Thursday, May 19, 2011

SAR #11139

It is “average” rainfall that makes farming so difficult.

The Great Adventure, Part 47: The Obama administration, having finally killed bin Laden, has decided to impose sanctions on Syria in response to continuing slaughter of its citizens human rights violations even though it does not have much oil. Syrian President for Life Assad admits 'mistakes', but says there are no mass graves. Just the individual ones.

Sleeping Dogs... The European Central Bank has asked the European Union’s General Court to dismiss a lawsuit seeking the disclosure of documents showing how Goldman Sachs taught Greece to use derivatives to hide loans and mislead investors. The bankers' fingerprints are all over the corpse.

Luck O' the Irish? The indebtedness (to bail out private banks) forced on the country is “unsustainable” - and un-repayable. Ireland is broke. You can't get blood out of a Blarney Stone.

Social Norms: Researchers have concluded that neither homosexuality, celibacy or an all-male priesthood caused Roman Catholic priests to become pedophiles. They were pedophiles before they were priests.  Looking at the increase in such abuses within the church during the 1960s and 1970s suggested that clerical pedophilia was a response to the breakdown of morals in the civil society. This ignores the obvious: bishops hid the pedophiles, who in turn recruited ever more into the ranks of the Catholic clergy.

Wedding Vows: Newt Gingrich’s attack on Paul Ryan’s “right-wing social engineering” didn't stand up to confrontation any better than his wedding vows do.

Bargains: Ron Paul thinks the US should sell of its gold to reduce the national debt, reducing it from $14 trillion to about $13.8 trillion. Then we could sell off the the Lincoln Memorial, the White House (instead of renting it out, as we do now), those parts of the Gulf Coast that BP doesn't already own, and the interstate highway system. Blackstone would make a bid for the Pentagon. Wall Street dearly wants to get hold of Social Security. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a market for the Constitution.

Quoted: “The Republican party needs to give itself a nice cold douche... until the Ron Pauls and Newt Gingriches have been washed out.”

Problem Solvers:   Republicans, claiming the voters elected them to solve the nation's serious pressing problems, have efforts underway in at least half the states to require voters to show a photo ID before voting. There is little evidence that people are voting illegally – in fact not one of the bills in any state has any supporting evidence that would justify the extra cost of the process. That most of those disenfranchised through these laws —21 million citizens of voting age lack photo identification — would likely vote Democratic is a coincidence.

Factor This In: It's not just the old folks the Republicans want to throw under the bus - 40% of children born in America are on Medicaid.

Dying For Dollars: Now Goldman Sachs and friends want to slice and dice the living and let investors bet on how long they'll live. The $23 trillion in assets held by pension funds is the next target for Wall Street sharks who want to “sell insurance” (read “gamble”) that people do or do not die on time. The banks don't care if you live or die, their concern is processing the bets raking in the fees.

Freedom, Democracy: Security forces killed at least 12 Afghans and wounded 80 who had assembled to petition the government protest a NATO raid.

Rent-A-Life: As technology marches on, ownership of things is becoming less important than access to things. Don't buy the movie or music, download it, along with books and magazines. Will the retailers of the future rent you jewelry for the big event, along with the clothes? If you don't cook, why own a kitchen? And, of course, renting a home seems to be the way to go. Even cemetery plots outlive their usefullness with the passage of time – why not rent the plot for 5 or 10 years with an option to renew?

Porn O'Graph: Another day older and deeper in debt.

3 comments:

Demetrius said...

And the sixteen tons is now thirty six tons with an efficiency review due soon.

I'm Not POTUS said...

This "STUDY" is probably a backhanded way of letting married men become priests.

The root cause of the abuse is the fact that the Vatican Human Resources Department manual for recruitment is stuck in the 8th century.

You want to hire quality people you have to recruit from people living quality lives. These days that involves a wife and child for EVERY son in a Catholic family not just the first born like it was in the "goog ol' days"

But that won't happen because hiding and paying for pedophile abuse is easier than hiding and paying for divorces, alimony, child support, infidelity, and bastard children.

Just ask Arnold.

Unknown said...

Rent-A-Life: The Germans already do this with many of their burial plots now. Typically one "rents" the plot for 30 to 50 years and then the grave and marker are removed for the next.. um... "guest". Truly "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" rather than the "preserved for all eternity just in case I wake up" thing we do in the U.S.