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Put a cork in Corker

The Confluence - 11 min 57 sec ago

If you want a really example of politics as usual as well as something that is not in the interest of the public, this is it. Payday loans are loan sharks with out the kneecapping thugs.

Senator Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who is playing a crucial role in bipartisan negotiations over financial regulation, pressed to remove a provision from draft legislation that would have empowered federal authorities to crack down on payday lenders, people involved in the talks said. The industry is politically influential in his home state and a significant contributor to his campaigns, records show.

This is really bad.  If you have a congress critter sitting on Dodd’s committee, now is the time to write and scream.  Here’s information on from the Center for Responsible Lending on just exactly how bad this particular brand of predators can get.

Twenty or so years ago, some finance companies figured out how to make loans of a few hundred dollars to people who were barely getting by. That may sound generous, but when you look deeper, the practice they developed amounts to nothing more than legal loan sharking.

The problem for the borrowers—and the payoff for the lenders—is that the terms of these loans are cleverly designed to be very difficult to meet. The borrower must keep coming back and renewing their loan because they aren’t allowed to pay it down and can’t afford to pay it off. They pay the lender another chunk of interest each time, about $50 for a $300 loan. How the debt trap works

These loans carry annual interest rates of 400%, and the industry relies for 90 percent of their revenue on borrowers who repeatedly renew or re-open their payday loans. The typical borrower ends up paying about $500 in interest for a $300 loan, and still owes the principal.

Corker has already damaged the bill that should stop a repeat of the subprime lending crisis that triggered so much trouble back in 2007.    Dodd is going along with everything like the lobbyist he surely will become in a short amount of time.  We’ve already since the take down of the new consumer agency that was originally created by the bill.  The duties will now be given to the Fed.  This is something that Ben Bernanke originally opposed but later accepted under duress from Timothy Geithner.  The Fed is a conservative organization that is more reactive than proactive.  Under this new term, it is unlikely any one activate regulation for this set of loans.  This basically ghettos the poorest of the poor (mostly the unbanked who rely heavily on checking cashing places and pay day loans) into the least controlled instruments.  In other words, it’s going to take the most money and fees from those least able to pay for them.  It perpetuates the loan trap.  Most of the brick and mortar of the pay day loan industry is located in the poorest parts of cities where no bank will go any more.

Under the proposal agreed to by Mr. Dodd and Mr. Corker, the new consumer agency could write rules for nonbank financial companies like payday lenders. It could enforce such rules against nonbank mortgage companies, mainly loan originators or servicers, but it would have to petition a body of regulators for authority over payday lenders and other nonbank financial companies.
Consumer advocates said that writing rules without the inherent power to enforce them would leave the agency toothless.

The consumer groups that seek to protect borrowers from the worst of abuses appear to have given up on Dodd and his committee.  They’ve gone straight to the FED for help.  The hope is that Bernanke can convince the committee to give the FED broader powers than just ensuring compliance with the Truth in Lending Act.

Consumer groups, however, say that enforcement is crucial to curbing abusive, deceptive or unfair practices.
On Tuesday, while Mr. Dodd and Mr. Corker continued negotiating other provisions of the regulatory overhaul — notably, the extent to which state attorneys general would be able to enforce consumer protection rules against banks — the Federal Reserve’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, met with National People’s Action, an activist group that wants the Fed to restrict the banks it oversees from financing payday lenders.
Mr. Bernanke, who had met with the group twice before, is trying to fend off proposals in the Senate to strip the Fed of much of its power to supervise banks. A recommitment to protection consumers is part of that strategy

It is just unbelievable to me that the very people who nearly brought the economy to the knees by taking on unbelievable risks, securitizing them and then passing the trash to the market will still be able to carry on like nothing ever happened.  This is terrible news.  The only hope now is that Barney Frank will stop the senate from changing the tougher language originally introduced by the White House and put through by the House.

Filed under: Bad Bank Tagged: pay day loans, Predatory Lending

Categories: Our Friends

Sports: Chris Bosh Out For Season After Cutting Open Knee To See How It Works

The Onion - 42 min 15 sec ago

TORONTO—The Raptors medical staff announced Tuesday that Chris Bosh will miss the rest of the season after the inquisitive forward cut open his knee with a steak knife in an effort to look inside and see how the joint works.

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Universe Comes To Halt As Kid Flips Through First Shark Book

The Onion - 1 hour 1 min ago

SPRINGDALE, AR—The dynamic processes by which matter and energy function in the physical world ground to a halt Thursday night as 7-year-old...

Categories: Our Friends

Wine May Help Women Moderate Weight

The Onion - 1 hour 30 min ago

In a long-term study that surveyed the drinking habits of 20,000 women, those who consumed moderate amounts of alcohol were more likely to keep their...

Categories: Our Friends

No end in sight.

The Confluence - 3 hours 1 min ago

This is supposed to be the morning news post but I didn’t put any news in it because it’s all bad and I’m too fucking depressed to even skim the headlines right now.

You may have noticed that I haven’t been around here much the last week or so and the reason for that is I’ve been in a very dark and depressed mood and I needed a break. I think what triggered it was Joe Cannon’s announcement that he was closing his blog. In the big scheme of things somebody deciding they don’t want to blog anymore is not a major catastrophe but his announcement was the straw the broke the camel’s back.

I don’t know if I’m drinking too much or not enough but I’m still feeling pretty gloomy. The real reason for my emotional recession is partly due to all the bad news we’ve been getting steadily for years now. Pick a topic, it’s all bad, but some of it’s worse than others. We didn’t even get to enjoy the end of the Bush administration.

Another thing that has been bothering me is that I really wanted to be wrong about Obama but I wasn’t, and saying “I told you so” doesn’t make up for having my worst nightmares become true. If anything, he’s even worse than I feared.

But what really has me bummed out right now is the realization that there is no end in sight for the mess this country is in. The single biggest problem facing our nation is the illness in our political system. When I say “illness” I mean the equivalent of an inoperable cancer that has metastasized. If we fixed our political system then we would actually be able to do something about those other problems.

For most of my adult life I believed that the Democrats were the good guys so even when they were getting slapped around by the Republicans I could support them and hope that after the next election they would grow a pair and start standing up for the liberal ideals they campaigned on.

I finally realized that the majority of the Democrats who hold elected office are not only corrupt but they have the same agenda as the Republicans. Oh, the say they’re on our side, and when it’s time for them to represent us they might make some speeches andr play some parliamentary tricks but when the nitty meets the gritty they lose on purpose. Lots of times they don’t even bother to put on a dog and pony show anymore, they just vote to bail out Wall Street or take away our civil rights as if that’s what we wanted them to do.

Now as far back as I can remember the Republicans were corrupt and they tended to be pricks or assholes, and sometimes both, but they weren’t insane. Nowadays there’s a lot of GOPers that are crazy as shithouse rats. That not only includes the elected ones but the voters too. Then you got the tea baggers who don’t think the Republicans are crazy enough.

On the left side they’re getting just as bad, they’re just insane about different things. If you read both the left and right blogs on a regular basis you’d think think they inhabit completely different worlds. It’s almost like they don’t speak the same language.

Next fall we’re gonna have and election and right now it looks like the Republicans will gain seats in Congress, and maybe even get control of one or both houses. But no matter who wins, we lose. The same thing in November of 2012. – If either the Democrats or Republicans win, we’re screwed.

Sooner or later Obama will be out of office, but will whoever the Democrats nominate to replace him be any less corrupt?

When does this shit start to get better?

No news is good news so y’all have a nice day.

PS: If anybody fucking tells me to cheer up I’m sending a clown car to their house.

Filed under: General

Categories: Our Friends

[audio] 18-Year-Old Demands Right To Be Sexually Harrassed In Workplace

The Onion - Tue, 03/09/2010 - 8:00pm

Onion Radio News - with Doyle Redland

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Nation Shudders At Large Block Of Uninterrupted Text

The Onion - Tue, 03/09/2010 - 6:00pm

WASHINGTON—Without an illustration, chart, or embedded YouTube video to ease them in, millions of dumbfounded citizens from Maine to California were frozen in place, terrified by the sight of one long, unbroken string of English words unsure of what to do next.

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Pass the popcorn!

PUMA PAC - Tue, 03/09/2010 - 4:51pm

This from Drudge is just too damn funny. (h/t sistermoon)

SENATE WARNS EMPLOYEES TO AVOID THE DRUDGE REPORT
Tue Mar 09 2010 08:53:37 ET

Just as the healthcare drama in the capitol reaches a grand finale, congressional officials are warning employees to avoid the DRUDGE REPORT!

The Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works issued an urgent email late Monday claiming the DRUDGE REPORT is ‘responsible for the many viruses popping up throughout the Senate.’

The committee ordered hill staff: ‘Try to avoid’ the DRUDGE REPORT ‘for now’.

On Monday DRUDGE served over 29 million pages with NOT ONE email complaint received about ‘pop ups’, or the site serving ‘viruses’.

The site was seen 149,967 times since March 1st from users at senate.gov and 244,347 times at house.gov. [10,825 visits from the White House, eop.gov]

Developing… ”

BWAHAHAHAHA!

Riverdaughter had a good piece up about Erik Massa earlier today, and Bostonboomer has another. From Riverdaughter:

“Eric Massa is an extrovert.  He looks like he’s a bit of a loose cannon as well.  I kinda like that about him.  And his stories of life aboard ship are going to resonate well with a lot of working class guys who took a similar route in life.  Maybe Massa can shake things up a bit while he has some face time with the public.  What does he have to lose at this point in time?  His leadership has apparently made an international incident out of something that took place at a wedding reception when he behaved like dunken sailor and got carried away.  He regrets his behavior as unbecoming of a congressman, as well he should.  But if Massa were the standard for politicians, then Cheney should have been thrown out of office for telling a Senator to go fuck himself, Newt Gingrich would never be taken seriously again for getting blowjobs in his car from a staffer, and Jim Bunning would be publicly reprimanded for giving reporters the finger last week.  Let’s not pretend that Washington is a place where every day is a cotillion.  There are a lot worse sins than Massa’s and harrassment cases a lot more straightforward and unambiguous.”

and from Boston Boomer:

“Why are the powers that be so afraid of what newly retired New York Representative Eric Massa has to say about the treatment he has gotten from Rahm Emanuel? If Massa’s complaints are really so “ridiculous,” as the President’s press secretary Robert Gibbs said on Good Morning America today, why isn’t the White House simply ignoring him?”

Massa is going on Glenn Beck’s show in a few minutes. I will be watching live and blogging it. You can too, by posting your thoughts in comments.

Sing, Massa Sing!

Oh yeah, I forgot to remind you to have a cupcake today! Love those Sailor Boys!

Categories: Our Friends

“Unnamed Sources” Up the Ante on Massa Harrassment Accusations

The Confluence - Tue, 03/09/2010 - 3:58pm

Eric Massa

Why are the powers that be so afraid of what newly retired New York Representative Eric Massa has to say about the treatment he has gotten from Rahm Emanuel? If Massa’s complaints are really so “ridiculous,” as the President’s press secretary Robert Gibbs said on Good Morning America today, why isn’t the White House simply ignoring him?

Carol D. Leonnig of the Washington Post has a new story up about alleged ethical accusations against newly retired Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY). According to these anonymous sources,

Former Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) has been under investigation for allegations that he groped multiple male staffers working in his office, according to three sources familiar with the probe.

The allegations surrounding the former lawmaker date back at least a year, and involve “a pattern of behavior and physical harassment,” according to one source. The new claims of alleged groping contradict statements by Massa, who resigned his office on Monday after it became public that he was the subject of a House ethics committee investigation for possible harassment.

Leonnig also writes that two anonymous sources claim that the sexual harrassment complaints against Massa were reported to the House Ethics Committee by a former staffer.

Massa’s former deputy chief of staff Ron Hikel provided the information about the staffers’ allegations to the House ethics committee three weeks ago. Hikel had earlier sought advice from Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s office about brewing internal complaints, the sources said, and had been urged to report the allegations to the committee.

Hikel, reached at his home Tuesday, declined to comment on the ethics investigation.

According to this local WGRZ story, from March 5, Hikel claims to have been sexually harrassed by Massa.

An alleged harassment scandal involving the Southern Tier Congressman began four weeks ago.

That’s when a young male staffer in Massa’s office went to a senior member of the staff and said that Massa had been harassing him.

According to the Gannett’s Washington Burerau, that senior member was Massa’s former legislative director, Ronald S. Hikel, according to a source familiar with the investigation. Hikel is a military veteran and friend of Massa’s who was hired last year as the congressman’s expert on health care issues, the source said. His last day at work was Feb. 26.

2 On Your Side’s Erika Brason spoke to Hikel on the phone, but he would not confirm or deny any information.

I’ll continue to update this post with any new information I find.

Filed under: General Tagged: anonymous sources, Carol Leonnig, Eric Massa, Ronald Hikel, sexual harrassment, Washington Post

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In Focus: Study Finds Link Between Red Wine, Letting Mother Know What You Really Think

The Onion - Tue, 03/09/2010 - 12:12pm

CHICAGO—Subjects who drank five glasses or more showed an increased ability to recall each time their mothers had been unsupportive of boyfriends or husbands.

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Local CVS Selling One Leather Jacket For Some Reason

The Onion - Tue, 03/09/2010 - 11:56am

News In Photos

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Opinion: Do The New Tablets Own Up To The Hype? (by Beepo the Dolphin)

The Onion - Tue, 03/09/2010 - 11:00am

When tablet computers first reared their heads in the '90s, they were quickly written off as low-powered machines that were kind of neat, but not...

Categories: Our Friends

Wait. What?!?

PUMA PAC - Tue, 03/09/2010 - 10:17am

The Pope’s brother was the choirmaster at a church in Germany where choirboys were sexually abused? And now the Pope’s personal assistants are PIMPING OUT members of the Pope’s choir to men in Italy who want to pay for gay sex?

Is this an effing JOKE? If the hierarchy of the Catholic Church is a homosexual cult that routinely abuses children and young men or puts them in the path of those who will abuse or hurt them, well that’s bad enough.

But these blood sucking jackals DARE to impose their twisted and perverted lifestyle and beliefs on FREE American women? My daughters, nieces, and the daughters and nieces and granddaughters of all FREE Americans?

Godforsaken, out and out SCUMBAGS. Every damn one of them who doesn’t hang up his Roman collar in shame and spend the rest of his life serving Jesus’ poor and unwanted souls in every hell hole on this earth deserves to rot in their sado-masochistic, perverted Hell for all eternity.

Categories: Our Friends

Sports: Ball Movement Making Dirk Nowitzki Nauseous

The Onion - Tue, 03/09/2010 - 10:17am

DALLAS—During last Wednesday's game against the Phoenix Suns, Mavericks center Dirk Nowitzki reportedly told teammates that he "needed a sec" after a possession featuring quick-paced perimeter passing made him nauseous.

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Mytron The Fifth, Illuminati Ruler And Secret Overlord Of All Humanity, Dead At 112

The Onion - Tue, 03/09/2010 - 10:00am

2,000 MILES BENEATH BAVARIA, GERMANY—Mytron the Fifth, Illuminati ruler and secret mastermind of the entire human race since the year 8449...

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A Sailor’s Daughter Discusses “Salty Language”

The Confluence - Tue, 03/09/2010 - 10:00am

Crossing the line

Chris Bowers  headed to the fainting couch yesterday when Eric Massa violated his delicate sensibilities.  Massa recounted his days at sea and talked about the Crossing the Line ceremony for sailors who cross the equator for the first time.

My dad was one of those guys who crossed the line, having spent most of the Vietnam War at sea.  He was no typical squid.   He was a serious, family guy (or so we think).  He never swore.  When his ship was in port, we would sometimes go onboard and check the place out.  Those ships were labyrinthine places with lots of chutes and ladders that sailors would slide down on their elbows.   The food was pretty good, especially when my dad was in charge of the mess.  The sleeping quarters were tidy but cramped with narrow metal bunks  riveted onto the wall and stacked three bunks high.  Forget privacy.  People were coming and going at all times of the day and night as they finished their shifts and climbed into bed.  That’s where my dad lived for 8 months at a time while we lived in relative luxury at home.

Dad filmed a crossing the line ceremony once.  The film had that garish coloring of the home movie and was shot on a brilliantly sunny day somewhere in the Pacific.  What I remember of this hazing ritual was that the fattest sailor on the ship was dressed up like King Triton.  A bucket of something vile and disgusting was brought out and smeared on his belly.  The polliwogs were forced to crawl on their knees to the King and kiss his belly.  There were attendants to the king dressed up in drag with stringy blonde wigs.  My little sister and I were grossed out and fascinated at the same time.  Did our daddy have to do that too?  Ehh, by the time the film was shot, my dad was a veteran of such affairs.

We’re pretty sure that a shipful of males in the prime of their lives in the middle of nowhere on an endless sea communicate in a lot of salty language.  They must have gone nuts.  People are social animals.  They need family and friends and physical touch.  I can’t  imagine spending eight months at sea and never deliberately touching another human being.  I’m betting that my dad had some stories to tell, although I’ve heard that the really kinky sailors are on subs.  Even sailors like my dad were wary of them.   It’s different these days because life shipboard is not exclusively male.  Back when my dad was a sailor, it was the path for lower middle class guys to learn something and get ahead.  That’s probably why stories like Massa’s seem so foreign to the Chris Bowers and Josh Marshall’s of the world.  They can’t fathom what it’s like to be a poor working class guy stuck on s flat gray hunk of metal in the middle of the ocean months away from their wife and kids.

Eric Massa is an extrovert.  He looks like he’s a bit of a loose cannon as well.  I kinda like that about him.  And his stories of life aboard ship are going to resonate well with a lot of working class guys who took a similar route in life.  Maybe Massa can shake things up a bit while he has some face time with the public.  What does he have to lose at this point in time?  His leadership has apparently made an international incident out of something that took place at a wedding reception when he behaved like a drunken sailor and got carried away.  He regrets his behavior as unbecoming of a congressman, as well he should.  But if Massa were the standard for politicians, then Cheney should have been thrown out of office for telling a Senator to go fuck himself, Newt Gingrich would never be taken seriously again for getting blowjobs in his car from a staffer, and Jim Bunning would be publicly reprimanded for giving reporters the finger last week.  Let’s not pretend that Washington is a place where every day is a cotillion.  There are a lot worse sins than Massa’s and harrassment cases a lot more straightforward and unambiguous.

Bowers and Marshall reveal their revulsion of working class people when they get all fluttery over Massa’s life as a sailor.  But more than that, they reflexively smear a Democrat who challenges authority.  They get all nervous when a Democrat doesn’t conform.  They repeat the smears of Democratic leadership without reflection.  Does what Massa did rise to the level of impeachment?  Was it really harrassment?  Or is this a case of a guy who won’t stay in the lines and therefore must be punished? I really wish the A listers would stop and think about what they’re doing for a change.  Their initial reason for being was to stand outside the status quo.  Now, they are the status quo and carrying the water of the type of people they once railed against.

So, Eric Massa is going up to 11.  While I don’t particularly care for Glenn Beck, no publicity at this point is bad publicity.  Eric has nothing to lose.  Go for it, Eric.  Give’em hell.

And Chris Bowers can go frak himself.

Filed under: Blogosphere Tagged: Chris Bowers, Crossing the line, Eric Massa, Josh Marshall, King Triton, Life aboard ship, Navy, squids

Categories: Our Friends

Global Warming Skeptics Growing In Numbers

The Onion - Tue, 03/09/2010 - 9:00am

Since 2008, the number of people who don't believe in global warming has doubled to 16 percent. What do you think?

Categories: Our Friends

Tuesday Morning Coffee and Links

The Confluence - Tue, 03/09/2010 - 5:05am

Morning Conflucians!!!

It’s hard to find NEW news these days especially when it comes to the economy and politics.  We seem to be getting an incredible number of heavy pieces on Obama advisers right now.  The two that are getting undue attention are the controversial Rahm Emanuel and the even more controversial Timothy Geithner.  A New Yorker piece on Geithner has elicited a number of responses from the finance and economics blogosphere.  I like Simon Johnson’s take on Baseline Scenario which has a series of points questioning most of the spin spun by the New Yorker.  Especially germane are points 1 and 2 and 3.  You can go check the rest out for yourself.

1. Mr. Geithner is quoted as saying, “Some on the left have fallen into a trap set by the Republicans, allowing voters to mistakenly think that the biggest part of the bank bailout had come under Obama rather Bush.”  Mr. Geithner should know – as he spearheaded the saving of banks and other financial institutions under both Bush and Obama.  In fact, it’s the continuation of George Bush’s policies by other means that really has erstwhile Obama supporters upset.
2. “I think there are some in the Democratic Party that think Tim and Larry are too conservative for them and that the President is too receptive to our advice.”  Probably this is linked to the fact that Tim Geithner is not a Democrat.
3. Geithner also suggests that his critics compare government spending on different kinds of programs under President Obama: “By any measure, the Main Street stuff dwarfs the Wall Street stuff.”  This insults our intelligence.  Wall Street created a massive crisis and we consequently lost 8 million jobs; any responsible government would have tried hard to offset this level of damage with all available means.  This includes fiscal measures that will end up increasing out privately held government debt, as a percent of GDP, by around 40 percentage points.  It’s not the fiscal stimulus, broadly defined, that is Mr. Geithner’s problem – it’s the lack of accountability for the bankers and politicians who got us into this mess.

If you’d rather fixate on Rahm, the magazine at the New York Times has a preview up of “The Limits of Rahmism.”

The stupid season has arrived for Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel, the unlikely tandem of inspirational leader and legislative mechanic that was supposed to enact the most expansive domestic program since the Great Society. After the debacle in Massachusetts that cost Democrats their supermajority in the Senate, Washington has engaged in a favorite exercise, conducting the autopsy before the body is actually dead. How had it come to this? How did the president’s legislative drive drag on for so long that the surprise loss of a Senate seat could unravel it? Did Obama make a mistake by disregarding his top adviser’s counsel? Or was it Emanuel who failed to execute the president’s strategy? Was it both, or perhaps neither?

Are we coming to praise these two or to bury them?  Who had Rahm in the Dakini’s office pool?

You can always check out this week’s Time Magazine if you’d rather focus on the top banana of our banana republic-in-a-becoming-state. Mark Halperin has this banner headline: “How Obama Is Making the Same Mistakes as Bush”.

Who would have thought that one of Barack Obama’s biggest missteps as President would be repeating some of the bad habits of George W. Bush? No single factor was more instrumental in Obama’s 2008 victory than his pledge to completely reverse the nation’s course once in the White House. Instead, over the past year, Obama has mimicked some of Bush’s most egregious blunders, leading to much of the political predicament in which the present decider finds himself today.

Should we all raise our hands together and shout “We thought so! YES, we DID!”

Speaking of extinction, they’ve finally decided that it was a giant meteor that did in the dinosaurs.  This is now the prevailing theory and a huge group of researchers has come out pronouncing we have moved from hypothesis to theory in this issue of Science.  Science is basically the holy grail of all scientific publications.  The news was released today.  The hypothesis was first put forward in 1980 so it took a long time to grow up to be the generally accepted truth.

In 1980, Louis Alvarez and his son Walter published a paper blaming the dinosaur extinction 65 million years ago on an asteroid impact. The probable crater was later found at Chicxulub, Mexico, and the idea gained wide scientific acceptance. In the past few years, however, suggestions were made that the demise of the dinosaurs might have been caused by the eruption of volcanoes, known as the Deccan Traps, in India, or multiple asteroid impacts. That prompted 41 geologists, paleontologists and other researchers to come together to review the data.

Are Bonobos more likely to join the Republican or tea party or be Marxist?.  They share things like food and prefer to dine together instead alone.  Imagine that! Who says we’re more evolved than our hairier cousins? In an experiment, bonobos with food are given a choice.

One of these rooms was empty while the other contained another bonobo.

Scientists want to find out what drives this behaviour

The hungry primate could then choose to eat the food alone or unlock the door by removing a wooden peg and share his fare with the other bonobo.

Dr Hare wrote in Current Biology: “We found that the test subjects preferred to voluntarily open the recipient’s door to allow them to share the highly desirable food that they could have easily eaten alone.”

They now hope to uncover why the bonobos seem to prefer to share their food.

Dr Hare said it could be purely altruistic, or more selfish motives could drive this behaviour because sharing could be exchanged for future favours.

So, do you think they’re all Marxist or just doing a little of that trickle down so they can ask for a bigger payment later?  Unfortunately, the article from the BBC didn’t specify the bonobo sex.  I’m assuming that the male ones just offered the dinner and a drink to, well, you know the story ….

Have a great day!!!  Let us know what’s on your reading list this morning!
Filed under: morning news, Morning News edition

Categories: Our Friends

Vatican Prostitution Ring Exposed

The Confluence - Mon, 03/08/2010 - 9:43pm

Hypocrisy Personified

In the midst of the recent revelations of massive abuse of children by Catholic clergy in Ireland and Germany, I guess it really shouldn’t be that shocking to learn of a homosexual prostitution ring being run right out of the Vatican. This latest sex scandal in the Church was revealed through wiretaps being used by Italian police in an unrelated corruption investigation. CBS News reports:

The Vatican is facing allegations that one of Pope Benedict’s ceremonial ushers, as well as a member of the Vatican choir, were involved in a gay prostitution ring.

The police wiretaps:

…reveal Angelo Balducci, an Italian executive who’s been a Gentleman of his Holiness — the elite group of black-suited men who serve the pope in unpaid roles as ushers — negotiating with the 29-year-olf Nigerian Vatican choir member for the services of male prostitutes, as part of the larger prostitution ring.

A little more from the Examiner:

Apparently the tapes record Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness, negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Nigerian Vatican chorister, about men he wanted brought to him for sexual purposes.

Meanwhile, Catholics in Germany are the latest to discover that priests whom they trusted have actually been violating their children for decades. From the BBC:

Germany’s justice minister has criticised the Vatican for what she called a “wall of silence” over recently-emerged abuse allegations.

Allegations of sexual abuse are being investigated in 18 of Germany’s 27 Roman Catholic dioceses.

Former students from a number of Catholic schools have alleged sexual abuse by teachers.

Ms Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger referred to a Vatican rule dating to 2001 that requires abuse cases to be investigated internally.

The most recent revelations involve a choir led for many years by the Reverend Georg Ratzinger, the current Pope’s brother. Colm O’Gorman, an Irish survivor of clergy sexual abuse, writes in Tuesday’s Independent UK:

Revelations that Pope Benedict’s brother may be called upon to testify in a church abuse scandal raise valid questions about how much the current Pope knew about the allegations. A more revealing line of inquiry would be to examine the extent of the pontiff’s knowledge of the global clerical sexual abuse scandals.

Before he became Pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In this powerful position he was in charge of managing cases of priests who abused children in any Catholic diocese across the world.

O’Gorman’s article concludes:

Even today, after all that has been exposed by those of us who have spoken out about our experiences of brutalisation, the Vatican refuses to act to properly protect children. As new scandals erupt in Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain, Brazil and Nigeria, the Pope has failed to put in place and enforce mandatory child protection policy across his church. I asked a senior church figure why this was the case. I was told that to put in place global policy underpinned by church law would admit that the Vatican had the responsibility and the power to do so, and expose it to lawsuits and potentially massive financial losses. So there you have it. It would appear the Vatican values its money and its position more than the safety of children.

Why are President Obama and Democrats in Congress giving men like this any influence over the health care reform bill? From Politico last week:

The Roman Catholic bishops signaled Thursday that if agreement is reached with House leaders on anti-abortion language, the church would work to get the votes needed to protect the provisions in the Senate — and thereby advance the shared goal with Democrats of health care reform.

“We would strongly urge everyone, Democratic and Republican, to vote to waive the point of order,” Richard Doerflinger, an associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told POLITICO. “Whether it would be enough to get to 60 votes, I can’t predict. We would certainly try.”

And why are these men allowed to lecture the rest of us on the morality of abortion and gay marriage? I think it’s high time for these “gentlemen” to go clean up their own ugly messes before they meddle any further in our governmental affairs.

Filed under: General Tagged: Angelo Balducci, child abuse, Colm O'Gorman, germany, ireland, Italy, pedophilia, Pope Benedict, Sex Scandals, Vatican

Categories: Our Friends

[video] Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere

The Onion - Mon, 03/08/2010 - 6:00pm

Excruciating up-to-the-minute coverage of some irrelevant bullshit story that has no ramifications whatsoever.

Categories: Our Friends