Obama Backs Off From Holder’s Remarks

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“One post, by Stephan Tawney on the American Pundit blog, said that “our attorney general is black, both major parties are led by black men, the president is black.”

“And yet,” Tawney wrote, “we’re apparently a ‘nation of cowards’ on race.”

Obama was asked whether he agreed with Holder. He hesitated for five seconds before responding.

“I’m not somebody who believes that constantly talking about race somehow solves racial tensions,” Obama said. “I think what solves racial tensions is fixing the economy, putting people to work, making sure that people have health care, ensuring that every kid is learning out there. I think if we do that, then we’ll probably have more fruitful conversations.”

That’s from  the International Herald Tribune.

Comment:

Nice to hear that President Obama agrees with the Mind-Body Politic.

But then again, we have a strange and well-documented way of being a wee bit ahead on a few things (check out the tab ‘articles’). And on that note of unbecoming self-satisfaction, I will return to my labors tweaking this blog.

Libertarian Living: Facing the Starch Facts

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“People should be thought of as “starch-eaters;” just like cats are “meat-eaters.” Until recently, except for a small number of wealthy aristocrats, members of the human species have obtained the bulk of their calories from starch. After the mid 1800s with the creation of colossal wealth during the industrial revolution and the harnessing of fossil fuels, millions, and then billions, of people were able to eat from a table piled high with meat, fowl, and dairy, once available only to royalty. Look around you – the consequences are obvious – everyday people appear rotund like the kings and queens pictured in old paintings. Look a little further and you will discover the Starch Solution……

Tubers (potatoes, sweet potato, cassava), winter squashes (pumpkin, butternut, hubbard), legumes (beans, peas, lentils), and grains (barley, corn, rice, wheat) serve as organs for storing starch. Green and yellow vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower, and asparagus, accumulate relatively little starch, and fruits are made up of simple sugars, not complex ones. All animal foods, including beef, chicken, fish, shellfish, eggs, milk, and cheese, contain no starch at all.

While easily providing the abundance of calories needed for winning marathons, starches do not promote excess weight gain. That is because the human body efficiently regulates carbohydrates from starches, burning them off, rather than storing them, when consumed in excess. How effective is our body’s regulation? Obesity has been unknown among billions of Asians with a wide variety of activity levels who have followed traditional diets based on rice. However, these people’s immunity immediately disappears when they switch to meals based on meat and dairy foods, because the human body unsuccessfully balances for excess fat consumption – storing these calories in the abdomen, buttocks, and thighs. The fat you eat is the fat you wear…”

More by John McDougall

Remember that Old Coot Ron Paul Whom We Laughed At?

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“Paul was on Bloomberg TV on Wednesday, and he absolutely amazed the reporters by patiently explaining that we got into this national financial whirlpool by spending too much government money, and so the solution was probably not to spend even more government money. Ever heard anything so wacky?

You can listen for yourself on the video below. But in a nutshell, here’s the craziness Paul peddles: “We should be cutting spending. We should be trying to live within our means and not just try to spend our way out of a recession that was brought upon us by too much spending and too much borrowing and too much printing-press money…..”

That crazy loon….

More here.

Billionaire Bail-Out: The Goldman Touch at Work Again

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Such firms as Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley were among the financial institutions that received payouts from American International Group Inc since the Federal Reserve first began to aid AIG, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Citing a confidential document and people familiar with the matter, the Journal said AIG paid at least two dozen U.S. and foreign financial institutions about $50 billion.

Goldman received about $6 billion, as did Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG ….

From Reuters, March 6, 2009

Comment:

It’s commentators who drive the important stories now. That includes, yes, people like yours truly (no room for humility here).

Example:

Back in 2005 and 2006, when I was I reading through comments on trader forums, I realized they had a better sense of how things were manipulated than the big name financial press.  I read Lisa Endlich’s book about Goldman Sachs, which is a rather drab book as far as real insider information goes, but it does tell you the main plot. And that stinks.  GS’s been pulling strings and rigging things in its favor for decades.  They have a history of really dreadful corruption.  I wrote several pieces for the alternative press and one for a financial magazine on Goldman. But no one took up the theme…

Based on what I’d figured out about who the players were and what they were looking for (a power grab), I called a double-top of the market in March 2007 and I warned of  imminent trouble in a piece on Malcolm Gladwell in April 2007.  Gladwell’s article (see my piece, “Bunk: The Art of Writing without Thinking”) seemed like he was testing the wind for something big. The crash came soon after.  There was a small crack (Northern Rock) three months later,  and then a  full-scale avalanche  six months later….

Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets (Wiley, August 2007) came out exactly in time and correctly described the history and mechanism of the crash.

Not too shabby for an ex-school-teacher, sometime pianist, and amateur trader typing with three fingers (not to slight my esteemed co-author in any way; he was, obviously, the star of the production)…

Forgive my childish glee at being right about something so horrible.  (I lost money over it too and stand to lose even more).  I guess it’s like a pathologist who finds a particularly horrible type of bacillus. He ought to be upset. But if he’s any kind of pathologist, he probably feels a kind of triumph….almost an aesthetic joy…

It may be a hideous germ, but it’s his germ…he caught it.

He added a piece to the puzzle.

Whoever said human beings were completely rational creatures?

Madoff Ready to Plead Guilty; $1 billion recovered

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On the Madoff front:

“Madoff has already begun relinquishing his assets, something he might not do if he planned to fight the charges.

He already has surrendered rights to his business and any of the assets held by the business. A trustee overseeing his assets said he has identified nearly $1 billion in assets that are available to reimburse investors who have lost money over the last five decades.

Shortly after his arrest, Madoff offered to relinquish many of his and his wife’s assets, including properties in Palm Beach and France, as well as his boats and cars.

The lawyers, however, have indicated in court documents that Madoff’s $7 million Manhattan penthouse and an additional $62 million in assets should not be taken from the family because they are in his wife’s name and did not result from any alleged fraud.”

More at Associated Press.

GenV Entrepreneurs Light Up Indian Village

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“One of the biggest problems faced by Indian villages is scarce electricity to power light bulbs. Electricity is provided only for a very few hours and only during day time. Hence, children are unable to study at night and have to resort to using lanterns, which can contribute to pollution related ailments.

To provide a solution, we came up with an idea of using tractor batteries as an energy source to light 9-12W CFLs. At night, the tractors are not used and they can be used to light CFLs.

One-twelfth of the battery is consumed to use 1 CFL for 4 hours. The tractor’s battery then gets recharged during day time when it runs on the fields or is used for other agricultural purposes. Thus, the net is that we are not consuming any additional power to light up the CFLs on the days that the tractor is used.

We implemented this idea successfully in 17 homes in our village and this was of great help to the students. The whole setup cost was INR 135 (for wires, DC CFL and circuit board).

The advantages of this system are:

  1. Reduction of pollution by using CFLs instead of bulbs and lanterns: 240,000 liters of CO2 per month and 2,450,000 kJ of heat per month.
  2. Improvement in academic performance of students.
  3. Better health for users by reducing Asthma, ENT and Eye problems.
  4. Cost Savings for farmers and rural students, and for the Government.
  5. Increased lifespan of tractor battery.”

Shailesh Upadhyay and Ujala Shankar
More here at GenV Campaigns.

Washington Won’t Let Skilled Immigrants Solve Housing Crisis

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Solution:  “All you need is to grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans,” says the editor of The Indian Express. 

“We will buy up all the subprime homes; we will work 18 hours a day to pay for them.  We will immediately improve your savings rate — no Indian bank today has more than 2% nonperforming loans because not paying your mortgage is considered shameful here.  And we will start new companies to create our own jobs and jobs for more Americans.” 

Problem:  February 6, 2009, the US Senate unfortunately voted to restrict financial institutions that receive taxpayer bailout money from hiring high-skilled immigrants on temporary work permits (H-1B visas).

Thomas Sowell: Feedback From Reality Vital For Survival

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“Human beings have been making mistakes and committing sins as long as there have been human beings. The great catastrophes of history have usually involved much more than that. Typically, there has been an additional and crucial ingredient – some method by which feedback from reality has been prevented, so that a dangerous course of action could be blindly continued to at fatal conclusion.”

Thomas Sowell, “The Vision of the Annointed

via Drew Thorson, For Freedom’s Sake