No, this is not spam. This is information that everybody with a mortgage should know about. According to Ilargi over at The Automatic Earth, folks caught in the real estate market melt down can keep their house and stop paying the mortgage. Pass this around to your friends. They will love you for life.

Over my morning coffee and International Herald Tribune (paper edition) I had an epiphany about the "experts". They don’t know nothin’. At least, if they do, they sure don’t want to talk about it.

Crossposted at Conceptual Guerilla

It is at this time of the year that Christians await the celebration of the mystery that gives meaning to their beliefs. According to tradition, a man walked the earth and died to redeem us all from our sins. He then returned to life and went to Heaven.

Some weeks back John Cameron released a documentary that claims Jesus' tomb and mortal remains have been discovered. It would seem, if Cameron's story is to be believed, that Jesus was a mere mortal and that his death was a mere death.

When asked about Cameron's documentary by a friend, I replied, "You'll never find a unicorn's bones." "What?" he asked. "There never was a historical Jesus. He could not have married and sired a son. End of story." Then I got to thinking that maybe my bald assertion was not ready for prime time, and that maybe a bit of research would strengthen the case. I have long been a fan of Earl Doherty and have read "The Jesus Puzzle". I highly recommend it as a good introduction to scholarly research about the non-historical Jesus.

I recently discovered a book that every lover of democracy should read. It is called "The Authoritarians" by Bob Altemeyer, a leading academic researcher into the psychology of the authoritarian personality. He wrote this popularization of his research at the behest of John Dean, who discovered his work while researching his book "Conservatives Without Conscience".

abbeysbooks insists that I post a diary here that I have been plastering on numerous fora today. I'm supposed to remind you that Altemeyer and John Dean will be around to discuss Altemeyer's book on March 24.

Altemeyer’s book is available free at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/... .

We’ve all been there. You go to the stadium, you wear the team colors, the hat and the sweater. You wave the flag. You root for the team. You’re a supporter. It’s you and your kind against the other. We’re the Warthogs, they’re the Prairie Dogs. "Mash their viscera, gouge their eyes. C’mon, ’Hogs, skin ’em alive."

So, we’re a great nation of sports-lovers and other-haters. We support our team, no matter what. Why? Because it’s our team. We don’t need a better reason than that. Our gut tells us it’s right to support the team. We have school spirit. We support the team.

A couple of days ago, I got into the discussion TMI 29 years later: Lies and Damned Lies and showed folks on the diary what it would take to convert to solar as a replacement for fossil and nuclear energy electrical production. Since then, I have been mulling the problem over and have decided to take a stab at the calculations for going totally solar, i.e. eliminating the use of fossil and nuclear fuels for all energy production in the US. Follow me over the fold for the gory details.

Thanks to Bloomberg for clearing the air about what's going on at the heart of the Democratic Party. On the one side you have the Clintonistas from Wall Street; on the other is organized labor and the interests of 90+% of Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike.

Democrats are returning to power on Capitol Hill just as two powerful wings of the party, labor and Wall Street, are colliding over economic issues.

The dispute over trade and budget policies prompted a high- level private meeting earlier this month between AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who is now chairman of the executive committee at New York-based Citigroup Inc.

Labor Challenges `Rubinomics' as Democrats Gain Power

I'm going to take a chance on this one. It's not really diary material in the great tradition of Jérôme de Paris, DarkSyde and other Kos greats, but the remark is so apt that I want to share it with you.

You know the routine ...

When I was a young teen in the late 50s, my sweetheart of the moment nearly died of appendicitis. Since then, I have been acutely aware of the appendix and have wondered whether it was something we needed.

The current resurgence of creationism and Intelligent Design have stimulated me to do a little research on my friends Nemesis, and this is what I have found:

"the war against terrorism is a new kind of war" and "this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." - Alberto Gonsales

Permit me to paraphrase the Attorney General: the war against terrorism is a new kind of war . . . it renders the Monroe Doctrine quaint.

Hop the fence to follow my argument:

Right after Katrina devastated New Orleans, Dr. George Friedman, founder of Stratfor, wrote this incisive article describing the implications of Katrina for the US economy.

http://www.stratfor.com/news/archive/050903-geopolitics_katrina.php

In short, he points out that the Port of New Orleans, the fifth largest in the world, is essential for midwest agriculture and industry. Ocean going vessels are constrained by geography depend on New Orleans to deliver industrial raw materials and to pick up export grains and finished products. The train and truck networks in the region are incapable of picking up the slack and routing shipments to and from other ports. The Mississippi barges are the cheapest, most efficient way to transport the immense volumes that pass through New Orleans.

Yesterday, as I pointed out here, it seems more than probable that Novak learned of Valerie Plame from someone on AF-1 during the flight to Africa. The question is: Who got that information from AF-1 to Novak and how?

There has been some controversy and hair splitting about the meaning of the term "fixed around" as it is used in the now-famous Downing Street Memo. Those who would prefer to deny the signficance of the memo, to cover the adminstrations numerous asses, wish to interpret "fixed around" to be synonymous with "organized around". Those who see a more nefarious motive prefer a term like "falsified".