Lex Lowther

Large U.S. bank collapse seen ahead
Tuesday August 19, 1:07 am ET
By Jan Dahinten

“The U.S. is not out of the woods. I think the financial crisis is at the halfway point, perhaps. I would even go further to say ‘the worst is to come’,” he told a financial conference.

“We’re not just going to see mid-sized banks go under in the next few months, we’re going to see a whopper, we’re going to see a big one, one of the big investment banks or big banks,” said Rogoff, who is an economics professor at Harvard University and was the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist from 2001 to 2004.

Article Link: Click Here
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 Here’s the article as I understand it:

A special thanks goes out to the Captain who was courteous enough to allow me to join the crew.

LEX

No….it’s nothing cool like what the girl above is doing:

The brainiacs below tried kite surfing in Tropical Storm Fay and after one guy took a shot at being Superman and missed the ocean by about 180 degrees as he flew into the shore from the beach. While the guy lived and won’t qualify to receive a Darwin Award, he will receive a lifetime memory of his stupidity courtesy of Youtube.

LEX

A Baby Daddy for Both Americas
by Ann Coulter
Wed Jul 30, 7:58 PM ET

For those few Americans without an Internet connection and to whom I have not faxed the National Enquirer stories: Evidence is accumulating that John Edwards is right — there really are “two Americas.” There’s one where men cheat on their cancer-stricken wives and one where men do not cheat on their cancer-stricken wives.

To put it another way, it would appear that ambulances aren’t the only things John Edwards has been chasing lately.

Last year, the National Enquirer broke the story about New-Age divorcee Rielle Hunter, formerly Lisa Druck, telling friends she was having an affair with Edwards and that she was pregnant with his “love child.”

Who knew that “my father was a mill worker” could be such a great pickup line? In his defense, Edwards had to do something to kill time between giving $50,000 speeches on poverty.

I guess the Enquirer is lucky Edwards isn’t a trial lawyer! A sleazy carnival sideshow trial lawyer wouldn’t even need to start channeling unborn children before a jury — as Edwards did in the junk-science cases that made him a multimillionaire — to win a defamation case if these charges are false. The “love child” allegation could be easily disproved by DNA testing.

Which brings up a fascinating legal question: Would it be admissible for Edwards to channel the very love child at issue during such a proceeding? Reminiscent of his performances in medical malpractice cases, he could say: She speaks to you through me and I have to tell you right now — I didn’t plan to talk about this — right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She’s inside me, and she’s talking to you, she’s saying: “John Edwards ain’t my daddy!”

When the National Enquirer story first broke last year, the Edwards campaign denied that Edwards was the father, pawning the affair off on an apparently very loyal Edwards campaign official, Andrew Young. Like Edwards, Young was married with children, but also like Edwards, Young is a Democrat, so it was possible.

Except that, not only has Young’s wife not left him, but she was perfectly copacetic with her husband’s mistress moving into their gated community for the duration of her pregnancy, and even joining her, Andrew and the kids for dinner.

Back on Earth, that doesn’t happen. The Edwards campaign better start looking at its backup plan of claiming Nathan Lane is the father.

FULL ARTICLE: CLICK HERE

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In my opinion, John Edwards gives trial lawyers a bad name and that’s saying something. I guess with a Dad like this guy…it may take a village to raise the kid but first they’ll have to figure out which village will take him.

LEX 

Sen. Joe Lieberman (DINO), who was the Democratic vice presidential nominee eight years ago, is on Sen. John McCain’s short list of VP candidates, according to a McCain (RINO) campaign adviser.

“[McCain] loves Lieberman. And he is on the [short] list because Lieberman has never embarrassed anyone, never misspoken. The first rule is, don’t take someone who costs you votes,” the McCain adviser told the Financial Times.

Still, warned the adviser, Lieberman on the GOP ticket won’t be easy, noting that the independent Lieberman caucuses with Democrats in the Senate.

“Conservatives would be pissed as hell – I think you would have a revolt, but sometimes John does what John wants to do,” the McCain adviser said.

Another McCain adviser told the Times that McCain wouldn’t base his VP decision on “tactical considerations.”

“He can be pragmatic, but on the biggest decisions he tends to favor his instinct for the bigger picture,” the adviser said.

Lieberman’s office declined to comment, as did the McCain campaign.

Lieberman has consistenly said he wouldn’t run for vice president on the GOP ticket.

ARTICLE LINK: NEWSMAX

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McCain being the RINO (Republican in name only) and Lieberman being the DINO (Democrat in name only), I’m thinking that when they begin breeding new laws the only party that may be represented is at best the Party of Lobbyists supporting McCain.

LEX

DENVER (CBS4) ― CBS4 News has learned if mass arrests happen at the Democratic Convention, those taken into custody will be jailed in a warehouse owned by the City of Denver. Investigator Rick Sallinger discovered the location and managed to get inside for a look.

The newly created lockup is on the northeast side of Denver. Protesters have already given this place a name: “Gitmo on the Platte.” 

Inside are dozens are metal cages. They are made out of chain link fence material and topped by rolls of barbed wire.

“This is a secured environment,” Capt. Frank Gale of the Denver Sheriff’s Department told CBS4. “We’re concerned about how that’s going to be utilized by people who will be potentially disruptive.”

…..Each of the fenced areas is about 5 yards by 5 yards and there is a lock on the door. A sign on the wall reads “Warning! Electric stun devices used in this facility.”

CBS4 showed its video to leaders of groups that plan to demonstrate during the convention.

“That’s how you treat cattle,” said Adam Jung of the group Tent State University. “You showed the sign where it said stun gun in use and you just change the word gun for bolt and it’s a meat processing plant.”

Gale would not discuss the facility at this time.

“We want to make sure we got our game plan set,” he said, “We want to make sure the entire procedure is laid out all the personnel know what they are supposed to do.”

The plans were to keep this lockup a secret, at least for now. The sheriff’s department said late Tuesday the mayor’s office would be releasing a statement about it early next week.

The American Civil Liberties Union says it will ask the City of Denver how prisoners will get access to food and water, bathrooms, telephones, plus medical care, and if there will be a place to meet with attorneys.

ARTICLE LINK: Click Here

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If this was being reported about the Republican National Convention the ACLU would be asking for heads to roll rather than for rolls of 2-ply.

LEX

Mon Aug 11, 3:26 PM ET

GENEVA (AFP) - A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again, the museum said Monday.

The art work, titled “Complex S(expletive..)”, is the size of a house. The wind carried it 200 metres (yards) from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it fell back to Earth in the grounds of a children’s home, said museum director Juri Steiner.

The inflatable turd broke the window at the children’s home when it blew away on the night of July 31, Steiner said. The art work has a safety system which normally makes it deflate when there is a storm, but this did not work when it blew away.

Steiner said McCarthy had not yet been contacted and the museum was not sure if the piece would be put back on display.

Article Link: CLICK HERE

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Hat’s off to my Dad for turning me on to this one. His humor definitely reminds me that the crapple didn’t fall far from the tree

LEX

The chance discovery of the remains of a prehistoric giant kangaroo has cast doubts on the long-held view that climate change drove it and other mega-fauna to extinction, a new study reveals.

The research, published this week in the US-based journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, argues that man likely hunted to death the giant kangaroo and other very large animals on the southern island of Tasmania.

The debate centres on the skull of a giant kangaroo found in a cave in the thick rainforest of the rugged northwest of Tasmania in 2000.

Scientists dated the find at 41,000 years old, some 2,000 years after humans first began to live in the area.

“Up until now, people thought that the Tasmanian mega-fauna had actually gone extinct before people arrived on the island,” a member of the British and Australian study, Professor Richard Roberts, told AFP Tuesday.

He said that it was likely that hunting killed off Tasmania’s mega-fauna — including the long-muzzled, 120 kilogram (264 pound) giant kangaroo, a rhinoceros-sized wombat and marsupial ‘lions’ which resembled leopards.

Roberts, from the University of Wollongong south of Sydney, said the idea that climate change could account for the death of the animals was disputed by the fact the area had a very stable climate in the critical time period.

“Things were very climatically stable in that part of Australia and yet the mega-fauna still managed to go extinct,” he said. “So it’s down to humans of one sort or another.”

Roberts said because the large animals were slow breeders, it would not have required an aggressive campaign to see them quickly die out.

FULL ARTICLE: CLICK HERE

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Proof positive that even I tire of politics from time to time

LEX

The Pipeline War: Russian bear goes for West’s jugular

The war in Georgia escalated dangerously last night after Russian jets reportedly bombed a vital pipeline that supplies oil to the West.

After a day of heightening international tensions, Georgian leaders claimed that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which transports oil from the Caspian Sea to Turkey, had been attacked. But it is thought the bombs  missed their target.

Their claims came after Russian jets struck deep into the territory of its tiny neighbour, killing civilians and ‘completely devastating’ the strategic Black Sea port of Poti, a staging post for oil and other energy supplies.

Reports last night also said that Russia had bombed the international airport in Tbilisi.

Georgian economic development minister Ekaterina Sharashidzne said: ‘This clearly shows that Russia has targeted not just Georgian economic outlets but international economic outlets as well.’

The pipeline is 30 per cent owned by BP and supplies 1 per cent of the world’s oil needs, pumping up to a million barrels of crude per day to Turkey.

It is crucial to the world’s volatile energy market and the only oil and gas route that bypasses Russia’s stranglehold on energy exports from the region.

FULL ARTICLE: CLICK HERE
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It’s a crazy world we live in. Short of busting out a nuke, Putin is probably not going to be able to shore up commodity pricing. Hopefully the world never gets that crazy.

LEX

Hilarious new video from JIBJAB

I’d like to thank the technology that allowed me to make a guest appearance.

LEX

…..is not to kill the host. The markets apparently know this and are moving accordingly. While much of the recent movement relates to oil reaching its limit as prices found there is indeed some elasticity even in the black gold known as old.

Banks and major oil players have been blessed with an excellent cast of characters in both parties. If they want to maintain the status quo and not kill the proverbial host, things will have to ebb a bit to make the house players seems on target. While I don’t really believe much in market conspiracies, greed needs no organization in order to collaborate and there is an abundance of evidence in behavioral finance to support the psychology of the market.

In the campaigns for the Presidency of both John McCain and Barack Obama, the Securities & Investment sector ranks as the third highest donor. These guys are taking no chances and are surely determined to make sure they’ve buttered the biscuit of the winner no matter what.

Source: www.opensecrets.org

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While both have many of the usual suspects in their deck, Oil & Gas are definitely in McCain’s camp. Currently banks and oil companies have been shielded from the results of their lack of stewardship and if McCain loses, oil is likely to lose its get out of jail free card. The unfortunate thing is that if neither party addresses unchecked speculation that the banks are enjoying, oil is likely to be unfairly impuned as sellers pound commodities down while making max profits. Rescuing the banks already has taken its toll on taxpayers, if neither candidate steps up, it will also likely impact our energy independence (not to mention the oil & gas sector).

LEX