Monday, February 23, 2009

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World Environment Ministers Mix Science And Politics In Antarctica Top
TROLL RESEARCH STATION, Antarctica — A parka-clad band of environment ministers landed in this remote corner of the icy continent on Monday, in the final days of an intense season of climate research, to learn more about how a melting Antarctica may endanger the planet. Representatives from more than a dozen nations, including the U.S., China, Britain and Russia, were to rendezvous at a Norwegian research station with American and Norwegian scientists coming in on the last leg of a 1,400-mile (2,300-kilometer), two-month trek over the ice from the South Pole. The visitors will gain "hands-on experience of the colossal magnitude of the Antarctic continent and its role in global climate change," said the mission's organizer, Norway's Environment Ministry. They'll also learn about the great uncertainties plaguing research into this southernmost continent and its link to global warming: How much is Antarctica warming? How much ice is melting into the sea? How high might it raise ocean levels worldwide? The answers are so elusive that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a Nobel Prize-winning U.N. scientific network, excluded the potential threat from the polar ice sheets from calculations in its authoritative 2007 assessment of global warming. The IPCC forecast that oceans may rise up to 23 inches (0.59 meters) this century, from heat expansion and melting land ice, if the world does little to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for atmospheric warming. But the U.N. panel did not take Antarctica and Greenland into account, since the interactions of atmosphere and ocean with their enormous stores of ice _ Antarctica has 90 percent of the world's ice _ are poorly understood. And yet the West Antarctic ice sheet, some of whose outlet glaciers are pouring ice at a faster rate into the sea, "could be the most dangerous tipping point this century," says a leading U.S. climatologist, NASA's James Hansen. "There is the potential for several-meter rise of sea level," Hansen told The Associated Press last week. The scenario is "frightening," says the IPCC's chief scientist, Rajendra Pachauri, who met with the ministers in Cape Town before their nine-hour flight here from South Africa. Finding the answers has been key to the 2007-2009 International Polar Year (IPY), a mobilization of 10,000 scientists and 40,000 others from more than 60 countries engaged in intense Arctic and Antarctic research over the past two southern summer seasons _ on the ice, at sea, via icebreaker, submarine and surveillance satellite. The 12-member Norwegian-American Scientific Traverse of East Antarctica _ the trekkers "coming home" to Troll _ was one important part of that work, having drilled deep cores into the annual layers of ice sheet in this little-explored region, to determine how much snow has fallen historically and its composition. Such work will be combined with another IPY project, an all-out effort to map by satellite radar the "velocity fields" of all Antarctic ice sheets over the past two summers, to assess how fast ice is being pushed into the surrounding sea. Then scientists may understand better the "mass balance" _ how much the snow, originating with ocean evaporation, is offsetting the ice pouring seaward. "We're not sure what the East Antarctic ice sheet is doing," David Carlson, IPY director, explained last week from the program's offices in Cambridge, England. "It looks like it is flowing a little faster. So is that matched by accumulation? What they come back with will be crucial to understanding the process." The visiting environment ministers were those of Algeria, Britain, Congo, the Czech Republic, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Other countries were represented by climate policymakers and negotiators, including Xie Zhenhua of China and Dan Reifsnyder, a deputy assistant U.S. secretary of state. During their long day here under the 17-hour sunlight of a dying southern summer, when temperatures still drop to near zero Fahrenheit (-20 degrees Celsius), the northern visitors took in the awesome sights of Queen Maud Land, a forbidding, mountainous icescape 3,000 miles (5,000 kilometers) southwest of South Africa, and toured the Norwegians' high-tech Troll Research Station, upgraded to year-round operations in 2005. The politics of climate inevitably mixed with the science. Stranded in Cape Town an extra two days when high Antarctic winds scrubbed a planned weekend flight, the ministers were gently lobbied at lunch and dinner by Scandinavian counterparts favoring urgent action on a new global agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the deal to reduce greenhouse gases that expires in 2012. President Barack Obama's new U.S. administration has promised action after years of U.S. resistance to the Kyoto process. But the complexity of issues and limited time before a Copenhagen conference in December, target date for a deal, makes the outcome as uncertain as the future of Antarctica's glaciers and offshore ice shelves. Much more research lies ahead, say the scientists, including investigations of the possible warming and shifting currents of the Southern Ocean ringing Antarctica. "We need to put more resources in," said IPY's Carlson. Outspoken scientists say political action may be even more urgently needed. "We are out of out cotton-pickin' minds if we let that process get started," Hansen said of an Antarctic meltdown. "Because there will be no stopping it." More on Global Warming
 
SEC's Mary Schapiro Seeks To Beef Up Enforcement Top
WASHINGTON -- Less than a month after becoming the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary L. Schapiro is moving swiftly to reverse major decisions by her predecessor and to strengthen an enforcement program that missed several major frauds that cost investors billions of dollars.
 
Hale "Bonddad" Stewart: Supply Side Economics and Generational Theft Top
Sometime over the last few weeks Republicans started to use the phrase "generational theft" to describe the stimulus bill. I found this particularly interesting considering supply-side economics started the idea of massive government debt issuance. Let's start with Reagan. According to the Congressional Budget Office, he never balanced a budget -- despite the fact he was a "fiscal conservative". As a result, total debt outstanding increased from $1.2 trillion in 1981 to a little under $3 trillion in 1989 (the year of his last budget). Here's a graph of total debt outstanding under Reagan's leadership: Bush I continued the trend. He was a "fiscally responsible" Republican. He never balanced a budget. And total debt outstanding also continued to increase. It increased from 3.2 trillion to 4.4 trillion at the end of fiscal 1993 (the last Bush I budget). Here's a graph of total debt outstanding under Bush I's leadership: And then there is Bush II -- another "fiscally responsible" Republican. He never balanced a budget. And according to the Bureau of Public Debt, total debt outstanding increased by $500 billion/year starting in fiscal 2003: 09/30/2008 $10,024,724,896,912.49 09/30/2007 $9,007,653,372,262.48 09/30/2006 $8,506,973,899,215.23 09/30/2005 $7,932,709,661,723.50 09/30/2004 $7,379,052,696,330.32 09/30/2003 $6,783,231,062,743.62 09/30/2002 $6,228,235,965,597.16 09/30/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06 09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86 So when we hear Republicans talk about generational theft, well, they know of what they speak. More on Economy
 
Police Board Vegan Pirate Vessel, Seize Video Top
SYDNEY — Police boarded the ship of a militant anti-whaling group and seized videotapes of violent clashes between the activists and Japanese whalers, the group said Saturday. Police said they were investigating the clashes after Japanese authorities reported them to Australian officials, but would not to go into further detail. Paul Watson, head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said Australian Federal Police agents with search warrants boarded the group's ship, the Steve Irwin, as it docked late Friday in the southern Australian city of Hobart. The police seized video being shot for the television series "Whale Wars" about the group's campaign to stop a Japanese fleet from killing whales in waters off Antarctica, the Sea Shepherd said in a statement. The federal police said it had held discussions with crew aboard the Steve Irwin and was investigating events in the Antarctic Ocean "as a result of a formal referral from the Japanese authorities." The investigation was being conducted in accordance with Australia's obligations under international law, though it was not clear what law, if any, may have been broken. A police spokeswoman said it would not be appropriate to comment further until the investigation is finished. The Steve Irwin and Japanese whaling ships collided twice in recent months, and the activists have staged hit-an-run attacks on the fleet with rancid butter-filled bottles hurled from motorized runabouts, according to both sides. Video taken by the conservationists shows the whalers responding with water cannons. Each side has accused the other of putting lives in danger. The skirmishes were the latest between Sea Shepherd activists and Japanese whalers in Antarctic waters, where the hunters each season kill about 1,000 whales as part of its International Whaling Commission-sanctioned scientific whaling program. Critics say the program is a front for commercial whaling. Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research _ the government-affiliated organization that oversees the hunt _ has long demanded Australia do more to prevent the clashes and suggested the Steve Irwin be barred from refueling and restocking in Australian ports. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government strongly opposes whaling, and during the 2007-08 season sent a Customs vessel to collect video and photographs of the Japenese fleet that officials said could be used as evidence in an international court case to stop the hunt. Nothing came of the threat, and the government now says it prefers to use diplomacy to persuade Japan to stop whaling. More on Japan
 
Donna Schaper: The Sounds Good But Isn't FILIBUSTER Top
The Morality of the Filibuster: Why Bi Partisanship Sounds Good and Isn't Since when does it take 60 votes to pass something in Congress? I hear this everywhere as the higher morality or at least the higher reality. It may be the latter but it is not the former. Apparently the division between the two "Americas" has grown so big that one side simply can't abide what the other is doing and feels compelled by higher principles to threaten the filibuster unless they win their way. So instead of taking 51 votes we need 60 to get something through the Senate. The President learned this the hard and embarrassing way when he courted his presumed partners, only to receive not a single vote on the first rescue plan. We might reconsider the morality of bipartisanship and the hammer for the nail in its own coffin. That hammer is the filibuster. No doubt its bangers think it morally necessary to obstruct government. The punishmentalist party doesn't know much about the virtue of humility. There are conflicting principles to their moralistic, not moral, positions. When they obstruct this government, they obstruct a majority. Majority rule is much more moral (and constitutional) than minority rule. The framers of the rules probably knew what they were doing in passing out hammers to the minority. They did not assume (nor has it been historically true) that the right and left would drive each other so apart that rule justice would prohibit ordinary justice. Right now those of us who have the majority legally and decently elected almost couldn't get the economic bill through, finally did, and are now being told that unless we have a filibuster proof 60 votes for Health insurance, Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and many other moral necessities for the nation, that we can't win. I think that is immoral, unfair, un-American and way too kind to the minority party. The minority's principals are also not very respectable - but that is another story. When we protect the minority's rights to differ, we have to expect to genuinely differ. Beyond morality and its high fallutin' considerations, I played too much basketball to understand how the over used filibuster can be right. You can win or lose a game by one point. When the buzzer sounds, even if you were about to sink a three pointer, the game is over and if you have one less point than the opposition, you lose. Period, the end. The majority needs to rule much more than the minority needs to disrupt. I am as tired of any one when it comes to contacted my electeds about the issues that drive me. I actually use a service, the Progressive Letter Writer, to help me get my point of view out. I wish there were more. What I don't understand is how come my electeds don't think I am making enough noise about Comprehensive Immigration Reform, or Universal Health Care, or stopping the war, or guaranteeing the right to choose an abortion? After winning the election? They keep telling me that others are louder than I. The message is always the Franklin Roosevelt message that we are to go out and "make" them do what we want them to do by making noise. The pragmatic message of politics is "Hit" them harder, and make it inconvenient for them to vote any other way than the way you want. Even if we think "W" won in Florida in 2000, which he did not, and even if we think it was the higher cynicism for progressives to get a hold of all those secretaries of state in this last season, even if we think politics are just politics, what about the American way, the sacrosanct vote, the will of the people? What about plain old fairness? What about basketball? In the name of plain old fairness, I think the over use of the filibuster constitutes a very high, deep and serious immorality. What is to be done if you agree? Figure out how to put a little spine and passion in the Democrats. Call the minority's bluff. Rush Limbaugh says out loud that he wants to see Obama fail. Why not show the filibuster failing? Make them filibuster. Make them filibuster for a year or a decade. Show the American people just how unprincipled the right wing's principles are and how they attack simple fairness. Show the public what genuine obstructionists they are. Encourage the filibuster. Let the public see obstructionism in full flower and them let them put the nail in their own coffin. That's how you beat the filibuster, not by trying to get 60 votes to win but by creating a situation where 51 is enough. The Rev.Dr. Donna Schaper is Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church in New York City.
 
College Coaches' Salaries Among The Largest Top
College presidents aren't the only ones taking home big paychecks on some campuses. Many of the highest paid college officials are athletic coaches and medical school professors. A new study of 600 private colleges found that presidents accounted for only 11 of 88 employees earning $1 million or more and only 31 percent of those earning $500,000 or more. The survey was conducted by the Chronicle of Higher Education, a trade publication.
 
Presented By: Toronto Police Requesting Public's Assistance to Locate Missing Person, George Koutroubis, 36 Top
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Feb. 18, 2008) - The Toronto Police Service is requesting the public's assistance locating a missing man. George Koutroubis, 36, was last seen on Tuesday, February 17, 2009, at 7:30 a.m., in the Front Street West/Blue Jays Way area. However, recent reports claim he was last heard from via his cell phone while driving a black, 2008 BMW X5 with Ontario licence plate BCSS 209 in the Whitby area at 4:45 p.m., February 17, 2009. >> Read more Ads by Pheedo
 
Citigroup Nationalization: Talks Of 40% Gov Stake Causes Stock Rally Top
NEW YORK — Investors showed relief early Monday following a report that Citigroup Inc. is in talks for the U.S. government to boost its stake in the bank. Overseas markets rose on the report, and U.S. stock futures pointed to a higher open. Stocks tumbled last week as investors worried that the government would be forced to funnel more money to Citigroup and Bank of America Corp. and, in the process, completely wipe out shareholders. The Wall Street Journal reported late Sunday that Citi is negotiating to increase the U.S. government's stake to as much as 40 percent. The government, which has already invested $25 billion in the company, would convert its preferred shares to common shares; this would leave existing shareholders with some stake, albeit one that is diluted, the Journal reported. Investors have been anticipating that the overall number of shares would increase and therefore reduce the value of each share. But investors also seemed to welcome the report because it lessened uncertainty about the company. Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 51, or 0.69 percent, to 7,403. Standard & Poor's 500 index futures rose 4.80, or 0.62 percent, to 774.30, while Nasdaq 100 index futures rose 5.25, or 0.45 percent, to 1,177.00. Overseas, Britain's FTSE 100 rose 0.10 percent, Germany's DAX index rose 0.53 percent, and France's CAC-40 rose 0.98 percent. Japan's Nikkei stock average fell 0.54 percent. Bond prices fell as demand for the safety of government debt eased. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, rose to 2.84 percent from 2.79 percent late Friday. The yield on the three-month T-bill, considered one of the safest investments, rose to 0.28 percent from 0.26 percent Friday. The dollar was mixed against other major currencies, while gold prices fell. Light, sweet crude rose 53 cents to $40.56 per barrel in premarket trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Shares of Citigroup Inc. rose 5 percent in electronic trading. The stock ended Friday at $1.95. Bank of America shares rose 4.5 percent after closing Friday at $3.79. ___ On the Net: New York Stock Exchange: http://www.nyse.com Nasdaq Stock Market: http://www.nasdaq.com More on CitiGroup
 
Beau Friedlander: Air America Poll: 90% Want Bush Crimes Investigation Top
Air America conducted a poll that asked a question raised by Time Magazine's Joe Klein: "Should Obama pardon George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney?" The idea: a pardon would brand them for crimes without the agony of a trial. Air American's aren't buying the Klein solution. They want the whole lot thrown in jail. No trial necessary! A whopping 90% of our 9000 respondents want to see Bush and Company pay for their crimes with either hard time in the pokey or hard time in the pokey after enhanced interrogation techniques. (Shocking!) In an interview last year with Philadelphia Daily News reporter Will Bunch, Barack Obama said something that seemed to signal the presidential hopeful might prosecute George W. Bush and his staff for crimes committed during the eight-year death march also known as the 43rd presidency of the United States of America. It was one of the many moments that whipped up my own private Obama fervor. But did he say what I thought he said? Not really. "I would want to find out directly from my attorney general--having pursued, having looked at what's out there right now--are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies." That's as strong as it got. There was never any statement of positive intent regarding the prosecution of George W. Bush. Obama never ventured beyond the milquetoast, "We'll look into it." This is the equivalent of a disappointed soon-to-be ex-lover eliciting a "maybe" from a wholly disinterested wished for-former one. It's meaningless. Last go around we had Bushisms, those zany journeys into the what-the-f-isms of linguistic barbarism. This time around we learn another language lesson among many to come in what seems to be an emerging mode of communication in the Obama camp. Call it Obama-speak. The defining characteristic is an NPR-like far-sightedness, and long form intelligence. Our president has the uncanny ability to perform advanced political calculus on the fly and express the results of those many wondrous equations in simple, if somewhat involved, communications. A year ago people in the know saw a financial bump in the road. The mortgage crisis was apparent. And while no one in the mainstream media foresaw the immensity of the economic collapse that began last fall (lots of fringers make claims of clairvoyance), a clear-headed leader (yes, Obama) could at least see the clouds on the horizon and so we had the pleasure of listening to a man (Obama) who seemed to understand that over-promising anything at this juncture in history was ill-advised. It's one of the many reason's Obama prevailed in November. He had an appreciation of the profundity of our last error-prone (and possibly malfeasant) president, an idea of the mess that the Bush administration would be leaving behind, and a responsible vision for cleaning that very messy house. So what do we get? We don't know yet, because unlike George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, our president doesn't moonlight as over-promiser in chief. Whether or not caution of the variety being exercised in Obama's White House will win the day is an open question, and will remain so for quite some time. It's a boon of the tortoise approach--we have to wait. A boon to Obama. That is one of the advantages of Obama-speak. It slows things down to a sane pace. The issue we need to face now, more than anything else, is the economy. Can an investigation and a trial of Bush and his cronies help the economy? Perhaps in a small way. It would generate a few expert-class jobs inside the Beltway. Media companies would benefit because everyone would want to know the latest news. What else? It's hard to say how to place a value on the national conscience, but that is the issue here. What's at stake is finally our democracy. We need to investigate the Bush years for possible crimes because too many of us fear the worst from an administration that never gained our trust. The divide between bad policy or criminal acts dressed up like official declarations and government contracts is clear. The air is not. Joe Klein's question is valid, and clever to boot. There is enough to go on to green-light an investigation. Only criminals get hurt. We create a few taxable dollars by way of new jobs, and we set a whole array of fears to rest. (A recent USA Today/Gallup poll said more than 60% polled wanted their consciences eased regarding Bush-era crimes.) Indeed just looking at the Iraq quagmire with all its sweetheart contractors lining up at the Bush gravy train would make one wonder how there could be any hesitation. Pull a thread and the veil falls apart. It was always a see-through veil, etc... Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont has a petition to show Obama that an investigation of possible crimes committed by the Bush administration is the will of the nation. You can sign it here . More on Dick Cheney
 
Tallulah Morehead: Oscar Wild Top
Hello darlings. As my longtime readers and fans know, I have only contempt for the silly trinket known as The Oscar, which is why in a movie career that spanned the silents and the talkies, I have never been nominated for one. The Academy respected my contempt, and never nominated me, which is more than they did for George C. Scott or Marlon Brando. The Academy demonstrated their contempt for Scott & Brando by forcing Oscars on them against their wills, the poor dears. That's probably what killed them. The Oscars have grown into such a major event, the so-called "Gay Superbowl", that they are impossible to ignore. So what the swill? I might as well weigh in with my two Euros. There was a half hour delay getting started, because last year's Oscar show wasn't quite over yet. No Country For Old Men had become No Country For Even Older Men . Josh Brolin never had to leave his seat. And it started right out with a big disappointment: Huge Jackman was wearing clothes. Honestly, with openly-gay Bill Condon producing, and the Sexiest Man Alive hosting, the one thing I thought I could count on was Huge hosting in a tasteful, designer thong. They always promise to speed the show up, and they never actually manage it, but Huge hosting nude would at least have made it seem shorter. No such luck. Of course, Huge is Australian; maybe he was just disoriented from having to host upside down. Huge opened with a big, Billy Crystal-esque musical number, which benefitted from Huge being a real song-and-dance man who began in musicals. The song included jokes about no one seeing The Reader . That was refreshingly honest. Then, perhaps to counter that un-Oscarish honesty, Huge returned to traditional Oscar insincerity by telling Mickey Roarke ,"You look great." No he doesn't. Check a mirror, Huge. That is what "Looking Great" is all about. Once the tech crew figured out how to open the curtains, Condon and company unveiled their idea of slimming down the presentation: having five presenters for one Oscar! Now if you had five presenters presenting five Oscars all at once, in the words of Chico Marx, then-a you got somethin'! For another show-slimming tactic, over the evening they explained how to make movies to the members of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences . That's a good use of time. Could we just keep Tina Fey and Steve Martin, and send everyone else home? "Don't fall in love with me," said Martin. Sorry, Steve. You're 35 years too late. Openly-gay writer Dustin Lance Black won Best Original Screenplay for milking Milk . His real reward was escaping the Mormon Church, which has so kindly spent thousands of dollars this year to deprive him of his equal marital rights. Black's moving speech was almost drowned out by the sounds of televisions being switched off all over Utah and the deep south. The screenplay excerpt for the inexplicably over-nominated Curious Case of Benjamin Button included the stage direction: "There's an inept quiet" What is an "inept quiet"? How does it differ from a skillful quiet? How does a director show that a quiet is inept? By making it noisy? What we have here is an inept screenwriter. Fortunately, it lost to Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog Password . Presenting all the animation awards, Jack Black revealed that he saw nothing last year that he wasn't in. How coincidental. I saw nothing he was in. Daniel Craig came out and talked about something. I have no idea what. I was too busy swooning. Best Art Direction went to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button . Why? People who like this stupid film call it a "special movie." Yes, it's "special" in the same sense as the "Special Olympics". I don't think anyone has ever done a better job of Art Directing than Mike Nichols, back in Carnal Knowledge and Catch-22 , where he did a swell job of directing Art Garfunkle. You think he's easy to direct? You try it. I found it ironic that Daniel Craig was awarding Best Costumes, as he is the living embodiment of the irrelevancy of costumes, since he looks his best in no clothes at all. It went to The Duchess . How does a movie win an Oscar when no one saw it, not even the people who made it? Best Make Up went to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button . That makes sense, since they just made up a nonexistent premise for the film. It is a challenge to make Brad Pitt look creepy, but is it enough for an Oscar? Admittedly, Heath Ledger's Joker make up did look rather slapdash. It's a good thing they announced Twilight 's Robert Pattinson's name nice and loudly, as no one there would have had any idea who he was. The Academy is noticeably short on severely-overweight teenage girls. Ben Stiller and Natalie Portman made an interesting couple. Natalie is about the size of one of Ben Stiller's arms. Anthony Dod Mantle was lucky to win Best Cinematography for Slumdog Weakest Link , as he will never win Best Hairstyling. Honestly, if that hairstyle doesn't work on Russell Crowe, why would he think it would look good on him? Hell, that hair wouldn't look good on Anne Hathaway. But I liked him, as he was the one winner who was clearly drunk. How else to explain wearing cream shoes with a black tuxedo? Jessica Beal presented The Technical Oscars, so titled because they're only technically Oscars at all, really known as "The Boring Awards." Actually, you could hardly call it a presentation, as they only mentioned one winner - ONE! Apparently they are the "We don't really mean it" Oscars. So Condon's idea of speeding up The Oscars is to cut out the Oscars that are already cut out. Classy. To add more time to the show, which they must have feared was running short, they ran a "Comedy" montage made by Judd Apatow. If I wanted to watch Judd Apatow movies, I wouldn't be watching the Oscars. Or be able to write - or read. It was bizarre to watch James Franco watch himself making out with Sean Penn. But then, watching anyone make out with Sean Penn is a little strange. Frankly, Franco could do better. Huge Jackman stated, "You're probably wondering why I'm wearing this suit?" Damn right. 82 minutes in, and he was still fully dressed. He launched into a time-saving big musical number which was lots of fun, though I kept wondering who the babe in red he was performing with was. Only afterwards did they announce it was Beyonce Knowles. I'm supposed to just recognize her? I'm 111. That's why I didn't review The Grammys. I did recognize Zac Efron, but only because I'd seen Hairspray . They were now clearly going to use five past winners to present each acting award. Why? For Best Supporting Actor they had five presenters, but no winner. They were so desperate to fill out the five slots, that they settled for Cuba Gooding Jr., although the Academy has been hoping everyone would just forget that they ever gave him one. Last year's winner, the dreamy and divine Javier Bardem, didn't even bother showing up, though whether this was because he wouldn't lower himself to share a stage with Cuba, or just that his mom had a prior engagement wasn't made clear. It was amusing to have Cuba, a real black man but only a fake actor, announcing the nomination of Robert Downey Jr., a real actor, but only a fake black man. Christopher Walken, I adore you. You can make almost anything better just by showing up, but what was the deal with your hair? Is that your ear hair groomed? Heath Ledger won Best Supporting actor. I had Little Dougie type that sentence last week, to get an early start on this review. It was not, to put it mildly, any surprise. Heath's family's acceptance presentation was about as spontaneous as the musical numbers, though I was amused by the shots of the never-had-a-chance other nominees posing with serious and concerned fake expressions on their faces as they watched. You just know that each was thinking, "Heath's dead. This award could have helped my career!" The next big waste of time was a montage of documentary film makers blathering. Bill Mahar presented the documentary awards, a deep irony, since Mahar had made the most-non-fictional non-fiction movie of the year, which had not been nominated because it was too true, presenting the one fact people most want to hide from, the fact that there is no God. And Mahar's excellent documentary has already made more money than all the nominated documentaries combined. God forbid it should get nominated, and I mean that in the most literal sense possible. Let's face it, in this backward, superstitious nation, we'll have a black, female, gay president before we ever get an atheist president. Best Documentary Feature went to a movie about a tightrope-walker. Man on Wire . Yeah, some borderline-nutso circus wire walker is far more important that a film on how religious delusions will kill us all. I mean it didn't even go to the documentary made by Werner Herzog, an authentic cinematic genius. Then the silly wire-walker, Philippe Petit (" Petit " eh? So that's why he's overcompensating.) says he'll give "The shortest speech in Oscar History," which, at six words, was already longer than Alfred Hitchcock's five word speech, "Thank you very much indeed." so wire boy doesn't even know his Oscar history. And then he kept chattering anyway. And just to class up his exit, he attempted to fellate his Oscar. (Actually, it wasn't even his; it belongs to the film's makers, not its subject.) Time for yet another time waster, an "Action" montage. Then up pops Will Smith, who made it clear that he prefers brainless movies, ones that don't require him to listen or think. Will presented Best Visual Effects to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button . It had already won Best Make Up. The make up was its special effect. Just CGI-ing make ups onto other actors hardly compares to the actual effects work in the other two nominees, The Dark Knight and Ironman , both better movies as well. What Benjamin Button ought to have won was Best Inflation of a Stupid Idea Into a Bloated Movie that the Entire Industry All Seems to Be Afraid of Pointing Out Has No Substance. The Emperor's New Clothes Award. Four times we had five presenters handing out a single award. Now we had Will Smith, one presenter, handing out four awards. This makes no sense to me. The Dark Knight won Best Sound Editing. The makers of Dark Knight were relieved finally to have a living winner, although Heath Ledger's family were all set to accept the award. Indian sound engineer Resul Pookutty, in accepting his Oscar for Best Sound Mixing for Slumdog Match Game '73 , said "This is unbelievable," then adding "We can't believe this," in case any of us are unfamiliar with what "This is unbelievable" means. By the way, does anyone know the difference between sound editing and sound mixing? Is there a difference? Best Film editing was also won by Slumdog Family Feud , by an editor, Chris Dickens, who sadly, is not Charles Dickens. Before a commercial break they warned us about the upcoming Jerry Lewis tribute, so people with weak stomachs could switch over to The Amazing Race . The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award was given to Jerry Lewis for doing humanity the service of not directing one of his Godawful, unwatchable movies in over a quarter of a century. If Jean Hersholt had known that one day an award in his name would go to Jerry Lewis, he'd have been meaner. I know and understand that Jerry has over the years, raised millions and millions of dollars for the treatment of muscular dystrophy. This is an Absolute Good, regardless of whether he did it for the unselfish reasons he unselfishly reminds us of at any and all opportunities, or whether he does it so that people will think of him as being as saintly as he does, which is what I believe. They had Eddie Murphy present the award. This was smart. Eddie's Nutty Professor movies make Jerry's The Nutty Professor look almost like a good film, and thus having Eddie on stage made Jerry look better too. The film montage of Jerry's career referred to when "the world first came to love Jerry Lewis." That fictional event has yet to happen. 60 years ago, there were a lot of Jerry Lewis fans, but France isn't "The World." Little Dougie used to love Jerry intensely himself. But then he turned 6. Jerry has, without question, made a number of industry-revolutionizing technical innovations. And Jerry is actually a damn good dramatic actor. His work in The King of Comedy and Wiseguy was first-rate. And nobody does smarmy with less irony. Jerry's speech began with: "Thank you so very much. For most of my life I thought that doing good for someone didn't mean you would receive commendation for that act of kindness." Now that is a professional comedian. He opened with a joke. But his best line came later: "The humility I feel is staggering." Jerry is deeply impressed by his amazing humility. He is so humble, he's humbled by his humility. He's the humblest man since Uriah Heep. But perhaps Best Editing should have gone to Jerry, for he kept his speech blessedly brief. Thank you, Jerry. Best Original Score should have gone to Kate Winslet for The Reader , but it went instead to A. R. Rahman for Slumdog Deal or No Deal . Rahman ended his speech with "God is great." I expected Bill Mahar to pop his head in and say, "No he's not." They had a medley of the nominees for Best Song You Didn't Hear As You Left The Theater, which was mostly a fun big Bollywood production number. Notably absent was Peter Gabriel, who had previously withdrawn, stating, "If I can't bore them for the full four minutes, then I won't bore them at all!" Best (Foreign Language) Song - went to A. R. Rahman's Jai Ho , which I think is Indian for "J-Lo." In his speech this time, Rahman left us with this tidbit: "All my life I've had a choice of hate or love." Well that certainly distinguishes him from the rest of humanity. Why wasn't Waltz With Bashir nominated for Best Animated feature? It's a feature. It's animated. It got reviews that most films would kill for, and it was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. And if Waltz With Bashir can be considered alongside non-animated films as an equal, why must English language animated films be confined to an animation ghetto? Best Foreign Language Film went to the Japanese movie Departures . Set in a mortuary, it's about what happens to people after Godzilla steps on them. Queen Latifah sang the great song I'll Be Seeing You over the dead people montage. While everyone was relieved to see that I wasn't in the montage, the problem is that now, at the end of awards season, we've seen all these same dead people in montage after montage over the last two months, and frankly, it's getting old. No fresh faces. The only point of interest was hearing who the audience broke into applause for, and who it didn't. Folks getting applause: Cyd Charisse, Bernie Mac, Ollie Johnstone (A lovely man), Michael Crichton, Nina Foch, Pat Hingle, Harold Pinter, Abby Mann, Roy Scheider, Richard Widmark, Isaac Hayes, Ricardo Montalban, Paul Scofield, Stan Winstone, Ned Tannen, James Whitmore (A fresh face), Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack, and Paul Newman. (Who got cheers! I hope that meant they loved him.) Folks getting silence: Bud Stone, Van Johnson, Charles Joffe, Kon Ichikawa, Charles H. Schneer (Such a darling man, eulogized at length over on my flog, in The Man Who Doomed San Francisco ), David Watkin, Robert Mulligan, Evelyn Keyes, Maila Nurmi, Manny Farber (A film critic,
 
Raymond J. Learsy: Trust: The Reason Bank Nationalization is Essential Top
It has come to this. Our economy is in grave danger. Trust in many of our banks and lending institutions has evaporated. Without trust, without confidence that your counter party financing institutions can deliver or be trusted to execute the obligations they undertake, commerce as we know it will come to a standstill. If I may, let me give you an example from personal experience. Many years ago while still active in the trading of commodities and physical raw materials I sold a cargo of sulfur to Chile. Now sulfur is the building block for sulfuric acid, which in turn is essential to the production of chemical fertilizers as well as being a key ingredient in the production of explosives for mining operations (think Chilean copper and Chile's bountiful agricultural sector). The transaction was negotiated at a time when the Chilean economy was under enormous pressure. This was during the turbulent Allende presidency, a period during which its commercial relations with the West were sorely strained. In international commerce, transaction payments for the delivery of supplies are normally executed through letters of credit. The Chilean buyers were happy to oblige and offered to establish a letter of credit issued by Chile's largest bank, the O'Higgens Bank. At that time relations with the U.S. were such that the O'Higgens Bank was unable to find an American bank as counterparty to confirm its obligation to pay against our presentation of the title documents for the multimillion dollar cargo. It was made clear to the Chilean buyers that without a confirmation from a major banking institution outside Chile, we would not release the cargo. You see, we had no trust that the O'Higgens Bank of that time had either the means or capability to pay down the Chilean buyers' obligation as and when title documents for the cargo were delivered to them. There was no trust, and without trust in the banking institution as payee, the contract would not be executed. So what happened? The O'Higgens bank was able to to induce the Novrodny Bank of Moscow (I'm not making this up) to confirm the credit. Again, with the political hazards of that cold war moment, we declined the Novrodny Bank confirmation. They obviously needed the cargo badly, and the Novrodony bank thereupon arranged to have the credit confirmed by the Bank of Montreal, an institution well known and respected (our Canadian operations had a long standing relationship with them). Trust was established and the shipment went forward. Without the element of trust the deal would have been aborted. And there in a nutshell is what our financial sector is facing today. Trust has evaporated. No mater the billions upon billions of TARP funds that have flowed into these myriad zombie banks, funds used to prop up the banks and put their balance sheets into a better light (in the case of Citigroup and Bank of America alone, sums far exceeding their current market value). What has not been achieved is recapturing the trust of the business community, the governing class, nor the nation's citizenry. There is no transparency. Neither we, nor the government fully understand what the banks are doing with the funds showered upon them by the TARP agency. Most damaging is the almost universal lack of confidence in the competence and integrity of these tone-deaf managements who have clearly gotten us into this mess. With the mention of "nationalization," the howls of outrage coming out of what is left of Wall Street and their government allies are chilling. The projected pain of shareholder equity being wiped out is more than the bank nabobs had ever considered when plying the financial system and the nation with their toxic razzmatazz , taking us all over a cliff, all the while contemplating their shameful year-end bonuses which in retrospect give more the appearance of fraudulent transfers than earned income. For the government to keep on plowing billions into these banking institutions, without achieving transparency, without control over the sad sacks who got us into this mess is lunacy. Confidence would be restored to the banks almost overnight, to their obligations, their lending capabilities, if a broad nationalization of the zombie banks were to be mandated by the government. The system would function again and America could get back to business. More on Bank Of America
 

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