With the market still on the way down down down, what we will do WHEN THE MONEY’S GONE?
One of my favorite humans, Bobby Conn, has been predicting the current crisis for some time. Take this video down, and pass it around. Pure genius.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MJcMy-3fHs&feature=related[/youtube]
In other news, we’re off to Paris for a couple of weeks. We’ll miss you, dear visitor!
So much common sense has been lost. Here’s an effort to restore a touch of equilibrium: FREE RANGE KIDS.
I live two blocks from an elementary school, and I NEVER see a child walking past my house on his or her way to school. Every last kid is driven by parents. Parents who are so consumed by fear (well, it IS a Catholic school, so this makes sense) that their precious Pat may be whisked away by a bad guy. In Healdsburg? Find me a whiter, yuppier, more NIMBY-fied town than Healdsburg (outside of Marin County, of course), I dare you. Absolutely no reason to have fear, yet their children are not allowed to leave the YARD, let alone walk to school.
Was it like this when you were a child? Were you so strictly confined? I’m betting not. STOP THE MADNESS! FREE THE CHILDREN!!
Okay, a pretty weak post, but check the site out. We’re (including this father of a five year old) being totally anal, paranoid parents. Time to pull the sticks out of our asses and let our kids live a little.
Not that anyone should be surprised. Not only is that battery a toxic nightmare, but hybrid vehicles consume more water than their fuel counterparts (due to the massive amounts of water used in electricity generation). Oh, and in a recent MPG road challenge, the Prius’ numbers paled next to it’s stablemate, the Toyota YARIS, which recorded a whopping 84.66 MPG.
Some of you know this, many do not: President John F. Kennedy saw a long time ago that the Federal Reserve, a largely private entity, was going to strip the U.S. economy to the bone. Here’s what hapenned:
On June 4, 1963, a little known attempt was made to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the government at interest. On that day President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order No. 11110 that returned to the U.S. government the power to issue currency, without going through the Federal Reserve. Mr. Kennedy’s order gave the Treasury the power “to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury.” This meant that for every ounce of silver in the U.S. Treasury’s vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation. In all, Kennedy brought nearly $4.3 billion in U.S. notes into circulation. The ramifications of this bill are enormous.
With the stroke of a pen, Mr. Kennedy was on his way to putting the Federal Reserve Bank of New York out of business. If enough of these silver certificats were to come into circulation they would have eliminated the demand for Federal Reserve notes. This is because the silver certificates are backed by silver and the Federal Reserve notes are not backed by anything. Executive Order 11110 could have prevented the national debt from reaching its current level, because it would have given the gevernment the ability to repay its debt without going to the Federal Reserve and being charged interest in order to create the new money. Executive Order 11110 gave the U.S. the ability to create its own money backed by silver.
After Mr. Kennedy was assassinated just five months later, no more silver certificates were issued. This Executive Order was never repealed by any U.S. President through an Executive Order and is still valid. Why then has no president utilized it? And why won’t Obama or McCain? Bone up on ye olde Bank of England, why this nation was founded, and the implementation of the Federal Reserve, and you’ll learn the answer.
Summary of Kennedy’s Losing Battle (he ended up dead on the street)
You may find this chart of interest.
Check the bill below. 1963 UNITED STATES NOTE. Now look at the one in your pocket.
When I was wee, say about nine years old, I’d take the bus from Redding to Sacramento to visit my pops. These trips happened over the summer, were always hot, and were always a bit disconcerting for a young man fresh out of 2nd grade traveling alone. I never took Greyhound, always Trailways. Remember Trailways? I barely do…given my family’s economic situation, I can only guess they were a budget version of Greyhound, which is like saying a cheaper version of Thunderbird.
Anyway, around half way through the four hour trip, we’d stop at Sambo’s. Someone would usually befriend me on the bus and we’d eat together. Otherwise, I’d make like a man and belly up to the counter all by my little self. Either way, Sambo’s was always a welcome site. It meant, “I’m almost to daddy!” Talk about powerful conditioning.
The chain itself has a somewhat interesting history, one that I’m sure can be analyzed through the lens of race relations in the United States. Rather than bore you with my analysis, I’ll simply provide the Wiki entry for Sambo’s Restaurant and let you do the heavy lifting: Sambo’s is a restaurant, formerly an American restaurant
chain, started in 1957 by Sam Battistone and Newell Bohnett. Though the name was taken from portions of the names of its founders, the chain soon found itself associated with The Story of Little Black Sambo. Battistone and Bohnett capitalized on the coincidence by decorating the walls of the restaurants with scenes from the book, including a dark-skinned boy and tigers.
Pretty rich so far, right?This is some great icing:
A kids club, Sambo’s Tiger Tamers (later called the Tiger Club), promoted the chain’s family image.
Wow. I may be old, but I’m not that old. Sambo’s proliferated throughout the country concurrently with Max Headroom. In other words, not exactly ancient history. Still waiting for that “dawning of the Age of Aquarius” because I promise you it’s not here yet.
(Hmmm…is it a coincidence I ended up co-founding a winery called roShAMBO?)))
This just in from one of the most dedicated humans I know, Frank Scura.
Emergency Alert: FREE Burrito-FREE Burrito-FREE Burrito-FREE Burrito-FREE Burrito!!!
We are trying to give away 100,000 free burritos in the State of California this Saturday.
Get RAD, B RAD, U R RAD, RAD enough to Roll!
Here is a great one for you; this Saturday October 11th ASEC is launching our inaugural “RAD” (Roll Anything Day). This is a holiday dedicated to leaving behind cars, motorcycles, busses or whatever gas guzzling, veggie oil burning, natural gas farting device you or your parents are using and going out on the town Rolling your Skateboard, Bike or what ever form of “Non-Motorized Transportation” you choose. Go out and explore your city, Parks or Mountains, hang out with your friends and family or go see how many spots you can hit or shops you can check out in a day.
Break a sweat, work up an appetite and Roll to any Chipotle in California between 11-3PM and get a FREE Burrito-FREE Burrito-FREE Burrito-FREE!
If you have never checked out Chipotle before you need to, they make the tastiest Mexican Food I have ever had, no joke just ask Danny Way, Bob Burnquist Read the rest of this entry »
total bummer, this
From some random news source:
Whales may simply have to pay the price as the Navy prepares for war, Supreme Court justices suggested Wednesday.
In a closely watched environmental case, justices Wednesday morning repeatedly sounded sympathetic to Pentagon officials who want to run large-scale Navy exercises off the Southern California coast. While the resulting underwater sonar storm slaughters marine mammals, it also helps prepare sailors for combat.
“I thought the whole point of the armed forces was to hurt the environment,” Justice Stephen Breyer said, half-jokingly. “Of course they’re going to do harm.”
Can I get tickets to these Supreme Court deliberations? Sound like they may be a better source of comedy than SNL. Certainly, in the real world, we have to find a balance between armed forces (it’s not like they’re going to disappear) and our natural environment. What bothers me is a quip like this infers that Breyer is more interested in developing a post-court career on a whole ‘nuther circuit than in diving into the nuances of what defines such a critical balance.
Some time in the late 1960s, before even I was born, my dad was living in Marysville, California. If you don’t know Marysville, you’re not missing too much. In the 1850s, due to a gold rush boom, it was one of the biggest cities in California. Now, it’s not much more than dust and walnut shells. My pop, he was a reporter for the local paper, the Appeal Democrat. At the time, he was a real big Cutty Sark man. Big enough that he passed out drunk in bed and burned his house down. Fortunately, his trusty beagle got him up and out of there…a dog he later gave to the pound. Not a bad guy, mind you–just not a real dog lover.
So one day he walks into a bar in Marysville for his early afternoon fill. Problem is, he’d already had his fill at the bar next door. Across the bar he spies his good friend and fellow drunk, Joe Fulcher. Joe was (he’s got to be dead by now, Joe) a good guy. Never sober, always black. Meaning, he was a black man. And still is, if he’s alive (which I doubt, like I said). My dad sees Joe and hollers across the bar, “HEY YOU FUCKING NIGGER!” in the friendliest possible fashion. You see, Joe and my pops were just tight like that. Joe turns at the boisterous entrance line…and it’s not Joe. No, it’s a different black man. A bigger black man. A man who is decidedly NOT my father’s friend and who very much did not appreciate the greeting. Long story short, my dad got his ass kicked that day and learned a big lesson about the appropriateness of the public utterance of racially insensitive descriptors.
Pope Benedict XVI today said that the global credit crisis shows that the world’s financial systems are “built on sand” and that only the works of God have “solid reality”.
Need I really comment?
Between mobile, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, television, and the countless waves beaming from satellites, between computers and phones, we’re disrupting the way we make…ourselves. Think about it. These waves course through the air and permeate our every cell, weaving their way between the synapses, interfering with the impossibly vital inter-cellular electric communications–the very spark of life. (Pictured are human thalamus neurons communicating via electronic exchange)
Nary a soul alive will argue the basic premise: That every one of these waves passes right through our bodies. We take that for granted. What we’re too afraid to admit is that, in the process, some of these signals scramble ours.
From one in 10,000 people born with autism in the 1970s to 1 in 150 today. That doesn’t stagger you?
Wi-Fi (see below) is well-documented as being at least three times as powerful as mobile signals. Young children? Their thin skulls make them Read the rest of this entry »
