I know I haven’t been posting much lately, and what I do post is overwhelmingly political. It’s just that there is some seriously important political stuff going on right now. Chances are that anybody reading this is already well aware of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and realizes that the crooked righties who denounce it are doing so because they don’t want to give up their free ride at our expense. This Krugman piece from the Times really boils down exactly why they’re so vehement about it. I suppose I’d be mad too if I had a good scam going and a bunch of kids tried to shut it down.
The Real Housewives of Wall Street | Rolling Stone Politics
I don’t know why I even bother posting this stuff. Anybody with half a brain in their head already knows how monumentally crooked the US financial system is, and nobody in a position to do anything about it cares (or reads this blog). Just in case you’re not head-on-fire furious about it already, click the link above and you will be.
Hedge Fund Gamblers Earn the Same In One Hour As a Middle-Class Household Makes In Over 47 Years
It’s a longish read, but there are some legitimately good suggestions in this article on how to solve the problem of wall street super-greed.
Watch this video, then read this article. At this point we are so fucked there is no coming back.
(Source: youtube.com)
Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners | Rolling Stone Politics
Most of you probably don’t have the attention span to read an 8 page investigative piece about foreclosure fraud, but this is important.
The majority of Americans tend to think the fast-track forclosure mills that have popped up recently are morally icky, but legally sound. After all, people took out mortgages and aren’t paying them back, so the banks are right to take their houses… aren’t they? Turns out that the overwhelming majority of these loans were fraudulent in some form from the very beginning. The fraud continued as they were misrepresented to investors, sold and traded inappropriately and without paperwork, and now are being crammed through intentionally ineffective courts before anybody notices - mostly with doctored or non-existent documentation. And I’m not talking about a few rare cases here. This fraud isn’t the exception, it’s the rule.
Please take ten minutes from your day and read the whole article. It is unlikely that anybody will ever be held accountable for this bullshit, but everybody should at least know it’s happening.
Vice presidential failure and all around dingbat Sarah Palin has quit her job as governor of Alaska. The leading theory is that she’s only days away from being brought up on embezzlement charges for awarding Spenard Building Supplies the contract to build a $13 million hockey arena in her home town, in return for SBS supplying the materials used to build her Wasillia home. She should have asked former senator Ted “The Internet is Tubes” Stevens about why trading government contracts for home improvements is never a good idea. Something tells me it will be tricky to run for president in 2012 from inside a prison cell. (vis Digg)
In December 06, crude oil cost $63 a barrel. Over the next 18 months, the price rose unceasingly at an unprecedented rate to a staggering $147 per barrel in July of 08. Despite the fact that supply rose and demand fell for most of this time period, we were assured that this unheard of price spike was still somehow due entirely to “supply and demand”. Now just six months later, oil is down to $35 per barrel - less than one quarter it’s July price. Could simple supply and demand economics have screwed up so badly?
No. It turns out that the artificially high price of oil that we labored under for a year and a half was entirely due to the investment shenanigans of the same assholes that brought you such recent hits as “The Housing Bubble Tango” and “Investment Banking Collapse A-Go-Go”. It was all artificial, and it was all orchestrated to make some spectacularly rich people a bit richer at the expense of pretty much everybody else. They would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for those meddling kids and their damn dog.
Wait, what’s that? They’re going to get away with it anyway? Fuck.
Don’t take my word for it though. Watch this segment from 60 Minutes and see for yourself. (via Digg)
Get out your tinfoil hats everybody, because here comes the granddaddy of all conspiracy documentaries. This film attempts to expose three of the biggest secret conspiracies in modern society: Organized religion, 9/11, and international bankers. Yup, all three in one shot.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that the facts presented are inaccurate. Christianity is a scam, the threat of terrorism is artificially inflated to scare people into relinquishing their rights, and international bankers are a bunch of greedy scumholes who want all your money. I’m not arguing against the points made in the film, I just don’t think the sky-is-falling, take-the-red-pill, gloom-and-doom tone of the whole thing is necessary.
Most intelligent people already know (or at least suspect) most of what the director is trying to convey in Zeitgeist. The sort of people who are willing to watch the movie and critically examine it’s points have likely already done so and come to similar conclusions. As for those who will outright dismiss the points brought up without consideration, those people are likely to be further put off by the alarmist tone, yell “Moonbat!”, and run away.
Still, Zeitgeist is a very interesting documentary. The research is solid and it’s nice to see everything brought together, even if it is a bit disjointed. I recommend everybody give it a once-over, no matter where you stand on these divisive issues.
Note - you may want to skip past the first nine minutes or so. This Pink Floydian “overture” is amateurish and does not convey any real information. The actual documentary starts around 09:35.
Henry Rollins doing what he does best - ranting against authority. In this case, he’s entirely correct. If telco lobby sponsored laws to cripple the internet were to pass, things like this tumble log would be impossible. Go Henry! (via Boingboing)
