text:
It should be obvious to all and sundry by now that capitalism is in dire straights. Last week's meltdown of the world's major capital markets was only 'rescued' by the injection of literally hundreds of billions of dollars from by the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the US Federal Reserve.
So much for the magic of the 'market' which we are continuously told, solves all problems. And in fact, last week's injection by the European Central bank of something like $100 billion dollars didn't do the trick! More had to be 'injected' in order to stave off a total collapse of the world's stock markets. The 'injection' is in reality a bail-out of the commercial banks."
..."[A]dded to the sense of dread as investors have no idea which institutions own what debt, leaving the markets to be driven by rumor and counter-rumor. 'There is great uncertainty as to how far risks are spread within the financial system and exactly where the losses reside,' said Paul Niven, at F&C Asset Management. 'The market is trading on fear.' — ('Central banks pour in billions - but global slide goes on' — The Guardian, Saturday, 10 August 2007) Thus the real cause of the current panic is financial speculation caused by unrealistically cheap credit and almost no regulation of speculative markets…"
...That "entity we can't even see," in (Ethan) Miller's words, has hit a big bump in the road and the "free enterprise for us" gang has turned, where else, but to the government to bail them out by lowering interest rates and pumping massive amounts of money into the system. The people who created the downturn are now lining up for subsidies so they can go out and buy "distressed properties" and restart the greed machine. Naturally, the Hedge Funds now want to profit on the misery they helped fund. Deals R'Us is still their mantra.
More here
Saturday, August 18, 2007
The Real Welfare Queens
...London-based journalist William Bowles:
Reagan Must Be Spinning In His Grave
The withdrawal of America from multinational agreements is not new. If anything, we've been at it for 25 years and more.
So one wonders what this is about?
OK, fair enough. The standards were adjusted in 1994. Still, support for the treaty, particularly among Republicans, was tepid, even into the 21st century:
Here's why:For those of you still on dial-up...
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Now I see, said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw!
But there's still another piece to the puzzle. Currently, five nations have claim to the seabed under the North Pole: Russia, Canada, Denmark (by way of a ridge that runs to Greenland), and Norway. And the US. But the US claim is unenforceable because we never signed the Law Of The Sea treaty!
Disgusting little man, isn't he?
So one wonders what this is about?
The Bush administration is urging the U.S. Senate to ratify the Convention of the Law of the Sea. The treaty provides universal legal standards for shipping, fishing, and mining and codifies customary navigation and transit principles already followed by most states. Proponents of the convention, including President Bush, say it will enhance U.S. security on the high seas. But a number of conservative lawmakers remain concerned the treaty may harm U.S. industry and hinder counterterrorism efforts.Fair enough, except that Ronald Reagan refused to endorse (meaning the Senate was never presented with) this treaty. He claimed that the seabed mining standards were unfair to America.
OK, fair enough. The standards were adjusted in 1994. Still, support for the treaty, particularly among Republicans, was tepid, even into the 21st century:
As former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Jeanne Kirkpatrick told the U.S. Senate in April 2004: "The formula for representation guaranteed that the industrialized 'producer' countries would be a permanent minority."So why is Bush hot to trot with this?
Here's why:For those of you still on dial-up...
In the next few hours, Russian scientists hope to dive in two mini-submarines to a depth of more than 4,000 metres, and drop a metal capsule carrying the Russian flag onto the seabed. Balyasnikov said the dive was to start this morning and last several hours. Each submarine will carry three people.(emphasis added, and that's metric tons or about 20 billion imperial tons)
The symbolic gesture, along with geologic data being gathered by expedition scientists, is intended to prop up Moscow's claims to about 1.2 million square kilometres of the Arctic shelf, which, by some estimates, may contain about 9 billion tonnes of oil and gas deposits.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Now I see, said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw!
But there's still another piece to the puzzle. Currently, five nations have claim to the seabed under the North Pole: Russia, Canada, Denmark (by way of a ridge that runs to Greenland), and Norway. And the US. But the US claim is unenforceable because we never signed the Law Of The Sea treaty!
Disgusting little man, isn't he?
Friday, August 17, 2007
Friday Music Blogging
Watch out, Bonaire! Here I come!
Te aworo! See you in a week or so, I'm leaving you in the capable hands of my co-blogger, Katrina...
Nobody Asked Me, But...
1) Could you ever have imagined that K-Fed might be a better parent than Brittney?
2) Of course, naturally, I have a solution: put the kids in foster care. Michael Jackson's got time on his hands...
3) Enough celeb crap. I'm a knight! I never get invited to the cool castle seiges!
4) One more reason sanctions against Cuba should be lifted. My God, she's a widow AND an American!
5) Could you spare a moment of sympathy for Hawaii? I know it's Hawaii and all, and so the envy of the world, but...an earthquake AND hurricane on the same day is no fun.
6) This says it best:
7) Last week it was floods. This week, Mother Nature shook things up a bit.
8) And storms. Don't forget storms!
9) Money changes everything?
10) Hm. This combines my two favorite activities...looks like I can extend my athletic career after all!
11) This is really scary. Family Security Matters is a wing of the Center For Security Policy, an uber-neo-con think tank that boasts of Dick Cheney as a former board member. It's so far out that FSM took it down when a hue and cry was raised about making Bush President For Life, but that's the least scary part!
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Not That This Was Unexpected, But...
...yer an idiot, Paulson:
TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the turmoil in global markets will "extract a penalty" on growth but the financial system and economy was strong enough to withstand it without provoking a U.S. recession.All this article really needs is a video of someone whistling past the graveyard. Or maybe this:So many reasons Paulson is an ass here, so little bandwidth.
"The economy and the markets are strong enough to absorb the losses," Paulson told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published on its Web site on Thursday.
Paulson also said the repricing of risk in markets should not surprise anyone and was inevitable, and that nothing should be done to guarantee market players against losses or restrain them from taking risks.
First, he has a point: easy credit is no different than any other economic bubble and economic bubbles burst. Period. But here's the thing: this was a bubble the Fed could have AND SHOULD HAVE done something about years ago.
I find it hard to believe that Alan Greenspan (and now Ben Bernake) don't watch TV from time to time. Hell, you can't turn on the TV but for coming across and ad for Ditech.com or Countrywide Home Loans, advertising "No money down, no principal payment" loans at rates that make the prime interest rate look like a high-yield bond. Did it not occur to them, the way it occurred to me, that there might be something wrong in an economy where it's worthwhile for a predatory lender to run commercials hawking a dangerous financial product 24/7? So you bump up interest rates a bit, and you save a few people from making the biggest mistake of their lives.
You know, Alan, Ben, and now Hank, it's OK to do a little thinking about work while you're away from the office. Most of us have to do that, from time to time.
And now here's ol' Hank talking up the economy, you know, don't worry, everything's going to be fine, as the Fed pumps $50 billion dollars into the monetary system to shore up the credit markets.
OK, so a basic economic lesson here: when a government is forced to pump that kind of money into the system, where does it come from, in a nation running hundreds of billions in deficit spending each year?
Here's a hint: It ain't from a savings account.
There are two ways for the Fed to get their hands on that kind of dough that quickly: borrow it (meaning it will have to be paid back and then the question is, from whom was it borrowed?) or print it.
If it's just printed, then simple supply and demand will tell you what happens to the value of the dollar in your pocket: more supply lowers the "price" of that good, so by extension (and yea, I know, the analogy has holes in it, but it fits the argument more clearly than a real analysis), more money drives the value of your dollars down, meaning it will take more money to buy something.
In other words, inflation. Which the Fed tames by raising interest rates, thus stifling the demand for money.
If the money has been borrowed (ignoring for a moment from whom, tho I have my suspicions), then all this does is shift the risk off the original badder debts from the lenders (rapacious bankers and sub-prime mortgage companies) to, well, us.
In effect, the money the Fed has pumped into the credit markets is a guarantee that the government will stand behind the loans out there already (although not all of them, to be sure...I doubt we can get our mitts on something like $7 trillion to finance all the mortgages out there), meaning the ultimate responsibility for repaying this money isn't on the lenders, but on the guarantors, and since the Fed has authority but no responsibility, that privilege falls on our shoulders.
Where has this money come from?
Well, the make-up of the Fed is a bunch of money center banks, like say Citibank, Chase, Bank of America, who created and run the Federal Reserve System. No one knows for sure who precisely is on the Fed board, but these three are a safe bet.
These money center banks, which also sit on the central bank boards of nearly every other major nation in the world as well as the World Bank, would have the resources to finance, short term and at a rate of return commensurate with the critical nature of the emergency (in other words, usury) the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to stem the global economic collapse that is threatening the world.
As I said, for a price. They get us coming and going here, because who do you think funds the money to the mortgage markets to lend to people like you and me at attractive rates to pay off the credit cards (that they've issued) to try to get solvent by borrowing off our salaries in perpetuity? And now who's funding the bailout of those same sickening loans?
All this, so we could buy a new computer. Or car. Or second home.
So why is Paulson an idiot? He's bluffing, of course, and it's not a particularly good bluff this time. He sees (or he should) what should be evident to anyone after reading this far down: there's an enormous risk involved in the game the central bank is playing.
All it takes is one of the members to say "basta!" and the house of cards falls, forever. You've heard stories about The Great Depression, but you might (and I think you will) be living through something far worse in the very near future. And mind you, we were able to grow out of the Great Depression only by getting our asses into a world war, something we can't afford to do right now, because we've exhausted our financial and materiel supplies on this ill-starred and ill-fated invasion of Iraq, along with the more justifiable but still tragic war in Afghanistan.
Many of the 25%ers, the folks who still support George W Bush thru thick and thin, believe an apt comparison can be made to Harry Truman. It's clear from reading this, they're two Presidents too close.
economic royalists,
Henry Paulson,
stock market crash
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Texas Oilman Commits Treason
This is really disgusting. If this man had been a liberal, he'd have been strung up for what he did. More on the flip:
Houston oilman Oscar Wyatt is trying to ensure that a jury doesn't see an Iraqi document suggesting he discussed American troop levels and possible dates for an attack with a member of Saddam Hussein's regime prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.His lawyer claims none of the discussions were of confidential matters and that release of the notes would tend to prejudice a jury.
Wyatt, 83, is slated to stand trial Sept. 5 on charges that he and others funneled millions of dollars in illegal payments to Saddam's government in order to win lucrative oil export contracts.
His attorneys are asking a federal judge in New York to prohibit prosecutors from presenting as evidence handwritten notes purportedly made by an Iraqi oil official, which suggest Wyatt conveyed information about when the United States might begin bombing, when ground forces would be sent in and how many soldiers would be deployed.
Still, one wonders where the prattling purveyors of purity are on this? A businessman, involved in an illegal transaction with an enemy nation, discussing troop movements and strengths ahead of an invasion to liberate said nation from the grip of evil?
Oscar Wyatt, along with Bayoil executives David B Chalmers and Ludmil Dionissiev, is charged with fraud and conspiracy, but not treason, in connection with illegal transactions under the UN "oil for food" program in 2003. Under that program, Saddam Hussein was allowed to "sell" oil to companies (other than US companies) in exchange for staples like food, clothing and other necessities. The intent was that no money could trade hands, so that Saddam could not profit from these deals.
As these things always go, some palms were greased and some other negotiations took place, such that Saddam indeed made out handsomely.
So nevermind about discussing troop movements, these guys committed treason from the get-go.
Yet, not a peep out of the right wing noise machine. And if you recall, a LOT of hay was made about how France and Russia were the major players in the scandal, and how then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's son was behind it all.
Eh...not so much, it turns out!
So why would two dumb hicks from the sticks warrant such a large distraction, drumming up lies about Kofi Annan and Russia and France?
Here's one reason. Here's the other, although to his credit (or debit), Wyatt and his father seem to have spread out their contributions amongst both parties. And here's a third.
But notice something: no man gave to any Presidential campaigns, even though all are obviously politically active, tend towards more conservative candidates and, critically, all are Houston-based oilmen!
Why, what magic! They didn't give to Bush-Cheney, '00 or '04????
Not likely, I'm sure. But it would take a lot more digging than I have either the time or resources to pursue.
The real question is, who fed them this troop information, which I recall was scrupulously NOT discussed on the major television networks in the run-up to the war, for fear of revealing, well, troop movements and deployments?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...pardon me, I need to sneeze...Dick Cheney.
There, that's better!
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Rove'd And Rambled
I came across this little bit of news analysis from the Canadian Broadcasting Co's website. Read a bit of it. I'll meet you on the flip:
Karl Rove had no real expertise in foreign or domestic policy, but he knew how many votes it would take to win an election and, just as importantly, he knew what his Republican voters needed to hear to get them out to the polls.Much has been made in Blogtopia (© Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo) of the politics of the current crop of Democratic contenders and how they should be more vicious, going after Republicans more rather than talking about "inclusion" and "bi-partisanship".
He was not content simply to get George W. Bush into the White House. He wanted to turn the Republican party into a political force that would dominate the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government for a generation.
He believed he could do that with a Republican base made up of social conservatives, the Christian right and supporters of lower taxes, small government and a muscular foreign policy. The entire policy thrust of the Bush/Rove White House was directed at keeping those people happy and motivated.
At the same time, Rove could do the math. He understood that his Republican base was too narrow to ever make up a majority of American voters. He knew that most American voters were politically indifferent, waiting to be given a reason to get excited.
Enthusiasm is catchy. Neighbours influence neighbours. Energize your base, whip them into a frenzy of political activity, get them to donate their time and money to the cause, and others would follow in their wake. As George W. Bush demonstrated in both 2000 and 2004, you don't have to win by much to occupy the White House, you just have to win.
As for the other half of the country — the so-called blue states in the red-blue carve-up of the nation's interests — well, Karl Rove had little time for them. Other administrations may have tried to reach out to their political opponents, to build a big and welcoming tent as the saying goes. Uniting the country was generally seen to be a goal worth pursuing.
But Karl Rove had no illusions about attracting Democrats and left-leaning independents to his side. So why bother trying?
That way, if you don't care about reaching out to people on the other side of the political divide, and if your priority is winning elections, no matter how narrowly, then there is really nothing standing in the way of practising politics with the gloves off.
Reading this, you begin to get a sense as to why the Democrats have backed away, somewhat, from those tactics (they did use the moral scandals of the GOP in 2006 to great benefit).
There's a strategy at work here, and one suspects the long term goal is to create a Democratic dynasty. Rove was onto something in that the country is ripe for one party to dominate the political landscape for a long time. It's just a sense I get that there's a brass ring just around the corner to grab.
Rove was successful at politics of division, that no one can or will deny. The question is, what did it cost the party and the American people, that he beat up on Ann Richards, John McCain, Al Gore, Max Cleland, and John Kerry so viciously?
A lot. And the 2006 elections showed, I think, just the first thrust of the backlash, which will be long and brutal for the GOP. Why?
Because if you're going to demonize the other guy, you'd better damned well make sure you're a saint. From before September 11, when Bush's poll numbers were floundering in the low 40s, through Katrina, the Scooter Libby indictments, Katrina, and mostly, the Iraq debacle, Rove has been unable to get this administration to prove its mettle just when Rove needed it most. For his dream of a Republican dynasty to take shape, he would have needed the perfect President.
What he had was the perfect candidate: malleable, affable, and idiotic. Simple, which for American voters translated into safe.
You really can fool all of the people some of the time, in other words. Bush could not actually run the country, and the people around him were too busy suckling at the teat of the administration to pay attention to Rove's political vision.
If this sounds like a paean to Rove, to a point it is. As a political junkie, he took a bushel of lemons and made a yellow liquid that could have been lemonade, but for the fact it wasn't. He paid attention to about 25% of the American people and made them feel like they were in charge.
Which explains the deep feelings some in the blogosphere feel for this administration, despite the fact that it will go down in history as the single biggest disaster to befall this nation since the British invasion of 1812. Buyer's remorse doesn't apply, because they didn't buy Bush, they sold him, and that creates an even deeper attachment. Ask any salesman.
We liberals owe Rove a debt of gratitude as well. See, Rove is like a forest fire in an old growth forest: he's burned up the little weeds and twigs at the roots, but never really got hot enough to take out the entire forest. All he's done is given us more nutrients to live off.
For nearly thirty years, liberals have watched as the progressive agenda-- an agenda of tolerance, of equality, of taking care to make sure everyone benefits from the bounty that is this land-- had been whittled away, a slice here, a sliver there.
Rove took an axe to it.
Already, massive grass roots movements have sprung up in response to the "frenzy of political activity" Rove created in the 25%. And those movements will march forward, slowly at first, but in greater numbers, and more strongly. 25% of the nation couldn't possibly hold back the tide of change. It will come. It is coming, and thanks to Rove, it will be more progressive and more liberal than ever before.
And the seeds of his failures are very apparent:
Rove's relentlessly polarizing tactics and his over-the-top use of government power for political purposes, critics say, were bound to wear out their welcome with a fundamentally pragmatic and moderate electorate.There's much more to come. The long national nightmare is over.
"Karl will always be known as a brilliant political operative who has a great tactical sense," said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster, "but tactics only get you so far. Did they change politics forever? No."
Fabrizio asked: "At the end of the day, is the party better off today than it was when it was taken over six or seven years ago?" He believes Rove's strategy has alienated middle-of-the-road voters and left the party in worse shape.
How Rove's approach could misfire in the evolving political climate was illustrated when Bush, after his reelection, sought converts to the GOP cause by pushing to create private investment accounts in the Social Security system.
In the Rove playbook, the proposal -- with its call for a new "ownership society" -- would attract younger voters distrustful of government and fearful that Washington would not deliver on promised retirement benefits.
The campaign failed. Democrats charged that Bush and the Republicans would weaken or destroy the whole Social Security program.
Rove also played a major role in advocating an immigration-law overhaul that would have offered some illegal immigrants a way to become citizens and would have tightened border security. Hard-line congressional Republicans deserted the White House on the bipartisan effort, which had embodied many of Rove's ideas.
Or to put it more succinctly,
Monday, August 13, 2007
Red Rover, Come Over
Obviously, the big story of the day is Karl Rove leaving the White House in a rush at the end of this month.
Much speculation will center on why:
"I just think it's time," Rove, 56, said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Monday.Hm. The stock political excuse, and it covers all manners of sins. For some, it's covered a pending indictment. For others, it's covered internal clashes with others in the White House, which one has lost. To save face, one claims a family matter, and leaves graciously.
"There's always something that can keep you here and, as much as I'd like to be here, I've got to do this for the sake of my family."
We can hope for the first, but I seriously doubt it's the latter. Rove has too much sway with Bush, having guided his political career for fifteen years straight to the Presidency.
Speculation is that he had a contempt of Congress charge hanging over his head. Leaving the White House takes away any executive privilege cover, and of course, he would now be subject to prison time for refusing to testify.
So not a likely reason.
The real clue is this:
Rove finally decided to leave after Joshua Bolten, the White House chief of staff, told senior aides that if they remained past early September, they would be obliged to stay until the end of Bush's second and final term in January 2009, the paper said.Ah. There we are.
Rove intends to get back into the fight with another candidate. After all, why not run out the clock? Yes, he has a son heading to college...so what? The last time I checked, the last thing a father has to do is be around for a college kid. By that point, they're either going to swim or sink on their own.
What clues can we look for to confirm this suspicion? Well, Rove and Karen Hughes were integral parts of Bush's 2000 campaign, and while Hughes left the White House (to return in 2005 as an Undersecretary of State in charge of burnishing the US image abroad, something she's fucked up worse than before she got involved), she's been very quiet for two years now.
Indeed, about the only news from State regarding Hughes has been the resignation of media affairs director Floyd Price, who quit after 17 years at State because he believed the Bush administration had so screwed up foreign relations that it would require a new President to get any glimmer of respectability back in the world's eyes, partly because he felt Hughes had approached it from the wrong angle.
You'd have to think that Hughes will be announcing her resignation shortly. Should that come, you'd have in place the strategy and communications team that very effective vaulted Dubya from a crappy governor of a middling state (in administrative terms) to the Presidency (no matter how obtained).
So who hires them? McCain? Old news. Giuliani? Possibly, but Rudy has this need to be the focus of attention and center of the universe, large and in charge of everything. I don't think he could cede the kind of dirty work that Rove is known for to him. He wouldn't trust him.
Which really only leaves Mitt Romney. And I think the fit is good. Mitt is a slightly more polished version of Dubya, all Ivy League, Massachussetts, coiffed and burnished. All it really requires is a little adjustment in the playbook, and Rove could make Mitt more than a viable candidate.
It's early enough in the process that Rove could even be pondering taking up Fred Thompson nascent campaign, but the fund raising difficultiues Thompson has demonstrated seem to tell me that his run is a non-starter. Just a sense I get, nothing more than that.
At 56, he's young enough to do this for at least two more campaigns, and his ego is big enough that I think he wants to prove it was him and not Bush who won the White House.
It will be interesting.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Money. Money, Money, Money Moneyyyyyy!
Sorry, gang, it's Sunday, I know, and hardly the day you want to think about mooney and markets and economics...hell, my hangover has me hating writing this more than you hate reading it.
But it's important:
Global central banks, including the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan, added more than $300 billion of extra cash to the banking system over the last 48 hours to stabilize credit markets.The Dow was down nearly two hundred points Friday morning, even after the Fed injected $19 billion. When that barely bumped it up to a hundred point loss, the Fed funneled another $16 billion. That made the markets go into positive ground, briefly, and it took an additional $3 billion to keep them about flat for the day.
"Central banks like the Fed and ECB are adding liquidity, and that has done a lot to calm the markets," said Rafael Martorell, chief dealer at BNP Paribas in New York.
That helped U.S. stocks recover from an early plunge, sending currency traders rushing to sell their newly acquired yen.
Recently, the Japanese currency has slipped when equity markets rose because investors could borrow in low-yielding yen to finance purchases of other risky assets. When stocks slid, the yen firmed as investors unwound those carry trades and bought back yen.
$38 billion. About the cost of the Iraq invasion for a month and a half.
Shove it, Bush, seriously. This isn't the only news of the week that should be deeply tied (literally) to Bush's psychotic obsession with warmongering. The heavy price we've paid to secure perhaps ten percent of the known oil reserves could have basically bought us 25% of them without any military intervention whatsoever. Oh, but then there's the Republican obsession with not signing international treaties to contend with, but let's face facts: a trillion dollars buys a lot of goodwill.
Back to the stock markets. The Fed will have exhausted its ability to intervene in the markets probably by Wednesday. My guess is Bernake spent much of the weekend on the phone with the banks who control the Federal Reserve with his hat in hand, trying to find bail out money. All it will take is one banker to say no, and the entire house of cards collapses by Tuesday.
Why is this happening?
Two words: housing woes. Last year, 46% of home sales returned to the seller less than five percent equity. Since most mortgage require at least that much in a down payment, 46% of Americans either lost money or barely got back their down payment in selling a house.
I'd estimate maybe another 30% got back between 5 and 10% in equity, so about 3/4 of Americans who sold a house last year broke even. Maybe. It might be much much higher.
People have financed this recent economic growth, as feeble as its been, on their credit cards and home equity loans. Now, there will be no more home equity loans and credit card growth.
And you know who will be bailed out? Not the home owners, but the banks, who will keep lending money faster and faster and just get deeper and deeper in debt. Meanwhile, watch as people try to file bankruptcy only to find out that they can't, that they'll have to pay back each and every penny they borrowed...
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text:
Huma Abedin, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's closest aide, urged former President Bill Clinton in 2009 to reject a speaking invitation before the American Israel Public Affairs Council (AIPAC), asking his assistant in an email, do "u really want to consider sending him into that crowd?"
Abedin's comment about "that crowd" has sparked anger and consternation among Jewish and non-Jewish leaders who consider it hostile to Jews and to the State of Israel. Her comments are raising uncomfortable questions about Abedin's past and her family's ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
"Appalling" is how Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, described the email, adding that it, "shows hostility toward Jews and Israel in light of the fact that 'that crowd' gives huge ovations to White House speakers."
Klein pointed to the Abedin family's ties to a radical Islamic group, saying, "it makes me think about the allegations about her parents and other family members who were associated with the Muslim Brotherhood."
Middle East Forum President Daniel Pipes called Abedin's comment "disdainful" of AIPAC. He also noted her past association with the Muslim Brotherhood.
"Abedin's disdainful comment about AIPAC as 'that crowd' could derive from her Muslim or her leftist identity – or both," Pipes told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Andrew McCarthy, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York who led the prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and others for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, told TheDCNF Abedin's background raised security concerns.
"During Hillary Clinton's tenure at the State Department, some of us pointed out that Abedin's background raised concerns about Islamist sympathies and unfitness for a security clearance that gave her access to top-secret intelligence," McCarthy said.
Abedin was raised in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, by fundamentalist Muslim parents who ran the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. The journal was published by Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, which was founded by her father Syed Abedin. Abedin remained on the masthead as an editor of the journal for 12 years until she entered the Department of State with Clinton in 2009.
Critics noted her father's main benefactor was Abdullah Omar Naseef, secretary general of the Muslim World League (MWL). The U.S. Department of the Treasury designated Rabita Trust, a subsidiary of the MWL, as a terrorist entity. Osama bin Laden credited MWL as a funding source after the 9/11 attacks.
Abedin has kept her personal political views to herself. Accusations of anti-Semitism were blunted by her marriage to former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, who is Jewish. That marriage is ending after Weiner was caught multiple times sexting online, most recently while sitting next to his son.
The issue of AIPAC's interest in Bill Clinton's attendance was raised in two sets of emails, all dated Sept. 10, 2009.
The State Department released them Sept. 21, 2016, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the conservative advocacy group Citizens United.
The AIPAC issue was raised by Doug Band, who was Bill Clinton's White House "body man." Band now boasts on his corporate web site that he was "the key architect of Clinton's post-Presidency" and created and built the Clinton Global Initiative that critics link to corrupt "pay to play" deals with overseas corporations, wealthy individuals and foreign governments.
Band also was recently credited with securing access of Clinton Foundation donors to Hillary Clinton. Band is now the chairman of Teneo, a company that has been dubbed "Clinton, Inc." Abedin was senior adviser to Teneo while she was serving as deputy chief of staff for Hillary Clinton.
Abedin's special status allowing her to draw paychecks from the government and Teneo is being investigated by Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
In a Sept. 10, 2009, email, Band told Cheryl Mills and Abedin that Bill Clinton was reluctant to attend the AIPAC Jewish forum, stating, "Aipac begging for wjc to come speak at conference. He doesn't think he should unless you all do."
Mills, Hillary's chief of staff, told Band the final decision was up to Hillary Clinton and she would touch base with her. As Mills sought that answer, Abedin comments, "U really want to consider sending him into that crowd?"
An apparently impatient Band pointedly asked, "Go or not go?"
Abedin finally responds: "No go to aipac."
It's unclear from the email exchange why they wanted to skip the AIPAC meeting. Bill Clinton twice addressed AIPAC in the 1990s as president. Hillary Clinton spoke before AIPAC in 2010 after her husband was asked to address the group.
Bill Clinton attended the funeral for Israeli leader Shimon Peres last week, but in years past, Bill Clinton has expressed more sympathy for the Palestinians than Israelis.
"I will never forget what it taught me about your suffering, your history of dispossession and dispersal, but also about your resilience and courage," he said in an open letter to the Palestinian people on Jan. 19, 2001, the day he left the White House.
He also released a statement to the Israelis. Here, however, he counseled "compromise" rather than empathy: "Compromise is often difficult and always painful. But the people and leaders of the region must understand that to seek a peace without compromise is not to seek peace at all."
A spokesman for AIPAC declined to address the email. The Clinton campaign did not respond to TheDCNF's request for comment.
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7 Ways to Make Your API More Successful
The purpose of a content API is to make the content available to its audience in the most useful and efficient way possible. To be a useful API, it needs to help the developers make their jobs easier. This could mean a wide range of things, including making it easier to dig into the API, allowing for greater flexibility in the responses, improved performance and efficiency for both the API and its consumer. Below are seven development techniques (all of which are part of the NPR API) that can help content providers improve the usefulness and efficiency of their APIs on both sides of the track. These techniques played a critical role in the success of the API which now delivers over 700 million stories per month to its users (more stats on the NPR API coming soon on our Inside NPR.org blog).
Be Flexible: Support Multiple Output Formats
Making the API as available and accessible as possible is very important in drawing developers to use it. So providing the content in a range of formats will increase the likelihood that the developer can rely on existing libraries and make as few changes to the code as possible.
The NPR API offers eight different output formats in an effort to improve efficiency for the developers. Above is a graph demonstrating the distribution of requests for each of the formats in July of 2009. As you can see, the majority of requests are to our proprietary XML markup (NPRML). That also means that almost 50% of the requests, or about 20M requests per month, use the other seven formats. In offering offering these other non-proprietary XML formats, the API is able to support developers that may have existing applications that pull in content in one of these standardized format, such as MediaRSS or Atom.
Be Efficient: Handle Partial Response
This concept is now starting to get some more traction, now that Google announced partial response handling for some of their APIs. NPR's API also makes extensive us of this feature because it really is tremendously valuable to the provider and the consumer of the API. For example, NPR stories contain a wide variety of fields and assets in the API. If the consumer is forced to handle the complete document, even if they only want a few fields, they have to endure all of the latency issues from the API itself as well as the additional processing power needed to handle the undesired fields.
As a result, NPR incorporated a "fields" parameter (the same parameter name used by Google) that can be used in the query string to limit the resulting document to only the fields of interest. This approach creates documents that are smaller and much more efficient. Overwhelmingly, more requests to the NPR API contain the fields parameter than those that do not (in fact, it isn't even close).
Here are a few examples of how the same query to the NPR API, returning the same stories, delivers different documents based on the fields parameter (you will need to register for your own NPR API key to execute these queries):
An extension of partial response is to allow the developer to specify the number of items they would like in return. Some APIs return a fixed number of results, which can bloat the document just like the extra fields can. The NPR API, to counter this, allows the developer to pass in the number of results desired (with a fixed ceiling for any given request). To dig deeper in the results, we incorporated a "pagination" feature in the API. Here are some examples of how to control the number of stories:
Give Them Control: Allow for Customizable Output Markup ("Remapping Fields")
As mentioned in the transform section, if the API can easily serve existing applications that expect specific markup, it potentially increases adoption and improves developer efficiency. To extend that functionality, the NPR API offers a function that we call "Remap" which essentially lets the developer modify the name of one or more XML elements or attributes in the output at request time. This is done in the query string and the API transforms the markup accordingly in real-time. Here are a few examples:
In this example, the remap parameter changes the story title to < specialTitle >:
In this example, the remap parameter changes the story title to < specialTitle > and it changes the image caption to < imageCaption >:
In this example, the remap parameter changes the audio element's id attribute to be named audioId:
Another benefit to remap (which we have fortunately not had to use) is that it can be used to handle backward compatibility as the API grows and changes. NPR's philosophy is to make sure that upgrades do not adversely affect existing functionality. That said, if an element or attribute does need to change, we could execute apache rewrites for all old API calls and have the remap function applied to have the output match that of the old markup. Alternatively, the developer could simply modify their API call instead of having to change their codebase to match the markup changes. (Although we do not intend to change existing markup, if we do, we would advise developers to upgrade their code accordingly. That said, rather than having the applications fail during the transition, remap could be used to temporarily handle requests until the full codebase can be upgraded).
Be Fast: Set Up a Comprehensive Caching Architecture
Performance is another critical aspect of APIs when it comes to enticing developers to use them. After all, if the API is sluggish, developers may not want to depend their application on it.
Smart caching of queries and results can really improve the speed of the system. NPR has implemented several layers of caching for the API, as follows:
- Base XML – Caching the full document for each item is important to prevent the system from executing disk I/O before doing any transform. We cache the Base XML first in memory and secondarily as XML files to eliminate the need to access our content database.
- Full Query Results – When compiling the list of items to be returned for any given story, it is important to cache the full list because popular applications that have many concurrent users (such as NPR Addict) are very likely to execute the same queries and expect the same results. The cached result is a single document containing the full list of all items and the full base XML for each.
- Transformed Query Results – The calling application, such as NPR Addict, expects the document to be transformed to fit the application's needs. So, the results that get cached in Full Query Results may get transformed to MediaRSS while simultaneously removing extraneous fields. Caching the final results that get returned to the calling application enable fastest performance without compromising the system's ability to use the other caching layers to produce different versions of the document.
Click here for an enlargement of this architecture diagram
Give Them Tools: Provide a Query UI with the Documentation
There are two truths about developers and documentation: the former always expects the latter, but seldom uses it. Of course, you cannot have an API without providing comprehensive documentation. That said, offering a simple user interface that helps developers get what they need from the API wil increase adoption and make life easier for them.
NPR's API launched with a tool that we call the Query Generator. This tool exposes more than 6500 query-able IDs, methods for controlling the output format, fields to be returned, date and search restrictions, pagination, and more. Using the interface, the developer can select their options and have the tool create the query string for their API request. The developer can also see the results of that query inline before commiting it to their application. Almost exclusively, developers (including the NPR staff) use this tool to create queries, rather than reading the documentation.
Be Open: Eliminate Rate Limiting
Throttling or limiting access to APIs is an inherent disincentive for developers. Moreover, it is actually a detriment to the API provider. After all, the purpose of the API is to grant access to the content. If a given developer can only call the API 5000 times a day, and that developer creates a hugely popular application, the rate-limiting will inherently stifle the developer and the viral nature of the API.
Granted, most APIs use rate-limiting or tiered access levels to allow business people to control the graduation of API users. This seems counter-productive to me though. The better approach is to open access completely, identify those incredibly successful usages, then work with the developer accordingly on a mutually beneficial relationship. This way, applications are given full ability to grow and mature without arbitrary constraints.
Other APIs implement rate-limiting to protect the servers from unexpectedly high load. This is a legitimate risk which, if encountered, can adversely affect the performance of all users. That said, building complicated features into the system, such as rate-limiting, can be much more costly than configuring a scalable server architecture. Moreover, each request to the API will see slight latency increases as a result of the rate-limiting analysis. I know that latency is marginal, but why introduce any additional latency, especially when creating disincentives for developers?
Be Agile: Practice Iterative Development
Building your API over time has several benefits. First, it signals to the developer community that this API is meaningful to the provider and will continue to grow and get supported over time. This sounds trivial, but it is a very important part of the relationship with the community. If developers are not sure about your commitment to the API, are they likely to spend their own time building an application around it?
Another benefit of iterative development is that you do not have to get the API perfect the first time. I will qualify that by saying that, as a matter of principle, any release for an API should be done with the expectation that it will be supported for a long time. This is important because changes to existing API features will break the applications of those that use them. When I say the API doesn't have to be perfect, I mean it does not have to be complete. New features can (and should) be added over time, extending its capability and making it more attractive for potential developers.
To put it another way, you will not have every detail of the API solved at the initial launch. It is much better to go live with the features that you know well while deferring those that you do not. Trying to cram in tenuous requirements will create headaches for you and for the community down the road. Spend the time necessary on figuring out the features, the supporting markup, the access and error methods, etc. before you commit to an API feature.


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Delphi Parallel Programming Library & Memory Managers
In September 2014 Delphi XE7 was launched. I was excited to try the new Parallel Programming Library (PPL). I thought I'd be able to quickly and easily write code which takes advantage of the processors in my Intel i7 machine. To my dismay the performance improvement were virtually non-existent if there was any memory allocation carried out in parallel. I even brought up the subject on Google+ (see here: https://goo.gl/hWc6Z6). The bottleneck seemed to be with FastMM4. When it was first bundled with Delphi 2006, FastMM4 was a breakthrough in single core memory management. But FastMM4 had not been designed for multi-threaded performance. In my tests the PPL versions of my test routines were slower than the single core versions. I concluded it was wiser to stick with the simpler single core routine, and hope for a solution.
A week ago I stumbled across this thread on Google+, "Why is the FastMM4 development stalled?". I'd never heard about NexusDB's memory manager. Apparently it scales well in a multi-thread environment. Eivind Bakkestuen from NexusDB kindly offered to provide a test copy. So I thought I'd give it a try. I went back to my main application and fired up the parallel map rendering routines of my Sales Territory Mapping application. To my amazement I got a instant speedup of 68% when using the NexusDB memory manager. I was ecstatic! Out of pure interest I then tried the parallel rendering using FastMM4. To my surprise FastMM4 performed equally as well as NexusDB. What has changed since 2014? FastMM4 hadn't been updated since May 2013. Was it something new with the PPL included with Delphi 10 Seattle? Or was it as a result of Windows 10. I also noticed the memory manager included with Delphi didn't perform quite as well as explicitly including FastMM4 at the start of the "dproj" file.
So I set out to create a test and investigate further.
I created a test project (you can download it here). It's nothing special. The small app creates and destroys lists of small and simple objects. I quickly established there was no speed difference between XE7 and Delphi 10 Seattle applications. I then create six Delphi 10 Seattle versions of the application; a 32 bit and 64 bit version of with the native memory manager, FastMM4 and NexusDB:
- Speedtest-Native-32.exe
- Speedtest-FastMM4-32.exe
- Speedtest-NexusDB-32.exe
- Speedtest-Native-64.exe
- Speedtest-FastMM4-64.exe
- Speedtest-NexusDB-64.exe
Each executable can run in single-core or multi-core mode. You can download the executables here (SpeedTest.zip). I then ran them on four different laptops:
- Dell XPS 15: Windows 10 2.6 GHz i7-6700HQ
- HP from 2009: Windows 7 2.2 GHz i7-2670QM
- HP from 2014: Windows 8.1 2.4 GHz i7-3630QM
- Surface Book: Windows 10 2.4 GUs i5-6300U
Here are the 32 bit results – each value is the times in milliseconds required to execute (smaller is better):
And here are the 64 bit results – each value is the times in milliseconds required to execute (smaller is better):
And here are the key points:
- NexusDB's memory manager was impressive in every multi-threaded test (in some cases double the speed of FastMM4)
- FastMM4 did much better than I expected. There was a measurable speed improvement in all multi-threaded tests
- The native memory manager (which I thought was FastMM4) was measurably slower than FastMM4 in most multi-threaded tests (e.g. 64 bit multi-threaded). The difference was negligible in single thread tests.
- I was amazed at how well the 2009 laptop performed – Moore's Law is clearly dead for laptops.
My conclusion is that NexusDB's memory manager is the one to use if multi-thread performance is an issue.
All of these tests were carried out on laptops. I'd love to see the speeds when run on an eight core machine.


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Ask a great inventor to invent, and that's exactly what he'll do. Sometimes the ideas pop out like cannon bursts: "consider this ... " or "maybe this?" or "Wait! How about THIS!"
Ben Franklin did that with balloons.
In the 1780s, Franklin was America's ambassador to France, living in Paris, where all over town, people were experimenting with balloon flight. They'd constructed car-sized baskets, packed in bottles of champagne, iced lemonade, added packets of roast duck sandwiches, set up in a public park, fired up the gas, inflated big balloons and soared off — floating over the town, waving, doing acrobatics, getting in trouble, snagging onto roofs, having near misses. Everybody could see them. Everybody talked about them. Europe was having its first wave of "Ballomania," writes historian Richard Holmes. Balloons were the 18th century's version of space travel, our first leap into the sky.
But they couldn't be directed. The first "aerialists" would just fly up and go wherever the wind blew. Balloons weren't like horses or boats. You couldn't use them to get somewhere. So what, really, were they good for, asked Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society in London. Anything useful? Anything practical?
That's where Franklin jumped in. "Practical" was his territory. His mind wandered freely, and he liked to solve problems. So here, culled from Franklin's letters, are his Balloon Ideas, many of them proposed to Sir Joseph, as reported by Richard Holmes.
Need to send a message to a neighbor? You have a footman? Good. All you do is attach him to a hydrogen balloon, which will make him much lighter, (says Holmes quoting Franklin,) "so his body weight was reduced to 'perhaps 8 or 10 Pounds,' " and so made capable of running in a straight line in leaps and bounds "across Countries as fast as the Wind, and over Hedges, Ditches & even Water ... " Bingo! You've just created the 18th century version of an instant message!
I don't know why Franklin called it an "elbow" chair, but here's the gist. You are at a fair. Imagine lots and lots of people stuck on the ground looking for something to do. But look up. There's an easy chair hooked to a flock of balloons, parked in the sky, with a great view of a village, town, meadow, whatever. The plan? You pull the chair down to the ground, invite the tourist to sit and then winch "the picturesque spectator 'a mile high for a Guinea' to see the view." A revenue earner — like the Eiffel Tower without the tower.
Holmes describes it as "Franklin's patent balloon icebox." This being an era before refrigeration, imagine someone with five ducks, freshly killed. Rather than eat them right away, the hunter would like to store them, but where? Well, the higher you go, the cooler it gets, so, thought Dr. Franklin, why not create a container in the sky? "People will keep such Globes anchored in the Air, to which by Pullies they may draw up Game to be preserved in the Cool, & Water to be frozen when Ice is wanted." The Original Frigidaire.
When Franklin moved back to Philadelphia in 1785, he had trouble walking. He'd developed a bad case of gout. To get to the Philadelphia State Assembly on working days, he arranged to be "lifted by four stout assistants" on a sedan chair. This apparently embarrassed him, because he suggested harnessing his sedan to small hydrogen balloon "sufficiently large to raise me from the ground." This, he thought, would make him so much lighter he imagined himself floating, "being led by a string held by one man walking on the ground." (Richard Holmes calculated that a single balloon, ten feet across, containing one thousand cubic feet of hydrogen, would have done what Franklin imagined. But it doesn't seem they ever tried it.)
Not To Mention ...
He had other ideas. I've skipped over the obvious ones, using balloons to transport infantry across rivers and channels, to predict the weather, for military intelligence. He was one of those guys that if you gave him a problem, he'd think it over, and out would pour a crazy stream of stories, get-rich-quick schemes, fairy tales, adventures and solutions to problems you'd never known you had. He had what you might call "a mind wide-open" ready, like those balloons, to fly anywhere ...
Richard Holmes' forthcoming book on ballooning (to be released in America next fall) is called Falling Upwards: How We Took To The Air. If you'd like to imagine flying over Paris carried by a gaggle of balloons, here's the classic short French film The Red Balloon, (The whole thing! It's not too long.) in which a host of balloons rescue a little boy from some bullies and pull him up into the sky to take him ... well, I'm not sure where they're going. Maybe to balloon heaven. Directed by Albert Lamorisse, this film won both an Oscar and the Palm d'Or for short films at Cannes in 1956 and it gives me just a hint, perhaps a more heart-rending hint, of what Franklin saw sailing overhead in the 1780s.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Make Your Choice…
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Cyberoptics & Direktor Bashing Through the End of the World on a Lost Horizon
Salt City – A few years of public stupidity inflamed by fools, capitalists and a desperate media ended with a whimper Friday night. December 21, 2012 exited without fanfare, remarked upon only for the extremely quiet day that ensued. Warnings … Continue reading
Posted in Electrocution, I was there, Muzak
Tagged 2012, cyberoptics, december 21, direktor, dubstep, end of the world bash, kayo, live, lost horizon, mayan calendar, musick, ridiculous rights, syracuse, womps
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Katherine Cesinger, a spokeswoman for Mr. Perry, said that on the night of the execution, the governor's general counsel thoroughly briefed him on the report of the arson expert and various appellate court decisions. He denied the reprieve, she said, because the courts "all agreed that the Hurst report was no more than an opinion and did not merit reopening the case."This is the first admission that the Governor actually was aware of Hurst's conclusions about arson testimony before Willingham was put to death. But since Hurst's report was filed with a last-minute habeas brief, it wasn't "all" the courts that reviewed it but only one: the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. And they think it's okay to execute someone even if the judge and prosecutor were sleeping together during trial.
So Rick Perry thought it was okay to overlook the possible execution of an innocent man because Sharon Keller said it was alright so there was no need to think about it further. That really boosts your confidence, doesn't it?


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Okay, so MiM is coming up soon, and the Beale Street Music Festival is calling out, crying out for recognition. As usual, I will be having over any of my friends who care to come for a weekend of music, ribs, and debauchery, albeit not necessarily in that order.
So, all the information you want can be found on the Memphis in May website, and I'll be emailing everybody soon with details on my discount. It will not be much, but considering that the single day price at the gate will be $25 this year, it's better than in the past.
The band lineup is also available on their website, but if you're not up for web navigation, here's a direct link: (PDF)
Dates are May 5th, 6th, and 7th. There is one other good thing this year. In the past couple years, they always saved the best for last, as Mandy can testify to. This year, that doesn't seem to be the case. Sunday's lineup does have some quality bands, however, IMO, the best music is going to be on Friday and Saturday. Including B.B. King, who's right at the top of Friday.
Anyway, come one, come all.
Edit: I sent out an email to several people with the details. If you didn't get that email, and you want to come, email me for those details.


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By Sarah Brenner, JD
IRA Analyst
You may ask if you should leave your IRA to a trust. This can be a complicated question. Trusts can be complex and retirement accounts are not like other assets.
How a Trust Beneficiary Can Get the Stretch
If you are thinking a trust is the right beneficiary for your IRA, you will want to be familiar with the requirements for trust a to be a qualified "see-through" trust. Meeting these requirements is the only way the valuable "stretch" advantage can be used by trust beneficiaries. The stretch is the ability of the named beneficiary to spread (or stretch) required post-death distributions from an IRA over the beneficiary's life expectancy using the IRS Single Life Expectancy Table.
"See-Through" Trust Requirements
To qualify as what the IRS refers to as a "see-through" trust for IRA distribution purposes, the trust must meet the following four requirements outlined in the regulations:
1. The trust is valid under state law or would be but for the fact that there is no corpus.
2. The trust is irrevocable, or the trust contains language to the effect it becomes irrevocable upon the death of the employee or IRA owner.
3. The beneficiaries of the trust who are beneficiaries with respect to the trust's interest in the employee's or IRA owner's benefit are identifiable.
4. The required trust documentation has been provided by the trustee of the trust to the IRA custodian no later than October 31st of the year following the year of the IRA owner's death.
Other Requirements
If trust qualifies as a see-through trust, the trust's beneficiary is treated as if he or she were named directly. This will allow the inherited IRA to be stretched over that person's life expectancy.
What if the trust has more than one beneficiary? Well, if there are multiple beneficiaries of the trust, and the trust was named as the IRA beneficiary, all the trust beneficiaries must use the life expectancy of the oldest beneficiary to calculate post-death payments. They may not each use their own life expectancies.
Also, watch out for nonliving beneficiaries. If any one of the trust's beneficiaries is not a person (for example an estate), then then the IRA does not have a designated beneficiary and the stretch will be lost.
Getting it Right
Not everyone will benefit from naming a trust as beneficiary of their IRA. Naming a trust adds a level of complexity and expense that you just may not need. However, if you are looking for control of your retirement funds after your death, a trust can be a good strategy. If the qualifications for a see-through trust are met, your trust beneficiaries can still take advantage of the stretch IRA. This is a complicated area with little room for error. If you want to be sure that you get it right and that your trust is a 'see-through" trust, your best bet is to consult an advisor who specializes in this area.


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BERLIN- Harness drivers, trainers, owners and the entire Ocean Downs racing family gathered at the track's winner's circle before the evening of racing last Saturday, July 21, in memory of popular local horseman Keith Long, who passed away unexpectedly at the age of 37 last Thursday, July 19 at his home.
Keith Long is a third-generation horseman whose grandfather Elwood had raced at Ocean Downs when it first opened in 1949. Keith's father, Ed was a very successful driver at the Ocean Oval while his brothers, Wayne, Donnie and Gene are still active racing locally.
Wayne Long this summer has five driving wins in fifteen starts at the Ocean Oval and has trained all five of those horses, including four wins by ten year-old gelding Mister Darcy N. Donations to the Long family in remembrance of Keith Long may be mailed to Donnie Long, 990 Cabin Ridge Rd., Felton, Delaware 19943-3131.


text: Ray Morris Art Director + Designer Ray loves eating pizza and playing soccer. Riding his motorbike and sharing adventures with his wife are Ray´s best time, when he is not enjoying such beautiful things, Ray is thinking in unicorns and galactic cats, chicken zombi apocalypse and happy end stories like those. What a nice guy. Tw. — Fb. — Lnkd. Back


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Darren Criss, me winning a motherfucking contest, bitches, and other stupid shit
Ah, yes. It's that time of the month. No, not that one, piggish and/or sensitive menfolk. The one where I make excuses for the long stretches of not doing anything. I know. You're so disappointed.
It's not that I don't care, people. Truly, I love you more than my own hypothetical alien spawn. Yo.
It's just that, in the summertime, kids, while I have all the time the American education system allots, I have neither the patience, energy, or incentive to do jack shit about it. During the year, us young folk bitch about all the amazing shit we're gonna do when summer comes around, because we're not yet affected by what I assume in the summerless, soulless, tax-and-health-insurance-filled world of adulthood. Seriously, I don't envy you fuckers. No summer vacation? Three days off in the year? Fucking cubicles?
ANYWAYS. I have some things to say while I'm here.
1) Darren Criss? The one all you assholes have been drooling over? You don't know. You don't know SHIT. Because if you did know shit, you'd know noto credit him as Glee's Magical Homosexual Blaine Whatshisface. You'd know that he was, in fact, Harry Freakin' Potter.
2) The Great White Dopeness himself as bestowed upon me the honor of WINNA in his recent contest. Of course, I deserved it.
3) I won't be here for the better part of next month, due to Seattle shit I don't expect you children to understand.
4) I see my computer's about to combust. Good day, sirs.