Life as Lou

Get Off My Mountain

2012-02-17T12:57:00.000-08:00

Mystery Mountain Man To Utah Cabin Owner: Get Off My Mountain | Fox News

SALT LAKE CITY – He's eluded authorities for more than five years, a mountain man who roams the wilderness of southern Utah, breaking into remote cabins in winter, living in luxury off hot food, alcohol and coffee before stealing provisions and vanishing into the woods. Investigators have clawed for clues, scouring cabins for fingerprints that match no one and chasing reports of brief encounters only to come up short, always a step behind the mysterious recluse.

They've found abandoned camps, dozens of guns, high-end outdoor gear stolen from the homes and trash strewn around the forest floor.

But the man authorities say is armed and dangerous and responsible for more than two dozen burglaries has continued to outrun the law across a swath of mountains not far from Zion National Park. He's roamed across 1,000 square miles of rugged wilderness where snow can pile 10 feet deep in winter.

And while there have been no violent confrontations, detectives say he's a time bomb. Lately he has been leaving the cabins in disarray and riddled with bullets after defacing religious icons, and a recent note left behind in one cabin warned, "Get off my mountain."

"You wouldn't want to come across that guy," said Iron County Det. Jody Edwards, who has been working the case since 2007.

Theories about his identity have ranged from a 42-year-old man on the FBI's Most Wanted List sought for the 2004 killing of an armored-truck guard in Phoenix to a castaway from the nearby compounds of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the polygamous sect run by jailed leader Warren Jeffs.

The FBI recently discounted the theory that the man was their fugitive after authorities got the first pictures of him from a motion-triggered surveillance camera outside a cabin showing a sandy-haired man in camouflage on snowshoes, a rifle slung over his shoulder. The photos were captured sometime in December.

"We believe that is not Jason Derek Brown," FBI special agent Manuel Johnson told The Associated Press.

However, Edwards isn't so quick to rule out the possibility, given the close resemblance to Brown, who was raised Mormon and is a highly educated, well-traveled avid outdoorsman.

So while detectives believe they are getting close, buoyed by the recent photos, the shadowy survivalist remains an enigma. No missing person report appears to fit, and fingerprints lifted from cabins have yielded no match.

Meanwhile, cabin owners are growing more frightened by the day and are left wondering who might be sleeping in their beds this winter.

"He's scaring the daylights out of cabin owners. Now everyone's packing guns," said Jud Hendrickson, a 62-year-old mortgage advisor from nearby St. George who keeps a trailer in the area.

In November 2010, Bruce Stucki, another cabin owner, said a burglar broke into his cabin through a narrow window, pried open a gun case with a crowbar and laid out the weapons but took none. At a nearby cabin, the man reportedly took only the grips from gun handles.

"He could stand in the trees and pop you off and no one would know who killed you," Stucki said.

Some cabins he has left tidy and clean, while others he has practically destroyed, even defecating in one in a pan on the floor.

"He should know he's being followed, but I don't think this guy is normal in any way," said Stucki, who, like many cabin owners, has a lot of his own theories. "He's anti-religious, waiting for the mothership to come in," Stucki speculated.

Investigators say they have found several of the man's unattended summer camps, what they initially thought were left behind by "doomsday" believers preparing for some sort of apocalypse because of the remote locations and supplies like weapons, radios, batteries, dehydrated food and camping gear. Edwards said two camps found a few years ago were stocked with 19 guns. One of the camps also had a copy of Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild," a book about a young man who died after wandering into the Alaskan wilderness to live alone off the land.

The cabin burglar has managed to avoid being seen all but twice over the years, each time retreating into the forest. The coffee and alcohol the survivalist favors plays into some cabin owners' assessment that he could be a castaway from the nearby twin towns of Hildale or Colorado City on the Utah-Arizona border. The so-called lost boys are said to be regularly booted from the polygamous sect there by elders looking to increase their marriage opportunities with young women.

Unlike members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which discourages consumption of alcohol and coffee, many of the Mormon fundamentalists imbibe.

Detectives aren't sharing their latest assessments but "we've got a lot of leads" from the surveillance photos, Edwards said. "I would say we're very close to making a positive ID on him.We just got to catch this guy."

To cabin owners in southern Utah, he remains a spooky and menacing figure. "We feel like we're being subject to terrorism by this guy," Hendrickson said. "My wife says flat-out she's not going back to our trailer until they catch him."

Record $6 Trillion of Fake U.S. Bonds Seized - Bloomberg

2012-02-17T08:19:00.000-08:00

Record $6 Trillion of Fake U.S. Bonds Seized - Bloomberg

Italian anti-mafia prosecutors said they seized a record $6 trillion of allegedly fake U.S. Treasury bonds, an amount that’s almost half of theU.S.’s public debt.

The bonds were found hidden in makeshift compartments of three safety deposit boxes in Zurich, the prosecutors from the southern city of Potenza said in an e-mailed statement. The Italian authorities arrested eight people in connection with the probe, dubbed “Operation Vulcanica,” the prosecutors said.

The U.S. embassy in Rome has examined the securities dated 1934, which had a nominal value of $1 billion apiece, they said in the statement. Officials for the embassy didn’t have an immediate comment.

The financial fraud uncovered by the Italian prosecutors in Potenza includes two checks issued through HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) in London for 205,000 pounds ($325,000), checks that weren’t backed by available funds, the prosecutors said. As part of the probe, fake bonds for $2 billion were also seized in Rome. The individuals involved were planning to buy plutonium from Nigerian sources, according to phone conversations monitored by the police.

The fraud posed “severe threats” to international financial stability, the prosecutors said in the statement.

HSBC spokesman Patrick Humphris in London declined to comment when contacted by telephone.

Phony U.S. securities have been seized in Italy before and there were at least three cases in 2009. Italian police seized phony U.S. Treasury bonds with a face value of $116 billion in August of 2009 and $134 billion of similar securities in June of that year.

The U.S. Secret Service averages about 100 cases a year related to bonds and other fictitious instruments.

Your Bailout Dollars at Work

2012-02-16T10:27:00.000-08:00

G.M. Reports Big Profit - Europe Lags - NYTimes.com

DETROIT — General Motors reported a big annual profit on Thursday, but losses in Europe dragged down fourth-quarter earnings.

The results mean G.M.’s hourly workers in the United States will receive profit-sharing checks next month of up to $7,000, a record.

G.M. said it earned a quarterly profit of $472 million, or 28 cents a share, down from $510 million, or 31 cents a share, a year ago. It was the eighth consecutive quarterly profit for the carmaker, which cleansed much of its debt in bankruptcy two years ago, but also the smallest during that stretch.

For all of 2011, G.M. earned $7.6 billion, nearly all of it from North America. That was 62 percent higher than the $4.7 billion it earned a year ago and nominally more than G.M.’s previous record of $6.7 billion in 1997 (in today’s dollars, the 1997 profit would be about $9.4 billion).

Revenue increased 11 percent to $150.3 billion, as sales rose and its vehicles commanded higher prices.

G.M.’s chief executive, Daniel F. Akerson, called the year “another step in the right direction” but said the performance in Europe was not acceptable.

“Obviously, we still have a lot of work to do in some areas and we’re taking the necessary corrective actions to get the ball over the goal line,” Mr. Akerson said in a conference call with analysts and reporters.

Excluding one-time items like debt reduction and an investment in its former financing arm, Ally Financial, G.M. earned 39 cents a share in the fourth quarter, 2 cents below analysts’ expectations. Still, shares were up 6.4 percent, to $26.53, in midday trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.

G.M. earned $7.2 billion in North America in 2011, 26 percent higher than the previous year. Under a formula in the United Automobile Workers union’s new contract with G.M., 47,500 hourly workers are eligible to receive up to $7,000 in profit-sharing as a result. G.M. paid workers $4,300 a year ago and before that had paid out more than $1,000 only once, in 1999, when the checks were $1,775 each.

Fact check: Obama's trillion-dollar exaggeration on the Bush tax cuts – USATODAY.com

2012-02-15T11:12:00.000-08:00

Fact check: Obama's trillion-dollar exaggeration on the Bush tax cuts – USATODAY.com

President Obama has repeatedly and falsely claimed that "right now, we're scheduled to spend nearly $1 trillion more" in tax cuts for the "wealthiest 2% of Americans." That's simply not true. The Bush tax cuts — which Obama and Congress extended for two years — expire at the end of this year, so any plans to "spend" beyond Dec. 31, 2012, would require Congress to act again.

By Jewel Samad, AFP/Getty Images
President Obama discusses his budget proposal in Annandale, Va., on Monday.The White House told us that the president is referring to the $968 billion that "we save" over 10 years by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire as scheduled for high-income wage earners and returning the estate tax rate to 2009 levels. But that's money "saved" compared with extending the expiring cuts, not compared with current law. The fact is that the U.S. is not "scheduled to spend" that money and can't spend it without changes to current law.

On the day he released his fiscal year 2013 budget, Obama visited Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va., to discuss his budget proposals. He talked about "shared responsibility" — referring to his belief that the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire, as planned, at the end of 2012 for the families making more than $250,000 a year and individuals earning more than $200,000.

Obama, Feb. 13: Right now, we're scheduled to spend nearly $1 trillion more on what was intended to be a temporary tax cut for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. We've already spent about that much. Now we're scheduled to spend another trillion.

Obama, State of the Union, Jan. 24: Right now, we're poised to spend nearly $1 trillion more on what was supposed to be a temporary tax break for the wealthiest 2% of Americans.

The president often refers to families earning more than $250,000 a year (and individuals earning more than $200,000) as "the wealthiest 2% of Americans." He did it throughout the debate in the final months of 2010, when he failed to convince Congress to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire as scheduled on Dec. 31, 2010, for "the wealthiest 2% of Americans," and keep them for those earning less than that. We figured — correctly — that the president was referring to the temporary income tax cuts enacted by Bush in 2001 and 2003 and extended by Obama in 2010.

But we were puzzled by Obama's repeated claim that the U.S. "right now" is "poised" to spend "nearly $1 trillion more" on the Bush tax cuts. The fact is that when Obama and Congress negotiated a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts for all taxpayers, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimated it would cost $363.5 billion through Dec. 31, 2012. That's not close to "nearly $1 trillion" and that was the cost for all taxpayers, not just the wealthy.

We asked the White House to explain the president's claim. In an email exchange with us, the White House pointed us to Table S-9 on page 236 of the budget summary tables. The White House said that the federal government would realize a "combined savings" of $968 billion by allowing the income tax cuts to expire for high-income taxpayers and returning the estate tax to 2009 rates.

But saving money is not the same thing as spending money if the payments are automatically scheduled to stop. By the president's logic, a car owner is scheduled to spend $36,000 in car payments over the next 10 years, even though the $300 monthly car payments are due to end on Dec. 31, 2012. Unless, of course, the car owner goes out and buys a new car. Likewise, the only way the tax cut can be extended beyond 2012 is if Obama signs a law extending it, or if Congress overrides his veto — or if Obama loses reelection and the next president retroactively reinstates the tax cut.

It's true that Republicans would like to extend the Bush tax cuts, and there is legislationthat proposes to make them permanent. But right now the Bush tax cuts are due to expire, so claiming the U.S. is "scheduled" or "poised" to pay "another trillion" is just wrong.

In delivering his $1 trillion talking point in Michigan, the president was interrupted by a member of the audience, who shouted out, "That's not fair!" The president agreed. "That's not fair," he said. To which, we would add: It's also not true.

It would be true, however, if the president said it would cost the U.S. nearly $1 trillion in lost tax revenue to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans for another 10 years and return to the 2009 estate tax rates.

Now, Obama also said that "we've already spent" about a trillion dollars on the Bush tax cuts. It wasn't clear whether he was talking about lost revenue from just the wealthy or all taxpayers. The tax cuts cost the federal government $1 trillion in lost revenue over 10 years from all taxpayers, according to a December 2010 report by the nonpartisanCongressional Research Service. And, as we said earlier, the two-year extension cost an additional $363.5 billion in lost revenue. Other partisan groups have put the figure much higher. Citizens for Tax Justice puts the total at more than $2 trillion over 10 years. The Tax Foundation says that "there is no definitive answer" for how much the Bush tax cuts cost in lost revenue.

ILLINOIS TO CRIMINALIZE GUN OWNERSHIP

2012-02-14T15:03:00.000-08:00

The Anti Gun politicians in Chicago are proposing three bills that would criminalize law abiding citizens who own semiautomatic firearms.

House Bill 1294 will ban semi-automatic handguns, rifles and shotguns in the state and bring about the confiscation of every semiautomatic firearm. The bill will also ban certain firearm parts as well as .50 caliber rifles.House Bill 1599 will re-classify a number of semi-automatic handguns, rifles and shotguns as “assault weapons.” It hen would increase the penalties and jail time of anyone who is in violation of HB1294.

House Bill 1855 will turn anyone who is victimized and has a gun stolen into a potential criminal subject to investigation. The bill creates penalties for those that fail to report a missing weapon in an arbitrarily determined time-frame. That means that law enforcement would be able to investigate anyone who is victimized and reports a missing firearm. They turn you into the criminal instead of looking for the real criminals.

Apple Climbs Above $500 for First Time - Bloomberg

2012-02-13T15:07:00.000-08:00

Apple Climbs Above $500 for First Time - Bloomberg

Shares of Apple Inc. (AAPL) rallied above $500 for the first time after a two-week gain spurred by the iPhone maker’s first-quarter earnings report approached 20 percent.

Apple increased 1.9 percent to $502.60 today. In the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, Google Inc. (GOOG), Priceline.com Inc. (PCLN) and Intuitive Surgical Inc. (ISRG) cost more per share, at $612.20, $571.15 and $503.07, respectively.

“It reminds us all of the amazing transformation of Apple over the past eight years,” Timothy Ghriskey, who owns Apple and oversees $2 billion as chief investment officer of Solaris Group LLC in Bedford Hills, New York, said in a telephone interview today. “We think the stock has higher to go, $600 is next,” he said. “It’s still an inexpensive stock for a company that is executing at the very highest level and continues to innovate.”

Apple has climbed 11 of the 14 days since reporting quarterly results. Its earnings are expanding so fast that even with the rally, the shares are trading at less than half their median valuation since 1990, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The gain since Apple reported results is almost four times as large as the advance in the Nasdaq-100 Index.

The world’s largest company by market capitalization said on Jan. 24 that profit in the quarter ended Dec. 31 was $13.1 billion, 36 percent more than the average analyst projection, while revenue beat forecasts by $7.3 billion, the most ever. The Cupertino, California-based company single-handedly erased a drop in S&P 500 earnings for the October-to-December period, turning a 4.2 percent decline into a 4.4 percent gain.

Shares of the maker of the iPod, iPhone and iPad have risen 17 percent over the past month, the biggest gain since August 2009 rolling back as of Feb. 10. The stock rose 22 percent this year through the end of last week, compared with a increase of 12 percent for technology companies in the S&P 500.

Analysts see the stock climbing to $575.56, according to the average of price estimates in a Bloomberg survey.

I'm a Threat, You're a Threat

2012-02-09T12:14:00.000-08:00

FBI warns of threat from anti-government extremists | Reuters

[chances are if you're reading this, we are of like mind - Lou]

(Reuters) - Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday.

These extremists, sometimes known as "sovereign citizens," believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.

The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.

Routine encounters with police can turn violent "at the drop of a hat," said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI's counterterrorism division.

"We thought it was important to increase the visibility of the threat with state and local law enforcement," he said.

Motorcyclist clocked at 188 mph convicted – USATODAY.com

2012-02-06T07:59:00.000-08:00

Motorcyclist clocked at 188 mph convicted – USATODAY.com

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa – A motorcyclist whose speeds reached 188 mph during a chase by troopers may spend two years in prison after he is sentenced March 8.

James Foldenauer of Council Bluffs, Iowa, was found guilty Wednesday of traveling at excessive speed and eluding a police officer as he drove Aug. 5, 2009, on Interstate 29 near Missouri Valley, Iowa. The speed limit was 70 mph, and he and another motorcyclist were clocked at 89 mph in a construction zone.

The other motorcyclist, a woman, stopped, said Sgt. Bryan Michelsen of the Iowa State Patrol. Foldenauer accelerated his 2003 Suzuki Hayabusa and reached 188 mph near Honey Creek, Iowa.

But that's not the fastest motorcycle chase: Michelsen said he found records from the Minnesota Highway Patrol clocking a motorcycle at 205 mph. Two Iowa State Patrol officers on the ground and one in the air pursued Foldenauer although the police cars couldn't keep up with the motorcycle.

"I don't think he knew we had a plane over him. If he had known that, he probably would have stopped," Michelsen said.

Pilot Scott Pigsley said he was concerned on that day about the safety of not only the motorcyclist, who was wearing a helmet, but also everyone else traveling on I-29 in his path.

"I not only watched him pass on the shoulders at high rates of speed, but I saw him go on the centerline between semis and cars," Pigsley said.

Pigsley followed the motorcyclist across the Missouri River to an Omaha, Neb., residence, where Omaha police officers arrested him.

George Has it Right!

2012-02-01T21:08:00.000-08:00

Microsoft mishap in Madison funds 1,400 iPads | iPad Atlas - CNET Reviews

2012-01-31T08:17:00.000-08:00

Microsoft mishap in Madison funds 1,400 iPads | iPad Atlas - CNET Reviews

Back in 2009, according to a report from Cult of Mac, the state of Wisconsin sued Microsoft for overpricing its software, effectively cheating consumers out of their hard-earned money. That lawsuit ended in an award of $80 million, which the state decided to split among its school districts.

Using its $2.1-million share, the city of Madison decided to purchase about 600 iPads for the current school year, setting aside the rest of the cash to purchase 800 iPads for next year.

Perhaps it's not a Hollywood-esque dramatic turn of events, but in the age-old battle between Mac and PC, chalk this up as a win for Mac (and the students in Madison who get to shed some textbooks in favor of an iPad). Are iPads the future of learning in the classroom?

Problems plague cleanup at Hanford nuclear waste site

2012-01-18T07:37:00.000-08:00

from USATODAY

HANFORD SITE, Wash. – Seven decades after scientists came here during World War II to create plutonium for the first atomic bomb, a new generation is struggling with an even more daunting task: cleaning up the radioactive mess.

Hanford's Reactor B made plutonium for the first atomic bomb ever detonated. It also produced the plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II. It was shut down in 1968.

The U.S. government is building a treatment plant to stabilize and contain 56 million gallons of waste left from a half-century of nuclear weapons production. The radioactive sludge is so dangerous that a few hours of exposure could be fatal. A major leak could contaminate water supplies serving millions across the Northwest. The cleanup is the most complex and costly environmental restoration ever attempted.

And the project is not going well.

A USA TODAY investigation has found that the troubled, 10-year effort to build the treatment plant faces enormous problems just as it reaches what was supposed to be its final stage.

In exclusive interviews, several senior engineers cited design problems that could bring the plant's operations to a halt before much of the waste is treated. Their reports have spurred new technical reviews and raised official concerns about the risk of a hydrogen explosion or uncontrolled nuclear reaction inside the plant. Either could damage critical equipment, shut the facility down or, worst case, allow radiation to escape.

The plant's $12.3 billion price tag, already triple original estimates, is well short of what it will cost to address the problems and finish the project. And the plant's start-up date, originally slated for last year and pushed back to its current target of 2019, is likely to slip further.

"We're continuing with a failed design," said Donald Alexander, a senior U.S. government scientist on the project.

"There's a lot of pressure … from Congress, from the state, from the community to make progress," he added. As a result, "the design processes are cut short, the safety analyses are cut short, and the oversight is cut short. … We have to stop now and figure out how to do this right, before we move any further."

Documents obtained by USA TODAY show at least three federal investigations are underway to examine the project, which is funded and supervised by the Department of Energy, owner of Hanford Site. Bechtel National is the prime contractor.

In November, the Energy Department's independent oversight office notified Bechtel that it is investigating "potential nuclear safety non-compliances" in the design and installation of plant systems and components. And the department's inspector general is in the final stages of a separate probe focused on whether Bechtel installed critical equipment that didn't meet quality-control standards.

Meanwhile, Congress' General Accountability Office has launched a sweeping review of everything from cost and schedule overruns to the risks associated with the Energy Department's decision to proceed with construction before completing and verifying the design of key components.

The "design-build" approach "is good if you're building a McDonald's," said Gene Aloise, the GAO's director of nuclear non-proliferation and security. "It's not good if you're building a one-of-a-kind, high-risk nuclear waste facility."

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent federal panel that oversees public health and safety at nuclear weapons sites, is urging Energy Secretary Steven Chu to require more extensive testing of designs for some of the plant's most critical components.

"Design and construction of the project continue despite there being unresolved technical issues, and there is a lot of risk associated with that," said Peter Winokur, the board's chairman. The waste at Hanford, stored in 177 deteriorating underground tanks, "is a real risk to the public and the environment. It is essential that this plant work and work well."

Energy Department officials acknowledged that the design questions are a significant challenge and likely to inflate the project's cost and timetable.

"We've got tough technical issues to deal with," said David Huizenga, acting assistant Energy secretary for environmental management. "Each one of these issues that gets raised, we take it on and we work it until we've solved it. It might take a little longer than we'd hoped and cost a little more … (but) we will not operate a plant that cannot be operated safely."

Bechtel managers also insisted that all of the plant's designs will be verified before it begins operations. "When complete, the facility will meet all safety and regulatory requirements," communications manager Suzanne Heaston said.

Monumental mess

Everything about the waste treatment plant at Hanford is unprecedented — and urgent.

The volume of waste, its complex mix of highly radioactive and toxic material, the size of the processing facilities — all present technical challenges with no proven solution. The plant is as big as the task: a sprawling, 65-acre compound of four giant buildings, each longer than a football field and as tall as 12 stories high.

The plant will separate the waste's high- and low-level radioactive materials, then blend them with compounds that are superheated to create a molten glass composite — a process called "vitrification." The mix is poured into giant steel cylinders, where it cools to a solid form that is safe and stable for long-term storage — tens of thousands of glass tubes in steel coffins.

Once the plant starts running, it could take 30 years or more to finish its cleanup work. The Bechtel company, under the direction of the Department of Energy, is building this waste treatment plant at Hanford to turn liquid radioactive waste into glass for safer storage.

The 177 underground tanks at Hanford hold detritus from 45 years of plutonium production at the site, which had up to nine nuclear reactors before it closed in 1989. Some of the tanks, with capacities ranging from 55,000 gallons to more than 1 million gallons, date to the mid-1940s, when Hanford's earliest reactor made plutonium for the first atomic bomb ever detonated: the "Trinity" test at Alamagordo, N.M. It also produced the plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II.

More than 60 of the tanks are thought to have leaked, losing a million gallons of waste into soil and groundwater. So far, the contamination remains within the boundaries of the barren, 586-square-mile site, but it poses an ongoing threat to the nearby Columbia River, a water source for communities stretching southwest to Portland, Ore. And, while the liquid most likely to escape from the older tanks has been moved to newer, double-walled tanks, the risk of more leaks compounds that threat.

"Each day without progress (in treating the waste) further threatens the Columbia River and its surroundings." Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire warned in November. "There are critical public health and environmental issues at play."

A 1989 legal agreement among the Energy Department, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Washington sets strict timetables for stabilizing the tank wastes, including a 2011 deadline to get the treatment plant running. Two years ago, a negotiated extension pushed the start-up date to 2019. But a November review by the Energy Department reported that the deadlines are at "significant risk," because of both engineering and budget concerns.

The deadlines "were put in place to ensure the health and safety of the people of Washington and that commitment must continue," Gregoire said, urging that the federal government commit whatever funding is necessary to address the project's technical hurdles and keep it on track. "Falling behind schedule … is not an option."

Technical difficulties

Most of the technical issues still vexing the project involve moving waste through the plant.

The thicker, high-level waste doesn't flow according to usual laws of physics; it glugs like ketchup spurting from a bottle. The challenge is to keep it moving: If particles in the material accumulate, they can cause clogs, trapping potentially explosive hydrogen gas or, if too much plutonium masses together, triggering an uncontrolled nuclear reaction that generates extreme heat and radioactivity, threatening workers and the plant's operation.

The challenge lies in the plant's huge pre-treatment building, where the waste traverses an intricate set of pipes and vessels as its radioactive streams are separated and sent to separate facilities for conversion into glass. To keep the waste agitated, many of the pre-treatment vessels contain "pulse jet mixers" that act like giant turkey basters, sucking the waste into tubes and expelling it through jet nozzles.

"No one can stand up and say with any certainty that (the mixers) will work," said Walter Tamosaitis, who spent seven years as a supervising engineer on the project for URS Corp. before being reassigned in 2010. During his tenure, he filed memos and reports to top officials questioning the mixers' design.

Some of the high-level waste has turned out to be more complex than anticipated, with plutonium particles up to 10 times larger than expected. That has heightened concerns among several scientists, including Tamosaitis and the staff of the nuclear facilities safety board, that the systems designed to churn that waste need further testing to address the threat of hydrogen buildup or a nuclear reaction.

The mixers will be nearly impossible to repair or modify if they fail, because they will be too radioactive — they're in fortified rooms, known as "black cells," that will be sealed permanently when the plant begins operating. If the system malfunctions, Tamosaitis said, "the plant is dead in the water."

Alexander, the Energy Department scientist, also worries about the pre-treatment mixing system. Because the mixing jets and vessels were not designed to handle the larger plutonium particles and other abrasives in the high-level waste, he said, the material is likely to erode the vessels' lining.
Alexander, who has detailed his concerns in official filings, has run simulations showing that the vessels could fail well before the end of the system's 40-year design life, potentially causing a leak inside the plant.

When the jet mixers expel waste into the vessels, they're "like a liquid sandblaster," and the mixing system needs years of extra testing and refinement to account for the problem, Alexander said. "If they don't make any changes and just move ahead, it lasts maybe 10 years."

Tamosaitis and Alexander aren't alone in their concerns.

The mixing system "is not necessarily a solid design," said Donna Busche, a URS employee who serves as manager for environmental and nuclear safety at the site. "The research isn't done, the design isn't done, and there are numerous technical and safety issues … to address."

Testing on the fly?

The Energy Department has agreed to do more testing of the mixing system's design, but is moving ahead with construction of the vessels before tests are complete. That means the equipment might have to be re-engineered and modified, or replaced entirely, if it fails.

The alternative is to "take the pieces and parts that are sitting in the middle of a vendor's shop and leave them there, not have the vessel completed, while you wait for the results of a large-scale test," said Dale Knutson, the Energy Department's project director. Under the current plan, if the designs pass muster, "you haven't lost the ability to complete the work" on time.

"We would not operate the facility in an unsafe condition," Knutson added. "The question is: Do you have an appropriate hold point in place, a place where you can stop" if the design proves to be inadequate? "In this particular case … that hold point is defined as prior to installation."

The decision reflects the Energy Department's "design-build" approach: To speed completion, construction occurs while some features still are being designed.

That strategy has fueled a progress-at-all-costs climate that discourages scientists from raising design concerns, said Winokur, the safety board chairman. "The safety culture is flawed."

Project managers were too slow to address questions about the plant's mixing systems, Winokur said, noting that proper testing will take "several years" and should have started sooner. "Management is not adequately surfacing and resolving important technical and safety issues."

Last week, a report by the Energy Department's health and safety office echoed many of the safety board's assertions. Assessing the treatment plant project, the report identified "significant concerns" about "processes for nuclear design … and for managing safety issues."

Busche, the safety manager, said concerns about the potential for hydrogen buildup in components at the pre-treatment facility were pushed aside.

The question is "how likely would an explosion be and would the equipment survive (and) contain the waste?" she said. The safety office raised "significant issues" about the mixing system's design because assumptions on hydrogen buildup were "not conservative enough" to account for all the risks, she added.

In October, after many of the system's components already were being installed, Energy officials warned Bechtel in a letter that some of the piping had not been shown to meet safety requirements, records obtained by USA TODAY show. In a November response , Bechtel said it had ordered a "suspension of work" on the piping system pending more design review — a move the company described in a statement as a "conservative approach."

Busche shares many of the concerns raised by Tamosaitis, Alexander and the safety board. "We're all coming at these issues in different ways," she said. But when they're raised, "the first question that gets asked is not 'how are we going to solve it?' It's 'how much is it going to cost?' … I've never seen this sort of flagrant disregard for technical issues."

Project managers said that disagreements over risk and safety assumptions are to be expected on such a complex undertaking, but rejected the notion that concerns aren't taken seriously — or that money drives the response.

It's in everyone's interests to build a plant that works properly and safely, said Richard Kacich, an assistant project director for Bechtel. "The earlier you know about (a safety issue), the earlier you can deal with it. … The culture of our company is highly supportive of bringing issues forward."

"On a first-of-its-kind project, are there (design) challenges? Of course," he added. But "as with any nuclear undertaking, the way a project delivers is to focus on safety … and quality."

Drug dog busts Snoop Dogg's bus - CNN.com

2012-01-09T14:15:00.000-08:00

Drug dog busts Snoop Dogg's bus - CNN.com

WOW - that's a news flash! - Lou

Zopittybop-bop-bop arrested near Wisconsin Capitol

2012-01-09T11:14:00.000-08:00

Zopittybop-bop-bop arrested near Wisconsin Capitol | Reuters

[Why be normal? - Lou]

(Reuters) - He'd better watch out or he'll make a bad name for himself. Or maybe he already has.

Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-bop-bop, 30, was expected to be charged on Monday with possession of marijuana and a knife, as well as a probation violation following the Wisconsin's man's arrest in a park near the state Capitol, police said.

Zopittybop-bop-bop -- formerly Jeffrey Drew Wilschke before a state court approved his name change request in November -- was arrested on Thursday afternoon in a park less than a mile from the Capitol in Madison after police received complaints from neighbors.

Zopittybop-bop-bop told officers he would "get even with them" when he was being taken to jail, according to a police report. They recovered marijuana, a knife and drug paraphernalia after his arrest.

He was already on probation for a prior weapons possession conviction. Police had arrested him in April near another Madison park and recovered a loaded handgun and two knives from a backpack he was carrying, according to court records.

Two Birds - One Stone (e.g. Cruise Missle)

2012-01-09T09:18:00.000-08:00

Ahmadinejad visits Venezuela on first stop of Latin America tour - CNN.com

[Chavez AND Ahmadinejad in the same place at the same time? How can we pass this up? Israel - are you paying attention? - Lou]

It's a Bird, It's a Plane .... No, it's a Skycam

2012-01-06T12:15:00.000-08:00

Pros and Cons

2012-01-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

That's what is on my mind today. Pros vs Cons, good vs evil, white vs black (vs 256 shades of gray). Everything's being evaluated for the new year.

Iran warns U.S. over Strait of Hormuz | Reuters

2011-12-29T08:39:00.000-08:00

Iran warns U.S. over Strait of Hormuz | Reuters

[So, if Iran is pissed off by EU sanctions, why are WE sending 20 ships from the 5th Fleet there? - Lou]

(Reuters) - A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said on Thursday the United States was not in a position to tell Tehran "what to do in the Strait of Hormuz," state television reported, after the U.S. said it would preserve oil shipments in the Gulf.

Tehran's threat to block traffic through the crucial passage for Middle Eastern crude suppliers followed the European Union's decision to tighten sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, as well as accompanying moves by the United States to tighten unilateral sanctions.

Iran's English-language Press TV quoted Hossein Salami as saying: "Any threat will be responded by threat ... We will not relinquish our strategic moves if Iran's vital interests are undermined by any means."

Separately, Salami was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency: "Americans are not in a position whether to allow Iran to close off the Strait of Hormuz."

The U.S. Fifth Fleet said on Wednesday it would not allow any disruption to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a strip of water separating Oman and Iran.

At loggerheads with the West over its nuclear program, Iran said earlier it would stop the flow of oil through the strait if sanctions were imposed on its crude exports.

The Iranian threat pushed up international oil prices on Tuesday although they slipped back on Wednesday in thin trade.

Analysts say that Iran could potentially cause havoc in the Strait of Hormuz which connects the biggest Gulf oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. At its narrowest point, it is 21 miles across.

But its navy would be no match for the firepower of the Fifth Fleet which consists of 20-plus ships supported by combat aircraft, with 15,000 people afloat and another 1,000 ashore.

This is not the first time the Iranians have threatened to disrupt the oil flow in the Gulf, including in 2008 and 2010 when Iran talked about shutting the Strait as retaliation for any military strike on the country's nuclear sites.

Neither the United States nor Israel have ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve a long-running dispute over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Israel, widely believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, has described Iran's nuclear program as a threat to its existence. Iran refuses to recognize Israel.

Tehran says it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity. Iran has been hit by foreign sanctions, including four rounds of U.N. sanctions, over its refusal to halt its sensitive nuclear work.

To show off its military capabilities, Iran launched a 10-day large-scale naval wargames in the Gulf on Saturday.

Iran's state television reported on Thursday the country's surveillance plane filmed a U.S. aircraft carrier during the drill.

"We have filmed and photographed a U.S. aircraft carrier as it was entering the Gulf of Oman," said Iran's Navy Chief Habibollah Sayyari. "The area is under our full control."

Is Time Off Really Time Off?

2011-12-28T09:06:00.000-08:00

It doesn't pay to take time off - you lose so much time preparing to take time off, and then catching up when you return, that all the stress and extra hours negate having the time off in the first place. Like they say - the winner of the rat race is still just a rat...

While I Sit on my Ass Doing Nothing....

2011-12-25T12:31:00.000-08:00

PEOPLE ARE AWESOME (DON'S VERSION) - YouTube

Merry Christmas

2011-12-21T17:10:00.000-08:00

An -ist

2011-12-20T17:59:00.001-08:00

I think I should have been an -ist. A geologist, a biologist, a paleontologist, archeologist, machinist - something more scientific, something that gave me more opportunity to work with my hands. I'm a nothing, and not even a proud nothing. I've pissed away most of my life already, and have nothing to show for it. What a waste!

I want to be a Mythbuster, a Swamp Logger, drive a snowplow ... the grass sure looks green over there. I wonder what color I'll see when I look back over here?

Metal undergoes novel transition under extreme pressure

2011-12-20T10:50:00.000-08:00

BBC News - Metal undergoes novel transition under extreme pressure

Under extreme pressures and temperatures, one of the main materials of the Earth's interior has exhibited a never-before-seen transition.

Iron oxide was subjected to conditions similar to those at the depth where the Earth's innermost two layers meet.

At 1,650C and 690,000 times sea-level pressure, the metal changed the degree to which it conducted electricity.

But, as the team outlined in Physical Review Letters, the metal's structure was surprisingly unchanged.

The finding could have implications for our as-yet incomplete understanding of how the Earth's interior gives rise to the planet's magnetic field.

While many transitions are known in materials as they undergo nature's extraordinary pressures and temperatures, such changes in fundamental properties are most often accompanied by a change in structure.

These can be the ways that atoms are arranged in a crystal pattern, or even in the arrangement of subatomic particles that surround atomic nuclei.

Core values

A team at the Carnegie Institution for Science subjected the material to pressures up to 1.4 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level, and temperatures up to 2,200C.

They found that it pulls off the trick of changing its electrical properties without any shifting of shape - it can be an insulator or conductor depending just on temperature and pressure.

Combined with computer simulations of just what was going on with the material's electrons, the group claim that the results show a new type of metallisation.

"At high temperatures, the atoms in iron oxide crystals are arranged with the same structure as common table salt," said Ronald Cohen, a co-author of the study. "Just like table salt, iron oxide at ambient conditions is a good insulator—it does not conduct electricity."

"Our new results show, instead, that iron oxide metallises without any change in structure and that combined temperature and pressure are required. Furthermore, our theory shows that the way the electrons behave to make it metallic is different from other materials that become metallic."

A mixture of magnesium and iron oxide makes up much of the Earth's mantle - the solid layer just outside the planet's liquid outer core. The fact that iron oxide behaves as a metal means it will electrically link the core and mantle, affecting the way the magnetic field makes its way to the Earth's surface and beyond.

John Got it Right

2011-12-19T12:55:00.001-08:00

When I was 5 years old, my mom told me that happiness was the key to life.

When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy”.

They told me I didn’t understand the assignment.

I told them they didn’t understand life.

– John Lennon

iLike iCloud and iMatch !!

2011-12-18T08:04:00.001-08:00

Apple hits another home run.

I sign up for iCloud. I pay a $24.99 annual membership for iMatch. I then go to my Mac, which has my primary iTunes library on it, I enable iMatch, and 27 hours later, all 18k songs of mine have been matched with the iTunes world, and my entire library is accessible to me from every device that I've associated with my account. So, when I'm sitting on the sofa with my iPad, I have access to my ENTIRE music library, not just the few albums I had copied locally. And the same with my Windows laptop, and my iPod Touch, etc etc. All my music, any time I've got an internet connection and a device with iTunes associated with my account.

SNEAKY TIMMY

2011-12-17T20:24:00.001-08:00

Did The Fed Quietly Bail Out A Bank On Tuesday? | ZeroHedge

NTSB recommends full ban on use of cell phones while driving - CNN.com

2011-12-13T11:23:00.000-08:00

NTSB recommends full ban on use of cell phones while driving - CNN.com

[WOW! What about eating doughnuts, putting on lipstick, and reading stuff? - Lou]

Washington (CNN) -- Federal accident investigators Tuesday called for a nationwide ban on the use of cell phones and text messaging devices while driving.
Study: Half of young people text, drive

The recommendation is the most far-reaching yet by the National Transportation Safety Board, which in the past 10 years has increasingly sought to limit the use of portable electronic devices. It has recommended such bans for novice drivers, school bus drivers and commercial truckers.

The new recommendation, if adopted by states, would outlaw non-emergency phone calls and texting by operators of every vehicle on the road.

It would not apply to hand-free devices or to passengers.

Eurozone Solution: Aaah, So That's How They're Trying To Do It

2011-12-11T09:48:00.000-08:00

Eurozone Solution: Aaah, So That's How They're Trying To Do It! - Forbes

Recall, the basic short term problem is that finance is fleeing eurozone banks, there’s a tremendous credit crunch going on. This is roughly what happened in 1930/31 and led to the Great Depression. We would really rather not go through all of that again. The solution is well known. The European Central Bank should simply print euros and buy up the debt of the peripheral nations. Very much like the quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England.

However, the ECB isn’t allowed to do that so we can’t do that. So, what can we do?

At its monetary policy meeting on Thursday, the ECB offered ultra-long 3-year financing to banks and eased rules on the collateral it requires from them to tap its funds. It also cut its interest rates to a record low of 1.0 percent.

Euro zone leaders seized on the increased liquidity provision as a means to help fight the debt crisis, which has pushed up borrowing costs for countries on the periphery of the bloc – including G7 economy Italy – to unsustainable levels.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the ECB’s increased provision of funds meant governments in countries like Italy and Spain could look to their countries’ banks to buy their bonds.

“This means that each state can turn to its banks, which will have liquidity at their disposal,” Sarkozy told reporters at the summit in Brussels.

As usual, Tyler Cowen was a couple of days ahead of the rest of us on this.

So, here’s a rough sketch of what will now happen. Umm, OK, no, here’s a rough sketch of what the plan is intended to be, assuming that the plan works.

So, we have governments that have huge piles of debt that they need to sell. The ECB is not allowed to buy this debt nor is it allowed to buy old debt to lower the issuance price of new debt. Banks desperately need a source of medium term funding as everyone other than those stuck in the eurozone is pulling their money out of it. So here’s how we do it.

The ECB agrees to lend very cheap money to any bank that asks for it. Sure, they’ve got to put up some collateral to get it but guess what the acceptable collateral is? You guessed it, sovereign bonds. So, banks buy Italian bonds on which they get 7% interest (ish, at present) present them to the ECB and get money at 1%. Recycle this process as many times as you like and the net effect is that the ECB is printing the money to purchase government bonds, using the banks as intermediaries.

We’ve a nice side effect too. The eurozone banks all desperately need more capital. One very useful source of new capital is retained earnings. And if you can borrow at 1%, lend at 7%, that’s a good source of such retained earnings. Providing no one goes bust of course.

I think I’m right in saying that under the current rules, banks can hold sovereign debt without having to allocate any capital to such holdings. While this will change in a few years under Basel III, for the present this means there’s no real limit on how much sovereign debt they can load up on to earn that 6%.

You might think that this exposes the banks to a lot of risk: but yes and no. If the banks are holding such debt to maturity then they do not have to mark the bond holdings to market. So even if Italian debt (say) falls in value they don’t have to take a hit to their balance sheets. It’s only bonds on the trading books that have to be marked to market.

So the banks aren’t exposed to the MF Global problem, which is that they have to stay liquid enough long enough for the gamble to pay off. The ECB isn’t going to demand more collateral now they’ve decided sovereign bonds are good collateral. And the banks can earn juicy margins while being pretty much protected.

So, that’s what I think the plan is, or what the plan is supposed to be. There is however just one little fly in the ointment. We’re going to be gearing the eurozone banking system up on sovereign debt. Which means that if anyone does in fact default then the eurozone banking system really will go bust, crash and burn in a great big ball of flames.

This all only works as long as it keeps on working. As soon as it doesn’t work then we find out that it’s just made the problem larger.

5 Financials That Don't Need Europe To Succeed - Seeking Alpha

2011-12-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

5 Financials That Don't Need Europe To Succeed - Seeking Alpha

#1 and #3-#5 Omitted, because they don't affect me. Read the whole article if you care.

#2 - US Bancorp: US Bancorp (USB) owns US Bank, the largest regional bank in the United States. We think that this is the right spot to be in. It is large enough to meaningfully compete with the Big 4 banks (JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo), but small enough that loan growth, acquisitions, and deposit growth actually make an impact on the company's profitability. US Bank avoided the subprime mortgage disaster, has no exposure to Europe, and reported record profits in its last quarter, to the tune of $1.273 billion.

Deal questioned for firm with Obama admin tie

2011-12-09T04:09:00.001-08:00

Deal questioned for firm with Obama admin tie:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/08/politics/siga-technologies-hhs-contract/index.html

Report: Rep. Jackson offered deal for Senate seat - Thanks Blago!

2011-12-02T13:28:00.000-08:00

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2011/12/jesse-jackson-jr-rod-blagojevich-ethics-committee-/1

United States of Europe?

2011-12-02T09:55:00.000-08:00

BBC News - Merkel urges euro fiscal union to tackle debt crisis

[Watch as a continent goes up in flames! - Lou]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Europe is working towards setting up a "fiscal union", in a bid to resolve the eurozone's debt crisis.

She told the Bundestag that a new EU treaty was needed to set up such a union and impose budget discipline.

On Monday she is to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has also called for EU treaty changes.

EU leaders have been under pressure to do more to tackle the debt crisis, amid concern about the survival of the euro.

In her speech, Mrs Merkel promised "concrete steps towards a fiscal union" - in effect close integration of the tax-and-spend polices of individual eurozone countries, with Brussels imposing penalties on members that break the rules.

"We need budget discipline and an effective crisis management mechanism," she said. "So we need to change the treaties or create new treaties."

The German government has been pressing for changes to establish powers to veto national budgets in the eurozone that breach agreed rules.

"We have started a new phase in European integration," Mrs Merkel said.

Why Cypress Semiconductor's Earnings Are Outstanding (CY)

2011-11-30T09:08:00.000-08:00

Why Cypress Semiconductor's Earnings Are Outstanding (CY)

It's not why we own it, but still, it's a great stock and I'm not taking profit yet!

(BN) Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress

2011-11-28T05:30:00.001-08:00

Bloomberg News, sent from my iPad.

Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress

Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

The Fed didn't tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn't mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed's below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.

A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.

'Change Their Votes'

"When you see the dollars the banks got, it's hard to make the case these were successful institutions," says Sherrod Brown, a Democratic Senator from Ohio who in 2010 introduced an unsuccessful bill to limit bank size. "This is an issue that can unite the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. There are lawmakers in both parties who would change their votes now."

The size of the bailout came to light after Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, won a court case against the Fed and a group of the biggest U.S. banks called Clearing House Association LLC to force lending details into the open.

The Fed, headed by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, argued that revealing borrower details would create a stigma -- investors and counterparties would shun firms that used the central bank as lender of last resort -- and that needy institutions would be reluctant to borrow in the next crisis. Clearing House Association fought Bloomberg's lawsuit up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the banks' appeal in March 2011.

$7.77 Trillion

The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he "wasn't aware of the magnitude." It dwarfed the Treasury Department's better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.

"TARP at least had some strings attached," says Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, referring to the program's executive-pay ceiling. "With the Fed programs, there was nothing."

Bankers didn't disclose the extent of their borrowing. On Nov. 26, 2008, then-Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth D. Lewis wrote to shareholders that he headed "one of the strongest and most stable major banks in the world." He didn't say that his Charlotte, North Carolina-based firm owed the central bank $86 billion that day.

'Motivate Others'

JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon told shareholders in a March 26, 2010, letter that his bank used the Fed's Term Auction Facility "at the request of the Federal Reserve to help motivate others to use the system." He didn't say that the New York-based bank's total TAF borrowings were almost twice its cash holdings or that its peak borrowing of $48 billion on Feb. 26, 2009, came more than a year after the program's creation.

Howard Opinsky, a spokesman for JPMorgan, declined to comment about Dimon's statement or the company's Fed borrowings. Jerry Dubrowski, a spokesman for Bank of America, also declined to comment.

The Fed has been lending money to banks through its so- called discount window since just after its founding in 1913. Starting in August 2007, when confidence in banks began to wane, it created a variety of ways to bolster the financial system with cash or easily traded securities. By the end of 2008, the central bank had established or expanded 11 lending facilities catering to banks, securities firms and corporations that couldn't get short-term loans from their usual sources.

'Core Function'

"Supporting financial-market stability in times of extreme market stress is a core function of central banks," says William B. English, director of the Fed's Division of Monetary Affairs. "Our lending programs served to prevent a collapse of the financial system and to keep credit flowing to American families and businesses."

The Fed has said that all loans were backed by appropriate collateral. That the central bank didn't lose money should "lead to praise of the Fed, that they took this extraordinary step and they got it right," says Phillip Swagel, a former assistant Treasury secretary under Henry M. Paulson and now a professor of international economic policy at the University of Maryland.

The Fed initially released lending data in aggregate form only. Information on which banks borrowed, when, how much and at what interest rate was kept from public view.

The secrecy extended even to members of President George W. Bush's administration who managed TARP. Top aides to Paulson weren't privy to Fed lending details during the creation of the program that provided crisis funding to more than 700 banks, say two former senior Treasury officials who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak.

Big Six

The Treasury Department relied on the recommendations of the Fed to decide which banks were healthy enough to get TARP money and how much, the former officials say. The six biggest U.S. banks, which received $160 billion of TARP funds, borrowed as much as $460 billion from the Fed, measured by peak daily debt calculated by Bloomberg using data obtained from the central bank. Paulson didn't respond to a request for comment.

The six -- JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley -- accounted for 63 percent of the average daily debt to the Fed by all publicly traded U.S. banks, money managers and investment- services firms, the data show. By comparison, they had about half of the industry's assets before the bailout, which lasted from August 2007 through April 2010. The daily debt figure excludes cash that banks passed along to money-market funds.

Bank Supervision

While the emergency response prevented financial collapse, the Fed shouldn't have allowed conditions to get to that point, says Joshua Rosner, a banking analyst with Graham Fisher & Co. in New York who predicted problems from lax mortgage underwriting as far back as 2001. The Fed, the primary supervisor for large financial companies, should have been more vigilant as the housing bubble formed, and the scale of its lending shows the "supervision of the banks prior to the crisis was far worse than we had imagined," Rosner says.

Bernanke in an April 2009 speech said that the Fed provided emergency loans only to "sound institutions," even though its internal assessments described at least one of the biggest borrowers, Citigroup, as "marginal."

On Jan. 14, 2009, six days before the company's central bank loans peaked, the New York Fed gave CEO Vikram Pandit a report declaring Citigroup's financial strength to be "superficial," bolstered largely by its $45 billion of Treasury funds. The document was released in early 2011 by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a panel empowered by Congress to probe the causes of the crisis.

'Need Transparency'

Andrea Priest, a spokeswoman for the New York Fed, declined to comment, as did Jon Diat, a spokesman for Citigroup.

"I believe that the Fed should have independence in conducting highly technical monetary policy, but when they are putting taxpayer resources at risk, we need transparency and accountability," says Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee.

Judd Gregg, a former New Hampshire senator who was a lead Republican negotiator on TARP, and Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who chaired the House Financial Services Committee, both say they were kept in the dark.

"We didn't know the specifics," says Gregg, who's now an adviser to Goldman Sachs.

"We were aware emergency efforts were going on," Frank says. "We didn't know the specifics."

Disclose Lending

Frank co-sponsored the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, billed as a fix for financial-industry excesses. Congress debated that legislation in 2010 without a full understanding of how deeply the banks had depended on the Fed for survival.

It would have been "totally appropriate" to disclose the lending data by mid-2009, says David Jones, a former economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who has written four books about the central bank.

"The Fed is the second-most-important appointed body in the U.S., next to the Supreme Court, and we're dealing with a democracy," Jones says. "Our representatives in Congress deserve to have this kind of information so they can oversee the Fed."

The Dodd-Frank law required the Fed to release details of some emergency-lending programs in December 2010. It also mandated disclosure of discount-window borrowers after a two- year lag.

Protecting TARP

TARP and the Fed lending programs went "hand in hand," says Sherrill Shaffer, a banking professor at the University of Wyoming in Laramie and a former chief economist at the New York Fed. While the TARP money helped insulate the central bank from losses, the Fed's willingness to supply seemingly unlimited financing to the banks assured they wouldn't collapse, protecting the Treasury's TARP investments, he says.

"Even though the Treasury was in the headlines, the Fed was really behind the scenes engineering it," Shaffer says.

Congress, at the urging of Bernanke and Paulson, created TARP in October 2008 after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. made it difficult for financial institutions to get loans. Bank of America and New York-based Citigroup each received $45 billion from TARP. At the time, both were tapping the Fed. Citigroup hit its peak borrowing of $99.5 billion in January 2009, while Bank of America topped out in February 2009 at $91.4 billion.

No Clue

Lawmakers knew none of this.

They had no clue that one bank, New York-based Morgan Stanley, took $107 billion in Fed loans in September 2008, enough to pay off one-tenth of the country's delinquent mortgages. The firm's peak borrowing occurred the same day Congress rejected the proposed TARP bill, triggering the biggest point drop ever in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The bill later passed, and Morgan Stanley got $10 billion of TARP funds, though Paulson said only "healthy institutions" were eligible.

Mark Lake, a spokesman for Morgan Stanley, declined to comment, as did spokesmen for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.

Had lawmakers known, it "could have changed the whole approach to reform legislation," says Ted Kaufman, a former Democratic Senator from Delaware who, with Brown, introduced the bill to limit bank size.

Moral Hazard

Kaufman says some banks are so big that their failure could trigger a chain reaction in the financial system. The cost of borrowing for so-called too-big-to-fail banks is lower than that of smaller firms because lenders believe the government won't let them go under. The perceived safety net creates what economists call moral hazard -- the belief that bankers will take greater risks because they'll enjoy any profits while shifting losses to taxpayers.

If Congress had been aware of the extent of the Fed rescue, Kaufman says, he would have been able to line up more support for breaking up the biggest banks.

Byron L. Dorgan, a former Democratic senator from North Dakota, says the knowledge might have helped pass legislation to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, which for most of the last century separated customer deposits from the riskier practices of investment banking.

"Had people known about the hundreds of billions in loans to the biggest financial institutions, they would have demanded Congress take much more courageous actions to stop the practices that caused this near financial collapse," says Dorgan, who retired in January.

Getting Bigger

Instead, the Fed and its secret financing helped America's biggest financial firms get bigger and go on to pay employees as much as they did at the height of the housing bubble.

Total assets held by the six biggest U.S. banks increased 39 percent to $9.5 trillion on Sept. 30, 2011, from $6.8 trillion on the same day in 2006, according to Fed data.

For so few banks to hold so many assets is "un-American," says Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. "All of these gargantuan institutions are too big to regulate. I'm in favor of breaking them up and slimming them down."

Employees at the six biggest banks made twice the average for all U.S. workers in 2010, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics hourly compensation cost data. The banks spent $146.3 billion on compensation in 2010, or an average of $126,342 per worker, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That's up almost 20 percent from five years earlier compared with less than 15 percent for the average worker. Average pay at the banks in 2010 was about the same as in 2007, before the bailouts.

'Wanted to Pretend'

"The pay levels came back so fast at some of these firms that it appeared they really wanted to pretend they hadn't been bailed out," says Anil Kashyap, a former Fed economist who's now a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. "They shouldn't be surprised that a lot of people find some of the stuff that happened totally outrageous."

Bank of America took over Merrill Lynch & Co. at the urging of then-Treasury Secretary Paulson after buying the biggest U.S. home lender, Countrywide Financial Corp. When the Merrill Lynch purchase was announced on Sept. 15, 2008, Bank of America had $14.4 billion in emergency Fed loans and Merrill Lynch had $8.1 billion. By the end of the month, Bank of America's loans had reached $25 billion and Merrill Lynch's had exceeded $60 billion, helping both firms keep the deal on track.

Prevent Collapse

Wells Fargo bought Wachovia Corp., the fourth-largest U.S. bank by deposits before the 2008 acquisition. Because depositors were pulling their money from Wachovia, the Fed channeled $50 billion in secret loans to the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank through two emergency-financing programs to prevent collapse before Wells Fargo could complete the purchase.

"These programs proved to be very successful at providing financial markets the additional liquidity and confidence they needed at a time of unprecedented uncertainty," says Ancel Martinez, a spokesman for Wells Fargo.

JPMorgan absorbed the country's largest savings and loan, Seattle-based Washington Mutual Inc., and investment bank Bear Stearns Cos. The New York Fed, then headed by Timothy F. Geithner, who's now Treasury secretary, helped JPMorgan complete the Bear Stearns deal by providing $29 billion of financing, which was disclosed at the time. The Fed also supplied Bear Stearns with $30 billion of secret loans to keep the company from failing before the acquisition closed, central bank data show. The loans were made through a program set up to provide emergency funding to brokerage firms.

'Regulatory Discretion��

"Some might claim that the Fed was picking winners and losers, but what the Fed was doing was exercising its professional regulatory discretion," says John Dearie, a former speechwriter at the New York Fed who's now executive vice president for policy at the Financial Services Forum, a Washington-based group consisting of the CEOs of 20 of the world's biggest financial firms. "The Fed clearly felt it had what it needed within the requirements of the law to continue to lend to Bear and Wachovia."

The bill introduced by Brown and Kaufman in April 2010 would have mandated shrinking the six largest firms.

"When a few banks have advantages, the little guys get squeezed," Brown says. "That, to me, is not what capitalism should be."

Kaufman says he's passionate about curbing too-big-to-fail banks because he fears another crisis.

'Can We Survive?'

"The amount of pain that people, through no fault of their own, had to endure -- and the prospect of putting them through it again -- is appalling," Kaufman says. "The public has no more appetite for bailouts. What would happen tomorrow if one of these big banks got in trouble? Can we survive that?"

Lobbying expenditures by the six banks that would have been affected by the legislation rose to $29.4 million in 2010 compared with $22.1 million in 2006, the last full year before credit markets seized up -- a gain of 33 percent, according to OpenSecrets.org, a research group that tracks money in U.S. politics. Lobbying by the American Bankers Association, a trade organization, increased at about the same rate, OpenSecrets.org reported.

Lobbyists argued the virtues of bigger banks. They're more stable, better able to serve large companies and more competitive internationally, and breaking them up would cost jobs and cause "long-term damage to the U.S. economy," according to a Nov. 13, 2009, letter to members of Congress from the FSF.

The group's website cites Nobel Prize-winning economist Oliver E. Williamson, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, for demonstrating the greater efficiency of large companies.

'Serious Burden'

In an interview, Williamson says that the organization took his research out of context and that efficiency is only one factor in deciding whether to preserve too-big-to-fail banks.

"The banks that were too big got even bigger, and the problems that we had to begin with are magnified in the process," Williamson says. "The big banks have incentives to take risks they wouldn't take if they didn't have government support. It's a serious burden on the rest of the economy."

Dearie says his group didn't mean to imply that Williamson endorsed big banks.

Top officials in President Barack Obama's administration sided with the FSF in arguing against legislative curbs on the size of banks.

Geithner, Kaufman

On May 4, 2010, Geithner visited Kaufman in his Capitol Hill office. As president of the New York Fed in 2007 and 2008, Geithner helped design and run the central bank's lending programs. The New York Fed supervised four of the six biggest U.S. banks and, during the credit crunch, put together a daily confidential report on Wall Street's financial condition. Geithner was copied on these reports, based on a sampling of e- mails released by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

At the meeting with Kaufman, Geithner argued that the issue of limiting bank size was too complex for Congress and that people who know the markets should handle these decisions, Kaufman says. According to Kaufman, Geithner said he preferred that bank supervisors from around the world, meeting in Basel, Switzerland, make rules increasing the amount of money banks need to hold in reserve. Passing laws in the U.S. would undercut his efforts in Basel, Geithner said, according to Kaufman.

Anthony Coley, a spokesman for Geithner, declined to comment.

'Punishing Success'

Lobbyists for the big banks made the winning case that forcing them to break up was "punishing success," Brown says. Now that they can see how much the banks were borrowing from the Fed, senators might think differently, he says.

The Fed supported curbing too-big-to-fail banks, including giving regulators the power to close large financial firms and implementing tougher supervision for big banks, says Fed General Counsel Scott G. Alvarez. The Fed didn't take a position on whether large banks should be dismantled before they get into trouble.

Dodd-Frank does provide a mechanism for regulators to break up the biggest banks. It established the Financial Stability Oversight Council that could order teetering banks to shut down in an orderly way. The council is headed by Geithner.

"Dodd-Frank does not solve the problem of too big to fail," says Shelby, the Alabama Republican. "Moral hazard and taxpayer exposure still very much exist."

Below Market

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, says banks "were either in bad shape or taking advantage of the Fed giving them a good deal. The former contradicts their public statements. The latter -- getting loans at below-market rates during a financial crisis -- is quite a gift."

The Fed says it typically makes emergency loans more expensive than those available in the marketplace to discourage banks from abusing the privilege. During the crisis, Fed loans were among the cheapest around, with funding available for as low as 0.01 percent in December 2008, according to data from the central bank and money-market rates tracked by Bloomberg.

The Fed funds also benefited firms by allowing them to avoid selling assets to pay investors and depositors who pulled their money. So the assets stayed on the banks' books, earning interest.

Banks report the difference between what they earn on loans and investments and their borrowing expenses. The figure, known as net interest margin, provides a clue to how much profit the firms turned on their Fed loans, the costs of which were included in those expenses. To calculate how much banks stood to make, Bloomberg multiplied their tax-adjusted net interest margins by their average Fed debt during reporting periods in which they took emergency loans.

Added Income

The 190 firms for which data were available would have produced income of $13 billion, assuming all of the bailout funds were invested at the margins reported, the data show.

The six biggest U.S. banks' share of the estimated subsidy was $4.8 billion, or 23 percent of their combined net income during the time they were borrowing from the Fed. Citigroup would have taken in the most, with $1.8 billion.

"The net interest margin is an effective way of getting at the benefits that these large banks received from the Fed," says Gerald A. Hanweck, a former Fed economist who's now a finance professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

While the method isn't perfect, it's impossible to state the banks' exact profits or savings from their Fed loans because the numbers aren't disclosed and there isn't enough publicly available data to figure it out.

Opinsky, the JPMorgan spokesman, says he doesn't think the calculation is fair because "in all likelihood, such funds were likely invested in very short-term investments," which typically bring lower returns.

Standing Access

Even without tapping the Fed, the banks get a subsidy by having standing access to the central bank's money, says Viral Acharya, a New York University economics professor who has worked as an academic adviser to the New York Fed.

"Banks don't give lines of credit to corporations for free," he says. "Why should all these government guarantees and liquidity facilities be for free?"

In the September 2008 meeting at which Paulson and Bernanke briefed lawmakers on the need for TARP, Bernanke said that if nothing was done, "unemployment would rise -- to 8 or 9 percent from the prevailing 6.1 percent," Paulson wrote in "On the Brink" (Business Plus, 2010).

Occupy Wall Street

The U.S. jobless rate hasn't dipped below 8.8 percent since March 2009, 3.6 million homes have been foreclosed since August 2007, according to data provider RealtyTrac Inc., and police have clashed with Occupy Wall Street protesters, who say government policies favor the wealthiest citizens, in New York, Boston, Seattle and Oakland, California.

The Tea Party, which supports a more limited role for government, has its roots in anger over the Wall Street bailouts, says Neil M. Barofsky, former TARP special inspector general and a Bloomberg Television contributing editor.

"The lack of transparency is not just frustrating; it really blocked accountability," Barofsky says. "When people don't know the details, they fill in the blanks. They believe in conspiracies."

In the end, Geithner had his way. The Brown-Kaufman proposal to limit the size of banks was defeated, 60 to 31. Bank supervisors meeting in Switzerland did mandate minimum reserves that institutions will have to hold, with higher levels for the world's largest banks, including the six biggest in the U.S. Those rules can be changed by individual countries.

They take full effect in 2019.

Meanwhile, Kaufman says, "we're absolutely, totally, 100 percent not prepared for another financial crisis."

To contact the reporters on this story: Bob Ivry in New York at bivry@bloomberg.net Bradley Keoun in New York at bkeoun@bloomberg.net Phil Kuntz in New York at pkuntz1@bloomberg.net .

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gary Putka at gputka@bloomberg.net David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net .

Find out more about Bloomberg for iPad: http://m.bloomberg.com/ipad/

Regards,

Lou

==============

Sent from my iPad

Volcker Says World Has ‘Big Stake’ in Resolving Europe’s Crisis

2011-11-09T08:02:00.000-08:00

Volcker Says World Has ‘Big Stake’ in Resolving Europe’s Crisis - Bloomberg

[Why is one country's economy the concern of any other country's? Will I be ok tomorrow if Greece or Italy default? Yep. Free markets/free world. - Lou]

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker comments on Europe’s debt crisis and China’s economy. He was responding to questions at an event in Singapore today.

On Europe’s debt crisis:

“They have the resources in Europe to get it done. Or they go to the rest of the world for funds. The rest of the world has a big stake in this. Europe as a whole can manage it, but can it manage it? They all have their own political problems.”

On China:

“There has not been at any time in history that a country of its size has grown 10 percent a year. The country has become a force in the world economy.”

“The emerging world is now as big as the developed world and that is the phenomenon of the last decade and requires a change in thinking. China is out there and wants to have a say in the affairs of the world. In probably 12 to 15 years its economy will be as big as the U.S., and it will be a different world politically and a different world economically.”

Sarkozy to Obama: Netanyahu Is a 'Liar'

2011-11-08T08:21:00.000-08:00

Sarkozy to Obama: Netanyahu Is a 'Liar' - ABC News

French President Sarkozy called Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu a liar in a conversation with President Obama caught on an open mic at last week's G-20 summit.

"I can't look at him [Netanyahu] anymore, he's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama, the French media website Arret Sur Images reported.

"You've had enough of him, but I have to deal with him every day," Obama is said to have responded.

The private conversation happened last Thursday in the southern French city of Cannes, heard by half a dozen journalists whose headphones were still receiving audio from the presidents' wireless microphones.

The handful of reporters included one from the Reuters news agency who confirmed the quotes.

"By the time the team from the Elysee [presidential palace] realized, it must have been three minutes," one of the journalists told Arret Sur Images.

Free at Last

2011-11-02T07:23:00.000-07:00

I ditched Comcast last week. At least their phone and cable tv, I kept the broadband. For a penny a month they provide limited basic cable, which I don't even watch. But by having it, I get a $10 discount on my broadband service. So, it's Netflix, Amazon VOD, and Hulu. No more annoying, stupid TV shows fouling up my brain.

Are you a Democrat, a Republican, or a Southerner?

2011-10-31T15:46:00.000-07:00

Are you a Democrat, a Republican, or a Southerner?

Here is a little test that will help you decide.

The answer can be found by posing the following question:

You're walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children.

Suddenly, a Terrorist with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks
eyes with you,
screams obscenities, raises the knife, and charges at you...

You are carrying a
Kimber 1911 cal. 45 ACP, and you are an expert shot.
You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family.
What do you do?

THINK CAREFULLY AND THEN SCROLL DOWN:

Democrat's Answer:
·        Well, that's not enough information to answer the question!
·        What is a Kimber 1911 cal. 45 ACP?
·        Does the man look poor or oppressed?
·        Is he really a terrorist? Am I guilty of profiling?
·        Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire him to attack?
·        Could we run away?
·        What does my wife think?
·        What about the kids?
·        Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knock the
knife out of his hand?< /span>
·        What does the law say about this situation?
·        Does the pistol have appropriate safety built into it?
·        Why am I c arrying a loaded gun anyway, and what kind of
message does this send to society and to my children?
·        Is it possible he'd be happy with just killing me?
·        Does he definitely want to kill me, or would he be content
just to wound me?
·        If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family get
away while he was stabbing me?
·        Should I call 9-1-1?
·        Why is this street so deserted?
·        We need to raise taxes, have paint & weed day.
·        Can we make this a happier, healthier street that would
discourage such behavior.
·        I need to debate this with some friends for a few days and
try to come to a consensus.
·        This is all so confusing!

............ ......... ........ ......... ......... .........
......... ......... .
Republican's Answer:

BANG!

............ ......... ........ ......... ......... .......... ........ ......

Southerner's Answer:

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
BANG ! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Click..... (Sounds of reloading)
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!BANG!BANG!
Click

Daughter: 'Nice grouping, Daddy!'
'Were those the Winchester Silver Tips or Hollow Points?!

Son: 'Can I shoot the next one?!'

Wife: 'You ain't taking that to the Taxidermist!

Financial Engineering

2011-10-27T20:53:00.000-07:00

Financial engineering

This is what you should get a college degree in! - Lou

Financial engineering is a multidisciplinary field relating to the creation of new financial instruments and strategies, typically exotic options and specialized interest rate derivatives. The field applies engineering methodologies to problems in finance, and employs financial theory and applied mathematics, as well as computation and the practice of programming; see computational finance.

Despite its name, financial engineering does not belong to any of the fields in traditional engineering. In the United States, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) does not accredit financial engineering degrees.

Financial engineering is also the process of creating new securities or processes, and designing new financial instruments, especially derivative securities. More importantly financial engineering is the process of employing mathematical, finance and computer modeling skills to make pricing, hedging, trading and portfolio management decisions. Utilizing various derivative securities and other methods, financial engineering aims to precisely control the financial risk that an entity takes on. Methods can be employed to take on unlimited risks under certain events,or completely eliminate other risks by utilizing combinations of derivative and other securities.

Financial engineering can be applied to many different types of currencies and pricing options. These include equity, fixed income such as bonds, commodities such as oil or gold, as well as derivatives, swaps, futures, forwards, options, and embedded options. With financial engineering comes many risks. Risks are divided into market risk and credit risk. Market risks can be managed using risk identification, risk measurements, and risk management. Credit risks can be managed using credit modeling and credit pricing.

To become a financial engineer, one must have a strong understanding of financial economics, mathematical tools such as probability and statistics and differential equations, as well as have engineering principles such as software engineering.

Notable financial engineers include F. Black and M Scholes for the pricing of options and corporate liabilities, Robert C. Merton for his theory of rational option pricing and the introduction of stochastic calculus in the study of finance. Robert F. Engle is also notable for the work in analyzing economic time-series with time-varying volatility. Clive W. J. Granger analyzed the economic time series with common trend.

Financial engineering is normally employed in the securities and banking industries. It is also used by quantitative analysts in consulting firms or in general manufacturing and service firms, in corporate treasury, corporate finance and risk management roles. Financial engineers will often hold doctorates in computer science or mathematics, although, increasingly, have instead completed a specialized (terminal) masters degree - usually the Master of Financial Engineering, or the more general Master of Quantitative Finance.

Sex Toy In Luggage Elicited 'Wildly Inappropriate' Note From TSA Agent, Traveler Says

2011-10-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

Sex Toy In Luggage Elicited 'Wildly Inappropriate' Note From TSA Agent, Traveler Says | Fox News

An alert Transportation Security Administration screener at New Jersey’s Newark Airport apparently spotted a "sex toy” stuffed inside a passenger’s luggage Saturday and offered the traveler some encouragement.

“Get your freak on girl” was found written in black ink on the back of a TSA notice, passenger Jill Filipovic revealed on her Twitter page.

“Just unpacked my suitcase and found this note from TSA,” she tweeted. “Guess they discovered a 'personal item' in my bag. Wow.”

She identified the item in an email to New York Magazine:

“It was a $15 bullet vibe from Babeland, about the most basic sex toy you can imagine. It has now been officially retired, since I have no idea if the TSA agents manhandled it.”

She discovered the note on Sunday after she landed in Dublin, she said. She wrote on her blog, Feministe, that the message was “wildly inappropriate” but she “died laughing” about it in her hotel room.

But she told FoxNews.com in an email Monday evening that she's transitioning to being "pretty disturbed" by the note. She said these agents are given a lot of authority with little oversight.

She wrote that she suspects "whoever left the note felt comfortable doing so (I also suspect that they believed most women would be embarrassed to be "caught" with personal items and wouldn't file a complaint)," she wrote in the email. "That is certainly cause for concern."

TSA said in a statement to FoxNews.com that there is no evidence to suggest one of its agents was behind the note.

Greg Soule, a TSA spokesman, said Filipovic has not filed a complaint about the incident, but the TSA “takes all allegations of inappropriate conduct seriously and is investigating this claim."

Filipovic said she is not looking to get anyone fired over the incident, but she received a lot of feedback from others with other stories of public humiliation at the hands of TSA. She said she hopes the TSA addresses the larger issue, not just this one case.

Filipovic reportedly will file a complaint with the TSA when she returns to the U.S.

Lindsay Lohan Drops Her Drawers!

2011-10-25T11:45:00.000-07:00

Lindsay Lohan Scores Big Payday For Nude Photo Shoot In Playboy | Fox News

How do you rid your mind of nasty images of blood, guts and gore after working an eight-hour clean-up detail at the county morgue?

If you're Lindsay Lohan, you pose for nasty pictures in Playboy magazine!

Lohan, fresh off her first stint of community service at the LA County Morgue last week, participated in a nude photo shoot for Hugh Hefner's skin mag, according to TMZ.

Lohan wanted $1 million from Hefner to drop her drawers, but multiple reports say she settled in the $750,000 to $900,000 range, more than enough to keep her up-and-down lifestyle on the ups, at least temporarily.

E! Online reports the shoot is taking place in a Beverly Hills mansion.

Classy.

It has been an eventful seven days, even for Lohan, who had her probation revoked, was initially turned away from court-ordered service at the L.A. County morgue for arriving too late, came on time the following day, and then fired her manager.

The troubled starlet was concerned that manager Lou Taylor, who lives in Tennessee and also manages Britney Spears, does not spend enough time on her affairs -- and she wants to hire someone who can give her more attention.

It is not clear if Taylor set up the Playboy shoot before he was fired.

Lohan's publicist, Steve Honing, said that Taylor's departure was perfectly amicable and that Lohan and Taylor were still on good terms.

German designer Philipp Plein, who paid Lohan $500,000 to represent his fashion line, is standing by the star.

“I chose Lindsay Lohan as the face of my 2012 collection because, aside from being talented and beautiful, she is unconventional, unpredictable, full of surprises and far from boring…which perfectly reflects the spirit of my collection,” he told Fox411.com in a statement. “I look forward to completing our project together, and trust that she will be able to resolve her legal issues as soon as possible.”

Lohan, 25, is due back in court on Nov. 2 for a probation-violation hearing that could wind up with her heading to the slammer.

So, it is feasible her Playboy issue could come out while Lohan is behind bars.

Stranger things have happened (in the last week, even).

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2011/10/25/lindsay-lohans-nude-photo-shoot-for-playboy-is-underway/?intcmp=obnetwork#ixzz1bow4T64J

President Obama To Announce Major Revamp Of Home Lending Program, HARP

2011-10-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

President Obama To Announce Major Revamp Of Home Lending Program, HARP | Fox News

[What a bunch of bullshit! - Lou]

WASHINGTON – Seeking to breathe new life into a sagging economy, President Obama will attempt an executive branch rescue of homeowners trying to refinance underwater mortgages, with a new initiative that lets people with little or no equity get a better interest rate at a reduced cost.

The initiative, the first in a series of announcements expected this week by the president, applies to homeowners with federally guaranteed mortgages who are current on their payments.

The revamped Home Affordable Refinance Program, which aims to avert foreclosures, is expected "to encourage new, lower-cost loans" to more homeowners who are paying more than the value of their properties, a senior administration official said ahead of Obama's Monday announcement.

The three-year-old Home Affordable Refinance Program was supposed to allow refinancing for up to 125 percent of a home's value on mortgages owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, but has been stuck on tight eligibility rules, including excluding people with high credit scores or other attractive risk offers.

The change is not a mass refinancing of everyone in America, but a targeted fix to open up the program to more people who are underwater.

Obama will announce the initiative Monday in Las Vegas, where an estimated 60 percent of homes are underwater. But it could also help borrowers in other states, including Arizona, Florida, California and elsewhere where the underwater mortgage rate is high and borrowers are stuck without options to lower their payments.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said HARP has already helped nearly 1 million homeowners but "has not reached the scale that we hoped and the scale that it needs to reach to be able to reach to unlock this potential tool to help ... families in the American economy even further."

The changes to the loan programs are specifically intended to bypass Congress, which is stalled on agreeing to new plans to increase jobs and jump-start the economy. But it won early support from Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California and Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia.

"This is a positive step in the right direction for the preservation of homeownership for those Americans who have been making their payments and met their obligations. They deserve the benefit of today’s lower interest rates," Isakson said.

The announcement is part of a new campaign that Obama is trying out with a new catchphrase, "We can't wait," to goad Republicans for inaction, even as the Democratic-led Senate votes against the president's other jobs proposals.

The "We can't wait" campaign doesn't mean the White House has abandoned its pressure on Congress to pass the American Jobs Act, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said.

"We can't wait for Congress to act so we're going to take the steps we can take," he said.

While on a West Coast swing this week, Obama will also announce policy changes to ease college graduates' repayment of federal loans.

After a drop-in to Las Vegas, for high-money fundraising for his reelection campaign, the president will travel to Los Angeles for three more fundraisers, including one at the home of movie stars Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas. Obama will also make stops this week in San Francisco and Denver.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/24/white-house-to-announce-major-home-lending-revamp/#ixzz1bjRnl7cL

Who is the top 1%

2011-10-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

Who is the top 1% for income? - Oct. 20, 2011

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Think it takes a million bucks to make it into the Top 1% of American taxpayers?

Think again. In 2009, it took just $343,927 to join that elite group, according to newly released statistics from the Internal Revenue Service.

Occupy Wall Street protesters have been railing against the Top 1%, trying to raise anger and awareness of the growing economic gap between the rich and everybody else in America.

But just who are these fortunate folks at the top of the income ladder?

Well, there were just under 1.4 million households that qualified for entry. They earned nearly 17% of the nation's income and paid roughly 37% of its income tax.

Collectively, their adjusted gross income was $1.3 trillion. And while $343,927 was the minimum AGI to be included, on average, Top 1-percenters made $960,000.

But the income threshold for this exclusive group changes every year, largely with the performance of the stock market, experts said.

In 2007, when times were good on Wall Street, one needed to have an adjusted gross income of more than $424,000 to get into the highest rank. But the stock market decline in recent years has helped lower that bar back to a level not seen since 2002.

"The further up you go, the wider swings you see," said Pete Sepp, spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union. "They have a great deal of wealth sunk into the markets, which can vary quite widely."

While much of the wealthy's income comes from capital gains on investments, bonuses on the job can also give people the needed boost.

Just what jobs are those?

Many workers in the securities industry in New York likely qualify for the Top 1%.

These folks, many of whom work only blocks from where protesters are gathering in Zuccotti Park, made an average salary of just over $311,000 in 2009, according to the state Comptroller's Office. (This figure does not take into account certain income, losses and deductions that make up adjusted gross income.)

A separate study found that financial professionals made up about 14% of the top rank in 2005.

Executives, managers and supervisors working outside of finance accounted for 31%, the largest share, according to an analysis by Jon Bakija of Williams College, Adam Cole of the Treasury Department and Bradley Heim of Indiana University. Medical professionals came in at 15.7%, while lawyers made up 8.4%.

BofA Said to Split Regulators Over Moving Merrill Derivatives to Bank Unit - Bloomberg

2011-10-23T18:39:00.000-07:00

BofA Said to Split Regulators Over Moving Merrill Derivatives to Bank Unit - Bloomberg

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. disagree over the transfers, which are being requested by counterparties, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The Fed has signaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief to the bank holding company, while the FDIC, which would have to pay off depositors in the event of a bank failure, is objecting, said the people. The bank doesn’t believe regulatory approval is needed, said people with knowledge of its position.
Three years after taxpayers rescued some of the biggest U.S. lenders, regulators are grappling with how to protect FDIC- insured bank accounts from risks generated by investment-banking operations. Bank of America, which got a $45 billion bailout during the financial crisis, had $1.04 trillion in deposits as of midyear, ranking it second among U.S. firms.

“The concern is that there is always an enormous temptation to dump the losers on the insured institution,” said William Black, professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a former bank regulator. “We should have fairly tight restrictions on that.”

Accommodating Clients

Jerry Dubrowski, a spokesman for Charlotte, North Carolina- based Bank of America, declined to comment on the transfers or the firm’s discussions with regulators. The company “continues to accommodate the needs of our clients through each of our multiple trading entities, including Bank of America NA,” he said in an e-mailed statement, referring to the company’s deposit-taking unit.

Is the US Declaration of Independence illegal?

2011-10-20T09:55:00.000-07:00

BBC News - Is the US Declaration of Independence illegal?

In Philadelphia, American and British lawyers have debated the legality of America's founding documents.

On Tuesday night, while Republican candidates in Nevada were debating such American issues as nuclear waste disposal and the immigration status of Mitt Romney's gardener, American and British lawyers in Philadelphia were taking on a far more fundamental topic.

Namely, just what did Thomas Jefferson think he was doing?

Some background: during the hot and sweltering summer of 1776, members of the second Continental Congress travelled to Philadelphia to discuss their frustration with royal rule.

By 4 July, America's founding fathers approved a simple document penned by Jefferson that enumerated their grievances and announced themselves a sovereign nation.

"When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security”

The Declaration of Independence

Called the Declaration of Independence, it was a blow for freedom, a call to war, and the founding of a new empire.

It was also totally illegitimate and illegal.

At least, that was what lawyers from the UK argued during a debate at Philadelphia's Ben Franklin Hall.

The event, presented by the Temple American Inn of Court in conjunction with Gray's Inn, London, pitted British barristers against American lawyers to determine whether or not the American colonists had legal grounds to declare secession.

For American lawyers, the answer is simple: "The English had used their own Declaration of Rights to depose James II and these acts were deemed completely lawful and justified," they say in their summary.

To the British, however, secession isn't the legal or proper tool by which to settle internal disputes. "What if Texas decided today it wanted to secede from the Union? Lincoln made the case against secession and he was right," they argue in their brief.

A vote at the end of the debate reaffirmed the legality of Jefferson and company's insurrection, and the American experiment survived to see another day.

It was an unsurprising result, considering the venue - just a few blocks away from where the Declaration was drafted. But did they get it right? Below are some more of the arguments from both sides.

The American case for the Declaration

Did the Founding Fathers have any respect for the law?

The Declaration is unquestionably "legal". Under basic principles of "Natural Law", government can only be by the consent of the people and there comes a point when allegiance is no longer required in face of tyranny.

The legality of the Declaration and its validity is proven by subsequent independence movements which have been enforced by world opinion as right and just, based on the fundamental principles of equality and self-determination now reflected in the UN Charter.

The British case against it

The Declaration emerged from the second Continental Congress

The Declaration of Independence was not only illegal, but actually treasonable. There is no legal principle then or now to allow a group of citizens to establish their own laws because they want to. What if Texas decided today it wanted to secede from the Union?

Lincoln made the case against secession and he was right. The Declaration of Independence itself, in the absence of any recognised legal basis, had to appeal to "natural law", an undefined concept, and to "self-evident truths", that is to say truths for which no evidence could be provided.

The grievances listed in the Declaration were too trivial to justify secession. The main one - no taxation without representation - was no more than a wish on the part of the colonists, to avoid paying for the expense of protecting them against the French during seven years of arduous war and conflict.

BREAKING NEWS: Lindsay Lohan's probation revoked

2011-10-19T13:19:00.000-07:00

Lindsay Lohan's probation revoked - CNN.com

And the #1 headline on CNN.COM right now is:

Los Angeles (CNN) -- A Los Angeles County judge revoked probation for Lindsay Lohan on Wednesday after reprimanding the actress and her attorney in court for Lohan's failure to comply with her community service.

Lohan was removed from the courtroom in handcuffs. She later posted the $100,000 bail and could be freed by 2 p.m. Wednesday (5 p.m. ET) once the processing is completed, said her attorney, Shawn Holley.

Judge Stephanie Sautner said earlier Wednesday that if Lohan made bail, the actress must perform 16 hours of community service a week -- over a minimum of two days a week -- at the Los Angeles County morgue before her probation violation hearing on November 2.

The judge expressed anger at Lohan's repeated probation violations the past several months.

Lohan was supposed to be performing community service at a downtown Los Angeles women's center, but the judge said that Lohan posted nine excused absences at the center since her last court hearing on July 21 -- and performed, at most, only two hours of service.

Lohan's attempt to perform community service at a nearby American Red Cross facility were voided Wednesday because the judge said she didn't authorize that change.

"I am revoking her probation," the judge said. "And I'm also setting bail at $100,000."

In back-and-forth arguments with defense attorney Holley before making the ruling, the judge read aloud in court a statement that Lohan made regarding her unsuccessful community service at a downtown Los Angeles women's center: "She said she wasn't interacting with anyone so it wasn't fulfilling."

The judge harshly reprimanded Lohan.

"Is that what it's supposed to be about -- fulfilling? Or is it supposed to be punitive," the judge told Lohan's attorney, standing beside the actress, who was seated at the defense table.

"Her probation would have been done last year if she had done what she was supposed to do," the judge said. "There has been violation after violation. You have been doing this a long time. I have been doing this a long time.... Probation is a gift. It's not a right."

"We all can't be fulfilled by what we do," the judge added.

Her attorney responded: "She understands that."

"There is this rallying cry for more punishment and more jail," her attorney said.

The judge said, "I don't care about rallying cries."

"You haven't shown me before July 21 (which was Lohan's last court appearance) ... and September 9, how many hours she has done at the downtown women's center. I'm thinking maybe two -- with nine absences," the judge said. "It says she blew them off and left after an hour or an hour and half."

[She's a witch! BURN HER! - Lou]

Another Weekend of Mass Layoffs

2011-10-17T17:29:00.000-07:00

Another Weekend of Mass Layoffs - 24/7 Wall St.

Challenger, Gray said planned layoffs announced in September were up more than 200% from a year earlier to 115,000. That figure appears to be on the rise, and the latest layoffs, or corporate plans that presage them, happened this weekend. That is a bad sign for employment statistics announcements for the balance of the year.

Philips Electronics said it will fire 4,500 people. Its third-quarter figures were below its expectations. Its plans to sell its TV division have failed. The prices of consumer electronics such as TV screens, which have become a commodity, have fallen faster than production costs. It may be that no one wants the Philips business because it cannot be made successful.

Kinder Morgan (NYSE: KMI) will buy rival El Paso (NYSE: EP) for $21.1 billion. The companies announced that the merger will allow them to eliminate $350 million per year in expenses. The firms have workforce structures that mirror one another. So count on the merger to result in the loss of thousands of jobs.

There has been some question about whether mass layoffs like those of 2009 will return. That answer is yes, although the force of the new ones may not be as great as those of two years ago. The 2009 employment disaster caused the loss of 500,000 jobs in the U.S. in some months. Since most of those jobs were never replaced, these new firings will dig a deeper joblessness hole. It just will not be dug as fast.

There has been some hopeful news about jobs in the past month. American retailers have added or will add about 400,000 temporary workers for the holidays. That is probably a false positive, though. Retail sales are only expected to rise between 2.5% and 3% this year. If that is true, almost none of the temporary jobs will become full-time ones.

And earnings season for the third quarter has begun. Fourth-quarter forecasts will come along with those reports. Most analysts who follow S&P 500 companies expect EPS results to be poor. That means margins for the final quarter of the year can only be protected by cost cuts.

If there is another surge in layoffs, it will happen in the next few weeks. The American economic recovery, as weak as it was, has run out of fuel.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Read more: Another Weekend of Mass Layoffs - 24/7 Wall St. http://247wallst.com/2011/10/17/another-weekend-of-mass-layoffs/#ixzz1b5Yul0vj

Dan Wheldon killed in crash at Vegas - Motor News | FOX Sports on MSN

2011-10-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

Dan Wheldon killed in crash at Vegas - Motor News | FOX Sports on MSN

Every race car driver heads onto the track understanding this race could be the last and hoping it won't be.

On Sunday, IndyCar drivers got a harsh reminder when the worst happened to one of their own.

Two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dan Wheldon died when his car got caught up in a 15-car pileup, sailed over another vehicle and smashed into a catch fence at IndyCar's season-ending race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

''Things happen in this kind of racing,'' said Wade Cunningham, also caught up in the wreck. ''It's so close. Not much room for error. I was near the front of what caused all this, so I'm not thrilled about it. At this point, whose fault it was is kind of immaterial.''

The green flag had barely stopped waving when disaster struck.

Wheldon, driving from the back of the field for a chance at $5 million, was moving through the pack when he drove into a tangle of cars careening off each other in every direction.

Unable to avoid the massive wreck unfolding before him, Wheldon clipped another car and went hurtling through the air, his car bursting into flames as it flew into a fence.

After just 11 laps, the race was over. Two hours later, track officials announced that Wheldon was dead. The Englishman was 33.

''One minute you're joking around at driver intros and the next, Dan's gone,'' said Dario Franchitti, whose wife, actress Ashley Judd, had to bring him a box of tissues. ''I lost, we lost, a good friend. Everybody in the IndyCar series considered him a friend. He was such a good guy. He was a charmer.''

With the speed - close to 225 mph during practice - and a crowded 34-car field, a big worry was aggressive driving early in the 200-lap race.

Chaos started when two cars touched tires coming around turn 2 and almost no one had time to react.

Within seconds, several cars burst into flames and debris covered the track nearly halfway up the straightaway. Some points of impact were so devastating workers had to patch holes in the asphalt.

Video replays showed Wheldon's car turning over as it went airborne and sailed into what's called the catch fence, which sits over a barrier designed to give a bit when cars make contact. Rescue workers were at Wheldon's car quickly, some furiously waving for more help to get to the scene.

''It's unfortunate that early on in the race they've got to be racing so close. ...,'' Team Penske owner Roger Penske said. ''You always worry about those at these mile-and-a-halves at the speed and with this many cars.''

Three other drivers, including championship contender Will Power, were hurt in the pileup.

Wheldon was airlifted from the track to University Medical Center; news of his death came from IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard:

''IndyCar is very sad to announce that Dan Wheldon has passed away from unsurvivable injuries,'' he said. ''Our thoughts and prayers are with his family today. IndyCar, its drivers and owners, have decided to end the race.''

In his honor, drivers, many sobbing openly, took part in a five-lap salute around the 1.5-mile oval as thousands of fans stood and cheered from the grandstand.

Also injured in the crash were JR Hildebrand and Pippa Mann. Both will remain in the hospital overnight. IndyCar said Mann was being treated for a burn to her right pinkie finger and will be released Monday morning; Hildebrand was awake and alert but will be held overnight for further evaluation. Power was evaluated and released.

An autopsy was planned Monday for Wheldon.

''I'll tell you, I've never seen anything like it,'' Ryan Briscoe said. ''The debris we all had to drive through the lap later, it looked like a war scene from Terminator or something. I mean, there were just pieces of metal and car on fire in the middle of the track with no car attached to it and just debris everywhere. So it was scary, and your first thoughts are hoping that no one is hurt because there's just stuff everywhere. Crazy.''

IndyCar has not had a fatality since Paul Dana was killed at Homestead in 2006 during a crash in a morning warmup. Wheldon won the race later that day.

The accident appeared to start when Cunningham's car swerved on the track and Hildebrand drove over the left rear of Cunningham's car. Hildebrand appeared to go airborne, and Cunningham's car shot up into the wall, setting off a chain reaction among the cars behind him.

Some of those cars slowed, others didn't, and others spun in front of Wheldon and Power. There was so much confusion on the track it was hard to tell who was driving what car.

Power appeared to fly over Alex Lloyd's car, his ride rolling into the catch fence and landing on its right side. His in-car camera showed one of the front tires coming toward him in the cockpit.

Wheldon then appeared to drive over a car driven by Paul Tracy, who seemed to be slowing down. Wheldon, however, went airborne and spun into the fence.

''It was like a movie scene which they try to make as gnarly as possible,'' said Danica Patrick, making her final IndyCar start. ''It was debris everywhere across the whole track. You could smell the smoke. You could see the billowing smoke on the back straight from the car. There was a chunk of fire that we were driving around. You could see cars scattered.''

Wheldon, who came to the United States from England in 1999, won 16 times in his IndyCar career and was the series champion in 2005.

Despite winning this year's Indy 500, Wheldon couldn't put together a full-time ride this season but had a deal in the works for 2012.

Andretti Autosport, the team with which Wheldon won the 2005 Indy 500, had agreed to a contract early Sunday for Wheldon to replace Patrick next season. The deal was supposed to be signed after the race.

''Back when he was with the team in '05, we referred to the team as The Beatles because it was such perfect harmony (with his teammates) - and with Dan coming back, there was talk of putting The Beatles back together,'' said John Lopes, chief marketing officer and VP of marketing for Andretti Autosport. ''So today is devastating. We not only lost a future teammate, but a longtime teammate. It's so sad. He's going to be sorely missed and fondly remembered.''

Wheldon landed in the Las Vegas race thanks to Bernard's promise of $5 million to any moonlighting driver who could win the IndyCar season finale. Although there were no takers, Bernard refused to scrap the idea and Wheldon was declared eligible for the prize, which would have been split with a fan.

Asked about speed after the crash, Wheldon's former boss Chip Ganassi said, ''There'll be plenty of time in the offseason to talk about that. Now is not the time to talk about that.''

And Franchitti said: ''I agree. We'll discuss that and sort it out.''

But driver Oriol Servia didn't mince words: ''We all had a bad feeling about this place in particular just because of the high banking and how easy it was to go flat. And if you give us the opportunity, we are drivers and we try to go to the front. We race each other hard because that's what we do,'' he said. ''We knew it could happen, but it's just really sad.''

Wheldon had been providing blog posts for USA Today in the days leading up to the Las Vegas race, and in one posted Saturday to the newspaper's website he spoke of how he expected Sunday to be ''pure entertainment.''

''This is going to be an amazing show,'' Wheldon wrote. ''The two championship contenders, Dario Franchitti and Will Power, are starting right next to each other in the middle of the grid. Honestly, if I can be fast enough early in the race to be able to get up there and latch onto those two, it will be pure entertainment. It's going to be a pack race, and you never know how that's going to turn out.''

The accident spoiled what Bernard had hoped would be a showcase event for the struggling IndyCar Series.

The second-year CEO worked the entire season on turning the finale into a spectacle, and said he would offer his resignation to the IndyCar board of directors if ABC's broadcast didn't pull a .8 ranking. His goal was to improve upon last year's horrible television rating for the season finale and give the series some momentum for a strong season in 2013 with the introduction of a new car and new manufacturers.

So Bernard poured everything into Las Vegas, renting the speedway from owner Bruton Smith and agreeing to promote the event himself. He landed enough sponsorship to at least break even, and the $5 million challenge bought him an enormous amount of publicity the entire year.

Bernard got the Las Vegas Strip to close to stage a parade of cars, and hosted industry parties and a blackjack tournament to boost interest in the race. He even got MGM Grand Resorts to offer a pair of tickets to anyone staying this weekend in one of the chain's 14 properties.

But what was hoped to be a day of celebration quickly turned somber.

When drivers returned to the track for the tribute laps, Wheldon's No. 77 was the only one on the towering scoreboard. Franchitti sobbed uncontrollably as he got back into his car for the memorial ride. The sound of ''Danny Boy'' echoed around the track, followed by ''Amazing Grace.'' Hundreds of crew workers and representatives from each team stood at attention in honor of Wheldon.

''What can you say? We're going to miss him,'' Ganassi said. ''Everybody in IndyCar died a little today.''

Secure Our Borders

2011-10-17T14:13:00.000-07:00

Ron Paul Issues Another Warning on Erosion of Civil Liberties

2011-10-13T14:08:00.000-07:00

Ron Paul Issues Another Warning on Erosion of Civil Liberties - Fox News

You're next.

That's the warning from Rep. Ron Paul, who said Wednesday that killing U.S. citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Kahn in Yemen without a fair trial is the start of a slippery slope.

“They asked me if it is an impeachable offense. It is,” he told an audience at the National Press Club. “I mean just ignoring the 5th amendment and assassinating an American citizen without due process? They won’t even tell us what the rules are -- oh, but he is a threat. Can you imagine being put on a list because you’re a threat? What’s going to happen when they come to the media what if the media becomes a threat? Or a professor becomes a threat, someday that could well happen, this is the way it works it’s called incrementalism.”

Steve Jobs: Tributes flood in for Apple 'visionary'

2011-10-06T06:57:00.000-07:00

BBC News - Steve Jobs: Tributes flood in for Apple 'visionary'

RIP Steve

Football's Magical Yellow Line

2011-10-04T16:47:00.000-07:00

Technology keeps everyone in the game

By: Robert Cong
Technical Copy Writer

Are you ready for some football? The latest lockout antics are ancient history, preseason brawls are over and America's number one sport is back in action. Football uses a lot of interesting technology that we take for granted, and in this article I'll answer the question, how the heck do they get that yellow first-down line on the field?

It may seem like a simple task, but like all computerized animation, it's a lot harder than it looks. When it comes to action films, most people have heard of CGI (computer generated imagery), think Terminator, Avatar or the Old Spice commercials. But I would argue that no other example of CGI is as important as that yellow first-down line on my TV screen once Sunday kick-off time comes around.

First-down line (yellow) and line of scrimmage (blue).

How it's Done? - By the Electronic Chain-Gang

Remember the suspense of waiting for the chain gang to run out onto the field to measure for first-downs? Now we typically know the outcome long before they've figured it out on the field. What is less understood is how much work goes into setting the system up before any players step on the field.

The process begins by creating 3D models of every field at the beginning of the season. They're all different and thus the system must factor in the subtleties like pitch and positioning. The second bit of technology is tracking devices attached to all stationary cameras. The tracking device records every minute camera movement, tilt, zoom and pan and reports this information in real time. According to How Stuff Works, this position is recalculated 30 times every second! On game day, the computer system integrates the position of the cameras on the 3D computer map.

The third piece of technology is the color separation process. This requires building immense color palettes in the computer prior to the game. One palette contains all the possible colors of the field (all the shades of the grass, sidelines, logos on the field, etc.). The other palette is the colors of everything that will be on top of the field (players shoe colors, uniforms, referee uniforms, skin colors, etc.). Everything from one palette goes under the line and everything from the other palette goes over the line. Poor weather conditions can create havoc with the coloration process. Think about snow or mud, mud on the ground versus mud on player's uniforms... simple?

Weather can affect the technology

What it Takes - Gigabytes Plus Man-Power

As you might guess, the virtual first-down line takes some major giga-drive power - four SGI computers, a PC, three special computers used in conjunction with the television cameras shooting all the action on the field, and at least four human beings to run and perfect the system over the course of the game. In order for the line to look clear and precise, the entire system must keep track of a long list of items: the orientation of the field with respect to the camera, the location of every yard line, every perspective change from the camera's movement, when players and referees cross the line so they are not painted over, superimposed graphics from the network, and much more.While the concept of painting a yellow line across the screen seems simple enough, the technology is anything but simplistic.

Now you can amaze your friends at the next game-day bbq when someone says, "how do they get that yellow line on there?"

Hey Timmy - Is That a Blank Check in your Back Pocket?

2011-09-22T16:18:00.001-07:00

Geithner certain euro zone will boost bailout fund

By Rachelle Younglai and Dan Flynn

WASHINGTON | Thu Sep 22, 2011 5:36pm EDT

(Reuters) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Thursday he was sure Europe would boost the firepower of its bailout fund to contain the debt crisis as pressure on Europe grew to act decisively to calm markets.

Geithner traveled to Europe twice in the last two weeks to discuss dealing with the crisis. He suggested boosting the firepower of the euro zone bailout fund -- the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) -- through leveraging to EU finance ministers last Friday.

[He's traveled there twice - with spare printing presses and bags of unmarked bills! That's why he's so sure! - Lou]

Borrowing costs for euro zone countries like Spain and Italy have been rising steadily despite a euro zone agreement to allow the EFSF to buy bonds on the secondary market, extend preventive credit to countries and lend to recapitalize banks.

Investors are concerned about the apparent lack of unity among euro zone countries to support the single currency area's weakest members and they doubt that the bailout fund has enough money to finance Spain and Italy if needed.

Speaking ahead of a meeting of finance ministers and central bankers of the world's 20 biggest economies, Geithner said euro zone officials were aware of the risks.

"They recognize that if you let, as the United States did in the early part of 2008, the momentum of these concerns build, they're very hard to arrest, much more expensive to arrest," Geithner said.

"So you're going to see them act with more force in the coming weeks and months," he said.

"I am very confident they're going to move in the direction of expanding the effective financial capacity of that set of financial ring fences because they have no alternative and they recognize that and they're going to do it," Geithner said.

"They're just trying to figure out how to get there in a way that is politically attractive."

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Wednesday European nations could "get ahead of the game" if they were prepared to increase the euro zone's bailout funds to 1 trillion euros from the current 440 billion euros.

Funny Biking Clips

2011-09-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

Barry O's Lips are Flapping Again

2011-09-19T14:19:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama unveils $3 trillion deficit-cutting plan - POLITICO.com

President Barack Obama offered a spirited defense Monday of his plan to slash $3 trillion from the federal deficit in large part by raising taxes on the wealthy.

“This is not class warfare. It’s math,” Obama said. “If we are not willing to ask those who have done extraordinarily well to help America close the deficit … then the logic, the math says everybody else has to do a whole lot more.”

In a feisty appearance from the White House Rose Garden, Obama detailed a proposal that reads more like a blueprint for shoring up his restless Democratic base than a vehicle for reaching across the aisle in search of bipartisan compromise. His tone — incredulous, exasperated and firm — was a notable departure from his usual reluctance to go too hard after the Republicans whom he needs to pass bills through Congress.

His proposal forces the GOP to side with corporations and the wealthy, avoids the most controversial remedies for overhauling Medicare and Social Security, and offers up a populist-sounding “Buffett Rule,” which would prohibit millionaires from paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.

“Anybody who says we can’t change the tax code to correct that, anyone who signs some pledge to protect every single tax loophole as long as they live, they should be called out,” Obama said. “They should have to defend that unfairness.”

While slicing $3 trillion from the deficit may appeal to Republicans on Capitol Hill, they do not like the way Obama wants to do it. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has already issued his own bottom line for the latest-round of deficit talks: No new taxes.

Obama directly challenged the speaker on Monday, calling for a tax code overhaul that would raise $1.5 trillion in new revenues mostly from high-end earners. This target is almost double the amount that Obama and Boehner agreed to before their “grand bargain” negotiations collapsed in July.

The president said he would veto any plan that cuts Medicare benefits without raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. And he pounded Boehner for a speech last week, accusing the speaker of a “my way or the highway” approach by ruling out any new revenues as part of a deficit-reduction deal.

“The speaker says we can’t have ‘my way or the highway’ and then basically says ‘my way or the highway,’” Obama said. “That is not smart. It is not right.”

One Electrical Worker Blamed for Leaving Millions Without Power in California, Arizona and Mexico - ABC News

2011-09-09T06:33:00.000-07:00

One Electrical Worker Blamed for Leaving Millions Without Power in California, Arizona and Mexico - ABC News

[DOH! Homer, is that you? - Lou]

A single worker's error led to a massive power outage that swept across Arizona, Southern California and Mexico, left millions of people in the dark and brought major West Coast cities to a standstill, according to a local power company.

The North Gila-Hassayampa 500 kV transmission line near Yuma, Ariz. was tripped offline when a single APS employee was carrying out a procedure in the North Gila substation, according to Arizona Power Service.

Typically, in such an instance, the outage would be isolated to the Yuma area. The investigation is now focusing on the reason that did not occur in this case, APS said Thursday.

San Diego Gas & Electric Co. president and CEO Michael Niggli earlier said that 1.4 million affected customers could be without power through the night and into Friday.

A multi-stage restoration plan was begun to get power back to everyone, according to the San Diego Gas & Electric Co. Power reportedly was back in some areas, including Orange County, Calif.

$16,000,000,000,000 DEFAULT

2011-09-08T19:20:00.000-07:00

$16,000,000,000,000 DEFAULT

from Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee by Gary

4 people liked this

“Politicians need to understand that without real change default is inevitable. In fact, default happens every day through monetary policy tricks. Every time the Federal Reserve engages in more quantitative easing and devalues the dollar, it is defaulting on the American people.”
– Ron Paul (July 18, 2011)

Now we know why the Fed was so opposed to an audit.

According to the recent GAO report on its limited audit of the Federal Reserve, the central bank secretly pumped $16 trillion into American and foreign banks during the recent economic crisis. All of the Fed’s fat cat cronies were taken care of at the expense of the American public, without any transparency whatsoever. And now the big spenders in Washington are doing everything they can to raise the debt ceiling so we can borrow and spend more money we simply DO NOT HAVE.

The latest debt deal will reportedly cut spending by only slightly over $900 billion over 10 years (Jake Tapper, ABC News, July 31, 2011). But we will have a $1.6 trillion deficit after this year alone, meaning those meager cuts will do nothing to solve our unsustainable spending problem. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve continues to wipe out the value of our dollar. All of this is speeding us toward an even deeper crisis, one that will hurt every American and could permanently wreck our economy.

Put These Numbers in Perspective

Congress has been in a frenzy over the suggestion that we not raise the debt ceiling, and simply spend what we take in.
The U.S. GDP is $14.8 trillion. The entire U.S. debt spanning over 200 years is $14.5 trillion. The current debt ceiling compromise is over cuts that would be enacted over the next decade to the tune of $900 billion. The budget debate in early 2011 was over $1.5 trillion. But there was no debate over the $16,000,000,000,000 (GAO Report) handed out to failing corporations and banks around the world in just a few short years.How can we afford to have the Fed give away more than our entire national debt in just three years?
We have been fighting in Congress these past few weeks over raising our debt ceiling by about $2.4 trillion (GAO Report), an amount the Fed secretly loaned out to just one bank. There truly is something wrong here.
Letting the Fed have its way with the American peoples’ money, and allowing the government spending to grow unchecked is not a sustainable way to govern. We must cut off the credit card and begin living responsibly.

Why Can’t We Get Serious About the Debt

Partisan politics always trumps serious debate.
“If my Republican friends believe that increasing our debt by almost $800 billion today and more than $3 trillion over the last five years is the right thing to do, they should be upfront about it. They should explain why they think more debt is good for the economy. How can the Republican majority in this Congress explain to their constituents that trillions of dollars in new debt is good for our economy? How can they explain that they think it’s fair to force our children, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren to finance this debt through higher taxes? That’s what it will have to be. Why is it right to increase our nation’s dependence on foreign creditors?” – Senator Harry Reid (Mary Katharine Ham, The Daily Caller, March 16, 2006)Obviously, the Senate Majority Leader is arguing a little differently in the present day.
“We can’t back out on the money we owe the rest of the world. We can’t do as the Gingrich crowd did a few years ago — close the government.” – Senator Harry Reid (NBC, January 9, 2011)

Cut or Borrow? Who’s Telling the Truth?

Obama believes our credit rating would have declined if we did not raise the debt limit.
“For the first time in history, our country’s AAA credit rating would be downgraded, leaving investors around the world to wonder whether the United States is still a good bet. We would risk sparking a deep economic crisis -– this one caused almost entirely by Washington.” – President Barack Obama (White House, July 25, 2011)

But credit rating agencies, not bureaucrats, believe our rating will inevitably decline based on increasing our debt.
“We are taking a negative action not based on the delay in raising the debt ceiling but rather our concern about the high level of debt to GDP in excess of 100%. Nonetheless, since the US’s debt is denominated in dollars, a hard default is unlikely.” (Egan Jones, July 16, 2011)“Because the U.S. has, relative to its ‘AAA’ peers, what we consider to be very large budget deficits and rising government indebtedness and the path to addressing these is not clear to us, we have revised our outlook on the long-term rating to negative from stable.” (Standard & Poor’s, April 18, 2011)
“Standard & Poor’s threatened…to downgrade the United States’ prized AAA credit rating unless the Obama administration and Congress find a way to slash the yawning federal budget deficit within two years.” (Steven Johnson, Reuters, April 18, 2011)

One Man Leads by Example, Voting Record, and Principle

In Washington, rhetoric often belies actual principles. But there has been one person who remains consistent in both rhetoric and action — Texas representative, doctor and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul.“What should bother Americans most is that under cover of this debt ceiling circus, we learned from a recent GAO one-time, limited audit that the Federal Reserve secretly pumped $16 trillion into American and foreign banks over three years. To put that into perspective, our entire national debt is $14.5 trillion, and our annual deficit will be about $1.6 trillion, meaning the Federal Reserve created and appropriated more than our entire national debt to banks around the world in a few short years.”
“I have no doubt that we face financial collapse and ruin if we continue to grow our debt. The ratings agencies have stated that if we do not cut spending by at least $4 trillion in the next few years we will face a downgrade of our triple-A rating. We need to make major spending cuts now, in this budget, and we can no longer afford to allow more deficit spending based on promises of future cuts.”
“For decades, politicians have promised future restraint in exchange for hikes in the debt limit. We are always told that we must act immediately to avoid a crisis. But time and time again, politicians reveal themselves to be untrustworthy and we soon find ourselves in a crisis being led by the same folks who wish only to maintain the status quo.”
“That is something that the American people should not tolerate.” – Ron Paul

Yahoo 'F---ed Me Over' | Reuters

2011-09-08T13:35:00.000-07:00

Ousted CEO Carol Bartz: Yahoo 'F---ed Me Over' | Reuters

No need to wonder what Carol Bartz thinks about her former bosses at Yahoo.

Bartz, who was canned from her CEO position with the internet company Tuesday, rang up Fortune Wednesday to vent about her overlords, letting the company's board have it with both barrels.

Also read: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz: "I've Been Fired Over the Phone"

"These people f---ed me over," Bartz seethed.

The former exec held particular rancor for Yahoo's chairman of the board, Ray Bostock, who indecorously fired her over the phone.

Also read: After CEO Carol Bartz' Ouster, What's Next for Yahoo?

Recalling the moment the ax fell, Bartz told Fortune that she was in New York to address Citigroup's technology conference, and put in a scheduled to call to Bostock shortly after 6 in the evening. According to Bartz, Bostock began rattling off a prepared statement informing her of her termination.

"I said, 'Roy, I think that's a script. Why don't you have the balls to tell me yourself?'" Bartz recalls telling Bostock.

After Bostock finished rattling off his rote canning, Bartz says she told him, "I thought you were classier."

The rest of Yahoo's board doesn't get off easy in the interview, either. According to Bartz, the board grew frustrated with the limited growth from Yahoo's Bartz-brokered search partnership with Microsoft -- but their real frustration stemmed from the flak they caught when they passed on a big-bucks offer from Microsoft to buy Yahoo in 2007.

"The board was so spooked by being cast as the worst board in the country," Bartz opined. "Now they're trying to show that they're not the doofuses that they are."

Guess she won't be listing Yahoo as a reference on her resume.

[I think I like Carol! - Lou]

Wow - Somebody Pulled BOTH Strings Today

2011-09-08T13:31:00.000-07:00

Bernanke: Fed to help restore strong growth, mum on measures | Reuters

(Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Thursday the U.S. central bank would spare no effort to boost disappointingly weak growth and reduce unemployment, while downplaying concerns about inflation.

While the Fed chairman did little to change expectations of a further easing of monetary policy when officials meet on September 20-21, he offered no details of steps the Fed might take.

"The Federal Reserve will do all it can to help restore high rates of growth and employment in a context of price stability," Bernanke told the Economic Club of Minnesota.

In what could be taken as a bid to quell concerns among some of his colleagues that further easing could spark inflation, Bernanke said a rise in consumer prices this year would likely to be transitory.

"We see little indication that the higher rate of inflation experienced so far this year has become ingrained in the economy," he said.

U.S. stocks fell as investors registered disappointment that Bernanke did not lay out a plan of action for the central bank's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. The dollar extended gains against the euro, while Treasury debt prices rose.

"Although the speech was lacking in any specifics about potential policy options, we see the relatively downbeat nature of the chairman's comments on the growth outlook as confirming our view that the FOMC is inclined to take further accommodative steps at its September meeting," said Michael Gapen, an economist at Barclays Capital in New York.

A widening debt crisis in Europe and collapse in consumer and business confidence in the United States has raised concern the U.S. and global economies could slide back into recession.

So stark is the recent deterioration in the global economic recovery that the political debate in Washington has veered in only six weeks from a preoccupation with how to cut U.S. debt to a renewed urgency on lowering unemployment.

President Barack Obama is scheduled to lay out a jobs package worth more than $300 billion later on Thursday, and job creation was a key theme for Republican presidential hopefuls at a debate on Wednesday.

FEW NEW CLUES ON EASING

Other than offering a bit more detail on the outlook for inflation and emphasizing that sluggish growth is not enough to satisfy the Fed, Bernanke offered few fresh insights into thinking at the central bank on measures to aid the recovery.

He largely reiterated remarks he made two weeks ago, repeating that the Fed has a range of tools to provide additional stimulus and is prepared to use them.

The Fed cut benchmark rates to near zero almost three years ago to pull the economy out of a sharp recession. It then bought $2.3 trillion worth of longer-term securities in two installments ending in June to boost growth.

But with confidence crumbling, the Fed on August 9 eased monetary policy further by expanding on an earlier promise to hold rates at rock-bottom levels for an extended period, saying it expected to keep them low at least through mid-2013, a decision that drew three dissents on the FOMC.

Bernanke may have decided to keep his cards close to his vest on Thursday in order not to pre-empt the debate later this month among members of the Fed's fractious policy panel.

"With the FOMC clearly split, Bernanke probably didn't want to antagonize the hawks who voted against the decision at August's meeting," said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist for Capital Economics.

Many analysts expect the Fed's next move to be a shift in its $2.8 trillion balance sheet to holdings of more longer-term securities. The point of such a move would be to "twist" down interest rates for longer maturities, potentially spurring mortgage refinancing and other activity that depends on longer-term interest rates.

The Fed is considering selling shorter-term securities and buying longer-term bonds, as well as simply replacing maturing securities with longer-dated issues.

One Fed official, Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans, has called for pledging to maintain ultra-loose monetary policy until unemployment comes down to a more acceptable -- and specified -- level.

A more modest step under consideration would be for the central bank to encourage lending by lowering the rate it pays banks for excess reserves they hold at the Fed.

Bernanke said unusually weak household spending and persistent financial strains spurred by worry over Europe's sovereign debt crisis and the loss of Washington's top-tier credit rating continue to hold back the recovery.

He also repeated a warning that overzealous belt-tightening by the U.S. government in the near term could also slow down the "erratic" recovery.

In response to an audience question, the Fed chairman said a bitterly polarized debate this summer on raising the U.S. debt ceiling had roiled financial markets.

"We need a better process so that we don't have the same consequences that we saw with the (ratings) downgrade and with some of the financial volatility that was associated with the process," he said.

Pull the String and He Talks too!

2011-09-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

Geithner urges global action to boost growth

(Reuters) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Thursday called on global finance chiefs to boost growth but said a repeat of the massive coordinated fiscal stimulus efforts of 2009 was no longer possible.

In an opinion piece written for the Financial Times, Geithner said the United States must strengthen employment, Europe must act more forcefully to quell its debt crisis and China and other emerging markets should strengthen domestic demand and allow their currencies to rise more rapidly.

"The imperative remains to strengthen economic growth. Fiscal policy everywhere has to be guided by the imperatives of growth," Geithner wrote a day before finance ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy economies are due to meet in Marseilles, France.

Geithner acknowledged that some governments with high deficits and high borrowing costs have no choice but to consolidate their fiscal positions, while others have room to take more action to support growth or at least slow their fiscal consolidation.

"In early 2009, the world showed remarkable unity and deployed remarkable financial force in rescuing the global economy," Geithner wrote. "The challenges now are different and cannot realistically be confronted by a repeat of that coordinated global response of financial stabilization and fiscal and monetary stimulus."

Geithner said President Barack Obama on Thursday evening will push for a "very substantial package" of public investments, tax incentives and targeted jobs measures, which will be combined with reforms to restore medium-term fiscal responsibility. He did not provide any specifics.

The U.S. Treasury chief is due to depart for the Marseilles meeting after Obama's speech to the U.S. Congress.

Geithner said governments in Europe must take more forceful action to "generate confidence that it can and will resolve its crisis."

Obama must condemn Hoffa

2011-09-07T06:49:00.000-07:00

West: Obama must condemn Hoffa - Mackenzie Weinger - POLITICO.com

Republican Rep. Allen West slammed the Obama administration on “Fox and Friends” Wednesday for not condemning Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa’s call for workers to wage war on the tea party and “take these son-of-a-bitches out.”

West said that Hoffa’s remarks, made at President Barack Obama’s Monday Labor Day rally in Detroit, have “no place in the political discourse of this country” and he called on the president to denounce them.

“The president has to come out and say something about this because he gets on the same stage that Mr. Hoffa was on and now that he knows what was said,” West said. “And going back to January when he talked about civility, I think we continue to see the people on the left in the Democrat party, Andre Carson with the Congressional Black Caucus making a statement about members of the tea party and certain folks in Congress want to see black Americans hang from trees — there’s no place for this.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney dodged questions about Hoffa’s speech at Tuesday’s briefing, saying that union leader “speaks for himself, he speaks for the labor movement.”

West likened Hoffa’s call to both the movie “Patton,” best known for its depiction of World War II Gen. George S. Patton’s speech to U.S. troops the day before D-Day, and to Saul Alinsky, who wrote “Rules for Radicals” and is considered the founder of community organizer.

“Perhaps Mr. Hoffa was going back over the weekend and he watched the movie ‘Patton’ where you know Patton gave that incredible speech before the Third Army and he tried to mimic that,” West said. “But it has no place in the political discourse in this country. I think what you see happening is that in order to stir up the liberal base, they have to demonize a certain entity and that entity they have chosen is the tea party.”

West added that Democrats are trying to ignore the failures of the Obama administration by turning to “a Saul Alinsky type of tactic.”

On Monday, Hoffa stirred up controversy as he called on the crowd at Obama’s rally to wage war on the tea party.

“President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march,” Hoffa said.

After leading a chant calling for more jobs, Hoffa told the crowd that Obama “needs help.”

“But you know what, everybody here’s got a vote. If we go back, and we keep the eye on the prize, let’s take these son-of-a-bitches out and give America back to America where we belong,” Hoffa said.

Financials News: Ex-Citigroup VP Admits Embezzling Over $22 Million - CNBC

2011-09-06T14:57:00.000-07:00

Financials News: Ex-Citigroup VP Admits Embezzling Over $22 Million - CNBC

[Go big or stay at home! ".. a stunning amount of money.." These idiots who rob a 7/11 for $200 are morons! This guy did it right (except for the getting caught part. - Lou]

A former vice president for Citigroup pleaded guilty Tuesday to embezzling more than $22 million from the company and funneling the money to his personal bank account.

Gary Foster, 35, pleaded guilty to bank fraud, admitting that he took the money between 2003 and 2010. He appeared in U.S. district court in Brooklyn before Judge Eric Vitaliano.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Yaeger said the government will request a prison sentence of eight to 10 years. Foster will remain free on $800,000 bail until he is sentenced.

Foster was arrested in June and at the time was charged with embezzling $19 million from the bank's accounts. He admitted in court Tuesday to taking more than $22 million, although his total seized assets were estimated at $16 million, Yaeger said.

The defendant, who worked for Citigroup for 10 years, said that between 2003 and 2010 he drafted emails and faxes directing the funds to his personal account.

According to the government, Foster first transferred money from various Citigroup accounts to Citigroup's cash account and then wired the money to his personal bank account at another bank. He concealed his thefts by, among other methods, making false accounting entries to create the appearance that the bank's cash account was in balance.

Foster used the money to buy real estate and luxury automobiles, including a Ferrari and a Maserati, the government said. Foster agreed to forfeit his interest in real estate and luxury cars, Yaeger said.

After the hearing, Foster's lawyer Isabelle Kirshner said the quick resolution came after they evaluated the government's evidence. "It was in his best interest to resolve this case as quickly as possible," she said.

U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said in a statement, "The defendant violated his employer's trust and stole a stunning amount of money over an extended period of time to finance his personal lifestyle."

Double Standard?

2011-09-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

Double Standard? Romney, Perry Grew State Payrolls as Governor - ABC News

[Well, I'd call it politicians talking out of their asses like they always do, but that's just me. - Lou]

The two leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination — Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — have cast themselves as foot soldiers in the war against government workers.

Romney has criticized President Obama for presiding over an “unparalleled” expansion of the federal workforce that he would see rolled back, while Perry has insisted altogether that it’s not the place of government to create jobs.

Yet both men have presided over substantial additions to state government payrolls at taxpayer expense during their tenures as governor, a review of historical employment data found.

When Romney took office in January 2003, the Massachusetts state government employed 112,000 workers, according to the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

Four years later, the ranks of Massachusetts state employees had grown by 3,000, or a 2.6 percent increase. (Over the same period, nonfarm employment grew just 1.2 percent.)

During Perry’s decade-long tenure in Texas, the state workforce has also blossomed, climbing from 328,800 in December 2000 to more than 377,600 in July 2011, a net gain of 48,800 state government jobs, according to the Texas Workforce Commission.

The more than 14 percent expansion of Texas state government under Perry far outpaces private sector job growth of 9.7 percent in the state over the same period.

As for Obama, the ranks of the federal government have swelled during his administration, though not by significantly more than they did under his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Between January 2009, when Obama took office, and August 2011, the federal government has added a net 137,000 jobs, or a 6.6 percent expansion of the workforce. During Bush’s second term, the ranks grew by 114,000 jobs, or 5.8 percent.

More than 2.2 million Americans worked for the federal government as of August 2011, excluding postal workers.

Fedex May Feel Squeeze of Postal Service Cuts - Bloomberg

2011-09-06T08:30:00.000-07:00

Fedex May Feel Squeeze of Postal Service Cuts - Bloomberg:

Good bye Post Office! Right now the primary users of postal mail are probably bulk mailers (catalogs/junk mail/etc) and the older people that still write letters to each other. And, I guess being able to send a postcard is kinda neat still. But there's no longer a need for daily mail delivery. How about twice a week? Maybe three times at most. My postcard can wait a day or two to be delivered, it's ok. My Mom's letter to her friend can wait, they still talk on the phone.

They're a dinosaur, a buggy-wheel manufacturer - face facts, cut them loose, end the pain.

Ooooh - terrible Lou you say. Lou's got a computer and internet connections, he can live without it. Guess what - so can you! I'd be willing to bet that 99% of public libraries in the U.S. have a public computer available for free use. AND a librarian that would be glad to show you how to use it. Change really is good - embrace it. Or you'll follow your friend the Brontosaurus soon.

Little Timmy and Uncle Ben are Worried I Think

2011-09-02T07:30:00.000-07:00

[Think they know something we don't? This is just a setup to panic BofA into selling to their best friend Jamie Dimon! - Lou]

(Reuters) - The Federal Reserve has asked Bank of America Corp to show what measures it could take if business conditions worsen, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the situation.
BofA executives recently responded to the unusual request from the Federal Reserve with a list of options that includes the issuance of a separate class of shares tied to the performance of its Merrill Lynch securities unit, the people told the paper.

Bank of America and the Fed declined to comment to the Journal. Both could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters outside regular U.S. business hours.

(Reporting by Sakthi Prasad in Bangalore; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Officials: Virginia quake shifted nuclear plant's storage casks - CNN.com

2011-09-01T08:45:00.000-07:00

Officials: Virginia quake shifted nuclear plant's storage casks - CNN.com

Washington (CNN) -- Twenty-five of 27 spent-fuel storage casks at a Virginia nuclear plant were shifted between 1 and 4 inches during last week's 5.8-magnitude earthquake, officials said Thursday.

The cylinders, each 16 feet tall and weighing 115 tons, were not damaged, and no radiation was released, said Rich Zuercher, spokesman for Dominion Virginia Power, which operates the North Anna Power Station near Louisa, Virginia. Monitors were hooked up to the casks to determine any abnormalities, he said.

He said the casks' movement was known shortly after the quake, which had an epicenter less than 20 miles from the plant, but the news was not released to the public.

"We had a lot going on," Zuercher said. "There was no indication of any problem ... and there isn't any problem."

Besides those casks, which are vertical, some of the horizontal bunkers holding spent fuel also were affected. The concrete "came loose on the face" of "a few" of the bunkers, Zuercher said, but the damage is not considered serious. The bunkers are 16 feet long and each weighs 50 tons.

It is the first time such casks have been shifted by an earthquake in U.S. history, said Roger Hannah, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as it's the first time a quake of this magnitude was felt at a nuclear plant in the country.

AT&T Dealt Defeat on T-Mobile After $12M in Lobbying - Bloomberg

2011-09-01T07:54:00.000-07:00

AT&T Dealt Defeat on T-Mobile After $12M in Lobbying - Bloomberg

[These PACs and lobbying are a joke. How blatant can this be? What's the difference between that and bribery? - Lou]

The U.S. move to block AT&T Inc. (T)’s purchase of T-Mobile USA Inc. marks a rare Washington defeat for the largest U.S. phone company, a failure deal opponents called a triumph of antitrust analysis over lobbying muscle.

As it sought regulators’ blessing for the transaction, AT&T boosted lobbying spending by 30 percent to $11.7 million in the first six months of 2011 from the same period last year, according to Senate records. Its PAC gave $805,500 to federal candidates this year, more than any other company, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington research group.

The company’s lobbying strategy has been guided by 13-year company veteran Jim Cicconi, a Washington insider since serving in the Reagan White House. It produced letters to regulators from more than 70 members of Congress, multiple economic studies aimed at supporting the deal, and a pledge to preserve 5,000 jobs. Nonetheless, the Justice Department yesterday sued to halt the $39 billion deal, calling it harmful to competition.

AT&T “never understood that the facts were so bad that no amount of political pressure was going to make a difference,” Gigi Sohn, president of the Washington-based advocacy group Public Knowledge that opposes the deal, said in an interview with Bloomberg Government. “Kudos to the Justice Department and the Obama administration for keeping politics out of it.”

Andrew Lipman, a Washington-based communications lawyer with Bingham McCutchen LLP, said the Justice Department’s lawsuit is the first U.S. action he can recall seeking to block an AT&T merger in his 35 years of practice.

“The Justice Department is extremely independent,” Lipman said in an interview. “That’s historically been the case, and is especially the case in this administration.”

Volley of Calls

AT&T’s campaign in Washington began March 20 as the proposed purchase of the Deutsche Telekom AG (DTE) unit was announced, with a volley of Sunday phone calls to members of the Federal Communications Commission, which hasn’t concluded its review.

In succeeding weeks, AT&T won the support of traditional Democratic constituencies including the Communications Workers of America and the International Association of Teamsters. Executives of Dallas-based AT&T testified twice to Congress.

The company hired three outside lobbying groups to work for the merger, and brought in former congressional aides. Congress, which doesn’t play a direct role in deal reviews, oversees the agencies vetting the transaction.

“They were employing both contributions and lobbying to smooth the way, but there is always a tension between the money and the merits,” Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, said in an interview. “Cash constituents will not win if there is a perception of this being contrary to the public interest.”

Rosneft, Exxon Announce Arctic Partnership - WSJ.com

2011-08-30T17:53:00.000-07:00

Rosneft, Exxon Announce Arctic Partnership - WSJ.com

BY RUSSELL GOLD IN AUSTIN, TEXAS, GREG WHITE IN MOSCOW AND GUY CHAZAN IN LONDON

Exxon Mobil Corp. snatched away a major Arctic exploration deal with Russia's OAO Rosneft from competitors including BP PLC in a sweeping agreement that for the first time gives a Russian state-controlled company access to energy projects in the U.S.

Exxon, entering a country where energy investments are fraught with political risk, agreed to invest $2.2 billion to explore potentially giant oil fields with state-run Rosneft in the ice-choked Kara Sea. It also finalized a deal to spend $1 billion looking for oil in the Black Sea. In return, Rosneft will be able to purchase stakes in some Exxon projects ...

New body 'liquefaction' unit unveiled in Florida funeral home

2011-08-30T06:38:00.000-07:00

New body 'liquefaction' unit unveiled in Florida funeral home

A Glasgow-based company has installed its first commercial "alkaline hydrolysis" unit at a Florida funeral home.

The unit by Resomation Ltd is billed as a green alternative to cremation and works by dissolving the body in heated alkaline water.

The facility has been installed at the Anderson-McQueen funeral home in St Petersburg, and will be used for the first time in the coming weeks. It is hoped other units will follow in the US, Canada and Europe.

The makers claim the process produces a third less greenhouse gas than cremation, uses a seventh of the energy, and allows for the complete separation of dental amalgam for safe disposal.

Mercury from amalgam vaporised in crematoria is blamed for up to 16% of UK airborne mercury emissions, and many UK crematoria are currently fitting mercury filtration systems to meet reduced emission targets.

"Resomation was developed in response to the public's increasing environmental concerns," company founder Sandy Sullivan told BBC News. "It gives them that working third choice, which allows them to express those concerns in a very positive and I think personal way."

The Resomator can dissolve the body tissue in under three hours, say its makers

The installation was only made possible after the state legislature in Florida approved the use of the technology, one of seven US states in which the process has now been legalised.

The system works by submerging the body in a solution of water and potassium hydroxide which is pressurised to 10 atmospheres and heated to 180C for between two-and-a-half and three hours.

Body tissue is dissolved and the liquid poured into the municipal water system. Mr Sullivan, a biochemist by training, says tests have proven the effluent is sterile and contains no DNA, and poses no environmental risk.

The bones are then removed from the unit and processed in a "cremulator", the same machine that is used to crush bone fragments following cremation into ash. Metals including mercury and artificial joints and implants are safely recovered.

The machine is patented in Europe with patents pending in other countries.

Legislative hurdle

Alkaline hydrolysis has been used in the past to dispose of medical cadavers and farm animals.

Last year, Aquamation Industries of Australia disposed of several bodies in Queensland using a rival alkaline hydrolysis machine. The same design was also used in Ohio earlier this year to dispose of 19 bodies until a state court shut it down, ruling that the process was not compliant with state law.

Mr Sullivan, whose company is now majority owned by Co-operative Funeralcare, claims his machine will provide a more efficient and quicker process. He also believes the equipment can rival cremation for cost, particularly given the expense of fitting mercury abatement systems.

He is now pressing for legislative changes in the UK to make alkaline hydrolysis a reality in Britain.

"The installations in the US will assist in that process because many of the leaders in the funeral industry are coming to see this unit functioning in the next couple of months once it's running," said Mr Sullivan.

"Once they see the unit running, see the process and how dignified, respectful, quiet and quick it is, they will help to push through legislative change in the UK."

Freeze drying

Another "green" alternative to cremation is in the pipeline. Susanne Wiigh-Masak, a Swedish biologist, has for a decade proposed a technology she calls Promession.

The process involves a fully automated and patented machine. Coffins are fed in one end, and the body removed from the coffin within the unit and then treated with liquid nitrogen.

The body is then vibrated until the body fragments, after which the remains are dried and refined further, and then passed through filters to remove metals, including dental amalgam. The remains are then poured into a square biodegradable coffin, again automatically, for shallow burial.

For Ms Wiigh-Masak, it is all about preparing the body for this shallow burial, a process which says is akin to composting. It was in her garden on the island of Lyr on Sweden's west coast, that the idea came to her.

"It only takes two to three weeks before the kitchen and garden waste is soil so this is what inspired me to really see if not only the kitchen and garden waste but also everything organic, including us, could be treated this way to really become soil," she told BBC News.

So far, the technology has only been tested on pigs, with one pig even being fitted with a hip replacement prior to death, to test the efficacy with which the metal joint could be removed during the process.

Ms Wiigh-Masak is now confident commercial operations will begin soon, after the Swedish government promised to introduce new legislation that would allow individuals to use a "burial tax" paid by all Swedes not just for cremation and burial, but also for Promession.

Designs are complete, manufacturers appointed, and four potential sites in Sweden have been earmarked for facilities.

She says 60 countries around the world have expressed an interest in the technology, including councils in England such as Crewe and Nantwich Council and Cambridge City Council (who have also held discussions with Resomation Ltd).

Many individuals have already signed up for the process, and around a dozen bodies, including Ms Wiigh-Masak's own late parents, are currently being held in cold storage, having signalled their desire to undergo the process prior to death.

How long they may have to wait remains unclear.

'Black swans' busting IT budgets

2011-08-29T19:52:00.000-07:00

BBC News - 'Black swans' busting IT budgets

One in six big IT projects go over-budget by an average of 200%, according to new research.

The study by Oxford University and McKinsey also found that spending on technology was three times more likely to spiral out of control than construction or other major projects.

Researchers said that rare but high-impact problems, dubbed "black swans", were often to blame.

They can lead to cost over-runs capable of bankrupting vulnerable firms.

The study analysed 1471 large-scale global IT projects costing more than $170m.

It found that while most projects ran less than 30% over budget, a sixth ended up costing on average three times as much.

The study also raised concerns about the adequacy of traditional risk-modelling systems to cope with IT projects, with large-scale computer spending found to be 20 times more likely to spiral out of control than expected.

Swan blindness

Researchers put this down to "black swan blindness" - a tendency for IT decision-makers to ignore low probability but high-impact risks to project plans.

"Black swans are negative events that hit you rarely, but when they hit you, they do it with a large impact," said Professor Bent Flyvbjerg of Oxford University.

"IT managers tend not to see these black swans, because they assume that they're rare, and will probably happen to somebody else. They are wrong. They happen much more often than people think."

The professor cited UK firm Auto Windscreens as an example of a project that had spun out of control, with catastrophic results for the business.

"It was the second largest windscreen repairer in the country. They tried to implement a new IT system, but it misfired - creating huge problems," he said.

Auto Windscreens went into administration in February.

"Black swans often start as purely software issues. But then several things can happen at the same time - economic downturn, financial difficulties - which compound the risk," explained Prof Flyvbjerg.

Until now, large-scale software failures have been most associated with the public sector. In 2007, a European Services Strategies Unit report identified 105 UK public sector contracts with substantial cost overruns.

However, Professor Flyvbjerg believes these problems apply equally to private firms.

"People always thought that the public sector was doing worse in IT than private companies - our findings suggest they're just as bad.

"We think government IT contracts get more attention, whereas the private sector can hide its details," he said.

Professor Flyvbjerg and his team are now looking to develop tools that help IT managers avoid out-of-control projects.

"Managers are very likely to run into black swans. They need to be able to identify them and prevent them."

How Bad do you Want It?

2011-08-29T14:14:00.001-07:00

How Bad Do You Want It from Greyskale Multimedia on Vimeo.

United Airlines Launches Paperless Flight Deck With iPad

2011-08-26T07:39:00.000-07:00

United Continental Holdings, Inc. - Investor Relations - News

CHICAGO, Aug. 23, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ --

United Continental Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: UAL) today announced that it is converting to paperless flight decks and deploying 11,000 iPads to all United and Continental pilots. The electronic flight bags (EFB) replace paper flight manuals, and as a first for major network carriers, provide pilots with paperless aeronautical navigational charts through an iPad app. Distribution of iPads began earlier this month, and all pilots will have them by year end.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110823/CG56146)

"The paperless flight deck represents the next generation of flying," said Captain Fred Abbott, United's senior vice president of flight operations. "The introduction of iPads ensures our pilots have essential and real-time information at their fingertips at all times throughout the flight."

Navigational Charting App Breaks New Ground

The iPads are loaded with Jeppesen Mobile FliteDeck, the industry's premier app featuring interactive, data-driven enroute navigation information and worldwide geo-referenced terminal charts. The enhanced full-color, high-quality information display ensures the right information is displayed at the right time.

"We are proud to partner with United Airlines on a project of this magnitude with Jeppesen Mobile FliteDeck," said Mark Van Tine, president and CEO of Jeppesen. "Jeppesen and United share a long and storied history that includes development of numerous innovations for the aviation industry. We look forward to continuing this partnership in integrating our digital mobile solutions that increase efficiency, reduce costs and optimize operations."

Saving 16 Million Sheets of Paper and 326,000 Gallons of Jet Fuel a Year

Each iPad, which weighs less than 1.5 pounds, will replace approximately 38 pounds of paper operating manuals, navigation charts, reference handbooks, flight checklists, logbooks and weather information in a pilot's flight bag. A conventional flight bag full of paper materials contains an average of 12,000 sheets of paper per pilot. The green benefits of moving to EFBs are two-fold--it significantly reduces paper use and printing, and, in turn, reduces fuel consumption. The airline projects EFBs will save nearly 16 million sheets of paper a year which is equivalent to more than 1,900 trees not cut down. Saving 326,000 gallons of jet fuel a year reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 3,208 metric tons.

iPad Improves Efficiency and Safety

With iPad, pilots are able to quickly and efficiently access reference material without having to thumb through thousands of sheets of paper and reduce clutter on the flight deck. United and Continental pilots' work will be streamlined as they can immediately download updates on iPad to their electronic flight materials, rather than waiting for paper updates to be printed and distributed. In addition, by eliminating bulky flight bags loaded with paper, pilots will have less to lift and carry through airports and onboard the aircraft, reducing the risk of injury while on duty.

JP Morgan May Take Over Bank Of America

2011-08-24T16:36:00.000-07:00

JP Morgan May Take Over Bank Of America - MarketWatch

There is a rumor circulating on Wall St. that JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM) will takeover Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) within the week. The government will support the deal with a $100 billion investment in preferred shares issued by the combined entity. Alternatively, the government may guarantee the value of a large pool of Bank of America assets. The word is that Treasury Secretary Geithner has discussed the transaction with JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon.The "merger" would completely destroy the value of BAC's common shares.

The government feels that the deal may be necessary as Bank of America struggles unsuccessfully to close several transactions to bolster its balance sheet. The Wall Street Journal reported that the financial firm will need to raise $200 billion which would be another possible event that would wipe out common shareholders.

Bank of America's fortunes have been hurt by events in just the last few days. A New York State judge agreed to allow institutional investors to intervene in an $8.5 billion settlement between the bank and groups that lost money on mortgage-backed securities. China Construction Bank Corp said Bank of American will continue to hold 50% of its share in the foreign financial firm. Many investors hoped Bank of America would sell its entire stake to raise money. Several analysts believe that the costs of owning mortgage firm Countrywide Credit have grown unexpectedly large.

Under federal law, JP Morgan and Bank of America could not combine because together they would have too large a share of several financial markets in the US. Treasury would apparently work with other government agencies to have those rules suspended and then the new combined bank would sell assets to get back into compliance later.

The government's preference for a deal with JP Morgan rather than a federal takeover may be because it does not want to set the precedent of Washington owning one of the world's largest banks "paid for" with taxpayer money.

Steve Jobs quits as head of Apple

2011-08-24T16:32:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs quits as head of Apple - MarketWatch

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — Steve Jobs, the iconic leader of Apple Inc. who transformed technology and consumer habits for generations by creating everything from the personal computer to the iPod, iPhone and iPad, resigned as chief executive of the company Wednesday, Apple announced.

Jobs submitted a letter to the Apple board of directors announcing that he would leave as CEO, and the board has appointed long-time lieutenant Tim Cook to replace him. Jobs, however, will remain with Apple AAPL -5.09% as the company’s chairman.

“I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come,” Jobs said in his letter.

Cook, who previously served as chief operating officer and has taken the helm for Jobs as he has battled cancer in recent years, assumes control immediately, the company said.

The appointment answered the question of Apple’s plan for succession, a question that was prominent in recent years as Jobs battled his illnesses.

No word was given on the status of Jobs’s health, and a company spokesman would not comment on it.

Shares in after-hours trading were halted for a period late Wednesday as Apple released the news, and then fell more than 6% as they resumed trade. They then pared losses to trade down 5.2% at $356.30.

Stellarium

2011-08-22T07:13:00.000-07:00

Stellarium

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

[Install, then stare at the sky. Pretty cool! - Lou]

Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2T in Loans

2011-08-21T21:17:00.000-07:00

Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2T in Loans - Bloomberg

Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits.

By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress.

“These are all whopping numbers,” said Robert Litan, a former Justice Department official who in the 1990s served on a commission probing the causes of the savings and loan crisis. “You’re talking about the aristocracy of American finance going down the tubes without the federal money.”

PIMCO: Treasuries reflect likelihood of recession | Reuters

2011-08-20T06:13:00.000-07:00

PIMCO: Treasuries reflect likelihood of recession | Reuters

(Reuters) - Bill Gross, manager of the world's largest bond fund, said on Friday the decline in Treasury yields to 60-year lows reflect a high probability of recession in the United States.

Gross, the co-chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co., which oversees $1.2 trillion, also told Reuters Insider television the U.S. is running out of monetary and fiscal policy options.

"It is increasingly apparent to us that policy options are limited and that economic growth is slowing down," said Gross said.

Thursday, Morgan Stanley warned in a research report the United States and euro zone are "dangerously close to recession," joining a number of firms that have slashed forecasts for global growth in the second half of the year. Not only are economists and investors bracing for a slowdown in the U.S., they are concerned about a deceleration in China's growth rate to persistent sovereign-debt turmoil in Europe.

Morgan Stanley cut its global GDP forecast to 3.9 percent growth from 4.2 percent for 2011, and to 3.8 percent from 4.5 percent for 2012.

"There's no doubt that (U.S.) growth from the standpoint of employment or unemployment and growth from the standpoint of corporate profits is definitely a risk -- whether or not we see a positive 1 percent real GDP number I think is besides the point."

Gross said low Treasury yields are flashing recessionary conditions.

"They certainly reflect, in terms of their yields, not only a potential for a recession but the almost high probability of recession and the result of lowering of inflation -- that is key."

On Thursday, the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note dropped below 2 percent to 1.98 percent. Friday, the 10-year yield stood around 2.08 percent.

That's a Big Apple

2011-08-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

Apple Is as Big as Europe's 32 Largest Banks—Combined - CNBC

Technology giant Apple is now worth as much as the 32 biggest euro zone banks.

That's the stark result from a steep fall in the share price of banks including Spain's Santander, France's BNP Paribas, Germany's Deutsche Bank and Italy's Unicredit, compared to a steady rise in Apple's valuation, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Earlier on Friday the DJ STOXX euro zone banks index fell 4 percent, valuing its 32 members at $340 billion. That's based on the market capitalization of their free-float shares, which for some French banks in particular is less than 100 percent.

The index has crashed by a third since the start of July, hammered by fears banks will lose billions from their holdings of euro zone government bonds and a failure of policymakers to stop a euro zone debt crisis from spreading.

The euro zone banks have lost three-quarters of their value since peaking in May 2007.

In contrast, Apple's market capitalization has soared to $340 billion on the back of the success of innovative technology products like iPods, iPhones and iPads.

Uncle Joe - Still Clueless

2011-08-19T10:07:00.000-07:00

Biden seeks to reassure China on U.S. debt | Reuters

(Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Friday said China had "nothing to worry about" concerning the safety of its vast holdings of Treasury debt, while China's Premier Wen Jiabao gave a ringing endorsement of the resilience of the debt-ridden U.S. economy.

The exchange came on the second day of Biden's five-day visit to China where he is seeking to reduce distrust between the world's two largest economies and build relations with Chinese leaders.

Wen said he was confident the U.S. economy -- which investors fear could slip into recession following a run of poor data -- would get back on track for healthy growth. That echoed earlier comments from China's vice president and heir apparent, Xi Jinping.

"It's particularly important that you sent a very clear message to the Chinese public that the United States will keep its word and its obligations with regard to its government debt, it will preserve the safety, liquidity and value of U.S. Treasuries," Wen told Biden.

Both sides have been at pains to project a harmonious image during the trip, although there was an unscripted note of discord on Thursday night when a basketball game between a U.S. college team and a Chinese professional side erupted in a fight.

Wen's comments were the first by a senior Chinese leader to directly address the roiling debt crisis in Washington since this month's credit rating downgrade by Standard and Poor's.

In response, Biden told Wen that Washington appreciated and welcomed China's investment in U.S. treasuries.

"I want to make clear you have nothing to worry about," Biden said.

'DON'T BET AGAINST AMERICA'

Earlier, the U.S. vice president told his hosts that "no one has ever made money betting against America," according to a transcript of remarks made with Xi. Biden also met with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Ahhh Chicago

2011-08-19T10:04:00.000-07:00

Naperville North High School: Some students appear intoxicated on first day of school - Chicago Tribune

No sooner had the school year begun at Naperville North High School than officials were handing out suspensions after some students appeared to have shown up intoxicated for the first day of classes Wednesday morning, a spokeswoman said.

At least 20 students and their families were questioned after some students participated in an off-campus "before-school get-together" Tuesday night, according to School District 203 spokeswoman Susan Rice.

Rice could not confirm what aroused suspicions but said officials noticed several students appeared to be under the influence as they showed up for school Wednesday.

"(Administrators) are talking to a number of students," she said, adding the number could grow beyond 20 as the investigation continues. Rice also said it is possible that not all of the students being questioned were involved in drinking.

Some suspensions have been handed down, she said, but she declined to release information about the severity of the discipline. Rice said the school believes it knows what type of activity the students had participated in the night before, but did not release information because the district does not comment on activities that take place off school grounds.

Rice said that it is unlikely police will become involved but that some investigation is still possible. "It is typically handled in-house," she said.

Mommy Can I Get a Pet Amoeba?

2011-08-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

Brain-eating amoebas blamed in three deaths - CNN.com

I'd take good care of it! I'd feed it all the time! And nobody would ever notice. Please, please, please, can I, can I?

Ron Who?

2011-08-16T14:18:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Wow - even Jon Stewart gets Ron Paul better than the MSM.

Mt Adams Fun

2011-08-15T14:01:00.001-07:00

Flight failure won't stop 'mad scientists'

2011-08-15T07:39:00.000-07:00

Flight failure won't stop 'mad scientists' - CNN.com

(CNN) -- Last week, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, attempted the impossible. It launched an unmanned aircraft from a rocket at 20 times the speed of sound with the goal of controlling its flight through the atmosphere for about 20 minutes -- long enough to glide from the California coast to the Kwajalein atoll in the Pacific.

Such a feat had never before been attempted, and ground controllers lost contact with the craft, called the Hypersonic Test Vehicle-2, or HTV-2, nine minutes after it separated from its Minotaur rocket.

Probably the force of the hypersonic gale screaming past it as it sped through the air overcame the thrusters attempting to maintain controlled flight, and it spun out and blew apart.

New York to Los Angeles in 12 minutes?

The HTV-2's hypersonic glide flight test was but one of many high-risk, potentially high-payoff projects funded by DARPA. DARPA is America's hidden innovation engine. Not so many know the name, but nearly everyone is familiar with the agency's work: GPS receivers that slip into our pockets, interactive computer displays and the Internet itself.

DARPA only undertakes projects that have a good chance of failing -- projects that few others dare to take on. Projects like hypersonic flight. The failure is not surprising; permission to fail is what has enabled the agency's spectacular success over its 53-year history.

With the HTV-2, DARPA and its partners, including the Air Force and Lockheed Martin, were attempting to advance a technology that has captured the imagination of aerospace engineers since the 1960s. Hypersonic flight, that is flight powered by air-breathing engines at greater than five times the speed of sound, could enable airplanes to cross the United States in minutes rather than hours, to jet from one side of the globe to the other and back on the same day.

Last year DARPA and its partners achieved powered hypersonic flight in an unmanned vehicle called the X-51A for more than three minutes. The previous record, a paltry 10 seconds of flight powered by a scramjet -- hypersonic flight's enabling technology -- had been set by NASA's X-43A back in 2004. Researchers hope to put the pieces of the aerodynamic puzzle developed through glide vehicles such as the HTV and powered vehicles such as the X-51A together into a single craft that is aerodynamically stable at hypersonic speed. Obviously they're not there yet.

Snow Forecast for the Winter of 2011-2012

2011-08-12T15:04:00.000-07:00

AccuWeather.com - Snow Forecast for the Winter of 2011-2012

I am going to try to keep this simple since it's a prelim forecast for the winter and will be updated in October and December.

The basis of the forecast is on the prediction that a weak La Nina will be forming this fall and continuing through the winter. Last year, we had a strong La Nina with blocking over Greenland that lead to a very snowy winter across the Midwest and Northeast. While the pattern will be similar to last year, there will be changes in the pattern that will lead to the heavy snow areas shown on the map.

I am not convinced that blocking will be prevalent across Greenland this winter, however, with the trough axis predicted to be in the Midwest, that will lead to storms developing along the East coast and racing northeast. The cold will be back in the Appalachians, and that will lead to heavy snow in that area. The major cities will probably be fighting many mix precip storms with the snow lovers along the I-95 corridor pulling their hair over heavy snow versus ice and rain.

A storm track coming out of the Rockies will lead to storms moving through the western Great Lakes and a band of above-normal snowfall across the Midwest and western Great Lakes.

I also went with an above-normal snow area along the Front Range of the Rockies due mainly to arctic air masses coming down from Alberta.

While overall, the winter will not be extremely cold for the country, it will be cold enough for ice concerns for areas from Oklahoma to North Carolina. Fronts may have a hard time making progress into the South simply due to this summer's heat dome hanging in across parts of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The good news for that area, while above-normal temps will continue, we should see storms cutting through the southern Plains that will lead to much needed rainfall after a summer of extreme drought conditions.

The mountains in the West should see the normal amount of snow and not the extreme snow that fell last year.

Federal Reserve is signaling surrender on economy

2011-08-10T11:14:00.000-07:00

Federal Reserve is signaling surrender on economy -The Buzz - Aug. 10, 2011

[Poor Ben! He needs little Timmy to give him some pointers I think. HA! - Lou]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Is the Federal Reserve waving the white surrender flag? It sure looks that way.

The Fed made the unusual (and unprecedented) move on Tuesday to tell the market in plain English that it intends to keep rates near zero for the next two years!

Reid taps Murray to co-chair debt committee - CNN.com

2011-08-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

Reid taps Murray to co-chair debt committee - CNN.com

[Patty Murray is a complete farce. She doesn't know up from down. She's the most partisan pig out there! This is a joke - our government is out to screw us. They don't work for us, these greedy arrogant selfish bastards are in it for themselves only. VOTE THEM OUT!]

Fed to Keep Rates at Record Lows at Least Through Mid-2013 - Bloomberg

2011-08-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

Fed to Keep Rates at Record Lows at Least Through Mid-2013 - Bloomberg

The decision represents the biggest effort since November to spark the U.S. economy and revive confidence while stopping short of initiating a third round of large-scale asset purchases. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his colleagues acted after reports showed the economy was slowing and an unprecedented downgrade to the U.S. credit rating sent stocks tumbling from Sydney to New York.

The Fed offered a dimmer view of the economy than it did in the last statement in late June. “Economic growth so far this year has been considerably slower than the committee had expected,” it said. The Fed also said it expects a “somewhat slower pace of recovery over coming quarters,” adding that “downside risks to the economic outlook have increased.”

Pressure grows for Fed to act as stocks plunge | Reuters

2011-08-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

Pressure grows for Fed to act as stocks plunge | Reuters

[The Fed should do NOTHING and let our free capital market system do what it wants to do! - Lou]

(Reuters) - It's still a remote possibility, but one that becomes increasingly more plausible with every tick lower in plunging global stock markets.

While most analysts still expect the Federal Reserve to not make any major changes in policy at its meeting on Tuesday, some are beginning to wonder whether the market disruptions of recent sessions warrant some kind of central bank intervention.

U.S. stocks extended last week's rout on Monday, with the Dow Jones industrial average tumbling down more than 5.0 percent for the day late afternoon, following Friday's historic downgrade of the U.S. AAA credit grade by ratings firm Standard & Poor's. U.S. stocks saw their biggest one day drop since December 1, 2008 during the worst of the financial crisis of that year. Bank shares were severely punished, raising fears of a new financial crisis, though the Fed said Friday night that the S&P downgrade of the government's rating would have no effect on bank capital ratio regulations.

"If the Fed does nothing, it could prove to be a disappointment at this point," said JP Morgan analysts on a conference call to discuss the S&P downgrade.

Many economists argue the Fed's policy toolkit is already severely depleted. Interest rates are effectively zero, and the Fed's bloated $2.9 trillion balance sheet has raised concern among conservative economists and politicians.

AFP: Fed to meet amid market havoc

2011-08-08T20:24:00.000-07:00

AFP: Fed to meet amid market havoc

Freddie Mac seeks $1.5 billion from taxpayers | Reuters

2011-08-08T20:23:00.000-07:00

Freddie Mac seeks $1.5 billion from taxpayers | Reuters

[Are they nuts? FUCK NO! - Lou]

(Reuters) - Mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac FMCC.OB said on Monday it would need to ask for an additional $1.5 billion from taxpayers due to losses stemming from weak housing markets.

The company reported a comprehensive loss in the second quarter of $1.1 billion. Despite income of $1 billion, the company registered a net worth deficit of $1.5 billion.

That is in part because it was required to pay dividends worth $1.6 billion to the Treasury. As a result, the cost to taxpayers of its rescue declined by $100 million this quarter.

Freddie Mac has drawn $65.2 billion from the government since it was taken over at the height of the financial crisis in September of 2008.

Because of dividend payments, the net cost of Freddie Mac's rescue peaked at $56.2 billion in the second quarter of last year. In the most recent quarter, the cost eased to $52 billion.

Freddie Mac said it expects home prices to decline in the near term, and that it expects its credit losses to remain elevated in the second half of the year.

Little Timmy Blows It

2011-08-08T14:43:00.000-07:00

Timmy is SO good! What a relief to have him as Treasury Secretary! No worries now. (This from April 19,2011)

BofA Retreats on AIG Lawsuit, Capital Speculation - Bloomberg

2011-08-08T11:47:00.000-07:00

BofA Retreats on AIG Lawsuit, Capital Speculation - Bloomberg

[First of many? - Lou]

Bank of America Corp. (BAC) dropped to its lowest level since March 2009 in New York trading after American International Group Inc. disclosed plans to sue over faulty mortgages and analysts speculated about a capital raise.

The bank slid $1.28, or 16 percent, to $6.89 as of 1:26 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, after falling as much as 18 percent during the session. It was the biggest drop since April 2009, and left the stock shorn of almost half its value since the start of this year.

“Investors are dumping financials because there’s so much confusion about what could be on their books,” Dave Lutz, head of ETF trading and strategy at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore, said in an interview. “You’ve got a perfect storm against Bank of America.”

AIG, the insurer rescued by U.S. bailouts during the 2008 financial crisis, contends Bank of America caused more than $10 billion in losses to AIG, which had specialized in investments and insurance tied to mortgage bonds. Bank of America, which repaid its own government bailout in 2009, rejected the assertions of New York-based AIG.

Credit-default swaps on Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America soared to the highest since May 2009. The cost to protect against a default by U.S. banks jumped after Standard & Poor’s cut the AAA rating on the government’s debt.

Ron Paul - Talking about the Economy 8/4/2011

2011-08-05T13:56:00.000-07:00

USPS posts $3.1 billion loss in Q3, warns of default | Reuters

2011-08-05T09:04:00.000-07:00

USPS posts $3.1 billion loss in Q3, warns of default | Reuters

(Reuters) - The U.S. Postal Service posted a net loss of $3.1 billion in its third quarter and warned again it would default on payments to the federal government if Congress did not step in.

Total mail volume for the quarter that ended June 30 fell to 39.8 billion pieces, a 2.6 percent drop from the same period a year earlier, as consumers turn to email and pay bills online.

The mail carrier, which does not get taxpayer funds, has struggled to overhaul its business as mail volumes fall. It has said personnel costs weigh heavily and is facing a massive retiree health benefit prepayment next month.

"We are experiencing a severe cash crisis and are unable to continue to maintain the aggressive prepayment schedule," Joseph Corbett, the agency's chief financial officer, said in a statement.

"Without changes in the law, the Postal Service will be unable to make the $5.5 billion mandated prepayment due in September."

Beneath Jobs Report Surface Lies Some Ugly Truths - CNBC

2011-08-05T08:29:00.000-07:00

Beneath Jobs Report Surface Lies Some Ugly Truths - CNBC

Before getting too excited about the modest uptick in net job creation and a slight downward move in the unemployment rate, it’s probably worth a look under the hood.

As is usually the case, there is far more than meets the eye to the Labor Department’s report that the economy added 117,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate fell to 9.1 percent.

Let’s start with the reality that fewer people actually were working in July than in June.

According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics breakdown, there were 139,296,000 people working in July, compared to 139,334,000 the month before, or a drop of 38,000.

But the job creation number was positive and the unemployment rate went down, right? So how does that work?

It’s a product of something the government calls “discouraged workers,” or those who were unemployed but not out looking for work during the reporting period.

This is where the numbers showed a really big spike—up from 982,000 to 1.119 million, a difference of 137,000 or a 14 percent increase. These folks are generally not included in the government’s various job measures.

So the drop in the unemployment rate is fairly illusory—stick all those people back in the workforce and you wipe out the job creation and the drop in unemployment.

For once, some of the government’s other tools of economic voodoo didn’t help the count.

The vaunted birth-death model, a byzantine approximation of business creation and failure, actually subtracted 18,000 from the total job creation after a five-month run where it added a total of 741,000 positions to the count.

And the so-called “real” unemployment rate, which adds in discouraged workers and others not counted as part of the headline unemployment rate, actually pulled back one notch to 16.1 percent.

But there’s plenty of bad news to go around otherwise.

The average duration of unemployment rose for the third straight month and is now at a record 40.4 weeks—about 10 months and now double where it was when President Obama took office in January 2009. The total number unemployed for more than half a year now stands at 6.18 million, 130 percent higher than when the president’s term began.

Among the nuggets of good news—the jobless rate for blacks slipped to 15.9 percent and for Latinos to 11.3 percent, both at four-month lows.

But how good or bad the unemployment picture really may not come into view until next month, because of distortions from seasonal adjustments.

Including teachers and others who experience seasonal unemployment, total joblessness actually rose 1.23 million.

Nasa images show signs of flowing water

2011-08-04T15:04:00.000-07:00

BBC News - Mars: Nasa images show signs of flowing water

Striking new images from the mountains of Mars may be the best evidence yet of flowing, liquid water, an essential ingredient for life.

The findings, reported today in the journal Science, come from a joint US-Swiss study.

A sequence of images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show many long, dark "tendrils" a few metres wide.

They emerge between rocky outcrops and flow hundreds of metres down steep slopes towards the plains below.

They appear on hillsides warmed by the summer sun, flow around obstacles and sometimes split or merge, but when winter returns, the tendrils fade away.

This suggests that they are made of thawing mud, say the researchers.

"It's hard to imagine they are formed by anything other than fluid seeping down slopes," said Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Scientist Richard Zurek of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but they appear when it's still too cold for fresh water.

Salty water

"The best explanation we have for these observations so far is flow of briny water, although this study does not prove that," said planetary geologist and lead author Professor Alfred McEwen of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona.

Saltiness lowers the temperature at which water freezes, and water about as salty as Earth's oceans could exist at these sites in summer.

"This could be the first flowing water," said Professor McEwen. This has profound implications in the search for extraterrestrial life.

"Liquid water is absolutely essential for life, and we've found life on Earth in pretty much every moist niche," said Dr Lewis Dartnell, astrobiologist at University College London, who was not involved in the study.

"So perhaps there could be hardy microbes surviving in these short periods of summer meltwater on the desert surface of Mars."

This was echoed by an expert on life in extreme environments, Professor Shiladitya DasSarma of the University of Maryland, also not involved in this study: "Their results are consistent with the presence of large and extensive underground salty lakes on Mars."

Jerry Week on SiriusXM Radio

2011-08-04T14:09:00.000-07:00

Grateful Dead 24/7 - Rock - Music - The Grateful Dead Channel - SiriusXM Satellite Radio - SiriusXM Radio

Jerry Week

Grateful Dead Channel commemorates the life and music of Jerry Garcia with Jerry Week July 31 through August 6. Hear special interviews, concerts and more all week long.

Tales from the Golden Road
Sun 7/31 4 pm ET

Rebroadcast: Mon 8/2 9 am ET; Wed 8/4 1 am ET
Tune in for a special edition of Grateful Dead Channel's live call-in show hosted by Gary Lambert. Dead Heads share their favorite Garcia memories and thoughts on how he influenced their lives. Plus, the musical spotlight is placed on Jerry’s solo work.

Garcia Concerts
Every day 12 pm, 9 pm and 3 am ET
Hear seven different Jerry Garcia solo concerts with both electric and acoustic performances, including three shows recently released to us direct from the Garcia Family archives.
Garcia Interviews
Every day 8 am and 5 pm ET
Hear full-length Jerry Garcia interviews from 1975, 1986, 1987, 1989 and 1991.

Jerry Garcia Memorial
Wed 8/3 3pm ET

Rebroadcast: Fri 8/5 at 1 am ET
The Golden Gate Park memorial tribute to Garcia on the 10th anniversary of his death in 1995 with bandmates and Garcia family members.
Friends and Family Remember Jerry
Hourly throughout the week
Jerry’s band members and loved ones share their thoughts on his legacy as a musician and a person.

Female Moaning

2011-08-02T14:05:00.000-07:00

BBC Nature - Female moaning spurs fights between male moose

Female moose may be able to manipulate amorous males - inciting fights between male competitors by moaning.

It was already known that females made "protest moans" in response to courtship.

Researchers have now found that females moan more when they are approached by smaller males, and that this triggers aggression in larger males.

The scientists believe that females have more control over mate choice than previously thought.

A team led by Dr Terry Bowyer from Idaho State University in the US carried out the study in Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

MOOSE FACTS

They are the largest members of the deer family
There are approximately 900,000 moose across North America
Their diet consists mainly of plants with woody stems

Watch videos of moose

Their findings are published in the journal Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology.

The species Alces alces is referred to as elk across Europe, but is known as moose in the US.

The animals are polygynous, which means that one male mates with multiple females but each female only has one male partner.

Reproduction takes place during the autumn rut, when males compete for females. This often results in fierce battles.

Previous research has shown that, during courtship, female moose moan in protest when they are approached by males.

By observing the moose during the mating season, the scientists discovered another level of complexity to the females' communication.

"Female moose gave protest moans more often in response to courtship by small males, even though the large males engaged in more courtship," said Dr Bowyer.

The moose expert, who has studied the animals in this region since the mid 1980s, realised that the females' moans had a dual purpose.

"This behaviour by females helped them avoid harassment by smaller males, but also provoked fights between large males," he explained.

"Male aggression was more common when females gave protest moans than when they did not, indicating that this vocalisation incited male-male aggression."

Dr Bowyer also suggested that female moose could purposefully provoke fights between males as a way of choosing their mates.

"Protest moans allow females to exert some choice in a mating system where males restrict [that] choice through male-male combat," he told the BBC.

Female choice, he concluded, may have been undervalued, because it was "masked" by male-male combat.

Dr Bowyer said: "We believe that female choice is a more critical component of mating systems in polygynous mammals than previously thought."

Market Erases 2011 Gains on Concern of Recession Return - Bloomberg

2011-08-02T14:02:00.000-07:00

Market Erases 2011 Gains on Concern of Recession Return - Bloomberg

[Gee - who'd have guessed that? - Lou]

Stocks tumbled as the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index had its biggest one-day loss in a year and erased its 2011 gain, while Treasury yields fell to the lowest levels since November, after an unexpected drop in consumer spending added to concern the economy will slide into a recession. Gold and the Swiss franc rallied.

The S&P 500 fell 2.6 percent to 1,254.05 at 4 p.m. in New York, dropping for a seventh straight day in its longest slump since 2008. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index declined 1.9 percent to an 11-month low. Yields on 30-year bonds dropped 17 basis points to 3.91 percent in the biggest decrease since May 2010. The Swiss franc advanced against all 16 major peers as 10-year Italian and Spanish bond yields climbed to euro-era records and gold set an all-time high of $1,661.90 an ounce.

Investors sought the safety of Treasuries, gold and the Swiss currency even as President Barack Obama signed a plan to raise the federal debt limit before a possible default. Attention has shifted to weakening economic data, including today’s 0.2 percent decrease in consumer spending, the slowest growth in personal incomes since November and an index of American manufacturing sinking to a two-year low.

Govt Needs to Butt Out!

2011-08-02T12:23:00.000-07:00

Hanging of 'Truck Nuts' Grows into a Free Speech Debate - FoxNews.com

'Don't touch my junk,' is taking on new meaning.

"Truck nuts," fake bull testicles made of plastic or metal that drivers hang on the back of their pickups to make a truck look more manly, have been around for years. Some find them funny, while others find them offensive, prompting at least three states to try to ban them -- unsuccessfully.

But a recent case in South Carolina is fueling debate over whether these ornaments violate a state's indecency laws and if attempting to regulate them infringes on freedom of speech.

On July 5, Virginia Tice, 65, from Bonneau, S.C. pulled her pickup truck into a local gas station with red, fake testicles dangling from the trailer hitch. The town's police chief, Franco Fuda, pulled up and asked her to remove the plastic testicles.

When she refused, he wrote her a $445 ticket saying that she violated South Carolina’s obscene bumper sticker law.

The South Carolina code of laws reads, “a sticker, decal, emblem, or device is indecent … in a patently offensive way, as determined by contemporary community standards, sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body.”