new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/health/research/01risk.html
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: April 1, 2008
People with a large pot belly in midlife are at increased risk for dementia in their later years, according to a new study, and the bigger the belly the higher the risk.
People should be concerned not only about weight, but about where they carry it,” said Rachel A. Whitmer, the study’s lead author and a research scientist at the research division of Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif. “And midlife is not too early to start thinking about it.”
It is well known that fat around the waist, even in people who are not overweight, is a significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, but this is the first finding of an association with dementia.
The study, which appeared online last week in Neurology, measured the sagittal abdominal diameter, or S.A.D. (in laymen’s terms, how far the pot belly sticks out), of 6,583 men and women in their 40s from 1964 to 1973, then looked at their records an average of 36 years later, when they found 1,049 dementia cases.
Compared with those in the lowest one-fifth in S.A.D., those in the highest one-fifth were almost three times as likely to have dementia. Even among people of normal weight, those with an S.A.D. above 9.8 inches — which corresponds roughly to a 40-inch waist — were almost twice as likely to be demented as those with the smallest bellies. The association held after controlling for high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol and other variables.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Monday, February 4, 2008
HOPEFULLY MICHAEL VICK WILL BE MURDERED IN PRISON
HERE IS WHY....
Given Reprieve, N.F.L. Star’s Dogs Find Kindness
Garrett Davis for The New York Times
By JULIET MACUR
Published: February 2, 2008
KANAB, Utah — A quick survey of Georgia, a caramel-colored pit bull mix with cropped ears and soulful brown eyes, offers a road map to a difficult life. Her tongue juts from the left side of her mouth because her jaw, once broken, healed at an awkward angle. Her tail zigzags.
Garrett Davis for The New York Times
McKenzie Garcia, a caregiver at the Best Friends sanctuary, with Squeaker.
Scars from puncture wounds on her face, legs and torso reveal that she was a fighter. Her misshapen, dangling teats show that she might have been such a successful, vicious competitor that she was forcibly bred, her new handlers suspect, again and again.
But there is one haunting sign that Georgia might have endured the most abuse of any of the 47 surviving pit bulls seized last April from the property of the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback AND DOG MURDERING MONSTER Michael Vick in connection with an illegal dogfighting ring.
Georgia has no teeth. All 42 of them were pried from her mouth, most likely to make certain she could not harm male dogs during forced breeding.
Her caregivers here at the Best Friends Animal Society sanctuary, the new home for 22 of THE MONSTER Mr. Vick’s former dogs, are less concerned with her physical wounds than her emotional ones. They wonder why she barks incessantly at her doghouse and what makes her roll her toys so obsessively that her nose is rubbed raw.
“I’m worried most about Georgia,” said the Best Friends veterinarian Dr. Frank McMillan, an expert on the emotional health of animals, who edited the textbook “Mental Health and Well-Being in Animals.” “You don’t have the luxury of asking her, or any of these animals: ‘What happened to you in your past life? How can we stop you from hurting?’
“So here we are left with figuring out how to bring joy to her life,” he said of Georgia, known to lick the face of anyone who comes near. “We want to offset the unpleasant memories that dwell in her brain.”
THE MONSTER Mr. Vick, once the highest-paid player in the N.F.L., is serving a 23-month sentence in a federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan., for bankrolling his Bad Newz Kennels dogfighting operation and helping execute dogs that were not good fighters. Dogs were electrocuted, hanged, drowned, shot or slammed to the ground, according to court records. Two mass graves with the remains of eight pit bulls were found on Mr. Vick’s property in rural Virginia. HOPEFULLY, MR. VICK WILL BE MURDERED WHILE IN PRISON.
Pit bulls seized from illegal fighting operations are usually euthanized after becoming property of the government. The Humane Society of the United States and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recommended that Mr. Vick’s dogs be euthanized, but many animal rescue organizations urged the prosecutors to let the dogs live.
The government agreed to give them a second chance after Mr. Vick agreed to pay $928,073 for evaluation and care of all the dogs. They were seen by animal experts, who named the dogs, and were eventually dispersed to eight rescue organizations for adoption, rehabilitation or lifetime care in sanctuaries, where they have been neutered. Only one of the Vick dogs was euthanized for aggression against people.
Best Friends, which is caring for more dogs than any other organization, received about $389,000. Many of their dogs are expected to be adopted after they are rehabilitated and matched with the right families. THE MONSTER Vick’s 25 other dogs are in foster care all over the country.
“This is a great opportunity to highlight the fact that the victims in the case are the animals themselves,” said Rebecca J. Huss, a Valparaiso University law professor, animal law expert and court-appointed guardian for Vick’s dogs.
Bay Area Doglovers Responsible About Pitbulls, or BAD RAP, which helped evaluate the dogs, has 10 in foster care. Donna Reynolds, the group’s executive director, said, “There are dogs that are able to handle and survive the past with a good attitude, then ones that are going to be shut down and not take it anymore.
“Best Friends got the dogs that pretty much aren’t going to do so well,” she added, noting that those dogs included the known fighters and THE MONSTER Mr. Vick’s champion pit bull, Lucas, who, by court order, will live out his days at the sanctuary.
Once Abused, Now Pampered
Life at Best Friends is nothing like it was at THE MONSTROUS CONDITIONS AT THE NOT-HUMAN Mr. Vick’s property on Moonlight Road in Smithfield, Va., where many of the dogs were found chained to buried car axles. They slept on concrete. Their water, if any, was kept in algae-covered bowls. Most were underfed. Some showed recent lacerations.
WHILE THE MONSTER VICK LAUGHED WITH HIS "BUDDIES" ABOUT IT ALL
Here, they live in a 3,700-acre sanctuary that is covered by juniper trees and sagebrush, and surrounded by canyons and red-rock formations. They have food called Canine Caviar, squeaky toys, fluffy beds and four full-time caregivers. The caregiver on the night shift curls up with the dogs for naps.
They are assigned to an area of the sanctuary called Dogtown Heights, what Best Friends calls a gated community. Vick’s dogs have their own building with heated floors, sound-absorbing barriers and skylights. Each has an individual dog run because, for now, the dogs must remain isolated, for safety’s sake.
Little Red is a tiny rust-colored female whose teeth were filed, most likely because she was bait for the Bad Newz fighters. Handlers cannot explain why loud noises make her jumpy.
Cherry, a black-and-white male, has what seems to be chemical burns on his back. His file at Best Friends says he loves car rides and having his backside rubbed. But like many of Mr. Vick’s pit bulls, he is petrified of new situations and new people.
Oscar cowers in the corner of his run when strangers arrive. Shadow runs in circles. Black Bear pants so heavily that he seems on the verge of hyperventilation.
All but one of the Vick dogs at Best Friends wear green collars, signaling that they are good with people. But Meryl, who arrived with a rap sheet, wears a red collar.
She was aggressive toward the veterinary staff at a previous shelter. When Best Friends evaluated her in November, she lunged at a veterinary technician, snapping at him three times. By court order, she must stay at Best Friends forever.
THE MONSTER Mr. Vick paid $18,275 for the lifetime care of each of his dogs here but one.
THINKING THIS WOULD BE ENOUGH TO STOP HIM FROM SERVING TIME IN PRISON, WHERE HOPEFULLY, HE WILL BE MURDERED WITH THE SAME BRUTALITY HE SHOWED THESE DOGS.
Denzel was deemed highly adoptable, so his fee was only $5,000.
The actual cost for personnel and medical staff to care for the dogs, said Best Friends officials, is much higher at the sanctuary, a no-kill, nonprofit facility for 2,000 animals. For example, Denzel needed a blood transfusion to treat a tick-borne virus. Donations must make up the difference.
Bred to Be Friendly
John Garcia, the assistant dog care manager of Dogtown, which houses about 500 dogs, said pit bulls that are withdrawn or aggressive toward humans break his heart because they are bred to be people-friendly. “With most of these dogs, even Meryl, their actions are based on fear,” said Mr. Garcia, who communicates with the dogs in soothing baby talk. “The biggest job we have with these guys is teaching them that it’s O.K. to trust people. It may take months or years, but we’re very stubborn. We won’t give up on them.”
Because the dogs are still adjusting to their surroundings, it is difficult to predict how many of them will become adoptable. They arrived Jan. 2 from Richmond, Va., on a chartered airplane, stressed after eight months in shelters. In initial evaluations last September, many lay flat and looked frightened. Now, many respond to caregivers by wagging their tails and giving sloppy kisses.
“They have improved by light-years,” Mr. Garcia said, adding that it would take patience and a lot of time for these dogs to be happy and safe in an adoptive home.
Caregivers walk the dogs several times a day and spend time in their kennels, praising and caressing them. It is progress when a dog like Cherry does not need to be carried, because he is afraid to walk on a leash. It is monumental when Shadow approaches them instead of retreating.
“We want to get them to understand that being around people isn’t necessarily a bad thing; that we won’t hurt them,” Mr. Garcia said. “The worst thing we could do is push them too hard, too fast.”
Mr. Garcia, an expert in working with aggressive dogs, said getting some of these pit bulls accustomed to other dogs would be the toughest task. Initially, 10 were evaluated as aggressive toward other dogs.
So far, there has been only one fight. Layla was put accidentally into the same dog run as Ray. She immediately attacked, biting his shoulder in a death grip.
One of their main caregivers, Carissa Hendrick, pried Layla’s jaws from Ray. She said it would take a lot of positive reinforcement to teach these dogs to coexist.
There’s just so much we don’t know about them, and that’s frustrating,” Ms. Hendrick said, adding that she wished she could talk to the men involved in THE MONSTER Mr. Vick’s MONSTROUS operation to find out what these dogs have endured. “Oh, Ellen Belly, what happened to you?” AT THE HANDS OF MONSTER VICK AND HIS MONSTROUS FRIENDS.
Ellen arrived at Best Friends overweight, looking more like a sausage than a fighter. She was a breeding dog but had spent time in the ring. One side of her face droops from nerve damage, but she is still affectionate and loves to offer her belly for rubs.
Lucas was Vick’s champion, a 65-pound muscular brown dog with a face mottled with dark scars. He is so friendly and confident that his trainers suspect he was pampered.
“I bet you ate steak every day, didn’t you, Lucas?” the caregiver McKenzie Garcia, who is married to John, said. “I bet they took care of you because you made them money.”
Every Vick dog here has a Personalized Emotional Rehabilitation Plan. Caregivers rate each dog in several categories. How fearful was Little Red today? How confident was Black Bear? How much did Meryl enjoy life?
Recording the dogs’ progress will help Dr. McMillan, the veterinarian, track their well-being. “DogTown,” on the National Geographic Channel, also plans to follow the progress of several of Mr. Vick’s dogs, including Georgia.
“The successful rehab rate for these kinds of dogs is unknown because nobody has ever studied it until now,” Dr. McMillan said. “You might see an incredibly friendly dog, but does that dog’s personality change over several weeks, over several months, after psychological trauma? Are they hard-wired to be aggressive, or can they change? What’s the best way to work with them?”
The plan is to determine how to keep these dogs happy, even if a real home is not in their future.
Coping With Past Trauma
Whether Georgia will find happiness is a big question. Dr. McMillan said she exhibited behavior that might be coping mechanisms for past trauma.
Georgia gnaws on her doghouse. She flipped her bed over so much that her handlers removed it. When toys are around, she often ignores people. Georgia, who was called Jane at Bad Newz Kennels, was sold to THE MONSTER Mr. Vick in 2001 to help start his MONSTROUS dogfighting AND DOG TORTURING business. She is thought to be his oldest dog, but her handlers can only guess that she is about 7. Dogs’ ages are usually estimated by examining their teeth, but she has none.
Having those teeth extracted, Dr. McMillan and other vets said, must have been excruciating.
BUT THE MONSTER VICK DID IT ANYWAY BECAUSE HE ISN'T HUMAN AND ONLY HUMANS COULD UNDERSTAND THE HORROR OF THIS.
Even with medication, dogs are in pain after losing one tooth, which may take more than an hour of digging, prying and leveling to pull.
“These dogs have been beaten and starved and tortured, BY THE MONSTER VICK AND HIS MONSTER FRIENDS and they have every reason not to trust us,” Mr. Garcia said as Georgia crawled onto his lap, melted into him for an afternoon nap and began to snore. “But deep down, they love us and still want to be with us. It is amazing how resilient they are.”
PLEASE GOD, IF YOU ALLOWED THIS TO HAPPEN, THEN ALLOW FOR THE BRUTAL TORTURE AND MURDER OF THE MONSTER MICHAEL VICK IN PRISON.
Given Reprieve, N.F.L. Star’s Dogs Find Kindness
Garrett Davis for The New York Times
By JULIET MACUR
Published: February 2, 2008
KANAB, Utah — A quick survey of Georgia, a caramel-colored pit bull mix with cropped ears and soulful brown eyes, offers a road map to a difficult life. Her tongue juts from the left side of her mouth because her jaw, once broken, healed at an awkward angle. Her tail zigzags.
Garrett Davis for The New York Times
McKenzie Garcia, a caregiver at the Best Friends sanctuary, with Squeaker.
Scars from puncture wounds on her face, legs and torso reveal that she was a fighter. Her misshapen, dangling teats show that she might have been such a successful, vicious competitor that she was forcibly bred, her new handlers suspect, again and again.
But there is one haunting sign that Georgia might have endured the most abuse of any of the 47 surviving pit bulls seized last April from the property of the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback AND DOG MURDERING MONSTER Michael Vick in connection with an illegal dogfighting ring.
Georgia has no teeth. All 42 of them were pried from her mouth, most likely to make certain she could not harm male dogs during forced breeding.
Her caregivers here at the Best Friends Animal Society sanctuary, the new home for 22 of THE MONSTER Mr. Vick’s former dogs, are less concerned with her physical wounds than her emotional ones. They wonder why she barks incessantly at her doghouse and what makes her roll her toys so obsessively that her nose is rubbed raw.
“I’m worried most about Georgia,” said the Best Friends veterinarian Dr. Frank McMillan, an expert on the emotional health of animals, who edited the textbook “Mental Health and Well-Being in Animals.” “You don’t have the luxury of asking her, or any of these animals: ‘What happened to you in your past life? How can we stop you from hurting?’
“So here we are left with figuring out how to bring joy to her life,” he said of Georgia, known to lick the face of anyone who comes near. “We want to offset the unpleasant memories that dwell in her brain.”
THE MONSTER Mr. Vick, once the highest-paid player in the N.F.L., is serving a 23-month sentence in a federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan., for bankrolling his Bad Newz Kennels dogfighting operation and helping execute dogs that were not good fighters. Dogs were electrocuted, hanged, drowned, shot or slammed to the ground, according to court records. Two mass graves with the remains of eight pit bulls were found on Mr. Vick’s property in rural Virginia. HOPEFULLY, MR. VICK WILL BE MURDERED WHILE IN PRISON.
Pit bulls seized from illegal fighting operations are usually euthanized after becoming property of the government. The Humane Society of the United States and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recommended that Mr. Vick’s dogs be euthanized, but many animal rescue organizations urged the prosecutors to let the dogs live.
The government agreed to give them a second chance after Mr. Vick agreed to pay $928,073 for evaluation and care of all the dogs. They were seen by animal experts, who named the dogs, and were eventually dispersed to eight rescue organizations for adoption, rehabilitation or lifetime care in sanctuaries, where they have been neutered. Only one of the Vick dogs was euthanized for aggression against people.
Best Friends, which is caring for more dogs than any other organization, received about $389,000. Many of their dogs are expected to be adopted after they are rehabilitated and matched with the right families. THE MONSTER Vick’s 25 other dogs are in foster care all over the country.
“This is a great opportunity to highlight the fact that the victims in the case are the animals themselves,” said Rebecca J. Huss, a Valparaiso University law professor, animal law expert and court-appointed guardian for Vick’s dogs.
Bay Area Doglovers Responsible About Pitbulls, or BAD RAP, which helped evaluate the dogs, has 10 in foster care. Donna Reynolds, the group’s executive director, said, “There are dogs that are able to handle and survive the past with a good attitude, then ones that are going to be shut down and not take it anymore.
“Best Friends got the dogs that pretty much aren’t going to do so well,” she added, noting that those dogs included the known fighters and THE MONSTER Mr. Vick’s champion pit bull, Lucas, who, by court order, will live out his days at the sanctuary.
Once Abused, Now Pampered
Life at Best Friends is nothing like it was at THE MONSTROUS CONDITIONS AT THE NOT-HUMAN Mr. Vick’s property on Moonlight Road in Smithfield, Va., where many of the dogs were found chained to buried car axles. They slept on concrete. Their water, if any, was kept in algae-covered bowls. Most were underfed. Some showed recent lacerations.
WHILE THE MONSTER VICK LAUGHED WITH HIS "BUDDIES" ABOUT IT ALL
Here, they live in a 3,700-acre sanctuary that is covered by juniper trees and sagebrush, and surrounded by canyons and red-rock formations. They have food called Canine Caviar, squeaky toys, fluffy beds and four full-time caregivers. The caregiver on the night shift curls up with the dogs for naps.
They are assigned to an area of the sanctuary called Dogtown Heights, what Best Friends calls a gated community. Vick’s dogs have their own building with heated floors, sound-absorbing barriers and skylights. Each has an individual dog run because, for now, the dogs must remain isolated, for safety’s sake.
Little Red is a tiny rust-colored female whose teeth were filed, most likely because she was bait for the Bad Newz fighters. Handlers cannot explain why loud noises make her jumpy.
Cherry, a black-and-white male, has what seems to be chemical burns on his back. His file at Best Friends says he loves car rides and having his backside rubbed. But like many of Mr. Vick’s pit bulls, he is petrified of new situations and new people.
Oscar cowers in the corner of his run when strangers arrive. Shadow runs in circles. Black Bear pants so heavily that he seems on the verge of hyperventilation.
All but one of the Vick dogs at Best Friends wear green collars, signaling that they are good with people. But Meryl, who arrived with a rap sheet, wears a red collar.
She was aggressive toward the veterinary staff at a previous shelter. When Best Friends evaluated her in November, she lunged at a veterinary technician, snapping at him three times. By court order, she must stay at Best Friends forever.
THE MONSTER Mr. Vick paid $18,275 for the lifetime care of each of his dogs here but one.
THINKING THIS WOULD BE ENOUGH TO STOP HIM FROM SERVING TIME IN PRISON, WHERE HOPEFULLY, HE WILL BE MURDERED WITH THE SAME BRUTALITY HE SHOWED THESE DOGS.
Denzel was deemed highly adoptable, so his fee was only $5,000.
The actual cost for personnel and medical staff to care for the dogs, said Best Friends officials, is much higher at the sanctuary, a no-kill, nonprofit facility for 2,000 animals. For example, Denzel needed a blood transfusion to treat a tick-borne virus. Donations must make up the difference.
Bred to Be Friendly
John Garcia, the assistant dog care manager of Dogtown, which houses about 500 dogs, said pit bulls that are withdrawn or aggressive toward humans break his heart because they are bred to be people-friendly. “With most of these dogs, even Meryl, their actions are based on fear,” said Mr. Garcia, who communicates with the dogs in soothing baby talk. “The biggest job we have with these guys is teaching them that it’s O.K. to trust people. It may take months or years, but we’re very stubborn. We won’t give up on them.”
Because the dogs are still adjusting to their surroundings, it is difficult to predict how many of them will become adoptable. They arrived Jan. 2 from Richmond, Va., on a chartered airplane, stressed after eight months in shelters. In initial evaluations last September, many lay flat and looked frightened. Now, many respond to caregivers by wagging their tails and giving sloppy kisses.
“They have improved by light-years,” Mr. Garcia said, adding that it would take patience and a lot of time for these dogs to be happy and safe in an adoptive home.
Caregivers walk the dogs several times a day and spend time in their kennels, praising and caressing them. It is progress when a dog like Cherry does not need to be carried, because he is afraid to walk on a leash. It is monumental when Shadow approaches them instead of retreating.
“We want to get them to understand that being around people isn’t necessarily a bad thing; that we won’t hurt them,” Mr. Garcia said. “The worst thing we could do is push them too hard, too fast.”
Mr. Garcia, an expert in working with aggressive dogs, said getting some of these pit bulls accustomed to other dogs would be the toughest task. Initially, 10 were evaluated as aggressive toward other dogs.
So far, there has been only one fight. Layla was put accidentally into the same dog run as Ray. She immediately attacked, biting his shoulder in a death grip.
One of their main caregivers, Carissa Hendrick, pried Layla’s jaws from Ray. She said it would take a lot of positive reinforcement to teach these dogs to coexist.
There’s just so much we don’t know about them, and that’s frustrating,” Ms. Hendrick said, adding that she wished she could talk to the men involved in THE MONSTER Mr. Vick’s MONSTROUS operation to find out what these dogs have endured. “Oh, Ellen Belly, what happened to you?” AT THE HANDS OF MONSTER VICK AND HIS MONSTROUS FRIENDS.
Ellen arrived at Best Friends overweight, looking more like a sausage than a fighter. She was a breeding dog but had spent time in the ring. One side of her face droops from nerve damage, but she is still affectionate and loves to offer her belly for rubs.
Lucas was Vick’s champion, a 65-pound muscular brown dog with a face mottled with dark scars. He is so friendly and confident that his trainers suspect he was pampered.
“I bet you ate steak every day, didn’t you, Lucas?” the caregiver McKenzie Garcia, who is married to John, said. “I bet they took care of you because you made them money.”
Every Vick dog here has a Personalized Emotional Rehabilitation Plan. Caregivers rate each dog in several categories. How fearful was Little Red today? How confident was Black Bear? How much did Meryl enjoy life?
Recording the dogs’ progress will help Dr. McMillan, the veterinarian, track their well-being. “DogTown,” on the National Geographic Channel, also plans to follow the progress of several of Mr. Vick’s dogs, including Georgia.
“The successful rehab rate for these kinds of dogs is unknown because nobody has ever studied it until now,” Dr. McMillan said. “You might see an incredibly friendly dog, but does that dog’s personality change over several weeks, over several months, after psychological trauma? Are they hard-wired to be aggressive, or can they change? What’s the best way to work with them?”
The plan is to determine how to keep these dogs happy, even if a real home is not in their future.
Coping With Past Trauma
Whether Georgia will find happiness is a big question. Dr. McMillan said she exhibited behavior that might be coping mechanisms for past trauma.
Georgia gnaws on her doghouse. She flipped her bed over so much that her handlers removed it. When toys are around, she often ignores people. Georgia, who was called Jane at Bad Newz Kennels, was sold to THE MONSTER Mr. Vick in 2001 to help start his MONSTROUS dogfighting AND DOG TORTURING business. She is thought to be his oldest dog, but her handlers can only guess that she is about 7. Dogs’ ages are usually estimated by examining their teeth, but she has none.
Having those teeth extracted, Dr. McMillan and other vets said, must have been excruciating.
BUT THE MONSTER VICK DID IT ANYWAY BECAUSE HE ISN'T HUMAN AND ONLY HUMANS COULD UNDERSTAND THE HORROR OF THIS.
Even with medication, dogs are in pain after losing one tooth, which may take more than an hour of digging, prying and leveling to pull.
“These dogs have been beaten and starved and tortured, BY THE MONSTER VICK AND HIS MONSTER FRIENDS and they have every reason not to trust us,” Mr. Garcia said as Georgia crawled onto his lap, melted into him for an afternoon nap and began to snore. “But deep down, they love us and still want to be with us. It is amazing how resilient they are.”
PLEASE GOD, IF YOU ALLOWED THIS TO HAPPEN, THEN ALLOW FOR THE BRUTAL TORTURE AND MURDER OF THE MONSTER MICHAEL VICK IN PRISON.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
SHORT TRADERS TRYING TO DESTROY AMERICA
During the past 8 days, the Federal Reserve has delivered an unprecedented 1 1/4% rate cut in the Fed Funds rate. Yesterday, after the additional 1/2% cut, the stock market tanked - and the reason was SHORT-TRADER BILL ACKMAN.
Bill Ackman has massively shorted MBIA and in order to try to increase his already humongous profits, he is willing to destabilize the entire financial system of America by "bad-newsing" the bond insurers every time there is hope of a recovery in the stock market.
If the ultra-greedy Bill Ackman were successful in destroying MBIA in order to enrich himeself personally, one man - Bill Ackman will be richer than his already riches, and 280 million Americans will be devastated when their money market funds are forced to sell into a panic stricken market because the securities held by these money markets have been down graded.
So, here is the math:
1 person, Bill Ackman stands to gain
280,000,000 Americans stand to lose their life savings that they thought they placed in safe money markets
IS THERE ANYONE LEFT IN ANY POSITION OF POWER IN AMERICA WILLING TO HELP 280,000,000 AMERICANS FROM BEING FINANCIALLY RUINED BY ONE MAN WHO IS ALREADY RICH AND WHOSE FATHER WHO WAS ALREADY RICH SENT HIM TO HARVARD AND SET HIM UP IN THE BUSINESS WORLD????
In the following article, the extremely knowledgeable Ben Stein put forth this same view and ended with wondering how Thomas Jefferson would feel aboiut all of this.
So, here we are America, after approximately 230 years, the great country created by noble men like Thomas Jefferson is about to be destroyed by the (long list of expletives deleted) man like Bill Ackman - and all because of the unfathomable greed of one man.
Everybody's Business
Can Their Wish Be the Market’s Command?
By BEN STEIN
Published: January 27, 2008
LONG ago and far away, I was a student of law and of economics at Yale. The economics I found fairly easy, probably because the material was the same as what I heard my two economist-parents discussing around the dinner table all my life. (My parents would literally discuss monetary policy with the meatloaf.)
But the law was a total puzzle. Here would be one case that went for the appellant, but just a circuit away, or maybe even in the same circuit, there would be another case — with identical or almost identical facts — that went for the appellee.
I was puzzled. I sat in the Sterling library reading the cases over and over, but still could not get it. Then, one day, out of the blue, my learned brother-in-law Melvin, who had gone to Harvard Law School, asked me if I knew about “legal realism.” I didn’t, but I soon learned.
“Legal realism” said that the whole common-law system of abiding by past decisions was a fig leaf. What really happened, at the appellate level and probably at the trial level, too, was that judges made up their minds based on their predilections, their biases, which lawyer was their friend, what they had for breakfast that day. (I myself love peach Activia yogurt.)
Then, because a case that reached appeal always had some legal merit on each side, the judges, or their very young clerks, picked whatever precedent they wished to support their bias and pretended that they were bound by that precedent and could not have decided any other way.
The scales fell from my eyes, and I went on to finish law school in fine fettle. It was just all show business and personal bias and what’s in it for the judge. That made law school easy.
Time has passed in a big way. But the lessons of legal realism have always been uppermost in my mind when I think about law or about anything else important: Stated reasons are often not the real reasons.
Because I usually write about finance, I have come to believe in the theory of what I would call “financial realism,” or what might more accurately be called “trader realism.” Under this theory, on which I have an imaginary patent, traders can see masses of data any minute of any day. They can find data to support hitting the “buy” button or the “sell” button. They don’t act on the basis of what seems to them the real economic situation, but on what’s in it for them.
Just as a tiny example, years ago a close friend, now deceased, was a trader in London for a big financial house. As he told it, one day I.B.M. came out with stellar numbers. The boss of the trading floor said, “O.K., the guy who’s getting the prize is the one who can make us money selling I.B.M. short.”
So the traders grabbed for their phones and started to put out any bad thoughts they could dream up about I.B.M. They called journalists, retailers, anyone. They sold huge amounts of I.B.M. short. Soon, they had I.B.M. on the run, made money on their shorts and went to Langan’s to drink champers.
As I see it, this is what traders do all day long — and especially what they’ve been doing since the subprime mess burst upon the scene. They have seized upon a fairly bad situation: a stunning number of defaults and foreclosures in the subprime arena, although just a small part of the total financial picture of the United States. They have then tried — with the collaboration of their advance guards in the press — to make it seem like a total catastrophe so they could make money on their short sales. They sense an opportunity to trick other traders and poor retail slobs like you and me, and they generate data and rumor to support their positions, and to make money.
MORE than that, they trade to support the way they want the market to go. If they are huge traders like some of the major hedge funds, they can sell massively and move the market downward, then suck in other traders who go short, and create a vacuum of fear that sucks down whatever they are selling.
Note what is happening here: They are not figuring out which way the market will go. They are making the market go the direction they want.
I know this because I know traders. They’ve told me that they love to sell into fear because fear is bottomless — you can make money selling all day, while buying eventually slows because enthusiasm has limits. The amount of money available to large professional traders is so large that they can overwhelm the market, at least for a while, anytime they want. And they like to do it when the market least expects it.
To my humble eyes, this is what we have seen recently on world markets. Note that the losses in United States markets alone are on the order of about $2.5 trillion in recent weeks. How can a loss of roughly $100 billion on subprime — with some recoveries sure to come as property is seized and sold — translate into a stock-market loss 25 times that size? The answer is trader realism.
The losses in the stock market since the highs of October 2007 are about 14 percent. This predicts — very roughly — a fall in corporate profits of roughly 14 percent. Yet there has never been a decline of quite that size for even one year in the postwar United States, and never more than two years of declining profits before they regained their previous peak.
In other words, traders are sending stocks down by a fantastically larger amount than is warranted by a recession or the losses in subprime. How and why does it happen? As someone said in the movie: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” It’s just Chinatown in trader-land, where money is made and there is no perspective.
So when you see the market gyrating wildly downward and hear some pundit saying it’s because of this or that data or this paradigm or that ratio, remember trader realism. The traders move the market any way they want, any way they think they can make money, and then they whisper a reason to journalists later in the day. Then the journalists print it or say it on television, and the amateurs believe it. And the traders snicker.
These traders, not economists or securities analysts, can turn the world upside down, make governments tremble, give central bankers colitis and ruin the lives of ordinary men and women saving for their children’s college education or their own retirement. In America today, it is the traders, not the politicians or the generals or the corporate bosses, who have the power.
This is what has become of the America of Thomas Jefferson. Lucky for the traders. Sad for the rest of us.
And one thing’s for sure: With the traders running things, it won’t be a good time for amateurs until the traders cry “Switch!” and the market starts to rise.
Ben Stein is a lawyer, writer, actor and economist. E-mail: ebiz@nytimes.com.
Bill Ackman has massively shorted MBIA and in order to try to increase his already humongous profits, he is willing to destabilize the entire financial system of America by "bad-newsing" the bond insurers every time there is hope of a recovery in the stock market.
If the ultra-greedy Bill Ackman were successful in destroying MBIA in order to enrich himeself personally, one man - Bill Ackman will be richer than his already riches, and 280 million Americans will be devastated when their money market funds are forced to sell into a panic stricken market because the securities held by these money markets have been down graded.
So, here is the math:
1 person, Bill Ackman stands to gain
280,000,000 Americans stand to lose their life savings that they thought they placed in safe money markets
IS THERE ANYONE LEFT IN ANY POSITION OF POWER IN AMERICA WILLING TO HELP 280,000,000 AMERICANS FROM BEING FINANCIALLY RUINED BY ONE MAN WHO IS ALREADY RICH AND WHOSE FATHER WHO WAS ALREADY RICH SENT HIM TO HARVARD AND SET HIM UP IN THE BUSINESS WORLD????
In the following article, the extremely knowledgeable Ben Stein put forth this same view and ended with wondering how Thomas Jefferson would feel aboiut all of this.
So, here we are America, after approximately 230 years, the great country created by noble men like Thomas Jefferson is about to be destroyed by the (long list of expletives deleted) man like Bill Ackman - and all because of the unfathomable greed of one man.
Everybody's Business
Can Their Wish Be the Market’s Command?
By BEN STEIN
Published: January 27, 2008
LONG ago and far away, I was a student of law and of economics at Yale. The economics I found fairly easy, probably because the material was the same as what I heard my two economist-parents discussing around the dinner table all my life. (My parents would literally discuss monetary policy with the meatloaf.)
But the law was a total puzzle. Here would be one case that went for the appellant, but just a circuit away, or maybe even in the same circuit, there would be another case — with identical or almost identical facts — that went for the appellee.
I was puzzled. I sat in the Sterling library reading the cases over and over, but still could not get it. Then, one day, out of the blue, my learned brother-in-law Melvin, who had gone to Harvard Law School, asked me if I knew about “legal realism.” I didn’t, but I soon learned.
“Legal realism” said that the whole common-law system of abiding by past decisions was a fig leaf. What really happened, at the appellate level and probably at the trial level, too, was that judges made up their minds based on their predilections, their biases, which lawyer was their friend, what they had for breakfast that day. (I myself love peach Activia yogurt.)
Then, because a case that reached appeal always had some legal merit on each side, the judges, or their very young clerks, picked whatever precedent they wished to support their bias and pretended that they were bound by that precedent and could not have decided any other way.
The scales fell from my eyes, and I went on to finish law school in fine fettle. It was just all show business and personal bias and what’s in it for the judge. That made law school easy.
Time has passed in a big way. But the lessons of legal realism have always been uppermost in my mind when I think about law or about anything else important: Stated reasons are often not the real reasons.
Because I usually write about finance, I have come to believe in the theory of what I would call “financial realism,” or what might more accurately be called “trader realism.” Under this theory, on which I have an imaginary patent, traders can see masses of data any minute of any day. They can find data to support hitting the “buy” button or the “sell” button. They don’t act on the basis of what seems to them the real economic situation, but on what’s in it for them.
Just as a tiny example, years ago a close friend, now deceased, was a trader in London for a big financial house. As he told it, one day I.B.M. came out with stellar numbers. The boss of the trading floor said, “O.K., the guy who’s getting the prize is the one who can make us money selling I.B.M. short.”
So the traders grabbed for their phones and started to put out any bad thoughts they could dream up about I.B.M. They called journalists, retailers, anyone. They sold huge amounts of I.B.M. short. Soon, they had I.B.M. on the run, made money on their shorts and went to Langan’s to drink champers.
As I see it, this is what traders do all day long — and especially what they’ve been doing since the subprime mess burst upon the scene. They have seized upon a fairly bad situation: a stunning number of defaults and foreclosures in the subprime arena, although just a small part of the total financial picture of the United States. They have then tried — with the collaboration of their advance guards in the press — to make it seem like a total catastrophe so they could make money on their short sales. They sense an opportunity to trick other traders and poor retail slobs like you and me, and they generate data and rumor to support their positions, and to make money.
MORE than that, they trade to support the way they want the market to go. If they are huge traders like some of the major hedge funds, they can sell massively and move the market downward, then suck in other traders who go short, and create a vacuum of fear that sucks down whatever they are selling.
Note what is happening here: They are not figuring out which way the market will go. They are making the market go the direction they want.
I know this because I know traders. They’ve told me that they love to sell into fear because fear is bottomless — you can make money selling all day, while buying eventually slows because enthusiasm has limits. The amount of money available to large professional traders is so large that they can overwhelm the market, at least for a while, anytime they want. And they like to do it when the market least expects it.
To my humble eyes, this is what we have seen recently on world markets. Note that the losses in United States markets alone are on the order of about $2.5 trillion in recent weeks. How can a loss of roughly $100 billion on subprime — with some recoveries sure to come as property is seized and sold — translate into a stock-market loss 25 times that size? The answer is trader realism.
The losses in the stock market since the highs of October 2007 are about 14 percent. This predicts — very roughly — a fall in corporate profits of roughly 14 percent. Yet there has never been a decline of quite that size for even one year in the postwar United States, and never more than two years of declining profits before they regained their previous peak.
In other words, traders are sending stocks down by a fantastically larger amount than is warranted by a recession or the losses in subprime. How and why does it happen? As someone said in the movie: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” It’s just Chinatown in trader-land, where money is made and there is no perspective.
So when you see the market gyrating wildly downward and hear some pundit saying it’s because of this or that data or this paradigm or that ratio, remember trader realism. The traders move the market any way they want, any way they think they can make money, and then they whisper a reason to journalists later in the day. Then the journalists print it or say it on television, and the amateurs believe it. And the traders snicker.
These traders, not economists or securities analysts, can turn the world upside down, make governments tremble, give central bankers colitis and ruin the lives of ordinary men and women saving for their children’s college education or their own retirement. In America today, it is the traders, not the politicians or the generals or the corporate bosses, who have the power.
This is what has become of the America of Thomas Jefferson. Lucky for the traders. Sad for the rest of us.
And one thing’s for sure: With the traders running things, it won’t be a good time for amateurs until the traders cry “Switch!” and the market starts to rise.
Ben Stein is a lawyer, writer, actor and economist. E-mail: ebiz@nytimes.com.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Tom Cruise - One Crazy Motherf**ker
If there is one movie you see in 2008 it is the Tom Cruise Scientology Indoctrination Video that has been leaked onto the internet.
http://gawker.com/5002269/the-cruise-indoctrination-video-scientology-tried-to-suppress
Yes, we know the Tom Cruise that went "cruisazy" in 2006 and "jumped the couch" on Oprah in 2007, but this video is the first time we get a view into his brainwashed mind, and it is four star frightening!!
Apparently, Tom Cruise believes that the "religion" invented by the pulp science fiction writer, bigamist, liar, cheat, charlatan, drug abuser, L. Ron Hubbard in response to the challenge "if you want to make millions of dollars, invent a religion" - makes him - Tom Cruise - supremely qualified as the ONLY person capable of helping accident victims, uniting cultures, and bringing world peace. And he relays this to the viewer in between insane bursts of grinning and giggling.
If anyone can watch this video and NOT conclude that Tom Cruise is one crazy mother f**ker, then we are more gullible than he is.
THIS VIDEO IS THE FINAL PROOF THAT WE MUST BOYCOTT ALL TOM CRUISE MOVIES AS THE PROCEEDS FROM HIS MOVIES ARE USED TO INDOCTRINATE AND BRAINWASH MORE UNSUSPECTING CONVERTS INTO "RONDROIDS" LIKE HIMSELF
http://gawker.com/5002269/the-cruise-indoctrination-video-scientology-tried-to-suppress
Yes, we know the Tom Cruise that went "cruisazy" in 2006 and "jumped the couch" on Oprah in 2007, but this video is the first time we get a view into his brainwashed mind, and it is four star frightening!!
Apparently, Tom Cruise believes that the "religion" invented by the pulp science fiction writer, bigamist, liar, cheat, charlatan, drug abuser, L. Ron Hubbard in response to the challenge "if you want to make millions of dollars, invent a religion" - makes him - Tom Cruise - supremely qualified as the ONLY person capable of helping accident victims, uniting cultures, and bringing world peace. And he relays this to the viewer in between insane bursts of grinning and giggling.
If anyone can watch this video and NOT conclude that Tom Cruise is one crazy mother f**ker, then we are more gullible than he is.
THIS VIDEO IS THE FINAL PROOF THAT WE MUST BOYCOTT ALL TOM CRUISE MOVIES AS THE PROCEEDS FROM HIS MOVIES ARE USED TO INDOCTRINATE AND BRAINWASH MORE UNSUSPECTING CONVERTS INTO "RONDROIDS" LIKE HIMSELF
Monday, January 14, 2008
IF THIS IS OUR ECONOMIC GENIUS...
2008 is going to be one helluva crazy ride year, and we have Alan "The Genius" Greenspan to thank for it.To give him the benefit of the doubt, I did read his book, and while he has quite a bit to say about almost every subject in the world economy, at the end of the day, he is really just another full of shit windbag.
His 1% Fed Funds "Crazy Money" is at the core of all of our economic problems today, and remarkably, "Helicopter Ben" Bernake is going to use his playbook to try and avert a recession.
Back in 2006 I was speaking with the guy who parks my car in Manhattan about the prices of the condos in a building next door that used to be a parking garage. Even he knew that it was only "crazy money" that could afford to buy at those prices.
So, by logical deduction, the parking attendant had more understanding of the bad effects of 1% Fed Funds than the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Conclusion?
WE ARE DOOMED
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Christian Slater is a Retard
The last time I had ecstasy was five years ago. There's no question that in proper quantities and the right manner, drugs are fine."
----Christian Slater tells Arena magazine drugs can be safe.
RETARD-->
and from the NY Times on January 9, 2008:
Rise Seen in Trafficking of Enhanced Ecstasy
Methamphetamine-laced Ecstasy is flowing across the Canadian border into the United States, according to a warning last week from the federal government to public health and local law enforcement officials.
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy reports that seizures of Ecstasy at the northern border increased tenfold from 2003 to 2006, with more than half of the contraband tablets containing methamphetamine, a vastly more addicting drug. This matches findings by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The development comes after an uptick in Ecstasy use after years of waning popularity for the club drug and just as the supply of methamphetamine is being strangled at the Mexican border. Some law enforcement and treatment experts hypothesize that the turbocharged combination is an effort by traffickers to reverse trends unfavorable to their business by marketing a new product at a new point of entry.
Ecstasy, which gained popularity in the 1990s rave culture, had been in steep decline since 2001, but began to creep upward in 2005 and 2006, when first-time users increased by 40 percent, a third of them under the age of 18, according to a variety of studies.
At more or less the same time, the supply of methamphetamine in the United States has been substantially reduced, first by shutting domestic laboratories and then by new cooperation from the Mexican government in controlling its manufacture and smuggling.
“This is simply my opinion,” said Scott Burns, a deputy director at the drug control policy office, “but drug traffickers often have to reinvent or come up with new products when what we’re doing is working.”
So, thank you Christain Slater, you RETARD, for helping to endanger the lives of countless teenagers and twenty somethings who think, because "Christian Slater said so" drugs are cool.
THE SAD FACT ALWAYS HAS BEEN AND ALWAYS WILL BE:
DRUGS ARE FOR RETARDS
and please don't forget that he is an arrogant RETARD
Remember this retarded bit of behavior from 2005?
Christian Slater, Starring in an Unscheduled Courtroom Drama
By ANDREW JACOBS
NY Times Published: June 1, 2005
By ANDREW JACOBS
NY Times Published: June 1, 2005
Yesterday, Mr. Slater was again back in the public eye, this time for what prosecutors describe as a wanton brush with a stranger who was patronizing an Upper East Side deli around the same time Mr. Slater and his girlfriend were having an argument. The victim told the police that she was groped by Mr. Slater, who was arrested, charged with sexual abuse and forced to spend a night behind bars, according to law enforcement officials.
At just before 2 a.m. yesterday, Ms. Puzio said, Mr. Slater was outside a deli on Third Avenue at 94th Street, arguing first with a cabdriver and then with his girlfriend. In the midst of the quarrel with his girlfriend, Mr. Slater spotted the victim, who had just bought a soda, and "grabbed and squeezed her buttocks," Ms. Puzio said. Mr. Slater's girlfriend, whom prosecutors declined to name, shouted at him to stop, and he complied, but the victim called 911, and Mr. Slater was arrested a few blocks away, Ms. Puzio said, by a police officer who described his reaction as being: "I didn't do anything. I'm suing you. I'm suing the Police Department. I'm suing everybody."
Good going Retard, have fun suing everybody
Maybe you were high on ecstasy when you were acting like a retard yesterday,
or maybe you are just RETARDED
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Beauty
Inner beauty is a concept used to describe the positive aspects of something that is not physically observable.
While most species use physical traits and pheromones to attract mates, humans claim to rely on the inner beauty of their choices. Qualities including kindness, sensitivity, tenderness or compassion, creativity and intelligence and a sense of humor have been said to be desirable since antiquity. However new research comparing what humans claim to find attractive to their actual mating habits underlines the superficiality of "inner beauty," underlining the fact that the human animal relies on physical traits and pheromones just like every other animal.
While most species use physical traits and pheromones to attract mates, humans claim to rely on the inner beauty of their choices. Qualities including kindness, sensitivity, tenderness or compassion, creativity and intelligence and a sense of humor have been said to be desirable since antiquity. However new research comparing what humans claim to find attractive to their actual mating habits underlines the superficiality of "inner beauty," underlining the fact that the human animal relies on physical traits and pheromones just like every other animal.
So, if inner beauty is superficial, then it is OK for me to be in love with Moon Bloodgood, cause she is GORGEOUS!!
Happiness
The Little Bird Of Happiness
There once was a little bird who decided he would not fly south for the winter with the rest of the birds. But soon it got cold, colder than the little bird ever imagined it could get, and he realized he would have to fly south. The little bird took off, but it was too late and his wings froze up and he plummeted out of the sky and fell into a pile of hay in a barn yard.
There the little bird lay in the freezing cold. When the little bird was close to freezing to death, a cow happened to walk by and crapped on the little bird. The manure warmed the little bird and soon his wings thawed out and his heart beat strong and the little bird was so happy he began to sing a beautiful song.
Upon hearing the song, the barnyard cat walked over and found the little bird and pulled him out of the manure, and promptly ate him.
THERE ARE THREE LESSONS FROM THIS STORY:
1. NOT EVERYONE WHO SHITS ON YOU IS NECESSARILY YOUR ENEMY.
2. NOT EVERYONE WHO GETS YOU OUT OF SHIT IS NECESSARILY YOUR FRIEND.
3. IF YOU ARE WARM AND HAPPY IN A PILE OF SHIT, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT.
There once was a little bird who decided he would not fly south for the winter with the rest of the birds. But soon it got cold, colder than the little bird ever imagined it could get, and he realized he would have to fly south. The little bird took off, but it was too late and his wings froze up and he plummeted out of the sky and fell into a pile of hay in a barn yard.
There the little bird lay in the freezing cold. When the little bird was close to freezing to death, a cow happened to walk by and crapped on the little bird. The manure warmed the little bird and soon his wings thawed out and his heart beat strong and the little bird was so happy he began to sing a beautiful song.
Upon hearing the song, the barnyard cat walked over and found the little bird and pulled him out of the manure, and promptly ate him.
THERE ARE THREE LESSONS FROM THIS STORY:
1. NOT EVERYONE WHO SHITS ON YOU IS NECESSARILY YOUR ENEMY.
2. NOT EVERYONE WHO GETS YOU OUT OF SHIT IS NECESSARILY YOUR FRIEND.
3. IF YOU ARE WARM AND HAPPY IN A PILE OF SHIT, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT.
Guidelines for Life
GUIDELINES FOR LIFE
1. You will learn lessons.
You are enrolled in a full time school called "life on planet earth."
Every person or incident is your teacher.
2. There are no mistakes-only lessons.
"Failures" are the steppingstones to "Success."
3. A lesson is repeated until learned.
It is presented in various forms until you learn it.
If you are here, there are still lessons to be learned.
4. If you don't learn the easy lessons, they get harder.
Pain is one of the way the universe gets your attention.
5. You'll know you've learned a lesson when your actions change.
Only action can transform knowledge to wisdom.
6. "There" is no better than "Here."
When "there" becomes "here" you'll notice another "there"
that again looks better than "here."
7. There is no right or wrong-but there are consequences.
The Universe never judges us;
it only gives opportunities to balance and learn.
8. Your life is up to you.
Life provides the canvas; you do the painting.
9. Your answers lie inside you.
All you need to do is look,listen and trust.
10. You'll tend to forget all this.
11. You can remember any time you wish.
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