What video were you referring to? The link above doesn’t point to a specific post.

September 23, 2008 @ 12:13 am | Comment

Hopefully the video will have nothing to do with China, so this can be perhaps yet another post about American politics. I’m sure that’s all why we read this site. Or used to. See ya l8r allig8rz.

September 23, 2008 @ 12:54 am | Comment

Is it this one?

September 23, 2008 @ 4:54 am | Comment

OUT for 6 hours… I’m sorry but that’s just retarded.

I would never do something like that to myself. Would you? Unless you are retarded, maybe.

September 23, 2008 @ 5:22 am | Comment

Thanks, Lisa.
500,000 volts? That had to be a hoax…

September 23, 2008 @ 7:02 am | Comment

No you can have high volt as long as the CURRENT is small, i.e. a high unit of EMF but small rate of flow.

Hmm, not sure about that one… But I’m sure as long as the current is small then it’s okay.

September 23, 2008 @ 7:49 am | Comment

Link corrected – sorry, I was unconscious myself last night after putting my finger in the electrical socket to see what would happen.

September 23, 2008 @ 10:02 am | Comment

That Chinese bloke who tasered himself must be watching the coup d’etat in the US in the form of the ongoing financial crisis. Read Naomi Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine” if you want to know what is going on.

Fleecing What’s Left of the Treasury
by Chris Hedges

The lobbyists and corporate lawyers, the heads of financial firms and the crooks who control Wall Street, all those who spent the last three decades assuring us that government was part of the problem and should get out of the way, are now busy looting the U.S. treasury. They are also working feverishly inside the Democratic and Republican parties to blunt any effective regulatory reform as they pass on their distressed assets to us. The process is stunning in its hubris and mendacity, and two of the most potent enablers of this unprecedented act of corporate welfare are John McCain and Barack Obama.

The federal government, reeling backward from the meltdown of financial markets, is now considering taking responsibility for the bad assets of numerous financial companies. But if that intervention does not include robust new mechanisms of regulation, accountability and control we will see nothing more than a massive taxpayer-funded bailout of stockholders and the financial industry.

The rhetoric of the two presidential candidates about the crisis has been filled with pious outrage about the abuses of Wall Street and short on actual solutions. John McCain and Barack Obama know, after all, who funds their campaigns. The financial industry has given $22.5 million in the current election cycle to Obama and $19.6 million to McCain, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And the financial industry has come around to collect. Two of the biggest financial groups in Washington, the Financial Services Roundtable and the Mortgage Bankers Association, have been holding meetings with McCain and Obama’s economic advisers. They are working with the campaigns to protect the unregulated power of financial industries and at the same time to shift bad debt to taxpayers. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Financial Services Roundtable, made up of the very banks and firms that got us into this mess, has developed draft legislation. The Roundtable has called a meeting this week with the chief executives of more than 50 banks, brokerages and insurers. The three-day meeting includes private, closed-door sessions on Thursday with Obama economic adviser Ian Soloman and McCain adviser Ike Brannon. Those hovering around Obama-economists like Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Laura Tyson-bear as much responsibility for the dismantling of government regulation as those advising McCain.

If the financial-services industry is able to suck us dry, our assets, from our homes to our retirement investments, will continue to tumble. Taxes will go up. Jobs will be lost. The grim economic indicators will get worse. The dollar, which has already lost about a third of its value against the euro, will continue to plummet. The rate of foreclosures, one in every 416 U.S. households in August, will skyrocket. Consumer spending, the engine of the U.S. economy, will continue to decline. Industrial production, which has fallen for three consecutive quarters, will fall further. Unemployment, which shot up to 6.1 percent in August from 5.7 percent in July, will get worse. These tremors presage an earthquake.

Ralph Nader, who has spent his adult life battling corporations, understands more about the rise of the corporate state and the steady fleecing of American citizens by corporations than anyone else in the country. The core of his message is that Republicans and Democrats are hostage to corporate power.

Nader warned in a letter to Congress on July 23 that the federal government’s bank insurance fund may be insufficient to handle the developing crisis in the banking industry. The letter was, at the time, greeted with indifference and ridicule. Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., at a congressional hearing, mentioned the letter and assured those present that “Our banks are well capitalized, our deposit insurance fund is sound. There’s absolutely no factual basis for saying that there’s not money there to pay.”

Two months later our federal bank insurance fund, which insures our bank deposits, is being swiftly emptied. The collapse of a huge commercial bank, such as Bank of America, which has assumed control of Merrill Lynch’s losses with no real idea of how extensive these losses are, could see ordinary depositors wiped out.

Nader warned eight years ago that the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) were about to tank like the savings and loan industry of the 1980s and ’90s. Because his warnings were ignored, taxpayers today face losing billions of dollars to cover these bad debts.

Nader, in a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox in 2006, criticized the exorbitant salaries of government-sponsored enterprise executives Jamie Gorelick, Daniel Mudd, Robert J. Levin and Timothy Howard. He noted in his letter that their financial incentives were in direct conflict with consumer financial security. A grave moral hazard was created by the accounting manipulations they sanctioned, Nader said. These manipulations benefited their personal wealth, yet there was no penalty for being caught.

Nader has called for an immediate halt to the increase in the national debt. He demands an end to corporate subsidies and unconditional taxpayer bailouts of corporations. And he has called for aggressive prosecution of corporate criminals.

“Given the contrast between the ‘free market’ ideology of the Republicans and the corporate or state socialism that is their increasing practice, the time is ripe for full Congressional hearings next year on the organized power, greed and lack of regulation that is shaking the foundations of Wall Street,” Nader said in prepared remarks delivered to editors at The New York Times’ Washington bureau.

Nader has come up with 10 market reforms that he says need to be implemented immediately along with any bailout. These reforms are:

No bailouts without conditions and reciprocity in the form of stock warrants.
No more lobbying for any company that is bailed out.
No golden parachutes or get-out-of-jail-free cards for guilty executives.
No bailouts without public hearings.
Reduce the moral hazard in U.S. mortgage markets by introducing covered bonds for the majority of mortgage products, as is done in Western Europe. That gives institutions that finance mortgages an incentive to be prudent, because they cannot just unload them and wipe their hands clean of the liability, but are instead on the hook if the homeowner defaults.
Maintain neighborhood stability and housing security by passing a law with a sunset clause allowing below-median-value homeowners facing foreclosure the right to “rent to own” their homes at fair market value rates.
Avoid future housing bubbles by removing implicit government guarantees for new mortgages that exceed thresholds of greater than 15 to 20 times the annual fair market rent value of the home.
Make the Federal Reserve a Cabinet position, so it is accountable to Congress, as well as make sure all Federal Reserve Bank presidents are appointed by the president and answerable to Congress.
Reduce conflicts of interest by taking away power for auditor and rating agency selection from companies and placing it in the hands of the SEC to be administered on random assignment.
Implement a securities speculation tax, starting with derivatives, to deter casino-style capitalism.
You can vote for Obama or, if you are really into self-delusion, you can support McCain. But you owe it to yourself, even if you erroneously blame Nader for the election of George W. Bush, to remember these Nader reforms. Hold them up against the proposed reforms that will soon be issued by the McCain and Obama camps. If the Nader reforms are not adopted, if we bail out our corporate masters with hundreds of billions of tax dollars without instituting draconian market reform and launching criminal prosecution, we will be left to bear the cross of corporate malfeasance. We will pay for corporate crime. We will leave those who robbed us free to plunder.

September 23, 2008 @ 2:56 pm | Comment

Now is the Time to Resist Wall Street’s Shock Doctrine
By Naomi Klein – September 22nd, 2008
I wrote The Shock Doctrine in the hopes that it would make us all better prepared for the next big shock. Well, that shock has certainly arrived, along with gloves-off attempts to use it to push through radical pro-corporate policies (which of course will further enrich the very players who created the market crisis in the first place…).

The best summary of how the right plans to use the economic crisis to push through their policy wish list comes from Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. On Sunday, Gingrich laid out 18 policy prescriptions for Congress to take in order to “return to a Reagan-Thatcher policy of economic growth through fundamental reforms.” In the midst of this economic crisis, he is actually demanding the repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which would lead to further deregulation of the financial industry. Gingrich is also calling for reforming the education system to allow “competition” (a.k.a. vouchers), strengthening border enforcement, cutting corporate taxes and his signature move: allowing offshore drilling.

It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the right’s ability to use this crisis — created by deregulation and privatization — to demand more of the same. Don’t forget that Newt Gingrich’s 527 organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future, is still riding the wave of success from its offshore drilling campaign, “Drill Here, Drill Now!” Just four months ago, offshore drilling was not even on the political radar and now the U.S. House of Representatives has passed supportive legislation. Gingrich is holding an event this Saturday, September 27 that will be broadcast on satellite television to shore up public support for these controversial policies.

What Gingrich’s wish list tells us is that the dumping of private debt into the public coffers is only stage one of the current shock. The second comes when the debt crisis currently being created by this bailout becomes the excuse to privatize social security, lower corporate taxes and cut spending on the poor. A President McCain would embrace these policies willingly. A President Obama would come under huge pressure from the think tanks and the corporate media to abandon his campaign promises and embrace austerity and “free-market stimulus.”

We have seen this many times before, in this country and around the world. But here’s the thing: these opportunistic tactics can only work if we let them. They work when we respond to crisis by regressing, wanting to believe in “strong leaders” – even if they are the same strong leaders who used the September 11 attacks to push through the Patriot Act and launch the illegal war in Iraq.

So let’s be absolutely clear: there are no saviors who are going to look out for us in this crisis. Certainly not Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, one of the companies that will benefit most from his proposed bailout (which is actually a stick up). The only hope of preventing another dose of shock politics is loud, organized grassroots pressure on all political parties: they have to know right now that after seven years of Bush, Americans are becoming shock resistant.

This article was first posted on The Huffington Post.

September 23, 2008 @ 3:13 pm | Comment

Holmes’ main asset in the porn business was his exceptional large penis. Holmes’ first wife, Sharon Gebenini, recalled him claiming to be 10 inches (25.4 cm) when he first measured himself. However, at the start of his cinematic career, he was widely publicized as having a penis ranging from 12.5 to 16 inches (32–41 cm) long when fully erect. “It is the size of two and one half 6 inch rulers (15inches),” as John Holmes once claimed in a video shoot.

In 2007, it was discovered that the coroner who performed the autopsy on Holmes took “secret” measurements of Holmes’ penis in a flaccid state and reported it as being approximately 8.75 inches in length. This information appeared in the form of handwritten notes (scrawled on the back of the third page of the official Holmes’ autopsy report) discovered by investigative reporter John Beck who is currently working on a new book about the life of Holmes. The coroner also noted that the size of Holmes’ testicles were approximately “the size of a pair of large hen eggs.”[citation needed]. Ron Jeremy has stated that Holmes was actually 11½ inches and used to brag that he was 14 inches.[4]

So celebrated was Holmes’ reputed penis size that it was even used as a marketing tool for films in which he did not even appear. In the porn classic Anyone But My Husband, the promotional tag line read “Tony The Hook Perez has a dick so big that he gives even John Holmes a run for his money.”[5]

Different attempts to ascertain the actual length of his penis have led to varying results. An American study of video footage of Holmes’ penis concluded his penis was 10–11 inches long (25–28cm), whereas another study comparing many pictures of his penis to the estimated measurements of other parts of his own body led to the conclusion of 8 3/4 inches (22cm). Holmes’ longtime manager, Bill Amerson, that “I saw John measure himself several times, it was 13 and a half inches”.[6] Holmes’ last wife, Laurie “Misty Dawn” Rose claims that John Holmes himself claimed 10 inches.

Veteran porn actress Dorothiea “Seka” Patton has claimed Holmes’ penis was the biggest in the industry[7], though not all who had sex with him agree.

Regardless of what the actual length of Holmes’ penis was, some people question whether he ever achieved full erections on movie sets. Veteran porn actress Annette Haven, for instance, recalled in the documentary Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes that “as the joke goes, if John ever became fully erect, he’d lose consciousness from lack of blood to the brain because his dick was that big. And it’s true that his cock was never hard. It [having onscreen sex] was like doing it with a big, soft kind of luffa.”

September 23, 2008 @ 3:27 pm | Comment

It’s dangerous to over-inflate the financial markets.

Veteran porn actress Annette Haven, for instance, recalled in the documentary Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes that “as the joke goes, if John ever became fully erect, he’d lose consciousness from lack of blood to the brain because his dick was that big. And it’s true that his cock was never hard. It [having onscreen sex] was like doing it with a big, soft kind of luffa.”

September 23, 2008 @ 3:36 pm | Comment

http://www.infowars.com/?p=4758

The rise of the fourth reich. They are dumping all this on us to complete the switch to fascist corporatism. Just research the connections between the bankers, socialism, national socialism, and fascist corporatism (addendum: also lookup “the military industrial complex” http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=why+we+fight&emb=0&aq=f# )

I’m sorry, but this is all by design. *Shrugs* I know you people don’t care. I don’t either anymore. I spent way too much time on stupid conspiracies theories. I quit.

September 23, 2008 @ 3:38 pm | Comment

Whether it be profit margins, financial situations, or semi-hard members plunging in and out of well-lubricated orifices, I think we can all agree exaggeration, obfuscation, and outright lies can have extremely harmful side effects on the material wealth of individual actors or the society that is so sexually deprived they spend millions of dollars supporting their work.

I for one would like to know: how big was it….really, I mean.

September 23, 2008 @ 4:02 pm | Comment

Readers, all three of the new commenters above – Jason, Wang and Holmes – are the same person. I’m afraid this site is once again flypaper for freaks.

Rhys, we are all wondering about its size right now. No one really knows, but the one thing nearly everyone seems to agree on is that it’s going to get a lot bigger.

September 23, 2008 @ 5:30 pm | Comment

“Veteran porn actress Annette Haven, for instance, recalled in the documentary Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes that “as the joke goes, if John ever became fully erect, he’d lose consciousness from lack of blood to the brain because his dick was that big. And it’s true that his cock was never hard. It [having onscreen sex] was like doing it with a big, soft kind of luffa.”

I thought that you blokes said that it was “too big to fail”?!

September 23, 2008 @ 6:43 pm | Comment

test

September 24, 2008 @ 9:50 am | Comment

It may be too big NOT to fail….

Bailout Plan Won’t Be End of Wall Street Bailouts
by Nomi Prins

Sunday night meetings in Washington produce startling announcements: In March, there was the Fed’s $30- billion backing of Bear Stearns’ bad assets, as it was given to JPMorgan Chase; last week we had Lehman Brothers’ declaration of bankruptcy; this week it’s Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, changing their status to one equivalent to neighborhood banks, with all the emergency capital perks thrown in.

The shifting tides of Wall Street aren’t over, and neither are the government bailouts. If Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s request for a $700 billion bailout is approved, it will bring the total government tab for saving Wall Street from itself to $1.25 trillion.

But, reading the fine print, that huge chunk of cash is just for one-time purchases. If the government buys $700 billion worth of assets whose value goes to zero, we could be on the hook for another bailout round before you know it.

Paulson considers this latest plan, “decisive action to fundamentally and comprehensively address the root cause of our financial system.”

But it does no such thing. That’s because his persistent focus on illiquid mortgage assets and the “housing correction” is not the bigger problem. It’s merely the catalyst that revealed the systemic rot of overleveraged and reckless activities that define our financial system.

Blaming irresponsible lending and borrowing is a slick way of avoiding the deeper need for regulation. If the entire industry (from small lenders through big trading firms) were more transparent and less leveraged, a correction in housing wouldn’t have brought down three major investment banks. It wouldn’t have triggered the decision of the remaining two to become commercial banks, to gain more access to desperately needed capital through citizens’ deposits and the Fed’s emergency window.

That Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley positioned their request like a plea for regulation is a joke – it was a plea for money.

Yes, we need stricter lending practices instead of the ones that contributed to 5 million homeowners facing defaults or foreclosures. But we also need to restructure Wall Street – not by creating bigger, less-transparent entities, but by generating smaller ones whose risks are clear, as was done in 1933.

Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress want more constraints on Paulson’s bailout package. They cite the need for independent oversight of the fund that will purchase the assets, a cap on executive compensation, and more help for borrowers through mortgage-debt reductions.

What’s lacking, even from the Democrats’ wish list, are demands to overhaul and re-regulate the entire banking industry, and that all financial institutions quantify their real credit losses – at the moment, only commercial banks report their exposures.

The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, passed late one December session by former Senate Banking Committee chairman Phil Gramm (R-Texas), deregulated the privately traded credit derivatives and swaps market. These derivatives have dangerously intertwined with mortgage-backed securities, and require the creditworthiness of the financial institutions that trade them to remain stable. (AIG is an example of one that didn’t, and we know how that turned out.)

Also, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 – navigated by Gramm and cheerled by former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who served under President Bill Clinton – repealed those 1933 protections and made it possible for investment banks, insurance companies and commercial banks to merge without requiring greater regulation.

Today’s mess is a direct result of these two acts.

To steer this ship, Congress has to bone up on finance – if members don’t know what CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) and credit derivatives really are, they can’t understand the risk they have incurred on behalf of American taxpayers, and they’ll be ill-prepared to evaluate Paulson’s plan. And Congress must then regulate credit derivatives and the banking industry.

The goliath Bank of America-Merrill Lynch will take months to decipher. Goldman and Morgan’s buying up smaller banking players – which they will – will add to the murkiness. None of this stabilizes the system. Instead, it sets it up as a bigger problem to solve later.

If our representatives in Washington are serious about fixing the problems that Wall Street has caused, they will shoot the roots of deregulation, not just the messenger of subprime-lending malpractice, or the toxic waste manufactured by Wall Street.

Congress also shouldn’t let Paulson anywhere near the management of the buyout fund – and frankly, shouldn’t feel compelled to approve a $700 billion bailout without strong regulatory protections for American citizens. But that requires a deeper understanding of the complicated mortgage and credit markets than Congress seems to have.

Meanwhile, stay tuned for more bank mergers and instability, punctuated by rest periods where Wall Street inhales government money. Or, I should say, our taxpayer money.

Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.
Nomi Prins, a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, is a senior fellow at the public policy organization Demos and the author of “Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America.”

September 24, 2008 @ 10:27 am | Comment

Chairman Mao would be really proud of him

September 24, 2008 @ 1:58 pm | Comment