A Crusade on the internet

A group calling itself (fittingly) "Anonymous" is engaged in an online battle with the Church of Scientology.  Scientology, as you probably know, is the religion of Tom Cruise and others who believe that humans were created by an alien named Xenu flying in DC-10's who dropped nuclear bombs into volcanoes (if you think I'm making this shit up, check out the links).

This group is attempting to bring down Scientology's website through denial of service (DOS) attacks, which basically means they get a great number of computers to repeatedly try to access the site, which will cause it to overload.

Scientology has pissed off a lot of people lately by suing them for posting their material online, which they claim they hold the copyright.  A thousand years ago people went to the middle east to destroy religion.  Today they launch hackers at a website.  Its interesting to see the evolution of religious conflict.

I have posted one of Anonymous' videos below.

Why we should have let Katrina win

Here we are, 2 and a half years after hurricane Katrina destroyed pieces of Mississippi and Louisiana.  You may remember that the feds had to spend a lot of money on housing and "rebuilding" the area.  As often is the case with governments, corruption has diverted this money to pet projects.  

It is reported today that Mississippi is going to use $600 million that was to be used for housing for another plan.  They are going to expand docks and possibly build casinos with it.  Worse yet, the federal government is expected to approve of this corruption.

Tonight's (R) Debate

Tonight's republican debate has a rather interesting Q&A session conducted by the candidates to each other.  Ron Paul asked McCain about the secretive Working Group on Financial Markets, a group that some say attempts to manipulate the stock market.  I think this was a poor question to ask as it is a small detail of one issue (the economy) and not many people knew what he was talking about.  McCain certainly didn't know what Paul was talking about, as he bumbled on about his advisors saving him.  That as probably the most effective part of the question, McCain appeared clueless.

Other highlights:

• Giuliani comparing himself to the NY Giants
  
• Ron Paul did a good job explaining his position on Social Security.  Kill the program for younger people and used revenues saved from getting out of the war to make sure the older people do not see a cut in benefits.
  
• Ron Paul reiterated that he will not run as an independent.  He also said he is worried that Republicans are no longer Republicans.  They used to stop wars, not start wars and used to be against government expansion, not encouraging it.

When free speech is unethical

I'm a big defender of the First Amendment, you know, the part of the Constitution that allows you to speak your mind without fear of arrest.

There are times, however, when speaking your mind is not the right thing to do.  Protesting at a funeral is one of those times.

Let's see if I understand this situation.  An ultra-conservative church thinks that a god kills soldiers in Iraq because gay people are allowed to live.  They are now going to protest at a funeral of an actor who was not gay but played a gay character in a movie.  

These people should be ashamed of themselves.  Whatever views they have, if they are such religious folks, they should realize that a funeral is not a time when their god would want them harassing people.  Get a life.

The Worst Weekend In Sports

The worst weekend in sports is coming up, the weekend before the Super Bowl.  Football, the game we have watched for the past 4.5 months, is not on TV.  It is a very big letdown before the big game.  The week after the Super Bowl, we have the Pro Bowl.  It's not something I usually watch but it is at least a diversion and one last gasp of the football season.  

The weekend after the Pro Bowl, of course, is the Daytona 500, the only event that comes close to the Super Bowl.

The end of gun control?

An interesting tidbit that I learned about from the VCDL.  During the last democrat debate, Hillary Clinton stated that she know longer believed in having a national gun registry.  Here is just one more instance in which she has toned down her liberal past to adopt a more moderate rhetoric.  

Which is the real Clinton?  The Goldwater supporter from the 60's?  The hardcore liberal of the 90's?  Or the supposed realist of the 00's?  Nobody knows.  And that's why she's not getting my vote, though I do think she would be less damaging to the country than Rudy, McCain, or Obama.

A band-aid solution

My prediction of a 5-7% drop today was wrong.  Why?  More government meddling.  Early this morning before the market opened, the Federal Reserve voted to drop the federal funds rate by .75%.  While this does not seem like too much, this is almost unprecedented.  The last drop of this magnitude was over 20 years ago!  

How will this affect our economy?  The dollar will grow even weaker, since it will not offer competitive interest rates to the Euro.  Some people with mortgages will see a slight break in July when their rates reset, but it will likely be too late for most.  

Worse, instead of having a one day or one week major crash, the market will likely crash over the next several months to 1 year, so recovery will take that much longer.

Subprime Fallout: Who is to blame?

Unless you have been tuning out all media, by now you know that the fallout from the housing bubble is massive.  Dot.bomb massive.  As world markets crashed Monday, the US had a holiday, MLK Day, so the markets were not open.

Look for a big decline today in the US indices; 5-7% is my guess based on the futures.  

What caused this problem?  As with any massive fallout there are several groups that can be blamed.  

1. Many people simply bought more house than they could afford.  Instead of buying a house with a traditional 15 or 30 year fixed interest rate, they opted to obtain a low rate that would reset to the market rate in 3 or 5 years.  Some people were dumb enough to take out a loan in which they would only have to pay interest for the first 3 years and then start paying big; this is similar to, but worse than paying only the minimum balance on a credit card.  It does not take a genius, or even a high school diploma to understand these concepts.  Once the rates reset, people found out that they could no longer pay their mortgage.
2. Several of the less reputable mortgage companies may have misled the buyers into getting one of the loans referred to above.
3. Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve.  A supposed "free market" central banker (an oxymoron) decided that to combat the internet bubble bursting he would lower interest rates to artificially low rates and leave them there for a long time.  These low rates are what led to the attractive interest-only loans.  These low rates are also what led to the dollar sinking to record lows against the Euro and Canadian dollar, as people were reluctant to convert their money into a currency in which they could not obtain a good interest rate.

Campaigning: Dirty as usual

The mud is being slung all over the place, it must be an election year!  While we had the Swift Boat controversy involving John Kerry, it seems that this year there is a lot of shit going around on both sides.  

On the Republican side, we have Rudy and McCain berating each other over who is more of a fiscal conservative (answer: neither).  You may remember two weeks ago Ron Paul was attacked over some newsletters that were most likely written not by Paul but by Lew Rockwell.  

And on the Democrat side its come down to Obama and Clinton.  The main attacks seem to be that Clinton has way too much baggage and that Obama does not have enough experience to properly lead the country.  And then there's a dirty attack coming out of nowhere that Obama is a muslim simply because of his name, which is ridiculous.  

I'm not a fan of Obama, but if I'm going to attack him I will do it on policy, not some half-cocked statement about his middle name being Hussein.  

What I think we should do is stick to the issues, and if we do that everyone would see that most of the candidates come up very short on leadership and very long on stupidity.