Last weeks of March - 23 March 2009

Here up top, The Naked Emperors: Asking simple questions about what our financial institutions were intended to be and what they have become now, and why getting pantsed by their own schemes should serve as a warning to the rest of us about unnecessasry complications. Additionally, avoiding biases that get in the way of our choosing the happy option, sometimes in favor fo the more profitable one.

Also, we ask whether ABC had some reality television show cancel on them that they're having four ministers debate the reality of Satan on television. They don’t even have the token scholar to be ripped into by all sides and ignored.

Internationally, the fight between the religious and the secular in Israel over whom should rule continues to make marks on the society, The lone survivor of the Mumbai attacks claimed he was from Pakistan and requested legal aid from there,

Afghanistan will continue, but with an exit strategy in place, hopefully putting some definition on what has largely been an undefined war, and much of that definition looks to be trying and seeing if the Iraq method is successful in Afghanistan - more troops, more material, more resources, hopefully resulting in more police that can take care of the country themselves.

Poland is still hoping that missile shield plans for them go through, as they still feel rather menaced by Russia nearby and think that they’ll get the bad end of some punitive reactions if the U.S. bails out on them.

Domestically, Alaskan volcano erupts five times. Yikes.

Looking into Freegans, those who have lots of living off of what everyone else throws away. This shows up lots when talking about the poor or depressed economic times when people are like “Must. Save. Money.” and is spun as such. There’s not very much in there about “Think about this. The developed world wastes sufficient product every day that several people can have perfectly healthy lives living off of it. What does that say about us?”

Infowars wants you to believe the government is targeting perfectly legitimate libertarians as terrorists, based on their beliefs that the government is ushering a new world order and that Barack Obama is the frontman for this freedom-destroying march and their associations with militia and survivalist groups that plan for or intend on causing the destruction of said government at some point. No reason at all for them to be looked at as potential terrorists at all, is there?

A bank bailout plan is unveiled, at the cost of another $1 trillion. The Public-Private investment program will purchase toxic assets, hold them, and then attempt to sell them at a profit when the economy rebounds as the banks get back to their gambling ways. There’s even a threat of takeover if the item is declared too big to fail and looks like it will. Wow. With all of that, it’s no wonder that while some of the GOP is saying that the administration is on the right track, the GOP in general is predicting that if all the spending maxes out, the country's going down in flames. So, the Treasury Secretary's plan, in more detail.

Perhaps as a result of that, the President was looking for some gallows humor to lighten the mood a bit, expressing optisism while recognizing that the economy could still be on the slide. His own personal finances are doing pretty well, though.

Whcih means it’s opinions time. The WSJ analyzes the deficits that are going to appear from all this massive spending, while also believing that if the government continues to beat on the financial sector with taxes and such, the financial sector will just collapse, and not just in America, to boot. Mr. Clements, one of those affected by the bailout bonuses, believes that once those affected receive their cash and their income moves up to the threshold, they will have no reason to work past that point. Which, depending on who you’re talking about, may be considered a blessing, exactly as intended. Ms. Garment suggests that populist angers is a genie in a bottle, who will wreak havoc because he cannot be put back in, and that the President failed in his duty to talk sense into the populist anger by stoking it and letting it run. Mr. Gerstein, of Politico, takes some blame for botching the story on the matter.

Mr. Taheri suggests that the Iranian fervor for nuclear energy is sparking an arms race in the Middle East.

Winning the coveted quiche for tonight is Mr. Armey, who declares Boss Limbaugh's failure statement to be correct, because every American should want Mr. Obama to fail and then fingers MoveOn.ogr as the primary reason why the Left got together and was able to get into Congress and the White House to try the grand socialist plot.

Although, considering what other prominent conservative voices are saying about secession, armed rebellion, wanting the president to fail, and other such things, suddenly Mr. Armey sounds within the standard deviation. Mr. Cline expounds more on how Republicans are just looking for a line of attack and not really caring about the populace.

In science, zoo enrichment programs for animals, such as playing with used beer kegs for exercise and play, whales letting birds to the work of gathering dinner before stealing it away, the human brain living on the edge of chaos, including a section that conceives of this thing that is thinking this thought, you know, the thing that doesn’t really exist and can get fooled by sophisticated enough software and hardware, a 100-kilowatt laser for the military, spotting a pink elephant, webcrawling to find and predict ecosystem collapses, designing robots that have nonverbal cues and will give off signals that humans are used to picking up on, and amping up iPhone 3 as being a game-changer for smartphones.

Last for tonight, they were not amused. Python Hold Hand Grenades spark bomb scare. And some things about time, just so you feel you haven't wasted yours. And the plant that plays an PFS.