Jack's Weekly Apocalypse Watch

Yeah, I renamed it. "Weekly Update" was just a little boring. Or "snorey", if you will. (Inside joke.)

Here's the news I found amusing this week.

Government No Longer Pretends To Be Anything Other Than an ATM for Bankers
In an utterly unsurprising development, the government has said it will guarantee unlimited number of losses at Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac for the next 3 years. You remember Fannie & Freddie, right? They were private companies that bought mortgages. This was their business model up till July 2008:

Step 1. Buy mortgages from banks that don't want to carry them because the mortgagees are bad credit risks.
Step 2. Lose trillions of dollars when those people who were bad credit risks quit paying.
Step 3. Pay their executive Big Bucks for doing a such a stellar job.

Then in July 2008, they couldn't pretend this was a viable business model anymore, so they called in their political debts and Congress handed them $700 billion dollars so they wouldn't have to officially declare themselves both Bankrupt and Insolvent. Congress assured us ignorant rubes that this was in our best interest, and that Things Would Be Better Now. Of course they were lying and of course we knew it. Fannie & Freddie are now even more broke, more insolvent and deeper in debt, so Congress - rather than writing a big check - just gave them a credit card with no limit.

Ain't it great to be a banker?

Never One To Miss an Opportunity To Look Idiotic, the TSA Outlaws Pooping and Peeing the Last Hour of a Flight
Unless you do it in your seat. Then it's okay. This in response to the guy who lit his underwear on fire. They also prohibited using electronics in the last hour and keeping anything in your lap the last hour.

Of course, a really CLEVER terrorist will find a way to make his poop and pee explosive, and then "detonate" it when they strap him into his seat.

I don't know why they don't just prohibit flying. Oh wait, yes I do. Where would all those mouth-breathers currently employed by the TSA go, the Post Office?

UPDATE: They caved on their stupid new rules.

James Cameron is in fact The King of Hollywood
We just got back from seeing Avatar, the latest movie from Titanic/Terminator creator/director James Cameron. It seems like every two months another movie is being touted as "ground-breaking-this" or "never-before-done-that" and invariably they all fail to live up to the hype. Avatar, however, exceeds the hype. I was blown away. It is a game changer. From now on, all movies will be either "Before Avatar" or "After Avatar". It really is that good. Go see it. You'll thank me.