDelete
  100. And Ashley will kill for hard banana.
    Doug?

    ReplyDelete
  101. What was this I was reading about some woman, a liberal no doubt, having cakes and tea, and sleeping with her chimpanzee? Seems she gave chimp a tranquilizer, and it touched him off, and he ripped someone's face off.

    Only in liberal lalaland.

    ReplyDelete
  102. Can't blame the chimp much. All comes from being forced to sleep with a liberal.

    ReplyDelete
  103. Wife says don't go to "Slumdog Millionaire". While parts of it were ok, she says there was a muzzie propaganda sequence that ruined the whole thing.

    ReplyDelete
  104. Seen it last week. An overrated "B" movie. Although I didn't notice anything pertaining to muzzie propaganda. Granted, I was busy with other things.

    ReplyDelete
  105. Something about a Hindu mob killing the muzzies, while it's usually the other way round? Maybe I misunderstood her.

    The exopolitics papers focus on the political implications of an extraterrestrial presence known to clandestine quasi-governmental entities that keep knowledge of this presence secret from the general public, elected political officials & even senior military officials.

    Exopolitics


    Sun 02.22 >>
    Pioneer in the development of 'Exopolitics,' Michael Salla will reveal how the U.S. Government has secretly developed and implemented policies on ET life. Host: George Knapp


    Rat thinks he knows what a conspiracy is, but he hasn't come even near the real thing:)

    As I continue along my 'walk of life', trying to sow a little awakened consciousness here and there, I do my best, that is all I can do.

    So far I have no converts.

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  106. So far I have no converts.
    ==


    :)

    That's ok, Bob. Neither do I.

    ReplyDelete
  107. In college a few years ago, I took a war class and one of the things we discussed was The Creel Committee. That was a committee set up to make the Japanese, which the government wanted Americans to go to war against, seem like "the enemy."

    They hired folks to write songs equating the Japanese to rats, disgusting animals which infiltrate homes and steal food. There campaign was a hit and off to war we went.

    I took this class as America started attacking Iraq and watched as our media did their job of villifying Muslims. I was amazed as people ate it up, forgetting that we have had Muslims living peacefully as part of some of our communities for years and years.


    Power of Propaganda

    ReplyDelete
  108. Power of Propaganda
    ==


    Just In–Sad News for the Academic Study of Religions

    I am reposting a link here to Thomas Verenna's Blog, just up this morning, regarding the late breaking news of the decision of the Supreme Court of Germany regarding the case of Professor Gerd Luedemann, historian, theologian, and New Testament scholar. I have known professor Luedemann for many years and most recently have enjoyed contact with him at the initial gatherings of The Jesus Project at UC Davis (2007) and in Amherst, NY (2008). This ruling says a lot about the long arms and tight hands of Church Influence even in "secular" Europe, not only in cases such as Hans Kueng, on the Roman Catholic side of things, but now equally so in the Protestant arena.

    As one non-Catholic among half a dozen others who left the University of Notre Dame back in the mid-1980s under the pressure of one of Father Hesburg's "recatholicising" moves in the Dept. of Theology back in those dark ages, as well as having scheduled lectures on my book, The Jesus Dynasty, forbidden in the spring of 2006 at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, because I had dared to suggest that Jesus had a human father, not likely Joseph, I can identify in just a tiny way with Prof. Luedemann.

    Surely the structures of European theological education are of great concern to those of us on the other side of the Great Deep, in that we who work in Biblical Studies are inextricably linked in both methods and research agendas to our European colleagues.

    Please help spread the world on this significant development so its issues and consequences can be more widely considered and discussed in our 21st century "post-Enlightenment" global culture.

    http://jamestabor.com/2009/02/22/just-in-sad-news-for-the-academic-study-of-religions/

    http://snipurl.com/cgfen

    ReplyDelete
  109. Exopolitics
    ==

    Nothing that occurs is by coincidence, Bob.

    ReplyDelete
  110. Seems the Hindus were killin' Muslims, rather than the other way 'round, bob.

    The Hindu
    India's National Newspaper

    Wednesday, Aug 23, 2006

    Organised riots & structured violence in India

    Paul R. Brass


    It was during my field work in Aligarh and Meerut districts in 1982-83 that I first came to the conclusion that there was a great deal wrong with the kind of attention given to what are called Hindu-Muslim riots and to the interpretations given to violence designated as such. I came away from those field trips with the thought that the rioting that I was learning about was neither spontaneous, nor was it primarily conflict between Hindu and Muslim crowds, though there was still some of that.

    On the contrary, I said to myself, and to a former district magistrate in Aligarh, that there existed in these towns what I called "institutionalised riot systems." The ex-DM, who knew very well how riots were organised, nevertheless reacted with an uncomprehending look. I was somewhat discouraged by his reaction, but ultimately found in my data from interviews, official and non-official reports — but not from the media — that the existence of such systems was to my mind incontrovertible. Moreover, it was much more highly developed and elaborately organised within the network of militant Hindu organisations radiating out from the RSS than from any comparable network of Muslim organisations, at least in northern India.

    Moreover, it was also now clear enough to me that what have been called Hindu-Muslim riots in India of the past several decades are misnamed, that they could not have been carried out with such force in so many places, in many cases for extended periods of time, and repeatedly, without the complicity of the police and the failure of the political parties in control of government and the administrative and police officers in the districts to prevent riots or at least to contain them once they had begun.

    In short, what are called Hindu-Muslim riots in India are, in fact, more like pogroms, and have recently, in Gujarat and elsewhere, taken the form of genocidal massacres and local ethnic cleansing as well.





    India's Hindu party revives temple plan ahead of polls
    Sat Feb 7, 2009

    The BJP rose to prominence on the back of a Hindu revivalist campaign that sought the construction of a Ram temple on the site of a 16th century mosque torn down by mobs in 1992.

    Hindu hardliners say the mosque was built by Muslim invaders after destroying a Ram temple on the site of the Hindu god's birth.

    About 3,000 people were killed after Hindu mobs destroyed the mosque in some of India's worst Hindu-Muslim riots.



    How do you recall the Gujarat 2002 pogrom today after seven years?


    By just recalling what happened in the communal riots in those days in Gujarat I get frightened. I and my Gandhian friends were very anxious. We wanted to help people but were helpless. Those were horrific days of lawlessness and mayhem – a nightmare better to forget. In Juhapura area in Ahmedabad 17 Muslims were killed and about 500 houses of Muslims were put on fire. A non-Muslim was also killed in that area. Juhapura is described as a Muslim ghetto and a mini Pakistan, yet the destruction there was one-sided.

    ReplyDelete
  111. India's Great Divide

    By Alex Perry Bombay
    August 4, 2003



    India's Muslims are also far more likely than Hindus to be victims of violent attacks. In all the communal riots since independence, official police records reveal that three-quarters of the lives lost and properties destroyed were Muslim, a figure that climbed to 85% during last year's riots in Gujarat. The Gujarat authorities even went so far as to price Muslim lives below those of Hindus, offering $2,050 in state compensation for Muslims killed but double that for the riots' 58 Hindu victims. "There is often a tendency in India to treat Muslims as them rather than us," says K.C. Tyagi, former leader of the moderate Hindu Samajwadi Party. "And this tendency does have terrible manifestations. Even today, by and large, Muslims have not been admitted to what we call the Indian mainstream." The portion of the population affected by this systemic discrimination is staggering: India's Muslim "minority" numbers 150 million people (vs. 850 million Hindus)—after Indonesia, the second-largest Islamic community in the world.

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  112. official police records reveal that three-quarters of the lives lost and properties destroyed were Muslim

    ReplyDelete
  113. Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of the Jammat-i-Islami Pakistan for the last two decades, and now head of the Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA), a coalition of religious parties, led a delegation to China. He was invited by the ruling communist Party of the People’s Republic of China.

    He went to a number of cities of the economically booming China. Everywhere the reception was warm and laid out on a grand magnitude.

    Top figures of the regional units of the Party came out to shake hands with an important religio-political figure from Pakistan. Every gesture, each move, at all points was smoothly conducted.


    Qazi Meets Communism

    ReplyDelete
  114. What We Don’t Know Will Hurt Us
    By FRANK RICH


    We are now waiting to learn if Obama’s economic team, much of it drawn from the Wonderful World of Citi and Goldman Sachs, will have the will to make its own former cohort face the truth. But at a certain point, as in every other turn of our culture of denial, outside events will force the recognition of harsh realities. Nationalization, unmentionable only yesterday, has entered common usage not least because an even scarier word — depression — is next on America’s list to avoid.

    ReplyDelete
  115. Wait til they bring back that
    "Trains of Death"
    Exchange Program with the Pakis,
    'Rat:
    We ain't seen nuthin yet.

    ReplyDelete
  116. I don't know.

    Is depression scarier?

    Or vice versa?

    Would a depression be much shorter lived than a nationalized economy?

    Would it be easy to un-nationalize once the economy gets up and running?

    Would the govenment allow the un-nationalization?

    I don't know.

    ReplyDelete
  117. Temporary Barry says that's all it is, Sam.
    Gotta get back to Fiscal Responsibility.
    ...that's why they hired Timmy G.

    ReplyDelete
  118. 34. MaggieTheCat:


    #30
    I think it would be a hoot if a bunch of old retired women went to jail for tax evasion. I doubt they’d get me before I can attend my 60th HS reunion this June in St.Louis. (I’ve got a blind date that I’d like to check out.)

    ReplyDelete
  119. Elton should hire him to spread his ashes.

    ReplyDelete
  120. Out away from the city on the open highway you see quite a few of them. Takes a long time to pass. Better have a lot of open road in front of you if you're going to make an attempt. If the trucker makes a small fast correction with the wheel on the straight, the correction amplifies down the trailers until the back end where it really starts to snake around quite a bit until it comes back under control. If you're gonna go around him, get around him real quick and be done with it. I've done it many times. Always makes my hair kinda stand on end until I get around.

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  121. The talks between Aso and Obama on Tuesday morning will come ahead of Obama's policy speech to a joint session of Congress that night to outline his domestic and foreign policy agenda.

    U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conveyed Obama's invitation for talks with Aso in Washington during her trip to Japan last week.

    Aso will be the first foreign leader to be hosted by the new U.S. president at the White House since he took office Jan. 20. Obama met Mexican President Felipe Calderon in Washington prior to his inauguration and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa last week on his first international trip.


    Talks with Obama

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  122. If you're gonna go around him, get around him real quick and be done with it.

    Only way to pass a truck. Any truck.

    Those who nap away their journey using cruise control set to the speed limit make my teeth ache when they take minutes to get around an 18 wheeler.

    ReplyDelete
  123. heh :)

    That little tyke, he'll be soaring with Rocket Man over the Alps in short order!

    ReplyDelete
  124. Come to think of it, one of those little jet packs would be good on the Grande Rhonde. Many a time my mouth has watered at a likely looking fishy place on the other side of the river, unattainable. No more, just push that button:)

    ReplyDelete
  125. F said...

    My dorm room overlooked the sea coast and we walked past the tennis courts down to the coast, where salt-drying pans were carved out of the rock, regularly. In those days many Palestinians lived in black goathair tents on either side of the road out to the airport. Their condition was miserable, but I believed then (and still do now) their leaders wanted it that way so they could appeal for international aid instead of becoming productive citizens (of Israel or Lebanon). Victimhood was just being developed as a political tool, but it took Yassir Arafat to perfect the process.

    All in all a wonderful year for me. It all changed very soon afterward, but I had left and it always seemed like a kind of dream anyway.


    F

    ReplyDelete
  126. Looks like you'd be spending a lot of time at the Wal-Mart Shoe Department if you bought into one of those MatMonoCycles.

    ReplyDelete
  127. Look @ this dumb fuck.
    McLean V-8 Monowheel (Crash)
    ...don't get to see the results
    ...if the V-8 landed on him, he might not have been in very good shape.

    ReplyDelete
  128. Higher quality 50 second edit.
    ...might not even recognize him as a moron if you saw him on the street.
    YouTube - monowheel crash

    ReplyDelete
  129. Like most things, they built 'em better in the old days, Doug. Craftsmenship, design, patience making the product, all gone now!

    ReplyDelete
  130. We're All Getting Screwed

    The silver lining is a lot of folks that dearly needed a screwing got themselves screwed in the process, too.

    ReplyDelete
  131. Oh, Canada! Complaint Against koran As Hate Speech Dismissed

    Nothing hateful about a commandment from allah almighty to kill every Jew behind every tree, save that one tree, the Gharqad tree.

    ReplyDelete
  132. A Restraining order servers
    or restraining order server
    is an order used by a court to protect a person, business, company, establishment, or entity, and the general public, in a situation involving alleged domestic violence, child abuse, assault, harassment, stalking, or sexual assault. In the United States, every state has some form of domestic violence restraining order law, and many states also have specific restraining order laws for stalking and sexual assault.
    Restraining and personal protection order laws vary from one jurisdiction to another but all establish who can file for an order, what protection or relief a person can get from such an order, and how the order will be enforced. The court will order the adverse party to refrain from certain actions or require compliance with certain provisions. Failure to comply is a violation of the order which can result in the arrest and prosecution of the offender. Violations in some jurisdictions may also constitute criminal or civil contempt of court.
    process servers

    ReplyDelete