fuzzypuzzle

Chad Lindsey, Hero At Large

After watching all the drunken Saint Patrick's Day retards stumbling around Murray Hlll last night, it's nice to wake up to a story like this.

From The NY Times

Mr. Lindsey, 33, is from Harbor Springs, Mich. He moved to New York City three years ago and settled in Woodside, Queens.

“I was waiting for the C,” he said from his office on West 30th Street, where he works as a proofreader. “I’m an actor — shocker.”

He said almost everyone seems to be an aspiring actor nowadays, but in this case, it is a critical point to the story: Mr. Lindsey currently appears in an Off Broadway show called “Kasper Hauser,” in a role that requires him to repeatedly lift a character who cannot walk.

On Monday, as he waited for the train, about 2:30 p.m., he was thinking ahead to the reading he was heading to. “I’m kind of zoned out, and I saw this guy come too quickly to the edge,” he said. “He stopped and kind of reeled around. I felt bad, because I couldn’t get close enough to grab his coat. He fell, and immediately hit his head on the rail and passed out.”

Mr. Lindsey said he sensed a train was approaching, because the platform was crowded. “I dropped my bag and jumped down there. I tried to wake him up,” he said. “He probably had a massive concussion at that point. I jumped down there and he just wouldn’t wake up, and he was bleeding all over the place.”

He looked back up at the people on the platform. “I yelled, ‘Contact the station agent and call the police!’ which I think is hilarious because I don’t think I ever said ‘station agent’ before in my life. What am I, on ‘24’?”

The man wouldn’t wake up, he said. “He was hunched over on his front. I grabbed him from behind, like under the armpits, and kind of got him over to the platform. It wasn’t very elegant. I just hoisted him up so his belly was on the platform. It’s kind of higher than you think it is.”

He stole a glance toward the dark subway tunnel that was becoming ominously less dark, with the glow on the tracks, familiar to all New Yorkers, signaling an approaching train.

“I couldn’t see the train coming, but I could see the light on the tracks, and I was like, ‘I’ve got to get out of this hole.’ ”

He remembered the subway hero of 2007, Wesley Autrey, who jumped on top of a man who was having a seizure on the tracks and held him down in the shallow trench between the rails as the subway passed over them. “I was like, ‘I am not doing that. We’ve got to get out of here.’ ”

People on the platform joined the effort. “Someone pulled him out, and I just jumped up out of there,” he said. With time to spare: “The train didn’t come for another 10 or 15 seconds or something.”

The man lay bleeding on the platform, and the police arrived. Mr. Lindsey soon got on another train. A large group of riders who had been on the platform entered the subway car with him, smiling and clapping him on the back and saying thank you.

“Then I sort of freaked out, and I was nervous and shaky. These five women opened their purses and gave me Handi-Wipes. I was covered in blood and dirt from the subway tracks.”

The fallen man was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan and was later released.

The police identified him late Tuesday afternoon as Theodore Larson, 60, of the Bronx.

Mr. Lindsey, of course, never learned the man’s name. His story told, he said goodbye, adding, “It was quite a New York day.”

Britain and France Crash 25% of Their Nuclear Submarines Into One Another

They only have four nuclear submarines each. So how the F do they manage to crash them into each other? Who's the Admiral over there, Benny Hill?

From the NY Times.

LONDON — Two nuclear submarines, one French and the other British, collided in mid-Atlantic earlier this month, reports in the British and French news media said on Monday, quoting sources in the two defense ministries.

Britain and France each have four missile-carrying nuclear submarines, constituting the core of their nuclear arsenals. According to military journals, Le Triomphant carries 16 ballistic missiles with a range of 5,000 miles, each with six warheads. H.M.S. Vanguard is a Trident-class submarine, 492 feet long and weighing 16,000 tons. It, too, carries 16 missiles, each with three nuclear warheads.

Rep. Paul Kanjorski Explains How the World Economy Almost Collapsed

Swiped over at boingboing

The Capital Markets Subcommittee Chair, Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania, explains how the world economy almost collapsed in a matter of hours.

 At 2 minutes, 20 seconds into this C-Span video clip, Kanjorski reports on a "tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars." According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occured over the period of an hour or two.

"The Treasury opened its window to help. They pumped a hundred and five billion dollars into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic and there. And that's what actually happened. If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o'clock that afternoon, five-and-a-half trillion dollars would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed."

"It would have been the end of our political system and our economic systems as we know it."

Financial Advisor Fakes Plane Crash, Parachutes Into Infamy

From today's Times. (This guy sounds so awesome ... I bet he gets his own reality show.)

MIAMI — A financial adviser from Indiana disappeared into the Alabama woods early Monday after faking a distress call and parachuting from a small plane that crashed in Florida.

The police in three states were looking for the pilot, identified as Marcus Schrenker, 38.

No one was hurt in the crash. According to the police in Santa Rosa County in the Florida Panhandle, where the plane went down, Mr. Schrenker turned up safely about 220 miles north of there. And there is evidence that Mr. Schrenker was an experienced pilot who might have been trying to fake his own death.

His life seemed to be unraveling. Court records show that Mr. Schrenker’s wife filed for divorce on Dec. 30. A Maryland court recently issued a judgment of more than $500,000 against one of three Indiana companies registered in his name — and all three are being investigated for securities fraud by the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office, a spokesman, Jim Gavin, said.

Mr. Schrenker has at least a decade of experience as a pilot, according to the airport in Anderson, Ind., where he departed Sunday evening. But the police said that within hours of taking off, he issued a distress call.

He told air traffic controllers that he was bleeding profusely and that the windshield of his Piper PA-46 turboprop had imploded. The control tower told him to try to land nearby, but instead he “appears to have intentionally abandoned the plane after putting it on autopilot over the Birmingham, Ala., area,” the police in Santa Rosa County said.

He next appeared in Childersburg, Ala., about 30 miles to the southeast, when he approached local officers at a store and said he had been in a canoeing accident. He was wet from the knees down and carried what the police described as “goggles that looked like they were made for ‘flying.’ ”

After checking his Indiana license, the officers drove Mr. Schrenker to a hotel. After learning of the abandoned plane, they returned, but his room was empty.

Witnesses said a man believed to be Mr. Schrenker wearing a black toboggan cap had run into the woods next to the hotel.

He has not been seen since. The telephones at Mr. Schrenker’s home and one of his companies, Heritage Wealth Management, have been disconnected.

His piloting skills, however, can be seen in a YouTube video in which he flies under bridges in the Bahamas. “This stunt,” it says, “should not be tried by any pilot that wishes to stay alive.”

Ridley Scott Signs on to Direct Shitty Movie For Boatloads of Cash

Do not pass GO, do collect millions you cheap frickin' whore. Ridley Scott, the visionary director of classic films Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator has lowered himself to directing movies based on Hasbro board games. From the Hollywood Reporter:

"Monopoly" marks the latest Hasbro property to look to pass go and head to the big screen. Board games and branded properties have become more attractive as studios look to mitigate risk by finding built-in audiences.

Universal is working with Hasbro on several projects as part of a long-term development deal. Platinum Dunes is producing its feature adaptation of "Ouija Board," while the maritime classic "Battleship" is also in development. Elsewhere at Hasbro, Paramount this summer is set to release Stephen Sommers' feature based on its "G.I. Joe" character. And "Trivial Pursuit: America Plays" is now airing as a syndicated television program.

Pirates of Somalia Much More Interesting Than Pirates of Caribbean

Great article in today's Times.

Banks Come Out of the Woodwork For a Piece of the Sweet Bailout Action

From the NY times.

At least 15 new banks have signed up for the government’s offer of a cash injection, in addition to the 9 that joined the program initially. The injections are a bid to revive the sector, which has suffered since lending has dried up and many loans have gone bad.

The Treasury Department plans to provide funds for 20 to 22 lenders in the current round of a $250 billion bank recapitalization program.

Nine of the largest banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Company and Citigroup, received the first $125 billion of capital infusions two weeks ago.

The additional 14 banks that have announced they will use the government funds includes: PNC Financial Services Group, $7.7 billion; the Capital One Financial Corporation, $3.55 billion; the Regions Financial Corporation, $3.5 billion; SunTrust Banks, $3.5 billion; Fifth Third Bancorp, $3.4 billion; KeyCorp, $2.5 billion; Comerica, $2.25 billion; the State Street Corporation, $2.0 billion; the Northern Trust Corporation, $1.5 billion; Huntington Bancshares, $1.4 billion; the First Horizon National Corporation, $866 million; the City National Corporation, $395 million; Valley National Bancorp, $330 million; Washington Federal, $200 million; and First Niagara Financial Group, $186 million.

I really cannot believe that this is the way it's going to go down (?!) Capital One is on this list. You know Capital One right? The company that is constantly bombarding you with multi-million dollar television commercials, advertising their product. The company that charges you 14% for the privilege of using their wonderful card. Yeah them. They're taking 3.5 billion of your tax dollars on top of that. You're cool with that, right? Because "whatevs", there's plenty to go around. This is America after all.

Ron Paul Says No to the Bailout

For more details and links to contact your representative visit the Campaign For Liberty. UPDATE: Links to senators Clinton and Schumer are currently "busy and unable to connect" Democracy in action! (insert screeching eagle of Liberty SFX)

Washington Mutual on Avenue A in the East Village

Quotes On the Bailout

"I'm not going to fire you; you can still be called Congress. But you don't have any power."

      — Jon Macey, Yale Law School professor and deputy dean, providing an allegory for Secretary Paulson's proposal

*

"As of now we [journalists] are, as a group, behaving just as we did the
last two times the administration sought to rush through a hastily
thought out, ill-conceived plan. Why in the world are we being so
gullible and naive?"

      — Former New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston

*

"What the proposal actually did...was explicitly rule out any oversight, plus grant immunity from future review... [I]f Paulson can't be honest about what he himself sent to Congress... there is no reason to trust him on anything related to his bailout plan."

      — Paul Krugman

*

"If you think the Bailout of All Bailouts...won't saddle American taxpayers with billions, if not trillions, of risky obligations, you don't know politics... Never before in the history of American capitalism has so much been asked of so many for...so few."

      — Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor

*

"We are talking about ten thousand dollars per household, and that money
cannot simply go into a black hole of bad debt."

      — John McCain

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"Americans can no longer trust the economic information they are getting from this Administration... Secretary Paulson's market predictions have been consistently wrong in the last year."

      — Republican Senator Jim DeMint

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"This is scare tactics to try to do something that's in the private but not the public interest. It's terrible."

      — Allan Meltzer, former economic adviser to President Reagan
and Carnegie Mellon professor of political economy, quoted in the New York Times

*

"Watching Washington rush to throw taxpayer money at Wall Street has been sobering and a little frightening."

      — Newt Gingrich

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"Many economists argue that taxpayers ought to get more than avoidance of the apocalypse for their dollars: they ought to get an ownership stake in the companies on the receiving end."

      — New York Times front-page analysis by reporter Peter S. Goodman

*

"Seriously, is there anybody out there willing to write George Bush a blank check?"

      — Democratic Activist Christine Pelosi