And after this week, I could use a little dopery.

Nothing needs to be added. You are complete, as whichever God or not-God made you.


Actually, I figure this thread hasn't a prayer....pagan that I am. It's a scandal in the family. Funny, ain't much of that family left....

Once upon a time, there was only one Pope at a time....but then there was a schism: a split or division between strongly opposed sections or parties, caused by differences in opinion or belief. And so the One True Church, as it liked to call itself, divided itself and the known world into two: The Romans, and the Orthodox.

The East–West Schism is the break of communion between what are now the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, and which began in the 11th century. There had long been ecclesiastical differences and theological disputes between the Greek East and Latin West. Prominent among these were the issues of the source of the Holy Spirit ("Filioque&quot , whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used in the Eucharist, the Pope's claim to universal jurisdiction, and the place of Constantinople in relation to the Pentarchy. (For administrative purposes, the church was divided into 5 districts).

In 1053, the first step was taken in the process which led to formal schism. Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Cerularius ordered the closure of all Latin churches in Constantinople, in response to the Greek churches in southern Italy having been forced to either close or conform to Latin practices. According to the historian John Bagnell Bury, Cerularius' purpose in closing the Latin churches was "to cut short any attempt at conciliation".

In 1054, the Papal legate traveled to Constantinople for purposes that included refusing to Cerularius the title of "Ecumenical Patriarch" and insisting that he recognize Rome's claim to be the head and mother of the churches. The main purpose of the papal legation was to seek help from the Byzantine Emperor in view of the Norman conquest of southern Italy and to deal with recent attacks by Leo of Ohrid against the use of unleavened bread and other Western customs, attacks that had the support of Cerularius; Axel Bayer says the legation was sent in response to two letters, one from the (Holy Roman) Emperor seeking assistance in arranging a common military campaign by the eastern and western empires against the Normans, and the other from Cerularius. On the refusal of Cerularius to accept the demand, the leader of the legation, Cardinal Humbert, excommunicated him, and in return Cerularius excommunicated Cardinal Humbert and the other legates. This was only the first act in a centuries-long process that eventually became a complete schism.

The validity of the Western legates' act is doubtful, since Pope Leo had died and Cerularius' excommunication applied only to the legates personally. Still, the Church split along doctrinal, theological, linguistic, political, and geographical lines, and the fundamental breach has never been healed, with each side sometimes accusing the other of having fallen into heresy and of having initiated the division. The Crusades, the Massacre of the Latins in 1182, the West's retaliation in the Sacking of Thessalonica in 1185, the capture and sack of Constantinople in 1204, and the imposition of Latin patriarchs made reconciliation more difficult. Establishing Latin hierarchies in the Crusader states meant that there were two rival claimants to each of the patriarchal sees of Antioch, Constantinople, and Jerusalem, making the existence of schism clear.

The Second Council of Lyon in 1274 and the Council of Florence in 1439 attempted to reunite the two churches. Despite acceptance by the participating eastern delegations, no effective reconciliation was realized, since the Orthodox believe that the acts of councils must be ratified by the wider Church and the acts of these councils never attained widespread acceptance among Orthodox churches. In 1484, 31 years after the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, a Synod of Constantinople repudiated the Union of Florence, officially stating the position that had already been taken by Orthodox in general.

In 1965, Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Athenagoras I nullified the anathemas of 1054, although this nullification of measures taken against a few individuals was essentially a goodwill gesture and did not constitute any sort of reunion. Contacts between the two sides continue: every year a delegation from each joins in the other's celebration of its patronal feast, Saints Peter and Paul (29 June) for Rome and Saint Andrew (30 November) for Constantinople, and there have been a number of visits by the head of each to the other. The efforts of the Ecumenical Patriarchs towards reconciliation with the Catholic Church have often been the target of sharp criticism from some fellow Orthodox.

The Orthodox Church took everybody East and South of Constantinople: Asia Minor, Africa, Near and Far East. The Romans took Europe...with some uneasy divisions between the Slavs. Some like the Poles went with Rome. Others, like the Russians, followed Byzantium.

But that wasn't enough! The two parts underwent more formal separations of each church into several, owing to doctrinal and other differences. Sometimes, a national or regional Orthodox church was granted autocephaly: allowed to be in charge of itself, due to the difficulty of administration over long distances or language barriers. Sometimes, it just did it for itself.

Rome enforced a common language: Latin; and developed papal courier systems to keep all the various parts in good communication and compliance. Frequently, the Pope would request (more or less nicely) that a monarch lend troops to the cause of unity....like the Crusades.

but fortunately, he was usually willing to settle for Europe...and then the New World opened up new conquests!

WHAT A COINCIDENCE! IT'S A MIRACLE!

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stock-futures-rise-ahead-of-jobs-data-that-could-usher-in-a-rate-increase-2015-10-02

The Dow and S&P 500 saw their sharpest reversal in four years on Friday, turning sharp opening losses into sizable gains by the end of the session, as investors shrugged off a surprisingly weak jobs report. (459 POINT SWING--LOTS OF VOLATILITY/MANIPULATION)

• Friday’s rally helped the main indexes end a volatile week on a positive note. The S&P 500 SPX, +1.43% closed 27.54 points, or 1.4%, higher at 1,951.36 and recorded a 1% gain over the week as nine of its 10 main sectors closed higher. Energy and materials stocks surged, tracking rising oil prices.
  
  
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.23% gained 200.36 points, or 1.2%, to 16,472.37 and was 1% higher for the week. The blue-chip index traded in a 459-point range on Friday, turning a 259-point drop into a 200-point gain, marking the biggest swing in the blue-chips benchmark since Oct. 4, 2011.
  
  
• Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite COMP, +1.74% advanced 80.69 points, or 1.7%, to 4,707.78 and ended with a 0.5% weekly gain. Friday’s gains on Nasdaq were driven by a jump in biotechnology stocks. The iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF IBB, +3.47% spiked 3.5%.

Setting the stage for the day’s early selloff was the closely watched jobs report, which showed that the U.S. economy added 142,000 jobs last month, far less than the expected 200,000. Gains in the previous two months were cut, suggesting the pace of hiring slowed over the past few months. The unemployment rate remained at 5.1% and wage growth was flat. Investors initially fled risky assets, such as equities and piled into Treasurys and gold, however, both those assets retreated from highs as stocks rebounded. ALL BY THEMSELVES, UH-HUH, RIGHT....

“The initial knee-jerk reaction when stocks tumbled was understandable given how weak the jobs report was. What markets really wanted was a goldilocks economy, growing steadily but not too fast. A slowdown like this was not priced in,” said David O’Malley, CEO of Penn Mutual Asset Management.

The jobs report, seen as the closest proxy for the health of the U.S. economy, comes at a time when financial markets have been reeling on heightened worries about global economic growth, led by China.

“A rebound may be due to realization that the Fed is not going to raise rates this year, but it’s not that significant as markets are stuck in a trading range,” O’Malley said.

Market participants are now pricing in only a 30% chance for a rate increase in December, according to Fed-funds futures. Meanwhile, economists said the Federal Reserve is now unlikely to raise interest rates year. Before the report, there had been speculation that a move could come later this month or in December.

“The jobs reports was absolutely horrible, but consistent with manufacturing data, especially regional reports that are in contraction territory,” said Edward Shill, chief investment officer at QCI Asset Management.

“We expect no rate hikes this year and probably even more quantitative easing by the Fed,” Shill said.

The weak economic tone was echoed by orders for goods produced in U.S. factories, which fell a steeper-than-expected 1.7% in August. Meanwhile a number of Fed officials continued to defend the possibility of a rate increase in 2015. Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren, speaking ahead of the jobs data, said a rate increase in 2015 was a “reasonable forecast.” On Thursday, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President John Williams said the central bank could raise interest rates as soon as October, should economic data continue to improve. He said the Fed’s September decision had been a “very close call.”

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/02/4-ways-to-trade-the-big-jobs-miss.html



After a disappointing U.S. jobs number Friday, "Fast Money" traders chose assets that could rally if the Federal Reserve stays put on interest rates for the foreseeable future.

The U.S. economy added 142,000 jobs in September, far fewer than economists had expected. The number reduced market expectations that the Fed would move off of near-zero interest rates this year. In that environment, traders Steve Grasso and Dan Nathan looked to utilities stocks, which they perceived as defensive plays with little exposure outside of the United States. The Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund, for instance, rose more than 1 percent on Friday. "Utilities work on both sides of the argument" on the Fed raising interest rates, Grasso said.

With a rate hike possibly delayed, trader Tim Seymour believes rate-sensitive financial stocks could fall to appealing entry points. He said they make a "great opportunity" if weakness on Fed uncertainty continues.


SOMEHOW, THAT LOOKS LIKE ONLY 3 WAYS--UNLESS GIVING OUT ADVICE IS THE 4TH
Trader Guy Adami, meanwhile, would look to profit from gold. The dollar could fall if the Fed does not raise rates, which gives gold prices a good chance of rising, he contended. He pointed to the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF, which rose 8 percent on Friday.

Passing on a fortune isn’t as easy as it seems...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-01/how-the-superwealthy-plan-to-make-sure-their-kids-stay-superwealthy

The first clue that this is no ordinary crowd of sulky teenagers comes when the instructor asks those who’ve invested in the market to raise their hands. Most hands go up. As a financial planner explains the benefits of investing, one boy interrupts. “What do you suggest investing in right now?” asks Liam Whitfield, 18, a senior at a private Seattle high school, with swooping bangs and a shaggy sweater. The speaker, from a local investment firm, suggests a standard mix of 60 percent stocks and 40 percent bonds. Whitfield looks disappointed. He already owns shares of Apple, Facebook, and Starbucks. “I was kind of looking for an actual stock tip,” he says.

It’s a Saturday morning in March, and Whitfield is sitting with two dozen teens in an antiseptic meeting room for a lesson on money management arranged by their well-to-do parents. The lecturers have broken the ice with a Saturday Night Live ad for a book of financial advice called Don’t Buy Stuff You Cannot Afford. (It’s one page long.) They show photos of cars that go from humble to glamorous and ask the kids to pick one—but only after calculating how long it would take to afford by saving $2,000 a year. An instructor praises a girl who chooses a Volkswagen Jetta over a $90,000 Range Rover. “You followed all the rules—it’s exciting, guys, right?” says John Gage, a 6-foot-9-inch recent Stanford graduate who roams the front of the room. Gage works for Cornerstone Advisors, a wealth management firm in Bellevue, Wash., that’s hosting the class for children of clients and prospects. During an exercise in monthly budgeting drawn from real-life salaries, someone notes how difficult it can be. “Especially if you’re a teacher,” one kid cracks.

This is the most gilded age since the Gilded Age, with 5 percent of American households controlling 63 percent of the country’s wealth. Decades of stagnant income growth for the middle class contrasts with family dynasties such as the Waltons of Wal-Mart, wealthier than the poorest 40 percent of households combined. Some $59 trillion—the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in U.S. history—will flow down from estates through 2061, according to Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy.

None of that’s made the rich any less anxious, at least when it comes to keeping their money. The number of family offices for the ultrawealthy has doubled since 1998, branching into areas far beyond portfolio and tax planning. The advisory firms reach deep into their clients’ family lives, aiming to prevent squabbles among heirs and head off early signs of wastrelism. Some teach classes like this one near Seattle or organize family retreats. Others use board games and flashcards to drill sound money concepts into children as young as 5. One firm, Ascent Private Capital Management, employs an historian and two psychologists to help clients put their fortunes and family dynamics into perspective. “We didn’t just want to help clients manage wealth, we wanted to help clients manage the impact of wealth,” says Michael Cole, the firm’s president...

POOR BABIES! TIME FOR A REALITY CHECK

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-hypocrisy-of-helping-the-poor.html

EVERY so often, you hear grotesquely wealthy American chief executives announce in sanctimonious tones the intention to use their accumulated hundreds of millions, or billions, “to lift people out of poverty.” Sometimes they are referring to Africans, but sometimes they are referring to Americans. And here’s the funny thing about that: In most cases, they have made their fortunes by impoverishing whole American communities, having outsourced their manufacturing to China or India, Vietnam or Mexico.

Buried in a long story about corruption in China in The New York Times a couple of months ago was the astonishing fact that the era of “supercharged growth” over the past several decades had the effect of “lifting more than 600 million people out of poverty.” From handouts? From Habitat for Humanity? From the Clinton Global Initiative?

No, oddly enough, China has been enriched by American-supplied jobs, making most of the destined-for-the-dump merchandise you find on store shelves all over America, every piece of plastic you can name, as well as Apple products, Barbie dolls or Nike LeBron basketball shoes retailed in the United States for up to $320 a pair. “The uplifting of impoverished people” was one of the reasons Phil Knight, Nike’s co-founder, gave in 1998 for moving his factories out of the United States.

The Chinese success, helped by American investment, is perhaps not astonishing after all; it has coincided with a large number of Americans’ being put out of work and plunged into poverty....

Paul Theroux is an author whose latest book is “Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads.”

THIS ARTICLE GOES INTO DETAIL ON SHUTTERED FACTORIES IN THE SOUTH...THE FACTORIES THE CEOS MOVED OUT OF NEW ENGLAND....AND ON TO CHINA

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-02/ackman-einhorn-lead-hedge-funds-on-track-to-rival-2008-losses

There’s no big bank failure on the horizon. The housing market is booming, not melting. Yet for a handful of well-known hedge fund managers, 2015 is looking a lot like 2008, when their industry suffered record losses and investor withdrawals.

David Einhorn and Michael Novogratz have slumped about 17 percent so far this year, and Bill Ackman declined almost 13 percent in a publicly traded fund. Sean Fahey and Michael Platt have seen billions of dollars flee their firms and are now managing less than a third of what they oversaw at their peaks.

Every struggling hedge fund has struggled in its own way, yet September did a lot damage for many managers, including Ackman, who slumped as much as in all of 2008. Six of the stocks that were most popular with the hedge fund set fell more than 20 percent last month, according to a report by Novus Partners Inc. The carnage added to a year of market twists and turns that included the unexpected surge in the Swiss franc in January, the rally in European government bonds in April and the surprise devaluation of the Chinese yuan in August.

“Hedge funds are reeling from a relentless rout that has all but killed a year’s worth of alpha in a matter of two weeks,” Stan Altshuller, chief research officer at Novus, wrote in a report discussing popular trades among some of the largest funds, including Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management and John Paulson’s Paulson & Co...

YEAH, THINGS ARE TOUGH ALL OVER

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/opinion/dont-repeal-the-cadillac-tax.html?_r=1

SURPRISINGLY, there appears to be one small area of bipartisanship in Washington: the desire to repeal the so-called Cadillac tax. It is a tax on super-expensive health insurance plans provided by some private companies to their employees. The tax would be paid by employers who sponsor these high-cost plans.

In 2018, it is scheduled to be the final aspect of the Affordable Care Act to go into effect. Republicans desperately want to show they can repeal some aspect of the health care law. Under pressure from unions, some Democrats, now including Hillary Rodham Clinton, want to eliminate or postpone the Cadillac tax, too.

Rather than a triumph of bipartisanship, this would be a big mistake, for a number of reasons. In its first eight years, the Cadillac tax will raise some $91 billion. Repeal it and politicians — if they are being fiscally responsible — will have to find other sources of revenue rather than add to the deficit.

But more important, the tax makes sense. It was imposed to counter the negative effects of the government subsidy of company-paid health insurance. We can’t get rid of that subsidy, but we can reduce its impact. The subsidy was encoded in law in 1954, when Congress passed an act making an employer’s contribution to the premiums for workers’ health insurance tax-free. This legislation gave employers an incentive to expand health insurance. Today, about half of all Americans get their insurance through their employer (or the employer of a relative) — and benefit from the tax exclusion...

SORRY DOC, BUT YOU BETTER STICK TO CANCER AND LEAVE THE BENEFITS TO THE UNIONS

Why the jobs picture is even worse than you think

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/02/why-the-jobs-picture-is-even-worse-than-you-think.html



Just glancing at the headlines made the September jobs report look bad. Digging inside the details makes it look even worse...the jobs market may have found its own "new normal" — a prolonged, secular malaise that indicates American workers will be looking at the job recovery's glory days in the rearview mirror.

"It's going to get a lot worse," said Peter Schiff, head of Euro Pacific Capital, who has been predicting doom for the economy and the likelihood that conditions will keep the Federal Reserve handcuffed when it comes to raising rates. "Right now we're talking about the economy creating fewer jobs than had been expected. There's a good chance that by next year, we're shedding jobs."

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE, PETER, JOBS ARE ALREADY BEING SHED BY THE THOUSANDS

Some context is necessary, as it's never wise to look at one month's results and try to draw broader conclusions about something as complex as the U.S. employment picture. It wasn't just, then, that September was bad, with its meager addition of 142,000 jobs that was way below the Street's estimate of 203,000. There were plenty of other issues. The notoriously volatile August numbers were supposed to get a good lift higher from the originally reported 173,000. In fact, Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle on Thursday predicted "a substantial upward revision" to the August estimate, based on a history that pointed to at least 35,000 positions added to the initial count. (Overall, Goldman, which is one of the better forecasting firms on the Street when it comes to the payrolls number, was looking for an above-consensus 215,000.) Instead, the report got knocked down to a paltry 136,000. Ditto for July, with the robust 245,000 print coming down to 223,000. Six of the past eight reports have been revised lower in subsequent months. Taken together, the three months averaged 167,000, a total that, while representing expansion, also signifies a major slowdown from the 260,000 per month clip for all of 2014. Moreover, at the beginning of the year, the three-month average was 312,000. Overall in 2015, job creation is now below the 200,000 milestone, sitting at 198,000 and drifting lower.

While most of Wall Street lamented the jobs numbers, the Obama administration opted for a positive spin. NO COMMENT

"We're still adding jobs," Jason Furman, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, told CNBC. "If you look at the last year, we've had very strong domestic momentum, we've added a lot of jobs in the last year, the unemployment rate has come down at a relatively fast pace over the last year so I feel good about overall the direction we're going in."

Momentum, though, argues against the administration's optimism. One below-the-radar indicator helps explain the problem. The establishment survey's diffusion index is a fairly simple sentiment measure of whether more companies are hiring or laying off. A reading above 50 denotes expansion; a reading below signifies that hiring is contracting. The level for September was 52.9. Yes, that represents that more companies are hiring than not, but it's down from 55.5 in August, 60.1 from July and 61.4 a year ago. The direction is pretty clearly to the downside, and with a host of high-profile layoffs in recent weeks unlikely to change soon.

"This is cause for pause. Weak in terms of depth and breadth," David Rosenberg, senior economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff, said in reaction to the diffusion trend.

Rosenberg extrapolated the data a step further, incorporating the downward revisions and a decline in the workweek and figured the "real payroll number was -265,000." Future economic numbers are likely to be impacted by the September data, he said, with industrial production expected now to show at least a 0.3 percent monthly decline on top of a 0.4 percent drop for August.

"There is not a chance that the Fed raises rates anytime soon," Rosenberg said in his daily report for clients.

Euro Pacific's Schiff believes the economy is headed for a recession that will necessitate the Fed not only to keep rates at zero but also ultimately to institute the fourth round of money printing, or quantitative easing, a program that sent the central bank's balance sheet past $4.5 trillion but has a spotty record when generating economic growth. Traders may be pricing in just such a move, with a massive turnaround Friday. Stock indexes opened sharply to the downside, but the midday reversal was shaping up to be the biggest change in direction for the market in about four years.

"Companies lay people off as the result of a recession," Schiff said. "I'd been saying since the beginning that the Fed was never going to be raising rates because raising rates is impossible given the state we're in."

Futures traders agree. October now stands just a 2 percent chance as being the month for the U.S. central bank to hike for the first time in more than nine years, according to the CME Group. December is at just 29 percent, January is at 39 percent and March is priced in as the most likely month, just barely, with a 51 percent probability...



Share of Americans in labor force shrinks to 38-year low

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/share-of-americans-in-labor-force-shrinks-to-38-year-low-2015-10-02?siteid=YAHOOB



...The so-called labor-force participation rate continued its steady march lower, falling to 62.4% in September, government data show. That’s the lowest reading since October 1977, long before Americans turned sour on first-year President Jimmy Carter.

In other words, barely six in 10 of all working-age Americans have a job or are looking for one...

http://qz.com/516052/the-one-bright-spot-in-the-us-jobs-report/?utm_source=YPL

Sometimes doing nothing is the right course of action.

That looks true after the US jobs report for September landed with a damp thwap this morning (Oct. 2). Some 142,000 new jobs were created during the month, far less than the roughly 200,000 that were expected.

In light of those numbers, the Federal Reserve’s Sept. 17 decision to delay the “liftoff” of short-term interest rates looks like an especially good call. Had the Fed gone ahead and tried to raise interest rates—despite collapsing global commodity prices and surging market volatility brought on by a sharp Chinese slowdown—soft job market data would have been far more alarming.

As it stands, markets seem to be betting that today’s weak jobs numbers push an interest rate increase even further out into the future. The benchmark US 10-year Treasury note tumbled below 2% after the employment report arrived, suggesting traders think the risk of a Fed hike isn’t imminent...

My wife retired. Seriously, those figures need to be adjusted for demographic shifts -- the aging of the population.

They don't count people who are retired, already.

They do count people of any age that are looking for work.

EVERY TIME HE SAYS SOMETHING LIKE THIS, HE ENDS UP WITH EGG ALL OVER HIS FACE

LESS THAN A SLOW LEARNER--A NON-LEARNER. IN FACT, HIS KNOWLEDGE BASE MAY BE ACTUALLY DECREASING WITH TIME

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-budget-debt-limit_560eeae3e4b07681270212ed?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business&section=business

President Barack Obama said Friday that he will not negotiate an increase in the debt ceiling as part of budget talks with Congress.

"When it comes to the debt ceiling, we're not going back there," the president said at a news conference at the White House.

Obama and congressional leaders are in the middle of budget negotiations for keeping the government funded after mid-December. He vowed not to sign any more short-term funding bills like the one he signed this week, which runs from Oct. 1 through Dec. 11.

The government's borrowing authority -- separate from budget talks -- runs out around Nov. 5, which means Congress has to vote before then to raise the debt ceiling. Obama gave a refresher on what that actually means: It doesn't authorize more spending. It authorizes the government to pay off debt it has already incurred. It also helps the U.S. maintain a solid credit rating.

"Historically, we do not mess with it," Obama said. "We're not going to negotiate on that."

Congress did mess with it in 2013, when Republicans demanded enacting other policies -- privatizing Medicare, cutting food stamps -- in exchange for a budget deal that raised the debt limit. Some Republicans argued that the limit didn't even need to be raised. The result was that a budget didn't get passed, the government partially shut down for 16 days and the U.S. credit rating took a hit as Congress finally raised the debt ceiling one day before defaulting. The president said he's been in talks with House and Senate leaders about a budget deal and sees a path forward that raises the across-the-board spending caps put in place in 2011, or sequestration, while being mindful about the deficit.

"It's not that complicated," he said. "The math is the math."

IS THE BOMB SHELTER RESTOCKED?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/02/us-autos-uaw-idUSKCN0RW2IN20151002?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

Mounting discontent among the United Auto Workers rank and file will complicate its leaders' bid to recover from the defeat of a proposed labor agreement with No. 3 U.S. automaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, UAW members said Friday. UAW President Dennis Williams and its vice president for Fiat Chrysler, Norwood Jewell, told local union leaders during a meeting in Detroit Thursday evening that negotiators would convene Friday and approach the automaker, people familiar with the discussions said. Williams and other top union leaders didn't discuss a strike at Fiat Chrysler in the near term, they said.

Meanwhile, workers at a Ford Motor Co pickup truck and commercial van factory near Kansas City, Mo. have threatened a walkout over local contract disputes for Sunday at noon local time.

Williams and the UAW made no public statement Friday about their next moves at Fiat Chrysler after 65 percent of UAW members rejected the proposed four-year deal. The union did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment on whether negotiators had convened or approached the company on Friday. The failure of the Fiat Chrysler contract highlights the tightrope that Williams and the UAW are walking. A strong recovery at the once-ailing Detroit automakers has failed to vanquish threats to union jobs from lower-wage workers in Mexico and non-union factories in the Southern United States. The contract agreed with Fiat Chrysler tempered wage demands in return for promises of $5.3 billion in investment in U.S. factories. But the effort to trade off short term gains for long term security backfired. Fiat Chrysler is expected to resist boosting U.S. labor costs beyond the levels originally agreed, people familiar with the situation said. The company said on Thursday that its decisions would be based on its "industrial objectives."

The tentative contract provided for raises for both veteran workers currently earning $28 an hour, and recently hired, second-tier UAW members who earn about $19 an hour. But it did not close the pay gap between the two groups, as many lower-paid workers had hoped, UAW members said. It also provided relatively modest raises for higher-paid veterans who made concessions on wages and benefits during three prior rounds of bargaining as the Detroit automakers scrambled to survive.

HIGH EXPECTATIONS

UAW officials and rank and file members told Reuters the contract lost support among Fiat Chrysler's 40,000 UAW workers because it failed to lift lower-paid workers into the top tier within the four-year span of the contract. Confusion over proposed changes to the union healthcare plans also undercut support, local leaders and union members said.

“The FCA contract did not resolve the two-tiered wage system, it only made it worse," said Scott Houldieson, a local UAW official at Ford's Chicago assembly plant. "The pay increases included in the contract are only those that we agreed to give up in 2009.”

UAW workers and officials at General Motors Co and Ford plants in the U.S. said a contract patterned on the rejected Fiat Chrysler deal could face opposition if taken to a vote at those companies.

“Our members see this as our time to get back some of the things that they have given up. The expectations of members were very high going into this,” said Brian Hartman, president of the UAW local that represents workers at GM's Fort Wayne, Indiana pickup truck factory.

“As it’s written, there’s not a chance" of a similar contract winning approval at GM, he said.

MORE QUIBBLES AT LINK

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/02/us-volkswagen-emissions-idUSKCN0RU15H20151002?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

Two weeks after it admitted to cheating diesel emissions tests, Volkswagen provided the first information on Friday allowing customers to find out if their vehicles are affected.

The German carmaker, which has said it will have to refit up to 11 million cars and vans containing illegal software, rolled out a website page that tells owners who input data about their vehicles whether they will have to bring them into the garage.

Volkswagen is under huge pressure to get to grips with the biggest business crisis in its 78-year history, which has wiped more than a third off its share price, forced out its long-time CEO and rocked both the auto industry and German establishment.

The head of its U.S. business has been called to testify before lawmakers next Thursday, and Germany's KBA watchdog has set an Oct. 7 deadline for it to come up with a refit plan.

MORE

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/deutsche-bank-invest-more-prevent-141845997.html

Deutsche Bank plans to invest more in technology to prevent money laundering, according to the head of the division that processes its transactions.

Germany's biggest bank was hit by a scandal over suspected money laundering at its Moscow office over the summer and last month said it was closing part of its business in Russia as part of a review of its global structure.

It has also yet to settle with U.S. authorities over alleged sanctions-related violations, following investigations of peers like Commerzbank and Societe Generale for moving funds through the U.S. financial system for countries such as Iran and Sudan.

Werner Steinmueller, head of Deutsche Bank's Global Transaction Banking (GTB) business, told Reuters the lender planned to increase spending on systems to prevent money laundering...

ONE DOES QUESTION WHETHER TECHNOLOGY OR TRAINING AND REGULATION WOULD BE MORE EFFECTIVE AT PREVENTING CRIME...MORE

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/respite-jpmorgan-8-6b-lehman-152003181.html

Amid a series of post crisis regulatory issues and subsequent settlements, JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM can now count one lawsuit less after a federal judge ruled in its favour and ended the five-year long dispute. The claim was related to an $8.6 billion court case filed by creditors of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. against JPMorgan, alleging misuse of power by the latter.

The Back Story

The lawsuit accused JPMorgan of wringing out an $8.6 billion “slush fund” from Lehman Brothers through illegal collateral demands in the final days before the failure of Lehman Brothers. In short, creditors of Lehman Brothers blamed JPMorgan’s actions for the collapse of the investment bank.

According to the plaintiffs, the bank exploited its leverage as Lehman Brothers’ primary clearing bank and compelled the investment bank to shell out additional collateral ahead of other creditors before its downfall, thus resulting in the historic 2008 crisis.

Latest Update

Judge Richard Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in New York rejected the claims and rebuffed Lehman’s creditors’ “fundamental premise” that J.P. Morgan “was obligated to extend credit to Lehman under its credit agreement.” However, he permitted six claims to seek trial having no basis to reject them.

According to the Judge, JPMorgan had no contractual commitment to offer credit, which may have provided support to Lehman Brothers. Moreover, he stated that the bank had every right to demand collateral in order to secure obligations.

“The parties were sophisticated players, represented by counsel, and practiced in executing contracts of this type,” Sullivan wrote in his 31-page decision. “The court will not now rewrite the parties’ contractual text -- with express or implied terms -- to provide Lehman with language more beneficial than what it negotiated.”

MORE

THERE ARE NO WORDS

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/02/us-mideast-crisis-syria-airstrikes-idUSKCN0RW0W220151002?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

U.S. President Barack Obama warned Russia on Friday that its bombing campaign against Syrian rebels will suck Moscow into a "quagmire," after a third straight day of air raids in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

At a White House news conference, Obama frequently assailed Russian President Vladimir Putin, who he accused of acting out of a position of weakness to defend a crumbling, authoritarian ally.

Friday prayers were canceled in insurgent-held areas of Syria's Homs province hit by Russian warplanes this week, with residents concerned that mosques could be targeted, according to one person from the area.

Putin's decision to launch strikes on Syria marks a dramatic escalation of foreign involvement in a more than four-year-old civil war in which every major country in the region has a stake...MORE

Бог с нами (God with Us) - Bulgarian church music

Agni Parthene (Complete) - Simonopetra Monastery (GREEK)

hymn "Agni Parthene" (O Pure Virgin). This chant was composed by St. Nectarios of Egina, and according to the Tradition, the melody was composed by angels.



Милостъ мира: Orthodox Anaphora in Church Slavonic (with Text) (RUSSIAN ORTHODOX)



The Lord's Prayer - Otche Nash, Отче Наш (Slavonic with English)

They limit the visual arts to icons (only 2 dimensional, although some icons cheat a bit) because
the Romans made extensive use of statues in their temples to the Pantheon of gods and goddesses they worshiped: Zeus, Hera, Jupiter, Minerva, etc.

They thought to break away from the traditions of the Roman Emperors.

The Roman Catholics, however, decided to outdo their pagan ancestors with bigger and better.

à chacun son goût ? “to each his own taste”

I'm having a crazy on Saturday...may not post until late. I figure you have enough to start, and there's no law against adding your own finds.

And Monday and Friday coming are going to be more crazy...that's what happens when I get sick; stuff piles up. And winter is icummen in...

Left the USA September 30, 2005; arrived in Kiev October 1, 2005. Like they say, time flies when you don't know what you're doing.

Would I do it again if the chance arose? I'd have to say yes.

Got rid of the car loan when I sold the car. Got rid of the mortgage when I sold the condo. After settling the mortgage, I walked away with over $100K. I was able to take a leave of absence from my work for 90 days, so if I found out I made a big mistake, things were not irreversible yet. Left the USA with only student loans (natch), and even considered walking away from those, (yeah, that was my attitude with the direction the USA was going even 10 years ago), but there was only a bit more than a year of payments left, so I paid those off anyway. I really wanted to just disappear from the USA radar, at least until it was time to collect Social Security. But that's really hard to do. Kept the money in USA banks, cause then and now, nobody will accuse Ukrainian banks of being models of stability. And deposit guarantees in Ukraine at that time was a mere $1500. And if I moved this money outside the USA, as a US citizen, I'd have to fill out yearly paperwork for the US Treasury Department. And I'm not talking tax forms here.

Arrived in Kiev where my girlfriend, soon to be wife, owned a place one Metro stop from the city center. Yeah, where all that Maidan stuff goes on. And yeah, she owned it, meaning no mortgage. Owned a second place, also no mortgage, 20 miles outside the city, and on a river no less. (Well, technically it's a canal, but if it looks and acts like a river, who's going to know)? No property taxes on either of them. Though I'm sure that as we get incorporated more deeply into the US empire, tribute will have to be collected and paid. I guess you could say that when I sold my stuff in the states, I became cash rich but property poor, while my wife was property rich and cash poor.

As you can see, I haven't disappeared from the radar. Yeah, I come from a big family, but even when I lived in closer proximity, (I was part of the central NJ core of the family), we weren't all that close. Even back then, we stretched up and down the east coast from NH to south of Miami. It always seemed to me that I was an unlikely candidate to stay in NJ, yet I stayed there for close to 5 decades. And after all that time, I didn't have any overriding reason to stay beyond some family and a couple of friends. But that was not enough to keep me from wanting to disappear from the radar. But I didn't and couldn't. As I later found out and was reminded of often, no matter where you are, the possibility of the empire intruding into your new reality is real and ever present. And the intrusion is rarely welcome and often destructive.

But dang, that first year was a duzzy. The weather was nice when I arrived, but within a week came weather I'd normally associate with late November. And it stayed. January bought temps at -33C/-27F, by far the coldest conditions I've ever been exposed to. Maybe because of this, or other things in my new reality, it bought on a case of gout that didn't fully go away for 4 months.

I often called this place the "Wild Wild East" during the Orange years, but during the time of "he who should not be mentioned" (Yanukovich), things normalized quite a bit. Or I just adjusted to my new reality. One or the other. Now I'm beginning to think in terms of the Wild Wild East again. Yeah, corruption was horrendous under Yanukovitch, but there seemed to be clearly defined rules. Now it's just a free for all. Official salaries stunk then; now with currency devaluation, it's a lot worse.

God, (a reference to this weekend's theme, no doubt), volumes could be written about the difference between Ukraine and the USA. But people would think it's fiction if I tried.

So, here's to 10 years under the belt, and a toast to the next 20 or so. Bring out the vodka, everybody!

You wouldn't recognize the place. I am a stranger in my own land. This is not the country I was born into.

I've been back only one time. 19 Days in June/July 2006. I remember I was driving on the NJ Turnpike and the thought popped into my head as clear as day "Man, I don't know this place". I had only been gone for 9 months, and I only living in NJ for close to 5 decades before that.

I was reminded this morning that I increasingly don't know the country I live in when I heard the U.S. bombed the Afghan hospital that was run by Doctors Without Borders. 19 dead, 37 injured. so far.


http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/03/asia/afghanistan-doctors-without-borders-hospital/

http://wolfstreet.com/2015/10/02/chart-depicts-new-terrible-trend-in-jobs-mess-fewer-employed/

In terms of labor force participation, “Obama has now cancelled out the entire effect of the Women’s Movement.”

The jobs report today has been described as “ugly,” though it certainly didn’t, or shouldn’t have, come out of the blue: Layoffs in the energy, Big Tech, retail, and other sectors have recently mucked up our rosy scenario. “The third quarter ended with a surge in job cuts,” is how Challenger Gray, which tracks these things, started out its report yesterday. In September, large US-based companies had announced 58,877 layoffs. In the third quarter, they announced 205,759 layoffs, the worst quarter since the 240,233 in the third quarter of 2009! Year-to-date, we’re at nearly half a million job cut announcements (493,431 to be precise), up 36% from the same period last year. And they’re “on track to end the year as the highest annual total since 2009, when nearly 1.3 million layoffs were announced at the tail-end of the recession.”...It’s been going on all year. In the first half, it was the energy sector. But more recently, Big Tech and others jumped into the fray. Biggest sinners this year: HP 30,000 (laying off people through thick and thin is what it does best); Target 17,000; Schlumberger 9,000 in January and another 11,000 in April; supermarket chain A&P 8,500; Microsoft 7,800; Baker Hughes 7,000; and down the line, including CAT a week ago with 5,000. The energy sector is still number one this year with 72,708 job cut announcements. Retail isn’t far behind with 68,871, the computer industry with 58,874, and industrial goods with 44,057. These are just the largest employers with big announcements that make it into the report. When a smaller company lays off 20 people, it doesn’t show up anywhere, unless it’s a startup in the “unicorn” club with a “valuation” over $1 billion. Then the media drool all over it. Evernote, which raised a total of $302 million by May 2012, with the last round giving it that glorious $1 billion “valuation,” announced its first layoff in January, and its second a couple of days ago. Because it’s a formerly hot startup, it made the news. But a small manufacturer quietly laying off 100 people might barely make the local press.

So now we get today’s “ugly” jobs report. It wasn’t the end of the world, compared to the end-of-the-world jobs reports in 2009. But there was a trend that, if it continues, is truly ugly. More on that in a moment. The economy added only 142,000 jobs in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. June and July were revised down by 59,000. Hourly wages edged down 1 cent, so not the end of the world either, just the continuation of a sad theme. Average weekly hours also edged down. Manufacturing shed jobs for the second month in a row, as we knew it would. But the headline unemployment rate remained comfortably at 5.1%, in part because the participation rate dropped to just 62.4%, the worst since 1977. Over the past couple of years, there has been a trend in the employment numbers that was at first hard to see due to the volatility of the monthly data. But now the trend has come into full bloom: the deteriorating growth of the number of employed people in the US has turned into shrinkage.

Back in 2013 and parts of 2014, the monthly increases were substantial, if volatile, but then started waning. By July 2015, there were 148.84 million employed in the US. In August, there were 149.04 million, up 196,000. But in September, the number of the employed plunged to 148.8 million. According to this report, there are now 236,000 fewer employed than a month ago. It doesn’t exactly corroborate the headline notion that 142,000 jobs have been created, even as the number of employed shrinks. Was it just a statistical quirk, something that will reverse with flying colors next month? We hope so. But beyond this hope, there is the two-year trend, and despite all the ups and downs and the month-to-month volatility, the trend is starting to crystallize.

This chart overlays the monthly change in the number of the employed (red bars, in thousands, right scale) and the unemployment rate (black line, left scale). One thing is clear: even as the unemployment rate fell from 5.3% to 5.1% over the last four months, the total number of employed only increased by 5,000. And even as the unemployment rate remained flat from August to September, the number of employed plunged by 236,000:



If this worsening trend continues, it would be truly chilling because the Fed still has the interest rate at near zero, along with nearly every country in the developed world, and QE is still the standard in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere. Central banks have kept their monetary foot on the gas pedal and floored it for seven years straight. Governments around the world, including in the US, despite all the hoopla about “austerity,” have piled on historic amounts of debt at dizzying rates in the greatest global stimulus package of all times. And yet, the US economy might be dropping below stall speed, with employment showing signs of deterioration, while asset prices, after seven years of “wealth effect,” are teetering precariously at ludicrous heights. The risks that the Fed promised it would banish from the globe are suddenly returning with a vengeance.

I am less concerned about the USA losing its international political standing than I am about it losing its economic integrity. A nation with a failed economy is a failed state.

The Pope Smokes Dope by David Peel And The Lower East Side:

With God On Our Side by Bob Dylan:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/memo_fr_Levin_re_TPP.pdf

Sandor Levin’s memo listing “a dozen major unresolved issues” in TPP, prepared in advance of the TPP meeting in Atlanta. READ IT AND WEEP

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/09/200pm-water-cooler-9292015.html

ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY ON THE MEMO FROM NAKED CAPITALISM'S Lambert Strether of Corrente.

THE SILVER LINING TO THIS CLOUD OF BOEHNER'S RESIGNATION....ACTUALLY, THERE IS NO CLOUD, WELL, FOR OBAMA THERE IS, BUT THE REST OF US, NOT AT ALL!

http://www.salon.com/2015/09/29/the_unexpected_upshot_of_john_boehners_ouster_the_trans_pacific_partnership_is_in_danger/

Critics on both sides of the aisle were already unhappy with the TPP — and now conservatives are feeling bold ... We have heard so little about the Trans-Pacific Partnership over the past couple of months that you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Obama administration simply abandoned it. But tomorrow, representatives from the 12 TPP nations assemble in Atlanta for a two-day meeting designed to produce a final agreement. Previous “final” talks in Maui revealed multiple hurdles, from dairy markets to auto parts manufacturing to the length of prescription drug patents. But this Atlanta meeting was abruptly put together, suggesting progress on the sidelines. While nobody thought TPP could conclude before Canada’s parliamentary campaign ends Oct. 19, the New Zealand prime minister said Canada is “negotiating as if there’s no election.”

But even if negotiators work out a tentative agreement this week, the biggest announcement on TPP may have already happened. That would be last Friday’s resignation of House Speaker John Boehner.

Trade promotion authority, which allows the president to negotiate trade agreements and bring them to Congress for an expedited vote, barely passed the House earlier this year. Fifty-four Republicans voted against it, among them practically all the ringleaders of the campaign against Boehner – like Mark Meadows, R-N.C., who took the leadership role in ousting him; David Brat, the man who upset Eric Cantor and took his House seat; Jim Jordan, chairman of the anti-Boehner House Freedom Caucus; and 23 members of that caucus in all. Obviously, those who spurred the Boehner revolt are emboldened by their apparent victory. In the short term this will not bear fruit. Boehner has vowed to use his final month to prevent a government shutdown and defuse other potential crises. He could reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, pass highway spending, and even raise the debt ceiling. “I want to clean the barn up a little bit before the next person gets here,” Boehner said on “Face the Nation” on Sunday. But the peculiarities of trade promotion authority make it impossible for Boehner to be in the speaker’s office when TPP comes up for a vote. Under the law, even if trade officials announce an agreement today, they must provide notification to Congress, wait 30 days, and then post the deal’s text on a public website for an additional 60 days before signing. Then there’s another 30 to 60 days where the administration must submit the final legal text and describe what changes to U.S. law must be put into implementing legislation. Only after that does the congressional process start.

What this all means is that an agreement announced at the end of the ministerial meetings could not reach Congress until Feb. 1, 2016, at the very earliest. Trade expert Lori Wallach of Public Citizen puts the earliest possible date at Feb. 15. And these are based on very accelerated timelines that assume no slip-ups or delays when the legal text gets scrubbed.

Wallach correctly calls this “the most politically perilous moment in U.S. politics.” Feb. 1 is the current scheduled date of the Iowa caucuses. And rank-and-file House Republicans would have to vote on TPP around the same time that potential challengers can raise the issue in their 2016 primaries.

Without a liberated John Boehner around to partner with Democrats, the task of shepherding through a trade agreement disliked by conservatives becomes difficult. After a potential blitz of legislation in October, right-wing House members will be frustrated and eager to flex their muscle. The new leadership – presumed Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his team – will have to look over their shoulders, mindful of exactly what happened to Boehner and what can happen to them if they get tangled in an issue opposed by the base. And the same right-wingers animated by Boehner’s perceived slights are also animated against TPP. McCarthy is already assuring Republicans that he will take a tougher line against the president and for the “conservative cause.” Keep in mind that Obama sees TPP as among his top priorities for the “last quarter” of his presidency.

Conservatives disfavored trade promotion authority for a variety of reasons, the biggest being that it gave Obama expanded powers. But there’s an under-the-radar issue here: immigration. Far-right conservatives believe the deal will bring a flood of foreign workers into the U.S. and override federal immigration laws...

I WOULDN'T THINK TPP COULD DO THAT...I SURELY HOPE IT CAN'T. HOW WOULD WE KNOW? IF THE DAMN THING IS KEPT SECRET FOR 5 YEARS AFTER IT IS SIGNED, ANYTHING COULD BE IN IT, AND WE'D HAVE TO TAKE THEIR WORD FOR IT.

I'D RATHER LIVE IN NAZI GERMANY! AT LEAST THERE WAS NO SUCH DUPLICITY, FOR THOSE WITH EYES TO SEE.

THE MIND BOGGLES

http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law/the-fbi-is-finally-taking-a-huge-step-in-fighting-police-brutality

This year's preliminary federal report on crime in the United States, drawn from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting system, is full of good news. Violent crimes decreased by 0.2 percent compared to 2013, continuing a steady decline in nationwide crime rates since a peak in the 1970s and '80s. And despite anxiety over rioting and looting in protest-gripped cities like Ferguson and Baltimore, property crimes fell 4.3 percent since last year. Even sexual assaults showed a slight decrease. America, it seems, is getting safer.

But the goods news isn't in the data; it's in the promise of even more information. In an accompanying announcement, FBI Director James Comey declared that the agency would start collecting more complete data on shootings involving police officers. As of April, the FBI had already begun requesting more data from local police departments as part of a major overhaul of its UCR system. But Comey's statement comes an explicit acknowledgement of the protests that have rocked the nation over the past year:

"Once we receive this data, we will add a special publication that focuses on law enforcement's use of force in shooting incidents," Comey said. "We hope this information ... will help to dispel misperceptions, foster accountability and promote transparency in how law enforcement personnel relate to the communities they serve."

While this may seem like an empty platitude, it's an important step in shaping policy regarding the relationship between civilians and law enforcement. Following the surge of activism against police brutality that came in the wake of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner grand jury verdicts, an analysis by the Wall Street Journal revealed major holes in how the federal government assesses the use of force by law enforcement. While 105 of the nation's largest police departments reported 1,800 police killings in internal documents between 2007 and 2012 (although the FBI's tally was only 1,242 during the same period), the Journal revealed some 2,400 fatalities...

AND GOLLY, IT'S ONLY 45 YEARS SINCE KENT STATE--60 SINCE THE LONG HOT SUMMERS STARTED. SO GLAD THE FBI IS RIGHT ON TOP OF THIS.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/common-sense-wins-in-ny_560ae76ce4b0dd8503097d54?2fg30udi

Drug court judges in New York will no longer be allowed to order defendants in recovery to stop taking doctor-prescribed medications as part of their treatment, as the result of a new law signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Public health experts say medication-assisted treatment such as Suboxone or methadone gives addicts the best chance at sobriety, but judges in New York routinely substituted their own opinion, arguing that those in their control should abide by strict abstinence.

The legislation was spurred by the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, known as the drug czar, which announced in early February that drug courts would not receive federal funding if they continued to force addicts off such medications. Kassandra Frederique, who works on the issue for the Drug Policy Alliance, said the ultimate lead sponsor of the legislation reached out to DPA in the wake of the drug czar's announcement, looking to write a law that aligned the state's policy with the federal policy.

Matt Curtis, policy director at VOCAL New York, celebrated the signing of the legislation but made a rare admission for an activist. "This is not a bill that we originated," he told HuffPost.

"This came from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy saying we're not going to co-fund state-level drug courts that do this. That was awfully helpful. It certainly sent the right signal," Curtis said. "Two legislators in New York saw the drug czar guidance and literally incorporated exact language from the ONDCP guidance into the bill."

NOW, IF WE COULD GET SIMILAR RESULTS ON WOMAN'S REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH ISSUES...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/29/upshot/how-many-deaths-did-volkswagens-deception-cause-in-us.html?_r=0

...Unlike the ignition defect in General Motors vehicles that caused at least 124 people to die in car crashes, Volkswagen pollution is harder to link to individual deaths. But it is clear to public health researchers that the air pollutants the cars illegally emitted damage health, and they have formulas for the number of lives lost from excess pollution in general. Indeed, the Environmental Protection Agency uses its own estimates of the health effects of air pollution to create its regulations of what’s allowed. After consulting with several experts in modeling the health effects of air pollutants, we calculated a death toll in the United States that, at its upper range, isn’t far off from that caused by the G.M. defect....Our estimates examine only the impact on public health in the United States, but it’s clear the negative effects were probably substantially higher in Europe, where the cars are much more common.

The chemicals that spewed illegally from the Volkswagen diesel cars — known as nitrogen oxides or NOx — have been linked to a host of respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, as well as premature deaths. Nitrogen oxides are a byproduct of burning fossil fuels at high temperature, whether in cars, power plants or other machines like industrial boilers. The chemicals can be harmful to humans, and in warm, sunny conditions, they can also turn into ground-level ozone, or smog, and unhealthy particle pollution.

Nitrogen dioxide and ozone irritate the lungs, increasing airway inflammation, coughing and wheezing, and can lower resistance to respiratory illness like influenza, especially with long-term exposure. The chemicals can also worsen the suffering and risk of serious illness or premature death for those with conditions like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Older people, who are more likely to have these ailments, are particularly vulnerable.

The impact of smog and soot pollution on global health is substantial: A recent paper by Jos Lelieveld, at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany, and colleagues estimated that air pollution causes some three million premature deaths a year, and that the number of deaths could more than double by 2050...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2015/09/29/the-mystery-of-hillarys-missing-millions/

Since Bill and Hillary Clinton left the White House in 2001, they have earned more than $230 million. But in federal filings the Clintons claim they are worth somewhere between $11 million and $53 million. After layering years of disclosures on top of annual tax returns, Forbes estimates their combined net worth at $45 million. Where did all of the money go? No one seems to know, and the Clintons aren’t offering any answers.

From 2001 to 2014 the power couple spent $95 million on taxes. Hillary’s 2008 presidential run cost her $13 million. Their two homes cost a combined $5 million, and the Clintons have given away $22 million to charity. All of this is according to FEC filings, property records and years of tax returns. Add it up and you get $135 million. If the Clintons made $230 million, spent $135 million and have just $45 million left over, what happened to the other $50 million?

“That’s kind of strange,” says Joe Biden’s accountant, Walter Deyhle. “You have to report all of your assets. You have to report assets that are owned by your spouse.”

It seems unlikely that the Clintons could have spent all of it. Over 14 years $50 million averages out to $3.6 million in extra expenses per year, or $9,800 per day...“I don’t see how that would be possible,” said Jeff Mussatt, a certified financial planner who helped put together the financial disclosures for Republican presidential candidate Jim Gilmore. “That’s quite a mystery you have on your hands.”

What we do know is that when Bill Clinton ended his presidency, he and Hillary owed millions in legal fees and were essentially broke. On a financial disclosure document Hillary filed after entering the U.S. Senate in 2001, the Clintons declared assets of less than $1.8 million and liabilities of more than $2 million....

https://theintercept.com/2015/09/28/death-athens-rogue-nsa-operation/

TRAGIC AND MYSTERIOUS TALE

http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001126.html

There's a story going around today regarding an individual who was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer when authorities arrived over a noise complaint. But cellphone video recorded by the arrestee convinced a judge that police had assaulted him, not the other way around. What's particularly unusual in this case is that the arrestee's cellphone had "mysteriously" vanished at the police station before any video was discovered. So how was the exonerating video ultimately resurrected? Turns out it was saved up on Google servers via the phone's enabled auto backup system. So the phone's physical vanishing did not prevent the video from being saved to help prevent a serious miscarriage of justice.

Lawyers and law enforcement personnel around the world are probably considering this story carefully tonight, and they're likely to realize that such automatic backup capabilities may be double-edged swords. On one hand, abusive cops can't depend on destroying evidence by making cellphones disappear or be "accidentally" crushed under a boot. Evidence favorable to the defendant might still be up on cloud servers, ready to reappear at any time. But this also means that we may likely also expect to see increasing numbers of subpoenas triggered by law enforcement, lawyers, government agencies, and other interested parties, wanting to go on fishing expeditions through suspects' cloud accounts in the hopes of finding incriminating photographic or video evidence that might have been auto-backed up without the knowledge or realization of the suspects.

While few would argue that guilty suspects should go free, there is more at stake here. The fact of such fishing expeditions being possible may dissuade many persons from enabling photo/video auto backup systems in the first place -- not because they plan to commit crimes, but just based on relatively vague privacy concerns. Even if the vast majority of honest persons would have no realistic chance of being targeted by the government for such a cloud search, an emotional factor is likely to be real for many innocent persons nonetheless. And of course, if you've turned off auto backup due to such concerns, video or other data that might otherwise have been available to save the day at some point in the future, instead may not be available at all.

Adding to the complexities of this calculus is the fact that most uploaded videos or photos on these advanced systems are not subject to the kind of strong end-to-end encryption that has been the focus of ongoing controversies regarding proposed "back door" access to encrypted user data by authorities. Obviously, for photos or videos to be processed in the typical manner by service providers, they will be stored in the clear -- not encrypted -- at various stages of the service ecosystem, at least temporarily. What this all amounts to is that we're on the cusp of a brave new world when it comes to photos and videos automatically being protected in the cloud, and sometimes being unexpectedly available as a result.

The issues involved will be complicated both technically and legally, and we have only really begun to consider their ramifications, especially in relationship to escalating demands by authorities for access to user data of all kinds in many contexts.

Fasten your seatbelts.

we will be lucky if it gets up to 50F today. At least some rain from the hurricane might blow our way. It's a big storm, based on the pressure gradient across the east side of the continent, which has been raising considerable wind yesterday and continuing today.

Strangely, there's no prediction of landfall. The weather people expect Joaquim to curve away into the mid-Atlantic, just pelting US with wind, rain and flood...very odd weather we are having.

https://theintercept.com/2015/09/18/leaked-seattle-audit-concludes-many-mortgage-documents-void/

A Seattle housing activist on Wednesday uploaded an explosive land-record audit that the local City Council had been sitting on, revealing its far-reaching conclusion: that all assignments of mortgages the auditors studied are void.

That makes any foreclosures in the city based on these documents illegal and unenforceable, and makes the King County recording offices where the documents are located a massive crime scene.

The problems stem from the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS), an entity banks created so they could transfer mortgages privately, saving them billions of dollars in transfer fees to public recording offices. In Washington state, MERS’ practices were found illegal by the State Supreme Court in 2012. But MERS continued those practices with only cosmetic changes, the audit found.

That finding has national implications. Every state has its own mortgage laws, and some of the audit’s conclusions may not necessarily apply elsewhere. But it shows how MERS reacted to being caught defrauding the public by trying to sneak through foreclosures anyway. Combined with evidence in other parts of the country, like the failure to register out-of-state business trusts in Montana, it suggests that the mortgage industry has been inattentive to and dismissive of state foreclosure laws...

THE CONSPIRACY THAT WILL NOT DIE, NOR BE PROSECUTED

Since 1797, America and the Holy See have been friends, strangers, and friends once more

Full article: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122890/brief-history-us-papal-relations

.

Last edited Sat Oct 3, 2015, 02:05 PM - Edit history (1)

Published on Sep 25, 2015

Sept. 25 -- Gerald Posner, author of "God's Bankers," discusses the history of the Vatican Bank and how Pope Francis has changed the business of the bank. He speaks on "Bloomberg Markets."

-----

Not usually a Posner fan, but he brings up some good points & questions.

(Demeter, your OP, as usual goes above & beyond, I had no idea there were so many popes! Leave it to you to give us the lowdown. I'm lost without my coffee & SMW, TY to you & all the contributors here. I'm a little late with the coffee today...)

and the Pope's bank got a thorough cleansing? Might take Hercule's tactics, though.

up with all the POV's in the real truth of Vatican Secrets. What bank ever gets a cleansing? It's unheard of, and Francis from the slums? Oh the irony...no wonder Dan Brown laughs all the way to the bank...centuries of drama & storyline.

and I'm sure there's some rivalry and stuff. But they are essentially equals, whether they want to admit it or not.

As an ex-Catholic, I had some background knowledge on the subject...and it was an interesting question! As for the multiplicity of Popes, I always liked this riff from "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown":

Last edited Sat Oct 3, 2015, 12:43 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/02/us/kim-davis-pope/index.html



More at link above, but it does indeed place "a wet blanket" over the pope's visit, though he also did cause some heads to explode with his statements on climate change & a few other issues. For that, we thank ye, Pope Francis.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/24/politics/donald-trump-pope-francis-immigration-climate-change/index.html


----------------
The Donald is about sheer entertainment, yeah he's looking like the spokesman for the clown car parade, but along the way & with thanks to the Pope, comedians and others are getting fuel for entertainment, that in many respects is shedding a light on how badly the GOP has deteriorated and appear to be nothing more than a joke...crazy right extremists, the hate talk, dirty laundry on full display, not a pretty sight.

One has to laugh at the off the cuff style of Trump, every issue no matter what it is - he's got it covered with a trivial perspective that defies logic, he just sweeps it away, unless of course he is talking about building a wall...in which case it's HUGE (I've been watching way too much Jimmy Fallon ).

Published on Sep 21, 2015

Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit pontiff? Once known as Argentina's "slum bishop," Pope Francis has placed special emphasis on concern for the poor, has changed the church's tone toward women, homosexuals and the divorced, and has not been shy about taking on controversial political issues. Judy Woodruff reports.

View Full Story/Transcript: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/low-pr...

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Atheists & Christians alike can appreciate, the fact that the Pope is shedding a light on Christianity or the lack thereof upon those who claim themselves as the moral majority, despite criticism of the church's handling of the sexual abuse scandal, the Pope seems to be reaching out and speaking out about issues that matter. How many videos will you watch where a Pope and Naomi Klein can speak about issues that reach into the excesses and problems of capitalism?

The definition of devout Catholic has truly changed...

POPE! An Epic Musical is an award-winning musical comedy of heroic proportions. It tells the tale of a young, idealistic, rock-star, Pope, and his ambitious nemesis, the Archbishop, who will stop at nothing to wear Pope's Mitre. In this comic book world, the papal masses are charmed at first, but Pope soon learns that a few well placed enemies can overpower a few million fans. When the tyrannical Archbishop sweeps in and seizes power the world cries out for a hero… and only Pope can answer the call! Good and evil collide in this rambunctious, Shakespearean power struggle where lines must be drawn, sides must be taken, and confrontations must be musical!

http://www.popethemusical.com/



Musical samples at: http://www.popethemusical.com/music.html

?426

WITH THE HELP (IF YOU CAN CALL IT THAT) OF THE US STATE DEPT. FOMENTING DESTRUCTION FROM UKRAINE TO LIBYA....AND THE FLOOD OF REFUGEES!

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-greece-could-collapse-the-eurozone-2015-09-30?mod=mw_share_twitter

The Greek debt affair has also harmed the European Project, potentially irreparably.

The problem is not that the eurozone found itself facing serious economic challenges. The issue is its failure to anticipate the risk of such a crisis ever happening, the lack of contingency planning, and the eurozone’s inability to deal with the problem on a timely basis. The Greek crisis is now over five years old, with no signs of a permanent solution. There are only unpalatable choices. Some concessions will not solve the problem. Other eurozone members will have to continue to provide additional financing to Greece, further increasing their risk. Favorable treatment for the Greek government risks opening a Pandora’s Box of demands from other countries to relax austerity measures. Demands for relaxation of budget deficit and debt level targets are likely from Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, and France.

A write-down of debt would crystallize losses. It might threaten the governments of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Finland, the Netherlands, and Germany. If Greece leaves the euro, then the consequences for the eurozone are unclear. Should Greece prosper outside the single currency, it reduces the attraction of the eurozone for weaker members. Given the absence of painless solutions, it seems for the moment that neither Greece nor its creditors have any objectives other than avoiding having their fingerprints on the instrument that triggers default, the world’s largest sovereign debt restructuring or a breakup of the euro.

The approach of the EU has also undermined the European project. Major countries such as Germany have reacted to the inability to resolve the crisis by resorting to economic and political repression, entailing less, not more, flexibility, with tougher rules and stricter enforcement, including tighter supervision of national budgets. Believing that Greece would not willingly leave the euro, a position confirmed by polls, the EU has rejected compromise. Instead, they have sought to maintain pressure, with the cooperation of the ECB, on the Greek government. The aim is to force them to an agreement or expose the divisions within the ruling party and coalition. The EU, which actively campaigned against Syriza’s election, now hopes for the government to collapse and be replaced by a more pliable alternative — as happened in Greece in 2012. The EU also is using its negotiations to make an example of Greece to discourage similar problems with potential future governments in Spain, and in Portugal, which might want to retreat from austerity.

The EU fails to recognize that its actions may destabilize Europe in unexpected ways. Greece has the potential to undermine Western security, creating a large corridor of vulnerability through the Balkans, the Levant, the Middle East, and Caucasus. While a member of the EU, Greece can veto sanctions reducing European power. Its actions or lack thereof can aggravate the serious refugee crisis confronting Europe. An embittered Greece, hostile to European partners and NATO, has caused alarm in the US. At a deeper level, the EU’s actions are promoting political radicalization on both the political right and left with unknown consequences. Perhaps the real damage is subtler, as the true face of the European Project and European leaders and elites is exposed. In November 1990, Margaret Thatcher, in responding to a question of European monetary union, anticipated the present situation presciently: “It’s all politics. Who controls interest rates is political. A single currency is about the politics of Europe.”

Satyajit Das is a former banker. His latest book is “A Banquet of Consequences” (in Australia and Europe), or “Age of Stagnation (in North America and Asia).

AND HE'S ONLY TOUCHING ON THE PROBLEMS...I'M SURE THERE ARE MORE THAT WILL BE REVEALED SHORTLY...

Catholic cause my grandparents were a mixed marriage, Catholic and Presbyterian*, and half the girls and one son married Catholic farmers. Syrian Orthodox, my Dad's best friend met and married an immigrants daughter, they were god parents to one of each other's children. Churches were a little more willing to share back then. Finally Greek Othodox, my grandpa's younger cousin married a Greek immigrant in Minneapolis.

Grandma Alice went to the Presbyterian church in her little SW MN town because there was no Methodist Church. Her great-uncle Asle Knudsen was the founder of the Danish-Norwegian Methodist Church in America which eventually merged with the main stream church. Her Uncle at age 91 regularly preached a service early on Sunday morning in the church he founded in Minneapolis and then took the train to the Norwegian, Grand Prairie Methodist Church he founded earlier in his career, to preach a noon service and took the train back again the next day. --From a news clipping in the 1920's Minneapolis Newspaper.

IT WAS SIMPLE: GET UNCLE SUCKER TO PAPER OVER THE LOSSES AND BAIL OUT ALL THE BANKS. NO NEED TO WORK AT IT, EASY TO IGNORE.

Joris Luyendijk spent two years talking to hundreds of City insiders. They revealed how close we came to disaster – and how quickly finance went back to business as usual

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/sep/30/how-the-banks-ignored-lessons-of-crash?CMP=share_btn_tw

I spent two years, from 2011 to 2013, interviewing about 200 bankers and financial workers as part of an investigation into banking culture in the City of London after the crash. Not everyone I spoke to had been so terrified in the days and weeks after Lehman collapsed. But the ones who had phoned their families in panic explained to me that what they were afraid of was the domino effect. The collapse of a global megabank such as Lehman could cause the financial system to come to a halt, seize up and then implode. Not only would this mean that we could no longer withdraw our money from banks, it would also mean that lines of credit would stop. As the fund manager George Cooper put it in his book The Origin of Financial Crises: “This financial crisis came perilously close to causing a systemic failure of the global financial system. Had this occurred, global trade would have ceased to function within a very short period of time.” Remember that this is the age of just-in-time inventory management, Cooper added – meaning supermarkets have very small stocks. With impeccable understatement, he said: “It is sobering to contemplate the consequences of interrupting food supplies to the world’s major cities for even a few days.”

These were the dominos threatening to fall in 2008. The next tile would be hundreds of millions of people worldwide all learning at the same time that they had lost access to their bank accounts and that supplies to their supermarkets, pharmacies and petrol stations had frozen. The TV images that have come to define this whole episode – defeated-looking Lehman employees carrying boxes of their belongings through Wall Street – have become objects of satire. As if it were only a matter of a few hundred overpaid people losing their jobs: Look at the Masters of the Universe now, brought down to our level!

In reality, those cardboard box-carrying bankers were the beginning of what could very well have been a genuine breakdown of society. Although we did not quite fall off the edge after the crash in the way some bankers were anticipating, the painful effects are still being felt in almost every sector. At this distance, however, seven years on, it’s hard to see what has changed.

And if nothing has changed, it could all happen again.
* * *

MORE--READABLE AND INFORMATIVE

Starts at the 1:10 mark:

I'm exhausted just watching it....

I am supposed to go to rehearse Xmas music tomorrow, and I'm still coughing (not very deep, but the dampness isn't helping, nor the fact that it's 45F. I've gone from AC to furnace with this disease...I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired!)

Thanks! I'm going to go see the rest!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?t=164&v=pvhYqeGp_Do

I called the police to find out where my recently widowed sister was...she's in the hospital, and the doggies are staying with friends (we think). If she's got what I've got, along with her chronic condition....she's trashed.

I have got to get well! This is getting absurd and desperate.

Hope your sister gets out of hospital soon.



Whatever this illness is, I don't want it

I am boycotting the bitch next door, but maybe someone else will contaminate her....a mortal enemy is the only one one worthy of such a disease.

She contracted C-diff from her previous stay in the hospital for pneumonia in June...the idiots killed off her gut bacteria. I swear, why the Lowell General Hospital hasn't been closed, nuked and replaced by a Peace Park escapes me! This is the #1 hospital-induced form of illness in the nation...this better-than-anyone-else nation. MRSA is #2. Even LGH should know that, and stuff their victims full of good bacteria before discharge....and put them on a probiotic regimen.

...this hasn't been a good year...

One goes to hospital to get well, not to get sicker.
Hope you both get feeling better soon.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-30/crocodile-tears-from-mortgage-lenders

Starting Saturday, the real-estate industry will be subject to new disclosure rules, courtesy of the Dodd-Frank law and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Lenders will be required to make transparent and complete disclosure of the terms of mortgages -- including all costs and fees.

This information was sorely lacking during the boom in the 2000s. Residential real estate peaked in the U.S. in 2006, and the housing bust that followed exposed the worst practices of the era. Common-sense disclosure could have curbed many of the more egregious and preventable abuses.

The new regs (details at the CFPB) also require a three-day grace period between the disclosure and the actual mortgage signing. In the past, closings were characterized by a flurry of signatures and initials -- and it's safe to say that most home buyers had no idea what they are signing, even after the cursory explanatory from their real estate attorney.

The rules were finalized two years ago and were initially scheduled to take effect in August. In response to industry concerns that the change could cause confusion in the height of the summer selling season, the agency postponed implementation until Oct. 3...Nonetheless, the mortgage and real estate industries are up in arms about the new rules. They have made the questionable claim that it is costing billions of dollars to prepare, even though they knew the changes were coming five years ago. And of course, they are predicting Armageddon, warning in a Wall Street Journal article that “the rest of the year could be marked by delayed closings, frustrated borrowers and confused real-estate professionals as they adjust to the new rules.”

HISTORY OF THE DEBACLE, AND TAUNTING

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09/30/everyone-you-know-will-be-able-to-rate-you-on-the-terrifying-yelp-for-people-whether-you-want-them-to-or-not/

Everyone you know will be able to rate you on the terrifying ‘Yelp for people’ — whether you want them to or not..You can already rate restaurants, hotels, movies, college classes, government agencies and bowel movements online. So the most surprising thing about Peeple — basically Yelp, but for humans — may be the fact that no one has yet had the gall to launch something like it.

When the app does launch, probably in late November, you will be able to assign reviews and one- to five-star ratings to everyone you know: your exes, your co-workers, the old guy who lives next door. You can’t opt out — once someone puts your name in the Peeple system, it’s there unless you violate the site’s terms of service. And you can’t delete bad or biased reviews — that would defeat the whole purpose.

Imagine every interaction you’ve ever had suddenly open to the scrutiny of the Internet public...

AND ANYONE WITH AN AX TO GRIND, AND LOTS OF FREE TIME....

MARS IS LOOKING BETTER EVERY DAY

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a38440/pope-francis-swindled-kim-davis-meeting/

...the meeting between Davis and the pope was brokered by Archbishop Carlo Vigano, the papal nuncio to the United States at whose residence the pope stayed during his time in Washington, which is when the meeting took place. Together, these facts set off my Spidey Sense about Vatican chicanery.

Before we continue, let us stipulate a few things. First of all, let us stipulate that there are more than a few members of the Church's permanent bureaucracy, both within the Clan Of The Red Beanie and without, who are not happy that this gentleman got elected Pope, and who are not happy with what he's done and said since he was. Second, let us stipulate that many members of this group are loyal to both former pope Josef Ratzinger and, through him, to the memory (and to what they perceive as the legacy) of John Paul II who, for good and ill, had a much different idea of how to wield a papacy than Papa Francesco does. Third, let us stipulate that this opposition to the current pope has been active and vocal, to say nothing of paranoid. Finally, let us stipulate that, for over 2000 years, the Vatican has been a hotbed of intrigue, betrayal, and sanctified ratfcking on a very high scale. (It also has been a hotbed of, well, hot beds, but that's neither here nor there at the moment.) So, if you're one of these people, and you're looking to ratfck the pope's visit to the United States, and to his agenda in general, you'd be looking to put him in a box. So, how would you do that?

Here's what I'd do. I'd arrange for the pope to meet Davis, but not as an American culture war celebrity, but as a devout Christian whose faith is under vague assault. (I would not mention the three marriages or the fact that she took an oath before god to do her job. I mean, why burden the poor old fella with details, right?) I'd shuffle her through the process and she gets some vague words of encouragement from the pope, who otherwise doesn't know her from any other hick who gets sent his way. I'd sit on the news for the entire rest of the pope's trip, even enlisting Davis's publicity-hungry legal team in that effort.

However, as the pope is preparing to go wheels-up in Philadelphia, I'd get the word to a reporter – say, Terry Moran of ABC. On the plane ride home, Moran would ask the pope a vague question about "religious liberty," without mentioning Davis's name, which seems a curious omission for a veteran journalist to make. The pope again would give a fairly anodyne answer about freedom of conscience with which nobody can disagree. Then, with the pope safely back in Rome, I'd leak the news to a conservative Catholic website and wait for the inevitable explosion. (Implicit in this strategy are two facts: a) that the pope doesn't know who Davis is or the facts of her situation, and b) that the Vatican press office will resort to its default position of clumsy semi-stonewalling when the story breaks.) When it comes, lo and behold, Kim Davis gets to give an exclusive interview to ABC, the same network that employs the reporter who asked the question on the airplane. But to pull this off, I'd need someone with serious clout within the Church bureaucracy. And this is where Vigano comes in.

The man is a real player within the institutional church. He first came to prominence as a whistleblower during one of the several investigations of the Vatican Bank, which may be what got him exiled to this godless Republic in the first place. Despite that fact, Vigano is well-known to be a Ratzinger loyalist and he always has been a cultural conservative, particularly on the issue of marriage equality. In April, in a move that was unprecedented, Vigano got involved with an anti-marriage equality march in Washington sponsored by the National Association For Marriage. (And, mirabile dictu, as we say around Castel Gandolfo at happy hour, one of the speakers at this rally was Mat Staver, who happens now to be Kim Davis's lawyer.) In short, Vigano, a Ratzinger loyalist, who has been conspicuous and publicly involved in the same cause as Kim Davis and her legal team, arranges a meeting with Davis that the legal team uses to its great public advantage. Once again paraphrasing New Orleans lawyer Lamar Parmentel from The Big Easy, the Vatican is a marvelous environment for coincidence....

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2015/09/lowering-medicare-part-d-prices/

Of all of the many poor domestic tax decisions that came out of the Bush Administration, the massive corporate giveaway that is Medicaid Part D was one of the most offensive.

A new study has found that this is a very expensive mistake. Its title: “Medicare Part D pays needlessly high brand-name drug prices compared with other OECD countries and with U.S. government programs.”



FULL PDF AVAILABLE AT LINK

It sucks for us. Up until this year, we didn't have prescription, but had to pay $30 per month for this 'benefit'. Otherwise, one is charged a 1% penalty for every month one does not have Medicare Part D.

Not only that, but a couple other things

The drugstore networks have changed. Your drugstore could be in the network...But the price is much cheaper if the drugstore is in the Preferred Network.

Also a prescription drug may have moved to a more expensive tier that costs more money.
For example, it may have been in tier2 costing $9, but moving to tier3 costing $45!


Be sure to read those booklets for drugstores, and drug lists.

NOW, MY WEEK IS COMPLETE, MY TASK IS DONE...AND WE ARE UNDONE!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/us/politics/congress-debt-limit.html?_r=0

As the government nears a potentially devastating default, the White House and congressional leaders have begun bipartisan talks aimed at reaching a two-year budget deal, seizing on what could be their final chance at consensus before Speaker John A. Boehner’s exit ushers in what is expected to be more combative leadership in the House.

The opening of negotiations, which started this week with a closed-door meeting of senior White House and Capitol Hill staff members, came as Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew warned on Thursday that the United States would exhaust its ability to borrow on Nov. 5 if lawmakers refuse to increase the amount of money the government can legally borrow.

That default date is weeks before lawmakers had expected, and it immediately increased the pressure to avoid a new fiscal crisis and break the gridlock that has become business as usual in Washington. Officials from both parties tamped down expectations for success, but the timing of the economic threats may provide a rare opportunity for cooperation.

“This back and forth, going to the brink all the time, it’s bad governmentally, it’s bad for the markets and it’s bad politically,” said Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York. “The average voter out there just thinks we’re crazy.”

The talks are unlikely to include Representative Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican expected to succeed Mr. Boehner as speaker, with whom the White House has never worked closely. By contrast, Mr. Obama’s advisers regard Mr. Boehner as a familiar and straightforward — if not always entirely cooperative — negotiating partner...

THE PUBLIC KNOWS YOU ALL ARE CRAZY, REP. KING, AND OBAMA IS AS USUAL, TERRIBLE AT PICKING HIS FIGHTS. OPPONENTS AND FRIENDS...

I would network like crazy with the Democrats to be benefit of the nation, and let the Tea Party suck its thumb until it decided to grow up or give up.

I sure as shooting wouldn't cower before them.

Got out before the SHTF

He hasn't got the stones for the job. Reports are that he's an alcoholic wet mess. I haven't seen anything to prove otherwise.

Our county was shoved into his district a few years ago. Glad he's gone. Rumors are flying who will replace him for this district.

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2015/10/andrew-robb-mulls-back-door-tpp-sell-out/



The last ditch (I WISH I COULD BELIEVE THAT...THIS IS THE THIRD? LAST DITCH SO FAR...) negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, which got underway this week in Atlanta, have hit yet another road block, with negotiators failing to make headway on the sticking points of auto parts, dairy access and drug protections.

Australia’s Trade Minister, Andrew Robb, has been quick to shunt blame on the US, claiming that its failure to strike a deal with congressman back home has hamstrung its ability to reach a compromise. Robb has also blamed the US’ intransigence with regards to pharmaceutical protections on so-called “biologic” drugs, which are an important new class of medicines produced from living organisms and are used to treat cancers and diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. Australian patent law currently gives pharmaceuticals 20 years of protection. Rival pharmaceutical companies must then wait another five years to access the clinical data needed to create similar and cheaper versions, known as “biosimilars”.

In the TPP negotiations, the US first pushed for 12 years of data exclusivity before reducing its bid to 8 years, whereas Australia (amongst others) wants to keep protections to 5 years, as applies currently. Any extension of protections beyond five years would delay the entry of generic drugs, raise the cost of drugs in Australia, and would compromise Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).

Speaking about the issue of biologic protections, Andrew Robb noted:

“I came to lower protection so I get frustrated if we are talking about increasing protection in the case of biologics or see no reduction in other areas,” Mr Robb told the newspaper in Atlanta. “Something has to give.”

Andrew Robb has previously insisted that he would never agree to any deal that pushed-up the cost of medicines in Australia or compromised the PBS. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has backed this view, stating the following in its fact sheet on the TPP, released in June:



While such comments are reassuring, it is disconcerting to read that Andrew Robb is considering a backdoor deal that would effectively raise protections for biologics. From The SMH:



Clearly, the best thing that could happen is for the TPP negotiations to collapse, as this is the only way to stop copyright and patent protections from being extended, and to stop foreign corporations suing the Australian Government (read taxpayers) via investor-state dispute settlement clauses embedded in the TPP.

THAT'S A UNIVERSAL CONCLUSION, AND YET, THE DAMN THING WON'T DIE....

http://boingboing.net/2015/10/01/theoretical-auto-brothel-a.html

Companies like GM have engineered their cars so that it's a felony to make independent diagnostic tools for them, or to investigate the official diagnostic tools rented to mechanics in exchange for a promise to only buy GM's hyper-inflated replacement parts.

This official, government-enforced secrecy means that independent researchers are slow to come forward when they discover bugs in car firmware -- meaning that showstopper bugs like the one that let attackers take over your car's steering and brakes over the Internet; or the $32 device that opens keyless entry locks on cars; or the $17 fob that lets you open the doors and start the engines of Priuses and drive away in them lurk and fester in your car for years before they're disclosed and fixed.

It's also the reason that Volkswagen was able to get away with mass-scale criminality for years.

These bugs also lurk in mechanics' tools, and the tools and the cars can infect each other. A presentation at Derbycon by Craig Smith showed how you could build a piece of malware that was passed from a car to a mechanic's tool, then to all the cars that mechanic serviced, then to all the garages those cars ever visited -- like an STD that is passed into a brothel, and then to all the johns who visit it, and then to all the brothels they visit. He's posted sourcecode for such a device to Github, and showed how he could build it for $20.

Smith is founder of an open-source car-hacking group called Open Garages.

In the hours following a violent rampage in southwestern Oregon in which a lone attacker killed nine individuals and seriously injured seven others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Thursday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place.

“This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Ohio resident Lindsay Bennett, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations.

“It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what he really wanted.”

At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past six years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

I'D SAY AMERICANS AND THEIR POLITICIANS WERE "FECKLESS" INSTEAD OF HELPLESS....

http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-prevent-says-only-nation-where-regularly-ha-51444

and then maybe brunch for the Kid and me.

Somebody hold the fort, and keep on posting!

The inbox is filling, again, although most of it isn't worth mention. It's the sorting process that takes so much time...there's always Monday, of course! The Monday from hell, I mean...sigh.

At least my appetite is returning...6 weeks of not eating does things to a body.