Have You No Shame?

From the blog post here. Is there anything more that needs to be said (other than Romney, bad as he has been, is not the embarrassment that Paul Celucci was.)

Win an alpaca.

While economic textbooks claim that people and corporations are competing for money -  using markets and resources to do so. Greed and fear of scarcity are being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the kind of money we are using. For example, we can produce more than enough food to feed everybody, and there is definitely enough work for everybody in the world, but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. In fact, the job of central banks is to create and maintain that currency scarcity. Money is created when banks lend it into existence When a bank provides you with a $100,000 mortgage, it creates only the principal, which you spend and which then circulates in the economy. The bank expects you to pay back $200,000 over the next 20 years, but it doesn’t create the second $100,000 - the interest. Instead, the bank sends you out into the tough world to battle against everybody else to bring back the second $100,000.

Bernard Lietaer, economist, one of the designers of the Euro

Kinder, Gentler Ways to Say Someone is Stupid:

• Chimney’s Clogged.
• Proof that evolution CAN go in reverse.
• Slinky’s kinked.

Developers - Free Standards Group:

The Linux Developer’s Network. Sort of like MSDN for Linux, but without all the CDROMs.

AlterNet: Even Progressives Need to Decorate:

Some advice on decorating without Ikea. Nothing would be better for me. A trip to Ikea is, to me, like a trip to the land of Mordor, but more colorful, and less smelly.

Web Site for a linux console:

This web site uses UML to create a new linux virtual machine on a web page. With an appropriate security mechanism and some other work you could turn this into a remote management page.I think this is really cool.

Here are a set of talking points concerning the Bush Economy.

1. The Bush years have had the Worst Rate of Job Creation in 40 years.
2. Bush’s new jobs mostly pay $9,000 or less per year.
3. Working people have not had a raise in 5 years.

Talk about them, we should hear about them over and over again.

The web site Angry Bear has the following chart, which I stole fair and square from this posting. If we didn’t already know that the Clinton years were years of steadily improving fiscal management, and that the Bush years have been unutterable disasters, this chart tells us again.

The three deficit methods are:

• The unified budget method, which counts the social security surplus as a general fund surplus,
• The general fund budget method, which does not include the social security surplus, but which includes some other surpluses, and
• The annual increase in the National Debt. This just tracks the changes in the National Debt, as you would expect.

On zFacts there is a realtime estimate of the cost of the Iraq war. It’s at 299.7 Billion right now, and is headed upward at an alarming rate . My prediction is that it will hit 300 billion about Monday or Tuesday.

Just thought someone might be interested.

Update: Already happened.  Look here.