It appears that members of the adult entertainment industry, including Larry Flynt, are looking for a federal bailout.
I think that they should just become a bank holding company.
They could give out something much more interesting than toasters to new account holders.
Madoff, that is.
The prosecution wants his bail revoked. It appears that he has been transferring a significant amount of valuables to 3rd parties.
It appears that he has mailed in excess of $1million in items to friends and relatives:
The decision by Bernard Madoff and his wife to ship jewelry and others valuables to family and friends may land him behind bars sooner rather than later.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Litt of the Southern District of New York told a magistrate judge Monday that Madoff and his wife Ruth mailed in excess of $1 million in valuables late last month despite a court order in a related civil case requiring the accused mastermind of a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme not to dissipate assets.
Most of the material has since been returned and handed over to federal authorities, but Litt said the transfer amounted to changed conditions that warrant Madoff detention as he awaits trial or a guilty plea on one of the largest frauds in history.
Defense attorney Ira Sorkin of Dickstein Shapiro said the mailing of the valuables, which included watches, a pair of cuff links and even a $200 pair of mittens, had nothing to do with allowing Madoff to remain free on bail.
$200 mittens?
It’s official we are bizarro world:
Bush personally lobbied recalcitrant Senate Republicans after Vice President Dick Cheney failed to round up support Wednesday during a contentious two-hour meeting.
“If we don’t do this, we will be known as the party of Herbert Hoover forever,” Cheney told them, according to a Senate Republican aide, evoking the president whose inaction is widely blamed for helping trigger the Great Depression in the early 1930s.
Dick Cheney was right…I can’t believe that I said that.
It appears that the The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has issued a statement commending the US and UK central banks for following its lead: See also here):
As Monetary Authorities, we have been humbled and have taken heart in the realization that some leading Central Banks, including those in the USA and the UK, are now not just talking of, but also actually implementing flexible and pragmatic central bank support programmes where these are deemed necessary in their National interests.
That is precisely the path that we began over 4 years ago in pursuit of our own national interest and we have not wavered on that critical path despite the untold misunderstanding, vilification and demonization we have endured from across the political divide.
Yet there are telling examples of the path we have…For instance, when the USA economy was recently confronted by the devastating effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, as well as the Iraq war, their Central Bank stepped in and injected life-boat schemes in the form of billions of dollars that were printed and pumped into the American economy.
(emphasis in original central bank statement)
I don’t know about you, but I’m very relieved that a bank that has engineered a 231 million percent inflation rate (and that’s just the official number) has endorsed our monetary policy.
Think Progress notes a bit of parody that came distressingly close to reality, a cover of Life magazine based on a movie in which Tina Fey was John McCain’s running mate.
I hate living in an era where parody consistently predicts reality.
Well, it appears that NASA has created an robotic nose to sniff the air in the space station.
It’s called the ENose, but as all Futurama fans, yours truly included, know, it should be called the Smell-O-Scope.
Palin giving a post turkey pardon interview while other turkies are slaughtered behind her.
I didn’t want to post this, but the peer pressure from the liberal blogosphere proved too strong.
Damn you John Aravosis!
Truth be told, I also saw this on MSNBC Countdown, where they blurred out the nasty bits, and supplied some very amusing headlines to go along with it. (click on picture for full size)
Indian Navy Destroys Pirate Ship.
I find it odd on so many levels.
BTW, the proximate cause of the piracy is that because there is no government in Somalia, fishing fleets from various nations have strip mined the waters off the coast, leaving fisherman with no other means of support.
Because he is reporting that Joe Biden’s role: in the Obama administration will be as “Good Cop”.
Biden? Good cop???? In what universe?
More on the Jury mishugas in the Ted Stevens corruption trial:
The juror who was dismissed from the criminal trial of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) to attend the funeral of her father in California admitted Monday that her father had not died, and that she went to California to attend a horse race.
This is truly the weird political season.
Specifically Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle.
Only this one is real, or at least in prototype state courtesy of those wacky Danes from art collective N55 in Copenhagen.
The theory is that when rising ocean levels from global warming make your current location to wet, the house walks somewhere else.
Reminds me of that bit of dialogue from a Get Smart episode:
99: What’s that?
Max: An electric snake, we’ll send it it to get
information.99: What does it run on?
Max: Tiny Little Feet.
Heh.
With Dr. Hubert J. Farnsworth’s Smell-o-Scope, but, “NASA has commissioned a British chemist to recreate the fragrance of outer space,” for astronauts in training.
This will actually be a difficult job, as the smell has been described as, “smell of fried steak, hot metal and even welding a motorbike.”
Is space no one can smell you…….I dunno…any suggestions for a twist on the Alien catch phrase?
But not in my house, it’s not kosher, but it looks like there are people in Australia who think that a greater reliance on Kangaroo meat will reduce global warming.
Kangaroo meat, which has a taste similar to farmed venison, was banned from sale for human consumption until 1995 on Australia’s eastern seaboard, including in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, according to Kelly of the kangaroo association.
So it doesn’t taste like chicken.
You know, Voyage to the Botom of the Sea.
It appears that someone in DARPA did too, because they are looking at the flying sub, though it does not look as cool as the original:
DARPA’s strategic technology office wants an aircraft that can reach a destination, whether it is 1,850km (1,000nm) away by air or 185km by sea or 22km travelling underwater, in less than 8h.
I want whatever it is that they are smoking.
So I get the following in my email
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2008 06:59:11 -0500 (CDT)
From: Toby #### #####@roundtablegroup.com
To: me
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To discontinue future correspondence from RTG, please let us know.
So I Google them, to see if they are on the level.
It appears that they are a repository of expert witnesses for court testimony, but I also find links on the first page tying them to the Illuminati.
Delving further, it appears that in the early 20th century, Cecil Rhodes was involved in a eponymous group in the early 20th century, and if you Google “Round Table Group” and Rhodes, it appears that this older group is:
I guess I’ve made it in the world.
Laser site and flashlight for a multi-shot rubber band gun?
It’s kind of neat, but still….too much free time.
It appears that Richard Branson’s space flight concern, Virgin Galactic, has rejected a $1 million offer to fly a group of people into space for a porn shoot.
*Sorry, I just could not resist…the headline is just too damn good.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Well, if you are waiting for the next shoe to drop in the dsyfunctional religious freak show that is Sarah Palin, here it is.
It now appears that everyone’s favorite hock mom has said that her election as governor was as the direct result of the prayers of a Kenyan witch-hunter, Thomas Muthee.
I’m not sure which I find more disturbing, the belief that the prayers of a self admitted witch hunter somehow got her elected governor, or the complete self-absorption to think that here elections are somehow the direct will of God.
In either case, it’s clear that she is just plain nuts, in a way that makes John Seymour McCain look pretty damn sane.
Here’s a hint, girl, if you believe that God is on your side, you are almost certainly arrogant, wrong, and deluded.
Sane people don’t believe that God is on their side; sociopaths do. Sane people worry if they are on God’s Side.
In any case, here is a vid of her talking about how she sees herself as have being elected by dint of God supporting her.
H/T Group News Blog.
