"A Hurricane Katrina-damaged car still sits half-submerged near cypress trees in Venice, Louisiana on Thursday, April 29, 2010. A region still recovering from the 2005 hurricane season is bracing for a growing oil spill that resulted from last week's explosion and collapse of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana"
"The most fascinating part of The Genius and the Goddess is an appendix, a list of Marilyn’s illnesses and hospitalizations. She tried to kill herself so many more times than Sylvia Plath -- eight, by this count, not just with pills but with gas. She got her nose and her chin redone. She had her tonsils and her appendix and her gallbladder and her wisdom teeth removed. She had thirteen (documented) abortions and a number of miscarriages. She lived in her famous body, and really couldn’t get rid of it except by dying in it. Ultimately, however many Elton John funeral dirges to Norma Jeane play on the world’s radio stations, there was no Other Marilyn. Just the one."
“And here’s what I’m trying to get you to understand: In the grown-up world, when an entire country’s savings accounts are wiped out because of some do-gooder and his law books and his Thomas Jefferson ‘What about free and fair markets?’ crap, that is a big problem—people don’t give a fuck about Jefferson and ‘free and fair markets,’ they just want their savings to be worth something. And people are right: Jefferson was an imbecile. He should have been a folk singer, not a Founding fucking Father. But that’s another issue that’s over your head—the point is, the guy who destroys this economy because it’s ‘the right thing to do’ will have to flee for his life, and whatever president or political party was in power when that decision was made will be out of power for the next 200 years. That’s why Washington panicked and passed ‘the bailout,’ they didn’t want to be the fools whom all the Ponzi victims blame for tanking the Ponzi scheme, so they broke the glass and pumped up a newer, bigger Ponzi scheme. It was an expensive 14 trillion dollar lesson in, ‘Stay the fuck away from free-market experiments, assholes!’ How naive are you people to actually believe that ‘free market’ crap? The problem is when people in power are stupid enough to listen to guys like you: all the do-gooder libertarians and the do-gooder free-market Republicans who forgot that they’re supposed to lie. Hello!”
In Austin, Texas, the Longhorns renovated their football stadium in stages between 2006 and 2009, adding 13,000 seats priced from $65 to $95 depending on the game; 2,200 club seats starting at a minimum $2,000 annual donation, plus the cost of the ticket; 2,450 chairback seats priced at a minimum $750 annual donation, plus the ticket; 47 suites priced from $62,000 to $75,000 plus the tickets and catering; an $8 million, 55- foot-by-134-foot video scoreboard; and ribbon scoreboards that offer more opportunities for advertisers.
At their baseball field, they added 19 suites priced from $32,000 to $40,000 plus catering; 400 club seats at field level priced at a minimum $750 annual donation, plus the tickets; and a video board.
The bricks-and-mortar investment paid off, according to Texas’s athletic director.
“Had we gone with endowments, we’d be down 30 percent,” Dodds said. “This is a huge success.”
Credit Agricole, Soc Gen Face Greek Risks as Debt Crisis Deepens
Banks have more at risk in Portugal and Spain than Greece. Claims on Portugal by European lenders amount to $240.5 billion, including $47.4 billion by German banks and $44.9 billion by French firms, according to BIS figures from the end of 2009.
European banking claims on Spain stand at $832.3 billion, with German financial institutions accounting for $238 billion and French companies $211.2 billion.
The opposite of austerity is not prosperity but luxe et volupté. We have substituted endless commerce for public purpose, and expect no higher aspirations from our leaders. Sixty years after Churchill could offer only “blood, toil, tears and sweat,” our very own war president—notwithstanding the hyperventilated moralism of his rhetoric—could think of nothing more to ask of us in the wake of September 11, 2001, than to continue shopping. This impoverished view of community—the “togetherness” of consumption—is all we deserve from those who now govern us. If we want better rulers, we must learn to ask more from them and less for ourselves. A little austerity might be in order.
“Tolerance” is a feel-good buzzword in our society, but I fear people have forgotten what it means. Many folks are proud of their “tolerance” for gays, working women, Tibetan monks in cute orange outfits, or blacks sitting at the front of the bus. But what they really mean is that they consider such things to be completely appropriate parts of their society, and are not bothered by them in the slightest. That, however, isn’t “tolerance.”
A freak leak of the Spanish unemployment number by the National Statistical Institute (INE), the equivalent to the DOL, was captured by Spanish daily ABC.es, according to which for the first time since 1997, the unemployment rate in the country that was notched by S&P today, will surpass 20%.
"One man I spoke to about it pointed out that, for men, Rivers Cuomo is both Liz Phair and Liz Lemon"
Charlie: It's about the night man, like you know like filling me up and I become him, I become the spirit of the night man.
Mac: But it sounds like a song where a man breaks into your house and rapes you.
Charlie: What dude, where are you getting that from?
Dennis: Alright, what's your favorite hobby?
Charlie: Magnets.
Dennis: Magnets- okay, making magnets, collecting magnets-
Mac: Playing with magnets?
Charlie: Just magnets.
There's some sort of weird chemical reaction that happens when you combine cat food, beer and glue. It makes you feel like extemely sick and tired and you're able to fall asleep.Dennis: "Actually Mac, you got it backwards. See a power bottom's actually generating all the power by doing most of the work."
“Then he smells crime again, he’s out busting heads. Then he’s back to the lab for some more full penetration. Smells crime, back to the lab, full penetration. Crime, penetration, crime, full penetration, crime, penetration — And this goes on and on and back and forth for 90 or so minutes until the movie just sort of ends.” -(Charlie and Mac Make a Movie.. involving Dolph Lundgren.)
If a dead body was sent into space, would it decompose?
| Greece | Germany | |
| Years of work to earn full pension: | 35 | 45 |
| Proportion of wages as pension: | 80 %* | 46 % |
| Number of pension payments a year: | 14 x | 12 x |
| Pension increase 2004: | 3 % | 0 % |
| Pension increase 2005: | 4 % | 0 % |
| Pension increase 2006**: | 4 % | 0 % |
| Minimum payment (Euros): | 445 | ca. 600 |
| Maximum payment (Euros): | 2538 | ca. 2100 |
| Minimum pension age for men: | 65 | 65–67 |
| Minimum pension age for women: | 60 | 65–67 |
| Average pension entrance age: | 62,4 | 63,2 |
| * for insurance beginning before 1.1.1993, 70% after 1.1.1993, average earner; ** last available figures; sources: Eurostat, OECD, Dt. Rentenversicherung | ||
"GM got a total of $52 billion from the U.S. government and $9.5 billion from the Canadian and Ontario governments as it went through bankruptcy protection last year. At first the entire amount of U.S. aid was considered a loan as the government tried to keep GM from going under and pulling the fragile economy into a depression.But during bankruptcy, the U.S. government reduced the loan portion to $6.7 billion and converted the rest to company stock, while the Canadian governments held $1.4 billion in loans. Those loans were repaid Tuesday, five years ahead of schedule.The automaker hopes to repay the remaining $45.3 billion to the U.S. government and $8.1 billion to Canada via a public stock offering, perhaps later this year. The U.S. government now owns 61 percent of the company and Canada owns roughly 12 percent."
PEACE OFFICER SALARIES
Correctional Officer / Youth Correctional Officer
Range A = $3,050 (This monthly rate shall apply to individuals while attending the Basic Correctional Officer Academy/Basic Correctional Juvenile Academy)
Range J = $3,774 - (Successful completion of the Basic Correctional Officer Academy/Basic Correctional Juvenile Academy)
Range K = $6,144 (Top step of pay scale)
Range A = $3,050 (This monthly rate shall apply to individuals while attending the Basic Correctional Juvenile Academy)
Range J = $4,142 (Successful completion of the Basic Correctional Juvenile Academy)
Range K = $6,743 (Top step of pay scale)
Range A = $5,188 (This monthly rate shall apply to individuals while attending the Basic Correctional Juvenile Academy)
Range J = $5,447 (Successful completion of the Basic Correctional Juvenile Academy)
Range K = $7,772 (Top step of pay scale)
Range A = $5,033 (This monthly rate shall apply to individuals while attending the Parole Agent Academy)
Range J = $5,285 (Successful completion of the Parole Agent Academy)
Range K = $7,437 (Top step of pay scale)
Peace Officers receive health, dental, and vision benefits. Peace Officers also earn vacation leave, sick leave, and holiday credits, and may be eligible for special educational and physical fitness incentive pay.
Upon permanent appointment to a Peace Officer position, individuals are enrolled in the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) and become members of the State Peace Officer/Firefighter retirement category. This retirement system is one of the best in the nation. Peace Officers may retire at age 50, earning 3 percent of their salary for every year worked as a Peace Officer. Actual pension is determined based on years of service as a Peace Officer. For example, Peace Officers can retire with approximately 90 percent of their income at age 50, after 30 years of service.Cheap sunglasses. They're all over the place, and the absence of Dolce, Prada and Gucci is noticeable. If you see a label, it's usually on a pair of Ray-Bans, with a smattering of Serengeti and Oakley. Many people, though, are going generic and seem to have decided that dropping a few bills on some plastic might be better used on something a little more essential, like food and water.Vans sneakers cost $42, as do most canvas footwear. Vans were everywhere, the reigning (unofficial) utility shoe of the decade. They too come in all colors, shapes and sizes, and though they don't offer much in the way of arch support -- nor do Chuck Taylors, also prevalent -- they're cheap and sturdy. Plus, who cares when you're young and bunionless.
"The day may not be far off when a city editor will say to a reporter, 'Check your space gear. You're going to the moon.'" (page 86).Your Career in Journalism 1965
"Let's assume the Indian ambassador to the United States and his wife visit your city. Someone from your paper will interview him on such weighty matters as East-West relations, India's neutrality policy, and so forth. But, as a reporter from the women's section, you will talk to Mrs. Ambassador about the problems and pleasures of being a diplomat's wife, her role in Washington, her views about American women, etc."
“You could have killed someone," said the aggrieved constable through Harris's window. "Young man, I kill thousands of people every night," was his laconic reply.
Rebecca, who claims friends describe her as, 'That weird girl who's famous in Japan', said: 'I am amazed how many viewers I have got.' I love you all. I’m so excited.'
Her album is expected to go straight to number one after it was produced by Tokuma Japan - one of the country's biggest publishers.
They have teamed Rebecca with an 18-year-old French student known as Sara Cruel and a 16-year-old student from Portsmouth called Gemma Cruel.
h/t-MR
- The basic picture of the federal government you should have in mind is that it’s essentially a huge insurance company with an army; Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — all of which spend the great bulk of their funds on making payments, not on administration — plus defense are the big items.
- Admittedly, gold may serve (or already have served) well as a tonic against large monetary dilution, incessant quantitative easing, continued unsterilized central bank consumption of newly-issued Treasury debt or merely fears of the aforementioned. But but do they think will happen when they really need it, like, trading those coins pure-gold coins (bling broach, or watch), for something tangible. If history is a guide, they will get sooooooo totally hosed.
"He is meant to look like a confused old man, unsure of where he is going, riding the bull market (the bull) all wrong. He is looking over his shoulder, not into the past but into the future..ie. he is clueless of how it should be done."
Sadly, the Greeks are today in a similar situation: the government’s macroeconomic program is not nearly enough to calm markets, or put Greece’s debt on a sustainable path. By 2012 we estimate Greece’s debt/GDP ratio will rise from 114% of GDP to over 150%. The interest payments alone on this would amount to 9% of Greek’s incomes at current rates, and almost all those funds are transferred to the German, French, and Swiss debt holders.-BS
CHICAGO—A University of Chicago freakonomics professor told General Electric investors Monday to keep a close eye on recent fluctuations in the heights of competitive powerlifters from Mexico. "Usually we can count on a stable average of 5 feet 8 inches, but last month's quarter-inch drop in height among Mexican dead-lift competitors in the middle-heavyweight division could spell disaster for GE's aviation and software subsidiaries," freakonomist James Duncan said. "But, like anything else, a shrewd investor must always ask himself one thing: How many hot dogs did I eat last year?" Duncan previously gained recognition for tracking first-time home ownership and teenage mothers' gum purchases against the Times Tom Jones Is Played Per Day Index.
"In effect, the government's profit is entirely due to the value of the government's guarantee. In Washington Post land, the government could make money by buying shares of a company's stock, offering to guarantee the company's debt, and then selling our shares at a gain when the market recognizes the value of the government's guarantee. Of course this strategy provides much larger gains to the other shareholders and allows the top executives to score billions in bonuses for being such shrewd managers, but in Washington Post land they don't pay attention to such things."Tasteful elitist arousal
To get a feel for just how much empty space there is in office buildings in Buckhead, Midtown and downtown Atlanta, picture this: The 12.3 million square feet of vacancy is the equivalent of about a dozen empty Bank of America Plaza skyscrapers.
At 55 stories, that iconic Midtown building is metro Atlanta’s tallest office tower and the sixth tallest building in the United States.
GROSS: And I just have to ask you, there is a scene in "The Wire" where two of the teenaged drug dealers are driving from Baltimore to New York to meet their connection and they're listening to a "Prairie Home Companion," and I've never understood the - why "Prairie Home Companion" showed up in that scene. So David Simon, please explain.
Mr. SIMON: Oh god. I have to go back to that? Well..In any event, we got - we hit that point where the Baltimore station, 92-Q, this hip hop station lost - started to fad out and then we started to pick up the Philly stations, you know, near Delaware or something. And he, having never been outside of Baltimore, he expressed that same amazement and we ended up listening to - because it was right sort of down at the end of the dial there -we ended up listening to "Prairie Home Companion." At that point I think he thought that the world had gone insane.
Kelly is wearing an eighties-style dress, all geometric shapes and latitudinous shoulders. She is hooking up with a 20-year-old male model but he’s not here tonight and she’s got her eye out for something else. Girls like her are either dating older men with money or young and good-looking ones without. There is a stupendous symmetry to this. The rich old men want to be young and good-looking and the young ones want to be rich, but both are sleeping with the same girl.
These kinds of girls, this is how you spot them. Garcia says, “You have to look at the discrepancy between her income and her lifestyle. These girls are going to St. Barts in May, Gstaad in winter. Their rent is three grand a month, and they don’t have a roommate. Dresses cost them $1,000, $2,000.” VIP hosts and bottle girls are half-pimps to these half-hookers, using them to keep their clients satiated. While some bottle girls will sleep with patrons, for the most part their interactions are limited to the confines of the club. Party girls are more like freelancers, and sex is their currency.Our nation is revolting
“That’s where trends in prostitution are headed,” he says. “Guys go crazy for the GFE shit.” He’s envisioning bottle waitresses becoming close with the clients the way they do now. But instead of doing what the bottle girls do sporadically and for an unspecific payback, Itzler’s girls would have sex (or perhaps just president-and-intern sex) and get paid. Full hookers, but in a social environment, with less stigma attached.
The conservative emphasis on family, traditional values and gender roles, and prolife anti-abortion sentiments all stress investment in children – for both men and women. Conservative policies mirror the genetic interests of women, writ large. They attempt to promote paternal investment in offspring. Further, they stress investment in conceived offspring – “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” In short, Conservative policies support the genetic fitness of women by capitalizing on each pregnancy, reducing male promiscuity, and increasing paternal investment in children. Such policies may impinge on the freedom of parents’ immediate offspring, but they increase the expected number of grandchildren via daughters.
I will be here.
Tyler Cowen
"The Economics of the Jobless Recovery"
George Mason University
Host: Paul Rubin
Sponsored by: The Department of Economics and the Program in Democracy and Citizenship
So should you if you live about the ATL.
Ever since he was a youngster, he says, he was intrigued by the way he would wake up and then, while he fell back into a lighter sleep, hold on to the awareness that he was in fact dreaming. Then there was the even more fascinating feeling that he could study the place and tilt the events of the dream.The Collapse of Complex Business Models
When the value of complexity turns negative, a society plagued by an inability to react remains as complex as ever, right up to the moment where it becomes suddenly and dramatically simpler, which is to say right up to the moment of collapse. Collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification.
I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth, and an insult to our intelligence, to deny. Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times...
Thus went on this process of hanging, from gamblers to negroes, from negroes to white citizens, and from these to strangers; till, dead men were seen literally dangling from the boughs of trees upon every road side; and in numbers almost sufficient, to rival the native Spanish moss of the country, as a drapery of the forest...
They constitute a portion of population, that is worse than useless in any community; and their death, if no pernicious example be set by it, is never matter of reasonable regret with any one. If they were annually swept, from the stage of existence, by the plague or small pox, honest men would, perhaps, be much profited, by the operation...
Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation...
That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until now, is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which now are decayed, and crumbled away. Through that period, it was felt by all, to be an undecided experiment; now, it is understood to be a successful one.--Then, all that sought celebrity and fame, and distinction, expected to find them in the success of that experiment. Their all was staked upon it:-- their destiny was inseparably linked with it. Their ambition aspired to display before an admiring world, a practical demonstration of the truth of a proposition, which had hitherto been considered, at best no better, than problematical; namely, the capability of a people to govern themselves. If they succeeded, they were to be immortalized; their names were to be transferred to counties and cities, and rivers and mountains; and to be revered and sung, and toasted through all time. If they failed, they were to be called knaves and fools, and fanatics for a fleeting hour; then to sink and be forgotten. They succeeded...
The consequence was, that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son or brother, a living history was to be found in every family-- a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related--a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned.--But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever...
"JP Morgan at one point even paid Goldman Sachs $3 million just to back the fuck off, so they could have the rubes of Jefferson County to fleece all for themselves."
"Here you can see a trail that leads directly from a billion-dollar predatory swap deal cooked up at the highest levels of America's biggest banks, across a vast fruited plain of bribes and felonies"
"Jefferson County, in effect, became one giant, TV-stealing, unemployed drug addict who borrowed a million dollars to buy the mother of all McMansions"
"...a move that sparked a lawsuit by one aggrieved sleazeball, who argued that halting such legalized graft violated his First Amendment rights"
"Blount is a stocky, stubby-fingered Southerner with glasses and a pale, pinched face — if Norman Rockwell had ever done a painting titled "Small-Town Accountant Taking Enormous Dump," it would look just like Blount. LeCroy, his sugar daddy at JP Morgan, is a tall, bloodless, crisply dressed corporate operator with a shiny bald head and silver side patches — a cross between Skeletor and Michael Stipe."
"...it was like the herpes simplex of loans — debt that does not go away, ever, for as long as you live"
"JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have systematically set out to pillage towns and cities from Pittsburgh to Athens. These guys aren't number-crunching whizzes making smart investments; what they do is find suckers in some municipal-finance department, corner them in complex lose-lose deals and flay them alive."
