US Census To Include Alien Life Forms?

American Scofflaw
Some researchers are so convinced that there are alien civilizations, they aren't asking "Is there life on other planets?" anymore. Instead they are asking, "How much extraterrestrial life is out there?"

In a recent paper published online by the International Journal of Astrobiology, a graduate student from the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, in Scotland estimated there should be 361 advanced, stable civilizations in the Milky Way.

He based his theory on current observational knowledge of stars and planetary systems, as well as the assumption that life can only arise under a narrow set of initial conditions, according to Scientific American .

Not everyone in the field is buying the theory. "We have to admit that we're hugely ignorant of many of the pieces of information that we would need to know before we could realistically estimate the prevalence of intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy," planetary scientist Ian Crawford of Birkbeck College at the University of London, told Scientific American.

Would You Buy A Used Economy From This Man?

That is the Mayor of Berwyn Heights

American Scofflaw
There's no way to know how badly things would have gone at the Berwyn Heights, Maryland home of Cheye and Trinity Calvo if Amir Johnson hadn't shown up when he did.

Johnson, a private on the local police force, was making his accustomed rounds in the neighborhood when he saw a swarm of heavily armed men laying siege to the Calvo home. Inside, Cheye and his mother-in-law, Georgia Porter, were being held face-down at gunpoint with their hands tied behind their backs. The Calvo family's two black Labradors, Chase and Payton, were dead from gunshot wounds. The assailants who killed the dogs were leaving bloody bootprints throughout the home. "That guy in there is crazy," one of the stormtroopers complained to Johnson as he emerged from the crime scene (that is, the scene of a crime committed under color of state "authority"). "He says he's the Mayor of Berwyn Heights."

"That is the Mayor of Berwyn Heights," Johnson told assailant, a member of the Prince George's County police department (which has overlapping jurisdiction with the town police). Johnson quickly contacted Berywn Heights Police Chief Patrick Murphy to tell him that a SWAT team had just laid waste the the Mayor's home and killed the family's dogs. Glancing around, he couldn't see any evidence of a search warrant. Inquiries about this omission were greeted with the assurance that the document was "en route."

Gold Fever Behind Hallucinations

The Gay Secretary

This morning, the United States Treasury Department issued a press release that constituted the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee’s (TBAC) report to the Secretary of the Treasury. TBAC membership is derived from senior members of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. These would be the proverbial foxes advising the chickens - a favorite Midas Letter theme.

This group forms the consulting connection between the U.S. Treasury and the investment industry who is tasked with finding investors for U.S. debt so that the behemoth debt machine can continue its primary function of maintaining the United States standard of living at the expense of foreign treasuries.

Remarkably, the foreign treasury managers have either not yet caught on, or are duplicitous in maintaining the illusion of a sustainable deficit government that would swallow the global GDP of several generations should it ever be called for repayment.

This group meets in closed conference in a hotel in downtown Washington, and the Treasury lays out what it needs, and the TBAC tells them how they think it can be done. What is interesting in the published minutes of the meetings is that it now is apparent that both sides are concerned solely with rolling out new and modified debt instruments in increasing quantity to service the debt requirements of the nations future spending requirements. Servicing current debt is barely mentioned, though one might deduce that those requirements are incorporated by default into future borrowing figure requirements. (The following quotes are taken from the press release)

“The deterioration in the budget outlook, combined with expenditures associated with the TARP, potential FDIC guarantees, and expected additional stimulus spending have increased private forecasts for total funding needs of the U.S. government for fiscal year 2009 to approximately $2 trillion. This is likely to stress the existing auction schedule and consequently warrants tangible adjustments to that schedule.

Faced with an unprecedented increase in net borrowing needs, the Treasury in its first charge to the Committee sought our advice and recommendation on changes to the auction calendar for debt issuance.”

The strategy for financing the new debt required for the TARP (Toxic Asset Relief Program) purchases and the stimulus packages calls for the expansion of debt instrument auctions across the entire maturity spectrum:

“Faced with such extraordinary financing needs, the Committee focused on the optimal potential size of each coupon issue, while not jeopardizing a successful auction process.

It was the Committee's recommendation that existing monthly 2-year and 3-year notes could be increased by $5 billion in size, to $45 billion and $35 billion, respectively.

Furthermore, the Committee recommends that monthly 5-year notes have the greatest room for expansion given their liquidity and focus and should be increased by as much as $10 billion per issue. This would bring the monthly issuance size to as much as $40 billion.

And lastly, the committee recommends that the Treasury increase the size of the newly issued quarterly 10-year notes by $5 billion and by $4 billion when re-opened the two months following the new issue. In other words, the sizes of the 10-year issuances would increase from $20 billion, $16 billion and $16 billion each quarter to $25 billion, $20 billion and $20 billion, respectively.”

What a brilliant solution! In the absence of demand, and abundant supply, issue more supply!

Significantly, the estimated spending requirement for 2009 has, in the estimation of this committee, now ballooned to $2 trillion, and the stipulation is made that a similarly grotesque figure will be required for 2010.

“The net supply of Treasurys in 2009 and 2010 combined seems likely to total more than $3 trillion and could climb as high as $4 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the 2009 Federal budget deficit to be $1.2 trillion. The consensus of private sector analysts is similar to that figure. Yet, neither the CBO estimate nor the private consensus reflect fully the funding needs associated with the Obama Administration's fiscal stimulus plans, the implementation of TARP (or another TARP-like program), or the rumored creation of a bad/aggregator bank to help deal with the underperforming assets weighing down financial institutions. Some of the funding of these government programs will spill over into 2010, a year in which the "core" budget position also will be weak according to mainstream expectations for economic performance.”

Importantly, the committee acknowledges for the first time that China will likely be a less reliable sucker for the continued sale of the expanding sea of U.S. debt instruments:

“China, on the other hand, could slow its accumulation of dollar-denominated debt. Such a trend already has begun to develop with respect to its accumulation of overall dollar assets as the flow of private capital into China has cooled alongside the global downturn, alleviating the need to offset capital inflows.”

And, in apparent support of the argument for diminishing demand for U.S.Dollar-denominated junk debt, the committee suggests that having a bigger “primary dealer community” would bolster the odds against future auction failures. The solution appears to be to hire more salesmen.

And finally, a larger primary dealer community would help to reduce on the margin the possibility of an undersubscribed auction(s). There currently are just 17 primary dealers, down from 30 a decade ago. Government bond trading desks at the dealers also are not immune from sector-wide capital/balance sheet issues and desks at many dealers are being encouraged to minimize risk.

What an operation! How can this charade be allowed to continue? The only explanation, and its glaringly obvious, is that nobody, from the executive administration level down to Joe the Plumber, is willing to step up and be first to pull the plug and the artificial standard of living we’ve created for ourselves at the current expense of foreign treasuries and at the future expense of our progeny.

What a sad statement as to the integrity of the human race.

But, whatever. We can't afford to sit around and pity ourselves just because we allowed the thieves of Wall Street and Washington administer this unlubricated broomstick to our collective backsides.

The only intelligent thing to do, and yes I do believe there is a "stuck record" frequency developing here, is to buy gold and silver. This $4 trillion hallucination on the part of the United States financial mismanagers is directly dilutive to the the value of any currency issued by that bankrupt nation, and is therefore a natural exponential driver for the gold price.

Gold bullion, gold mining shares, and for maximum upside (with correlated risk) gold juniors. If you choose NOT to participate in gold, you will have no one but yourself to blame for the splinters you'll be plucking out from your derriere that have "In God We Trust" printed on them.

John Bolton Is Upset

American Scofflaw

Bolton then went on to claim that the US's mother dresses it funny, and that the US's dog is really ugly.

Iran's nuclear program is a power station. And the fuel rods to operate it. Both activities are guaranteed to Iran under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which both the US and Iran (but not Israel) have signed.

Nobody has offered any proof that Iran is doing anything other than building a power station.

Folks, this is a repeat of the lies used to start a war with Iraq, but since they cannot go ahead and claim that Iran actually has nuclear weapons without a demand of proof from a world made skeptical by the Iraq lies, so the claim is that Iran may have nuclear weapons in the future, a far more difficult claim to prove or (for the purposes of the war mongers) disprove.

But this idea of killing people because of what they MIGHT do in the future is the slipperiest of slopes. Can I shoot my neighbor today because there is a very real chance he might attack my wife next month? Can I shoot the teenagers hanging around my car rather than risk having them steal the vehicle at some point in the future? I don't like the way the guy who lives by the mailboxes looks at me; does that give me the moral right to set fire to his home to drive him out?

Absolutely

American Scofflaw
A coming episode of the acclaimed FX drama “Rescue Me” will tackle what may sound like a far-fetched plot line: that the attacks of Sept. 11 were an “inside job.” The actor who espouses the theories on camera, it turns out, also subscribes to them in real life.

Mr. Sunjata surprised some of the TV reporters when he said that he “absolutely, 100 percent” supports the assertion that “9/11 was an inside job.”

Claims that Al Qaeda terrorists were not solely responsible for the attacks have a lively following on the Internet, including on YouTube, but the second episode of “Rescue Me’s” fifth season, starting in April, may represent the first fictional presentation of 9/11 conspiracy theories by a mainstream media company (FX is operated by the News Corporation).

“They’re not discussed a lot in the press,” Daniel Sunjata, the actor who plays Franco Rivera on “Rescue Me,” told reporters at a television press tour last month. He predicted that the episode would be “socio-politically provocative.”

In the episode, Mr. Sunjata’s character delivers a two-minute monologue for a French journalist describing a “neoconservative government effort” to control the world’s oil, drastically increase military spending and “change the definition of pre-emptive attack.” To put it into action, he continues, “what you need is a new Pearl Harbor.

Mister, it's a S.C.A. M

Where dat $$$

American Scofflaw

It never existed.

The problem with a debt-based economic system, found in the Federal Reserve and its cousins around the world, is that the moment it goes into creation, more money is owed than actually exists. The more money which is created (out of thin air) in response to loans, the more money which does not exist is owed.
Simply put, if there is 1,000,000 in circulation, then 1,050,000 is owed to the Federal Reserve. a recession is when nobody can come up with that extra $50,000, but then again, it never existed in the first place.

As long as an ever larger pool of borrowers can be found to create more new money to pay the interest on the older loans, the system will grow, but eventually you run out of new borrowers, which isd what has happened now. and, in their desperation to keep things going, the bankers encouraged everyone to do their finances on credit rather than on cash. Stores borrow the money to stock their shelves, shippers borrow the money to fuel their cargo ships, all of it running up the tally of money owed to the banks; money that does not and never did actually exist.

So, all a recession is is the banks demanding that interest money and nobody being able to find it... because it never existed.

May or May Not Get It

American Scofflaw
In 2002, Gary McKinnon was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice for hacking into a series of computers in the Pentagon, NASA, and other sensitive military locations. McKinnon claimed he was seeking information on UFOs and says he found files dealing with “non-terrestrial officers” and “fleet-to-fleet transfers” involving ships not on any U.S. Navy registry.

Not impressed by McKinnon's internet snooping for UFOs or alleged discoveries of classified information concerning non-terrestrial affairs, the U.S. Department of Justice began extradition proceedings.

After a series of unsuccessful legal appeals McKinnon stands on the verge of being extradited to the U.S.

Don't Fire Me, Don't Fire Thee, Fire That Man Behind The Tree

American Scofflaw

Blagojevich correctly told the state Senate on Thursday that the mover behind the drug importation issue was then Rep. Rahm Emanuel, now President Obama's chief of staff. The FDA proved to be a toothless tiger in the drug importation movement and never seriously tried to either approve or block any importation plans put in place by a relatively small number of cities and states.

That's the context. Blagojevich said he the state senate fires him, than Emanuel should be tossed out too.

After listening to Rod Blagojevich speak outside his Chicago home this evening I am certain that IL's impeached Governor is going to start talking about alot of IL and Chicago Political doings. Rahm Emmanuel may be planning to have another Donald Young type execution take place only this one directed at Blagojevich.

Lets not forget that IL newly sworn Governor Quinn has some political ethics questions as well. Can't wait to see who hangs Obama's skinny ass out to dry first. You know Blago is not about to go down alone.