Officials have released the 911 tape from this morning's home invasion shooting that left an intruder dead from a shotgun blast.
It happened in Cushing, about 50 miles west of Tulsa in Lincoln County. Police say the female homeowner was awakened by her barking dog and called 911. While she was on the phone with dispatchers, police say she warned the intruder that she had a rifle.
Authorities say the intruder, identified as Billy Dean Riley, ignored the woman's warning and threw a chair through the window. That's when the woman opened fire.
The 911 call details the tense moments before the woman opened fire. It does not contain the actual shooting.
RESIDENT - "Oh crap he's coming around the front..."
911 - "Is your front door locked?"
RESIDENT - "Yes ma'am but it's only got a lock on the handle."
911 - "Okay, do you have a place inside your house and lock yourself in a room?"
RESIDENT - "Uh, not really."
911 - "He's trying to come through the front door."
RESIDENT - "i've got a big shotgun. I'm not going into a tiny bathroom..."
RESIDENT - "He's walking around the house trying to find a way in..."
RESIDENT - "Oh crap, he's at the back..."
911 - "Okay , (unintelligible) is advising that you can defend your property if you need to."
RESIDENT - "Alright he's at the garage."
911 - "He's at the garage? Is it attached to your house?"
RESIDENT - "Nope, he's at the patio door again."
911 - "I can hear him banging again."
RESIDENT - "I don't want to have to kill this man, but i'll kill him graveyard dead ma'am."
911 - "I understand."
RESIDENT - "Alright."
RESIDENT - Oh crap he's breaking in. he's breaking in now, he's breaking in now. He's breaking the window, i'm going to kill him. He's walking back and forth on the porch. He looks to be an older man, I don't want to kill him. He's kicking the door please hurry. He's going to make it in please hurry ma'am. I think he's drunk . He doesn't know where his pickup's at. God I don't want to kill this man."
RESIDENT - "I cant keep this gun and keep on the phone darling, it's a big shotgun, it will break my arm. As soon as you tell me they're here im taking the safety, uh.. Im putting the safety back on this sucker."
#1
wonder how fast it will tajke the law too charge her with murder.
Posted by: chris ||
12/06/2009 12:01 Comments ||
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#2
Chris, this is the US, not England. The woman did everything she could to protect herself. She had no place within her house where she could retreat and be safe. She opened fire when the intruder actually broke in.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
12/06/2009 12:06 Comments ||
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#3
And specifically, this occurred in Oklahoma, a state which is supportive of self-defense rights. She not only had the dispatcher as a phone witness that she warned the intruder she had a gun, the dispatcher eventually told her "Okay , (unintelligible) is advising that you can defend your property if you need to."
A right to self-defense is the basic protection against tyranny.
#7
My Grandmother lived outside of Tulsa. A man tried to break in to her home and she shot him with a .38. Nothing happened to her. She was 82 at the time.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/06/2009 18:14 Comments ||
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#8
Chris, think you might be surprised how many ordinary Americans would go clean this womans gun, make shur she has more shells. she might need em'....
[Straits Times] INDONESIAN police arrested a man accused of smuggling 10 rare kangaroos by boat from New Guinea island, an official said on Saturday.
The Indonesian suspect was caught on Friday as he offloaded the exotic marsupials at the East Java provincial capital of Surabaya, said Police Major Widarmanto, who like many Indonesians goes by one name. Five of kangaroos had died.
The five surviving kangaroos - of a small, rain forest-dwelling variety - were given to a Surabaya animal sanctuary, Major Widarmanto said.
Illegal trade in rare and exotic animals is rampant in Indonesia, where law enforcement is generally poor.
The suspect, who has not been named, faces up to five years in jail and a 100 million rupiah (S$15,300) fine for violating Indonesian conservation laws.
Kangaroos are native only to Australia and New Guinea, which is divided into Indonesia's easternmost province of Papua and the country of Papua New Guinea.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/06/2009 00:00 ||
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In 1968, Andy Warhol wisecracked that in the future everyone would get their 15 minutes of fame. He did not say this would be a good thing. Nor did he say that everyone was entitled to, say, 16 minutes of fame. Fifteen minutes seemed like a nice round number -- but 15 was the absolute limit.
You got onstage by doing something stupid or amusing or insolent that briefly tickled the public's fancy -- and then you got off stage. You were not Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe or Chairman Mao or anybody else that Andy Warhol silk-screened. And you knew it.
All in all, this was a very democratic arrangement that guaranteed everyone one, but only one, brief shining moment in the spotlight. If you blinked, you missed it.
Then things changed. Thanks to cable TV and the Internet, Warhol's formula went woefully awry. First came a wave of famous-for-nothing celebrities like LaToya Jackson, gold-diggers who lurked in the penumbra of fame, often accompanied by people named Tito. After that came bargain-basement reality TV "stars" like the cast of "Survivor" and "The Hills," whose principal claim to fame was that they consumed oxygen on a daily basis.
They were succeeded by Brand X plutocrats like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, dysfunctional scionesses who didn't seem to understand that if you were already rich, being famous was not only redundant, but kind of tacky.
Most recently the floodgates have opened with a wave of high-octane riffraff, most of whom start out being loved and end up being hated, and never understand why. Octomom and her battalion of stunt tykes. Kate and Jon Gosselin and their luckless octet. The Heenes, proud parents of Balloon Boy. The White House gatecrashers.
In short, an army of scheming nonentities who would do anything to achieve fame, even if it scarred their children for life. But not for just a day, not for just a year, not for just 15 minutes, but for always.
Andy Warhol must be turning in his grave.
Before cable and the Net, ephemerally entertaining bozos like the Heenes and the White House gatecrashers quickly died a natural death. They strutted and fretted their quarter-of-an-hour upon the stage and then were heard no more.
For theirs was a tale told by an idiot, or, in the case of most celebrity journalists, numerous idiots. Their fame was built on sand. No one remembers the names of any of the "famous" streakers of the seventies. No one remembers the names of any "famous" pranksters. No one remembers Fab Morvan, even if he was one-half of Milli Vanilli. Quick, who was the other half?
Posted by: Fred ||
12/06/2009 12:52 ||
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#1
Then there was the old saying, "If you put a million monkeys in a room with a million typewriters, eventually they would reproduce all the works of Shakespeare." The internet has disproven that one.
This has got to be one of the silliest tech articles I have ever read, written as it was to "warn" readers about evil plans Google has in its kitten and baby duck laden drive for world domination.
Disclosure: I regard google as liberal and therefore evil, not evil and therefore liberal, which is why I dislike them. But ultimately they are a tech company and tech companies are gonna do geeky things, and the top of the geeky things to do in terms of the complexity and sheer geekdom pyramid is establishing a DNS server.
Google has entered the domain name resolution business, part of its ongoing effort to control just about everything you do on the net.
This morning, the Mountain View Chocolate Factory unveiled the free Google Public DNS, a service that lets you resolve net domain names through Google-controlled servers. Those bastards! Trying to control us by allowing computers to resolve names to IP numbers!
Definitely geeky. What does that mean?
The Internet is made up of servers with individual IP addresses who exchange packets based on those addresses. The Web is a service that uses the Internet to ask for and deliver the files that make up Web pages. DNS servers translate Web addresses to Internet addresses.
DNS - the Domain Name System - converts text urls into numeric IP addresses. This is typically handled by your ISP, but Google wants to keep the task to itself. It says this will bring your life more speed and more safety. Google's explanation makes some sense. If someone has poisoned a DNS cache, who is better equipped to handle countermeasures than a search engine? ISPs just sell access. Google using a DNS server can help quickly clear up poisoned caches.
I'm sure that's a terrible thing. What is it?
Routers move the Internet Protocol packets around until they reach the destination server. If the router doesn't know how to forward a packet it sends out an inquiry. To avoid inefficiency routers keep a list of how to reach IP addresses they've served recently. Hackers and spammers sometimes are able to break into routers and substitute fake IP addresses or break into DNS servers and substitute fake IP addresses for URL lookups. When that happens they get to receive your online purchase credit card information and passwords instead of them going to the intended site.
"The average Internet user ends up performing hundreds of DNS lookups each day, and some complex pages require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading," reads a blog post from Google product manager Prem Ramaswami. "This can slow down the browsing experience. Our research has shown that speed matters to Internet users, so over the past several months our engineers have been working to make improvements to our public DNS resolver to make users' web-surfing experiences faster, safer and more reliable." A silly bit by Google: Redirects are handled by web servers, which require a DNS query each time. Google having a DNS server won't speed this process up much. A DNS system is actually pretty passive. It doesn't do anything but respond to requests. It can't deliver content and it can't redirect.
Since 2005, a similar service has been available from a startup known as OpenDNS. One difference, Google says, is that its new service will not redirect you to landing pages if you mistype an address.
"Sometimes, in the case of a query for a mistyped or non-existent domain name, the right answer means no answer, or an error message stating the domain name could not be resolved," the company explains. "Google Public DNS never blocks, filters, or redirects users, unlike some open resolvers and ISPs." Obviously, some DNS queries resolutions are run through a web server, which can then do redirects
Yes, that would seem to be a reference to OpenDNS, which redirects users to ad-laden pages when names don't resolve. Google, it seems, carefully avoided even mentioning advertising in announcing its Public DNS - it merely says it doesn't do "redirection" - but the subtext is there. In his own blog post, OpenDNS founder David Ulevitch seems to have heard the "a" word. How totally evil. Ad. Those evil bastards! Engaging in a legitimate business. How awful!
He's right, however, in pointing out that even if Google isn't redirecting users to ads through the service, it should hardly be viewed in the way Google would have you view it. "Google claims that this service is better because it has no ads or redirection. But you have to remember they are also the largest advertising and redirection company on the Internet," Ulevitch writes. "To think that Google's DNS service is for the benefit of the Internet would be naive. They know there is value in controlling more of your Internet experience and I would expect them to explore that fully." I would expect that, too, Google being a business and not a non-profit
Among other things, this gives Google access to even more of the web's data.
According to Google, it limits how long certain information is retained. Your IP address, it says, is stored but then deleted after 24 to 48 hours. "The temporary logs store the full IP address of the machine you're using. We have to do this so that we can spot potentially bad things like DDoS attacks and so we can fix problems, such as particular domains not showing up for specific users," reads its privacy page. Limits are de rigueur in a DNS server. Google would be no exception holding to an internet protocol, except that they could tighten or loosen the limit. After all, it's their server.
Some geographic information and various other data is keep permanently. "We do keep some location information (at the city/metro level) so that we can conduct debugging, analyze abuse phenomena and improve the Google Public DNS prefetching feature."
And deliver local ads.
Google also says it will not combine DNS data with data the company collects elsewhere. "We don't correlate or combine your information from these logs with any other log data that Google might have about your use of other services, such as data from Web Search and data from advertising on the Google content network. After keeping this data for two weeks, we randomly sample a small subset for permanent storage."
We applaud Google for at least providing a detailed description of the service's data collection policy. But as we said, well, just last week: "Do we really want another monoculture?" To which the obvious answer is: Huh?
Monocultures develop because increasing numbers of people find they make sense. This is why the Muslim world has developed an indigenous rap music, and you can go to McDonalds almost anywhere in the world these days. There were German mothers in our toddler playgroup in Frankfurt. At least once a month they'd suggest meeting for lunch at the local McDonalds, the one with the indoor playground and the fabulous French fries.
As Ulevitch puts it: "It's not clear that Internet users really want Google to keep control over so much more of their Internet experience than they do already - from Chrome OS at the bottom of the stack to Google Search at the top, it is becoming an end-to-end infrastructure all run by Google, the largest advertising company in the world. I prefer a heterogeneous Internet with lots of parties collaborating to make this thing work as opposed to an Internet run by one big company." Who the hell wouldn't, but unless there is money in it and an idea that hasn't been encumbered by patents or copyright law, Google is the only game in town.
What about Yahoo, or Bing?
Google is even building its very own physical internet. We can safely say the company is building its own servers, its own Ethernet switches, its own underwater comms cables, its own worldwide collection of brick and mortar data centers, its own truck-em-anywhere-you-want-em mobile data centers, and perhaps even its own Data Center Navy. There are real life, perfectly acceptable reasons why Google would want to do this.
Doesn't this make the overall system more robust? That way if an attack takes down one part of the web, we can use this other part to go around the problem?
There are serious data ownership and privacy implications. Google reportedly is looking at establishing offshore data centers powered by solar and wave motion. That would potentially put them out of the range of laws concerning privacy and data use. Think of that when you see their offers to host all your company's data, programs, your email and your file backups.
This morning, at the Supernova tech pow-wow in downtown San Francisco, Googler Craig Walker offhandedly referred to this as "the Google network."
In a recent presentation, Google said it is intent on expanding this infrastructure between one million and 10 million servers, encompassing 10 trillion (1013) directories and a quintillion (1018) bytes of storage. All this would be spread across "100s to 1000s" of locations around the world.
"The implications are a little disturbing," one Reg reader said in response to Google Public DNS. "This could easily be a valid attempt by Google to deal with certain holes in the extant DNS infrastructure. However it could just as easily be a bridge too far."
What happens, he asked, if Google starts preconfiguring Chrome OS and Android for its Public DNS service? So deconfigure it. Jeez, do I have to think of everything?
The company will tell you - time and again - that it's merely interested in making the web a better place for netizens everywhere. But as it works towards this ostensible goal, it's also doing its best to control, yes, just about everything. Google wants to turn a buck, which is their Gawd given right to do.
Which is only what you'd expect from a Fortune 500 company.
Huh? Mr. Wife works for a Fortune 500 company, and they think in terms of working within the world-that-is, not changing or controlling it.
Google will also tell you that its leaders are saints - that they would never use this sort of ubiquity for evil. But even if Sergey, Larry, and Eric are morally superior to everyone else in the world - which is just as ridiculous as it sounds - what happens when new leaders arrive? Only the Good Lord is morally superior to everyone else. If Eric, et al have said or hinted they are morally superior to everyone else, then they are wrong and they should told they are wrong, and why.
For some, claims of saintliness are reason enough to wonder if the company has gone much too far. ®
All DNS systems have a second node that stores ( caches) information on previous successful DNS queries, on the theory that such caches help speed up DNS queries in case a main node goes down or takes too long to respond.
A coupla years back BIND, the largest free DNS server software, had a bug which permitted false queries to be entered and stored in caches, which would then cause DNS servers to relay a false resolution.
These caches were called poisoned caches since the data was poisoned by falsely entered resolution requests.
#4
Why would you use a DNS server many hops away when you could use a more local one.
When you use a DNS server for queries those queries can be logged. An ISP can track your online activities through those queries. Google wants to do this for their own business purposes, advertising
As it is, you don't have to use your ISPs DNS server. You can make use of any DNS server on the worldwide internet as long as it accepts your queries and as long as the ISP's provisioning rules permit it.
In the example of ATT, their DNS servers are all over the US. Your DNS server may be located in California, Dallas, TX or anywhere ATT has a network. The number of hops don't matter in any meaningful sense to them.
Google is likely going to enter into the ISP business before long providing broadband in competition with others such as ATT, verizon, etc.
Having a DNS server setup would go a long way towards that goal. It is nearly impossible to provide a lot of network services without your own DNS setup.
#8
A DNS system is actually pretty passive. It doesn't do anything but respond to requests. It can't deliver content and it can't redirect.
It can return an IP to a slow, ad-ridden 'helpful' page if the url you're trying to access is non-existent. I remember when Verisign did that, I was pounding the table waiting for the timeouts just because I mistyped the last character of a url and hit Enter.
It can notice common url typos and sell them to cybersquatters for registration. It can track frequency of access to particular urls. It can do "appropriate" re-directs and blocks in a "cyber emergency". Hm, didn't O just set something up?
What happens, he asked, if Google starts preconfiguring Chrome OS and Android for its Public DNS service?
So deconfigure it. Jeez, do I have to think of everything?
Hm, another cyber emergency. Blocked again, darn it. Now, how do I fix this Chrome thingy? Change the DNS server IP in my network setup? What's a network setup? Hint: Just check with Badanov in the O club, he'll walk you through it. Nuts, can't reach Rantburg for some reason....
Google wants to turn a buck, which is their Gawd given right to do.
Microsoft could have used your support back in the day when they were dealing with that silly lawsuit brought by the DOJ.
#2
Jacko's Rococo art imitation.....tacky city.....
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/06/2009 15:50 Comments ||
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#3
Another demonstration that wealth cannot buy good taste... and that bad taste can be quite expensive. $150,000 per, and he had been building up a collection by this artist, with himself as the subject of a variety of classic paintings? This, my dears, is how a too-rich man plays dress-up.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Around 20,000 people joined a climate change march in central London on Saturday calling for world leaders to agree a deal to protect the environment at their summit in Copenhagen, which advertisers have cleverly dubbed "Hopenhagen" to call people to the issue.
How many drove into London just to take part? And how many of those carpooled?
The protest was organized by a coalition of green groups and charities calling for action to prevent global temperatures rising more than two degrees centigrade, seen by many scientists as the threshold for dangerous climate change.
The marchers, many wearing blue clothes and face paint, made their way towards the Houses of Parliament chanting slogans and blowing whistles, bearing placards saying "Climate Justice Now" and "Climate Change: The End Is Nigh."
The Stop Climate Chaos protest was attended by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, who said Britain would push for a far-reaching pact at the Copenhagen meeting starting next week.
"We want the most ambitious deal we can get at the climate change talks," he told BBC television from the march.
"We are taking to Copenhagen not just the commitment to reduce our emissions by 34 percent by 2020, but a commitment to do more ... We want to use our willingness to do more to push other countries -- the United States, China, Australia, Japan, everyone -- to be part of an ambitious agreement."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/06/2009 00:00 ||
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Flat Earthers. Climate has always changed and will continue to change till that big bright ball in the sky consumes this planet. Might was well attend a protest against Pi. It's irrational too.
Chile is expected to win entry to OECD's club of developed countries by Dec. 15 -- a great affirmation for a once-poor nation that pulled itself up by trusting markets. One thing that stands out here is free trade.
At a summit of Latin American countries last week in Portugal, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet suddenly became the center of attention -- and rightly so. She announced that her country was expected to win membership in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, an exclusive club of the richest and most economically credible nations.
Chile is the first country in South America to win the honor, and in a symbolic way its OECD membership card seals its exit from the ranks of the Third World to the First.
For the rest of us, it's a stunning example of how embracing free markets and free trade brings prosperity.
It's not like Chile was born lucky. Only 30 years ago, it was an impoverished country with per capita GDP of $1,300. Its distant geography, irresponsible neighbors and tiny population were significant obstacles to investment and growth. And its economy, dominated by labor unions, wasn't just closed, but sealed tight.
In the Cato Institute's 1975 Economic Freedom of the World Report it ranked a wretched 71 out of 72 countries evaluated.
Today it's a different country altogether. Embracing markets has made it one of the most open economies in the world, ranking third on Cato's index, just behind Hong Kong and Singapore. Per capita GDP has soared to $15,000.
Besides its embrace of free trade, other reforms -- including pension privatization, tax cuts, respect for property rights and cutting of red tape helped the country grow not only richer but more democratic, says Cato Institute trade expert Daniel Griswold.
But the main thing, Griswold says, is that the country didn't shift course. "Chile's economy is set apart from its neighbors, because they have pursued market policies consistently over a long period," he said. "Free trade has been a central part of Chile's success."
Chile has signed no fewer than 20 trade pacts with 56 countries, giving its 19 million citizens access to more than 3 billion customers worldwide. When no pact was in force, Griswold notes, Chile unilaterally dropped tariffs. This paid off handsomely.
You've heard of flat taxes? Chile has a flat tariff -- only 5% on any item not exempted by a free-trade treaty, Griswold points out. But almost nobody has signed off on free-trade treaties like Chile.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/06/2009 13:17 ||
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#1
Not mentioned is that Chile's advisors were disciples of Milton Freedman and the free trade policy was initiated by that "evil man" Pinochet.
Posted by: Fozen Al ||
12/06/2009 13:36 Comments ||
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#2
Chile also has a trade surplus about as large (% GDP) as the US has a trade defict. It was even larger in previous years.
Posted by: ed ||
12/06/2009 14:04 Comments ||
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#3
Yup, not a word about Allende and Pinochet. I wonder how Chile would be doing these days on the leftist road? About as well as the rest of that cesspool.
#4
Lots is not known of Pinochet. A fine man. He killed about 500 or so dissidents (communist terrorists), re-established a free democracy, and left that country far better off than how he got it.
I think I just figured out what China is doing with all its toxic waste . . . .
The maker of Zhu Zhu Pets, one of the hottest-selling toys of the holiday season, defended its product after a consumer Web site said one of the robotic hamsters carries high amounts of a dangerous chemical.
Mister Squiggles, the light-brown version of the hamsters, has unsafe levels of antimony, said Dara O'Rourke, co-founder of GoodGuide.
The chemical can cause cancer, lung and heart problems, according to GoodGuide.
"We found levels of about 93 to 106 parts per million," O'Rourke said. "The new federal standard is about 60 parts per million."
But the toy manufacturer, St. Louis, Missouri-based Cepia LLC, said its products are safe.
"All our products are subjected to several levels of rigorous safety testing conducted by our own internal teams, as well as the world's leading independent quality assurance testing organization, and also by independent labs engaged by our retail partners," Russ Hornsby, CEO of Cepia, said in a written statement. "The results of every test prove that our products are in compliance with all government and industry safety standards."
Bruce Katz, a senior vice president of Cepia, told CNN: "They do not contain high levels of antimony in any way.
"None of these tests have failed over the many months we've been producing this product."
#2
D *** NG IT, first COW FARTS + TREE RINGS, now ZHU ZHU S + ANTIMONY - IFF THESE AREN'T GOOD ENUFF REASONS TO HAVE OWG-NWO WIDOUT A POPULAR ELECTORAL VOTE WHAT IS!?
#1
Blame Larry Summers, who pushed the university's investment managers to put way too much of the endowment's cash into risky, high-payoff places long after the warning signals were flashing.
#3
Wait a minute. Summers was forced out by the womyn in February 2006. There were no real signs flashing then that hadn't been flashing since 1997, when he was Dep Sec Treas.
What Summers did made sense when he did it. But Faust is no Summers and didn't realize the situation had changed. Given what Faust isn't, I'd blame the Treasurer of the Harvard Corporation for not figuring it out a year later in mid 2007. But then the Treasurer of the Harvard Corporation is a part time position.
#4
Even with the losses, Rothenberg said, the cash strategy has earned Harvard returns averaging 8.9 percent over the past 10 years. He and other university officials say the cash pool is still ahead of where it would have been, if invested more conservatively all along.
They did very well managing short term, highly liquid 'cash', even with the once in a century event. It would be interesting to know what Summers would have done. Would he have changed strategy in time?
#5
Foreign and low income scholarship programs may be part of the cause. But then again, how could Harvard produce such enlightened souls such as this poor fellow.
Be sure to check out the "Harvard University Senior Thesis Adviseeees" section of the CV.
Amid recession and loads of bad assets, six more banks have been shut down bringing the number of US banks failed in 2009 to 130.
On Friday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) took over AmTrust Bank -- the fourth-largest Cleveland-based bank to fail this year. With about USD 8 billion in deposits and USD 12 billion in assets, it is expected to cost the federal deposit insurance fund an estimated USD 2 billion.
Last year regulators had told the bank to limit their loans since they were concerned that the bank's reserves against potential losses were dangerously low.
AmTrust also had branches in Phoenix and Florida.
New York Community Bank agreed to take over the deposits of AmTrust Bank and about USD 9 billion of its assets. The FDIC will hold the rest for eventual sale and the bank's 66 branches will reopen soon.
Three other banks in the state of Georgia were also taken over by the FDIC on Friday: Tattnall Bank, of Reidsville with assets of USD 49.6 million and deposits of USD 47.3 million; Buckhead Community Bank, based in Atlanta, with USD 874 million in assets and USD 838 million in deposits and First Security National Bank, based in Norcross with USD 128 million in assets and USD123 million in deposits.
Benchmark Bank in Aurora, Illinois, with USD 170 million in assets and USD 181 million in deposits was also shut down and so was Greater Atlantic bank of Reston, Virginia, with USD 203 million in assets and USD 179 million in deposits.
The cloture of the three Georgian banks brought the number of bank failures in that state to 24 so far this year. Benchmark Bank was the 20th to fail in Illinois this year.
The failure of Buckhead Community Bank is expected to cost the federal deposit insurance fund an estimated USD 241.4 million; that of Tattnall Bank, USD 13.9 million; Greater Atlantic Bank, USD 35 million; First Security National Bank, around USD 30.1 million and Benchmark Bank, around USD64 million.
Over the next four years the FDIC expects the cost of bank failures to grow to about USD 100 billion.
As buildings sit vacant, banks are suffering losses and are especially hurt by failed real estate loans and as development projects collapse, builders are defaulting on their loans.
Since the height of the saving-and-loan crisis in 1992 the 130 failures have been the most in a year. They have cost the federal deposit fund over USD 28 billion so far this year compared with USD 25 billion last year and USD 3 billion in 2007.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/06/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Can you graduate from Harvard without being a certifiable moron?
#5
The Amtrust failure has some interesting aspects. The Feds have been extending them lifelines for over a year now, no bailouts, but going lightly on applying existing regulations to Amtrust's case. Thirteen months ago, after Cleveland's National City Bank failed & was taken over by PNC, an out of town bank, local Congressmen put pressure on the Feds to do more to save Cleveland banks. The Plain Dealer has been covering this very well the whole time, for those who care to keep themselves informed, a very small fraction, I know.
For the last several weeks Amtrust's holding company withdrew its deposits from its own bank and sent them to PNC. Then on 11/30 the holding company declared bankruptcy while keeping Amtrust in business, thus putting its own assets out of reach of the FDIC. FDIC's delay on using 'prompt corrective action' as mandated by law much increased FDIC losses in the collapse of Amtrust.
I would love to know what fraction of banks are actually insolvent at this moment, but the MSM isn't bothering to consider this, being consumed by health care reform and Tiger Woods. Karl Denninger opines that most banks are now, and have been for some time, insolvent.
SPANISH police have arrested nine men suspected of seeking to have a woman killed after they accused her of adultery, claiming they were following Islamic law, authorities said. The men were arrested on November 14 and seven have been held in jail, a police spokesman said.
According to police, the woman had been taken in March and held in an isolated house in Valls in northeastern Catalonia.
Authorities say the men set up a court there to judge her for adultery.
"These men had formed a kind of court to apply (Islamic) sharia law,'' the spokesman said, adding the woman told authorities she was tried and sentenced to death.
She was later able to escape and report what happened to police.
#1
Their big mistake was to put an ad in the 'Personals' section of the paper. "Men seeking woman to kill for adultery. B&D/SM. No Spam/Freaks/Smokers."
NASA. Great. They've been body-snatched too.
The fight over global warming science is about to cross the Atlantic with a U.S. researcher poised to sue NASA, demanding release of the same kind of climate data that has landed a leading British center in hot water over charges it skewed its data.
Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s.
"I assume that what is there is highly damaging," Mr. Horner said. "These guys are quite clearly bound and determined not to reveal their internal discussions about this."
The numbers matter. Under pressure in 2007, NASA recalculated its data and found that 1934, not 1998, was the hottest year in its records for the contiguous 48 states. NASA later changed that data again, and now 1998 and 2006 are tied for first, with 1934 slightly cooler.
Mr. Horner, a noted global warming skeptic and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, wants a look at the data and the discussions that went into those changes. He said he's given the agency until the end of the year to comply or else he'll sue to compel the information's release.
His fight mirrors one in Europe that has sprung up over the the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in the UK after thousands of e-mails from the center were obtained and appear to show researchers shaving their data to make it conform to their expectation, and show efforts to try to drive global warming skeptics out of the conversation.
The center's chief has stepped down pending an investigation into the e-mails.
The center has also had to acknowledge in response to a freedom of information request under British law that it tossed out much of the raw data that it used to draw up the temperature models that have underpinned much of the science behind global warming.
Mr. Horner suspects the same sort of data-shaving has happened at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), another leading global warming research center.
Mark Hess, public affairs director for the Goddard Space Flight Center which runs the GISS laboratory, said they are working on Mr. Horner's request, though he couldn't say why they have taken so long.
"We're collecting the information and will respond with all the responsive relevant information to all of his requests," Mr. Hess said. "It's just a process you have to go through where you have to collect data that's responsive." They sent a man to the moon and back in less than a decade. I guess the challenges today are orders of magnitude more difficult.
He said he was unfamiliar with the British controversy and couldn't say whether NASA was susceptible to the same challenges to its data. The White House has dismissed the British e-mails as irrelevant.
"Several thousand scientists have come to the conclusion that climate change is happening. I don't think that's anything that is, quite frankly, among most people, in dispute anymore," press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters this week. They're called local minima and maxima. Nothing more. They happen every few decades. They are not overall climate change.
But Republicans on Capitol Hill say the revelations deserve a congressional investigation. Republican leaders also sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson Wednesday telling her she should withdraw a series of EPA rules until the global warming science can be better substantiated. For now, climate scientists are rallying around the British researchers.
Michael Mann, a scientist at Penn State University who is under fire for his involvement in the British e-mail exchanges, said the e-mails' release was timed to skunk up next week's U.N. global warming summit in Copenhagen. Mr. Obama is planning to attend.
"They've taken scientists' words and phrases and quoted them out of context, completely misrepresenting what they were saying," Mr. Mann told AccuWeather.com in an interview, calling it a "manufactured controversy." Out of context? Really? How about you stop whining so much and start putting them in context for us? Oh, I forgot, several have already tried. And they came up with crap like "hide" and "trick" being scientific terms. Oh, I believe!
NASA's GISS was forced to update its data in 2007 after questions were raised by Steve McIntyre, who runs ClimateAudit.com. Well, what were the temps? Do they change depending on which angle you were looking from?Does the fact that you put them over asphalt or behind a runway make it difficult perhaps? Is it hard to decide whether they were put there, or how to report it?
GISS had initially listed the warmest years as 1998, 1934, 2006, 1921 and 1931. After Mr. McIntyre's questions GISS rejiggered the list and 1934 was warmest, followed by 1998, 1921, 2006 and then 1931. But since then, the list has been rewritten again so it now runs 1998, 2006, 1934, 1921, 1999.
The institute blamed a "minor data processing error" for the changes but says it doesn't make much difference since the top three years remain in a "statistical tie" either way.
Mr. Horner said he's seeking the data itself, but he also wants to see the chain of e-mails from scientists discussing the changes. What difference do they make? Give us the raw data. Or do you have something to hide, too?
The Freedom of Information Act requires agencies to respond to requests within 20 days. Mr. Horner says he's never received an official acknowledgement of his three separate FOIA requests, but has received e-mails showing the agency is aware of them.
He said he has provided NASA with a notice of intent to sue under FOIA, but said he also hopes members of Congress get involved and demand the information be released.
NASA and CRU data are considered the backbone of much of the science that suggests the earth is warming due to manmade greenhouse gas emissions. NASA argues its data suggests this decade has been the warmest on record. NASA shouldn't be arguing anything. Give us the data and we will decide.
On the other hand, data from the University of Alabama-Huntsville suggests temperatures have been relatively flat for most of this decade.
#11
Hilarious - poor Andrea with her feebly outstretched arm. Looking desperate! Bet she's reminded of the times the popular cheerleaders cut her off cold.
SAUDI Arabia has seized on a series of stolen British university emails to become the first country to cast doubt on the consensus about man-made climate change ahead of next week's Copenhagen summit.
The world's largest oil exporter claims the emails stolen from researchers at the University of East Anglia undermine the scientific case that human activity is overheating the planet.
Britain's Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change, Ed Miliband, yesterday said it was "absolute and utter nonsense" to suggest the controversial emails weakened the evidence about climate change.
The emails were illegally hacked from a computer system at the University of East Anglia and then stored on a Russian web server. On November 19, a computer in Saudi Arabia was used to post a link to the stolen emails on a website popular with climate change sceptics and deniers.
The emails, private exchanges of messages and data from climate researchers at the university, were pounced on by sceptics who said they revealed an unprofessional and combative approach towards critics of the mainstream view of climate change.
The emails do not prove that any evidence on climate change was falsified, but they show at least a reluctance to share information with climate sceptics and have led to an independent inquiry during which the head of the university's Climate Research Centre, Phil Jones, has stood aside.
Professor Jones says the emails were "taken completely out of context" and that the university's findings on global warming are backed by at least two research centres in the US.
"One has to wonder if it is a coincidence that this email correspondence has been stolen and published at this time. This may be a concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks," he said.
Saudi Arabia has long been reluctant to agree to any action to reduce carbon emissions and has only recently gone along with the 192 other governments attending the Copenhagen talks in accepting scientific evidence of man-made climate change.
But its chief Copenhagen negotiator, Mohammad al-Sabban, suggested in an interview with the BBC yesterday that there was now no longer any point in seeking an agreement to reduce emissions.
"It appears from the details . . . that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change," he said.
"Climate is changing . . . but for natural and not human-induced reasons. So whatever the international community does to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will have no effect on the climate's natural variability."
His government might be prepared to take "no cost" measures to control emissions but more drastic and painful action would be out of the question until there was "new evidence" about what was causing climate change, he said.
Mr Miliband poured scorn on such doubts when he spoke to a press briefing attended by The Weekend Australian in London shortly before the broadcast of Mr al-Sabban's comments.
"There will be people who want to jump on these emails and somehow say these disprove climate change is happening," Mr Miliband said.
"That is absolute and utter nonsense, frankly. I think it is very easy to take emails out of context.
"There is an inquiry going on in East Anglia into the precise nature of these emails and what they said but I think it is really important that we are responsible in this."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/06/2009 13:21 ||
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His government might be prepared to take "no cost" measures to control emissions but more drastic and painful action would be out of the question until there was "new evidence" about what was causing climate change, he said.
Looked at the SUN as a major "Heat Polluter" lately?
Didn't think so.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
12/06/2009 19:32 Comments ||
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Anyone who's a regular Google search user will know that the only way to avoid the company tracking your online activities is to log out of Gmail or whatever Google account you use. Not any more.
As of last Friday, even searchers who aren't logged into Google in any way have their data tracked in the name of providing a 'better service'.
The company explained: "What we're doing today is expanding Personalized Search so that we can provide it to signed-out users as well. This addition enables us to customise search results for you based upon 180 days of search activity linked to an anonymous cookie in your browser."
However, if you've previously been a fan of the log-out method to avoid being tracked, there's still the option to disable the cookie by clicking a link at the top right of a search results page. So, for example, if you search for "Falun Gong", they can now provide your entire search history to the Chinese secret police, not just the searches you did in Google. Better not say anything nasty about Obama, either.
One day after reports that Britain's Met office intends to reexamine 160 years' worth of temperature data, emotions over what's now being dubbed "Climategate" are getting more raw by the day.
During a live television faceoff hosted by the BBC, Marc Morano, a former communications director of the U.S. Senate Environment Committee and now an editor with the Web site Climate Depot squared off against Professor Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia in eastern England. It didn't take long before the two got in each other's face and Watson became increasingly annoyed with Morano's loud interruptions. He finally lost it by the end when the anchor thanked the participants. "What an asshole," Watson said.
Meanwhile, the Met's planned reexamination comes just before an international conference on climate change is set to open in Copenhagen. The UK government is said to oppose the three year investigation as it likely would play into the hands of climate change skeptics. This is potentially quite a big deal. As the UK's TimesOnline points out:
"The Met Office database is one of three main sources of temperature data analysis on which the UN's main climate change science body relies for its assessment that global warming is a serious danger to the world. This assessment is the basis for next week's climate change talks in Copenhagen aimed at cutting CO2 emissions."
The Met's move follows the recent leak of embarassing email messages between scientists at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. Critics say the correspondence suggests that some scientists have exaggerated the case for man-made climate change. The university and its defenders argue that the stolen documents have been interpreted out of context and don't suggest nefarious intent.
The problem for climate change activisists is that the scientific research upon which they base their claims has now been cast in a political light. Phil Jones, who is the CRU's director, has temporarily stepped aside. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania State University is deciding whether it needs to open its own investigation as some of the emails were written by one of its faculty members.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/06/2009 11:18 ||
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The problem for climate change activisists is that the scientific research upon which they base their claims has now been shown to have beencast in a political light.
Fixed it for ya - you IDIOT Journalist. They have not *NOW* been cast into a political light - they HAVE ALWAYS BEEN CAST IN A POLITICAL LIGHT - THAT IS THE PROBLEM!
Instead of following the scientific method the data was bludgeoned to fit a pre-concieved model to advance a POLITICAL goal.
Not this one again! Snopes debunked this in 2007, gentlemen, so can you all please find a new fantasy? And please, check any such stories at Snopes.com or the About.com urban legends page (which I find more intuitive to navigate) before posting. They debunked it in 2000. It makes us look awfully gullible when such things show up here.
Some of us, of course, want to remain on the safe side. Snopes isn't infallible, y'know...
#3
The unintended consequence of the internet, collapsing Social Security with a massive population of centenarians sustained by access at their fingertips.
#15
I'm not going to wait for the science to be confirmed on this one. I think the catastrophic risk to men means that the state HAS to step in and ensure 10Mins of Boobage per day for every adult male.
This will be paid for by a tax on A and B cup bras.
#20
I don't know, guys. If my wife catches me staring at other women's boobs, my life will definitely NOT be extended for five years.
Not so here, we have an agreement, look all you want, touch and your hand gets broken.
My wife is well endowed, sometimes she'll point out some absolute spectacular sets, I point out exceptionally Built men, we both enjoy looking. (No Hands broken yet in 36 years of marriage, and counting)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
12/06/2009 19:21 Comments ||
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#21
I just look the women in the eye, tell them the truth, then duck for cover, I am 53.
#22
Wehell, I twas gonna go with "Uh, uh, MANBOOBS??? - Gut Nuthin", but will instead go wid
* WAFF > RISE OF THE GIRLIE MEN [Pro-Herbivoral, non-Assertive, Metro-Sexual Progressive Feminist, etc.].
D *** NG IT, FERGIT POST-COLD WAR, POST-9-11, POST-AMERICA, PRO-GLOBALIST "ALPHA/BRAVO" MALES DEMAND THEIR "CHARLIE" + LOWER MALE RIGHTS + RIGHT TO DARWIN-BASED FEMINIST = FEMI-MALE EVOLUTION, BABY!
YEAR 2050-2100 > SAY DAD/GRANDPA, DID YOU EVER MISS THAT "MORNING FRESH FEELING"!?
But new research out of the University of Montreal suggests that p is so widely digested, and with such a seemingly low correlation to "pathological" behavior, that it is grossly over-demonized. The research is funded by the Interdisciplinary Research Center on Family Violence and Violence Against Women.
Simon Louis Lajeunesse, a postdoctoral student and professor at the School of Social Work, set out to examine the effects of p on men, which would involve studying men in their 20s who've never consumed p. "We couldn't find any," he says.
The US defence research agency DARPA has used 10 red balloons in a contest to assess the accuracy with which information spreads on the internet. The giant moored weather balloons were launched on Saturday morning at 10 undisclosed locations across the United States. More than 4,000 groups competed to be the first to pinpoint all 10.
A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology won the challenge and a prize of $40,000 (£24,000). Johanna Jones, a spokeswoman for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, said that beyond the actual contest, the aim was to see whether social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter should be seen as credible sources of information.
Darpa is no stranger to innovative uses of technology. The agency - which is part of the US defence department - played a pivotal role in the creation of the internet itself. That original network was created at the behest of the US government as a way to access and distribute information in the case of a catastrophic event.
Forty years on, with the internet in full swing, the same agency was keen to see if the power of social networking sites - with their tens of millions of users - could be used as a credible source to alert authorities of impending disaster or unrest on US soil.
Fun! But seriously, what's the answer? Irredeemably curious minds neeeeeeeeed to know.
#1
This follows on some previous experiments re: crowd sourcing and social network effects. The original Where's George experiment done by some academics traced the location of dollar bills whose recipients from around the world (including in African villages) were asked to send a dollar to someone they knew, who in turn was asked to send it to someone they knew, in an attempt to get it to a specific destination. It took surprisingly few hops for most of the bills to arrive, underscoring the fact that social proximity isn't limited geographically.
The question of how information and influence spreads has direct national security implications which is why DARPA's investing in this sort of research.
#1
Hard to decide whether to laugh, or cry. Laugh, because CJ has become a parody of the very moonbats he once despised; cry, because at one time the guy really did do some good work.
A mind is a terrible thing to lose.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
12/06/2009 12:50 Comments ||
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A real shame, after 9/11 Charles Johnson's LGF and Steven DenBeste's blog helped me get through the day. DenBeste gave up political blogging and Johnson's gone over to the moonbat side.
#4
yep, and I started out reading BalloonJuice which is a parody now. Fred, don't turn on us, K?
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/06/2009 15:28 Comments ||
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#5
Only perused LGF once or twice.
Thought it was too emotional.
(If you want to properly revenge or respond to an attack(s) it's a good idea to leave emotion at the entryway)
#6
My theory is that Charles - a respected session musician who's appeared on a number of jazz albums - was losing recording work as a result of his post-9/11 political stances. To restore his employability, he decided to follow Arianna Huffington's and David Brock's examples by publicly donning the sackcloth and ashes of the Fashionable Left.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
12/06/2009 19:35 Comments ||
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#7
I have wondered about LGF as well. Stopped reading it and went back a few times now.
I think I won't go back anymore. Anyone who doesn't agree 100% with CJ's Global Warming ideas is trollrated into oblivion.
I'm glad that Rantburg hasn't changed. I'll stick around here.
I have many questions about Climate Change. I'm neither a denier nor a follower. What I note are serious inconsistencies with the theory and a lot of fanatism to defend it and stifle dissent.
There is no debate anymore. Reminds me of Commie times when they sent dissenting scientists into psychiatric hospitals.
Scientists are getting scared when they disagree with the "consensus".
Posted by: European Conservative ||
12/06/2009 20:03 Comments ||
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#8
Wow, that's as blatant as it gets. Makes "lying like a rug" look respectable. He has an extraordinarily low opinion of his reader's intelligence to think they don't see through his dishonesty. They do, don't they? Heaven help us, it's probably the same guys who thought Palin would make a fine VP for Obama.
Isn't it time to remove him from the blogroll and stop stinking up the place?
The worldwide Anglican Church has been plunged into a fresh crisis after a lesbian was chosen as its second gay bishop.
In a move that will dismay the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, Canon Mary Glasspool was elected as an assistant bishop for the diocese of Los Angeles.
Why would that dismay the good archbishop? One would think he, of all people, would approve.
It might not be in accord with the Druid gospels ...
The Rev Rod Thomas, the leader of the conservative evangelical group Reform and a member of the General Synod, said: 'I feel deeply ashamed that this is happening in the Anglican Church. 'I
But St Paul's Cathedral's Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser, a leading liberal, said: 'This is another nail in the coffin of Christian homophobia.'
think a schism is absolutely inevitable.' But St Paul's Cathedral's Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser, a leading liberal, said: 'This is another nail in the coffin of Christian homophobia.'
It's another nail in the coffin of something
Canon Glasspool, 55, has openly stated that she has lived with her partner, Becki Sander, since 1988. American Gene Robinson became the first gay Anglican bishop in 2003. "God's light and God's life ooze over me like warm butter." -- icky quote by Gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Straits Times] INDONESIAN police arrested a man accused of smuggling 10 rare kangaroos by boat from New Guinea island, an official said on Saturday.
In 1968, Andy Warhol wisecracked that in the future everyone would get their 15 minutes of fame. He did not say this would be a good thing. Nor did he say that everyone was entitled to, say, 16 minutes of fame. Fifteen minutes seemed like a nice round number -- but 15 was the absolute limit.
The worldwide Anglican Church has been plunged into a fresh crisis after a lesbian was chosen as its second gay bishop.
