The Whitest Kids You Know: Trevor talks to children!

Awhhhhh. I’m sorry your hurting too.

Hey guys– the rich ‘feel my pain’. I don’t believe it, but that’s what they say.

“…”People are examining, ‘Do you keep the yacht, do you go to the classic car auction, do you take the private jet?’” said Joseph Montgomery, managing director of investments at Wachovia Securities. ..”

Rich begin feeling the pain in down economy

AP August 03 2008

The rich are sharing your financial pain – and contributing to it.  It may have taken longer and it may not be as acute, but there are early hints that the economic slump is crimping the lifestyles of the wealthy.  They are investing more conservatively, spending less on luxury goods and are being more thrifty with their credit cards. Many are asking their personal shoppers and private-jet travel providers to seek the best deals rather than over-the-top extravagances.  That news may produce a shrug from many people who have lost their jobs or homes in this economy. The problem is that when the wealthy get stingy, it trickles down to the rest of us. It’s a sluggish economy, and its difficulties are felt all over,” said Joseph DiRenzo, a married 38-year-old father of three who left a hedge fund two years ago to enter commercial real estate. DiRenzo says he’s feeling the hit in many places, especially in the value of his house on Long Island’s upscale Gold Coast in Muttontown, N.Y. He owns the kind of place you’d expect a former hedge-fund manager would call home: six bedrooms, seven full baths, hand-crafted Italian doors throughout, high-tech security and sound systems, and 9,000 square feet of living space on 2.4 acres. It can be had for $7 million – a good deal, he says, when you consider his next-door neighbor’s comparable home sold for $9 million last fall. He has cut the price twice in the 12 months it’s been on the market. DiRenzo is looking for a smaller, cheaper home. He also may buy a hybrid to supplement the two Mercedes Benzes in his heated four-car garage. And, he’s driving less these days. The DiRenzos aren’t unlike many American families cutting back to weather a downturn. They’re just richer. To be sure, the poor and middle-class are being hurt more, but upper crust thriftiness could reverberate across the rest of the economy. The 10 percent of households with the highest incomes account for nearly a quarter of all spending, according to data compiled by research firm Moody’s Economy.com from a 2006 federal survey. “That does suggest those folks are important for the spending outlook, and the overall economic outlook,” said Scott Hoyt, Moody’s director of consumer economics. Other government data show households in the top one-fifth of the U.S. population ranked by income earn about half of all total personal income before taxes – an imbalance that gives the wealthy immense economic clout, said Sara Johnson, an economist at the research firm Global Insight. “Consumer spending makes up 70 percent of gross domestic product, and when one group accounts for a very substantial share of consumer spending, they also account for a large share of the economic activity that creates jobs,” Johnson said. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate had jumped to the highest in four years. The housing slump, tighter credit, high fuel prices and a lack of confidence is causing employers to cut expansion plans, or even let employees go. It doesn’t help when your customer base is pinching its pennies, either. “A lot of our clients stop by a deli on the way to the airport, rather than have a catered meal on the plane” costing $50 per boxed lunch, said Justin Sullivan. Sullivan is the founder of Regent Jet, an Andover, Mass.-based broker that buys blocks of aircraft time to trim costs for high-end clientele whose multi-leg itineraries can sometimes exceed $100,000. Trevor Gilman, a professional pilot, says his charter service out of western Massachusetts’ Berkshires Mountains has flown about half as many miles so far this year compared with the same time last year. Consequently, the service hasn’t replaced a handful of employees who recently found other work or retired.  “We’re down to a total of two crews for three airplanes,” Gilman said. Unity Marketing, a Stevens, Pa.-based firm whose clients include retailers in the more than $322 billion U.S. luxury goods market, said its latest poll of affluent people nationwide found a 20 percent decline in spending on luxury goods in this year’s second quarter, and the lowest luxury consumer confidence level in the nearly five years the survey has been conducted. Just over half of the 1,024 respondents earning an average income of $204,800 predicted they would spend less on luxury in the coming 12 months than they did a year ago. Luxury spending fell 4 percent last year, and this year’s decline is expected to be steeper, particularly for luxury handbags and clothing that don’t hold value, Unity Marketing President Pam Danziger said. “We face a very different environment for luxury indulgence in 2008 as compared to 2007,” said Danziger, who predicts “a very difficult marketplace for luxury goods over the next five years.”  For most Americans, the choice has been whether to give up small indulgences, such as eating out or going to the movies, to help defray the rising cost of food and fuel. For the wealthy, the choices have been different. “People are examining, ‘Do you keep the yacht, do you go to the classic car auction, do you take the private jet?’” said Joseph Montgomery, managing director of investments at Wachovia Securities. “Those sound like nice problems to have, but at the same time, they are issues.” Although the rich may be suffering somewhat, most have a far bigger financial cushion to ride out hard times than folks living paycheck to paycheck. DiRenzo said that despite two price cuts to his home totaling $200,000, he doesn’t plan any more. “The high-end buyers out there are maybe more selective now, but I’m willing to wait out the storm,” he said. That hasn’t been an option for many Americans who have been swept up the maelstrom of foreclosures.

Happy Anniversary Baby… Got You On My Mind

It’s true.

Like a pus-filled boil on your ass… or something that creates extreme pain, shame and terror in one’s life… I seem to concentrate the most attention to ways of alleviating and/or eliminating the thing causing so much discomfort (I’m talking about ridding ourselves of the ass boil we now call Bush).

But to do so, let me slap your boil by sharing this heart warming blood boiling 8th anniversary video (h/t Jon Perr at Crooks and Liars):

All you rednecks that voted him in… thank you.

Really.

Without enduring this, we could have never realized how bad it could be. Now, wake up and let’s take control by voting in REAL patriots and men of honor and integrity. People like Bush were NEVER like you, rednecks. He is NOTHING like me, that’s for damn sure. He doesn’t give a damn about you. McCain doesn’t give a damn about you. And the fact of the matter is, neither does Obama.

Vote for yourselves. Just once.

Vote Nader

John McCain Selects Vice-Presidential Running Mate

A Balanced Ticket

Major Solar Energy Breakthrough At MIT

My buddy The Familographer gave me a head’s up on this today and I knew I had to share it. This is excellent news (with the only question being how much $). This could be revolutionary:

‘Major discovery’ from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution

In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today’s announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. “This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for years,” said MIT’s Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. “Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon.”

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

The key component in Nocera and Kanan’s new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity — whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source — runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.

Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.

The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it’s easy to set up, Nocera said. “That’s why I know this is going to work. It’s so easy to implement,” he said.
‘Giant leap’ for clean energy

Sunlight has the greatest potential of any power source to solve the world’s energy problems, said Nocera. In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet’s energy needs for one year.

James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis who was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a “giant leap” toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.

“This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind,” said Barber, the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London. “The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem.”
‘Just the beginning’

Currently available electrolyzers, which split water with electricity and are often used industrially, are not suited for artificial photosynthesis because they are very expensive and require a highly basic (non-benign) environment that has little to do with the conditions under which photosynthesis operates.

More engineering work needs to be done to integrate the new scientific discovery into existing photovoltaic systems, but Nocera said he is confident that such systems will become a reality.

“This is just the beginning,” said Nocera, principal investigator for the Solar Revolution Project funded by the Chesonis Family Foundation and co-Director of the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Center. “The scientific community is really going to run with this.”

Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.

The project is part of the MIT Energy Initiative, a program designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the needs of the future and to help build a bridge to that future by improving today’s energy systems. MITEI Director Ernest Moniz, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, noted that “this discovery in the Nocera lab demonstrates that moving up the transformation of our energy supply system to one based on renewables will depend heavily on frontier basic science.”

The success of the Nocera lab shows the impact of a mixture of funding sources – governments, philanthropy, and industry. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Chesonis Family Foundation, which gave MIT $10 million this spring to launch the Solar Revolution Project, with a goal to make the large scale deployment of solar energy within 10 years.

B’Man’s Sabbath Watch: The Greatest Action Story Ever Told

she knew what?…when??

http://apnews.myway.com//article/20080803/D92ANP4G0.html 

Issues!! I have issues again! Being a retired Social Worker myself, I KNOW there is a code of ethics that ALLOWS for the safety of others the reporting of otherwise confidential information and concerns. I do feel this woman is a bit culpable here!

Social worker Jean Duley testified at a court hearing in Frederick on July 24 in a successful bid for a protective order from Ivins – who five days later committed suicide – that he “actually attempted to murder several other people.”

“As far back as the year 2000, the respondent has actually attempted to murder several other people, either through poisoning. He is a revenge killer. When he feels that he’s been slighted or has had – especially toward women – he plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killings,” Duley said.

She added that Ivins “has been forensically diagnosed by several top psychiatrists as a sociopathic, homicidal killer. I have that in evidence. And through my working with him, I also believe that to be very true…”

“Client has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, plans and actions towards therapists,” Duley wrote in court documents last week, adding that his psychiatrist had described him as homicidal and sociopathic.

——————————————————————————–

FREDERICK, Md. (AP) – Bruce E. Ivins, the late microbiologist suspected in the 2001 anthrax attacks, had attempted to poison people and his therapist said she was “scared to death” of him, according to court testimony that emerged Saturday.

Social worker Jean Duley testified at a court hearing in Frederick on July 24 in a successful bid for a protective order from Ivins – who five days later committed suicide – that he “actually attempted to murder several other people.”

Ivins took a fatal dose of Tylonel as federal authorities monitored his movements and prepared to charge him with the murder of five people who died from anthrax poisonining in the weeks after the Sept. 2001 terror attacks.

An audio recording of the court session was obtained by The New York Times and posted it on its Web site.

As far back as the year 2000, the respondent has actually attempted to murder several other people, either through poisoning. He is a revenge killer. When he feels that he’s been slighted or has had – especially toward women – he plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killings,” Duley said.

She added that Ivins “has been forensically diagnosed by several top psychiatrists as a sociopathic, homicidal killer. I have that in evidence. And through my working with him, I also believe that to be very true.”

Ivins, 62, who worked at an Army biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, took his own life Tuesday as federal authorities were closing in after investigating him for more than a year in connection with the deaths of five people poisoned by anthrax sent through the mail.

Answers to one of the nation’s highest profile unsolved mysteries are in documents that could be released as early as this week – and help explain how the government chased the wrong suspect for years.

Prosecutors were mulling this weekend whether to close the anthrax poisoning investigation, possibly as early as Monday or Tuesday. If that happens, court documents detailing newly developed scientific evidence that recently led the government to Ivins may be unsealed.

Had the same process been available years ago, it would have cleared Hatfill much earlier, according to two people familiar with the FBI investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is not officially closed.

The Army refused Saturday to say whether it had been reviewing the security clearance of the chief suspect in the anthrax attacks who had mental problems and killed himself as federal prosecutors were planning to indict him.

Ivins was removed from his lab in Maryland by police on July 10 and temporarily hospitalized, according to court records, because it was feared that he was a danger to himself and others. But it was unclear whether he was still employed by the lab at the time of his death Tuesday.

That raises the question of whether Ivins still had his security clearance and, if so, how he kept it, given that his social worker said Ivins had been viewed as homicidal and sociopathic by his psychiatrist.

Army spokesman Paul Boyce declined to comment on Ivins’ case.

Boyce didn’t respond to a question on what type of clearance microbiologists at the lab would have to hold.

David R. Franz, a former commander of the Army’s lab biological warfare labs at Fort Detrick, Md., where Ivins worked, said Saturday he thought it was “very important that the FBI present their case against Bruce and not just state that the investigation was over because it was him and he’s gone.”

Franz added, “I’m concerned about what closing this case without conclusive evidence might do to harm our life sciences enterprise. … I think we as Americans need to see the proof.”

Initially, FBI profilers said they probably were looking for a loner with a scientific background. Maybe he had a grudge against the lawmakers and news organizations. Investigators also considered possible links to al-Qaida, the terrorist group behind the 9/11 attacks.

Intensive focus initially settled on Hatfill, who for years accused the government of unfairly targeting him. In late June, the government exonerated Hatfill and paid him a $5.82 million settlement.

With that, the government seemed no closer to solving the “Amerithrax” mystery. But, quietly, investigators were closing in on a different scientist, Ivins.

A murder indictment and the possibility of the death penalty could have produced a high-profile climax to the case. Shadowed by the FBI, Ivins died Tuesday from a Tylenol overdose, leaving the probe in limbo and a nation seeking answers.

“It’s a shame the man is not here with us. We might have known more,” said Maureen Stevens, whose husband, Bob, was the first anthrax victim.

Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, said: “I think the FBI owes us a complete accounting of their investigation and ought to be able to tell us at some point, how we’re going to bring this to closure.” Daschle’s office received a letter containing the deadly white powder in 2001.

Among the unanswered questions is why the anthrax was sent. The FBI was investigating whether Ivins, renowned for his work developing anthrax vaccines and treatment, released the toxin to test those cures. Ivins was one of several scientists named in an application for a vaccine patent 18 months before the attacks.

Another puzzle is what finally led the FBI to focus on Ivins a year or so ago. Ivins attracted some attention for conducting unauthorized anthrax testing in the six months following the anthrax mailings, but the FBI focus stayed on Hatfill.

As Ivins’ name emerged, so did a portrait of a conflicted, troubled man. His friends knew him as the man who played the keyboard at church, a Red Cross volunteer who was an avid juggler and gardener.

Others saw a darker side. Police recently removed him from work, fearing he was a danger to himself or others. Social worker Duley filed for a restraining order in a Maryland court.  “Client has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, plans and actions towards therapists,” Duley wrote in court documents last week, adding that his psychiatrist had described him as homicidal and sociopathic.  Ivins’ brother, Tom Ivins, said he had not spoken to Bruce Ivins since 1985, but acknowledged the possibility his brother may have been the anthrax mailer.

“It makes sense, what the social worker said,” Tom Ivins said. “He considered himself like a god.”

Ivins’ lawyer, Paul F. Kemp, asserted the scientist’s innocence and said he would have proved it at trial. Kemp said his client’s death was the result of the government’s “relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo.”  Maryland’s chief medical examiner, Dr. David Fowler, confirmed Saturday that Ivins died Tuesday morning at Frederick, Md., Memorial Hospital; that the cause of death was found to be an overdose of acetaminophen, the active drug in Tylenol; and that it was ruled a suicide based on information from police and doctors.