American Blog

Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

British artist Bansky has opened The Village Petstore & Charcoal Grill in New York City. It’s supposed to be something about man’s relationship to food, and to fast food in particular. Actually, maybe that’s just the excuse to open a very surreal house of food-related horrors in Greenwich Village.

Installation art that is actually funny, and entertaining. Now there’s an innovation.

Enjoy the exhibits…

Sausages & Hot Dogs

Monkey Watches Monkey Porn

More Here

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

Genetic screening, and then compulsory genetic screening, means that this will probably be the last generation that children like this are born, at least in the west.

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

Also, The Dr Pepper Bailout

By Darryl Mason

The producers of one of the most bizarre tasting soft drinks in the world (outside of Japan), US sugar syrup dealers Dr Pepper must be expected to be held to their promise that if Guns N’ Roses actually did release the long delayed Chinese Democracy album before December 30 this year, everyone in the United States gets a free Dr Pepper.

Chinese Democracy will be released November 23.

Americans lining up at heavily armed FEMA food and water stations and checkpoints will appreciate that free drink, it will remind them of happier, more prosperous times.

But handing out 300 million free drinks will require a government bailout. With this bailout, Americans can say “Hell, at least I got a free Dr Fucking Pepper.”

Chinese Democracy will apparently be a set of records. So rumours that more than 30 new songs are ready for release are apparently true. This puts an interesting perspective on the so-called ‘leaks’ of Guns N’ Roses demos and live songs that have provided endless free publicity through much of this year. At most, only nine new songs have hit the torrents, and I’d guess at least two or three of them won’t be on the final release of Chinese Democracy.

So only a fraction of the album has been leaked in advance, supposedly against the law, and to the outrage of the music industry, while it all helped to make the new Guns N’ Roses (or Axl and a few Roses) album one of the most anticipated releases of the year.

Once again, the supposedly illegal leaking of an unfinished or unreleased album has provided enormous benefit and momentum, free of charge. The record company doesn’t pre-promote the album, they let fans and bloggers do it for free, and with much greater credibility.

Chinese Democracy, when its finally released, will be quickly become one of the most heavily pirated albums in history, and yet it will also sell a few million copies, and propel sales of tens of millions more in paid downloads, DVDs, merchandise, concert tickets. Just like recent albums from Lil’ Wayne, Metallica, The Offspring and now AC/DC.

The mainstream music industry claims to hate music piracy in all forms, and pursues legal action against teenagers for helping to introduce more potential buyers to music they really like, but its a facade. Any smart record label boss knows that carefully crafting a staggered set of releases of “bootlegs”, “demos” and “leaks” to The Pirate Bay (with millions of visitors from around the world, every single day) works to the advantage of the albums they’re releasing. The hardest part of building up an audience for a new album, or a new artist, is getting the exposure. Purposely releasing songs and albums that you claim have been ‘pirated’ will get write ups in the mainstream media, and will be linked to and promoted by the blogstream. This is all free publicity, and when bloggers and music fans can download an album for free, before release, and start talking it up all over chatrooms and comments boards, awareness explodes, for no real cost to the record company. Torrent sharers, bloggers, commenters, do the greater part of getting the name of a new album, or artist, out there, and in front of eyeballs.

Piracy already earns the music industry tens of millions of dollars a year through ‘black marketing’. You will only see more of this, not less.

‘Piracy’ works, and Free is the new currency. Give it away to everybody, sell a special box set, or DVD with non-piratable extras (t-shirts, posters, key rings, memory sticks chock full of videos and photos and interviews and artwork), to 10% of those who got it for free, but still want to buy something collectible.

Before sales, before TV ad campaigns, the most challenging part of a record company’s gig is to get the people to listen to a new album, or to give a new musician or band a decent listening. Stacking The Pirate Bay with an assortment of supposedly illegal torrents achieves both of these aims.

Particularly if all those ‘pirates’ and ‘iilegal‘ torrent downloaders decide the album or band is awesome, and word-of-mouth it to local friends and to international others in the comments pages.

Forget a five star review in Rolling Stone, or buying a spot on the front page of YouTube or MySpace. If you’re an unknown muso and you want to find a worldwide audience, come up with an album, a song, a video, good enough, interesting enough, to make the millions who haunt The Pirate Bay every day want to champion what you’ve done, what you’ve decided to give away for free.

‘Leaking’ a fraction of Chinese Democracy to the Pirate Bay (dozens of torrents of various demos in various compilations, over many months) helped to introduce Axl N’ Roses to millions of fans who were born in the 17 years since Guns N’ Roses last released an original studio album. No doubt, Axl Rose knows this, in the same way Lars Urlich from Metallica finally came to understand that music piracy will not destroy the music business, but will save it. Is in fact already saving it, right now.

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

This is so utterly demented, so anti-human, even Philip K Dick would have rejected it as a realistic weapon of choice in his police state America fiction.

From Taser :

Full area coverage is provided to instantaneously incapacitate multiple personnel within that region.

They’re talking about American civilians in food riots. Or just a pack of the wrong kind of protesters. You know, the ones demanding public trials and death sentences for those who stripped the American economy bare.

Imagine Taser salespeople going back to all the 250,000 cops and security guards across the world who have armed themselves with tasers in the past few years trying to get them to ‘upgrade’ to this appalling horror. Oh, and you can mount ‘Shockwave’ (or many of them, they are after all stackable “like lego blocks,” according to Taser) on a truck, so you can scream into a crowd of, say, very angry people outside a bank trying to get enough of their savings back to buy some water and food, and take out dozens and dozens of people at a time.

They’ll be ready for widespread deployment across the United States by Christmas, promises Taser. Just in time then.

The sales video should be parody, just listen to the Bruckheimer music for a start, but it’s not. This is how Taser is trying to sell the fucker. A must have new toy for the ultra-police state.

You’d imagine, you’d hope, that while there would be some police forces and combat-freaked security units who’d drool all over their shirts to get their hands on this thing, there would be many more who’d be repulsed, disgusted, at what is clearly a highly dangerous weapon designed solely for the electrofrying of dozens of people at a time.

Insurance companies are already very nervous about new taser weapons that deliver 20 second long blasts of tens of thousands of volts. Who’d bet money that the ‘Shockwave’ can be used even moderately safely in, or on, a panicking crowd?

More On This From Steve Watson

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

By Darryl Mason

It’s now a once in a lifetime Global Financial Apocalypse.

A few months ago, a Wall Street player interviewed on late night news laughed at the idea of the Dow Jones dropping below 10,000. When pushed, he admitted that it dropping below 9000 wound be mind-shattering for him, psychological waterboarding for him and his co-workers on America’s most hated and despised street.

So how far does the stock market have to fall before Bush shuts the markets and declares a week long bank holiday? 8000? 7000?

How many times must we hear the ‘experts’ - who were so knowledgable and confident when the Big Lie of Endless Prosperity was successfully covering up the awesomely grim truth about the state of American and global finances - now tell us “We don’t know what’s going to happen next…” ?

What do you mean you don’t know?

It’s your fucking job, pal. That’s why you’ve been allowed to call yourself an Expert. You’re supposed to know. You can’t just sing the praises of deregulation and globalisation and ‘compassionate capitalism’ when everything appears to be pikkity-boo, and then throw up your hands and shrug contemptuously as the the true scope of the staggering deception of your make-nothing-of-value industry is revealed.

There’s a lot of grinding outrage, genuine disgust, and borderline calls, demands for blood-spilling revenge against those who fleeced America, and are now fleecing the UK, Europe, and trying their hand at fleecing Russia and China (less sucessfully, of course). Americans are angry. Far angrier than when they found out that BushCo. had lied them into the War On Iraq.

To save the world from a population decreasing Greater Depression is a mighty task, but to calm the masses will be even harder. And take longer.

There’s a turgid atmosphere of distrust and blind fury soaking through people all over the world today, as they count up their losses, and realise with a shudder that just like their parents, and their grandparents, they too have been royally fucked and swindled.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen next…”

They sure don’t. So why trust any of them when, in a few years time, these same clowns start singing once more that “now we know again!”?

It’s almost beyond belief that nobody has been arrested yet, particularly in Washington, and on Wall Street. How can that Lehman Brothers vampire walk away from the mess he helped create without being forced to give back even some of the many tens of millions of dollars he’s been paid, for doing a completely shithouse job? Why does he get to walk away, to either his $22 million New York apartment, or his $18 million estate, while almost everyone else in the country is limping, wiped out?

The financial scouring Richard Fuld helped to unleash will cost the American taxpayer, and their grandchildren, far so much more than the 9/11 attacks. Probably hundreds of billions of dollars more. Another few thousand American families will become homeless in the next week, and yet Fuld just walks away, troubled only by the presence of much greater security than he had last month.

And if you think Americans are angry, you should see the fury in Germany, in Japan, in Russia. Americans think, ‘Yeah, maybe we got fucked.’ The rest of the world knows it got fucked over, and will be fucked over some more in the days and weeks to come, before The Calm returns. They will want blood spilled.

Americans may be doped up enough on religion, sex and TV enough not to start dragging half billion dollar executives from their beds by flaming torch light, perhaps, but the rest of the world, particularly Asia, will want to see those fuckers pay for their crimes, and the pain they’ve unleashed.

This is a graph of the Dow Jones controlled demolition this past year :

The Economic 9/11 looks even worse when you see it over two years :

Unprecedented ‘World Economy’ Co-Ordinated Rates Cut - But Markets Still Fall

Britain Pours Hundreds Of Billions Into Its Failing Banks

Tokyo Slammed By Near Ten Percent One Day Stock Market Decline

China Tells Australia Its Export Boom Will Continue, China’s Demand For Resources Will Protect Australia From Worst Of World Recession

Where Did All That Money Go? IMF Predicts Losses Of $1.4 Trillion

Americans Retirement Dreams Shattered - Pension Funds ‘Lose’ Estimated $2 Trillion In Days

Rush On Gold Bars And Coins In Germany Leads To Shortage

China Sends A Loud Clear Message To US - Dodgy US Economic Policies Shredded In Chinese State Newspaper

The Global Recession - Asian Stocks Plunge

Forget Near Worthless American Dollar, Russia Says, Why Not Trade In Roubles?

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

By Darryl Mason

Ten per cent of all the people killed by natural disasters in the past five decades died in the first six months of 2008.

Almost a quarter of a million humans were wiped away by ‘natural disasters’ in 180 days.

More than 130 million more have been injured, made homeless, jobless, townless.

That pagan bitch goddess Nature’s War On Humans is really ramping up :

More people died in natural disasters in the first six months of 2008 than in the Asian tsunami of 2004, the United Nations says.

“2008 is a terrible year. There have already been more victims than in the tsunami…”

Cyclone Nargis which hit Burma in May is estimated to have killed around 138,000 people while the earthquake in south-west China’s Sichuan province left a death toll of 87,500.

Record floods in India as well as a devastating hurricane season in the Caribbeans also all contributed to the grim statistics.

The bill is huge. UN estimates claim the economic impact of Nature’s War On Humans this year has already reached about $US50 billion. For the decade back from 2007, insurers coughed up about $US20 billion on average each year due to hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, lava flows, mass flooding and unpredictably sudden mini-cyclones.

A UN report from earlier in the year claimed :

“at least 2.5 million have been killed in natural disasters” in the past 50 years.

More than 1.6 million of those slaughtered have died in the past two decades.

Almost 250,000 have already have already been returned to the earth and the sea this year alone. Ten percent of an estimated total for all human fatalities from natural disasters since the late 1950s have died in the first six months of 2008.

Nature clearly means business. We cannot negotiate with Nature. Nature wants to change our way of life, Nature hates our freedoms. When Nature takes one of our cities, we should take another wilderness area. There’s still a few left. From lush forest to cold empty carpark in a week. This is war.

An earlier warning :

Specialists at the German group recorded about 400 natural catastrophes in the first half of 2008, with overall losses so far estimated at $US50 billion ($52.48 billion).

In 2007, a total of 960 disasters caused about $US82 billion in damage, of which $US30 billion was covered by insurance.

The first half of this year has been marked by “a large number of weather-related natural catastrophes”, the statement said.

Earth To Humans : “I Keeeel You!”

July 2008 : Bitch Goddess Mother Nature Kills 150,000 Humans In ‘400 Attacks’ In Six Months

Human’s War On Nature Must Be Fought And Won, Before The Aliens Invade

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

I was hoping to find a blood-chilling face of a demon in this extraordinary image of a sunspot, any excuse to post it you see, but after a quick close-up search, all I found was just a plain old Sun Wookie instead :

More beautiful detail :

The full NASA image :

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

There’s something demented about the idea that the American economy can only remain strong, and keep growing, if mostly poor Americans can get easy credit to buy cheap crap from China.

Who designed this system? Daffy Duck?

We all know there has to be a better way, but what is it?

From the Washington Post :

For the past two decades, the nation could count on one thing to keep it going when economic times got tough: Consumers kept spending.

Not anymore.

Real spending has been flat or down since June. The cutbacks have been so severe that many economists are predicting that the third quarter will show the first quarterly decline in consumer spending in 17 years — effectively stalling the engine of the American economy.

Spending fuels about 70 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, and right now, consumers’ pain is being felt across socioeconomic lines in ways both big and small.

Unlike in previous years, consumers are grappling with significant inflation, particularly for necessities such as food and fuel, that are eating at their purchasing power. The consumer price index rose 4.3 percent during the second quarter of this year compared with the same period last year, the largest increase since the early 1990s. Meanwhile, real wages are decreasing and the unemployment rate has been rising since the summer to 6.1 percent in August, a five-year high.

The stats in the rapid falloff of American spending are absolutely stunning. The worse the news of the financial crisis, the quicker Americans stop spending, which, according to the New York Times virtually guarantees “the economic situation will get worse before it gets better” :

Recent figures from companies, and interviews across the country, show that automobile sales are plummeting, airline traffic is dropping, restaurant chains are struggling to fill tables, customers are sparse in stores.

When the final tally is in, consumer spending for the quarter just ended will almost certainly shrink, the first quarterly decline in nearly two decades. Many economists, who began the third quarter expecting modest growth, now believe the cutbacks are so severe that the overall economy did not expand either, and they warn that a consumer-led recession could be more severe than the relatively mild one earlier this decade.

“The last few days have devastated the American consumer,” said Walter Loeb, president of Loeb Associates, a consultancy, who said he worried that the constant drumbeat of negative news about the economy was becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. “They all feel poor.”

Consumer spending, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of the economy, grew modestly earlier in the year but fell in July and August on an annualized rate. When the government releases quarterly numbers this month, they are expected to show that consumer spending shrank 3 percent or more. That would be the first quarterly decline since 1990, ahead of the 1991 recession, and the steepest since 1981.

….household net worth, which greases spending, fell $6 trillion over the last year, with $1 trillion of that in just the last four weeks…

How long will it be before the non-spenders start getting blamed for the continuance of the US economic crisis? By the tone of some of the stories popping up in the mainstream media, it’s already begun.
I’d expect there will be a concerted mainstream media effort to make Americans feel guilty about blowing their dwindling supply of cash on things like food and rent, instead of a $2000 television. What else are they going to do? Praise poor Americans for taking better care of their cash while advertising revenue for the mainstream media plummets?

By the way, how’s your food garden going? It’s never too late to get planting, inside and out.

There’s a great story here on the rise of ‘free veggie gardens’ popping up by the sides of roads in inner suburban Sydney. This needs to happen in every village, town and city in Australia, and across America. It sucks being poor, it’s absolutely shithouse owing a lot of money you can’t pay back, but it’s a lot easier to deal with all that when you’re eating fresh, good quality meals. Particularly ones that cost next to nothing, outside of basic gardening skills and a little time.

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

Most Americans have no idea that indigenous people used plentiful acorns to make flour for thousands of years. Most don’t even know you can use acorns to make flour. This post, on Boing Boing, explaining how to do it, has sparked some good ideas from commenters :

I’ve been thinking that we need a new “American Fusion” cuisine that would take the sustainable, native plants that grow wild all around us and use them with spices and tastes from around the world. Traditional acorn mush doesn’t sound so appealing as a staple food, but add some curry powders or ginger and soy sauce, or some paprika, etc. and you would get a fusion cuisine that uses much less energy and resources than the current staples we rely on (wheat, etc.)

Take just a few of those abandoned houses in a growing number of suburbs in every American state, clear the buildings and foundations and round up some bored locals to establish Food Parks, filled with edible herbs, nut trees, fruit trees and ‘weeds’. Let loose some chickens to take care of the bugs, then eat them, too.

Those who can afford it can buy all their food pre-prepared from the supermarkets, those who don’t have the dollars can gather a meal, or at least the makings of one, from a local food park.

In a couple of generations, people are going to look back at these first years of the 21st century and shake their heads in disbelief that their grandparents actually lived in suburbs where nothing edible grew, outside of a few lemon trees. Our great-grandparents would be ashamed that we do so little, know so little, about feeding ourselves for free.

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

One of the better, more insightful commentaries on the insanity of ‘Casino Socialism’ by journalist Pepe Escobar.

Pepe Escobar is a regular contributor to the Asia Times, here’s a direct link to his archive with his latest stories. Escobar is a fearless, brutally honest reporter on the Iraq & Afghanistan wars, which is why your local city newspapers don’t carry his columns.

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

A science fiction writer complains about how hard it is to write SF set in the next decade or two, and that a new novel is almost completely out of date just as it’s about to be published. The rate of change in the modern world, in technology and reality altering events, is too quick, too sudden, too hard to keep up with, let alone get ahead of.

In a decade where nobody predicted the near instant rise of a new method of communication - via text-messaging - and where the Greater Depression began with all but a few days warning (if you read or watch only the mainstream media), well, who knows what the fuck will happen next month, let alone in 2015?

Stross’s complaints may provide an argument for more direct writer to consumer distribution, but it also suggests that speculative fiction somehow fails unless it is predictive of an actual possible future. Yesterday’s speculative fiction may be today’s alternate history…

Isn’t all science fiction alternative history, future histories at that, anyway?

A commenter at iO9 makes a short, very relevant point :

When did sci fi become about being right?

It never did. As Philip K Dick said, the Idea is King.

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

Futurologist Richard Watson makes a few predictions.

But be warned, he has absolutely nothing to say about robot hookers.

In short :

Wal-Mart, Apple, Google, Microsoft get into the banking business, all electronic payments.

Artificial intelligence helps you find the best loans and insurance policies.

Cash transactions will decrease dramatically by 2020, to only 10% of current levels.

Then a global pandemic will make the masses paranoid about touching paper or plastic notes handled by others. So it’s goodbye to that. We will pay and be paid by cell phones and ID chips under the skin of our forearms. So very, very hackable.

And more here :

…by 2050 there won’t be DVDs, or national currencies, or a monarchy, or a unified Belgium, but we might well have a ladder into space, robotic policemen and diets based on our individual genome.

…the environment will remain vitally important, but climate change won’t be the only game in town - the approach of peak oil, peak coal, peak gas, peak water, peak uranium and even peak people (a severe shortage of workers in many parts of the world) will also have an impact, and require a profound shift towards sustainability.

…privacy will be dead or dying….but we may get smarter at making decisions, because our connectivity will allow instant polling of a crowd whose wisdom is nearly always greater than any single member’s.

What if they’re all idiots? What then?

…self-replicating machines, with intelligence equal to or greater than our own. We might be able to download not only our memories but also our consciousness into such a machine, and live for ever inside it.

That sounds terrible. Floating around in your own memories for all eternity, unable to end it all. It would be much better to be able to iBrain the stored memories of people who lived lives you wished you had, or had experiences you’re interested in exploring.

But anyway, I think our consciousness and memories still have many surprises left for those who think they can copy and store it like a digital movie file. They haven’t even been able to confirm, yet, that human memory is stored within our DNA. And passed on, deep through the generations.

So professional futurologists just read and watch lots of science fiction and then pick and choose the best ideas they’ve jotted down from all those books and TV shows. Right?

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

Funny, because it’s true :

What? You don’t want riot cops with a sense of humor?

Denver’s police union is facing criticism for printing a commemorative T-shirt that makes light of the use of violence by police, particularly in the wake of 154 arrests during the week of Democratic National Convention this past August.

“We get up early, to beat the crowds,” the shirt reads, followed by “2008 DNC.” The words flank a grinning police officer holding a baton and wearing a hat with a crossed-out number “68,” presumably making reference to activist organization Recreate 68, which staged several anti-war demonstrations during the convention.

The Law Enforcement Code of Ethics from the Denver Police Department Operations Manual reads :

‘As a Law Enforcement Officer, my fundamental duty is to serve mankind, to safeguard lives and property, to protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation, and the peaceful against violence or disorder; and to respect the Constitutional rights of all men to liberty, equality and justice.’

They printed 2000 t-shirts, gave them away to police officers, are reporting “strong sales” and no complaints.

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Written by Michael Vass

There are several causes that I endorse and advocate for, as long-term readers may be aware of. From time to time I like to take the opportunity to mention them and to try to raise funds for them. Today I will do so again.

This time this is a cause closer to home than say Darfur. For those in the central New York State area I invite you to come to, or donate for (even if you are not in New York State or the United States), the 1st Annual Memorial Pig Roast for Madden A. Cordero at Tom’s Tavern in Hagaman New York on October 18th – donation for admission are $10 but you can give more if you want – starting at noon until.

Madden Cordero sadly lived a short life, but was loved greatly in his time here. He had Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome which is a congenital disorder that can be found while the child is in the womb. Sadly, as in this case, it was not. Because this syndrome can be easily missed those born with the affliction often die within the first few days or months, but with quick treatment they can survive. Even with the required surgeries a child with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome will require life long medication and regular check-ups with heart doctors.

In honor of Madden this pig roast will raise money to be donated to the Ronald McDonald House located in Albany.

Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) has been around for 35 years. The purpose of RMHC is to help children and their families around the world. The RMHC is more than just toys and games for children as many of us might assume. They provide services that families and children with serious conditions require and could never be expected to be prepared for.

RMHC provided the Cordero family a place to stay, which was 40 minutes away from their home, and close to the hospital in Albany where Madden was being treated. They had the ability to sleep, shower, research the internet on the condition afflicting their child, and a shuttle to and from the hospital – allowing them quick and easy access to the hospital and their child without the worry and cost of taxis, traffic jams, bad directions, fatigue driving, or any other potential delay and complication.

Like at all Ronald McDonald Houses, the only thing families are asked it to provide is a donation, maybe $7/day, if the family can afford it while they stay at the House. Like for the Cordero family this was a simple bit of help in a time of turmoil emotion and difficulty.

While I would hope that no family would ever have to endure any problems in their child’s life, Ronald McDonald House Charities helps those that do have to encounter these unexpected and extreme situations.

The 1st Annual Memorial Pig Roast for Madden A. Cordero will provide food and some drinks for all those that come and make a $10 donation. 100% of the donations, plus the cost of the event will be given to the Ronald McDonald House of Albany.

There will be a 50/50 raffle, and prizes donated by corporations in the area are planned to also be raffled. Again all monies raised will be given 100% directly to the RMHC.

If you would like to donate $10, or more to this cause please contact Mr. Gregg Cordero at 607–797–3783 for further details.

If you own a business and would like to donate a product or service to be raffled to raise funds for Ronald McDonald House of Albany you can also contact Mr. Cordero at the above number.

I know that my readers are compassionate people. As such I will donate all profits from the sale of any item found at my online store, for the month of October, to this Memorial and RMHC. In addition, all donations made to M V Consulting and/or all of its blogs and sites for the month of October will be donated as well. And finally I expect to be at this event, and will personally be making a donation as well.

I thank you for your attention in this matter, and your generosity as well.

Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

Funny, because it’s true :

What? You don’t want riot cops with a sense of humor?

Denver’s police union is facing criticism for printing a commemorative T-shirt that makes light of the use of violence by police, particularly in the wake of 154 arrests during the week of Democratic National Convention this past August.

“We get up early, to beat the crowds,” the shirt reads, followed by “2008 DNC.” The words flank a grinning police officer holding a baton and wearing a hat with a crossed-out number “68,” presumably making reference to activist organization Recreate 68, which staged several anti-war demonstrations during the convention.

The Law Enforcement Code of Ethics from the Denver Police Department Operations Manual reads :

‘As a Law Enforcement Officer, my fundamental duty is to serve mankind, to safeguard lives and property, to protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation, and the peaceful against violence or disorder; and to respect the Constitutional rights of all men to liberty, equality and justice.’

They printed 2000 t-shirts, gave them away to police officers, are reporting “strong sales” and no complaints.

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Written by Michael Vass

You have to be impressed by the Congressional Democrats. They have balls. Not brains, just balls. Because that is the only way they can make the claims they do about the bailout deal.

In listening to the Democrats, Barney Frank in particular you would think that the Republicans are staging a massive political coup. That the Republicans are the only reason why the bailout deal that was voted on today failed was their votes. That this is all about politics and the upcoming election.

But if you stop listening to the polispeak in Congress and look at the vote numbers and you see another picture.

The vote was 228 – 205 against the deal. That includes 94 Democrats, which could have easily made the difference and passed the deal no matter what the Republicans did. But they chose to go against their Party and Treasury Secretary Paulson, and President Bush.

Why? Because the deal was horrible. Because there is no confidence in the deal. Because the rush to pass the deal makes you wonder what is in it. Like the fact that a previous version included a stipulation that if this bailout actually got any money repaid that money would not go to taxpayers but would fund a Democratic initiative called ACORN (which has federal problems currently).

Or how about the fact that I have yet heard how the public, that will be buying these assets (bad mortgage loans) could or will get the money back. We will spend $10,000 each, out of our pockets, and if this ever makes break-even or profit there has been no discussion how we get that $10,000 back in our pockets directly. And under the current plans you never will. That is not a political problem, that is just a bad deal.

If this were as political as Democrats would like it to be, then this bad deal would have passed, Senator Obama would have the credit for it (or at least Senator McCain would have the blame) and they would use this to win the election. That didn’t happen.

If this were political, Republicans could have voted for this deal claimed it was because of Senator McCain’s influence and used that to win the election. It’s just that simple.

But Senator McCain, the Republicans, and 94 Democrats are not being political. They are doing their jobs. They are trying to structure a deal that works for taxpayers like you and me. They want to answer (I hope) the question of how the money comes back to you and me, if it ever makes money.

If we want to really be political about this, we can ask why Barney Frank and Chris Dodd could not see the impending problem as late as July of this year yet they are the heads of the Banking and Finance Committees in Congress. They were informed by supposedly brilliant minds on the exact status of the problem, and they crafted laws and regulations to control what happened. They also made enormous amounts of money from the very people they were (supposedly) watching.

Look, here is the reality. Senator Obama and McCain are Senators. One of them will be the next President. They are effectively the leaders of their respective Parties. They need to get into this fray (well at least Obama does as McCian is) and do their jobs. They need to forge a deal, stand together and say they endorse the deal. At that point it will have to pass. And to forge the deal they need to answer the question that I feel is most important, how I get my money back.

Everything that is short of this is polispeak. Every moment that Obama avoids this problem, every moment that they don’t answer the key question, every moment we have no deal endangers America and makes our near-term future that more bleak. And no matter how many Democrats blame Republicans, or how many deny their failure to do their jobs, the outcome remains the same.

Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

The cream of the Democrats and Republicans hold stock portfolios worth tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars. So it’s no surprise they’re very happy The Big Bailout is apparently going ahead. Their money is safe. How about yours?

They appear to be the ONLY people in America laughing their faces off about this today.

A Goldman Sachs discussion group is filled with dread about what comes next :

“PEOPLE ARE HORRENDOUSLY PISSED ALL OVER THE INTERNET

THERE IS DEFFINATE A SEVERE BACKLASH COMING…. QUESTION IS HOW BIG OF A BACKLASH

i have never seen the internet this pissed before and i have been online since 1992″

“People are extremely pissed off and alot of them. Personally, Im not sure what to believe anymore.”
“don’t underestimate the hillbillies when they get pissed off….. they own most of the guns in the country”

“people need to start canceling their insurance policy. then they need to stop paying their property taxes. then take more action if needed.”

Michael Rivero proposes a totally legal, but devastating, act of mass dissent against the state :

The instant this bailout passes I am taking all of my money out of the bank in protest.

THIS IS A PERFECTLY LEGAL FORM OF PROTEST. It is, after all, YOUR money. It is not a crime to take it back from the bankers who just now lobbied Congress into screwing you for $700 billion. The US Government cannot legally stop you from taking your money out of the bank, nor can they block you from recommending to your friends that they take their money out of the bank.

Yes, the banks just make money out of thin air for the loans that got then into trouble, but under the current laws, they need REAL deposits of REAL money on which to base their loans of created credit. For every $1000 withdrawn from an account, the bank has to call back in $10,000 in loans. It won’t take very many people deciding to empty their accounts to get the notice of the bankers and politicians, and of course, once it gets going, people will empty their accounts rather than risk being left empty-handed.

Some Republicans think the nationalisation of American banks and financial institutions signals the start of Martial Law In America :

And so for the first time in a century, the US Army will deploy armed combat teams permanently on American soil, starting October 1. It will be an “enduring mission”. They call it ‘Brigade Homeland’ :

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.

Civil Unrest and Crowd Control will clearly be the mostly likely crisis they’ll respond to. Luckily, they will have a “non-lethal package” to “restore normalcy” :

They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”

What has been tested in Iraq, will be fully operational for use against Americans to “restore normalcy” :

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.

“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds … it put me on my knees in seconds.”

Traffic stoppers, road blocks, and Tasers, too.

American soldiers tasering American civilians….

They will be welcomed at natural disasters and massive train wrecks or more inexplicable skyscraper collapses, but not so much at massive protests in the streets of Washington and New York.

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

Video tells truth, unvarnished, unspun :

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The boom :

And then the bust :

More at Grods

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Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

If you’re having trouble comprehending what else Americans could spend $700 billion on, instead of propping up an epically failed financial system, you can take CNN’s advice and think of it as being worth the equivalent of 2000 McDonalds hot apple pies for every man, woman and child in the land, or you can consider these far more interesting spending comparisons from Vanity Fair :

-Preventing 200 million foreclosures
-Paying for Social Security for next 40 years

-Providing healthcare for all Americans

-Buying Apple, Google, Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway

-Throwing 100,000 lavish Las Vegas birthday parties with appearances by the Rolling Stones

-Buying 10,000 pounds of LSD, the most expensive thing in the world, per pound

-Buying the publishing and music industries wholesale

-Supplying at least two AK-47’s per person, including children (at about $1,000 a pop on the black market)

More Here

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