Problem with my iPod classic
My iPod classic is one of the technology tools that enriches my life the most. I have thousands and thousands of dollars worth of gadgets but the iPod gets the most use. It’s my traveling companion. It reads my audiobooks on my long commute. It plays my Free Talk Live and Dan Carlin. By the way, Dan Carlin has two of the best podcast shows I’ve ever heard, Common Sense and Hardcore History. If you check him out and you like him, give him a couple bucks. Totally worth it.
When my iPod doesn’t work right (which hasn’t happened until this morning) I get a very off kilter feeling. What am I supposed to do on the hour plus drive? I usually listen to the first half of Free Talk Live and then hit the second half on my way home. This morning, I couldn’t do that because my iPod was locked up. I took it off hold and it just stayed on hold.
This particular iPod has been gold. I was once running on a treadmill when I accidentally jerked it off the ledge it was sitting on. The iPod flew across the room and just kept playing without missing a beat. This morning, however, it wouldn’t respond to my commands to download my podcast. Plugging it in had no effect. I had no idea what to do and I was running late for work. iPods, in case you’ve never owned one, have no obvious reset button.
Long story short, I left for work in a bad mood, without my podcast. I was forced to listen to Wall Street Journal on my XM Radio. When I got to work, I was in the doldrums, thinking I would be shelling out for a new iPod. I was wrong. An iPod classic can be reset. In my case, that cleared up the issue. My audiobooks, movies, music collection and massive set of podcasts is once again available for me to have eargasms.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac: Investors Flee
The fit is just beginning to hit the shan. Two pseudo-private companies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, are wobbling a bit. Teetering a little. Standing on the brink and realizing the drop is pretty far. Washington is in a tizzy. This is what happens when you have a monetary system that is faith based. Fiat currency, baby.
So what are our overlords doing to fix the cracks in the faith based dam that holds back the tide of easy living debt America has amassed and is now having a hard time paying back?
At the core of those proposals, as outlined by Paulson, is a request that Congress grant Treasury a temporary increase in the credit line it can extend to the GSEs, as well as the ability to purchase equity in the firms should that prove necessary. The moves are designed to reassure bond and stock investors that Fannie and Freddie will have both the liquidity and the capital needed to weather the current crisis, key to getting the markets, and ultimately the economy, back on track. With the Treasury proposal in the works, the Fed also agreed to temporarily grant the GSEs access to the Fed’s discount window, should they need emergency liquidity before Congress can authorize the Treasury moves. “The GSEs now touch 70% of new mortgages and represent the only functioning secondary mortgage market,” Paulson told the senators. “The GSEs are central to the availability of housing finance, which will determine the pace at which we emerge from this housing correction.”
I don’t want to be a fear monger, but I’ve lived lots of places around the world. When the money becomes worthless the new currency is always bullets. I’m not saying that’s where we are at. I’m just saying it could happen, and it could happen in a few months, a few years or a few decades. If we continue borrowing it will happen. And lots and lots of people will suffer needless misery. Are you paying attention?
What kind of government forces people to make gasoline out of food, artificially boosts the price of corn to $6 a bushel, guarantees that inflated price as the “base” for higher federal subsidies to corn farmers in the future, and then tries to hide its own depredations by excluding high food prices from its measure of “core” inflation?
The money is all made up. The real debt is being fudged every year. Your children may be learning something in their public high school. I don’t know what, but I’m damn sure it isn’t economics. And that’s why Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are teeter tottering on the brink. How many bail outs later will those fools on the hill realize the nation has no more credit left? When will you start sounding off and telling them to stop the bailouts because we cannot afford them?
Hypocrites in Congress investigate ISP spying
The people responsible for FISA are busy investigating internet service providers for gathering up their customers’ surfing habits.
ISPs seeking to find new ways to make money by profiling their customer’s online habits are likely reconsidering after powerful House lawmakers turned their anti-tracking ire on a second large telecom in recent months.
In June, Charter Communications — the nation’s fourth-largest ISP – shelved its plan to make money by letting others snoop on and categorize the web-surfing habits — including searches — of its customers, following a May inquiry from Congress about the plan.
This go round top members of the House Commerce committee, including chairman John Dingell (D-Michigan) and top Republican Joe Barton (R-Texas) and telecom subcommittee head Reps. Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) are targeting the Fortune 500 telecom company Embarq.
The lawmakers want to know whether the company informed its customers earlier this year that it was testing web-tracking technology that would chronicle their every move online. They also want to know whether the test of web-surveillance technology from NebuAd complied with federal communications law.
Anti-tracking ire? Seriously? How about turning your anti-tracking laser beam of wrath on yourself? When is someone going to stand up and tell Congress to go to hell? Come on. Am I the only one who thinks that putting criminals in charge of jails doesn’t make any sense? If that doesn’t make sense then how does putting professional busybodies in charge of making rules about busybodies?
I don’t want anybody spying on me. Not my ISP and not Congress. But in my lifetime, to the best of my knowledge, Congress hasn’t fixed a single problem that was affecting me. They just made every one of them worse as far as I can tell. The pot calling the kettle black doesn’t even begin to cover the sheer arrogance repeatedly displayed by this group of human beings. Shame on them.
Recent changes to FISA are a disgrace, but instead of dealing with their own unnecessary nosiness, Congress is busy worrying about the speck of sand in someone else’s eye.
Now go read about your dishonest Congress over at Downsize DC.
Why did nearly half the Democrats in the House vote for the “FISA Amendments Act” that’s now pending in the Senate, when most of them had opposed warrantless spying and telecom immunity before? The answer is that they were bribed, using your tax dollars.
Lots of Americans like to complain about how dishonest corporate America is. Guess what? Until we fix the even more dishonest oversight body nothing is going to change in corporate America.
Peter G. Peterson Foundation and I.O.U.S.A Movie
David Walker says we’re in trouble. Since David Walker has spent a great deal of time making management decisions inside of our federal government, and since I’ve been under the impression that we’re in trouble since long before I ever heard of David Walker, I decided to attend when I was invited to participate in a conference call hosted by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
I don’t agree with all of what was said in that conference call, but I am intrigued enough by the messages I heard to report them to you.
First, and most important, is the immutable fact that the United States of America is in serious financial trouble. Second, and nearly as important, is the hardly debatable evidence that the people in charge of managing the finances of this country are irresponsible. They are teaching Americans to be irresponsible, fiscally and otherwise. Since Americans elect these entrenched purveyors of instant gratification who preach a message of borrow now and worry about it later, we are caught in a vicious cycle.
David Walker wants to break the cycle. I want to break the cycle. What are the tools for doing this? Awareness is one tool. The vehicle for spreading awareness that Dave Walker and his foundation are currently marketing is a new movie called I.O.U.S.A. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but based on the conversation I participated in yesterday, and based on the pitch, I plan to watch.
Buzz about “I.O.U.S.A.,” the PGPF-supported, nonpartisan documentary that tells the story of the national debt, is growing in Washington. The film will screen for reporters in the area on Monday night.
The screening follows a private showing last week on Capitol Hill for members of Congress and other invited guests. In attendance were House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Senate Budget Committee ranking member Judd Gregg, among others. Since then, a number of other members, including several in the congressional leadership, have asked to see the film. The movie also will screen for attendees of both presidential conventions courtesy of a brand-new film festival being announced on Tuesday.
As CEO Dave Walker announced at PGPF’s official launch in New York last week, “I.O.U.S.A.” will premiere with an unprecedented national media event broadcast to 400 theaters on August 21 before opening in 10 cities around the country the following day. The August 21 event – stay tuned for more details! – is one example of how PGPF intends to make innovative use of media to raise the public’s awareness and inspire them to act on the fiscal challenges threatening America’s economic well-being.
“I.O.U.S.A.” is directed by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Patrick Creadon (“Wordplay”) and is being distributed by Roadside Attractions (“Super Size Me”). It tells the story of the country’s four key deficits – budget, savings, balance of payments/trade, and leadership – and their implications for the nation and its citizens. We are faced with an ever-expanding government and military, increased foreign competition, and financial obligations that will become ever more difficult to honor absent meaningful reforms. As 78 million baby boomers begin to retire and collect benefits from the government’s over-extended entitlement programs, an economic crisis of epic proportions awaits.
I hope you’ll watch too. If you cannot attend the premiere on August 21, at least make arrangements to screen I.O.U.S.A. at some point in the near future. I really don’t know how much time is left to turn the federal fiscal debacle around, but I know that each passing moment adds millions of dollars to our national debt and that each passing moment ensures the dollar will be further devalued until we make some serious changes.
PGPF publishes a document called State of the Nation’s Finances. Download it. Read it. Pay attention to it. There was a lot of talk yesterday about “entitlements” and how to deal with them. My personal preference would be to get rid of all federal entitlements and let the states handle them. But I understand we live in a culture of entitlement and we’ve trained at least three generations now to demand and expect the Fed to steal money from some Americans to redistribute it to other Americans. It will take another three generations to change this attitude that stealing is OK. That’s assuming we can start to turn things around before we reach a tipping point where the system eats itself in violent revolution or some other major calamity.
For now, go watch I.O.U.S.A. And start thinking about where we’re headed before we can’t turn around. You’ll hear much more from me on national fiscal issues in coming days, months and years. We can’t keep satiating our every whim. We can’t keep consuming more than we produce. We cannot keep borrowing and distributing “stimulus” checks.
‘World’s greatest dad’ not so great
If you’re going to engage in pedophilia (which I do not recommend or support) you should probably not wear a t-shirt that claims you are the “World’s Greatest Dad.” Of course, people who get caught doing this sort of stuff generally aren’t armed with a very high IQ.
No one should be alone when crimes are being committed. A dumb criminal needs a dumb attorney general – they were meant for each other.
A spokesman for Attorney General Mike Cox could not confirm whether Everett has children. But Cox says in a statement that the arrest is a reminder that “a parent can pose a threat to our children.”
You don’t say? How stupid does Mr. Cox think the rest of us are? Anyone can “pose a threat to our children.” I don’t need to be reminded that the world has some bad people in it. But thank you, Mr. Mike Cox for being so patronizing and reinforcing the mindset that we should continue to support a police state, government stings, reduction of civil rights, a bloated court system, zero tolerance stupidity, 500 alphabet soup agencies full of armed bureaucrats, the highest per capita prisoner rates in the civilized world, ignoring our own founding document and a complete lack of all common sense – it’s for the children. Thank God for the children, and for the World’s Greatest Dad and thank God for you, Mike Cox.
You’re my hero. The “World’s Greatest Dad” may have been a total pervert, and he may have been trying to hump someone’s daughter, and that is all bad. On the other hand, I’m not particularly enamored of the public “servants” who spend their days emailing child porn to pehophiles and posing as little children on the Internet. Isn’t it the Devil who is supposed to tempt us, not the government?
