Prose: Cut Scene
Wrote this a bit ago, never made it to the first draft of the book I’m writing. if you feel like reading it it may be slightly spoilerish. hence it’s below the fold.
Bloodstar
Liberals and Libertarians on Everything and Nothing
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BloodstarLiberals and Libertarians on Everything and Nothing |
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Wrote this a bit ago, never made it to the first draft of the book I’m writing. if you feel like reading it it may be slightly spoilerish. hence it’s below the fold.
What? you thought I was kidding? bahaha! I found an old test I gave and since I’m on vacation, I thought i’d go ahead and post it on here for everyone to peek (it’s below the fold if you’re not curious).
Yeah, I’m on vacation from now until, oh… Monday Afternoon so I’ll have limited or no access to the blog until then. All you other people who are supposed to write can write damnit! 
Well, if you want to, it’s a weekend, and no one ever reads it on the weekend anyway. I’ll have a few posts from stuff I wrote a very long time ago that’ll show up over the next couple of days.
I should be back to full time duty Tuesday at the latest.
This is Sinatra (Sin for short). An awesome cat… Sadly, I did not get to keep him when my fiancee and I split. 
And this is my pride and joy: Sam. He was a rescue from Animal Care & Control in South Florida. He was on his last week there before they euthanized him. He was a very, very broken creature when I adopted him. It took a solid two years for me to be able to rehab him into the spoiled, overgrown lapdog he is now. 
He’s far too smart for his own good (and mine). I couldn’t have asked for a friendlier, more intelligent, and loyal creature than him.
At least on Sean Hannity’s Website:
I don’t even know what to say. except to point out the laws of Sedition
American International Group Inc. may get a backstop from the U.S. to protect against further losses on credit-default swaps, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The federal guarantees may be included in New York-based AIG’s restructured bailout, which the company plans to disclose next week with fourth-quarter results, according to the person, who declined to be identified because the talks are private.
Regulators who saved AIG in September feared that a collapse of the insurer, which sold swaps to banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., would spread losses throughout the global financial system. In November the U.S. committed $30 billion to retire some of the contracts tied to subprime mortgages, while not addressing other swaps tied to corporate loans and European debt.
So we’re going to insure AIG’s Insurance.
Lovely.
Okay, Bloodstar, you asked for it. A pic of one of my (several) pets…
This is an old pic. I think he’s gotten even bigger since then…
In hopefully the last major piece of grim news, jobless claims continue to spiral upward:
Signaling persistent labor market weakness, first-time applications for state unemployment benefits for the week ended Feb. 21 rose 36,000 to a seasonally adjusted 667,000, government data showed Thursday.
The level of initial claims thus stands at the highest since October 1982 — up 86% from the same period in the prior year. The four-week average of new claims, which measures the underlying trend, rose 19,000 to 639,000 — also the highest level since October 1982.
Does anyone have any good news? or (borrowing an idea from balloon-juice) pictures of their pets they want to post?
More on the disaster that is AIG:
American International Group and U.S. authorities are in advanced discussions over a radical restructuring that would split the insurer into at least three government-controlled divisions in an attempt to keep it afloat, the Financial Times reported on its website, citing people close to the situation.
Basically, they’d chop the company up into separate pieces, convert the 80 percent holdings they have into large stakes of the new units. and in return they’d relax some of the terms of the loans (or even cancel some of them) and convert a large amount of AIGs preferred stock into shares.
I suppose it could help, at least one piece of the company going down won’t take all the other pieces with it, and the government could sell off pieces to recoup some of the billions they’ve already sunk into AIG. Also by breaking up the company, maybe it won’t be ‘too big to fail’ anymore, or at least one piece failing won’t be.
The hits just keep coming:
Despite a record drop in prices, sales of new homes fell 10.2% in January to a record-low seasonally adjusted annual rate of 309,000, the Commerce Department estimated Thursday.
Sales were down 48.2% compared with a year earlier, the government reported, an indication that the downturn in the housing market was still accelerating as the recession headed into its second year.…
Inventories of unsold homes fell by 3.1% to 342,000, the 13th consecutive decline. However, sales are falling even faster. The inventory at the end of January represented a record-high 13.3 month supply at the January sales pace. Nearly half the homes for sale have been completed.
We’ve got a long long ways to go before we hit bottom I suspect.
Sometimes I just can’t wrap my mind around the numbers:
General Motors Corp (GM.N) posted a loss on Thursday of nearly $31 billion
for 2008. GM and other automakers around the world are in turmoil as consumer
demand evaporates in the wake of the global debt crisis.
I fired a text over to klossy simply asking how GM could have lost 31bln, and her response was simple and direct: “By making big gas guzzlers when gas was 4 bucks a gallon.” heh
Whatever the causes, the lack of foresight by GM and Chrysler have been staggering, and while it’s not the only reason they’re in this pickle, it’s a pretty big contributing factor.
Someone was kind enough to email me the proper spelling for Purview:
Thanks and credit go to Merriam-Webster (One of my best buds) online :
pur·view
Pronunciation:
\ˈpər-ˌvyü\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English purveu, from Anglo-French purveu est it is provided (opening phrase of a statute)
Date:
15th century1 a: the body or enacting part of a statute b: the limit, purpose, or scope of a statute
2: the range or limit of authority, competence, responsibility, concern, or intention
3: range of vision, understanding, or cognizance
It may be an idea ahead of it’s time, but they’re going to take a stab at passing a law Legalizing Marijuana:
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano in California thinks he has come up with a partial solution to the state’s budget problems: legalize marijuana.
The Democratic lawmaker introduced the bill Monday. The proposal would allow people older than 21 to buy, sell and grow marijuana.
Who knows, maybe the recession could be the impetus to push some drug law reforms through. At least that’s the hope, though I have my doubts about any real chance for laws like this to pass in the near term.
Seattle – February, 2009 Photo by Gutter Glitter
