POLITICSHYPE: Showing The President Who's Boss

Yesterday, in a stunning display of arrant contempt, 3 of the big-bank CEOs who had been summoned to the White House blew off the President of the United States. Mr. Obama was expecting them at a televised meeting of their peers so he could be seen to be lecturing them on how they needed to increase consumer lending, among other things.

(An aside: in case you've forgotten, the big banks were given $700 billion late last year in order to resume lending to consumers, among other things. Unfortunately, there were no strings attached to the deal, and as a result, the banksters are able to borrow money from Uncle Sam at 0% interest while lending it to you at 30%. Have a look at your latest credit card statement to see this in action, or wait until tax time rolls around in April. You'll pay one way or the other.

(They were also supposed to stop paying outlandish bonuses, but as you'll no doubt see in a couple of weeks, that won't happen either. Now you know why many of the big banks paid back their obligations to the government just recently - since they're no longer subject to limits on executive compensation, they're going to do it again.)

As the New York Times describes it:

Putting Obama on Hold, in a Hint of Who’s Boss

President Obama didn’t exactly look thrilled as he stared at the Polycom speakerphone in front of him. "Well, I appreciate you guys calling in," he began the meeting at the White House with Wall Street’s top brass on Monday.

He was, of course, referring to the three conspicuously absent attendees who were being piped in by telephone: Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs; John J. Mack, chairman of Morgan Stanley; and Richard D. Parsons, chairman of Citigroup.

Their excuse? "Inclement weather," according to the White House. More precisely, fog delayed flights into Reagan National Airport. That awkward moment on speakerphone in the White House, for better or worse, spoke volumes about how the balance of power between Wall Street and Washington has shifted again, back in Wall Street’s favor.

Ah, the old bad weather excuse. Try that out on your own boss the next time you're called on the carpet. Make sure you stand him up on national TV too - nothing like losing face on the world stage. Just to twist the knife a few times, the Daily Show went after this too, in a Clusterf#@k to the Poor House piece:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Clusterf#@k to the Poor House - Flight Delay
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

This obviously makes the President look bad, at the very least. More informed readers should now realize that the man in the Oval Office, whoever he is and whatever his political persuasion, is a bankster tool. Is this the "change we can believe in" that brought record numbers of new voters to the polls last year? Are you now over your 2008 Hopium high? If not, have a look at Matt Taibbi's latest article, Obama's Big Sellout (NB: Taibbi's full of shit when it comes to 9/11, but the axes he grinds against the banksters seem pretty accurate so far).

President Obama said last Sunday night that he "did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers on Wall Street." Well, actions speak louder than words, and anyway, doesn't this remind you a little bit of Bill Clinton's famous Presidential one-liner?

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman..."

Tell you what, you can keep the "change" - I'll keep it real.

COMEDYHYPE: Support T.W.A.T.

Like the poster says:


Don't be a filthy terrorist, support T.W.A.T. (The War Against Terror)!

SCIENCEHYPE: Earth with Saturn's Rings

Ever wonder what our planet would look like with rings similar to those found on Saturn? Here's a really cool visualization of exactly that, created by Roy Prol.

He's included sky shots from some well-known places around the globe: the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Cristo Redentor in Rio de Janeiro, Quito, Malmö, New York City, Uluru in Australia, Madrid, the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Azadi Tower in Tehran, and the Kölner Dom. It's a pretty amazing thing to see.



It's likely that Celestia was used for this animation, which is a great piece of open source (that means free, if you didn't already know) software. The music is Ave Maria.

Also, did you know that in addition to Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings? These are collectively known as the gas giants.

FINANCEHYPE: No Worries, Your Money Is Fine

There are no problems with the banking system right now. Things may be a little rough, but that's nothing major. Your insured deposits are fully insured. The government ensures it. There's no reason to panic. Nothing bad will happen. Nobody has ever lost a dime.

In other news, it's Bank Failure Friday, and the FDIC has closed 106 banks so far this year, including 10 in the past week (as of today, October 23, 2009). But don't take our word for it - CNN has more on the bank failures as the number passed 100 today, along with a nifty thematic bank failure map. Or, as the AP story says:

WASHINGTON -- The cascade of bank failures this year surpassed 100 on Friday, the most in nearly two decades. And the trouble in the banking system from bad loans and the recession goes even deeper than the number suggests.

Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other banks remain open even though they are as weak as many that have been shuttered. Regulators are seizing banks slowly and selectively — partly to avoid inciting panic and partly because buyers for bad banks are hard to find. Going slow buys time. An economic recovery could save some banks that would otherwise go under. But if the recovery is slow and smaller banks' finances get even worse, it could wind up costing even more.

The bank failures, 106 in all, are the most in any year since 181 collapsed in 1992, at the end of the savings-and-loan crisis. On Friday, regulators took over three small Florida banks — Partners Bank and Hillcrest Bank Florida, both of Naples, and Flagship National Bank in Bradenton — along with American United Bank of Lawrenceville, Ga., Bank of Elmwood in Racine, Wis., Riverview Community Bank in Otsego, Minn., and First Dupage Bank in Westmont, Ill. When a bank fails, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. swoops in, usually on a Friday afternoon. It tries to sell off the bank's assets to buyers and cover its liabilities, primarily customer deposits. It taps the insurance fund to cover the rest.

Bank failures have cost the FDIC's fund that insures deposits an estimated $25 billion this year and are expected to cost $100 billion through 2013. To replenish the fund, the agency wants banks to pay in advance $45 billion in premiums that would have been due over the next three years.

The FDIC won't say how deep a hole its deposit insurance fund is in. It can tap a credit line from the Treasury of up to a half-trillion dollars to cover the gap. The list of banks in trouble is getting longer. At the end of June, the FDIC had flagged 416 as being at risk of failure, up from 305 at the end of March and 252 at the beginning of the year.

In fact, don't even take their word for it - have a look at the official FDIC failed bank list itself. The 7 that were closed just today caused the FDIC's deposit insurance fund to take a loss of $356.7 million.

Sorry, back to the party line... A bank failure, even if it might happen to you, is a non-event. Really. There's nothing to worry about. But don't take our word for it, here's the head of the FDIC, Chairman Sheila Bair, to tell you all of this herself. And she's from the government, so she must be right. No, really, your money is totally safe. That must be why this video was posted today:



We notice something interesting about this video, however. Check out her body language at certain points in the clip. At 0:24 we have a "no" shake of the head after saying "I want to take this opportunity to reassure consumers that their insured deposits are absolutely safe". That may be a subconscious reaction to telling a lie.

Additional head shakes appear at 0:33 ("their money is fully protected, no matter what happens"), 0:42, 0:46, 0:58 ("there are many signs that our economy is recovering"), 1:13, 1:32 ("depositors have nothing to worry about"), 1:35, 1:43 ("a bank failure is a non-event"), 2:07 ("we cannot run out of money"), 2:17 ("our resources run deep"), 2:42, 2:54 (an obvious one; "I do not anticipate having to use this line of credit"), 3:04, 3:24, and 3:28 (another obvious one). It's likely that not all of these are lies, but it's interesting that these head shakes coincide with certain types of statements (those meant to reassure) and not others (statements of fact about past events).

It may be useful to recall some of the doom-and-gloom prognostications made recently. In July, we discussed the Harry Schultz Letter's prediction of an upcoming bank holiday (FINANCEHYPE: Bank Holidays, FDR Style). We also touched on the massive increase in US debt levels (FINANCEHYPE: The Debt Clock) and the likelihood that the taxpayer will be on the hook for most of that (POLITICSHYPE: Uncle Sam Speaks). Another it'd-be-funny-if-this-wasn't-so-serious thing to see is the FDIC's commercial from August 2009 encouraging people to keep their money in a bank instead of in the mattress at home:



The folks over at Zero Hedge are also having a great discussion on this latest announcement. They also have a great piece on how your dollars, safe in the bank or elsewhere, have been devalued 25% over the past 12 years (DOW 10,000!!!! Oh Wait, Make That 7,537).

And whatever you do, don't go take all your money out of the bank! It's safer there - the government says so.

TECHHYPE: Muckety Maps and Madoff

Ya gotta love the Internet, and all the bell-and-whistle technology that's built on top of it. You'll need a modern browser and a recent version of Flash to see this properly, but here's something that's a relatively recent invention: Muckety, "published by Muckety LLC, a company founded in 2006 by a team with years of experience in journalism, technology and online publishing."

The name Muckety derives, of course, from muckety mucks. Some follow the money. We follow the muckety, producing a daily news and information site based on online databases (which we enlarge daily), extensive research and old-fashioned journalism.

This crew, with whom we have no affiliation, seems to be legit. The insights into business, political, sports, celebrity, and other types of relationships in the news can be priceless. If your name is mentioned somewhere in a press release, news story, or the like, sooner or later you'll be in their database. And the world will know.

Remember Bernie Madoff, the guy who went to Club Fed after being convicted of perpetrating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, the largest investment fraud in Wall Street history? Here's Bernie Madoff's Muckety Map:




Tips: Solid lines are current relations; dotted lines are former relations. You can double-click on any of the nodes with a '+' sign to expand that entity's relationship web. You can also right-click on a node to see additional options, and there's a menu on the left. Nodes are moveable.

Interesting, no? You should see some of the relationships in the financial and political worlds. For example, Robert Rubin (ZeroHedge Profile), the former Treasury Secretary. How about Sarah Palin, Facebook, the San Francisco 49ers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters - or even Harry Potter (Muckety Maps)? More interesting yet, is there really a connection between Barack Obama and Tupac?

Conveniently, they have categories of listings, movers & shakers, and a general news page that are all linked to relationship maps.

Conspiracy theorists, journalists, anyone performing due diligence, and political hacks, rejoice!

COMEDYHYPE: SF MUNI Catfights

This is the latest YouTube viral video sensation - fisticuffs on a San Francisco Municipal Railway (or Muni, as the locals call it) bus in Chinatown. Put "Muni Fight" into Google and you'll see what I'm talking about.



The first punch is thrown at about 1:15 in this clip. Hopefully this doesn't start a race war between the blacks and the chinese (although the comments on the YouTube page are pretty ugly). Be assured that this sort of confrontation is not unusual, though - there have been several of these recently. Maybe it's got something to do with the bad economy?

What you may find unusual is that not one of the men on this bus stepped in to break up the fight. I don't find this strange, however - most of the men in San Francisco are completely pussified, too afraid even to leave the seat up in a public unisex bathroom or otherwise be politically incorrect.

The transit agency is investigating this incident.

CONSPIRACYHYPE: To the moon, Alice!! To the moon!

"It is commonly believed that man will fly directly from the earth to the moon, but to do this, we would require a vehicle of such gigantic proportions that it would prove an economic impossibility. It would have to develop sufficient speed to penetrate the atmosphere and overcome the earth’s gravity and, having traveled all the way to the moon, it must still have enough fuel to land safely and make the return trip to earth. Furthermore, in order to give the expedition a margin of safety, we would not use one ship alone, but a minimum of three … each rocket ship would be taller than New York’s Empire State Building [almost ¼ mile high] and weigh about ten times the tonnage of the Queen Mary, or some 800,000 tons.”
Wernher von Braun, the father of the Apollo space program, writing in "Conquest of the Moon"

I know you hate you some CONSPIRACY THEORY -- cos that's what crazy UNIX sysadmin wacko nutjobs whose car be filled with McDonald's wrappers and low-end porn be believin', but YO, MORON -- Read, listen, analyze, understand... sheesh....

I've never heard it crystalised better than this, all the wacky little lies that add up to Adolf's Big Lie:

Wagging the Moondoggie, Part I

[ON EDIT -- Curiously, the site, since this piece was posted, is reporting:

davesweb.cnchost.com Temporarily Unavailable.

This account has surpassed its bandwidth allocation at the present time. You may reach the account administrator at www@davesweb.cnchost.com

Hmmm... Curious...]


"How many decades can pass, after all, without anyone coming even close to a reenactment before people start to catch on? Four obviously haven’t been enough, but how about five, or six, or seven? How about when we hit the 100-year anniversary?

If the first trans-Atlantic flight had not been followed up with another one for over forty years, would anyone have found that unusual? If during the early days of the automobile, when folks were happily cruising along in their Model T’s at a top speed of 40 MPH, someone had suddenly developed a car that could be driven safely at 500 MPH, and then after a few years that car disappeared and for many decades thereafter, despite tremendous advances in automotive technology, no one ever again came close to building a car that could perform like that, would that seem at all odd?

There are indications that this lie does indeed have a shelf life. According to a July 17, 2009 post on CNN.com, “It’s been 37 years since the last Apollo moon mission, and tens of millions of younger Americans have no memories of watching the moon landings live. A 2005-2006 poll by Mary Lynne Dittmar, a space consultant based in Houston, Texas, found that more than a quarter of Americans 18 to 25 expressed some doubt that humans set foot on the moon.”

The goal of any dissident writer is to crack open the doors of perception enough to let a little light in – so that hopefully the seeds of a political reawakening will be planted. There are many doors that can be pried open to achieve that goal, but this one seems particularly vulnerable. Join me then as we take a little trip to the Moon. Or at least pretend to."

ADVERTISINGHYPE: They Put Me In The Closet

Courtesy of CANAL+, which is basically the French equivalent of the American HBO, here's a great little video showcasing the talents of their screenwriters.

If you're banging someone's wife, and subsequently get caught in that man's bedroom closet, now you have the perfect excuse:



Priceless!

POLITICSHYPE: Indoctrinating the Children

There's been a bit of a tempest in a teacup lately about Barack Obama speaking to schoolchildren at the beginning of the school year. Let's not get into a debate on the merits of that event, but rather take a look back in time.

Less than a year ago, at the time of this writing, Dubya was still in the White House. Do you think any children were "indoctrinated" during his time in DC? Let's have a look:



Boy, people sure do have short memories these days! Good thing we have YouTube around to keep things real.

And doesn't this particular incident violate some basic religious tenet about false idolatry? Like, say, #4 of the Ten Commandments?

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." (Exodus 20:4, King James Version)

Gee, it sure seems like it did. What happens to those who violate that particular commandment?

"Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." (Exodus 20:5, King James Version)

There's another commandment that deals with bearing false witness, but let's leave that one alone for a while. If the video above hasn't given you your daily dose of shudders or laughs, well, then please feel free to leave us a comment.

By the way, this is real. It's an excerpt from Jesus Camp, the 2006 documentary that was nominated for an Oscar (best documentary feature).

COMEDYHYPE: Protect Insurance Companies PSA

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell