Archive for 31. December 2009

December 31, 2009 Breaking News

31. December 2009 by Glenn.

 

Today’s attachment is a commentary on Barney Frank’s new financial regulation bill. You will not only be surprised, but shocked. You will even wonder why you didn’t know that you had all that money that they plan to lift from your pocketbook.

Quote of the Day:

“It has long been my belief that in times of great stress, such as a 4-day vacation, the thin veneer of family wears off almost at once, and we are revealed in our true personalities.”

– Shirley Jackson (1919-1965) US author

For some reason, I thought that this might be apropos today…

Observations:

And if things weren’t bad enough, it now appears that everyone will have to prepare themselves to appear nude when they go through the body scanners at the airports.

Up until “Big Sis” was awakened from her bureaucratic reverie on Christmas Day, only newsletter writers and other political enemies were forced to endure the indignities of the full body scan at airports. Well, us and little old ladies in wheel chairs, so that no one could claim they were profiling.

The folks at Wikipedia appear to be a little too “on the ball”. Shortly after it was reported that Rush Limbaugh was rushed to a hospital in Hawaii, Wikipedia updated their website with the news that Limbaugh was dead.

I think that is just being a little too prepared… or wishful thinking?

The best laid plans and all of that… Turns out that a planned “scream in” at the Copenhagen climate talks, by demonstrators protesting the lack of a definitive agreement on global warming, failed to materialize due to a blizzard which kept most of the demonstrators at home. The 6 demonstrators that did show up quickly packed up their bullhorns and posters and headed for the shed.

I love irony…

While you weren’t looking, oil edged up to nearly $80 a barrel today.

One million people are expected in Times Square tonight. You talk about the mother of all soft targets! Authorities are understandably jittery and have banned all backpacks. They probably should ban all burkas too, but that would be profiling, wouldn’t it.

And if things weren’t bad enough, now we are finding out that Goldman Sachs, personal bankers for Obama and Geithner, were running an offshore Ponzi scheme from the Cayman Islands, which led to hundreds of billions of losses for investors.

Apparently, while they were selling billions of dollars of shaky mortgaged back securities to investors, they were betting that the securities would tank and were selling billions of dollars of credit default swaps to other investors which insured against those very losses. It is said that, in some cases, they sold the mortgage-backed securities and the credit default swaps to the same investors! Apparently, the credit default swaps didn’t show up on the financial statements of the investors.

Word has it that Goldman recognized the potential devastation in the subprime mortgage backed securities early on and covered themselves with selling credit default swaps and moving out of the MBS market before competitors did.

My question is, are these so-called sophisticated investors greedy or just plain stupid? Longtime readers know that I am no fan of Wall Street, but that’s for another time.

And if things weren’t bad enough, now the Treasury Tinkerbelle, Timothy Geithner, is giving the ailing lender GMAC another $3.8 Billion to shore them up. Even with this, analysts say that the company isn’t out of the woods due to their portfolio of residential loans.

But what’s a mother to do? The government already owns over 56% of GMAC. Somehow, that fact escaped my notice when it happened. If you read the attachment

today, you already know that Tinkerbelle is a veritable piker compared to Barney Frank.

And if things weren’t bad enough, Iranian authorities have said they will show no mercy to demonstrators against the government. They then proceeded to use police vehicles to run into crowds of protestors.

They have also started rounding up relatives of known protestors, including the sister of a former Nobel Prize winner, whose Nobel medallion they recently confiscated. All the good moves of every penny ante dictatorship.

I keep getting a vision in my head of Obama reading about the Iranian efforts to put down the riots while wishing that his 500,000 strong national police force, which would not be sworn to uphold the Constitution, was a reality and he could have used them on those pesky tea partiers. Things would be so much simpler for him.

A new study of dust by a scientist at the University of Arizona has revealed dust to be a major modifier of the ecosystem. (Hey, the guy is being financially responsible. Why not study something you already have plenty of at hand.)

They are saying that as (if) global warming raises temperatures and more forests are cut and developments built, the amount of dust in the air is expected to increase, but they don’t really have an idea as to the impact. They say that dust may have been a factor in ending the last ice age 10,000 years ago by blackening snow and ice, leading to its melting.

They also say that even when you can’t see it, billions of tons of dust are being transported through the atmosphere. Dust seeds the oceans with needed minerals and is an important parent material to soil, bringing in natural fertilizers and minerals.

The key observation (in my opinion) was that dust, unlike Carbon Dioxide, tends to block the suns radiation and cool the planet.

My question is, if that is the case, why isn’t Phoenix cooler? After all, we have more dust than anyone but the Sahara.

Maybe a little good news with which to start the new decade:

No Rise of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Fraction in Past 160 Years, New Research Finds

Science Daily (Dec. 31, 2009) — Most of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity does not remain in the atmosphere, but is instead absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. In fact, only about 45 percent of emitted carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere.

However, some studies have suggested that the ability of oceans and plants to absorb carbon dioxide recently may have begun to decline and that the airborne fraction of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions is therefore beginning to increase.

Many climate models also assume that the airborne fraction will increase. Because understanding of the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide is important for

predicting future climate change, it is essential to have accurate knowledge of whether that fraction is changing or will change as emissions increase.

To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data.

In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.

The research is published in Geophysical Research Letters.

A little good news for a change. One study, however, doesn’t make fact. It does, however point out that there is good reason for many of us to believe as we do. And, at worst, it would point out the inability to accurately measure the green house gasses, as more scientists have pointed out recently.

Big Sis goes Postal:

WASHINGTON – As the government reviews how an alleged terrorist was able to bring a bomb onto a U.S.-bound plane and tries to blow it up on Christmas Day, the Transportation Security Administration is going after bloggers who wrote about a directive to increase security after the incident.

TSA special agents served subpoenas to travel bloggers Steve Frischling and Chris Elliott, demanding that they reveal who leaked the security directive to them. The government says the directive was not supposed to be disclosed to the public.

Frischling said he met with two TSA special agents Tuesday night at his Connecticut home for about three hours and again on Wednesday morning when he was forced to hand over his lap top computer. Frischling said the agents threatened to interfere with his contract to write a blog for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines if he didn’t cooperate and provide the name of the person who leaked the memo.

“It literally showed up in my box,” Frischling told The Associated Press. “I do not know who it came from.” He said he provided the agents a signed statement to that effect.

Thuggery seems to be a common thread that runs through the entire administration.

Happy New Year and see you next year (one less year that we have to endure Obama; unless, of course, he gets his national police force trained and equipped)

Glenn

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Definition for new readers: Yellow rat democrats, as opposed to Blue Dog Democrats, or just Democrats, are so named because they behave like yellow rats;

they are sneaky, they have no rules that they live by except to get what they want by any means necessary and they run for cover when someone shines a light on them. Yellow Rat Democrats draw primarily from the so-called “progressive” democrats.

Find your congress person: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt

Senate phone Numbers: 1-877-851-6437 and 1-866-220-0044, or call toll 1-202-225-3121

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The purpose of this newsletter is to provide information to the public regarding the political climate in America, which may not be available from the regular media, as well as to urge them to become politically active. While the writer tries to use only news sources that are deemed reliable, no guarantees can be made.

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