A NEW GENERATION OF HOPE!

Stories like this one are what we should be seeing on the nightly news instead of which celeb is gaining weight, losing weight, doing drugs, going to rehab, etc, etc.

When I read about kids like 12 year old Max Wallack I want to stand up and cheer for a new generation that gives me hope for the future.

Max is one of those “gifted” kids who will probably never make a winning touchdown but he will most certainly make a name for himself just the same. In fact, he's already well on his way. Max won a contest by creating the shelter pictured here out of trash; namely wire, plastic and packing peanuts. He won $10,000 and a Dell computer but modest Max isn’t too impressed with himself. “I don’t really care about the money. I care about helping people.”

And his ambition began at an early age. “When I was six,” Max said, “I won an invention contest that included a trip to Chicago. While there, I saw homeless people living on streets, and beneath highways and underpasses. I felt very sorry for these people, and ever since then, felt that my goal and obligation was to find a way to help them. My invention improves the living conditions for homeless people, refugees, or disaster victims by giving them easy-to-assemble shelter.”

So, here’s to Max and all those in his generation looking to make the world a better place. While their elders are talking these issues to death, our children are making us look like fools and I for one am thankful that they are!

CHEERS!

Let them eat Lobster

I just don't know any more and perhaps soon enough I just won't care. I got cornered by a woman at my club last night who went on and on about her money being wasted in earmarks for tattoo removal. This seems to be the red herring this week and the fishy smell of course is emanating from Fox, with people ( and I use the term loosely) like Michelle Malkin working overtime to make the most of it.

Apparently some money will go to a program to remove gang tattoos in California. Some will go for the Lobster fishing industry in Maine -- I don't need to repeat the litany, just turn on Fox or read any of the Ditto sites that repeat it ad nauseam, but we're hearing far less about billions to companies that use it for executive pay and bonuses; jets and yachts than we are about millions to entities that spend money on the poor and disadvantaged or on industries that employ Americans. All around her, of course are bankrupt businesses, foreclosed houses and homeless people. Perhaps one of them works for a dermatologist who removes tattoos. Perhaps there's someone who works in maintaining the 20,000 or so acres of parkland in this county -- land that attracts more in tourism than we spend making it pretty.

Certainly some of them in this coastal village are commercial fishermen whose boats are being foreclosed on, which is affecting the sales of gasoline and services which is forcing marinas to close and people in boatyards and grocery stores and tackle shops to be laid off. Saving an industry that employs Americans is at least a bridge to somewhere and criticism from people who have represented and supported the greatest orgy of non-productive pork barrel spending is almost as disgusting -- well, as Michelle Malkin.

It's easy to call any budget a series of "earmarks" and it beats me to think about how one allocates funds without allocating funds, unless you follow the Bush/Paulson "don't ask because we won't tell, you liberal bastard" model. One thing is for sure; some Maine fisherman is more likely to be salting cod with whatever comes his way from this package than salting money away in the Caymans or buying German cars or yachts made in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The whole idea of economic stimulus is to produce liquidity and improve the velocity of money so that maybe fewer people will lose their homes and jobs and businesses. The sudden parsimony of people who said nothing as tens of trillions of debt piled up, as money disappeared into the bowels of offshore corporations like Halliburton, was disbursed in pizza boxes to Iraqi war profiteers and corrupt politicians, should be embarrassing. Being a Republican however, is never to feel embarrassment, guilt or remorse, but to look for the solace of being told it's the doing of the "liberals."

As I said, I'm almost to the point of not caring any more. If we really are a nation of people hypocritically obsessed with the motes in other people's eyes, or stimulus packages, to the point where they would gladly see the end of the United States as a world power, we deserve what we get.

What we have here is a failure to cogitate

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sees 2010 recovery "only if" markets and banks stabilize, says Bloomberg.com. I see prospects for cheap, aerial fertilizer delivery if pigs learn to fly.

Listening to songs that have "degrading lyrics" may cause teenagers to have more sex. So said Dr. Brian A. Primack, a pediatrician and co- author of a study released Tuesday. Yep and a billion or so years of evolution contribute to the tendency too, but thanks Brian -- I think I understand much better now. It's a bit like insisting that to grant veteran's benefits to Filipino soldiers who fought alongside General McArthur will hasten the financial collapse of the US economy or that unplugging your cell phone charger will "save the planet."

I feel lucky if I can save my sanity.

THE GLOBAL GENDER GAP - 2008

Here are results from the latest Global Gender Gap Report complied by the World Economic Forum.  Specifically, the Report measures the gender gap according to these criteria:

Economic participation and opportunity 

Wage equality, management equality, access to high-skilled employment – as a ratio of female to male;

Educational attainment

Literacy rate, primary, secondary, and advanced enrollment - 

as a ratio of female to male;

Political empowerment 

Parliamentary and ministerial positions, heads of state in years - as a ratio of female to male;

Health care and survival 

Life expectancy and sex ratio at birth.

The Report does not penalize those countries having fewer resources (lower levels of education for example), but assesses countries on how fairly they distribute existing resources between women and men.

Covering 128 countries and 92% of the world’s population, the report shows equality gains for women in two-thirds of the nations studied. Compared with previous study years, gaps in education, political empowerment, and economic opportunity have narrowed, whereas gaps in health care have widened.  One implication of the study is a strong correlation between competitiveness and gender equality; countries that do not utilize their full human potential lose competitiveness. In virtually all countries surveyed, gender equality is weakest on indices of political empowerment.

So where does the good ole U.S. of A. stand on gender equality?  Here are the top ten countries in overall ranking:

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Oops!  The good ole U.S. of A., leader of the free world and shining beacon of hope and opportunity, is not even among the top ten.  How about the next group of countries, ranked 11 through 20?

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Nope.  Not there.  So where are you hiding, good ole U.S. of A (under a pile of WMDs)?

(Click on image to enlarge)

There you are!  Good ole U.S. of A is ranked number 27 ... well behind the Philippines (ranked #6), Sri Lanka (#12), Lesotho (#16), Mozambique (#18), Cuba (#25), and Barbados (#26).  What a nice role model, good ole U.S. of A., leader of the free world and shining beacon of hope and opportunity!

For a PDF copy of the full report, click here.

Bigger, more intrusive government

"The makers of the Constitution conferred the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by all civilized men—the right to be let alone."

-Justice Louis Brandeis-

Whenever there's a lot of outrage being sold, whether it's about protecting children, preventing tax shelters or defending the faith, it's fairly safe to assume they're selling something else and it's safer to assume it's something you wouldn't have bought otherwise.

There are few things easier to bundle with invasive, intrusive or even abusive government than protecting children, hence the carefully maintained impression that children are in vastly more danger then ever before and controlling the internet in the cause of controlling people and their unwanted thoughts and words attaches to our parental fears like a remora to a shark.

A free internet

"offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children,"

says U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican. Well of course! So does freedom of association and freedom of speech and assembly and of course, so does freedom in general. It also offers opportunities for dissent, for exposure of secrets of invidious nature and other things authoritarian and paranoid governments fear. So in order to protect the children, Cornyn would like to make sure that with every word you write, every breath you take, every move you make, he'll be watching you. listening to your calls, reading your mail, checking your financial records, tracking your movements: all these things we bought in the name of Bush's "warrontare" and yet it's not enough.

The plan is to have everything you say on the internet and a list of every search you make and every site you visit stored for the benefit of anyone who may want to investigate you -- for two years. Two bills have been introduced so far--S.436 in the Senate and H.R.1076 in the House. Both bills bear the same title: "Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act," or Internet Safety Act. Both use the same words:

"A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user."

And what is a provider or remote service? If you're got a home network with a wired or wireless router, you are! Better buy another hard drive and keep it backed up, you potential child molester, you.

"That sweeps in not just public Wi-Fi access points, but password-protected ones too, and applies to individuals, small businesses, large corporations, libraries, schools, universities, and even government agencies. Voice over IP services may be covered too."

says CNN.com's Declan McCullagh.

Alberto Gonzales may be gone, George Bush may be a bad memory, but the Republican Dream lives on. A country where nothing you do is private and nothing they do is public; a country where "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" is seen as an unnecessary impediment to control.

Absolute statements and American Values

I'm sorry I haven't posted here of late... I think I'm just more of a debater than a writer of original material. This piece did come out pretty well though, if I do say so myself... It's adapted from a comment I wrote in reply to an observation someone made about me, and I think it's good enough to share, here... Sorry if it comes off preachy, but sometimes I am just that kinda person...
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It's probably the liberal in me, but I don't go in much for the whole black/white, good/evil, with us/with the terrorists kinda thinkin'. I don't believe there are all that many absolutes, and I reject statements that speak in absolute terms. Just about all saints have sinned, and most sinners have performed good acts, too. All Americans (or Muslims) are not good. All Muslims (or Americans) are not evil. Not everyone who claims to be a faithful _______ (place religion/denomination of choice there) acts like one.

Just about anytime a person speaks of a whole group of people, whether chosen & denoted by their religion, their ethnicity, their country of origin, or any other factor, and speaks of them as though they are all one kinda person (whether all good, or all evil), one is almost certainly going to end up being factually incorrect in what one is saying about them. To group people together based on ethnicity, religion or country of origin, and then treat them all as one monolithic entity is the very definition of bigotry.

The same is true of me & politics. As a Green, I seldom agree with Conservative or Republican thought. (And contrary to what some have said about me, I'm generally not a big fan of Democratic thought, either.) Still, it's mighty rare to find me saying "Conservatives are evil" (or anything else, either), because I just don't think that way... Whatever issues and disagreements I have with individual conservatives or Republicans, wherever I may find them, they do not prove anything about ALL Conservatives, or Republicans, (or about any other groups to which such Conservatives or Republicans may belong, like "college professors," or "guys with hats," for instance...) Good or bad, whatever I'm saying about you, I'm saying it about you, alone.

I try to treat the people I meet as individuals, not as representatives of the groups they were either born into or chose to affiliate themselves with... Call me naive or crazy if you must, but I believe the more folks treat others as individuals, the better our personal & global relations with each other will be...

If you want (or want me) to condemn or praise individual people and / or individual acts, that's one thing... But chances are slim you'll ever get me to say all ________ are ____________, and I encourage everyone reading these words to give it a lot of thought before doing so yourselves. To my way of thinkin', it's neither intellectually or morally right to do so.

Yes, there is evil in the world, but it isn't "the Muslims," or "the conservatives," or "the non-believing nihilists" that are the cause of it. It's individual men & women murdering others, raping others, and treating others with disrespect and derision in a myriad of other ways large and small, that is at the heart of evil.

That's what I think, anyway...

The original version of this piece, and the comment to which I was replying, appear here, in case anyone's interested. I also posted this version to my blog, Wingnuts & Moonbats (link in the list to the right, somewhere), 'cause I haven't been doing enough posting there of late, either, and saw no reason not to kill lots of birds with the same single stone... 8>)

AMERICAN EXPRESS TRAVELERS' CHEQUES: DON’T LAUNDER MONEY WITHOUT THEM - PART TWO

The problem defined:  The purpose of money laundering is to disguise financial assets that can be used without detection in the pursuit of illegal activities. Drug dealers, terrorists, arms dealers, and other criminals operate and expand their enterprises through the use of laundered money. While this may seem an obvious point, what is less understood is how criminals use our banking system to further these activities.

A case in point, this older story about American Express from August 6, 2007:

American Express Co. (AXP.N) agreed to pay $65 million for failing to detect drug-related money transactions laundered through a subsidiary over several years, U.S. authorities said on Monday.

All American financial institutions are required to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act, which requires institutions to flag any transactions deemed suspicious and report movements of money over $10,000.

According to a GAO Report (July 2002), an estimated $500 billion is laundered annually. In the same report, the GAO admits: "The extent to which money laundering through credit cards may be occurring is unknown."

What these accounts fail to mention is the ease of using money orders and travelers’ checks as a means of money laundering.  This issue dogged American Express decades ago when Treasury officials confronted the firm in the 1980s for lax monitoring of its Travel Related Services (TRS) division.  Amex and other banks have long taken the position that it is too burdensome to report suspicious transactions to law enforcement.  My point: The story of banks participating in money laundering schemes does not begin nor end with Sir Allen .  In this context, Wall Street has always been a partner in crime, and this has been going on for a very long time.

AMERICAN EXPRESS TRAVELERS' CHEQUES: DON’T LAUNDER MONEY WITHOUT THEM

Our good friend Libby just posted an article, Laundering Drug Money, about the latest private equity scandal involving Texas billionaire Allen Stanford. These days, news of scandals flow from the spigot faster than tap water, and my interest is not a rehash. You can read more about this latest scandal here, here, and here.

Now, it seems, Sir Allen is suspected of laundering money for the notorious Gulf cartel. But my question is this:  Why just Sir Allen? Why not American Express? Or Bank of America? And every bank that sells travelers checks?

You see, your crafty Ocotpus has long known about the symbiosis between banking and money laundering, and the worst offender by far is American Express (Amex). This relationship between banking and money laundering is based on a concept known as "float." Here is how it works:

You buy American Express Travelers Cheques weeks in advance of a planned trip, and your trip lasts a few more weeks. Amex makes front-loaded income in the form of commissions from the sale of travelers' checks, but makes far more income on the delay between the time you purchased those checks and the time you spent them.

This delay between purchase and redemption is called "float" ... and Amex uses this "float" money to make more money. Float money is interest-free to Amex and other sellers of these instruments, but Amex can charge high interest rates to all sorts of borrowers for the use of float money. The longer the float, the more money Amex and others can make, and money-laundering has the longest, and most profitable, float of all.

What does every good drug or crime lord know about American Express Travelers Cheques? They are safe and can be redeemed anywhere in the world … just like the advertisement says.

The relationship between travelers’ checks and money laundering is one of Wall Street’s dirtiest, best kept secrets. Now you know.

Knock, knock. Someone at my door. Ooops! Gotta go …

Truth in comics?

The truth is that "controversial" cartoonist Sean Delonas is a provocateur who really doesn't care about the limits of decency, or about appearing to be joking about murdering the President, or comparing a man of exceptional intelligence, education and achievement to a dead ape.

Humor is a wonderful tool for saying what is difficult to say, but when the difficulty stems from offending the dignity of people of African Descent and indeed of the United States of America, the tool is no longer wonderful. I've been vilified for criticizing George Bush as has everyone who disagreed with him. Bush's mildest critics have been called vicious, unpatriotic and "deranged" but although he's often been depicted as a monkey, I can't recall a single cartoon in the mainstream press showing him being shot by the police. Double standard? We need a better word than understatement to describe it.

"The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, it broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy"

Said Post editor-in-chief Col Allan. No it isn't. I'm the last one to go hunting for racist innuendo, but this isn't innuendo, it's a classic piece of bigotry right out of the Jim Crow era and it can't be whitewashed by slurs against Al Sharpton, whether you like him or not. Everyone on the planet who believes we are a violent nation of racists will nod his head at this. It will be reproduced in papers all over the world just at the time when Obama's election was beginning to change people's minds and that's just what the rabid right wants: failure for America, Resurrection for the policies that have torpedoed the world.

Delonas has left us a long slime trail of disgusting cartoons pandering to the demented, deranged, stupid, bigoted, homophobic and social misfits who read Murdoch publications looking for justification and stories of alien abduction.

It's time the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post found someone else to write the next cartoon. It's time America found better places to look for information.

It's not fraud when we do it

We've certainly seen and heard plenty of haughty harumphment aver the tax problems of Tim Geithner. We've had more of the "more of the same" from the same folks who gave us, or tried to give us Sarah Palin as a Joan of Arc reformer and an upholder of the kind of ethics Republicans like to talk about while trying to keep us from examining their own failings.

We're not seeing a hell of a lot about Sarah Palin's tax problems. It seems that it hadn't occurred to her that the additional "travel related" money she was being paid for staying at home in Wasilla ( since her home isn't in the capitol, Juneau) was taxable income. Of course we learned a long time ago that the State of Alaska has been paying for all kinds of family expenses like tickets to basketball games, and sled races, but these things are "private matters" according to her spokeswoman. That's because she's a Republican in a Red State. otherwise any personal detail would be a public matter and could and would be used against her by her party's scandal machine. I'm still waiting for the "Liberal Press" to make a fuss about it. I'm still waiting to hear why everything we do or say on the phone or in our mail: why everything we buy and everywhere we go is no longer a private matter as far as the Government is concerned.

Next time they tell me what a bad break Sarah got from the mean old media, I might just have to mention this, as well as to relate my litany of her other lies.

Of course Alaska is in for some hard times, since 90% of its revenue comes from soaking the oil companies, hard as that might be to explain to laissez faire lovers who supported her anti-Tax rhetoric. " living within our means and putting money aside for a rainier day" is something, like ethics, that Sarah likes to give lip service to while running up debt like a mainstream Republican.

But they're still talking about her as a Presidential Candidate, which is fine with me. Let her select Joe the Plumber as VP too and maybe the accountant she used to hide her expense account shenanigans for Secretary of the Treasury as well. The country's going to hell anyway and we might just as well get it over with. You betcha!