News stories the mainstream media missed : 05/15/10

Have you ever had a week of Mondays? I finally got a moment to post somethin’!

Here are some news stories from this week that I think the mainstream media completely missed out on. All links are from legitimate news sources and not the fringe / wacko sites.

* Instead of saying how bad things are going in California, I think it’s better to show of this next clip of an early classic Arnold Schwarzenegger movie called “Conan the Barbarian” as a allegory. Imagine Schwarzenegger as the modern day governor and everyone on horseback as a line item on the California budget. There’s gonna’ be cuts. Lots and lots and lots of vicious, deep, nasty DAAAAAAYUM kinds of cuts coming. Grab the popcorn! [BLOOMBERG] and [BUSINESS INSIDER]

* The oil rig owner of the massive BP gulf oil spill would like to only pay $27 million for destroying the Gulf of Mexico. No more. Because paying more would not be fair! There’s still the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean (there’s still a lot of clean areas!), the Indian Ocean, the Arctic ocean and the Southern Ocean to screw up! [WALL STREET JOURNAL]

* You know when you’re winning stupid amounts of money in Vegas because you’re always getting a 10 and an Ace on every hand of blackjack? No? Yeah, me either. Well, something similar happened to the “getting a 10 and an Ace” on every hand in the financial market recently. Four big banks scored a absolutely perfect 61 day run. If this happened in Vegas, I would expect a nice pair of concrete shoes to go with my new lead-based body ventilation. [NY TIMES]

* This week, “Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire, is funding research into machines to suck up ten tonnes of seawater every second and spray it upwards. This would seed vast banks of white clouds to reflect the Sun’s rays away from Earth.” OK, first off, flinging the happy little critters of the ocean into the stratosphere might be somewhat bad. And ten tons of seawater a second? In addition to needing a filter made of diamonds twelve inches thick, they’re going to need a massive no-fly zone around that contraption. Meh. He’s got the money to do it all. Go Bill! Go Bill! It’s yo’ birf-day! It’s yo’ birf-day! [TIMESONLINE.CO.UK]

* On the flipside of “I can’t comprehend this level of money” news stories, “the Treasury Department said Wednesday the April deficit soared to $82.7 billion. That was significantly higher than last year’s April deficit of $20 billion and the largest imbalance for that month on record.” [NY TIMES]

That’s all I got for this week! Have a great weekend ya’ll!