SAR #12197

Perfection is not a reasonable expectation. Plausibility is.

Bogus: The last couple of weeks have seen the rapid embrace of the idea that a housing recovery is underway because the supply has shrunk - but that depends on the definition of 'supply". If you count only the houses for sale on the market, yes. But there's lots of evidence that upwards of 90% of foreclosed houses are not on the market. Plus all the unmentionable but real houses that would be for sale if they were not so far underwater. Plus those deluded owners who are still waiting for prices to come back. The other factors regularly cited - deleveraging, demand for Treasuries, the rising stock market, consumer borrowing - are similarly based on a careful concealment of essential truths.

Playing Catch-Up: A 'confidential' EU plan reports progress on assembling the first €30 billion of the proposed €100 billion bailout for Spanish banks. What? You thought that was a done deal?

Who Have We Become? On top of secret renditions to secret dungeons around the world where the US tortured confessions out of prisoners, now we are supposed to be shocked to learn that the same bunch of upstanding defenders of American democracy and freedom have been extracting "confessions" from prisoners by drugging them with powerful antipsychotics that compromise an individual's ability to separate reality from fiction. Which puts them on an equal footing with their interrogators.

Doubletake: "Human Genome agrees to GlaxoSmithKline takeover."

Life As We Know It: A whistleblower claims that the National Security Agency has been "assembling" information on "every US citizen". Of course they are - have been for yeas. 'All of us' might be a stretch , but a goodly number of us have dossiers filed away, waiting...

When You're Right... Stephen Emmott, an Oxford University professor of computing, has gathered notice for stating the obvious: Overpopulation is the root of all of our planet’s troubles.

Biographic Notes: According to several 2000, 2001, and 2002 Bain filings with the SEC, Romney was CEO, President, sole director and only shareholder of the company. During those years Mr. Romney was paid an 'executive salary' of at least $100,000. Mr. Romney says (now) that he did nothing for that money, much like he accuses many civil servants of drawing their salary without actually earning the money. This is supposedly explained by claiming that Mr. Romney " retired retroactively" in February of 1999 and in June of this year he submitted documentation - under penalty of felony perjury - to the Office of Goverment Ethics claiming this as fact. So what was he paid for?

All Your Thoughts Are Belong To US: The FDA says that if its employees have had no disloyal thoughts, they should not be concerned that their superiors have built a database of over 80,000 emails to "outside parties" such as congressmen and journalists and my Aunt Molly.

A World Without: Overwhelming scientific evidence shows that coral reefs around the world are becoming "zombie ecosystems" not quite dead, but not functional in a biologic sense, and will collapse "within a human generation".

Traveler's Notice: According to Seattle police, goggles and bandannas are "protest paraphernalia" and can be "evidence of politically motivated vandalism."

Picture Imperfect: At a Romney fundraiser in Wyoming that featured Dick Cheney, taking pictures of Romney and Cheney together was forbidden. (Has Romney retroactively absented himself? )

The Parting Shot

 

Prunella_vulgaris.  Heal-All