Writing by Webmaster on Monday, 29 of September , 2008 at 8:05 pm - Leave a comment - 3 views
C-Spans Debate hub is prime example of how news media should conduct business. C-Span has enthralled itself on being the most unbiased news source out there (because it provides live access to the white-house, house of representatives, and the congress) from their own site: C-SPAN offers gavel to gavel coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives. C-SPAN also offers a variety of public affairs programming including congressional hearings, press briefings from the White House, State Department and Pentagon, campaign and election coverage, and international programming. So I ask every-one of you to follow your “politicking” on PBS, C-Span or multiple news websites. Opinion should not ever be presented as news in any shape or form, and that is what we currently get from CNN, FOXNews, and MSNBC and news should never just come from one source.
Writing by Webmaster on Monday, 29 of September , 2008 at 7:55 pm - Leave a comment - 2 views
As I crammed myself onto a crowded train this morning, I noticed there was a very pregnant woman standing near me, jammed in tightly and hanging on for dear life. I looked at the passengers sitting in the seats that are supposed to be surrendered to the elderly, physically challenged, and other people who need to sit, and all of them were listening to iPods. Most of them were also texting or reviewing email, one person was reading on a Kindle, and two people were watching movies. Not one of them even looked up; everyone was too absorbed in what they were listening to, reading, or watching to even notice the protruding belly and flushed face of the pregnant passenger.
Over the past few years, there have been countless discussions on minding our manners within our new modes of communication. Is it rude to text someone and ask him on a date? When is it appropriate to forward an email? Do we befriend someone on a social networking site we’ve only met once?
But while we’ve been debating the dos and don’ts of technology etiquette, it appears that many of us have forgotten some of the old school manners that our parents, grandparents, and teachers taught us—manners that have nothing to do with a keyboard or a monitor, but have everything to do with the long-forgotten Golden Rule. Maybe technology has eroded our brains so much that we can never go back to those golden days, but there are a few simple courtesies that I’d like to see make a comeback.
What your dad is presumably talking about is stuff like the Community Reinvestment Act, which was signed into law in 1977. The Clinton administration made changes, and the Bush administration made changes, which I’m going to guess the GOP is not talking about.
So, bottom line, are these bad loans? Well, in November of 2000, the Cleveland Fed did a study and found that CRA loans were a little less profitable, and marginally more at risk of delinquency and default (more the former than the latter, which isn’t the worst). I don’t have all morning, but I wish I had more time to look into this.
Bottom line is, both Bush and Clinton are on the record promoting home “affordability”, one more recently than the other. Clinton was in the bank’s pockets, too, and of the many, many reasons for the crisis (inflationary Fed policy under Greenspan, poor enforcement of existing regulations, accounting shams, condo-flipping as a career option, etc) the minor deviations in performance for loans to working poor minorities, especially as traced to mid-90s changes in related laws, are probably not that high up. Can’t you and your dad agree that there are a bunch of scam artists in any business where you can get rich overnight, and that the banks bought off both parties in order to keep the orgy going?
But the yammering heads on the right are usually talking about the Community Reinvestment Act… The changes Clinton made were significant, and should have seen increased oversight later (and the regulators intended to in 2002) as its effects (in tandem with the repeal of Glass-Steagall) were better known. Instead, Bush juiced it up with even less regulation… nothing like a modest de-regulation for the sake of growth being co-opted for the sake of greed… especially when you can dump blame on the “entire system” rather than the parties actually at fault. So this “Diversity Recession” blames fault on Minorities, not those in Washington who can’t help but point fingers instead of having actual ACCOUNTABILITY. Clinton publicly said his changes to the Community Reinvestment Act needed to create new regulations in the coming months that would work for the new century. Of course the republican’s who claimed they would do this, promptly ignored the whole issue of new regulations once Clinton signed it. Basically he was punked by congress, and we get Diversity Recession.
“The diversity recession”. I like that. Sounds like a great way to pin the blame on the most powerful economic force in the United States, poor minorities. That way, you don’t feel bad for bailing out the horribly mistreated banks - they were fooled by those tricky poor people! Who knew you couldn’t math away your risk? Not the banks, for sure.
Writing by Webmaster on Monday, 22 of September , 2008 at 10:00 pm - Leave a comment - 6 views
“Project censored is one of the organizations that we should listen to, to be assured that our newspapers and our broadcast outlets are practicing thorough and ethical journalism.” — Walter Cronkite
Religion scares me in the aspect it infiltrates society. We all saw this with al-queda on 9/11 and since in all religions itself with the crusades, the greeks, the mayas, aztecs and incas. No religion overcame obscurity without clashing, without attacking another in the same way we saw 9/11. It was al-queda as they called it, that had attacked the very foundations of America. Its Religious Freedom. Al-Queda imposed that America was lewd, too liberal, lacked morals and among other things, imposed its military in other countries. We all saw what this lead to, a conservative movement within our society. The same way Islam created its own movement and has since the stone ages imposed. When reading the Koran its not much different from the Bible. Same goes for any other “feel good” hero stories from any other religion. While religions do good on the short term for a person, they tend to do more harm than good in the long end for a whole society. We take the conservative movement and escalate to a preacher at the white house. Can you tell me what comes next???
Writing by Webmaster on Sunday, 14 of September , 2008 at 8:43 pm - Leave a comment - 356 views
Tina Fey plays Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin for the premiere of the show’s new season. Fey and Amy Poehler opened the show with a joint appearance as Palin and Hillary Clinton.
Update: This last weeks episode includes a return of Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin on the Couric Interview.
sorry, it seems some browsers are blocked by NBC. Please use Internet Explorer or FireFox.
Writing by Webmaster on Monday, 25 of August , 2008 at 9:45 pm - Leave a comment - 5 views
“Ten questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution,” a document by Jonathan Wells, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based group that advocates intelligent design, aims to highlight the weaknesses in evolutionary theory. Here are his questions, along with responses compiled by the National Center for Science Education.
1. Origin of life. Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment shows how life’s building blocks may have formed on the early Earth — when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like those used in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery?
N.C.S.E. answer: Because evolutionary theory works with any model of the origin of life on Earth, how life originated is not a question about evolution. Textbooks discuss the 1953 studies because they were the first successful attempt to show how organic molecules might have been produced on the early earth. When modern scientists changed the experimental conditions to reflect better knowledge of the earth’s early atmosphere, they were able to produce most of the same building blocks. Origin-of-life remains a vigorous area of research. Continued at LINK [LINK]]
Writing by Webmaster on Monday, 21 of July , 2008 at 7:37 pm - Leave a comment - 12 views
Imagine staring into the sky and seeing a tiny yellow dot, gradually getting closer. That dot doubles in size every second, until it slowly darkens the sky. You realize that this dot is actually the size of New York City and is screeching through the atmosphere faster than the speed of sound, coming right for you. This massive object will cause tsunamis, earthquakes and obliterate natural daylight for years…oh… and it will kill you. Similar asteroid impacts have and will happen on numerous occasions in our earth’s history. Today we’ll show you the biggest impact craters by diameter. [LINK]
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Tags: news, politics, world-view
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Imagine staring into the sky and seeing a tiny yellow dot, gradually getting closer. That dot doubles in size every second, until it slowly darkens the sky. You realize that this dot is actually the size of New York City and is screeching through the atmosphere faster than the speed of sound, coming right for you. This massive object will cause tsunamis, earthquakes and obliterate natural daylight for years…oh… and it will kill you. Similar asteroid impacts have and will happen on numerous occasions in our earth’s history. Today we’ll show you the biggest impact craters by diameter. [
