Obama Retorts

Economic Crisis Solution

Or How China became capitalist and America, communist...

Here's a crazy idea on how to solve the apparent economic crisis on Wall Street:

Instead of the US government diverting taxpayer's hard-earned dollars away from killing people overseas; they should look up all the C.E.O.'s who've received bonuses over $1,000,000 over the past two or three years, take their cash and pump it into the system. I'm sure they could easily make a start on $700 billion.

Here's where they could start:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein will take home nearly $68 million in restricted stock, options and cash, making it the largest bonus ever given to a Wall Street CEO.

Blankfein was awarded $26.8 million in cash and $41.1 million in restricted stock and stock options, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission issued Friday.

Lehman Brothers chairman and CEO Richard Fuld Jr. made $34 million in 2007.

Goldman Sachs paid Co-Chief Operating Officers Gary Cohn and Jon Winkereid made $72.5 million and $71 million.

American International Group’s chief executive Martin Sullivan, who was ousted in June, made $14 million.

Morgan Stanley Chief Financial Officer Colin Kelleher got $21 million.

Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain was paid $17 million in salary, bonuses and stock options.

JP Morgan Chase & Co. chairman and CEO James Dimon earned $28 million in 2007. Chase bought Bear Stearns in a fire sale earlier this year with Washington promising to take on up to $30 billion in assets to get the deal done.

Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd made $11.6 million in 2007.

Freddie Mac, CEO Richard Syron, brought in $18 million.

Wachovia Corp. chairman and CEO G. Kennedy Thompson received $21 million in 2007. He was succeeded by Robert Steel as CEO in July. Steel is slated to get a $1 million salary with an opportunity for a $12 million bonus, according to CEO Watch.

Seattle-based Washington Mutual will pay its new CEO Alan Fishman a salary and incentive package worth more than $20 million through 2009 for taking the helm of the battered bank, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/09/25/193135.aspx

There you go: there's at least three or four hundred million. And really, who needs all that money?

Really?

Internet Ethics

***WARNING: Some links in this post contain adult material.***

I might be showing how far behind the times I am here, but I came across a story recently, which might make you think about right and wrong online.

Some of you might know Craig's List. It's an internet bulletin board started in San Francisco and is now available all over the world.

In 2006, a couple of jokers in Seattle posted at ad posing as a submissive female looking for a dominant male to defile her. The aim was to see how many responses they could get in 24 hours.

They got 178 replies and 145 photos.

People sent email addresses from home and work, phone numbers as well as their real names in some cases.

Next they posted all the replies on a wiki-satire site called Encyclopaedia Dramatica, with the goal of getting people to identify the respondents in real life.

The ethical debate has been raging ever since. The story was picked up by various news outlets including the BBC.

Opinion:

This ain't cool.

The men who replied weren't doing anything illegal - the ad was posted by an apparently consenting adult seeking a consenting adult for an activity in their own home. If they were trying to out kiddy-fiddlers, I'd have a different opinion.

Even if this is what you are into, you don't need to have it broadcast to the world; possibly affecting all other aspects of their lives.

The issue here is within society as well. Why should your interest in any variety of legal sexual activity affect your professional or social life? Who are we to judge others by what they like with their privates?

Yet we still live in a world where hatred and intolerance are rife; where violence against those who are different still occurs.

An example: the British blogger who wrote "girl with a one track mind" anonymously. It describes here experience as a sexually active woman in London. The site became so popular that it was turned into a novel.

The day the book was released a bunch of flowers arrived at her door. The courier made her lean out the door to sign. What she didn't know, was that there was a photographer in her garden. The card on the flowers said: "Zoe (her pseudonym). Congratulations on the book."

The story broke the next day in the Sunday times. She was hounded by the press, received threatening letters and her family was even harassed. She lost her job working on the Harry Potter films on the grounds that they didn't want to be associated with her.

Yet at the same time, Danny Radcliffe can get his shlong out in the West-end with no worries at all.

This is an example of a double standard and how someone's personal life can ruin the other aspects of their life - for no good reason.

Let's leave Bill Clinton out for the time being.

People have sex.
Most likely not with you.

Get over it.

Lets work on that evolution people.

New Olympic Logo...

Murder Mystery Continued...

Received this email last week regarding my post:

Murder in Kaohsiung

>>sharon Fillion wrote:
Can you help me find out more information about david fillion? Were you an acquantance? The david michael fillion I knew was living in Tiawan, teaching english, alcoholic, and played poker, ex navy. He dropped out of "life" about 10 years ago. I have just been informed that he is in a georgia jail after getting arrested for a DUI. I came across your blog on an internet search. I appreciate your help.

S. Walker

Strange.

I wrote back today:

Hi Sharon,

Thanks for getting in touch.
Sorry for taking so long to get back to you but I have been asking around about David.

What's your relationship with him? Sister I'm guessing.

Like I said on the blog,
we had a very limited relationship.

Wednesday was poker night and
we played with him and his girlfriend a couple of times.

I asked around and no one has seen him in a long while.
Maybe not for six months or more.

We had assumed that he went back to the States.
It looks like you have the same chap though.

Sorry I could be more helpful.
If you have any other questions feel free to get in touch.

All the best,

Al

The part that amazed me is that you can be involved in a web of contacts which can throw light on a close personal situation on the other side of the world.

I will keep you informed of any further developments.

Kosovo Gains independence!

Right on!

Have a country.

Everyone grab a country:

Let’s make a Kurdistan

More power to southern Thailand

Freedom for Aceh

Give the Tamils some land

Free Tibet

UN for Taiwan

Disband the United States

Damn it! Western Australia Succeed!

Let everyone have a country.

Imaginary lines on the ground... can’t have too many.

If it would stop people killing each other, why not

It would be nice though for those seeking independence to look more towards

Gandhi than

Guevara

Evangelical Christians ...

...are protesting Heath Ledger’s funeral. They say he was a “gay enabler” for making a movie involving man-love. Last time I checked the bible dealt a lot more about wealth distribution than what cowboys did with their willies.

They rely heavily on Leviticus 20:13...

" 'If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

... it goes on to say in Leviticus 20:17 –

" 'If a man marries his sister, the daughter of either his father or his mother, and they have sexual relations, it is a disgrace. They must be cut off before the eyes of their people. He has dishonoured his sister and will be held responsible.

...so members of the Westboro Baptist Church should be keeping a low profile.

US election coming up...

...if you hadn't noticed.

It looks like a race to see who Americans hate the least: women or blacks.

Comment Response

Hi Leinad,

Here are the answers to the questions in your comments:

Leinad said...

played poker with them?

Yeah, a couple of times.

tell us more here.....when?

Over the last couple of months.

under what circumstances?

Wednesday night poker.

their place or yours?

At a little bar around the corner from us run by a friend of ours.

any chance he is pathological liar, living in fantasy alkie fueled world?

I couldn't really tell you whether he was a pathological liar, but he did seem very keen on poker, not really in a fun way. Seemed very keen on staying strictly to the rules.

He is a self confessed hard-core alcoholic. I was told by someone who knew him well that he would start the day with one of those long neck Taiwan Beers and read the paper before setting off to work.

On the night of the murder it is alleged that he was passed out on the couch in a booze induced coma in the living room while his missus stabbed Anita to death with a knife in the kitchen. This is all speculation and hearsay however.

is it also true, she controlled him, abused him physically and mentally, and he put up with it for alchohol tips?

She did seem like a very strong woman, but very amenable and small. It is hard to believe that she kept the body in the house for two days before dumping it without him knowing. At the same time those alco types can be easily manipulated. I guess we will never know.

dish, man, dish! this is trial of the century!

She has confessed and he claims not to know anything about it, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt. Regardless, it spells the end of his time in Taiwan. I'm sure no one will give him a job now and he is even less likely to get an ARC or work permit.

This case has larger implications for the rest of us however. Foreigners in Taiwan are branded by the locals as foul-smelling, alcoholic perverts, only here to abuse their culture, ignore their road laws, vomit on the side walks and do unspeakable thing to their women.

For the most part, this is fairly accurate stereotype from their point of view.

Now we have to deal with the stigma of being murders as well.

I think it is the responsibility of all expats to make an extra effort to treat the local population with the utmost courtesy and respect to restore our standing from murderers to plain old alco perverts.

Murder in Kaohsiung!

This has been the talk of the town.

We played poker with the two suspects.

Here's the story from The Taipei Times:

American, Filipina arrested over body in garbage bag

SUSPECTS IN CUSTODY: David Fillion and his girlfriend Armia were arrested at a private language school in Tsoying. The pair denied being involved in the murder
By Rich Chang
STAFF REPORTER, WITH CNA AND DPA
Wednesday, Sep 19, 2007, Page 1

Kaohsiung police on Monday night arrested a US citizen and his Filipina girlfriend on suspicion of murder after a woman's body was found in a garbage bag in front of a store in the city's Yencheng District (鹽埕) on Saturday evening.

Police said the two suspects -- US citizen David Fillion and his Filipina girlfriend Armia -- deny any involvement in the murder.

Police on Sunday named the deceased as 48-year-old Chou Mei-yun (邱美雲), a broker who helped foreigners find work teaching languages at private schools.

Chou left home last Wednesday afternoon, telling her son she would not be home for supper. She was never seen again.

Police said footage from a surveillance camera near the place where the body was found showed a woman riding a scooter towing a big black garbage bag on Friday at approximately 11pm.

The bag was carried on a two-wheeled trailer tied to the rear of the scooter, police said.

Police on Monday traced the scooter to its owner, a Japanese teacher who told the police that she had lent the scooter to Fillion on Friday and that he had not returned it.

Police then went to Fillion's residence in the city's Tsoying District (左營), but discovered that Fillion and Armia had moved out.

Investigators said they found traces of blood and dog hair in the apartment.

They had also found dog hair in the plastic bag which held Chiu's body.

A DNA test showed that the blood found at Fillion's apartment matched that of the deceased, the Kaohsiung City police said last night.

Police discovered that Fillion had gone to stay with a friend in the city's Linya District (苓雅) on Thursday.

Police officers visited the residence and were told by the friend, surnamed Lee, that Fillion had borrowed a trailer from him on Friday.

Fillion and Armia were arrested at a private language school in Tsoying, where Fillion worked, late on Monday.

The pair denied any involvement in the murder.

They were accompanied by several officials from the American Institute in Taiwan's Kaohsiung Office and had refused to answer questions overnight, the police said.

Kaohsiung District Prosecutors' Office spokesman Chung Chung-hsiao (鍾忠孝) yesterday told reporters that prosecutors had been able to question the two suspects yesterday afternoon, and they had asked the police to gather more evidence in support of their case.

Police said they were investigating whether Chou had had any financial disputes with Fillion.

They said they suspect the woman who abandoned the body was Armia and not a Japanese woman as originally thought.

Police said the victim had been tied up with nylon ropes and had multiple stab wounds to her chest and thigh, as well as marks on her neck that suggested possible strangulation.

Police suspect the murder was not committed by a single person.

###

Scary stuff.