First, a shameless plug: Please go read my latest piece at AlterNet about America's most revolting breakfast foods. From Reese's Puffs to Hardee's Monster Biscuit, these are the most comically unhealthy breakfasts you'll ever find.

Now, onto the more serious business of robots taking over the entire world through the stock market.

60 Minutes ran an excellent piece last night about high-frequency trading:

For those of you who don't know, an estimated 70% of trades on the stock market today are generated by high-frequency trading algorithms that scan market data for inefficiencies, anomalies and the like and buy or sell stocks based on the probability that they'll go up or down in a very short period of time. So let's say Microsoft's stock has been trading down 25% on the day. An algorithm detects that this is unusually low and snatches it up, then trades it three minutes later after its price has appreciated.

The key here is that the algorithms get pricing data milliseconds before human traders do and place orders accordingly. This helps them skim pennies off of stocks millions of times a day, which adds up to big long-term gains at the end of the year.

Let's make this simple by using a sports analogy, or rather a virtual sports analogy. If you've ever played fantasy football, you know that you set your lineup of players roughly one hour before game time and you aren't allowed to change it once the games start. But let's say you're playing in a league that lets you change your roster during games. And let's say a rival player is watching games on an old analog set while you're watching it on Direct TV. As you're following games you notice that your rival is signing and dropping players five seconds before they score a touchdown. Because he doesn't have the five-second delay that you have, he's able to grab players off the waiver wire who have just scored right before the system records the score officially. And at the end of the day, you check your league to learn that your rival has accumulated 5,469 fantasy points in one week alone.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying, "Our markets are completely insane." When 70% of trades are made by algorithms that don't have any sense of a stock's underlying value and are only skimming pennies off the top, we have no idea if price changes are the result of real-world events or if they're just being driven by computers trading with themselves. And what's more, if a firm enters a trade that sets off several algos' alarm bells it can result in a massive flash crash like the one that happened in May.

I'm not sure of very much in this life, my friends, but I feel pretty confident that turning our stock market over to robots will probably end badly for most of us.

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As you know, I've been very active when it comes to helping elect more and better progressive candidates into Congress and taking political actions on issues I think are hugely important like Financial reform, Education reform, Health care, Gay rights,Civil Rights and campaign finance reform to name a few.

With your help we were able to raise enough money along with Digby and Howie to run thousands of dollars of ads against Blanche Lincoln for months when nobody was covering her and we believe it helped set the stage for Bill Halter's dynamite showing in the AR. primary. Are you ready for a runoff?

The abomination in Arizona is just one example of what I mean and I support the ACLU's lawsuit entirely. We all need to do what we can to overturn this hideous and xenophobic immigration bill that replaces probable cause with reasonable suspicion for law enforcement and has the potential to turn the state and others that are trying to adopt similar legislation virtually into a racial profiling machine. Since one third of this country's population is Latino, 30 percent of the population will be walking around with potential targets on their backs every single moment of every single day. No country calling itself "free" should tolerate it.

I'm asking you to donate to C&L's Fellowship Action Program so I can hire a few great people to raise their progressive voices, do the kind of work you look forward to and keep folks in the media and in Congress honest.

Our call for a boycott in Arizona along with my MLB/Bud Selig action is making a difference already. The country is talking about boycotting Arizona like nobodies business and although Bud Selig is remaining mute about it, but the media is starting to gang up on him and the MLB. I have more in store for Mr. Selig.

This site exists because the mainstream media hasn't lived up to their responsibility to report facts without spin. I'm not saying the whole of journalism has failed us, but enough to warrant these feelings. We've also exposed the outrageous lies being spun by the right wing media machine as good as anyone. Our video archive is second to none and Video Cafe has continued to serve up some of the best video has to offer. Newstaligia has developed into an incredible historical resource and the Late Nite Music Club just rocks. That's why I'm asking you to help.

Please contribute to C&L's Fellowship Action Program. The money will go to supporting C&L's infrastructure, (Our new design is almost done and that means diaries too)) hiring new bloggers to expand our roster, paying the ones we already have including non-writers and to keep the pressure on and push forward towards real progress and real change. Last night we saw what the blogosphere can accomplish yet again.

So please, "Can You Help?"

Seeing the Forest: The voters are smarter than the media.

Newshoggers: They're also wiser than the high-ranking officials who feel the American public lacks "the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats" to our national security and that "the correction for that… is an attack." Hmm, maybe a domestic propaganda campaign would aid that agenda.

Glenn Greenwald: It's also easier to deceive the public when "actual journalists" serve as uncritical, dismissive government spokespeople.

Amygdala: The New, New Colossus, in a cruel, mocking land where decency knows no home.

Human Rights Watch: Is waterboarding more like swimming freestyle, or the backstroke? Have these officials no shame about widespread and systemic abuse authorized straight from the top? Let's put Jack Bauer on it, because when you're secretly, radically overturning constitutional and international law, who needs expert advice or historical fact when you have specious reasoning and fantasy on your side?

Guest roundup by Batocchio. Please e-mail submissions and tips to Batocchio9 at yahoo dot com. Thanks!

Leave it to South Park to dig deep inside the mind of a Neocon-right wing warblogger:

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General: Do you realize what's going on here? Terrorists have attacked our imagination and now our imaginations are running wild.

Pure genius. The military uses fantasy as their ultimate weapon....Quick, give up your civil liberties---allow torture and rendition...You can catch highlights here...

This Jack Bauer fantasy hero worship is really getting out of hand...

Int'l. Herald Tribune :

Observing President George W. Bush in action lately, we have to wonder if he actually watched the election returns in November, or if he was just rerunning the 2002 vote on his TiVo.
[..]In 2006, the voters sent Bush a powerful message that it was time to rein in his imperial ambitions. But we have yet to see any sign that Bush understands that. Indeed, he seems to have interpreted his party's drubbing as a mandate to keep pursuing his fantasy of victory in Iraq and to press ahead undaunted with his assault on civil liberties and the judicial system. Read full article here

"William the Bloody" Kristol, (I have many names for him) is being hired by TIME magazine. The neocons have been totally discredited in their world domination aspirations and they decide to give him a new gig, Unbelievable. Check out "The Vampire" in action that I posted a few days ago. I guess TIME finds his type of thinking---appealing...

If your stomach can take it, Bill "the Vampire" Kristol practically orgasms at the thought of a long and sustained troop level surge in Iraq. "What's needed is a sustained and large surge." Billie got almost three solid minutes to praise Bush for his—cough—cough—leadership.

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There's nothing like some hot burning warmongering love for Billie. His neocon fantasy got a little pick me up like a sex addict with an unlimited porn pass on DirecTV.

If your stomach can take it, Bill "the Vampire" Kristol practically orgasms at the thought of a long and sustained troop level surge in Iraq. "What's needed is a sustained and large surge." Billie got almost three solid minutes to praise Bush for his---cough---cough---leadership.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

There's nothing like some hot burning warmongering love for Billie. His neocon fantasy got a little pick me up like a sex addict with an unlimited porn pass on DirecTV.

He's so distraught over the state of Iraq that Thomas Friedman is losing his mind. He now tells us that Iraq is like thirty civil wars and the only solution would be to reoccupy Iraq again. Wasn't once enough? And we're still occupying Iraq or did we already redeploy our troops?. He wants to go into a time machine and start all over. If we actually---you know had time travel--we wouldn't have invaded Iraq at all! Right Thom? Basically---he's in fantasy land.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT (rough transcript)

Friedman: ...To have a proper civil war you need to have two sides ----you have about thirty sides---It's beyond a civil war there.

Vieira: So what does that mean in terms of our role there then, Thom?

Friedman: Um, Obviously when you're dealing now with something broken up into so many little pieces--it's hard to believe that anything other than re-occupying the country--um, and establishing the very coherent order we failed to do from the beginning is really the only serious option left.

Vieira (stunned) But, is that really a serious option---to reoccupy the country?

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