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Oct. 30th, 2008
Oh good, more Hitler rhetoric
Oct. 30th, 2008 02:08 pmThe fundamentalists are bringing out the "gays == nazis" rhetoric again. C.f. this Yes on 8 speaker saying that if "we" don't overturn marriage for queers it'll be like accomodating Hitler and the Nazi party. The Yes on 8 side also just got another $4.5 million in funds in the last two days and is buying $2m in ads a day.
The "No on 8" campaign - the campaign to preserve marriage rights in California - has stated that their site came under DDOS attack earlier this week, preventing donations from being made, but that they have resolved this issue. Donate to the "No on 8" campaign here.
eta: More normal YouTube link here. And the speaker is the spokesperson for Yes on 8, so this isn't some random jackass. It's a specific and highly-placed jackass!
eta2: And at the same rally, they've got the old "they can't reproduce so they have to recruit" language revved back up. For those who don't know: this is 90s shorthand for "faggots will rape your kids and turn them into queers." In the 90s, they'd actually say all those words outright (adding "and give them AIDS" for bonus "kill your children" points) but that plays badly now. All this comes from the key fundamentalist dogma about homosexuality which requires that being GBLT is not in any way innate, but is instead a learned and sinful behaviour. Accordingly, this behaviour must be taught, which leads directly to a small variant on old-school blood libel, wherein adult queers rape children to "turn" them into queers. This is also the source of the no-longer-as-often-repeated "pedophilia is the basis of homosexuality" libel in the fundamentalist community.
So that's what they're talking about here: the longstanding (decades-old) rhetoric that queers want to kill your children by raping them, giving them AIDS, and turning them into queer monsters like themselves. That's what this clip's shorthand means.
The "No on 8" campaign - the campaign to preserve marriage rights in California - has stated that their site came under DDOS attack earlier this week, preventing donations from being made, but that they have resolved this issue. Donate to the "No on 8" campaign here.
eta: More normal YouTube link here. And the speaker is the spokesperson for Yes on 8, so this isn't some random jackass. It's a specific and highly-placed jackass!
eta2: And at the same rally, they've got the old "they can't reproduce so they have to recruit" language revved back up. For those who don't know: this is 90s shorthand for "faggots will rape your kids and turn them into queers." In the 90s, they'd actually say all those words outright (adding "and give them AIDS" for bonus "kill your children" points) but that plays badly now. All this comes from the key fundamentalist dogma about homosexuality which requires that being GBLT is not in any way innate, but is instead a learned and sinful behaviour. Accordingly, this behaviour must be taught, which leads directly to a small variant on old-school blood libel, wherein adult queers rape children to "turn" them into queers. This is also the source of the no-longer-as-often-repeated "pedophilia is the basis of homosexuality" libel in the fundamentalist community.
So that's what they're talking about here: the longstanding (decades-old) rhetoric that queers want to kill your children by raping them, giving them AIDS, and turning them into queer monsters like themselves. That's what this clip's shorthand means.
If you saw my previous post
Oct. 30th, 2008 03:39 pmI've added this link showing a spokesperson at the same "Yes on 8" rally talking about how queers can't reproduce, so must "recruit" instead. This is longstanding shorthand for "the faggots want to rape your kids and turn them queer." (I explain in a bit more detail in the previous post.) Andrew Sullivan takes note of the predictable (and by me, predicted) silence of the Obama campaign, as well as the silence of Governor Schwarzenegger, over here.
You can donate to the "No on 8" campaign here.
You can donate to the "No on 8" campaign here.
dumb ideas i like
Oct. 30th, 2008 10:04 pmIf I had a time machine that I could only use for trivial things, I'd use it go to back in time and insert anachronisms into the backgrounds of old movies and TV shows. Not necessarily science-fiction ones (tho' I'd pretty much have to give Doctor Who an iPod; it's inevitable - and given his character, arguably in character), and not shows and movies which were shot as period at the time; just, you know, stuff that could be there, but didn't exist yet. So the Brady kids' room could have a model of the Space Shuttle in 1969.
(This accidental post inspired by deeply-passionate arguments about typeface usage in Mad Men.)
(This accidental post inspired by deeply-passionate arguments about typeface usage in Mad Men.)
What a mess.
Oct. 30th, 2008 11:01 pmOkay, so the Baltic Dry Index, which measures international trade activity, has, um, basically collapsed. It's sitting at 885 today, compared to a year ago about this time at 11,000, which to be fair was part of an abnormal spike up. (Note graphs on that page are behind a day or two, but they're good for historical data.) However, these numbers are very low; the index hasn't been this low since trade shut down immediately after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Credit-default-swap insurance on US treasury debt is now 40 times what it cost a year and a half ago. That's really not very good. The rate is still low - $40,000 for $10M in coverage, vs. $1,000 in early 2007 - but still. That's treasuries. And oh, by the way, the Fed is now officially buying out non-US-generated non-US-held non-US-at-all debt with... well, I suppose it's TARP funds. But who knows, it's all ad hoc at this point. Bernanke is now banking (a-heh) on so much deflationary pressure that he can essentially print money globally (Brad Setzer has more on this), and is threatening to cut rates to zero percent. (They're damn near there already; they cut rates by half a point and missed by 63 basis points.)
The IMF is making the same bet; the International Monetary Fund is talking about essentially printing its own money by issuing new debt as it has already gone through most of its balance sheet and countries like Pakistan are reportedly a few days from Icelandic-style bankruptcy. And the UK is being told it needs a ZIRP to prevent a depression. Yay.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, now that corporate debt can be traded for Treasuries at damn near will, companies have started issuing more long-term debt instruments. I wonder if any of them are any good at all? They'd better be, because this week's treasury auction sure could've gone better.
Oh, but as far as the actual TARP money goes - the US$700B in Treasuries? Bank recipients are going to use it to buy up other banks, not lend out. It's taxpayer-funded industry consolidation: "In point of fact, the dirty little secret of the banking industry is that it has no intention of using the money to make new loans. But this executive was the first insider who’s been indiscreet enough to say it within earshot of a journalist." And at least Goldman Sachs says they have no plans to change their business practices regarding the leveraging that got us here to start with, but so far, only a very people people are paying attention to this theft of tax money, such as The Nation's "Paulson's Swindle Revealed" and the New York Times really, really, really wanting to know where the $123B in bailout funds for AIG went. They're through most of it already, and the clear implication is that they were hiding assloads of losses through accounting fraud.
Oh, and in a blow to corporate lending, Citigroup Inc. and Credit Suisse Group AG are among banks tying corporate loan rates to credit- default swaps, raising borrowing costs and exposing companies to derivatives accused of crippling the financial system. This is insane.
Consumer confidence, as previously reported many places fell through the floor. This was of course predictable based on polling data.
Karl Denninger at Market Ticker looks at all this and mortgage-"assistance" plans being floated and says that if you're underwater or close to it, default on your mortgage right now, and in particular do not accept any bailout being offered that would take you from a "non-recourse" loan (as most are) to a "recourse" loan. Read the column for why; he explains in more detail here.
Dr. Roubini at RGE Monitor is saying we need to be prepared for stagnation plus deflation, which is pretty obvious at this point, as the Financial Times notes that we've gone through his 12 steps to create a collapse of the financial system. Interestingly, another RGE Monitor blogger (username economonitor) comments on Dr. Roubini's post that things are so broken now transparency would actually be counterproductive; the banking system would be recognised as utterly insolvent and what's left of the system would fall over dead that day. I think this comment forgets that people generally think that already. He also talks about the civil unrest that would follow a deflationary collapse; hyperinflationary spirals do the same damn thing.
Dr. Roubini also wants a US$400B stimulus package. The previous round, by contrast, was $168B.
I don't see how these printing+stimulus combinations go down without a collapse of the US dollar. I know what governments are trying; I don't see how you both create enough money to have it work without destroying confidence in that instrument - particularly with banks overtly working against the stated plans and stated intents. Hopefully I'm missing something.
Here, this'll amuse you; Tuesday's big ramp up in stocks, in historical context:
Credit-default-swap insurance on US treasury debt is now 40 times what it cost a year and a half ago. That's really not very good. The rate is still low - $40,000 for $10M in coverage, vs. $1,000 in early 2007 - but still. That's treasuries. And oh, by the way, the Fed is now officially buying out non-US-generated non-US-held non-US-at-all debt with... well, I suppose it's TARP funds. But who knows, it's all ad hoc at this point. Bernanke is now banking (a-heh) on so much deflationary pressure that he can essentially print money globally (Brad Setzer has more on this), and is threatening to cut rates to zero percent. (They're damn near there already; they cut rates by half a point and missed by 63 basis points.)
The IMF is making the same bet; the International Monetary Fund is talking about essentially printing its own money by issuing new debt as it has already gone through most of its balance sheet and countries like Pakistan are reportedly a few days from Icelandic-style bankruptcy. And the UK is being told it needs a ZIRP to prevent a depression. Yay.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, now that corporate debt can be traded for Treasuries at damn near will, companies have started issuing more long-term debt instruments. I wonder if any of them are any good at all? They'd better be, because this week's treasury auction sure could've gone better.
Oh, but as far as the actual TARP money goes - the US$700B in Treasuries? Bank recipients are going to use it to buy up other banks, not lend out. It's taxpayer-funded industry consolidation: "In point of fact, the dirty little secret of the banking industry is that it has no intention of using the money to make new loans. But this executive was the first insider who’s been indiscreet enough to say it within earshot of a journalist." And at least Goldman Sachs says they have no plans to change their business practices regarding the leveraging that got us here to start with, but so far, only a very people people are paying attention to this theft of tax money, such as The Nation's "Paulson's Swindle Revealed" and the New York Times really, really, really wanting to know where the $123B in bailout funds for AIG went. They're through most of it already, and the clear implication is that they were hiding assloads of losses through accounting fraud.
Oh, and in a blow to corporate lending, Citigroup Inc. and Credit Suisse Group AG are among banks tying corporate loan rates to credit- default swaps, raising borrowing costs and exposing companies to derivatives accused of crippling the financial system. This is insane.
Consumer confidence, as previously reported many places fell through the floor. This was of course predictable based on polling data.
Karl Denninger at Market Ticker looks at all this and mortgage-"assistance" plans being floated and says that if you're underwater or close to it, default on your mortgage right now, and in particular do not accept any bailout being offered that would take you from a "non-recourse" loan (as most are) to a "recourse" loan. Read the column for why; he explains in more detail here.
Dr. Roubini at RGE Monitor is saying we need to be prepared for stagnation plus deflation, which is pretty obvious at this point, as the Financial Times notes that we've gone through his 12 steps to create a collapse of the financial system. Interestingly, another RGE Monitor blogger (username economonitor) comments on Dr. Roubini's post that things are so broken now transparency would actually be counterproductive; the banking system would be recognised as utterly insolvent and what's left of the system would fall over dead that day. I think this comment forgets that people generally think that already. He also talks about the civil unrest that would follow a deflationary collapse; hyperinflationary spirals do the same damn thing.
Dr. Roubini also wants a US$400B stimulus package. The previous round, by contrast, was $168B.
I don't see how these printing+stimulus combinations go down without a collapse of the US dollar. I know what governments are trying; I don't see how you both create enough money to have it work without destroying confidence in that instrument - particularly with banks overtly working against the stated plans and stated intents. Hopefully I'm missing something.
Here, this'll amuse you; Tuesday's big ramp up in stocks, in historical context:
Largest daily percentage gains
Rank Date Close Net % Change
1 1933-03-15 62.10 +8.26 +15.34
2 1931-10-06 99.34 +12.86 +14.87
3 1929-10-30 258.47 +28.40 +12.34
4 1932-09-21 75.16 +7.67 +11.36
5 2008-10-13 9,387.61 +936.42 +11.08
6 2008-10-28 9,065.12 +889.35 +10.88
7 1987-10-21 2,027.85 +186.84 +10.15
8 1932-08-03 58.22 +5.06 +9.52
9 1932-02-11 78.60 +6.80 +9.47
10 1929-11-14 217.28 +18.59 +9.36