the inventor of the lie about Obama: the antisemitic certified psycho Andy Martin / and his enabler, Fox's Hannity

Andy Martin is known for filing many lawsuits.

The New York Times
e-pub: Sunday 12 October 2008
print: Monday 13 October 2008 Page A-1

The Man Behind
The Whispers
About Obama

by Jim Rutenberg

The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set him on the path to his presidential candidacy:

“Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.”

That statement, contained in a press release, spun a complex tale about the ancestry of Mr. Obama, who is Christian.

The press release was picked up by a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com, and spread steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and books. It continues to drive other false rumors about Mr. Obama’s background.

Just last Friday, a woman told Senator John McCain at a town-hall-style meeting, “I have read about him,” and “he’s an Arab.” Mr. McCain corrected her.

Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs.

But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.

An examination of legal documents and election filings, along with interviews with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims. He has left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years.

He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.”

Though he is not a lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he made unsuccessful attempts to win public office for both parties in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as a writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases.

Mr. Martin, in a series of interviews, did not dispute his influence in Obama rumors.

“Everybody uses my research as a takeoff point,” Mr. Martin said, adding, however, that some take his writings “and exaggerate them to suit their own fantasies.”

As for his background, he said: “I’m a colorful person. There’s always somebody who has a legitimate cause in their mind to be angry with me.”

When questions were raised last week about Mr. Martin’s appearance and claims on “Hannity’s America” on Fox News, the program’s producer said Mr. Martin was clearly expressing his opinion and not necessarily fact.

It was not Mr. Martin's first turn on national television. The CBS News program "48 Hours" in 1993 devoted an hourlong program, "See You in Court; Civil War, Anthony Martin Clogs Legal System with Frivolous Lawsuits," to what it called his prolific filings. (Mr. Martin has
also been known as Anthony Martin-Trigona.) He has filed so many lawsuits that a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court without preliminary approval.

He prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew power.” He ran as a Republican for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he aired a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of using cocaine.

In the 1990s, Mr. Martin was jailed in a case in Florida involving a physical altercation.

His newfound prominence, and the persistence of his line of political attack — updated regularly on his Web site and through press releases — amazes those from his past.

“Well, that’s just a bookend for me,” said Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party, whom Mr. Martin sued for refusing to support him. Mr. Slade said Mr. Martin was driven like “a run-over dog, but he’s fearless.”

Given Mr. Obama’s unusual background, which was the focus of his first book, it was perhaps bound to become fodder for some opposed to his candidacy.

Mr. Obama was raised mostly by his white mother, an atheist, and his grandparents, who were Protestant, in Hawaii. He hardly knew his father, a Kenyan from a Muslim family who variously considered himself atheist or agnostic, Mr. Obama wrote. For a few childhood years, Mr. Obama lived in Indonesia with a stepfather he described as loosely following a liberal Islam.

Theories about Mr. Obama’s background have taken on a life of their own. But independent analysts seeking the origins of the cyberspace attacks wind up at Mr. Martin’s first press release, posted on the Free Republic Web site in August 2004.

Its general outlines have turned up in a host of works that have expounded falsely on Mr. Obama’s heritage or supposed attempts to conceal it, including “Obama Nation,” the widely discredited best seller about Mr. Obama by Jerome R. Corsi. Mr. Corsi opens the book with a quote from Mr. Martin.

“What he’s generating gets picked up in other places,” said Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., who has investigated the e-mail campaign’s circulation and origins, “and it’s an example of how the Internet has given power to sources we would have never taken seriously at another point in time.”

Ms. Allen said Mr. Martin’s original work found amplification in 2006, when a man named Ted Sampley wrote an article painting Mr. Obama as a secret practitioner of Islam. Quoting liberally from Mr. Martin, the article circulated on the Internet, and its contents eventually found their way into various e-mail messages, particularly an added claim that Mr. Obama had attended “Jakarta’s Muslim Wahhabi schools. Wahhabism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging jihad on the rest of the world.”

Mr. Obama for two years attended a Catholic school in Indonesia, where he was taught about the Bible, he wrote in “Dreams From My Father,” and for two years went to an Indonesian public school open to all religions, where he was taught about the Koran.

Mr. Sampley, coincidentally, is a Vietnam veteran and longtime opponent of Mr. McCain and Senator John Kerry, both of whom he accused of ignoring his claims that American prisoners were left behind in Vietnam. He previously portrayed Mr. McCain as a “Manchurian candidate.” Speaking of Mr. Martin’s influence on his Obama writings, Mr. Sampley said, “I keyed off of his work.”

Mr. Martin’s depictions of Mr. Obama as a secret Muslim have found resonance among some Jewish voters who have received e-mail messages containing various versions of his initial theory, often by new authors and with new twists.

In his original press release, Mr. Martin wrote that he was personally “a strong supporter of the Muslim community.” But, he wrote of Mr. Obama, “it may well be that his concealment is meant to endanger Israel.” He added, “His Muslim religion would obviously raise serious questions in many Jewish circles.”

Yet in various court papers, Mr. Martin had impugned Jews. A motion he filed in a 1983 bankruptcy case called the judge “a crooked, slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.”

In another motion, filed in 1983, Mr. Martin wrote, “I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did.”

In an interview, Mr. Martin denied some statements against Jews attributed to him in court papers, blaming malicious judges for inserting them.

But in his “48 Hours” interview in 1993, he affirmed a different anti-Semitic part of the affidavit that included the line about the Holocaust, saying, “The record speaks for itself.”

When asked Friday about an assertion in his court papers that “Jews, historically and in daily living, act through clans and in wolf pack syndrome,” he said, “That one sort of rings a bell.”

He said he was not anti-Semitic. “I was trying to show that everybody in the bankruptcy court was Jewish and I was not Jewish,” he said, “and I was being victimized by religious bias.”

In discussing the denial of his admission to the Illinois bar, Mr. Martin said the psychiatric exam listing him as having a “moderately severe personality defect” was spitefully written by an evaluator he had clashed with.

Mr. Martin, who says he is from a well-off banking and farming family, is clearly pleased with his newfound attention. But, he said, others have added to his work in “scary” ways.

“They Google ‘Islam’ and ‘Obama’ and my stuff comes up and they take that and kind of use that — like a Christmas tree, and they decorate it,” he said. For instance, he said, he did not necessarily ascribe to a widely circulated e-mail message from the Israeli right-wing activist Ruth Matar, which includes the false assertion, “If Obama were elected, he would be the first Arab-American president.”

He said he had at least come to “accept” Mr. Obama’s word that he had found Jesus Christ. His intent, he said, was only to educate.

Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 14, 2008

An article on Monday about Andy Martin, who has been a source of some of the false rumors about Senator Barack Obama’s background, referred incorrectly to an academic institution where a study of the rumors’ origins was conducted by Prof. Danielle Allen. The Institute for Advanced Study is located in Princeton, N.J., but is not part of Princeton University.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 13, 2008, on page A1 of the New York edition.

Past Coverage
Book Attacking Obama Hopes To Repeat '04 Anti-Kerry Feat (August 13, 2008)
Want Obama in a Punch Line? First, Find a Joke (July 15, 2008)
Muslim Voters Detect a Snub From Obama (June 24, 2008)
Bloomberg, In Florida, Blasts Rumor About Obama (June 21, 2008)

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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1.October 13, 2008 7:06 am
Why, NY Times, do you legitimize nut-case provocateurs by responding to them? What nitwitted impulse compelled you to write a brief on Obama's background, as if there was some "issue" about it? There is none. There are only cynical "conservatives" who live off your inability to ignore them.
— Jon, China

No big surprise that Fox News and Sean Hannity should be connected with and be standing behind this type of hatred and crazed ranting.
-- Jeff, New York

I'd rather have Obama as a president than Martin any day! I think having a president who is tolerant and open, and actually understands Islam (rather than has a knee-jerk reaction to the religion, lumping over 1 billion people who follow a generally peace-loving Islam into the same bucket as non-sanctioned fanatics) would be a benefit to the US. Oh, and I'm Jewish, by the way. Palin scares me a heck of a lot more than anything out there!
— debbie, new york

October 13, 2008 7:06 am
Don't you think this guy has had more than enough attention? This article was too even-handed for a disseminator of lies.
— John, Geneva, Switzerland

5.October 13, 2008 7:06 am
You had better hope people get the point of this article, that this man is a disgusting pathetic anti-Semitic liar. I'm nervous that you just thrust him and his despicable rants into the spotlight even more.

Be careful, New York Times.
— Naomi, Brooklyn, NY

6.October 13, 2008 7:06 am
What a wonderful country.. really:) dreams do come true. But then am I thinking of just a fictitious country that we all love so much.Maybe it has never existed..? only that can explain how one can get away with this absolutely slanderous behavior and be accepted by society.

Oh but I forget of course our constitution guarantees us Freedom of speech! Am I among the select few that feels so repulsed with this kind of slime? I went to a catholic school.. and I loved my teachers who were mostly nuns. Even though I am not Christian, I was always
proud to be from a convent! Is this Christianity, what the republican party and This slime ball espouses. One wonders how Taleban et al came to hold so much sway in the middle east? One can say most of them who belong to that school are not well educated. But what does one say to all the crazies here.. how are they getting away with just absolutely behaving like the lowest denominator possible.. how does Sean Hannity et al exist and have a following? Where is The Lord when you need him?
— Srikanth, Clifton

7.October 13, 2008 7:06 am
The "fair and balanced" news network does it again. FOX TV promotes what they want to promote whether it's true or not. When confronted by a Barack advisor on Andy Martin's lies and anti-semitism, Fox admitted nothing.
— CAS, NYC

8.October 13, 2008 7:06 am
the republicans are desperate.they will try to swift boat obama in the next three weeks.
— observer, us

9.October 13, 2008 7:06 am
Is this for real? It's hard to believe so many people have so little common sense that they would stoop to believing stuff like that. Or, are that many people filled with that much hate? I suppose that's about the best explanation for why the rest of us have had to put up with eight years of the no-class Bush.
— Andy Hain, Carmel, CA

10.October 13, 2008 7:06 am
What a lunatic. A shame that a large number of the American public believes this load of garbage. But then again, most of those that are ignorant enough to believe such ridiculousness probably wouldn't vote for Obama in the first place. Which really is a shame because they would probably be better off with him in the white house than with a Republican.

Thank you for your investigative research.
— Zach Claudino, Visalia, Ca

11.October 13, 2008 7:06 am
We need stronger libel laws in this country. The fact that someone can say and a national news organization can publish allegations that are patently false and intended to do the object of the statement harm without being subject to civil action because the object of the malicious statement is a public figure is just plain wrong.

Fox News is a travesty. Their idea of a good moderated discussion or debate is to have two people talking with raised voices in opposition of each other while Chris Wallace tut, tuts in the middle. The Republican guests are very good at shouting the other person down.

They need to come out of the closet and start wearing brown uniforms.
— Peter Martin, Grapevine, TX

12.October 13, 2008 7:06 am
When you get a moment, would you send memo's out to Senator McCain, Governor Palin, and News Corporation with a special attention to the Fox News Empire.

Thanks.
— Mark, Winnetka, IL

As so many of us on the "left" have realized over the years...vileness, hatred, libel, fascist-type propaganda and despicable lies, completely devoid of one ounce of journalistic
integrity finds a willing home at FOX news...FOX is not alone, there are many, (they are legion)....
— chabuka, Olympia, WA.

14.October 13, 2008 7:06 am
This is the typical GOP strategy; If you can't argue with the message, then smear the messenger. It worked on Gore and Kerry, but I hope Americans can never be fooled again by those who will stop at nothing, tell any lie or break any law, to win or get what they want. We can't afford (literally) another 8 years like the last 8.
— JimZ, Thousand Oaks, CA

15.October 13, 2008 7:06 am
My GOD what a loser. Is this all that is left of the Republican Party? It seems so.
— Scy, Dallas

16.October 13, 2008 7:06 am
It's incredible to me that there are rumors that he's a muslim among the same crowd that also propagated the rumors that he's a radical christian follower of Jeramiah Wright. I believe it shouldn't even matter what religion he is or who he listens to on weekends analyzing old books, but if people want to look at christian values, which candidate has stayed with one wife and which has a divorce.
— Matthew, Sydney, NSW

17.October 13, 2008 7:06 am
What this speaks to is not so much about this crackpot, but how an American news network like Fox and another hate filled and ignorant man such as Hannity would allow such slander to fill the airwaves.

You have an Austrailian, Rupert Murdoch, allowed by this government and Republican John McCain, who for many years was head of the Commerce Committee,to purchase multiple news outlets. It was Johm McCain's committee that let the laws be relaxed over how ownership of Radio, TV and newspapers could be bought. Murdoch has done the same in England and elsewhere and turned legitimate news into tabloid trash.

There is no dividing line between real news and Fox and something akin to the National Inquirer.

Then you hire ignorant bloviators such as Hannity and O'Reiley, who never let facts get in the way of a hate filled propoganda and guess what???? They sell this as real news and give voice to every hated filled crackpot living.

Allowing one man to buy up news outlets is akin to the Republicans allowing the financial institutions to have free wheeling laws that has caused no regulations and has driven our economy into a ditch.

Those laws, in place since the Great Depression, were overturned by Mr. Deregulator, Phil Gramm who is on McCain's short list for Secretary of the Treasury.

So, we have Bush/Cheney who started two wars and are complete failures in everything they have touched, Rupert Murdoch who allows the airwaves to be tainted with hate filled crackpots, and McCain's great friend to deregulate the financial markets and we have the perfect storm of destruction of America.

And Americans are suppose to buy their tripe of "Obama is a Muslim" or "Who is Obama" or "Obama hangs out with terrorists", at the same time these pigs are destroying this once great country? Not that it matters that none of the utterances are in any way true. We are suppose to believe these crackpots, all ?

Not this time !!

— TN60, Tennessee

18.October 13, 2008 7:06 am
Who is Hal Turner, and what is his relationship to Sean Hannity?
— swingvoter, Florida

19.October 13, 2008 7:06 am
What is most puzzling to me about this whole election rubbish is - what is CNN doing to counter this. I have seen nothing. In fact, at times, they have seemed more like Fox than Fox, especially during the primary season, when it came yo Hillary vs Obama. Your newspaper has been late to the game as well. Why is this?
— susan3631, australia

20.October 13, 2008 7:09 am
Obama, Fleger, Wright, and Farrakhan are easily linked together through Trinity United Church of Christ. Fleger attacks white people with 401k's as guilty of Slavery. Fleger defends Wright and Farrakhan.

Then, Farrakhan says, "we owe them the whole damn country!" Them referring to blacks. Get your head out of your ...
— Skeptician, Alabama

21.October 13, 2008 7:09 am
Slime hath a name; it is Andy Martin. He is what might be understood as the "intellectual" fire power behind the recent angry, racist mob gatherings that McCain/Palin rallies have become.
— John, Chicago

22.October 13, 2008 7:09 am
So that's how this stupid nonsense got started. I live not all that far from Indonesia and they simply do not have extremist madrassas in the country, they are not allowed.

The education system is pretty good, the people extremely moderate and mostly always have been and they have always been friends of Australia and the US.
— monty41, Australia

23.October 13, 2008 7:09 am
Fox News has been host to a string of blatantly and latently of anti-semitic incidents in recent weeks, of which giving Herr Martin a half-hour of air-time is only the next-to-the-latest. I'm disappointed you didn't take Herr Hannity more to task (or to task at all for that matter) for not only putting scum like Martin out there, but then refusing to take any responsibility for his actions in doing so---much like the candidate both of these, ahem, men would have us elect President.

By the way, for the latest anti-semitic bit, check out Gov. Huckabee's act earlier this evening---he and ignorant guests going after Speaker Pelosi for letting the House go on "vacation" on September 29, ignoring that it was in fact the Jewish New Year. Perhaps minor in the cosmic scheme, but all part of a pattern, it would seem.
— larnov, N. Hollywood

24.October 13, 2008 7:09 am
So, Fox News allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government. Is Fox News held to the same standards as the Sci-Fi channel? Forget about running for president for the past year, would a man that trained to overthrow the government be allowed to serve in the U.S. Congress? Do people that watch Fox News believe such things are possible? Maybe I shouldn't be asking questions I don't want to hear the answer to...Fox News owes their viewers an explanation and an apology.
— Leonardo Canneto, Los Angeles

25.October 13, 2008 7:09 am
Anthony R. Martin-Trigona is the real name of the person now posing as Andy Martin.

In the 1970s, Mr. Anthony R. Martin-Trigona was a slum landlord in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, renting apartments to University of Illinois students. It was well-known that Martin-Trigona was a racist and anti-Semite. In once case, when Trigona found out that a property
manager had rented one of his apartments to black students, Trigona forced the tenants out by turning off the utilities to their apartment. The Champaign County Courthouse has the case records of this matter and other matters where Trigona harassed tenants.

Trigona frequently slandered Jews and harassed his female tenants. He frequently sued judges and government agencies alleging, inter alia, grand Jewish conspiracies to prevent his admission to the Illinois Bar.

Trigona, a tall large man, used to walk around town wearing Army fatigues and combat boots, and carrying a large stick. Most people gave him a wide berth.

It is difficult to believe than any news organization or website is giving this racist hatemonger a platform to spew his pathological hatred. Andy Martin is a fraud, a convicted criminal and the worst of America.
— WildOne, Portland

PIZZAQ: What the heck is going on here?

Oh yeah, click for larger.

square dingbats by Adina Weinand
Minneapolis College of Art & Design
Minnesota USA

I have received several inquiries regarding this PizzaQ image, and should explain that it came into our possession as the illustration on one of the very rare postage stamps ever seen outside its originating postal authority, Planet Mollyringwald. Mollyringwald is the most reclusive, closed, secretive, xenophobic, isolationist planet in the Dwingeloo-2 Galaxy. It makes North Korea seem like a 4th of July Kiwanis Club picnic. We know next to nothing about it or its inhabitants, but there is a strong belief among Vleeptron's exobiologists that it is populated exclusively by females.

(In The Journal of Dwingeloonic Studies, J. Guillam points out that unless such a society is intentionally self-extincting, like the Shaker religious community in North America, it probably has at least one male, whose name might be Scott or Todd or maybe Mark.)

This postage stamp was accidentally or illegally transmitted off Mollyringwald in 22400739 (roughly Earth Year 1994 AD), affixed to the upper right corner of a postcard that said only:

Miss You

* * *

3 square slices of white / ranch spinach pizza.

What on earth is going on here???

I'll need a full, unambiguous explanation. 3 names of people, and 1 species designation, would be nice.

I'm not sure, my memories of the '60s are pretty fuzzy, but I think I was at this Halloween party in Takoma Park, Maryland, or something a lot like it.

McCain/Palin county campaign chairman's newspaper column about Barack Obama / vote McCain/Palin, become a racist knuckledragger

Well, girls and boys, this is what the McCain presidential campaign has come down to. This is who runs John McCain's campaign on the grassroots level. Here's the voice of today's Republican party, southern Virginia klavern.

Though snippets of Bobby May's column have appeared all over the news in the last 48 hours, this blogger was thoughtful enough to post an image of the entire column on the Web.

And Agence-Vleeptron Presse was thoughtful enough to transcribe the column, so you can read the entire Sample of the Thought of a McCain/Palin Chairman here.

This is the kind of guy you get to stand next to if you go to a rally for John McCain and Sarah Palin. This is who the McCain/Palin campaign appoints as the county chairman. (May is also Treasurer of the Buchanan County Republican Committee.)

Virginia has traditionally been a solid "given" for Republican candidates, but enthusiasm for Obama, particularly in northern Virginia (near Washington DC), has turned that upside-down, and Obama is now polling ahead of McCain. The McCain campaign is ferociously, and nastily, battling for a state which was once in the GOP bag. Elsewhere in Virginia, The Wall Street Journal (recently bought by Rupert Murdoch) reports:

* * *

Sen. McCain's younger brother, Joe, 65, told supporters at a rally in Loudon County, a key northern Virginia battleground, that areas of the state where Obama has stronger support are "communist country." Mr. McCain, a former newspaper reporter and Navy petty officer, later apologized for the statement.

* * *

Anyway, after a brief AP item about Bobby May's dismissal by the McCain campaign, check out Bobby May's column, and get a whiff of the McCain campaign in Virginia. A-VP types every damn word just for you.

=================

Associated Press (US newswire)
Sunday 12 October 2008

McCain drops Virginia
GOP county chairman
over newspaper column

DANVILLE, Va. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate John McCain's campaign has ousted a prominent Virginia GOP figure who wrote a newspaper column mocking a potential Barack Obama administration.

A McCain spokeswoman said Bobby May was dropped this week from his job as McCain's Buchanan County campaign chairman.

May wrote in his column, "The (clarified) platform of Barack Hussein Obama," that if the Democratic senator were elected he would hire rapper Ludacris to paint the White House black and change the national anthem to the "Black National Anthem."

The column originally appeared in The Voice, a local newspaper.

May has worked on dozens of state Republican campaigns.

- 30 -

====================

The Buchanan County Voice
Buchanan County, Virginia USA
Friday 10 October 2008

The (clarified) platform
of Barack Hussein Obama

[by] Bobby May
bobbyleemay@yahoo.com

In response to criticism that I favor John Mccain for president and only present "one side of the issues," I am listing for your consideration the platform of Barack Hussein Obama as best as I can figure it out after venting all for the hot air, straining out the honey and removing the smelly substance similar to what the old bull left behind.

I think I've did a pretty good job of boiling his positions down to their very essence for the sake of clarity.

HIGH GAS PRICES: Inflate your tires.

OBAMA'S LACK OF EXPERIENCE: Inflate his ego.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: Learn to speak Spanish.

TERRORIST THREAT TO AMERICA: Learn to speak Arabic.

IRAQ: Establish time table to turn tail and run.

HEALTH CARE FUNDING CRISIS: Don't get sick. And raise taxes.

ENERGY SOLUTIONS: NO coal mining. NO oil drilling. NO nuclear power. Use solar panels and wind turbines to power cell phones and iPods; walk everywhere you go, buy a bike if you have any money left after huge Obama tax increases are implemented.

NATURAL DISASTERS: Raise taxes.

JOB CREATION: Raise taxes.

REPARATIONS TO BLACK COMMUNITY: Opposes before Election Day and supports after Election Day.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION: Mandatory Black Liberation Theology courses taught in all churches -- raise taxes to pay for this mandate. Put Rev. Jeremiah Wright in charge. Condemnation of homosexuality from the pulpit will become a Class 1 Felony.

HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE: Raise taxes. And coddle sexual perverts. Give tax breaks for NAMBLA membership fees.

SOCIAL SECURITY: Raise taxes.

PUBLIC EDUCATION: Raise taxes.

NATURAL RESOURCES: Raise taxes.

DRUG CRISIS: Raise taxes to pay for free drugs for Obama's inner-city political base.

SPACE EXPLORATION: Raise taxes to send all Republicans to Mars.

ABORTION: Anywhere, anytime, for anyone for any reason up to 9 months and send taxpayers the bill. Encourage Partial Birth Abortion.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: Keep buying foreign oil and sending billions to Muslim countries that hate us and want to destroy us.

TAXES: Soak the rich; everyone is hereby declared 'rich' for taxing purposes.

2ND AMENDMENT: Under Obama will only apply to gang-bangers, illegal aliens, Islamo-Fascist terrorists and Senator Jim Webb's aide.

REST OF U.S. CONSTITUTION: Appoint George Soros to update it for 21st Century, assing Socialist/Communist "grand ideas" and deleting First and Fourteeth Amendments upon advice of Buchanan County Democratic Party.

FOREIGN RELATIONS: Appoint Rev. Al Sharpton as Secretary of State, Jesse Jackson as UN Representative and let Bill Clinton handle all other "foreign relations" ... as long as Hillary doesn't find out! And raise taxes.

THE WHITE HOUSE: Hire rapper Ludacris to "paint it black." Taxes to be increased to buy enough paint to do the job plus spray-paint for graffiti.

THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES: Raise taxes to send $845 billion, send most to Africa so the Obama family there can skim off enough to allow them to free their goats and live the American Dream.

POLITICAL CORRUPTION: Yes. (Must in future be based on the Chicago model; no other restrictions will apply as long as Mayor Daley's machine gets a percentage.) And raise taxes.

NATIONAL ANTHEM: Change to the "Black National Anthem" by James Weldon Johnson. And raise taxes.

VOTING RIGHTS: Extend franchise to the French, English and especially the Germans due to their level of political sophistication and admiration of "The New Messiah."

STATEHOOD: Extend statehood the The District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Kenya, Cuba, Palestine, Freedonia, Bugtussle and "The Free State of McDowell." Then raise taxes.

U.S. CURRENCY: Update photos to reflect U.S. diversity; include pictures of "great Americans" such as Oprah Winfrey, Ludacris, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lousiana Congressman William Jefferson (Obama's new Secretary of the Treasury -- 50 Cent refused position after learning that he would lose his crazy check if he accepted the nomination). And raise taxes.

U.S. FLAG: Replace 50 stars with a star and crescent logo; red stripes changed to green to represent Obama's tree-hugging radical environmentalism and his lack of experience. Flag label pins, having become a substitute for "real patriotism" will henceforth be banned.

And raise taxes.

U.S. MILITARY: Confiscate all weapons, substitute water pistols, pea shooters and bows with suction cup arrows. Replace U.S. flag on uniforms with peace symbols changing uniform color from green to pink and abolishing the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, replacing it with "A queer in every foxhole and a camouflage sex toy in every backpack" requirement. Condoms will be issued instead of bullets and brotherly love encouraged. Barney Frank will be the new Secretary of Defense (renamed Secretary of Peace and Love) and Rosie O'Donnell, Ellen DeGeneres, Lindsay Lohan and Rick Boucher will all be made 5-star generals. And raise taxes.

* * * * *

If Barack Obama, a/k/a "The Great One" or "The New Messiah" takes issue with any of the above then I dare him to meet me on County Talk next Friday to debate his plans to divide and conquer America and change Liberty and Freedom to Socialism and Communism.

Bob gets a (slightly more sensible) new ride / when Bad Things happen to Good Quakers / always inspect sack for cobras before entering embassy

Click images for larger.

Hi B & D --

Please mourn with me the sad farewell to my heroic, helpful and ridiculous pickup truck -- though it may Keep On Truckin' as a donation to Smith Vocational High School. When next you see me wheeling around, it will be in a far more realistic and sensible pre-owned Honda CR-V, from Pleasant Journey, whose All-Wheel Drive will still give me the illusion that no Adventure or helpful chore is beyond my reach in any season. Cynthia took a test drive and has pronounced it acceptable, and even Lots Of Fun.

Last April, I was lazily trying to filch a Web version of [John Kenneth] Galbraith's "The Great Crash," and found some snippets on the website of an Australian crystallographer who also admires this funny and spooky history.

Our correspondence turned to Herbert Hoover, and I had the fun of introducing the crystallographer to Herbert and Lou Hoover's 1912 translation, still the only English version, of Agricola's 1556 sourcebook of the mining sciences, De Re Metallica. He rushed out and bought the Dover edition -- and so did I, it's a beautiful window into the past, and a magnificent scholarly achievement, which the Hoovers did as geology students at Stanford. In the mining communities of Renaissance Europe, De Re Metallica was often chained to the church altar, so the priest could read and translate it for the miners. The Hoovers did lots of lab experiments to clarify obscure technical points in Agricola.

On-line version at

http://www.farlang.com/gemstones/agricola-metallica/page_001

or borrow my gorgeous Dover.

Galbraith is not very kind to Hoover; few Americans are, or are ever likely to be. But yesterday a book I didn't even realize I owned popped out and open, and gave me the niftiest treat.

Thought I'd pass this along, thought you might be interested. The book, of course, is yours for the asking.

Bob

* * * * * * *

Dear Lachlan C.,

Yesterday, largely by magical principles, a book in my collection jumped off the shelf, and I wanted to steer you to a remarkable chapter, "Herbert Hoover and the Crisis of American Individualism," that's just given me enormous surprise and pleasure.

Its insights are certainly timely. I dearly wish they weren't. I wish these were just curiosities of absolutely no significance to current events. But like the last go-round in '29, real people all over the world have been plunged deeply into fear, and even tangible suffering has started. The parallels, and in many cases the identities to Galbraith's account are startling.

The book, still highly regarded in history circles, is "The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made it," by Richard Hofstadter (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1948). It was reprinted as a Random House / Vintage Books paperback, so should be easy to get your hands on.

There's good news about an e-text, and your credentials may be the Open Sesame to accessing it. (Mine sure aren't.) It's archived here:

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=acls;cc=acls;view=toc;idno=HEB01418.0001.001

Galbraith was a New Deal (Franklin D. Roosevelt) liberal and prominent Democrat. President Kennedy appointed him U.S. Ambassador to India. (He bragged that he was the first ambassador to insist on examining the cobra-catcher's sack before the cobra catcher entered the embassy grounds, rather than upon leaving, when he would be paid by the snake.)

Hofstadter was well to the left of Galbraith, a prominent academic Marxist, and a strident critic of capitalism. God bless academic freedom, private universities, and tenure, because he seems to have escaped the political terror of the McCarthy era of the 1950s, and his books were a string of popular and highly honored mainstream successes. He was a prof at Columbia University in New York City. (Politically, New York City can often only be explained or comprehended as a different planet.)

So Hoftadter should be the harshest critic and basher of Hoover. But you'll be startled at his unbridled admiration for Hoover. Ultimately his portrait of Hoover's private career and public achievements can only explain what happened to Hoover in '29 as classic Greek tragedy; Hofstadter leaves us convinced that no man ever worked harder, more brilliantly, or more honestly, no man ever deserved better -- but was punished more brutally. What happened to him can only be attributed to malevolent gods -- and to Hoover's sincere conviction that the laissez-faire system that made him rich and shot him to the top of world affairs would spontaneously heal itself.

A bit of local interest: At 23, Hoover's first challenge was to open new gold mines in Coolgardie [Australia]. (Are they still producing?) From there he went from mining success to success all over the world.

Like Hofstadter, all my beliefs, background and prejudices entitle me to the universal American villification of Hoover. I come from a family of True Believers that FDR and his New Deal saved America (and, shortly thereafter, the entire civilized world). I should reject out of hand any and all suggestions that Hoover was a great national and world figure.

But, for all his philosophical faults and blindnesses, and for all the Great Depression's suffering, the good Quaker gentleman and Latin scholar manages to keep shining through. I hope you can get your hands on this very interesting account.

Hope all's well with you, your travels, and your work.

Bob Merkin

Northampton Massachusetts USA

this is a test / hope it still wiggles

Sure, click.

GRRRRRR!!! it's not wiggling. That like totally sucks.

Go HERE (the Secret Part of the Internet where my old website is hidden), it wiggles there.

This is a test to see if the upper left image wiggles for you (and for me). It wiggled when I created it about 10 years ago, and it was still wiggling today when I hunted it down in a Secret Corner of the Internet Which You Can't Find, haha, and I copied it.

The lower left image shows two wisecracking American scientist guys talking to a bushy-eyebrowed Alien guy from Planet Metaluna. The Alien guy FedEx'ed the wisecracking scientist guys an Interocitor Kit, they followed the instructions and built the Kit, they turned it on, and there was the Alien guy talking to them on the screen.

The upper left image is my Heathkit Interocitor IR-55, which I use to teleconference with my pals on Vleeptron when the Zeta Beam isn't working.

You can rent "This Island Earth" (1955), or you can rent "Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie," where a janitor from Minnesota and his robot pals are forced by Evil Scientists to watch "This Island Earth" and make rude, vulgar comments about the cheezy old sci-fi movies they're watching in the movie theater aboard the Satellite o Love. Later Crow the Robot remembers he has an Interocitor Kit in his bedroom, they find it under the bed and they build it, and they chat with another Alien Guy from Metaluna.

Any questions? Did it wiggle for you?

ye Island of Hostile & Suspicious Strangers in the Great Wet Sea of Planet Hoon

Click, gets larger.

Somewhere in the vast expanse of the Great Wet Sea of Planet Hoon, there is a small, uncharted desert island. Only marooned, shipwrecked people live there, and those who live there never escape; no ship or airplane has ever found the island or rescued any of its miserable castaways.

Everybody on the island finds a hiding place and scrupulously avoids everybody else. For all you know, your neighbors might be cannibals or pirates or worse. There's utterly no Social Life or Romance or Team Sports or Holiday Get-Togethers. Everybody's a suspicious, hidden hermit.

There's not much on this Island of Hostile & Suspicious Strangers to keep body and soul alive -- a few coconuts, a little driftwood to make a fire, a few scraggly seabirds and eggs, a plump crab now and then.

Now and then someone finds an old bottle of rum or a can of tobacco -- little surprises which aren't good for your health, but will make you a little less miserable.

An odd kind of Trade has sprung up on the island. At night a castaway will stuff something into a sack and sneak to the edge of a small clearing in the middle of the island. He tosses his sack into the clearing, while another castaway does the same.

Then the two rush out, grab the other sack, and run back to their hiding places, where they open the new sack and discover what their swap has given them.

Sometimes, safe at home, they open the new sack and all they got for their risk and trouble is rocks. That really pisses off the castaway -- especially if he just gave away a coconut or a tasty crab.

They can see (and smell) who their trading partner was each night, and they all have long memories.

They have to keep trading, because the few valuable or enjoyable things are scattered in different corners of the island. If you don't keep trading your stuff and hoping for good stuff in the new sack, you'll die.

Your only chance of surviving is to be smart, clever, tough, quick-witted -- and thus reasonably successful at these sack swaps night after night.

So every castaway develops a Strategy -- a personal mix of Suspicion and Trust, of Hope and Grudge, of Risk and Caution, of Punishment and Reward.

If you want, you can flavor your Strategy with old Sunday School lessons about Charity, Trust, Honesty, Faith, Love, Brotherhood, Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You.

If you want, you can flavor your Strategy with your old beliefs that People Are No Damn Good, Every Man For Himself, Always Look Out For Number One, Do Unto Others Before They Do It To You.

Years go by and thousands of two-sack swaps take place. Sometimes a castaway who sucked as a trader dies. New castaways wash up on the beach, find hiding places, stumble on the nightly trading ritual, and develop a personal Strategy.

This is a rough description of Life & Death on the Desert Island of Hostile & Suspicious Strangers.

Any questions? I'll try to answer them as best I can.

But here's my question: Where is all this going? If you were cast away on this Island, what kind of Sack Trader would you become? What kind of Strategy do you think would keep you alive and healthy? What kind of Strategy is the fast track to early death?

Who survives, and who perishes, on the Island of Hostile & Suspicious Strangers in the Great Wet Sea of Planet Hoon?

George Soros has more to say about the financial crisis and the bailout plan

Look, I got no idea what the hell is going on with the financial crisis and the bailout plan. All I know is I'm investing heavily in the only commodity which is guaranteed to increase in value no matter what happens: halvah. We got a half-ton of the stuff in the basement, we're sitting pretty.

Meanwhile, another e-mail from my buddy the gazillionaire George Soros. (He also speaks fluent Esperanto.) It is slightly possible he has some insight into this slightly confusing mess. This column first appeared in today's online edition of The Financial Times. Read it, memorize a few phrases and ideas, and the people you talk to for the next few days will think you're smarter than Sarah Palin.

$ ₵ € ₱ ₰
₯ ₮ ₨ ₤ ₣

Recapitalise the banking system

by George Soros

The emergency legislation currently before Congress was ill-conceived - or more accurately, not conceived at all. As Congress tried to improve what Treasury originally requested, an amalgam plan has emerged that consists of Treasury's original Troubled Asset Relief Programme (Tarp) and a quite different capital infusion programme in which the government invests and stabilises weakened banks and profits from the economy's eventual improvement. The capital infusion approach will cost tax payers less in future years, and may even make money for them.

Two weeks ago the Treasury did not have a plan ready - that is why it had to ask for total discretion in spending the money. But the general idea was to bring relief to the banking system by relieving banks of their toxic securities and parking them in a government-owned fund so that they would not be dumped on the market at distressed prices. With the value of their investments stabilised, banks would then be able to raise equity capital.

The idea was fraught with difficulties. The toxic securities in question are not homogenous and in any auction process the sellers are liable to dump the dregs on to the government fund. Moreover, the scheme addresses only one half of the underlying problem - the lack of credit availability. It does very little to enable house owners to meet their mortgage obligations and it does not address the foreclosure problem. With house prices not yet at the bottom, if the government bids up the price of mortgage backed securities, the taxpayers are liable to loose; but if the government does not pay up, the banking system does not experience much relief and cannot attract equity capital from the private sector.

A scheme so heavily favouring Wall Street over Main Street was politically unacceptable. It was tweaked by the Democrats, who hold the upper hand, so that it penalises the financial institutions that seek to take advantage of it. The Republicans did not want to be left behind and imposed a requirement that the tendered securities should be insured against loss at the expense of the tendering institution. The rescue package as it is now constituted is an amalgam of multiple approaches. There is now a real danger that the asset purchase programme will not be fully utilised because of the onerous conditions attached to it.

Nevertheless, a rescue package was desperately needed and, in spite of its shortcomings, it would change the course of events. As late as last Monday, September 22, Treasury secretary Hank Paulson hoped to avoid using taxpayers' money; that is why he allowed Lehman Brothers to fail. Tarp establishes the principle that public funds are needed and if the present programme does not work, other programmes will be instituted. We will have crossed the Rubicon.

Since Tarp was ill-conceived, it is liable to arouse a negative response from America's creditors. They would see it as an attempt to inflate away the debt. The dollar is liable to come under renewed pressure and the government will have to pay more for its debt, especially at the long end. These adverse consequences could be mitigated by using taxpayers' funds more effectively.

Instead of just purchasing troubled assets the bulk of the funds ought to be used to recapitalise the banking system. Funds injected at the equity level are more high-powered than funds used at the balance sheet level by a minimal factor of twelve - effectively giving the government $8,400bn to re-ignite the flow of credit. In practice, the effect would be even greater because the injection of government funds would also attract private capital. The result would be more economic recovery and the chance for taxpayers to profit from the recovery.

This is how it would work. The Treasury secretary would rely on bank examiners rather than delegate implementation of Tarp to Wall Street firms. The bank examiners would establish how much additional equity capital each bank needs in order to be properly capitalised according to existing capital requirements. If managements could not raise equity from the private sector they could turn to Tarp.

Tarp would invest in preference shares with warrants attached. The preference shares would carry a low coupon (say 5 per cent) so that banks would find it profitable to continue lending, but shareholders would pay a heavy price because they would be diluted by the warrants; they would be given the right, however, to subscribe on Tarp's terms. The rights would be tradeable and the secretary of the Treasury would be instructed to set the terms so that the rights would have a positive value.

Private investors, including me, are likely to jump at the opportunity. The recapitalised banks would be allowed to increase their leverage, so they would resume lending. Limits on bank leverage could be imposed later, after the economy has recovered. If the funds were used in this way, the recapitalisation of the banking system could be achieved with less than $500bn of public funds.

A revised emergency legislation could also provide more help to homeowners. It could require the Treasury to provide cheap financing for mortgage securities whose terms have been renegotiated, based on the Treasury's cost of borrowing. Mortgage service companies could be prohibited from charging fees on foreclosures, but they could expect the owners of the securities to provide incentives for renegotiation as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are already doing.

Banks deemed to be insolvent would not be eligible for recapitalization by the capital infusion programme, but would be taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The FDIC would be recapitalised by $200bn as a temporary measure. FDIC, in turn could remove the $100,000 limit on insured deposits. A revision of the emergency legislation along these lines would be more equitable, have a better chance of success, and cost taxpayers less in the long run.

The writer is chairman of Soros Fund Management

1st Day Issue / Postalo Vleeptron / GIMPS / Discovering the largest known Prime Numbers

Clicking image strongly urged.

First Day Issue
Postalo Vleeptron
GIMPS
"Discovering the largest known Prime Numbers"

What has this worldwide network of fast and powerful (and not-so-fast, not-so-powerful) digital computers discovered?

Well ... they have discovered, after years of unimaginable computational efforts, Things which always, eternally existed.

They have discovered Things previously discovered perhaps millions of years ago, by other Sentients and their Great Machines elsewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Vleeptron's bumper sticker promises Really Big Integers.

And Vleeptron delivers.

M45 and M46 -- the 45th and 46th, in increasing size, Mersenne Prime Numbers -- have just been discovered and verified, and are a bit on the Unique side.

A few years ago, the Electronic Frontier Foundation offered a prize of U$ 100,000 for the discovery of the first Prime Number which, in its full expansion, has more than 10,000,000 decimal digits.

10,000,000 is a completely arbitrary target. $100,000 is a completely arbitrary prize. Mathematically, a Prime with 10,000,000 decimal digits has nothing special which a Prime with 27,931,422 decimal digits, or one with 3882 digits, doesn't have.

But we Humans of Earth not only usually have ten fingers, but we are a Simple & Childlike Race, and this Prize Contest reflects the philosophy of KISS:

Keep
It
Simple,
Stupid.

Everybody easily recognizes and grasps lots of Zeroes. Everybody easily grasps Money, and an amount of it with lots of Zeroes.

So the achievement which won the $100,000 check wasn't truly Special or Amazing.

But you can buy a Lexus or a Jaguar with the check anyway.

GIMPS, the brainchild of Mr. George Woltman (one of my heroes), is the world's first network of ordinary PCs, connected via the Internet, to connect enough unused or underused computing power to solve such computationally massive problems -- in this case, discovering and verifying the Largest Prime Number known on Earth.

I love to run GIMPS on my PC. After downloading the software, you never have to think about it again. Leave your PC powered up While-U-Sleep, and you can completely forget it, while it secretly and silently crunches big numbers, automatically Web-zapping intermediate results to Mother. Then Mother zaps another problem to my PC, while she does the same thing to hundreds of thousands of other ordinary PCs and mainframes all over the Planet.

Back at Mother Central, she stitches together all the Small Answers into the Final Big Answer. And year after year, GIMPS discovers the world's biggest known Prime Number. And moves on to find bigger ones.

There is a rich Human and Historical Romance to this Quest. Since the Ancient Greeks, since the Pythagorean Mystery Cult, the greatest mathematicians of every generation have been mesmerized by and seduced into learning the Secrets of the Primes, and squeezing the next record-breaking Prime from these secrets.

This is the Realm not just of Pythagoras, Plato, Eratosthenes and Euclid, but the Realm of Gauss, of Fermat, of Reimann, of Euler.

This is Number Theory. This is Die Mengenlehre.

And because there is an Infinity of Prime Numbers -- Euclid proved that around 300 BCE -- the Quest will never stop. Humans will never get a grip, humans will never grow so Wise or so Sensible that they can control themselves and stop looking for the next World's Biggest Prime.

And now I will shut up and share The Wonderful News, straight from GIMPS:

==============

Titanic Primes Raced
to Win $100,000
Research Award

San Diego CA and Orlando FL, September 15, 2008 -– Researchers have discovered the two largest known prime numbers, a whopping 12,978,189 and 11,185,272 digits long, as part of a 12-year-old, world-wide volunteer computing project, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search ("GIMPS").

The primes can be written shorthand as

(2^43,112,609) - 1

and

(2^37,156,667) - 1

The larger number qualifies for a U$100,000 research award, most of which GIMPS will donate to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and to charity.

In recognition of every GIMPS participant's contribution, credit for the qualifying prime goes to "Edson Smith, George Woltman, Scott Kurowski, et al", and the other to “Hans-Michael Elvenich, George Woltman, Scott Kurowski, et al".

A nearly decade-long competition for a $100,000 award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation ended closely when the larger prime surfaced on a UCLA computer managed by Edson Smith, just two weeks before the second prime was found by Hans-Michael Elvenich’s computer, in Langenfeld near Cologne, Germany.

Both are among the 100,000 computers in GIMPS PrimeNet, a "grass-roots supercomputer" as Science magazine describes it, which has been running continuously since 1996 and performs 29,000,000,000,000 calculations per second. Had Elvenich’s prime been discovered first, it would have qualified, instead.

“We're proud to be participants in GIMPS and grateful to the UCLA Mathematics Department for providing computational resources to the project,” said Edson Smith, Computing Manager. Hans-Michael Elvenich, a German electrical engineer and prime number enthusiast, adds, “After four years of searching for a prime on GIMPS, finally a great success!”

"These exciting discoveries are literally at the Internet’s ‘electronic frontier’," says PrimeNet inventor, Scott Kurowski, a software technologist in San Diego, California. “Developing technologies and methods to apply the incredibly vast power of cooperative research computing is why the Electronic Frontier Foundation set up their grand challenge awards. It’s serious research, but fun and educational, too.”

GIMPS founder George Woltman in Orlando, Florida said, "In addition to congratulating and gratefully acknowledging the vast contributions of our hundreds of thousands of participants over the years, we're committed to giving $25,000 to charity, $50,000 to UCLA for its part in the discovery, and most of what's left to other GIMPS prime discoverers." He adds, "Our research project will soon offer the chance to achieve the next challenge, the $150,000 award for an immensely more difficult 100-million-digit prime. All you need to participate is our free software download, and a lot of patience!”

- 30 -

George Soros on the US bailout plan

from the Thursday 25 September edition of The Financial Times:


Paulson Cannot be Allowed to Have a Blank Check

By George Soros

Hank Paulson's $700bn [$700,000,000,000] rescue package has run into difficulty on Capitol Hill. Rightly so: it was ill-conceived. Congress would be abdicating its responsibility if it gave the Treasury secretary a blank cheque. The bill submitted to Congress even had language in it that would exempt the secretary's decisions from review by any court or administrative agency - the ultimate fulfillment of the Bush administration's dream of a unitary executive.

Mr Paulson's record does not inspire the confidence necessary to give him discretion over $700bn. His actions last week brought on the crisis that makes rescue necessary. On Monday he allowed Lehman Brothers to fail and refused to make government funds available to save AIG. By Tuesday he had to reverse himself and provide an $85bn loan to AIG on punitive terms.

The demise of Lehman disrupted the commercial paper market. A large money market fund "broke the buck" and investment banks that relied on the commercial paper market had difficulty financing their operations. By Thursday a run on money market funds was in full swing and we came as close to a meltdown as at any time since the 1930s. Mr Paulson reversed again and proposed a systemic rescue.

Mr Paulson had got a blank cheque from Congress once before. That was to deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. His solution landed the housing market in the worst of all worlds: their managements knew that if the blank cheques were filled out they would lose their jobs, so they retrenched and made mortgages more expensive and less available. Within a few weeks the market forced Mr Paulson's hand and he had to take them over.

Mr Paulson's proposal to purchase distressed mortgage-related securities poses a classic problem of asymmetric information. The securities are hard to value but the sellers know more about them than the buyer: in any auction process the Treasury would end up with the dregs. The proposal is also rife with latent conflict of interest issues. Unless the Treasury overpays for the securities, the scheme would not bring relief. But if the scheme is used to bail out insolvent banks, what will the taxpayers get in return?

Barack Obama has outlined four conditions that ought to be imposed: an upside for the taxpayers as well as a downside; a bipartisan board to oversee the process; help for the homeowners as well as the holders of the mortgages; and some limits on the compensation of those who benefit from taxpayers' money. These are the right principles. They could be applied more effectively by capitalising the institutions that are burdened by distressed securities directly rather than by relieving them of the distressed securities.

The injection of government funds would be much less problematic if it were applied to the equity rather than the balance sheet. $700bn in preferred stock with warrants may be sufficient to make up the hole created by the bursting of the housing bubble. By contrast, the addition of $700bn on the demand side of an $11,000 market may not be sufficient to arrest the decline of housing prices.

Something also needs to be done on the supply side. To prevent housing prices from overshooting on the downside, the number of foreclosures has to be kept to a minimum. The terms of mortgages need to be adjusted to the homeowners' ability to pay.

The rescue package leaves this task undone. Making the necessary modifications is a delicate task rendered more difficult by the fact that many mortgages have been sliced up and repackaged in the form of collateralised debt obligations. The holders of the various slices have conflicting interests. It would take too long to work out the conflicts to include a mortgage modification scheme in the rescue package. The package can, however, prepare the ground by modifying bankruptcy law as it relates to principal residences.

Now that the crisis has been unleashed a large-scale rescue package is probably indispensable to bring it under control. Rebuilding the depleted balance sheets of the banking system is the right way to go. Not every bank deserves to be saved, but the experts at the Federal Reserve, with proper supervision, can be counted on to make the right judgments. Managements that are reluctant to accept the consequences of past mistakes could be penalised by depriving them of the Fed's credit facilities. Making government funds available should also encourage the private sector to participate in recapitalising the banking sector and bringing the financial crisis to a close.

The writer is chairman of Soros Fund Management

i'm excited! $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

e-mail received today:
======================

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gramm, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

PizzaQ: What's this Stuff? What's cool about this Stuff?

Certainly consider clicking.

The upper right image is a painting, oil on canvas. I'll credit the artist when the Pizza is Won.

Everything else is photographs of some Stuff.

5 Slices, shallots, endives, shitake mushrooms:

What is the name of this Stuff?

What's famous/notorious about some of this Stuff?

CERN PULLS (euro standard) PLUG ON LARGE HADRON COLLIDER!!!

sure click

AGENCE-VLEEPTRON PRESSE
FLASH FLASH FLASH
DING! DING! DING!

THIS JUST IN FROM
A-VP SWITZERLAND BUREAU

Just watched the news

According to local media the LHC in Geneva was turned off due to maintenance . all operations are suspended for at least 2 months. It had already been turned off on thursday due to power issues and was turned on again on Friday , but the problems remain

You heard it from me first, no need to wait till the news agencies bother to translate and release the news bulletin via ap or whoever ...

Pat

aaaargh mateys! avast ye landlubbers! Today is INTERNATIONAL TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY!

Flag of the Dwingeloo Pirates,
Dread & Scourge of Space
around planets Vleeptron, Yobbo,
Hoon & Mollyringwald

Mesdames & Sirs

today

Friday 19 September 2008

is

INTERNATIONAL
TALK LIKE A PIRATE
DAY

aaaargh matey
shiver me timbers
yo ho ho
walk the plank

drink rum!

(particularly this rum)

if you don't drink, uhhh ... well, do whatever non-drinking Pirates do or ingest.

but do all the other Pirate stuff:

* dress like a pirate
* talk like a pirate
* wear an eyepatch
* put a parrot on your shoulder
* put 1 gold ring thru 1 earlobe
* terrorize a coastal community
* or a ship of innocent travellers at sea

Historically,
Ladies & Gentlemen
(and boys & girls)
can ALL be Pirates
& Pirate Captains

it's just one day a year