Oh McCain you made a big boo boo

YouTube - Fox News: Palin didn't know Africa was a continent

Malaysia to impose Fatwa against Yoga

Yoga is
becoming very popular in recent times and its followers are increasing
all over the world. The soaring popularity of yoga could be gauged
by the skyrocketing sales of yoga books, classes and equipment all over
the world.

Yoga is a traditional exercise devised by the sagea and hermits of
Hindu religion but now it is spread across all religion with big
followers in Islam and Christanity.

Fearing the growing popularity of yoga the National Fatwa Council of
Malaysia has decided to ban yoga exercise soon. They feel that Muslims
who have taken up yoga to stop practising it for fear that it could
deviate their belief.

Yoga may soon be outlawed in Malaysia, if a prominent body of
clerics which is planning to issue a fatwa on the practice, has its
way.

Malaysia's National Fatwa Council is going to impose
Fatwa on Yoga after Zakaria Stapa, a lecturer of University of
Kebangsaan's Islamic Studies Centre, yesterday advised Muslims who have
taken up yoga to stop practising it fearing that it could deviate their
belief, local news reports said.

"A ruling would be made by
the council's Chairman, Abdul Shukor Husin, in this regard," Deputy
Director-General of the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia,
Othman Mustapha, quoted as saying by New Straits Times online edition.

If you've lost all hope help is on the way

Lahde Quits Hedge Funds, Thanks `Idiots' for Success

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

Lahde Quits Hedge Funds, Thanks `Idiots' for Success (Update1)

By Katherine Burton

Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Andrew Lahde, the hedge-fund manager who quit after posting an 870 percent gain last year, said farewell to clients in a letter that thanks stupid traders for making him rich and ends with a plea to legalize marijuana.

Lahde, head of Santa Monica, California-based Lahde Capital Management LLC, told investors last month he was returning their cash because the risk of using credit derivatives -- his means of betting on the falling value of bonds and loans, including subprime mortgages -- was too risky given the weakness of the banks he was trading with.

``I was in this game for money,'' Lahde, 37, wrote in a two-page letter today in which he said he had come to hate the hedge-fund business. ``The low-hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government.

``All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other sides of my trades. God Bless America.''

Lahde, who managed about $80 million, told clients he'll be content to invest his own money, rather than taking cash from wealthy individuals and institutions and trying to amass a fortune worth hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.

``I do not understand the legacy thing,'' he wrote. ``Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life.''

Request for Soros

He said he'd spend his time repairing his health ``as well as my entire life -- where I had to compete for spaces at universities, and graduate schools, jobs and assets under management -- with those who had all the advantages (rich parents) that I did not.''

He also suggested that billionaire George Soros sponsor a forum in which ``great minds'' would come together to create a new system of government, as the current system ``is clearly broken.''

Lahde ended his letter with a plea for the increased use of hemp as an alternative source of food and energy that segued into a call for the legalization of marijuana.

``Hemp has been used for at least 5,000 years for cloth and food, as well as just about everything that is produced from petroleum products,'' he wrote. ``Hemp is not marijuana and vice versa. Hemp is the male plant and it grows like a weed, hence the slang term.''

`Innocuous Plant'

He added, ``The evil female plant -- marijuana. It gets you high, it makes you laugh, it does not produce a hangover. Unlike alcohol, it does not result in bar fights or wife beating. So, why is this innocuous plant illegal? Is it a gateway drug? No, that would be alcohol, which is so heavily advertised in this country.''

Lahde said the only reason marijuana remains illegal is because ``Corporate America, which owns Congress, would rather sell you Paxil, Zoloft, Xanax and other addictive drugs, than allow you to grow a plant in your home without some of the profits going into their coffers.''

Lahde graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in finance and holds an MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles. He worked at Los Angeles-based hedge fund Dalton Investments LLC before founding his own firm two years ago with about $10 million.

Lahde wasn't available for comment. A woman at his firm, who asked not to be identified, confirmed the authenticity of the letter.

To contact the reporter on this story: Katherine Burton in New York at kburton@bloomberg.net

God wins in Nebraska Court

A Nebraska state senator last year filed a
lawsuit against God. Ernie Chambers sought an injunction against God
because of widespread death and destruction. Judge Marlon Polk has
thrown out the lawsuit. He says there's no way to properly notify the
defendant. You can't serve papers on a suspect with no address.
Chambers says he may appeal. He contends that God is aware of the
charges, since God is all-knowing.

This is litigation gone mad.
I've been thinking about Suing Road Runner for all the trauma he caused me.

Christopher Hitchens---America the Banana Republic

America the Banana Republic: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com

America the Banana Republic
The ongoing financial meltdown is just the latest example of a disturbing trend that, to this adoptive American, threatens to put the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave on a par with Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Equatorial Guinea.
by Christopher Hitchens WEB EXCLUSIVE October 9, 2008

In a statement on the huge state-sponsored salvage of private bankruptcy that was first proposed last September, a group of Republican lawmakers, employing one of the very rudest words in their party’s thesaurus, described the proposed rescue of the busted finance and discredited credit sectors as “socialistic.” There was a sort of half-truth to what they said. But they would have been very much nearer the mark—and rather more ironic and revealing at their own expense—if they had completed the sentence and described the actual situation as what it is: “socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the rest.”
Dick Cheney

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush, by Joseph E. Stiglitz (December 2007)

The Sack of Washington, by Cullen Murphy (June 2007)

Empire Falls, by Niall Ferguson (October 2006)

I have heard arguments about whether it was Milton Friedman or Gore Vidal who first came up with this apt summary of a collusion between the overweening state and certain favored monopolistic concerns, whereby the profits can be privatized and the debts conveniently socialized, but another term for the same system would be “banana republic.”

Understanding the financial crisis--if it is possible

11 Things I Learned While Trying to Figure Out the Financial Crisis - 2parse/blog

11 Things I Learned While Trying to Figure Out the Financial Crisis
7
Vote!
www.wikio.com



Like a lot of people, I’ve been struggling to understand this financial crisis over the past few weeks. I don’t pretend to be an economic expert - I’ve always been more interested in foreign policy, politics and history - but the issue of this crisis is obviously so important, it seems that it is everyone’s responsibility to find out what went on, what caused this.

I also feel that this is an issue which is confusing our politics, our partisan impulses. Both the right and the left have many reasons to hate the bailout - yet the pragmatists on both sides agree that something must be done. Everyone is angry. Very few predicted this. I only came across a few who prominently warned about a crisis such as this - subscribers to the Austrian school of economics such as Ron Paul; liberal capitalists such as Warren Buffet and George Soros; and economists like Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

This crisis has succeeded in confusing ideological categories - which is probably part of the reason it has spwarned so many interesting and non-ideological takes, as people struggle to understand these momentous events in terms they are familiar with. (Here’s one ingenious example.) On the whole, Republican politicians instinctively trusted the market and although some attempted to reign in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they saw no imminent threat to the financial system. A few Democrats saw the need for more oversight to prevent excessive risk-taking that might endanger the financial system; many more Democrats (especially as the party in Washington is dominated by neo-liberals), didn’t see the profit in warning of an unknowable future catastrophe. Those financial firms whose main purpose was to minimize risk and maximize profit accomplished this by reducing the risk of any individual transaction while placing greater and greater stress on the system - trading many small risks for a giant catastrophic risk. But theyse firms didn’t know this because the entire system was opaque and oversight was minimal. As long as things were going well, there was no reason to figure out what was going on.