Veronica Mars and topical news

I took today off work. For the past few years taking a day off meant taking care of personal business or seeing the doctor. Nope, I just took the day off. I went out to the movies and saw "Veronica Mars" and then had dinner with friends. My dear friends don't get a lot of time out, they spend a lot of time taking care of others and while they have an interest in world affairs, they really don't have the time follow it the way I do.

A few people that know me in the real world have told me that I write just like I talk. I guess that could be good or bad. When we go out the subject matters usually have a little personal information (obviously I showed them pictures of my grandchild and talked about how she was doing) and news of the day. Because they don't have time to read the blog or much else, often I sort of go over things that I have recently written about. We talked about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Malaysian flight that disappeared, I haven't written about that and may tonight, we shall see.

The great thing about having these conversations is that I get feedback and questioned. My friends are fairly traditional conservatives with spiritual beliefs and old school family type people. To those who don't personally know me I have to explain something, while my thinking may be different and my views all over the place, I live the most conservative and quiet lifestyle and attempt to avoid conflict in my personal life. The Pimpernel is quite boring and prefers to listen to music, read and write. I am also very tolerant about other people's lifestyles, my friends span the gammit. I am not very social, as a rule, and prefer to be around people I already know well. The people I work with and know through business often assume that I am very social, some have said they thought I was a ladies man of some sort and I don't even date. Only my closest friends know how personal I really am. Even on this blog you really only see a very small part of who I am because I rarely discuss how I feel and try to keep to issues that I am pondering. It is partly magic, the closer you look, the less you see and the best part of magic is not the trick; but, the show.

At dinner, my friends and I discussed what the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac thing was really about. I brought up the articles and issues in the same order that I recently wrote about them. As I dripped bits of information, one of my friends followed the line of thought I expected from someone with conservative views to the tee. Because of the progression of the articles being explained as we talked, the point could be made and the biases could be looked past. That is the key to how the media works, The first article is released and our response is judged, then the second balloon is floated and again our biases are monitored. By the time the story gets to it's next phase, you stop listening to the questions and only hear your biases.

Now, to Veronica Mars. My daughter was a fan of the show; but, as she just had the baby could not go to the opening today. I never watched the show until I read about the Kickstarter campaign. I decided that if over 91,000 people would donate $5.7 million to have a movie made, I should find out why. I watched the series on the computer and it was good enough. I thought the writing was snappy and the acting showed a true connection between the actors. I did not believe that you could make a movie with the production values needed for the amount of money being spent; but, it turned out the actors worked way below what they could have gotten.

I liked the movie. I thought they gave the audience their moneys worth. I will not give any specifics about the plot; but, it worked. I love film and would have enjoyed film making; but, I had a different career that I was committed to. I am always disappointed when someone takes over $100 million and makes a piece of garbage with no heart, I think about how much more they could have done with that money making a worthwhile film. This was a very worthwhile film. Now, to the news.

The Guardian - Feinstein accuses CIA of 'intimidating' Senate staff over torture report. The press has either been talking about how she shouldn't care because she thinks it is okay for everyone else to be monitored and others in the press are talking about how "Obama" is monitoring politicians to influence their decisions. Neither is the real point of the story. The fact of the matter is that all people that are given certain information are monitored, we monitor anyone with access to secrets and Fienstein knows that, she is faking outrage. The real thing to watch for is her solution to the "problem".

The Guardian - Dianne Feinstein statement on CIA torture report 'cover-up' – full text. Now, I want you to read the actual text of what she said and it shows some interesting things. Firstly, she is the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, do you really believe she didn't know that the congress was also monitored. EVERYONE with top secret clearance can be monitored at any time.

Yahoo - How the jobless deal could cut your pension. Everything that this writer says is garbage and I will pick some of them. Firstly, he talks about how congress is going to restore benefits for people who were long term unemployed. Further down the article he states that this will give people about $300 a month. LOL. Welfare pays more and general relief pays about the exact same amount. The difference between putting people on general relief (what long term unemployed and people who never worked) get is the same cost; but, by showing them as unemployed, it changes the employment numbers.

What is really disturbing is that congress is using this promise of paying "unemployment benefits" to justify allowing companies to not fund their pensions. There is no connection between private pensions and unemployment benefits at all. This is about stealing from any retirement that they can. They have been working on this for years and will continue down this path.

Huffington Post - Reuters - FDIC Sues 16 Big Banks For Rigging LIBOR Rates. Taxpayers, pensioners, governments and just about everyone else has lost more because the big banks conspired to fix markets than they pay for benefits for citizens. Think about that.

Yahoo - Investors Business Daily - Fannie Mae Foreclosure Perks Go To Residents, Not Investors. Another article with a writer completely ignorant of what is going on or a complete shill. Lets start with this little bit, it talks about "owner occupants" and "residents", what do you think that means? I can assure you that there are very few renters in foreclosed upon properties, these are the people who used to own the homes and got foreclosed upon but still live in them and that is why they were not called renters in the article.

The "investors" that are being taken advantage of, they are not investors in Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, they are potential buyers of the properties, speculators. The same people who helped create the housing bubble. The real issue is that once this program is in place, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will see a windfall in profits for the taxpayer and the banks don't want to see that, they want to buy up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from the government at a low price before they become really profitable.

Bloomberg - Fannie Mae Liquidation Seen Sparing Preferred Holders. I like the lies in this article because just about nobody is going to get it. Lets start with this, the article says, common share values (the shares the government holds; but, it doesn't tell you that) dropped in value when it came out that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would turn a profit for taxpayers and Preferred Stock has had a five fold increase in value even though their payouts should not increase more than the payouts for common shares (please read the previous few posts if you don't understand this - common shares get the increased profits and preferred shares get what they were promised).

Basically, members of congress want to sell Fannie and Freddie Mac to the large banks, the same ones that have rigged all the markets. If you continue down the article it becomes very clear that the plan, now that these two companies are making big profits, is to sell them off cheap and the supposed benefit is that taxpayers will be responsible for any losses these companies have that are greater than 10%. If the government sells the stock to private investors, why should we keep the liabilities?

Here is a quote from the article, "Any wind down of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would have to address whether the companies’ values -- from the loans and bonds on their balance sheets to income from their existing guarantees on about $4 trillion of securities -- is split up among several stakeholders or left for taxpayers." I don't know who wrote the article; but, they should know that it is not okay to have one sentence paragraphs. The lie within their statement is that there is a question over how the profits of the sale are to be split, there is no question, all profits in the sale of common stock goes to the Federal government, to taxpayers as it should.

The article also makes this statement, "The Corker-Warner bill called for the proceeds from unwinding of the companies’ estates once their replacement was established to be first used to pay down the government’s investment and then their preferred shares. Anything left would go to holders of their common stock." So, this bill, intended legislation, requires that the government be paid back it's "investment" and then pay the preferred shares giving the profit to the common shares. Huh? But the government is holding the common shares, so how does this plan change anything? Oh, it is the purchasers of the common shares that get all the profit, the people who buy the shares from the government. That is some tricky propaganda their kids.