Monthly Archives: February 2011

Arbitrary nostalgia. Music Night, February 4, 2011

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The great thing about being responsible for Music Night is that I get to post anything I want! Bwahahaha! (Psst, Gummitch, so can everyone else!) Tonight’s artist appears because one of his songs stuck itself in my head the other day, and poking around on YouTube I realize how I missed his talent. I tried to include music from The Point, but the videos I found were largely crap.

Born 1941, died at 52 of a heart attack: Harry Nilsson.

Continue reading →

Welcome to the Rocket Docket

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A specially designated, high-speed housing court, nicknamed “the rocket docket,” set up specifically to process legally murky foreclosures as fast as possible; presided over by an apparently uninformed, utterly disinterested, retired judge who openly states his only goal is to resolve an astonishing TWENTY FIVE CASES AN HOUR. In layman’s terms, this means he wants to ‘throw someone out of their home approximately every two and half minutes.’ This same clueless magistrate, moving so fast he can’t possibly give the cases coming before him even a perfunctory once over, threatens – THREATENS – to cite a defense lawyer with contempt for simply talking to a reporter in front of said judge.

 

 

Is this taking place in some godforsaken, Third World banana republic?

No…

According to Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, it’s happening right here in America, in the so-called ‘Sunshine State,’ Florida.

The numbers are staggering:

In Las Vegas, one in 25 homes is now in foreclosure. In Fort Myers, Florida, one in 35. In September, lenders nationwide took over a record 102,134 properties; that same month, more than a third of all home sales were distressed properties. All told, some 820,000 Americans have already lost their homes this year, and another 1 million currently face foreclosure.

Nearly a million homes foreclosed on in 2010; another million coming this year; and almost all of those foreclosures fraudulent:

Virtually every case of foreclosure in this country involves some form of screwed-up paperwork. “I would say it’s pretty close to 100 percent,” says Kowalski. An attorney for Jacksonville Area Legal Aid tells me that out of the hundreds of cases she has handled, fewer than five involved no phony paperwork. “The fraud is the norm,” she says.

Out of hundreds of cases, less than FIVE were NOT fraudulent.

Those hundreds of cases were not just fraudulent, but blatantly, screamingly bare-faced fraudulent, based on documentation that makes such ridiculous claims it leaves you speechless… Continue reading →

Random Thoughts

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A line’s been crossed that nobody wanted,
Freedom hangs by a thread,
Peaceful protesters, now the hunted,
No turning back: the fat lady’s dead.

Will hope win out?
Or iron fist?
The Reaper’s got a growing list.

Who will stand?
Who will fall?
Who’ll survive to count them all?

Committed now to see the course,
Once peaceful mob, now bloodied.
Assemble again in peaceful discourse,
History’s lesson studied.

The Hand of the Oppressor,
Crushes each transgressor.
It is the price we all must pay,
For suffering tyrant’s play.

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The Watering Hole: 2/2/11

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Wisdom, for those who already understand:

Pursue knowledge, daily gain
Pursue Tao, daily loss

Loss and more loss
Until one reaches unattached action
With unattached action, there is nothing one cannot do

Take the world by constantly applying non-interference
The one who interferes is not qualified to take the world

This is our Open Thread. While Muslims peacefully protest in Egypt, “christians” call for bombing Iran. The United States is not qualified to take the world, hence it must inevitably lose all it has gained. Feel free to expound on this, or anything else that comes to mind.

UPDATE: Recently, supporters of Mubarak turned out, bearing firebombs, bricks, clubs and knives. Reports indicate they attacked on horseback and camel. Things have now turned violent between the protesers and Mubarak’s civilian supporters. The army is standing back…for now.

Water Fall in Winter

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Nothing in the world is softer or weaker than water
Yet nothing is better at overcoming the hard and strong
This is because nothing can replace it

That the weak overcomes the strong
And the soft overcomes the hard
Everybody in the world knows
But cannot put into practice

Therefore sages say:
The one who accepts the humiliation of the state
Is called its master
The one who accepts the misfortune of the state
Becomes king of the world
The truth seems like the opposite

http://www.taoism.net/ttc/complete.htm

 

The Watering Hole: February 1, The March of Millions

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Nefertiti

It is still early in the day, but hundreds of thousands Egyptians have already taken to the street. Let us hope the protests will be peaceful. For live updates on the situation, you can go to the following sites:

The BBC

The Guardian

Meet Mohamed El Baradei at The Independent. Remember, this was the man who couldn’t be pressured, nor bribed into supporting Bush’s Iraq war reasoning. And he couldn’t be pressured, nor bribed into saying Iran’s nuclear program was entirely peaceful. I, for my part, would be happy for the Egyptians, if he was too be Mubarak’s successor.

This is, however, our open thread, so don’t hesitate to change the topic!