Significa 2-29-12

Super Bowl Ad of the Year: Matthew's Day Off
(With all due respect to Clint Eastwood...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhkDdayA4iA

To celebrate the launch of the all-new 2012 CR-V, Honda brought Ferris Bueller's Day Off back in a big game commercial. We cast Matthew Broderick as himself, skipping out on a day of acting work and living it up in his all-new CR-V. Relive movie history with Honda's fresh twist and wonderful homage to this '80s classic.

Think you're a true fan of Ferris Bueller's Day Off? We hid over two dozen references to the movie throughout the commercial. Some are obvious, some are VERY subtle. See how many you can find. #dayoff

http://automobiles.honda.com
http://cr-v.honda.com
http://leaplist.honda.com
http://facebook.com/hondacrv

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Who is the most desirable woman on the planet? According to www.AskMen.com, it's Sofia Vergara. Pretty hard to argue against:

Why is Sofia Vergara no. 1?

When it comes to Colombian imports, none are more in demand than Sofia Vergara these days. The jaw-dropping Modern Family star is one of our favorite things about one of our favorite comedies. Vergara shows off the best cleavage on network TV, and we've never been more jealous of Ed O'Neill. But despite her obvious assets, Vergara's also one very funny woman, lampooning stereotypes with her perfect timing. You don't have to pretend to laugh at her jokes, even if you do have to make a concerted effort to pay attention to them. And though you'd never think it to look at her, Vergara is mother to a 20-year-old.

"I am so honored to be AskMen’s most desired woman this year. A big thank you to all the men who desire me."
Sofia Vergara

Full list of AskMen's 99 babes:

http://www.askmen.com/specials/2012_top_99

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Robalini's Deep Philosophical Piece of the Week

Q: Are there cats & dogs in heaven?
A: If cats & dogs aren't there, how can it be called heaven?

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Found: A mysterious object in the Baltic Sea, by deep-sea salvage company Ocean Explorer. According to the NY Daily News, "Through the use of side-scan sonar, the team discovered a disc-like object that measures nearly 200 feet in diameter and has generated out-of-this-world speculation." The coolest theory is that it's a UFO, one that suspiciously resembles Han Solo's spaceship The Millennium Falcon in Star Wars. Other theories, according to Benjamin Radford of the Skeptical Inquirer, are: Russian warships, Atlantis, a marine version of Stonehenge, or a plug to another world inside Earth. Radford, the pure skeptic to the end, doesn't buy any of these scenarios. Quit harshing our mellow, dude...

For more info:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/team-investigate-underwater-ufo-sunken-ships-millennium-falcon-article-1.1013642

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46226992/ns/technology_and_science-science/

http://www.BenjaminRadford.com

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Album of the Month: Born to Die

Never mind the haters. Lana Del Rey, aka "The Gangsta Nancy Sinatra" delivers the goods...

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YouTube Video of the Week: Give Me All Your Luvin'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cItHOl5LRWg

Madonna is back, with Nicki Minaj & M.I.A. (sans middle finger) dressed as cheerleaders. Winning!

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The BlackBerry, Trying to Avoid the Hall of Fallen Giants
SAM GROBART and IAN AUSTEN
January 28, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/business/blackberry-aiming-to-avoid-the-hall-of-fallen-giants.html

Research in Motion, maker of BlackBerry smartphones and tablets, sent its co-chief executives packing last week and replaced them with Thorsten Heins, who had been RIM’s chief operating officer. How would he characterize his employer?

“We make the best communications devices in the world,” said Mr. Heins, who met with editors and reporters from The New York Times on Friday.

Not everyone feels the same way. Over the last year, RIM’s share price has plunged 75 percent. The company once commanded more than half of the American smartphone market. Today it has 10 percent.

RIM has two, maybe three ways forward.

The first — the one that Mr. Heins is clearly aiming for — is a triumphant comeback after a near-death experience. Think Apple and its iMac. RIM is on the verge of upgrading its PlayBook operating system — now with, among other things, e-mail, a feature that the original PlayBook bafflingly lacked — and will release the BlackBerry 10 OS this year.

Behind Door No. 2 is a gradual decline and diminution as rivals like Apple, Google and Microsoft devour most of the market; to some degree, they already have. BlackBerry would keep the scraps — a small but dedicated following of corporate and government customers who want its proprietary messaging and security features.

Then there is the third option: oblivion. The road of progress is littered with the corpses of fallen titans. Objects that once seemed as indispensable as the companies that made them have been mercilessly superseded — as seen below. And RIM ought to know: with mobile devices like the BlackBerry 957, it helped to extinguish the pager era.

SONY WALKMAN (1979-2010) Before the Walkman, “personal audio” meant holding a transistor radio to your ear. Sony’s invention created an entire category of devices and helped make the company the technology leader of the 1980s. New models (Thinner! Auto-reverse!) were eagerly anticipated, the LP was relegated to the attic and tender moments spent listening to mix tapes from that certain someone proliferated across teenage bedrooms. Sony seemed incapable of putting a foot wrong. It successfully moved the brand into compact discs with the Discman, then bought record labels and movie studios to bring about that illusory marriage of technology and content. When the digital revolution hit, Sony was too beholden to its proprietary formats, as well as to the inertia inside its media companies. Enter Apple and the iPod.

PAGERS (BORN 1951) At first, pagers were attached to people who worked in fields where lives were on the line. That usually meant doctors, though the group expanded in the late 1980s to include drug dealers. Early beepers displayed only numbers, giving rise to a numerical lexicon that included codes like 911 (call me back immediately) and 07734, which resembles “hello” when read upside down. Pagers briefly gained fame in early 1990s hip-hop, showing up in songs like “Skypager,” by a Tribe Called Quest. The pager’s fall was attributable to the disruptive and destructive powers of another technology: the mobile phone. Why beep when you can talk? And a pager message is so tiny that it makes a tweet look like “The Iliad.” The beeper does live on, in limited circles: its network remains more reliable than cell networks, making it useful to E.M.S. and other rescue workers.

PALM PILOT (1997-2007) Filofax brought personal organizers to their analog apogee in the early ’90s, but Palm brought them into the digital age. Palm Pilots were dazzling when they first appeared: all of your contacts, calendars and notes in one slim, pocket-size device. A touch screen, which required a stylus, made navigation easy. And you could add software, bought through an online store. Want a Zagat guide to go along with your personal data? No problem. In later years, Palm even added telephone features, creating a compelling, all-in-one gadget. Despite boardroom dramas that affected the company’s name and its ownership, Palm’s reputation as a source of innovative hardware and software endured until Jan. 9, 2007. Why that date? That’s when Apple introduced the iPhone.

POLAROID INSTANT CAMERAS (1948-2008) Edwin Land’s invention of instant-developing film in 1948 put a darkroom inside a handheld camera. That achievement gave his Polaroid Corporation a distinct advantage over traditional film cameras. By 1980, Polaroid was selling 7.8 million cameras a year in the United States — more than half of all the 15 million cameras, instant and traditional, sold that year. In 1985, it won a major patent-infringement suit, forcing Kodak to abandon its own instant-camera efforts. The victory was short-lived. The late ’80s brought the rise of the digital camera. By 2000, digital cameras began appearing on cellphones, placing cameras in millions of pockets. Polaroid declared bankruptcy for the first time in 2001 and stopped making instant film in 2008. Kodak declared bankruptcy on Jan. 19.

ATARI 2600 (1977-c.1984) It wasn’t the first game console, but the Atari 2600 brought video games into the home and popular culture. Over its life span, more than 30 million were sold. Pong, Combat, Pitfall and Frogger soaked up children’s afternoons. Then came the PC, which could play games and do much more. Atari rushed out games, assuming that its customers would play whatever it released. They didn’t. Millions of unsold games and consoles were buried in a New Mexico landfill in 1983. Warner Communications, which bought Atari in 1976 for $28 million, sold it in 1984 for no cash.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 29, 2012, on page BU5 of the New York edition with the headline: The BlackBerry, Trying to Avoid the Hall of Fallen Giants..

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Quiet Quiz: Are You an Introvert or an Extrovert?
Excerpted from: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/30/145930229/quiet-please-unleashing-the-power-of-introverts

To Find out where you fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum, answer each question True or False, choosing the one that applies to you more often than not.

1. ______ I prefer one-on-one conversations to group activities.

2. ______ I often prefer to express myself in writing.

3. ______ I enjoy solitude.

4. ______ I seem to care about wealth, fame, and status less than my peers.

5. ______ I dislike small talk, but I enjoy talking in depth about topics that matter to me.

6. ______ People tell me that I'm a good listener.

7. ______ I'm not a big risk-taker.

8. ______ I enjoy work that allows me to "dive in" with few interruptions.

9. ______ I like to celebrate birthdays on a small scale, with only one or two close friends or family members.

10. ______ People describe me as "soft-spoken" or "mellow."

11. ______ I prefer not to show or discuss my work with others until it's ?nished.

12. ______ I dislike conflict.

13. ______ I do my best work on my own.

14. ______I tend to think before I speak.

15.______ I feel drained after being out and about, even if I've enjoyed myself.

16. ______I often let calls go through to voice mail.

17. ______If you had to choose, I'd prefer a weekend with absolutely nothing to do to one with too many things scheduled.

18. ______ I don't enjoy multitasking.

19. ______ I can concentrate easily

20. ______ In classroom situations, I prefer lectures to seminars.

The more often you answered True, the more introverted you are. This is an informal quiz, not a scientifically validated personality test. The questions were formulated based on characteristics of introversion often accepted by contemporary researchers.

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Underground Movie of the Week: Kill List
Director: Ben Wheatley

From Salon.com:

Love it or hate it, “Kill List” is a definite widescreen cinematic experience loaded with delicious details, from the hotel clerk who holds a conversation without really listening to the sound of someone getting his brains beaten out against a concrete wall. He’s like a faux-Cockney Quentin Tarantino, passionate about the things he loves and also dedicated to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of “taking the piss” — and believe it or not, I mean that as a compliment.

Full Review:
A clever British horror-thriller nods to Tarantino
Andrew O'Hehir
Thursday, Feb 2, 2012
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/03/a_clever_british_horror_thriller_nods_to_tarantino

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TV Show of the Week: Comic Book Men

AMC's new series takes place in Kevin Smith's Secret Stash comic store in Red Bank, New Jersey. It's like Pawn Stars for comic book fans:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-et-comic-book-men-20120211,0,4358774.story

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Awesome Quotes

“From our beginning, in hindsight at least, our social direction is clear. We have moved to become one people out of many. At intervals, men or groups, through fear of people or the desire to use them, have tried to change our direction, to arrest our growth, or to stampede the Americans. This will happen again and again. The impulses which for a time enforced the Alien and Sedition Laws, which have used fear and illicit emotion to interfere with and put a stop to our continuing revolution, will rise again, and they will serve us in the future as they have in the past to clarify and to strengthen our process. We have failed sometimes, taken wrong paths, paused for renewal, filled our bellies and licked our wounds; but we have never slipped back - never."
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath.

"Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid."
John Wayne

"The more I know about people, the better I like my dog."
Mark Twain

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Kool Websites: Free Stuff & Great Deals Edition

The following list of sites is courtesy of Yahoo Shine:
http://shine.yahoo.com/financially-fit/7-ways-score-free-stuff-145400495.html

ShopSmart
http://www.shopsmartmag.org
Consumer Reports quick & easy shopping guide...

Academic Earth
http://www.academicearth.org
Online courses from the world's top scholars...

Howcast
http://www.howcast.com
The best how to videos on the web...

ThunderFap
http://www.thunderfap.com
100% REAL free samples, freebies: NO STRINGS ATTACHED...

Totally Free Stuff
http://www.totallyfreestuff.com
One of the most popular free stuff and savings sites on the internet...

AbsurdlyCool
http://absurdlycool.com
An automated free stuff aggregator designed to collect free stuff offers from top freebie sites...

Hey It's Free!
http://www.heyitsfree.net
Daily freebies, free stuff and free samples...

Eat Free On Your Birthday
http://eatfreeonyourbirthday.com
Where kids AND adults eat free of their birthday...

Freecycle
http://www.freecycle.org
The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 5,019 groups with 8,910,022 members around the world. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by local volunteers (them's good people). Membership is free...

House Party
http://www.houseparty.com
House Party makes it easy to have a party in your own home and get exclusive access to awesome products for you and your friends. We provide the fun, you provide food, your friends and feedback and promise to have an amazing time. Our parties are sponsored by the brands you love. By hosting, you and your guests get to try their products and receive an incredible Party Pack chock full of goodies! You don’t pay anything or sell anything. It’s a no-pressure party. Just tell us what you and your guests think...

BookMooch
http://bookmooch.com
Trade your books with other people...

Swapstyle
http://www.swapstyle.com
The worlds original & number 1 fashion swap site...

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RIP

Don Cornelius, Soul Train creator & host

Angelo Dundee, veteran boxing trainer, most famously for Muhammad Ali

Actor Ben Gazzara

Film writer-director-producer Zalman King

Baseball Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter

L.A. artist Mike Kelley

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Last but definitely not least, RIP Whitney Houston, the greatest vocalist of the MTV era. Here's Dave Zirin on the passing of Ms. Houston:

Whitney Houston: My Love Is Your Love
Dave Zirin
February 13, 2012
http://www.thenation.com/blog/166208/whitney-houston-my-love-your-love

I’m a sports writer and don’t pretend to know anything about music. I listen almost exclusively to hip hop that stopped being recorded fifteen years ago (Organized Konfusion, Tim Dog) or whatever my seven-year-old daughter is into this week (please don’t ask.) I also don’t pretend to know anything about the addictions and demons that plagued Whitney Houston. But I know how it feels to hear that Whitney Houston is dead and I’m trying to come to grips with why I can’t stop thinking about her voice.

Maybe it’s because Whitney lent that singular vocal instrument to two of the most iconic collisions of music and sports. There was Whitney’s National Anthem performance, all confident volume, at the 1991 Super Bowl, which was the forward-marching soundtrack of the Persian Gulf War. I’ve found that people’s opinions of her anthem tend to reflect their opinions on the war itself. Those who favored Operation Desert Storm see it as a patriotic tour de force. Those who stood against the war remember it as a bombastic sonic eardrum buster with the subtlety of a blowtorch. Whitney also recorded the 1988 Olympic anthem One Moment in Time, essentially an adult contemporary version of Eminem’s Lose Yourself. In other words, you’d need to be comatose to not feel an involuntary goosebump.

But the real reason I’m writing this isn’t because of some sports tie-in or because I think I have anything to say about Whitney’s musical contribution. It’s that her remarkable voice was always there during some of the most intense moments of my younger life. Every junior high dance was punctuated by Whitney. She accompanied those moments of sublime adolescent intensity where a dance, the touch of a hand, a smile or a scrawled phone number, made being a teenager fleetingly bearable. 1980s school dances in New York City meant Run DMC, Bon Jovi, Roger Troutman, Michael Jackson, Bananarama, Springsteen, Lisa Lisa, Joan Jett, Prince, the Beastie Boys, Talking Heads and at least three Whitney songs, with I Wanna Dance with Somebody or How Will I Know always in rotation. You could rely on Whitney for that flirty fast song, and for the slow dance to end the night, with Where Do Broken Hearts Go the favorite.

Whitney was part of a mosaic of 1980s music that was more musically inclusive and less segmented by the crude race-based marketing that dominated the 1990s. A portion of this inclusivity, certainly with Whitney and Michael, was because record execs were trying to "whiten" their look and sound in the 80s for max appeal. But both (as well as Quincy Jones) were talented and transgressive enough to not let industry pressures swamp their sound. The result was a crossover that led, before the industry figured out how to package, market and segregate it, to a burst of rare creativity when commerce comfortably danced with art. Now the fame industry has claimed another life. It was hard to watch the Grammys last night and not wonder where all these painted, praying, preying, people were when Whitney was spiraling down. Bruce Springsteen started last night's Grammy show singing his new single, We Take Care of our Own. He was singing to the wrong collection of people.

This is an industry that tends to people’s talent and not to the people themselves. It’s an industry that claimed Billie Holiday and Whitney Houston before they reached fifty. Its body count transcends musical categories and includes Tupac, Biggie, Kurt, Marvin, Amy, Jimi, Janis and too many others to name. For those who lay all these deaths at the altar of their “personal responsibility” need to explain how so many, from young starlets to Ol’ Dirty Bastards, have been left for dead. I’ve wondered before what it says about our country that the people who in theory should be healthiest among us, professional athletes, tend to die crippled and young. I wonder today how we can look at the music industry as anything other than what it is: a parasite feeding on the very people it should nurture. Of course, many survive its clutches, but Whitney didn’t. Now every memory I have of those dances in darkened church basements, wearing my shell-toe Adidas with fat laces and Coca Cola t-shirts, swaying to Whitney’s voice, is interrupted by the reality that my joy fed the same machine that eventually claimed her life. I don’t know anything about music. But I know that Whitney, like Lady Day, didn’t live to see fifty. That’s a shame and a sin, and in a sane world it wouldn’t be theirs to bear alone.

Dave Zirin is the author of “The John Carlos Story” (Haymarket) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

The Top Twelve Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement

Yves SmithThursday, February 9, 2012
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/02/the-top-twelve-reasons-why-you-should-hate-the-mortgage-settlement.html
As readers may know by now, 49 of 50 states have agreed to join the so-called mortgage settlement, with Oklahoma the lone refusenik. Although the fine points are still being hammered out, various news outlets (New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal) have details, with Dave Dayen’s overview at Firedoglake the best thus far.

The Wall Street Journal is also reporting that the SEC is about to launch some securities litigation against major banks. Since the statue of limitations has already run out on securities filings more than five years old, this means they’ll clip the banks for some of the very last (and dreckiest) deals they shoved out the door before the subprime market gave up the ghost.

The various news services are touting this pact at the biggest multi-state settlement since the tobacco deal in 1998. While narrowly accurate, this deal is bush league by comparison even though the underlying abuses in both cases have had devastating consequences.

The tobacco agreement was pegged as being worth nearly $250 billion over the first 25 years. Adjust that for inflation, and the disparity is even bigger. That shows you the difference in outcomes between a case where the prosecutors have solid evidence backing their charges, versus one where everyone know a lot of bad stuff happened, but no one has come close to marshaling the evidence.

The mortgage settlement terms have not been released, but more of the details have been leaked:

1. The total for the top five servicers is now touted as $26 billion (annoyingly, the FT is calling it “nearly $40 billion”), but of that, roughly $17 billion is credits for principal modifications, which as we pointed out earlier, can and almost assuredly will come largely from mortgages owned by investors. $3 billion is for refis, and only $5 billion will be in the form of hard cash payments, including $1500 to $2000 per borrower foreclosed on between September 2008 and December 2011.

Banks will be required to modify second liens that sit behind firsts “at least” pari passu, which in practice will mean at most pari passu. So this guarantees banks will also focus on borrowers where they do not have second lien exposure, and this also makes the settlement less helpful to struggling homeowners, since borrowers with both second and first liens default at much higher rates than those without second mortgages. Per the Journal:

“It’s not new money. It’s all soft dollars to the banks,” said Paul Miller, a bank analyst at FBR Capital Markets.

The Times is also subdued:

Despite the billions earmarked in the accord, the aid will help a relatively small portion of the millions of borrowers who are delinquent and facing foreclosure. The success could depend in part on how effectively the program is carried out because earlier efforts by Washington aimed at troubled borrowers helped far fewer than had been expected.

2. Schneiderman’s MERS suit survives, and he can add more banks as defendants. It isn’t clear what became of the Biden and Coakley MERS suits, but Biden sounded pretty adamant in past media presentations on preserving that.

3. Nevada’s and Arizona’s suits against Countrywide for violating its past consent decree on mortgage servicing has, in a new Orwellianism, been “folded into” the settlement.

4. The five big players in the settlement have already set aside reserves sufficient for this deal.

Here are the top twelve reasons why this deal stinks:

1. We’ve now set a price for forgeries and fabricating documents. It’s $2000 per loan. This is a rounding error compared to the chain of title problem these systematic practices were designed to circumvent. The cost is also trivial in comparison to the average loan, which is roughly $180k, so the settlement represents about 1% of loan balances. It is less than the price of the title insurance that banks failed to get when they transferred the loans to the trust. It is a fraction of the cost of the legal expenses when foreclosures are challenged. It’s a great deal for the banks because no one is at any of the servicers going to jail for forgery and the banks have set the upper bound of the cost of riding roughshod over 300 years of real estate law.

2. That $26 billion is actually $5 billion of bank money and the rest is your money. The mortgage principal writedowns are guaranteed to come almost entirely from securitized loans, which means from investors, which in turn means taxpayers via Fannie and Freddie, pension funds, insurers, and 401 (k)s. Refis of performing loans also reduce income to those very same investors.

3. That $5 billion divided among the big banks wouldn’t even represent a significant quarterly hit. Freddie and Fannie putbacks to the major banks have been running at that level each quarter.

4. That $20 billion actually makes bank second liens sounder, so this deal is a stealth bailout that strengthens bank balance sheets at the expense of the broader public.

5. The enforcement is a joke. The first layer of supervision is the banks reporting on themselves. The framework is similar to that of the OCC consent decrees implemented last year, which Adam Levitin and yours truly, among others, decried as regulatory theater.

6. The past history of servicer consent decrees shows the servicers all fail to comply. Why? Servicer records and systems are terrible in the best of times, and their systems and fee structures aren’t set up to handle much in the way of delinquencies. As Tom Adams has pointed out in earlier posts, servicer behavior is predictable when their portfolios are hit with a high level of delinquencies and defaults: they cheat in all sorts of ways to reduce their losses.

7. The cave-in Nevada and Arizona on the Countrywide settlement suit is a special gift for Bank of America, who is by far the worst offender in the chain of title disaster (since, according to sworn testimony of its own employee in Kemp v. Countrywide, Countrywide failed to comply with trust delivery requirements). This move proves that failing to comply with a consent degree has no consequences but will merely be rolled into a new consent degree which will also fail to be enforced. These cases also alleged HAMP violations as consumer fraud violations and could have gotten costly and emboldened other states to file similar suits not just against Countrywide but other servicers, so it was useful to the other banks as well.

8. If the new Federal task force were intended to be serious, this deal would have not have been settled. You never settle before investigating. It’s a bad idea to settle obvious, widespread wrongdoing on the cheap. You use the stuff that is easy to prove to gather information and secure cooperation on the stuff that is harder to prove. In Missouri and Nevada, the robosigning investigation led to criminal charges against agents of the servicers. But even though these companies were acting at the express direction and approval of the services, no individuals or entities higher up the food chain will face any sort of meaningful charges.

9. There is plenty of evidence of widespread abuses that appear not to be on the attorney generals’ or media’s radar, such as servicer driven foreclosures and looting of investors’ funds via impermissible and inflated charges. While no serious probe was undertaken, even the limited or peripheral investigations show massive failures (60% of documents had errors in AGs/Fed’s pathetically small sample). Similarly, the US Trustee’s office found widespread evidence of significant servicer errors in bankruptcy-related filings, such as inflated and bogus fees, and even substantial, completely made up charges. Yet the services and banks will suffer no real consequences for these abuses.

10. A deal on robosiginging serves to cover up the much deeper chain of title problem. And don’t get too excited about the New York, Massachusetts, and Delaware MERS suits. They put pressure on banks to clean up this monstrous mess only if the AGs go through to trial and get tough penalties. The banks will want to settle their way out of that too. And even if these cases do go to trial and produce significant victories for the AGs, they still do not address the problem of failures to transfer notes correctly.

11. Don’t bet on a deus ex machina in terms of the new Federal foreclosure task force to improve this picture much. If you think Schneiderman, as a co-chairman who already has a full time day job in New York, is going to outfox a bunch of DC insiders who are part of the problem, I have a bridge I’d like to sell to you.

12. We’ll now have to listen to banks and their sycophant defenders declaring victory despite being wrong on the law and the facts. They will proceed to marginalize and write off criticisms of the servicing practices that hurt homeowners and investors and are devastating communities. But the problems will fester and the housing market will continue to suffer. Investors in mortgage-backed securities, who know that services have been screwing them for years, will be hung out to dry and will likely never return to a private MBS market, since the problems won’t ever be fixed. This settlement has not only revealed the residential mortgage market to be too big to fail, but puts it on long term, perhaps permanent, government life support.

As we’ve said before, this settlement is yet another raw demonstration of who wields power in America, and it isn’t you and me. It’s bad enough to see these negotiations come to their predictable, sorry outcome. It adds insult to injury to see some try to depict it as a win for long suffering, still abused homeowners.

Votescam: Oscar Edition

From the London Guardian:
Computer security experts have warned that the 2013 Oscars ballot may be vulnerable to a variety of cyber attacks that could falsify the outcome but remain undetected, if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences follows through on its decision to switch to internet voting for its members.

The Academy announced last week that it would be ditching its current vote-by-mail system and allowing its members to fill out electronic ballots from their home or office computers to make their choices for best picture and the other big Hollywood prizes, starting in 2013.

It announced a partnership with Everyone Counts, a California-based company which has developed software for internet elections from Australia to Florida, and which boasted it would incorporate "multiple layers of security" and "military-grade encryption techniques" to maintain its reputation for scrupulous honesty in respecting its members' voting preferences.

The ballot change will be a culture shock for an Academy voting community that tends to be older and more conservative: indeed, concerns are already surfacing as to whether all of the Academy voters even have email addresses.

But Everyone Counts' security claims have been met with deep scepticism by a computer scientist community which has grappled for years with the problem of making online elections fully verifiable while maintaining ballot secrecy – in other words, being rigorous about auditing the voting process, but still making sure nobody knows who voted for what. So far, nobody has demonstrated that such a thing is possible.

"Everybody would like there to be secure internet voting, but some very smart people have looked at the problem and can't figure out how to do it," said David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University and founder of the election transparency group Verified Voting. "The problem arises as soon as you decouple the voter from the recorded vote. If someone casts a ballot for best actor A and the vote is recorded for best actor B, the voter has no way of knowing the ballot has been altered, and the auditor won't be able to see it either."

Dill and many other leading computer scientists have listed multiple potential vulnerabilities to internet systems making vote-tampering possible, including denial-of-service attacks, malware, and penetration of the server's security wall. He reacted with particular alarm to the notion that the Academy's more than 5,000 voters would cast their ballots from their own computers.

"The hardest problem is when you have malicious software on the machine where the vote is cast," he said. "If that's the user's home PC, that's a huge problem, because lots of people have undetected viruses on their machine. A lot of people are under the control of hackers in eastern Europe, or wherever, and don't even know it."

Three years ago – in the wake of a decision by the Democratic party to let overseas voters participate in its presidential primary via internet – Dill issued a formal statement outlining the problems with internet voting, and persuaded 30 of America's top computer scientists to sign it...

Dill said his concern about the arrangement went well beyond the integrity of the Academy Awards themselves. Rather, he worried about the publicity implications of an awards ceremony broadcast to tens of millions of people across America and around the world.

"I don't want this to set a precedent and give a PR push to internet voting generally," he said. "I don't want the message to be: they used it for the Academy Awards, so it's OK to use it to vote for the president."

Full Article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/feb/02/oscars-vulnerable-cyber-attack-experts-warn

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue 2012

Kate Upton, cover girl...

The Ancient Wisdom Of The Infinite, Living Heart Of The Amazon

The Ancient Wisdom Of The Infinite, Living Heart Of The AmazonRichard Sauder
dr_samizdat1618@yahoo.com
Sunday, February 12, 2012 http://eventhorizonchronicle.blogspot.com/2012/02/ancient-wisdom-of-infinite-living-heart.html

When I was younger I eagerly devoured the books of Carlos Castañeda as they appeared in print. I read and reread his descriptions of his encounters with the allies and the nagual. For me they were mysterious accounts of another world at serious odds with the insanity of the red-white-and-blue mental asylum north of the Rio Grande / Rio Bravo.

However, as I have spent more and more time in Latin America, beginning years ago in Mexico, I have found myself slowly being drawn onto the shamanic path. Back in the 1980s, I somehow managed to stumble across the path of some of Carlos Castañeda´s Mexican associates. A series of improbable events occurred over the course of several weeks that brought me face to face with the realization that, for whatever reason, I was interacting with a shamanic group whose life modus operandi and perception and mnanipulation of reality, whether physical, social or otherwise, was very substantially at variance with the rest of society.

More recently I have been involved with a number of South American shamans and the plant-based brews and concoctions that they use to access other realities. The effect for me has been to drive home the salient point that there is NO dividing line between the so-called physical world and spiritual realm.

The two are in fact part and parcel of the one and same continuum of reality, which is limitless in extent and mystery.

In recent weeks I have been working with malicagua, and even more so than ayahuasca or salvia divinorum, it has driven home to me the reality of the allies that Don Juan Matus taught Carlos Castañeda about. The same would be true of the nagual.

The shaman who is currently instructing me has told me that poweerful shamans of the past sometimes saw the essence of malicagua but that in its essential aspect it is impossible to rationally describe. It is beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend. Malicagua is not bound in any way that the human mind can conceive. It is limitless.

The variety of beings that it brings calling is truly stunning. Many of them appear to be ordinary, everyday humans; so ordinary, in fact, that repeatedly I have found myself asking the shaman if they are his covert confederates that he has slyly sent to trick me or confound me. He smiles and says, no, that these are all beings that mnalicagua is sending to me for its own unknown purposes and reasons.

In one recent ceremony an ordinary-looking man unobtrusively entered my field of vision as I sat quietly behind the shaman´s house. I perceived that he was sent by malicagua so I asked him if he had a message for me. He slowly turned toward me and silently beckoned for me to come closer. I approached him and he put his face right in front of mine. I then saw that this was no ordinary man and that his response was no ordinary answer, because his eyes were windows directly into the void. As I gazed at his eyes I saw that they opened directly into the limitless, indescribable, infinitude of total nothingness. Nothingness, because there are absolutely no words or mental concepts in our modern languages or cultures to describe or understand the reality of what his eyes expósed to my consciousness.

Sometime later, I became aware that another human being had appeared in front of me. This was a solitary Amazonian warrior wearing a mioderately large, circular feather headdress. He was very solemn, almost regal in his prospect. His head was backlit with a soft golden glow. His face was painted with a greenishish-blue pigment.

Later when I was describing him to the shaman it was his feeling that this man was a shaman-warrior from deeper in the Amazon, perhaps from Brazil or Peru, whom I may meet in person in the future.

When I was studying South American geography, back in the 1980s, the professor used to impress upon the class that the Amazon jungle is the lungs of the planet. Kill the Amazon, and the Earth as we know it is done. Now that I am here in South Amnerica I am sure that he was right. The fortunes of this planet and the human race rise and fall with the fortunes of the natural world, with the fortunes of the great forests on this planet, in particular, the grandest of them all, The Amazon.

As I meet more and more spirits of the forest, as the medicinal plants of South America speak to me and reveal more of themselves and their reality to me, ranging from spirit warrior allies carrying blow guns, bows, arrows and lances, and also a whole slew of very ordinary looking, Western European-type human beings, both male and female, to tree people, to hyper-conscious insect beings, to animals ranging from owls, to armadillos, snakes and javelinas, the veil between the natural spirit world and the everyday world of consensual social reality is becoming more and more tenuous.

In fact, this is what the so-called Powers That Be fear so much. They are in absolute dread of large numbers of people establishing a conscious connection with the natural world, because that fundamentally threatens the machine consciousness, the artificial, mechanical, machine driven control structure they have spent so many centuries clamping down on this planet.

But there is no future in their vision, no life juice in their hollow, mechanical, artificial reality that they impose by genocidal military force on people after people, country after country.

One of the things that malicagua has shown me is that the time is coming when humanity will run joyfully through the forest singing ecstatically at the top of our lungs in a magical, majestic symnphony of life, in planetary concert with the mighty trees of the deep forest. All of humanity in joyful, full throat harmony with the mighty, ancient trees of this world´s forests.

Huge changes will soon be upon us. Much of what is coming will be far different than what the so-called ruling elite of this planet expect. This is because they lack a spiritual core, they are hollow, soulless entities. For this reason, spiritual realities are incomprehensible to them, they cannot begin to fathom them.

But they have had their day. They have held sway and had their say. Chance after chance has been extended to them to turn from their ruinous, self-destructive course. Even now they could express genuine remorse for their multitudinous heinous deeds and throw themselves on the mercy of the Universe. But this presupposes a measure of humility and introspection that they appear to lack. And so it does appear that their fate is sealed. They will continue to cause enormous harm to the planet and all its creatures right up to the last instant --and then they will exit the global stage and a new era will begin

When I first began to drink malicagua the shaman came and took my watch from me. He said it was better for him to do that, because malicagua does not like watches. If people do not remove them beforehand, then after drinking malicagua they routinely remove their watches and fling them away into the underbrush. He also took my belt. Malicagua does not like leather either. People also routinely take off their belts and throw them away in the bushes.

Malicagua does not like to be metered or constrained. Just pure, infinite, natural consciousness, flowing like a mighty river straight from the Infinite Living Heart of the Amazon.

This is what the Powers That Be want to kill. But in the end, Mother Nature does prevail, in a manner that they absolutely do not expect, could never predict, do not comprehend, and moreover will not believe, not even when they are personally confronted with it to their very faces.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

http://vimeo.com/35404908

Moonbot Studios, the animation studio behind this film, is gaining hype as "The Pixar of the iPad age." If this is any indication, the studio has earned the hype. To read more about Moonbot on The Atlantic and see more photos from the film:

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2012/02/the-pixar-of-the-ipad-age-goes-to-the-academy-awards-with-its-short-film/252703

Moonbot Studios:
http://www.moonbotstudios.com

Moonbot's description of the film:

Inspired, in equal measures, by Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton, The Wizard of Oz, and a love for books, “Morris Lessmore” is a story of people who devote their lives to books and books who return the favor. Morris Lessmore is a poignant, humorous allegory about the curative powers of story. Using a variety of techniques (miniatures, computer animation, 2D animation) award winning author/ illustrator William Joyce and Co-director Brandon Oldenburg present a new narrative experience that harkens back to silent films and M-G-M Technicolor musicals. “Morris Lessmore” is old fashioned and cutting edge at the same time.

“The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” was the winner of best animated short film of 2011 at the 84th Academy Awards...

The 'Mac' of all trades

Glenview woman reflects on naming famous burger, 45 years later
Alan P. Henry
January 30, 2012
http://www.glenviewlantern.com/Articles-News-c-2012-01-30-235637.114133-The-Mac-of-all-trades.html

Robalini's Note: Esther Rose is the mother of Konformist Kontributing Editor Scott Rose.

The next time you prepare to chomp into a Big Mac, take a moment first to thank Esther Glickstein Rose of Glenview.

She's the one who named it, and without her dogged persistence, the iconic sandwich may never have become a McDonald's product.

The story begins 45 years ago on a snowy winter day in downtown Chicago in 1967.

With ten dollars to her name, the 17-year-old Von Steuben High School graduate saw an ad for a secretary at McDonald's corporate headquarters. Poorly dressed and soaking wet from the commute into the LaSalle Street office, she was spotted in a hallway by a company official, who promptly hired her.

"I guess she felt sorry for me, the way I looked," said Esther, 65, who has lived in Glenview since 1978.

One day soon thereafter, the head of product development stopped by her desk, told her he was headed to a board meeting where they were going to name a new double burger product and asked for her suggestions.

"I just said off the top of my head, 'Big Mac, that's it!'"

He dismissed her idea and told her they were going to name it the Blue Ribbon Burger.

"I started laughing and told him that was a dumb name," she said.

He then told her, while he stood there, to write down ten reasons not to name it the Blue Ribbon Burger, and also to list ten other names.

She quickly typed ten reasons to nix their choice, and only one name: Big Mac.

The board chose Blue Ribbon Burger, test marketed it in Quad Cities, and it bombed.

A few months later, the manager said they were going to try again, this time calling it the Aristocrat.

She laughed, called it a "dumb" idea and again made the case for the Big Mac.

The board went with Aristocrat, test marketed it in Peoria, and it bombed again. The idea of a double burger dropped out of sight.

Fast-forwarding to 1972, Esther decided not to follow McDonald's out to its new headquarters in Oak Brook, got married and moved to Niles.

One day she walked into the McDonald's on Milwaukee Avenue in Glenview and there, on the menu, was the Big Mac!

Word spread over the years that the name Big Mac was Esther's idea.

Word also spread that McDonald's refused to compensate her, first arguing that she was an employee when she came up with the name, then many years later arguing that the statute of limitations had run out on a claim.

There were letter writing campaigns at several Glenview schools, supportive interviews with the likes of radio hosts Wally Phillips, Uncle Bobby, and Eddie and JoBo and, to this day, periodic stories on TV and in the news.

Maxim magazine even talked to her about a photo shoot using Big Macs in strategic places. "No, thank you," she said.

In 1985, McDonald's did finally send her a plaque, thanking her for her "contribution to the development of the Big Mac." But no money.

"I am not bitter," said Esther. "We've had so much fun with it. Over the years, people would say, 'there's the Big Mac lady.' And they'd want an autograph." She recalled that one fan letter was sent from New Jersey to the Glenview post office addressed to "Big Mac Lady."

But the events of forty years ago have played only a small role in Esther's life.

Her parents were among the very few members of their two families to survive the Holocaust, and came to America in 1948. Esther was eight when her mother died of cancer in 1955. But suffering only made her stronger.

"I pledged to make a good life for myself and make the best life for my children and pass a smile on to others," she said.

True to her pledge, Esther became a woman with many passions and interests, none of them requiring a toasted sesame seed bun.

At the head of the line are her two sons, Scott and Bradley, and two grandchildren.

In 2010, she received the Illinois Association of Park Districts Community Service Award in recognition of what is now 34 years of service supervising the Glenview Park District's adult volleyball program. A lifelong volleyball player, standing 5 feet 1 inch tall, she currently runs two programs a week for 28 players per class.

Theater is another of her passions. She is on the board of the Highland Park Players, which will soon be celebrating their 25th anniversary and has performed in numerous community theater productions.

A lifelong animal lover, she volunteers as an administrative assistant at the Heartland Animal Shelter in Northbrook, "where [she feels] most rewarded."

"I have never seen such dedicated people who come rain, sleet or snow to care for these animals and work so hard to find them a good home," she said.

One of her favorite quotes is: "Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened." She followed that message as two of Heartland's cats, Petey and Delsie, now live with Esther.

Esther can also be found at the Glenview Library assisting people, golfing, making photo collages, and riding with her partner, Rick Metz, on his Harley. She's penned numerous short stories and produced a book of over 100 poems, too. Her latest fascination?

"Tap dancing," she says with an enchanting smile. "A teacher once commented about me, 'I try my best.' I may not be the best at many things, but I always try my best."

She also worked for 14 years as an advertising sales assistant for Gulf Publishing, and would love to pick up a similar post-time position today to help make ends meet.

Of course, in that regard, there's always the chance McDonald's may at long last make amends, too.

"It is not too late," smiled Esther. "If they still want to give me something I would love it."

We Must Free the Revolutionary Health Discoveries of Dr. Hulda Clark

Steven A. SwanDr. Clark Consultant

Over the past few years Big Medicine (i.e., the huge, multinational pharmaceutical companies as well as the beneficiaries of other high-profit medical modalities [surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, diagnostics, cancer research, etc.) and the corporate-controlled mainstream media (MSM) have effectively marginalized the revolutionary health-related discoveries and inventions of Dr. Hulda Clark, Ph.D., N.D. Big Medicine has done so using its vast financial resources to fund its many willing minions, including the mainstream medical research industry. The mainstream media has proactively aided and abetted Big Medicine. We must not allow this travesty to continue.

Dr. Clark’s Discoveries and Inventions

Hulda Regehr Clark received her Ph.D. in the biological sciences way back in 1959 when it was much more difficult to earn a doctorate degree than it is today. Her many years of subsequent research in this field led her to discover the two true reasons behind virtually every disease—1) that the increased number of toxins which we continually take into our bodies compromise our immune systems’ ability to protect us and directly cause some of our ailments and diseases, and 2) that our compromised immune systems are unable to repel foreign invaders such as viruses, bacteria, parasites, etc., which also can contribute to or directly cause some of our ailments or diseases by (among other things) manufacturing toxic chemicals of their own. These two factors working in conjunction with each other cause virtually every one of our ailments or diseases.

In addition to using traditional scientific methods to confirm these realities, Dr. Clark discovered another revolutionary method for doing so. Even though she was an expert in the biological sciences, her curiosity had introduced her to electromagnetism and the electromagnetic spectrum—from the largest radio waves to the smallest rays of ionic radiation. In conjunction with her research into this field, she took up the hobby of amateur (or ham) radio operation.

Her research into radio waves led her in 1988 to one of her most important breakthrough discoveries—that everything in existence, whether living or dead, animate or inanimate, produces and emits a radio frequency (RF) or a range of radio frequencies. Microscopic entities such as viruses emit a single radio frequency, whereas larger entities such as human beings emit a wide range of radio frequencies.

Using this information, Dr. Clark invented a device with which she could accurately identify substances or entities based upon the radio frequencies they emit. She also determined how to pinpoint the exact locations of these substances or entities within other entities, such as the human body. Astonishingly, using radio frequencies to identify substances is thousands of times more accurate than the latest analytical methods employed by scientific researchers today. It is also much quicker and much less expensive.

Using this information, Dr. Clark was able to identify the particular toxin or toxins responsible for causing any given ailment or disease. She was also able to identify any foreign invader or invaders which might be associated with that ailment or disease.

After Dr. Clark made these important discoveries, she studied many human ailments and diseases and ascertained the factor or combination of factors causing each one. Armed with that information, she was then able to articulate each one’s cure.

Dr. Clark realized that the first step to take to cure ailments and diseases is to reduce the flow of toxins into the body as much as possible. Once this feat is accomplished, our immune systems may recover to the point where they can remove many of the remaining toxins on their own. However this effort is seldom totally effective by itself so the next step is to proactively work to remove the toxins which have accumulated.

Dr. Clark’s many years of research also taught her how valuable herbs are in removing toxins from the body and in exterminating our foreign invaders. These insights led her to become a master herbologist. She also became a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine (N.D.) during her career.

Dr. Clark’s research into radio frequencies also led her to discover that by subjecting our foreign invaders to their own frequency ranges for a few minutes at a time using a frequency range generator, they could be exterminated. Unfortunately this technique is not effective on all parts of the body because some of them are shielded from the frequency ranges. However using a frequency range generator in conjunction with the proper herbs to exterminate our foreign invaders is extremely effective.

The Dissemination of Her Revelations

Dr. Clark did not conduct her scientific research in a vacuum. Much of her research into specific diseases was prompted by the conditions of actual disease sufferers with whom she was acquainted. She assisted her first patient in 1963 and went on to assist many thousands more over the years.

Even though Dr. Clark had discovered the basic causes of and the basic cures for many diseases, there was much more to be discovered about each one. Dr. Clark subsequently focused her research efforts on discovering further information relative to the causes of and curing the disease that was killing a large number of people—cancer. She also focused her research efforts on refining the causes of and the cures for HIV and AIDS.

Dr. Clark did not want to wait the many years necessary for the mainstream medical research industry and government agencies to analyze and accept her revolutionary discoveries using their conventional methods (double-blind studies, etc.) because too many people (including the control groups in the studies) would needlessly suffer and die in the interim. So she decided to make her discoveries known directly to anyone who was interested in learning them. She did so by authoring books detailing the causes of and the cures for particular diseases and publishing them herself.

In 1993, Dr. Clark published two books. One of them was entitled The Cure For All Cancers. This book detailed the basic causes of and the basic cures for all types of cancer. The other book was entitled The Cure For HIV and AIDS. This book did the same for these two diseases.

Because of Dr. Clark’s many years of research, she possessed vast amounts of information regarding the causes of and the cures for many other diseases. This led her in 1995 to publish a book entitled The Cure For All Diseases. In this book she detailed the causes of and the cures for many diseases individually.

The Demonization of Dr. Clark

Even though Dr. Clark discovered a method for analyzing substances much more accurately and quickly than any modality in existence in the scientific community, which in turn allowed her to discover the causes of and the cures for virtually every disease, not surprisingly, these revelations were met with strenuous hostility from the mainstream medical industry, the mainstream scientific community (which is highly influenced by the mainstream medical industry), and the corporate-controlled mainstream media. The first two groups are much more interested generating profits and longevity for themselves than they are in helping individuals cure their ailments and diseases. All three of them did everything imaginable to try to marginalize Dr. Clark’s revolutionary health discoveries and inventions. However, undaunted by the tremendous opposition to her fantastic discoveries and inventions, Dr. Clark persevered.

In the ensuing years, Dr. Clark made further discoveries into the causes of and the cures for many ailments and diseases. Since one of her primary foci was on curing cancer, she published three subsequent cancer books over the years detailing her discoveries. The last one was published in 2007. In 2003, she updated her HIV and AIDS book. Although she never updated The Cures For All Diseases, many of the discoveries delineated in her subsequent books are applicable to many other diseases as well.

Not surprisingly, Dr. Clark wished to use her discoveries to actually help people cure their ailments and diseases. Early on in her career while she was living in Indiana, many afflicted individuals had learned of her ability to cure a vast number of diseases. So naturally they sought her help in to try to cure their own diseases. So she accommodated them.

On one occasion a couple of officials from the State of Indiana surreptitiously spoke with Dr. Clark about the contrived disease from which one of them was purportedly suffering. After meeting with them, Dr. Clark made her recommendations. She never heard from them again and subsequently moved to California.

Then in the late 1990’s (approximately seven years after that encounter and as she was becoming famous after publishing some of her books), Indiana justice department officials indicted her for practicing medicine without a license. (Do you think that they could have been put up to this by the profiteers of Big Medicine?) Dr. Clark was arrested in California and extradited to Indiana to stand trial. However when the judge realized how much time had elapsed since the initial encounter, he dismissed the charges against Dr. Clark and she returned home.

Helping Individuals Cure Their Ailments and Diseases

Because Dr. Clark possessed a doctorate in science rather than a medical degree, she was precluded from practicing medicine within the United States. However she was not precluded from practicing medicine in Mexico. She therefore established a clinic just over the border with California.

As with her research, her primary focus at the clinic was on assisting individuals suffering from cancer, HIV, or AIDS. Many of her patients were ones whom the mainstream medical industry had already given up hope. However Dr. Clark was willing to admit them and cure their diseases.

In addition to all of the time she spent conducting her other research, Dr. Clark also spent an enormous amount of time with each one of her patients. She would analyze their conditions using radio frequencies when they were first admitted; make recommendations and provide them with various supplements, medicines, and protocols to purge toxins from their bodies, exterminate any foreign pathogens and parasites and remove their remnants, if necessary, bolster their immune systems, etc. She would then spend an enormous amount of time monitoring the progress of each patient to ensure that the protocols were being effective. Another tremendous burden upon Dr. Clark must have been the fact that many of her patients were terminal cases with only short amounts of time to live if she were not there to save them.

Dr. Clark’s Detractors

As Dr. Clark became more famous, her establishment detractors became more vociferous. One group or individual after another decried her discoveries and inventions. They called her a quack and asserted that her discoveries could not be true and that her inventions did not work. However even in the face of all of this negative criticism, Dr. Clark persevered with her work.

Dr. Clark Violated a Cardinal Rule

Unfortunately in her zeal to help others cured their diseases before their time on Earth expired, Dr. Clark violated the first rule of life—one must first ensure one’s own health before helping others. She was so caught up in her research, in disseminating her discoveries to others, and in saving people’s lives that she neglected her own health. She worked seven days a week, she probably did not eat properly, did not get any exercise, did not get enough rest, etc. One can watch her condition deteriorate on videos in which she appeared over the years. In one speech she even remarked that one day she should take the time to regain her own health, but that she was finding it difficult to do so because she was working so hard researching four interrelated diseases—cancer, HIV, AIDS, and malaria. Finally in 2009 at the age of eighty, the time of this wonderful person ran out.

Her detractors seized the opportunity to marginalize her discoveries and inventions even more. They offered as proof that she was a charlatan the fact that she had declared innumerable times over many years that she could cure cancer and then she succumbed to cancer herself. However it was not cancer to which this amazing lady had succumbed, it was her neglect of her own health.

The Marginalization of Dr. Clark’s Revelations and Inventions

After Dr. Clark’s death, the popularity of her revelations diminished. This was largely due to the marginalization of them by her detractors. They did such a fantastic job that, not only was the mainstream public persuaded that her assertions about her discoveries were not true and that her inventions did not work, but many believers in alternative therapies were deceived into believing that she was a charlatan as well. The situation went from being that, at one point, many people were aware of her and talking about her and her discoveries to no one talking about them. At one point you could walk into any given bookstore or health food store and see a number of her books for sale. Now there are none of them on display. It was like she had never even existed.

Another reason that her cancer books did not gain universal acceptance in the first place was because they are relatively difficult to comprehend. This is because cancer is not caused by a single entity, it is caused by a number of entities working in conjunction with each other. As a result, in order to stop a cancer malignancy as well as shrink the tumor or tumors down to nothing, there are numerous steps one must take and numerous toxins to remove. Many individuals simply did not wish to or were unable to expend the time or effort to try to comprehend all of these steps. Further exacerbating the problem was the fact that Dr. Clark included a tremendous amount of scientific information in each book.

Fortunately, Dr. Clark Still Has a Large Number of Passionate Followers

Another reason that Dr. Clark’s revelations were not widely accepted was because the device she invented to analyze substances using radio frequencies is relatively difficult to master. However there are many individuals who have mastered it and who use it to monitor their own health as well as the health of their friends and relatives. In addition, many individuals who worked with Dr. Clark while she was alive continue to use and promote her revelations. There is also a solid core of many thousands of individuals who continue to use Dr. Clark’s revelations to keep themselves healthy.

Partial evidence of the number of individuals who use Dr. Clark’s revelations to keep themselves healthy is the number of testimonials made to her and her accomplishments after her death. These testimonials can be found on the Internet at http://inmemoryofdrhuldaclark.com. There are approximately 550 heartfelt testimonials there. More evidence of her continued popularity is the large number of individuals who still use and promote her remarkable discoveries and inventions on the Internet and elsewhere.

Summary

In summary, we should do everything within our power to stop the vested medical interests and the corporate-controlled mainstream media from marginalizing the revolutionary discoveries and inventions of this remarkable woman and preventing them from becoming widely accepted. This information has the potential of improving the health of virtually everyone on the planet. It is long past time for it to be freed from its confinement. Moreover, Dr. Hulda Clark should be recorded in the annuls of history as one of the greatest scientists and human beings who ever lived.

Copyright 2012 Steven A. Swan

Steven A. Swan is a longtime follower and user of Dr. Clark’s discoveries and inventions. He is now offering his expertise to others who might wish to learn how to use them to cure their own ailments or diseases or who might wish to understand them better.

Contact: contact@drclarkconsultant.com
Website: Dr. Clark Consultant.com (http://www.drclarkconsultant.com)

Apple’s Foxconn Auditing Group ‘Surrounded With Controversy’

Apple’s Foxconn Auditing Group ‘Surrounded With Controversy,’ Critics Say
Christina Bonnington
February 13, 2012
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/02/apple-foxconn-investigations
Following ongoing public outcry and organized protests at Apple stores last week, Apple has announced that an organization called the Fair Labor Association is conducting independent assessments of worker conditions inside the factories of Foxconn, its manufacturing partner in China.

The FLA audit began this morning in Shenzen’s “Foxconn City.” In the inspections, FLA representatives will interview thousands of factory employees about their living and working conditions, delving into topics such as compensation, health and safety, working hours, and the workers’ communication with management. The results of the inspections will be posted on the FLA’s website in early March.

“We were hoping for a quick response, but I don’t know if we were actually expecting such a fast response from Apple,” said Sarah Ryan, a human rights organizer at Change.org, one of two groups that orchestrated last week’s protests at Apple stores. “It’s especially exciting that these audits are going to be transparent and public.”

The FLA said the audits will be conducted by “a team of labor experts” composed of FLA staff and representatives from two accredited service providers, Openview and INFACT. They’ll be visiting another Foxconn facility in Chengdu, China in the coming weeks.
While encouraged by today’s Apple announcement, Ryan also conceded the FLA is “surrounded with controversy in terms of effectiveness and objectiveness.” Still, Ryan says Change.org recognizes Apple has an existing relationship with the FLA, and as long as its findings are open and transparent, that’s a good thing.
But another key advocate of the Foxconn workers was even less impressed with Apple’s Monday announcement. Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, executive director of SumOfUs.org, told Wired, “We’re hopeful that this is a step towards the solution, but it’s not even close to the solution itself. The FLA does not have a great track record of conducting effective investigations.”

SumOfUs and Change.org co-sponsored a petition asking Apple to respond to allegations of Foxconn worker abuse, and to commit to developing “ethical” products. More than 250,000 people signed the petition, which was hand-delivered to Apple Stores across the globe on Thursday morning. A second petition, from Hong Kong group SACOM, takes last week’s protest one step further by outlining five specific areas in which Apple needs to improve, including ending the use of student workers and providing a living wage for factory employees.

Although knowledge of poor working conditions inside Foxconn has existed for years, after Apple’s record earnings in 2011, the issue struck a big nerve with much of the public. A New York Times piece that highlighted some of the dire conditions inside Apple’s Chinese factories motivated people to start taking action against the status quo.

The new FLA investigations, detailed in an Apple press release, appear to be a direct response to this outcry. Apple has conducted more than 40 supply chain audits of Foxconn since 2006 and over 500 audits of its factories total.

“We believe that workers everywhere have the right to a safe and fair work environment, which is why we’ve asked the FLA to independently assess the performance of our largest suppliers,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in the release.
“As an Apple consumer, I’m relieved to hear that Tim Cook is taking this seriously and is breaking ground in the industry with Fair Labor Association auditing,” said Mark Shields, the consumer who originally launched the Change.org petition, in a statement. “But Apple still needs to use some of their trademark creativity and problem solving to create a worker protection plan for new products — especially the upcoming iPad 3 — so that they’re proactively taking care of their workers.”

But for those looking for Apple (as well as other tech companies) to really change their ways, the FLA may not be the best company to perform these assessments, if its history is anything to go by.

Stinebrickner-Kauffman pointed out a site called FLA Watch that’s dedicated to monitoring the company’s well-publicized audits. It calls the FLA “a public relations mouthpiece” for corporations (particularly the apparel industry).

“The FLA was created in response to student protests around the sweatshop issue in the late 90s, specifically to monitor garment shops, with NIKE as a founding member,” Teresa Cheng, international campaigns coordinator with United Students Against Sweatshops (the organization behind FLA Watch), told Wired. “Ten years later, we see little to no reform of sweatshop conditions in NIKE’s supply chain, and no positive changes can be attributed to the FLA.”

Another veteran of the garment industry backs up Cheng’s opinion of audits.

“Reading that Apple has been auditing their vendors since 2006 does not mean anything,” says Sindy Sagastume, production manager for a fashion c'ompany called Aimee Lynn, which imports clothing for distribution to companies like Walmart, Target, and Sears. “Audits are truly a tool used by retailers in the US to make themselves seem to be socially compliant, but in fact does nothing to ensure factories are acting appropriately,” Sagastume told Wired.

So how much teeth does the FLA really have behind its audits? The organization has developed a code of conduct with which it judges workplace conditions, but all it does is investigate and report on working conditions; it doesn’t actually instigate any change itself. According to the organization’s website: “The FLA is a brand accountability system that places the onus on companies to voluntarily achieve the FLA’s labor standards in the factories manufacturing their products.”

In other words: The FLA is a reporting agency, not a policing agency. Any real change for Foxconn workers will come from either Foxconn itself, or pressure from the Chinese government or Apple.
“This is at best a decent first step,” echoed Stinebrickner-Kauffman of SumOfUs.org. “At worst, the beginning of a white-washing campaign.”

When asked to comment on its Foxconn investigations, the FLA supplied Wired with an official statement that mirrors the language of Apple’s press release. We will continue to reach out to the FLA for comment.

Libya: Militias out of control, says Amnesty International

Libya's fledging government is threatened by armed militias whose lawless behaviour risks jeopardising the country's stability and security, Amnesty International says. Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
16 Feb 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/9084999/Libya-Militias-out-of-control-says-Amnesty-International.html

A year after the first demonstrations against Col Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year dictatorship, thousands of Libyans continue to suffer from the threat of violence and misrule, with militias perpetrating widespread human rights abuses.

According to Amnesty, at least 12 people have been tortured to death in rebel prisons since September. Despite the overthrow of the regime, Libya is still ruled by the gun.

"Militias in Libya are largely out of control and the blanket impunity they enjoy only encourages further abuses and perpetuates instability and insecurity," said Donatella Rovera, a researcher for the human rights group.

"A year ago Libyans risked their lives to demand justice. Today their hopes are being jeopardised by lawless armed militias who trample human rights with impunity."

Inmates at 10 of 11 detention facilities run by the militias had been tortured, Amnesty said. Prisoners said they had been suspended with ropes and cables, beaten with plastic hoses and subjected to electric shocks.

Amnesty also accused the interim government of failing to investigate suspicious incidents, such as the deaths of 65 Gaddafi fighters whose bodies were dumped in a hotel.

The government formed from the National Transitional Council, which spearheaded the uprising against the regime, was also criticised for not intervening against the expulsion of 30,000 residents from the town of Tawargha by Misuratan fighters.

Activists from a range of human rights groups claim that armed gangs are responsible for daily atrocities. "The government should protect the rights of thousands of people who are held without formal charges or access to an attorney," said Sarah Leah Whitson, of Human Rights Watch.

Diplomats have applauded the Libyan government's efforts to prepare for elections but acknowledge that frustration with its failure to stamp its authority on the streets has grown. "There has been very slow progress in binding the various factions into a central government worthy of the name," said one Western official.

The danger that the country could fracture into zones run by militias rose this week after a group of 100 brigades from the west of the country formed a political front in opposition to the current leadership, with its fighters staging a show of force in Tripoli.

Volcker defends ban on proprietary trading in comments to regulators

Former Fed Chair Volcker defends ban on proprietary trading in comments to regulators
February 13, 2012http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/industries/former-fed-chair-volcker-defends-ban-on-proprietary-trading-in-comments-to-regulators/2012/02/13/gIQArIwVBR_story.html

WASHINGTON — Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker on Monday issued a broad defense of a federal rule bearing his name that would prohibit banks from trading for their own profit.

Commercial banks backed by government deposit insurance shouldn’t be able to engage in speculative trading, Volcker said in a letter supporting the so-called Volcker rule.

“Proprietary trading is not an essential commercial bank service that justifies taxpayer support,” he wrote.

The letter was sent to the five regulatory agencies that have approved a draft version of the rule, including the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The rule is expected to be finalized by summer. Banks will then have until July 2014 to comply.

Congress directed regulators to draft the rule under the 2010 financial overhaul. It was a response to bets banks had placed on mortgage-backed securities, which hastened the financial crisis and led to taxpayer-funded bailouts.

Wall Street executives have opposed the rule. They say it would limit trading on behalf of customers and put them at a disadvantage with non-U.S. banks, which aren’t subject to the ban.

Banks, financial services trade groups and individuals have submitted hundreds of comments in opposition. Monday was the deadline for comments.

Tim Ryan, a lobbyist for the securities industry, called the rule “unworkable” and said it will slow economic growth.

The industry says the rule will reduce trading volumes, or the “liquidity” of stocks, bonds and other instruments. Banks won’t be able to trade with their own money and will likely cut back on trading for their customers to avoid running afoul of the rule. Lower trading will reduce demand for stocks and other securities, cutting into their prices.

Members of Congress from both parties have echoed the industry’s criticism. About 120 members of the House signed a letter asking regulators to drop the current proposal and draft an entirely new rule.

Volcker disagreed. He noted that excessive liquidity can increase risk by encouraging more trading.

“The restrictions... are not at all likely to have an effect on liquidity inconsistent with the public interest,” Volcker wrote.

Regarding the industry’s concerns about competition from overseas, Volcker wrote that they seem “superficial at best.” The rule’s bar on trading could make U.S. banks more appealing to many customers, he wrote.

Volcker indicated that small banks should be subject to less scrutiny under the rule. The vast majority of proprietary trading is done by a handful of large banks, he noted.

“At the end of the day, I feel confident that the restrictions imposed by the ‘Volcker Rule’ can be reasonably and effectively administered,” he wrote.

A 75th Anniversary for the American Dream

A 75th Anniversary for the American Dream, a 25-Year Anniversary for Me
Michael Moore
February 11th, 2012

On this day 25 years ago, in 1987, I became a filmmaker. It was around ten in the morning and the first-ever roll of Kodak 16mm film for my first-ever movie was loaded into my friend's camera to shoot the very first scene of 'Roger & Me.' I had no idea on that morning in Flint, Michigan what my life would be like after that, or what would happen to Flint, or to General Motors. It all felt fairly ominous, though -- after all, GM, which was posting record profits at the time, was closing its first Flint factory (the first of what would become many) and unemployment in Flint had officially been listed as high as 29%. Surely things couldn't get much worse.

That morning, 25 years ago today, a group of autoworkers had come together on the lawn of the soon-to-be-closed Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac assembly plant to raise their voices against the closing -- and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Great Flint Sit-Down Strike, which had begun at that very factory. That strike, in 1936-37, was actually an occupation. Hundreds of workers took over the factories in Flint and refused to leave for 44 days until GM capitulated and recognized their union. The strike inspired thousands of other workers across the country to stage their own occupations and, before you knew it, in the years to follow, factory workers were paid a living wage, with benefits, vacations, and a safe working place.

The middle class and the American Dream were born 75 years ago today, on February 11, 1937, the day the Flint workers won their struggle. And for the next 44 years, working people everywhere got to own their own homes, send their kids to college and never worry about going broke if they got sick. That belief, that life would be good if you were a good citizen and a hard worker, now seems out of reach for nearly half the country which is either living in or near poverty. Perhaps people wouldn't mind it as much if the burden were being evenly shared. But everyone knows that's not the case. In a time of record personal bankruptcies, record home foreclosures, record family and student debt, there are a group of people having the best years of wealth and profit ever recorded in human history. And it is those very people who have made the decisions to export our jobs, to decimate unions, to make college unaffordable, to start wars and to pay themselves with gluttonous joy while paying little or no tax -- this is the 1% that has created the burden so many Americans (and people around the world) now share.

And so, 75 years after the victory in Flint, the battle is now being fought all over again. But this time it's not just about getting paid a dollar an hour, or having Sunday off, or reducing the chance of your hand being crushed in the metal stamping machine. This time, the stakes are even greater: Who is going to own America and control the basic functions of our democracy -- the richest 1% who buy the politicians to get what they want, or the 99% who don't have much these days and live in anxiety or fear of what's around the bend.

I believe that justice will win out again, in the end, just as it did 75 years ago today in Flint in 1937.

I have no special plans to mark this day of anniversaries other than to post a short story I wrote called 'Gratitude.' You may have read it in my book, but if not, here it is to freely download and enjoy:

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/gratitude

If you'd like to hear me read it in my own voice, click here:

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/gratitude-audio

It tells, in part, the story of that day I first placed that roll of Kodak film into a movie camera. I am proud of the town I was born in, and I'm proud of my uncle who participated in the Sit-Down Strike. I am grateful to those of you who have gone to my movies over the years, and I thank all of you who have been inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement to speak up on behalf of the 99%.

There's no turning back now. Onward!

Greek lawmakers approve austerity bill as Athens burns

Harry Papachristou and Yannis BehrakisSun Feb 12, 2012
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/12/us-greece-idUSTRE8120HI20120212

ATHENS (Reuters) - The Greek parliament approved a deeply unpopular austerity bill to secure a second EU/IMF bailout and avoid national bankruptcy, as buildings burned across central Athens and violence spread around the country.

Cinemas, cafes, shops and banks were set ablaze in central Athens as black-masked protesters fought riot police outside parliament.

State television reported the violence spread to the tourist islands of Corfu and Crete, the northern city of Thessaloniki and towns in central Greece. Shops were looted in the capital where police said 34 buildings were ablaze.

Prime Minister Lucas Papademos denounced the worst breakdown of order since 2008 when violence gripped Greece for weeks after police shot a 15-year-old schoolboy.

"Vandalism, violence and destruction have no place in a democratic country and won't be tolerated," he told parliament as it prepared to vote on the new 130 billion euro bailout to save Greece from a chaotic bankruptcy.

Papademos told lawmakers shortly before they voted that they would be gravely mistaken if they rejected the package that demands deep pay, pension and job cuts, as this would threaten Greece's place in the European mainstream.

"It would be a huge historical injustice if the country from which European culture sprang ... reached bankruptcy and was led, due to one more mistake, to national isolation and national despair," he said.

The chaos outside parliament showed how tough it will be to implement the measures. A Reuters photographer saw buildings in Athens engulfed in flames and huge plumes of smoke rose in the night sky.

"We are facing destruction. Our country, our home, has become ripe for burning, the centre of Athens is in flames. We cannot allow populism to burn our country down," conservative lawmaker Costis Hatzidakis told parliament.

The air in Syntagma Square outside parliament was thick with tear gas as riot police fought running battles with youths who smashed marble balustrades and hurled stones and petrol bombs.

Terrified Greeks and tourists fled the rock-strewn streets and the clouds of stinging gas, cramming into hotel lobbies for shelter as lines of riot police.

The Billionaires' Brokered GOP Convention

Greg Palast, Truthout Thursday, February 9, 2012
The Plan is working.

Mitt Romney's biggest backer didn't want him to win.

We know that Paul "The Vulture" Singer, Romney's Daddy Warbucks, organized the "grassroots" campaign to replace Romney with Gov. Chris Christie back in September.

That flopped, so Singer and the billionaire boys' club that courted Christie moved over to Romney. Not that they had a choice. They knew Moonrocks Gingrich, who thinks he's running for Master Jedi, and Saint Santorum who thinks he's running for pope, would end up road kill in November.

But despite their million-dollar checks for Romney's campaign, the billionaires are handling the ex-governor with very long and slippery tweezers. The fact that Singer and the Koch brothers went on bended knee to Christie means they are just nauseated over Romney, a man losing a war with the English language and his own tax returns, carrying their standard against President Obama.

These billionaires are smart men. Devious men. I've followed them for years, and they do nothing in a straight line. The super PAC that Singer and the gang control, Restore Our Future, is supposed to be for Romney. But it's not; it's for Singer and Bill Koch. The future they want to restore is their own, not yours or mine - or Romney's.

Now, if your ultimate goal is to beat Obama and you need Christie to do it, you want the GOP race to end in a brokered convention. Then, the billionaires become the brokers. In the best of all worlds for these super PAC men, no candidate gets the 1,144 delegates needed to win. Restore Our Future can then restore the nomination to Christie (or, say, Sen. Marco Rubio, or both), someone who can win.

So, think about it. The Singer-Koch super PAC has access to more money than Fort Knox. It has raised over $30 million and has left as much as half sitting unspent. Yet, they didn't bother to run major ads in cheap media markets like Grand Junction, letting Romney go down in Colorado by less than 4,000 votes.

For a few bucks, they could have sealed it for Governor Romney this week. But they chose not to. Why?

By moving money in and out of selected primaries like a piston, Restore Our Future can shoo Santorum and Gingrich away from the nomination - and, with a bit of luck, the Romney campaign ends up in Tampa dead on arrival.

Then the Vulture and the Richie Rich Club can gnaw at Romney's political corpse and regurgitate the nomination for the cat's paw of their choice.

Greg Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores, released in the US and Canada by Penguin.

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GregPalast.com

Robalini's NFL Picks: 2011 Season

Final regular season record: 73-60-7
Playoff record: 7-5
Total record: 80-65-7

Thanks for playing with me in 2011!