JayB

Since we're on the topic of things that mattp will never read, I'd encourage you to read "The Looming Tower, " by Lawrence Wright as well. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/books/review/06filkins.html?ex=1182571200&en=0c490c225671cad4&ei=5070

I don't think that's an especially good summary of the first author's point, but I'd encourage you - since you are not mattp - to invest some time in reading the second article and see if you can identify the manner in which it relates to the first.

...will never read. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2104994,00.html http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9635

Thankfully they're keeping a tight lid on this story at the moment... "Bear Stearns Hedge Fund Woes Stir Worry Updated: 1 hour, 8 minutes ago NEW YORK - The uncertain fate of two Bear Stearns hedge funds which loaded up on mortgage-backed securities that are now souring has cast a sharp light on the fragility of the collateralized debt obligation market, a strategist warned. Collateralized debt obligations, known as CDOs, are structured finance products that bunch together a portfolio of bonds and other fixed-income asset into a new blended security. These securities are divided between senior and subordinated debt. In theory, any losses taken by the security are applied first to later classes of debt before earlier ones. However, there are mounting concerns that the deterioration of many subprime mortgage-backed securities is yet to be properly reflected in the CDOs that hold them, according to Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. This is because the value of CDOs is measured by a "marked to market" technique that pegs them to their value in the market, rather than their book value. Complicating the situation is the fact that CDOs containing mortgage-backed securities seldom trade, which can mean that their "marked to market" value does not reflect recent events. "As long as these CDO bonds stay off the market, as they universally have, asset managers have the luxury of 'marking them to market.'" Schiff wrote in a research note. "Not surprisingly, using this method the vast majority of these bonds are valued at par or greater," according to Schiff. He argued that if the bonds in the Bear Stearns Companies Inc. funds were auctioned on the open market, much weaker values would be plainly revealed. "This would force other hedge funds to similarly mark down the value of their holdings. Is it any wonder that Wall street is pulling out the stops to avoid such a catastrophe?," Schiff said. He further cautioned that the impact of hedge fund losses would be pale in contrast to the likely impact of an open market auction of subprime CDOs. "Their true weakness will finally reveal the abyss into which the housing market is about to plummet," he said." http://www.cnbc.com/id/19359041/for/cnbc/

Anyone notice that this story made it to the front-page of the WSJ today? Looks like someone may have escaped a mauling for now. "You guys better bail us out so that we never have to put this stuff up for sale in the open market and put a real price on this stuff, because if we do, everyone is gonna know that all of the securities made from sliced-and-diced sub-prime-neg-am-I/O-ARMs or their cousins that you've got in your portfolios are also absolute shit and are, much like the absolute shit sitting in our imploding hedge-fund, worth way less than face-value - which is what you've got written on your ledgers at the moment, which is the value you use to calculate your fees - and then things are going to get real ugly real fast." It'll be interesting to see how much the other investment banks with a stake in this business are willing to fork over to keep this under wraps, as that should be a rough indication of how widespread and severe these problems really are. "The high-stakes game of brinksmanship began early yesterday on Wall Street, and continued throughout the day. Bankers traded telephone calls, frenetically negotiating the fate of two hedge funds. All wanted to avoid a fire sale in the troubled mortgage-securities market, but at the same time, not get stuck with an exploding liability that could result in steep losses. The day ended with deals that appeared to have forestalled a meltdown. But questions remained about how successful they were and whether they had merely delayed the inevitable. As the morning unfolded, lenders to two hedge funds at a unit of Bear Stearns, the investment bank, tried to ascertain what they could expect if they auctioned off mortgage securities with a face value of up to $2 billion. The solicitations were hastily withdrawn when investors reacted with little enthusiasm. But by the end of the day, some of the less-risky securities did change hands. At the same time, several lenders, including JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, reached deals with Bear Stearns that forestalled a need to sell securities in the open market. It appeared that some lenders pulled back over concerns about the effect that a large liquidation would have on bond prices and investor confidence. While the securities involved represent a fraction of the market, a liquidation could have forced a bigger sell-off while setting a lower price." http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/business/21bonds.html?hp "Junior subbrime-neg-am-I/O-option-ARM CDO tranches....mmmmmmm"

I'm not taking sides against you here, just wondering how this rule would apply to someone with a severe brain injury, massive mental retardation, etc...

-I'm not sure if you are familiar with the process that it takes for say, a nurse, to get fired from any unionized hospital - let alone a government run facility like the VA. If you think that the doctor's would be easier to fire under a system like the one you are proposing, you can believe that if you wish, but I think it's highly unlikely to say the least. The effect on who chooses to go into medicine, the extent to which they have the freedom and motivation to develop new treatment, technologies, etc is something that's rarely taken into consideration, but warrants at least a moment's consideration. -Funding basic research is part of bringing new technologies to the market, but it's only one part of a much more complex picture. The collective circumstances, choices and priorities of hundreds of millions of people currently drive resource allocation and determine which of the potential new devices, drugs, and technologies ultimately make the move from concept to reality. The outcomes that this produces may not meet with your approval, but it's difficult to argue that this allocation is inconsistent with the needs of the people who are able to pay for their own care as they and their doctors understand them. When it comes to those that can't pay for their own care, you have to make the case that they'd be better served by central planning than by subsidized health insurance - which is a difficult case to make, especially when you factor in the fact that they will no longer be in a position to benefit from the innovations developed for those who can. I think that reforming the tax-incentives and regulations that are responsible for some of the problems associated with access to healthcare in this country is more likely to be beneficial than nationalization, but you are free to disagree. -Missallocation of resources - this has more to do with those decisions being driven by those who need care as opposed to those the government decides to fund. Even if you accept that the government will be staffed by competent people who act in good faith, the track record of those who have attempted to substitute central planning for the information conveyed by prices hasn't been terribly good. Theres also the matter of who decides which new drugs, therapies, or technologies that do become available under this regime get funded, who gets them, and for how long. What about people who are willing to spend their own money over and above what the state provides? The ethical problems that this will present in terms of desperately ill people who may or may not respond to them are, if anything, going to get quite a bit more complex under a single-payer scheme. Providing for preventive care is cheap and easy by comparison. When it comes to our status relative to the rest of the world, that's a good question. I'd chalk most of it up to the way we live, and the choices we make concerning our health. When you are comparing longevity from one society to the next, it's difficult to tell what's attributable to lifestyle and what's attributable to a particular approach to providing health-care. Ultimately - the argument will be between reforming health-insurance and providing subsidies to expand coverage to those who can't afford it and some kind of nationalization. When you compare these two models, the net benefits derived from nationalization, price controls, and rationing will likely have costs and negative consequences that exceed the benefits.

Just to take the case of the first statistic alone, the standards by which infant mortality is assessed vary massively from one country to the next, so what counts as an infant death in the US may not even be logged as a live birth in another country. ": Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol. 2002 Jan;16(1):16-22.Click here to read Links Registration artifacts in international comparisons of infant mortality. Kramer MS, Platt RW, Yang H, Haglund B, Cnattingius S, Bergsjo P. Department of Pediatrics, McGill University Faculty of Medicine, Montreal, Canada. michael.kramer@mcgill.ca Large differences in infant mortality are reported among and within industrialised countries. We hypothesised that these differences are at least partly the result of intercountry differences in registration of infants near the borderline of viability (<750 g birthweight) and/or their classification as stillbirths vs. live births. We used the database of the International Collaborative Effort (ICE) on Perinatal and Infant Mortality to compare infant mortality rates and registration practices in Norway (n = 112484), Sweden (n = 215 908), Israeli Jews (n = 148123), Israeli non-Jews (n = 52 606), US Whites (n = 6 074 222) and US Blacks (n = 1328332). To avoid confounding by strong secular trends in these outcomes, we restricted our analysis to 1987-88, the most recent years for which data are available in the ICE database for all six groups. Compared with Norway (with an infant mortality rate of 8.5 per 1000), the crude relative risks [95% confidence intervals] were 0.75 [0.69,0.81] in Sweden, 0.97 [0.90,1.06] in Israeli Jews, 1.98 [1.81,2.17] in Israeli non-Jews, 0.95 [0.89,1.01] in US Whites and 2.05 [1.95,2.19] in US Blacks. For borderline-viable infants, fetal deaths varied twofold as a proportion of perinatal deaths, with Norway reporting the highest (83.9% for births <500 g and 61.8% for births 500-749 g) and US Blacks the lowest (40.3% and 37.6% respectively) proportions. Reported proportions of live births <500 g varied 50-fold from 0.6 and 0.7 per 10000 in Sweden and Israeli Jews and non-Jews to 9.1 and 33.8 per 10000 in US Whites and Blacks respectively. Reported proportions 500-749 g varied sevenfold from 7.5 per 10000 in Sweden to 16.2 and 55.4 in US Whites and Blacks respectively. After eliminating births <750 g, the relative risks (again with Norway as the reference) of infant mortality changed drastically for US Whites and Blacks: 0.82 [0.76,0.87] and 1.42 [1.33,1.53] respectively. The huge disparities in the ratio of fetal to infant deaths <750 g and in the proportion of live births <750 g among these developed countries probably result from differences in birth and death registration practices. International comparisons and rankings of infant mortality should be interpreted with caution." With regards to the rest of the statistics, assuming that they are accurate - the statistic with respect to immunization "ranking" strikes me as one that screams for further examination- argument must be that all of the statistics would improve under whatever health-care nationzalization scheme you are envisioning. If you look at the leading causes of death in the US, and what role lifestyle choices plays in their genesis, one crucial component of such a claim is that nationalizing health care would lead the citizens of this country to substantially modify their behaviors in a way that the operation of the current health-care market does not. None of this deals with the previous argument about the effect about allocating the nation's health-care resources via centralized rationing/planning in comparison to efforts to limit expenditures on the part of private insurers. Then there's the quality aspect - since all lawsuits in a nationalized system are ultimately paid out of tax revenues, there's a very, very high probability that the legislature will strive to and succeed in placing caps on liability judgments against doctors and hospitals. You seem to have argued that the threat of financial losses is an important means by which to force those in the medical industry to provide a certain standard of care. Are you arguing that nationalizing healthcare will suddenly promote a degree of caution and vigilance in doctors and hospitals that the threat of large financial losses hasn't? I think if this debate about nationalizing health-care in this country ever gets too serious, the attorneys that make their living from the current system are smart enough to figure out what this will mean for their practices, and you'll see a fairly dramatic about face from the trial lawyers, who will become one of the most vocal and effective opponents of any such plan.

Cost-controls, like statutory caps on liability, will be a fixture of any comprehensive single-payer system. In the case of a state-run system, the motive will be different, but the rationing will be at least, if not more severe than anything people have to endure at the hands of private insurers. There's also the matter of what happens to the allocation of health care resources when the government attempts to replace the price system with planning. Even if you accept that folks in whatever health-care bureaucracy that would emerge after the advent of a single payer system have everyone's best interests at heart, the fact remains that they will be attempting to do the impossible - and the misallocation of resources that results from price controls and central planning will be at least as severe as anything that we have to contend with today, and here I'm speaking only of the health-care resources that are on the table today. The effect on innovation will be even more dramatic when central planning makes it impossible to measure, let alone respond to effective demand.

"Merrill set to sell $850m of Bear Stearns fund assets By Ben White and Saskia Scholtes in New York Published: June 20 2007 03:00 | Last updated: June 20 2007 03:00 A highly leveraged Bear Stearns hedge fund that made bad bets on the subprime mortgage market was on the brink of failure yesterday after Merrill Lynch rejected a proposed rescue plan and prepared to auction off $850m of the fund's assets that had been pledged as collateral for a Merrill loan. In addition to large losses for investors and lenders to the Bear Stearns fund, some analysts fear the fund's failure could accelerate losses in the subprime mortgage- backed securities market and perhaps also trigger a crisis of confidence in the wider market for complex structured finance securities. That in turn could lead to heavy selling and large losses for investors, including Wall Street banks that hold some debt instruments before they are packaged and sold to investors." http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3e687946-1eca-11dc-bc22-000b5df10621.html

I'm more partial to screeds, perorations, and phillipics than soliloquys, but it's nice to see that Carl has an acolyte....

My conclusion from your reply was that you were intentionally being vague, evasive, and mendacious so as to avoid having to defend a specific central argument. Emulation in word and deed is a much higher form of tribute than mere praise.

I think we've got ourselves an acolyte. Now if he can summarize the central argument, proposition, or thesis that the Prophet pur forward in "Farhenheit 9/11"...

Clearly more apostle than acolyte.

AlpineK is a better handle... R.I.P. AlpineK. "Hahaha Scotty, you sure are one uptight bastard..."

There are quite a number of factually correct statements in both "Mein Kampf," the Bibble, the myriad Creationist treatises, and virtually every conspiracy theory ever put forward - but the presence of a set of factually correct statements within the context of a larger theory doesn't prove that the central claim put forth in a book or a film is either factually correct or truthful. This seems to be an insight missing from considerations of Michael Moore's work thus far, and this is rather ironic given the fact that people on this thread are riduculing Creationism while falling pray to the very same kind of fallacies that lie at the heart of that body of thought. Perhaps one of Michael Moore's accolytes on this forum would be kind enough to present the central claim at the heart of "Farenheit 9/11"? At this point - much as when creationists stop pretending that what they are really concerned about is the magnitude of the error bars associated with radiometric dating and concede that they are attempting to establish the literal truth of the creation story in the Bible - we can have a real discussion.

I've always been partial to the "Smoke Crack and Worship Satan" autosig of yore...

Yup. It's amazing how many people equate owning a sedan instead of an SUV or truck with the apex of eco-piousness. Living in a single-family home instead of an apartment is, if anything, at least as "selfish and wasteful" as driving a vehicle with a powerful engine* - but I don't see to many folks agonizing over the poorly insulated resource pit that is their 90 year old-POS craftsman in Ballard. *Subaru outback = 17/city, 23/highway per the EPA. Toyota 4-Runner, 16-city/20-highway. This kind of marginal difference hardly constitutes anything even remotely resembling a "sacrifice," let alone the kind of action that could even come close to justifying the onslaught of eco-hero onanism. This is before even taking driving habits and commuting distances into account. The other thing worth mentioning is that choosing a certain lifestyle out of conviction is one thing, living that way because you can't afford to do anything else and have no choice in the matter is quite another.

That was pretty hillarious. An East-Indian academic channeling Stokely Carmichael while a bunch of simpering "activists" line up for their PC-lashings. "Yo!Yo!Yo! Wassup Rid-wan! Break it down straight Brahmin Style fo' dey asses, like they was some Dalits G! "Get real. You are not mpoverished! You are a white and endowed with all the sh*t your ancestors stole and established through racism. So why are you poor? A personal choice for the time being until you grow-up and join your relatives standing on the back of the dominated? What you been doing for a few centuries now? All that white privilege and structural racism still kept you poor huh .... why? You should be concerned that you are underperforming in a system rigged to keep you empowered and dominant? Start accumulating your inheritance ... it is clear that you have the racist attitude to do so in place already. So stop playing in the traffic and get yours before the pie is not yours anymore. I wrote my post because I know your disease and its pretensions. Not cause I'm a hater or "angry" or any other f**king label you want to attach. I'm calling you and yours on your self-involved sh*t. See it for what it is or go on with your crap. But before I roll let me just let you in on a little secret though: most Black folk know you and hate your duplicitous ass. That is why we don't join your causes. This is especially true when you make a fool of yourself by letting your "pasty ass" hang out. And no, I did not get my analysis from TV ... I got it battling folk like you. And I am still standing. I know none of this will mean a damn thing to you ... but now you know that we know your limitations. Thanks for showcasing the racism we know well. Keep cycling nonetheless, just keep your "pasty ass" and its wanna-be politics to yourself. Ridwan" "Whites used to get dressed-up and attend the lynchings of Black folk for fun. Remember? Lynchings would be held on a Sunday and families (kids included) would even pose to have their pictures taken with the lynched bodies of Blacks. The even produced postcards that captured this family 'fun'. "Yippee! How cool is that dude?" The history of fun in the white imagination obviously has a long and tortuous history. What is consistent is that most white people just can't step outside of whiteness. The fact that fun should not be equated with principled struggle is hard to fathom inside of whiteness. Afterall, the world revolves around whiteness ... everything else is just not normal. Whiteness is such an impressed 'normalcy' that my critique hardly even scratches the "awareness" that is feigned. The naked-bike-ride is just one contemporary example of many other white delusionary moments. Saving Africa from AIDS/DEBT and Africans is a favourite of mine. And the 'prophets' of white ascendancy, Geldof and Bono, exemplify the reach of this particular delusionary moment. "Let's throw a concert to save Africa. Yippeeeeeee ... sounds like fun!!!! Can we get naked too?" Onward because we are still very much oppressed! Ridwan!" Jeah! Jeah! Jeah! MC Ridwan straight droppin it from the anti-Colonial tip. Unnngh! Unngh! Unngh! Straight Up. Check it...

I think you're right about the load distribution. If all three pieces were bomber I'd probably just use another clove for the loop tied to a single piece, but if not I think I'd just tie an overhand or a figure-eight on a bight to adjust the length of the loop and use this arm for the best piece of the three. In super-sketch situations where it'd be worth investing the time in a megacluster, I suppose you could clove one or more of the "arms" to a biner slung on a sliding-X between two pieces... When I was playing around with this rig something around two feet seemed to work most of the time. If you need to belay from a stance that's way to the left or right of the central point of your anchor then you might need more distance between the knots in order to prevent the knot from restricting the equalization.

Don't miss the suicide-vest + scimitar + burqua dance at about 5:30... G4zgURMOZ6k More Farfur. gi-c6lbFGC4 Appropriating a Disney character for these purposes shows that, whatever else, at least the Hamas leadership hasn't lost its sense of irony... Uno Mas.. xEB0SvMzKzg

Yes, and...there's plenty more where that came from. Meet Farfur: 5G_YjKRDNVE "Farfur seems entirely innocent: he looks like Mickey Mouse, speaks in a squeaky voice and his name means “Butterfly” in Arabic. But the fuzzy-faced rodent — the star of a Palestinian children’s show, broadcast on Hamas-controlled television — is pitting Israel and Hamas against each other on a new battlefield: satellite television. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has ordered Hamas to withdraw Farfur’s show, Tomorrow’s Pioneers, on the ground that it is being used to “indoctrinate Palestinian children to violence, hatred and murder”, according to their statement. The perpetually smiling puppet, which routinely urges Palestinian children to support armed resistance, sang in one recent episode: “We will destroy the throne of the tyrants, we will pour the fire of death on them.” In another, Farfur admits to cheating in his exams because “the Jews destroyed my house”, and that he could not find his schoolbooks, buried in the rubble. Hamas refuses to ban Farfur. “This programme tries to relay noble Islamic concepts to the children by teaching them about life from our point of view,” according to Fathi Hamad, the chairman of al-Aqsa TV in Gaza City. The dispute also sheds light on one of Hamas’s newest weapons: its satellite television station is part of a strategy to strengthen its grip on Palestinian society, especially children. In a climate of factional fighting and international sanctions, Hamad said that al-Aqsa television, often known as “Hamas TV”, is part of the movement’s battle for the hearts of the Palestinian people. “It is a way of teaching children about the importance of Islam from a very early age,” he said. The station was modelled on Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV, which is watched across the Arab world. It was launched in January last year, broadcasting from a secret location in Gaza. This year it went to satellite, opening offices in the West Bank and hiring dozens of staff. The programming has evolved from hours of Koranic readings but now includes children’s shows, Islamic MTV, with videos of fighters from its armed wing, and an Islamic fashion show, geared to women, with tips on how to dress modestly and raise obedient children. Some secular Palestinians object to its message. Mustafa Barghouti, the Palestinian Information Minister, who hails from the secular Third Way movement, has appeared several times as a guest on the station. Last week, however, he said that Farfur’s show had crossed the line. “It reflects a mistaken approach to the Palestinian struggle for independence and should be suspended to allow for a review,” he said, but he conceded that the Palestinian Government had no jurisdiction over private stations. Hazem al-Sharawi, Hamas TV’s West Bank manager, said that al-Aqsa had no intention of turning back: “We don’t incite. We present facts. We can’t cut off our children from the reality they live every day. “We need to launch a counter-offensive. We have to stop preaching to ourselves and start broadcasting to the whole world,” he said. " Times of London Article

I personally care more about the preservation of modern poltiical freedoms and liberal values than I do about preserving whatever whims that unfettered democracy gives rise to from time to time that may imperil those values - something that came about through a democratic process in the Reichstag comes to mind here. If the mass of people in a given region use the vote to endorse a species of barbaric fanaticism that's actively hostile Western values and the strongest Western ally, that's their right, but they shouldn't cry when they have to live with the consequences of those choices. The notion that any impulse that's sanctioned by an open vote is sufficient to compel the rest of the world to explicity endorse it, much less subsidize it to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year, is just insane. Hamas is a band of murderous Islamist fanatics who would turn on the West right after they realized their founding ambition of destroying Israel and killing everyone inside it. Their conduct towards their own people should leave no doubt concerning how they'd behave towards the objects of their hatred were they ever to gain the upper hand. The Palestinians tipped their hand when they elected Hamas, and now Hamas has shown the world their true nature, which differs from that of Al-Queda only in the fact that their barbarism and savagery - rather than taking aim at the entire civilized world -is directed at Jews in general and Israel in particular. The sooner the world recognizes this reality, the better. JJ0bWEnW_WU

Cause Effect...

After viewing this video, I predict the era of the monkey-bomber will nigh be upon us. What they lack in fanaticism, ruthlessness, and obedience they surely make up for terms of agility.