If I was the officer [Gates] verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC [pepper spray] deserving of his belligerent non-compliance.
He also wasn’t very happy about the Globe’s coverage of the incident:
You are a hot little bird with minimal experiences in a harsh field. You are a fool. An infidel. You have no business writing for a US newspaper nevermind detailing and analyzing half-truths. You should serve me coffee and donuts on Sunday morning.
The officer has apologized for the email, and as for he use of the term “jungle monkey” — which appears repeatedly in the email — he claims “I didn’t mean it in a racist way.”
But as Andrew Sullivan remarked “If this is what they’re putting in emails, imagine what they’re saying in private.”
“The President of the United States spent the week talking about America’s most vulnerable citizens, the Cambridge police department. Now, if you somehow missed the beginning of this story, let me catch you up. Perhaps the foremost African-American scholar in America today, Henry Louis Gates, was arrested for being black while home. Yes, apparently, in America if you’re black, you can be pulled over for driving a stolen house. Except that it was his house.” – Bill Maher
“What kind of burglar breaks into a house with luggage? That’s what I want to know about. ” – Bill Maher
“And the police officer, Officer Crowley … apparently, he said Henry Louis Gates was threatening. And by threatening, of course, he meant he was an educated black man.” – Bill Maher
“So, I don’t know if this is a case of racism. The police in Cambridge say it had nothing to do with Gates being black. They said they would have given the same treatment to any minority.” – Bill Maher
“President Obama said that the Cambridge police ‘acted stupidly’ when they arrested a professor for being a cat burglar in his own home. And now, President Obama says that he regrets saying, ‘stupid.’ What he meant was, ‘retarded.'” – Bill Maher
“It’s comforting to know that the men with the guns, Mace, Tasers and the license to kill are this thin-skinned, isn’t it? But I guess they are, because about an hour ago, Air Force One was pulled over for a broken tail-light.” – Bill Maher
“Today, President Obama spoke to the Massachusetts police officer who arrested the black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. They had a conversation. Yeah. And Obama says the conversation went well, but there was an awkward moment when the cop arrested Obama.” – Conan O’Brien
“But it’s all coming out okay, because Obama today spoke to Officer Crowley on the phone. He said he was a good man, a good policeman, and they could find common ground. Although he did find it strange at the end of their conversation that Crowley demanded to see his birth certificate.” – Bill Maher
“More than you might expect, actually, apparently there was a group of Americans who did not believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States and therefore should not be president. They’re called ‘birthers.’ They are. The birthers want Obama’s election to be invalidated, which, I’m not sure what their goal is. Are they aware that Joe Biden would be the president?” – Jimmy Kimmel
“The birthers believe that the president was secretly born in Kenya. … I always thought he was born in a manger in Jerusalem.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“But Kenya makes no sense. Listen, if Barack Obama had been born in Kenya, don’t you think Madonna would have adopted him by now?” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Big news up in Alaska. Sarah Palin will formally step down as governor on Sunday, leaving us completely unprotected from the Russians.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Sarah Palin will be stepping down in two days. Unless, of course, she decides to leave early.” – David Letterman
“Palin announced her retirement a couple of weeks ago without exactly saying why. Ordinarily, when you quit a job like this, you give a reason, like, ‘I was just caught in a restroom soliciting gay sex,’ or, ‘I was just caught banging a thousand-dollar hooker,’ or, ‘I was just caught sneaking to Argentina to have sex with my girlfriend’ — oh, wait, that guy didn’t actually resign. But you get the idea.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Governor Palin says she’s leaving office because she wants to spend more time hunting down her escaped son-in-law.” – David Letterman
“Her decision to resign has resulted in an 18-point drop in her approval rating among Americans and a 52-point drop among terrified moose. She says she’s going to divide her time between traveling to support conservative causes and learning to pronounce the ‘G’ at the end of words” – Jimmy Kimmel
“The ratings for President Obama’s press conference Wednesday night were down 14 percent from his last one. So, to try to boost ratings for his next press conference, they’re having his cousin Oliver move into the White House.” – Jimmy Fallon
“Yesterday, Chicago White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle threw a perfect game. And afterwards, he had a five-minute phone conversation with President Obama, which was very cool. Meanwhile, the losing pitcher got a two-hour phone call from Joe Biden. ” – Conan O’Brien
“President Obama said that since becoming president, he’s gone from praying before bed to praying all the time. And it’s always the same prayer: ‘God, please don’t let Joe Biden say something stupid today. Please.'” – Jimmy Fallon
“This is crazy. Three mayors in New Jersey were arrested yesterday in a huge money laundering scheme. Investigators knew something didn’t smell right, aside from what normally didn’t smell right in New Jersey.” – Jimmy Fallon
“This August, President Obama is renting a vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard. It’s amazing. It has a basketball court, swimming pool, apple orchard and a driving range. The president says he can’t wait to shoot hoops, while Michelle looks forward to pulling apple trees out of the ground with her bare hands.” – Jimmy Fallon
“If conservatives get to call universal healthcare ‘socialized medicine,’ I get to call private, for-profit healthcare ‘soulless, vampire bastards making money off human pain.'” – Bill Maher — Here’s the video:
Coulter has gone over to the dark side. Her dark roots are showing.
Anne, you are losing it girl. In fact, I think you have already. There would be No issue if zero would show his Birth Certificate. Until then, stop drinking the dims koolaide.
Ann Coulter is turning into another Peggy Noonan. It’s very sad.
Things are pretty crazy when the nutcases start attacking each other!
“Did you watch President Obama’s press conference last night? Well, boring. Let me tell you. I know he’s our president so I shouldn’t say this, but if he loves this healthcare proposal so much, why doesn’t he marry it?” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Anybody see President Obama’s press conference last night on television about the health plan? Here’s the deal – it will cost a trillion dollars but that will be in three easy payments of $330 billion a month, so it’s not that bad.” – David Letterman
“President Obama was on TV again last night. And, you know, it’s interesting – political experts are now saying that President Obama is giving so many interviews and appearing on so many television shows that he’s starting to dilute his own message which I think is unfair because I thought Obama was pretty convincing last night on ‘Ice Road Truckers.'” – Conan O’Brien
“Of course, last night, President Obama gave his healthcare speech. It drew almost 20 million viewers. Twenty million viewers! That’s a lot these days. Yeah, these days, the only way you can get 20 million people to tune into the show is to beat Spencer Pratt from MTV’s ‘The Hills’ to death with a naked Megan Fox, the ‘Transformers’ actress.” – Conan O’Brien
“There’s a woman in Florida, and they arrested her. And she’s in her garage. And you know what she is doing in her garage? She’s pretending she’s a dentist. And she’s making dentures and she has the reclining chair and the drilling equipment and, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Obama health plan.” – David Letterman
“President Obama tried to get a fire going under the lawmakers before the August recess, which is when they take a one-month break in order to visit their girlfriends in South America.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“But you know who really is opposed to the Obama healthcare plan? The Republicans. Apparently it does not cover breast implants for their mistresses so they think, ‘We don’t want it. We don’t need it.”” – David Letterman
“But the chances of getting a vote on the bill done by August doesn’t look good. Right now, it’s being held up in the Senate by a group of conservative-leaning Democrats called Blue Dogs. I never heard of this. They’re called blue because they’re from blue states and dogs because they roll over for the healthcare lobby. And also, they eat their own poop.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Here’s news from Pakistan. They believe now, intelligence believes, that a US missile attack about six months ago killed one of Osama bin Laden’s sons. And the CIA believes that it was the hot-tempered Sonny.” – David Letterman
“But Osama’s favorite son, of course, was Osama W. bin Laden. He was – no, he wasn’t too bright.'” – David Letterman
“North Korea today launched another attack, but this one of a personal nature against our secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. You’ve got to love North Korea. They’re a great villain. They say crazy things, their leader looks like Ethel Merman, all their missiles are named Dong; they’re the best.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“War of words now between Hillary Clinton and North Korea. Getting nasty. Earlier this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that North Koreans were acting like children. Yesterday, a spokesman for North Korea said Hillary Clinton was acting like a schoolgirl. Now, folks, is it me or is it obvious these two like each other?” – Conan O’Brien
“This is historic, this is huge in the world of politics. I don’t know if you remember a couple of years ago we had that presidential election. And John McCain was running. And he needed a date for the ticket. So he got a hold of the governor of Alaska. And they ran. They didn’t win but they ran. And now the governor of Alaska decided that she’s quitting. So on Sunday, she’s leaving office. And she will officially hand over her sash and her crown to her successor.” – David Letterman
“And you know, there’s some kind of ethics investigation going on up in Alaska, also involving Governor Palin. I don’t know what the ethics violations are, but for our purposes here, let’s just say that she robbed a gas station.” – David Letterman
“She’s stepping down as governor. Leaving the governor’s mansion. Next stop, LensCrafters commercial.” – David Letterman
“Don’t kid yourself. Sunday is going to be an emotional day. It’s her last day. She’s going to go out on to the porch and wave goodbye to Russia. So it’s a big weekend.” – David Letterman
“Oh my God, Barack Obama’s running the old Kenyan Prince birth announcement scam. Here’s how it goes: you want to destroy America from the inside but you can’t because you’re a foreigner. So first, you gotta find yourself a good ol’ American to reproduce for you. Then, you have that child on foreign soil, while simultaneously placing the birth announcement of that child in one of our “fringe” state’s local newspapers, your Hawaiis, your Alaskas, your Pennsylvanias. Alright then, kidding. And then, hold on, you wait. Until this baby is a middle-aged man. Now the trap is set. You just sit back and let that child go out and win the election for President of the United States. Now here’s where the scam gets tricky; they can’t just win the popular vote. He or she must have a strategy to win the electoral vote; that’s what trips up most drifters. But, if you pull it off, you and your puppet child can sit back and destroy the fabric of the country you both hate so much. It’s almost too easy.” – Jon Stewart
“There’s kind of a silly thing. Remember the All-Star Game last week, President Obama throws out the first pitch and everything seemed to be fine. Then later, people started to criticize what he was wearing. They said he’s wearing, and I never heard this expression, ‘baggie dad jeans.’ And Obama was surprised by the whole thing. He said, ‘Look, they’re not even my baggie dad jeans.’ He apparently borrowed them from Chastity Bono.” – David Letterman
“President Obama was on television earlier tonight. They held a TV conference earlier tonight. It’s nice to see the guy finally getting some air time, I thought.” – David Letterman
“President Obama held another press conference tonight, preempting all the major networks again. He does this every week now. It’s time for Oprah to give him a show.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“And the White House actually – this is true – rescheduled the President. They moved it up an hour from 9:00 to 8:00 because NBC complained it would interfere with ‘America’s Got Talent’. So in other words, the President of the United States moved his press conference to accommodate a show David Hasselhoff is on. I think Clinton did that for ‘Baywatch’ once.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“The focus was on the national healthcare plan that is working through Congress. He needed to made a strong case tonight – 50% are in favor of the universal healthcare and the other 50% have coverage.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“We’re learning more and more about Obama’s healthcare plan, and if it passes, the healthcare plan, if that passes, President Obama will have the governor of South Carolina neutered. Did you realize that?” – David Letterman
“The Republicans had been running a surprisingly effective campaign against the proposal for national healthcare, but the President found a very clever way to get them on board. Behind the scenes, he offered a key provision that would provide free breast implants for their girlfriends.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“But the governor of South Carolina, Governor Sanford has lately been seen not wearing his wedding ring. And I was thinking, geez, I hope he didn’t lose it while he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Then he’ll never find it.” – David Letterman
“Did you guys see Michelle Obama last night? She just got a new haircut. It’s the first real cut of the Obama Administration.” – Jimmy Fallon
“They announced Dr. Regina Benjamin is President Obama’s pick for surgeon general. She’s facing criticism for being overweight. I don’t know if Dr. Benjamin’s weight should be an issue, but her food pyramid does call for three to five daily servings of McRibs.” – Jimmy Fallon
“Anybody here from Alaska? Sarah Palin, some bad news for Sarah Palin – there’s another report now that she may have violated Alaska’s ethics laws. Like I’m going to say something about that.” – David Letterman
“Weird story about General Motors. General Motors just announced they’ve created – I’m not kidding – a new line of Cadillac cologne. The Cadillac cologne slogan is, ‘Smell like you owe the Federal government $10 billion.'” – Conan O’Brien
“Economists say the recession getting so bad, it’s driving down the prices of many goods. In fact, folks, it has gotten so bad, the 99-cent store just changed its name to ‘You know what? Just take it.'” – Conan O’Brien
“The astronauts went on a space walk today to change the batteries on the outside of the International Space Station. They hope the space walk will answer some key questions…Like, who put the batteries on the outside of the space station?” – Craig Ferguson
“Anybody in China yesterday? The solar eclipse lasted almost 7 minutes and China was plunged right into the darkness right into the middle of the — wait a minute, that’s their pollution.” – David Letterman
“But interesting reaction to the solar eclipse. Rush Limbaugh says that the solar eclipse proves the unreliability of solar power.” – David Letterman
“Here’s some sad news from Iran, ladies and gentlemen. Do you know Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, do you know his vice president has resigned? This guy’s main job was ceremonial, his main job was attending funerals. And you know, with Ahmadinejad in charge, that’s a full-time gig.” – David Letterman
“The vice president ‘resigned’ and that of course is Iranian for shot and thrown out of a car.” – David Letterman
“Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says that when President Bush was in office, they used to have a meeting once a week via video conference. Maliki said the teleconferences always ended the same way, with Bush throwing his joystick down and yelling, ‘This game is boring!'” – Conan O’Brien
“Yesterday, Secretary of state Hillary Clinton was in India. And today, there was a total eclipse of the sun. After hearing about it, Bill Clinton said, ‘If there’s one thing Hillary’s good at, it’s making the light go out of your life.'” – Conan O’Brien
Whether or not you believe the stock market is a zero-sum game, it is frustrating when you see someone being given an unfair advantage. After all, markets are only open and efficient when everyone has the same information — this is the reason that insider trading is illegal.
So it is height of hypocrisy that the same stock exchanges that extoll the benefits of open markets are providing advance insider information to investment firms — in exchange for money — before they provide the same information to the general public. It is called high-frequency trading, or flash trading, and this is how it works. When the price of a stock starts to rise, this information is provided to an investment firm like Goldman Sachs, who pay for it. The key is that this information is provided a split second before it is made available to everyone else. In a recent example detailed in the NY Times, this information was provided three one hundredths of a second (0.03 seconds) early. This might not sound like much, but the big investment firms have powerful computers sitting right next to the stock exchange, which are able to initiate thousands of trades in this amount of time (remember, a typical modern personal computer can execute 90 million instructions in 0.03 seconds, and their computers are even faster).
The problem with this is that when they buy the stock, based on information that someone else doesn’t yet have, whoever is selling the stock doesn’t get as much money. If the seller also knew that the price was rising, they could get a higher price, but the information that their computer sees (or more likely, their stockbroker’s computers) is that the price is still low. The investment firm pockets the difference and they win. If you happen to be the person selling the stock, your stockbroker can’t get as much money for it, and you lose.
So, how much money are the big investment firms stealing from normal people like you? Not surprisingly, the stock exchanges don’t provide this information, but we do know that over half of all trades are being done by high frequency traders, and these select traders made $21 billion in profits in 2008 alone. Some people believe that market volume has increased 164 percent since 2005, largely due to high frequency trading.
How do you think banks like Goldman Sachs recovered so fast after the recent economic collapse? According to the former chairman and chief executive of the NY Stock Exchange “This is where all the money is getting made. If an individual investor doesn’t have the means to keep up, they’re at a huge disadvantage.”
The big problem, as the head of US equity trading at T. Rowe Price (a firm that uses high frequency trading) puts it is “We’re moving toward a two-tiered marketplace of the high-frequency arbitrage guys, and everyone else. People want to know they have a legitimate shot at getting a fair deal. Otherwise, the markets lose their integrity.”
Senator Chuck Schumer is calling for a ban on this practice, saying “The hallmark of our markets are that they are open and above board and the little guy has as much of a chance as the big guy. This takes a dagger to the heart of that concept.”
What happens when the markets lose their integrity, because individual investors don’t think they have a fair chance? The markets collapse.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert discuss Universal Health Care calmly and rationally (not). Jon doesn’t remember how much a full anal probe costs on Alpha Centauri because his memory was erased.
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