Why The Business World Is Fucked Up

A full 25% of businessmen and women surveyed believed that it is not only acceptable but necessary to break laws and ethical codes in order to succeed in business.

 

One inference we may draw from this rather remarkable set of data is that the more successful any random group of executives is, the more likely there are skeletons in the closet.

 

Which brings me to the LIBOR scandal.

"A cesspit." That's how the usually measured Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England, described banks' attempts to manipulate the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.

Faced by a throng of sound-bite-hungry British Parlamentarians, on Monday Mr. Tucker did a convincing job of rebuffing allegations that the authorities had put pressure on Barclays PLC to manipulate Libor, the world's most important interest rate.

There's a hint in that last paragraph as to why you should be paying more attention to this story. LIBOR is the rate that is the basis of the interest rate you pay on everything, from your mortgage and credit cards to student and auto loans.

Not the Fed rate, LIBOR. LIBOR (London InterBank Offered Rate) is set by a panel of lenders each night, and therefore is removed from the political pressures of the Federal funds rate (the rate at which banks lend money overnight to other banks in America.) Ostensibly, it should be a fairer and truer benchmark of, to put it in layman's terms, the cost of borrowing money.

Which is fine. Free markets, no social structural rate, no incentive for a government to raise or lower, yadayadayada. It makes sense for the markets to use this rate to set all other rates.

Until...

The investigation found that Barclays's traders communicated with colleagues at some of the 16 banks involved in Libor setting. As one Barclays trader explained to another one at a rival lender, "the trick is you must not do this alone." This kind of evidence should help regulators prove that others were in on the fix.

Given [Barclay's CEO Robert] Diamond's resignation, the question is whether CEOs of other firms will follow suit once their companies settle. While some will argue they weren't there at the time, those with long tenure and an investment-banking past will come under pressure.

"CEOs of other banks should be worried, especially those who rose through the ranks of the fixed-income and rate businesses" says Michael Karp, managing partner of Options Group, an executive search and consulting firm.

Ay, there's the rub. And also the rationale behind strict government oversight of the financial markets.

 

This crisis will make the subprime bubble look like a bump in the road. See, this means that not only were a handful of bankers in England making out like bandits, pumping up their bottom lines at the expense of, well, the entire fucking population of the planet, but likely it means that the US banks who issued those cards and mortgages and loans had foreknowledge of the rip-off.

 

And so now we get back to the original point of this post: the tendency towards rule- and law-breaking the higher up the financial food chain one gets.

 

Evidence suggests that this crisis was covered up furiously when the story began to break, back in April 2008.

 

After all, would TARP have ever happened if the American public had focused on the fact that the underlying structure of bank lending was rubble and sand? Is it any wonder now why banks, after receiving their injections of steroids, went about not lending to anyone? If it got out that they were scamming people, even as they were being scammed themselves, there might have been full-scale class warfare.

 

And as George W. Bush was still President at the time, that would not have boded well for the long-term electability of Republicans. Or for that matter, a certain wealthy Presidential candidate who banks most of his money overseas and reaps the benefits of investments that likely took advantage of these same scams.

 

Too, the entire sordid affair puts paid to yet another Republican talking point: that markets will fix themselves.

 

They might, but it takes time and in the interim, billions-- if not trillions-- of dollars will be illegally skimmed off an already struggling global economy.

 

Make no mistake about this: this incident could be the crack in the dam where the entire reservoir pours out onto the valley below. This one might actually put capitalism as we know it out of business.

Interesting Strategy

First, let me state my preference: in a perfect world, I'd let the Bush era tax cuts-- all three of them-- expire in full. The Clinton tax structure developed 23 million jobs and it was foolish and foolhardy to risk that kind of growth.

 

Then we could have talked about the fair share of the rich, rather than listen to them whine of how they pay such a proportionately high percentage of a dishearteningly low national tax burden.

 

That said....

CBS News has confirmed that President Obama will call on Congress Monday to pass a temporary, one-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for people who make less than $250,000 a year.

The tax cuts are set to expire on January 1. With Monday's announcement, the president is hoping to show voters a very clear difference between himself and Mitt Romney.

For an election year in a sluggish economy, this is not a bad strategy. It does two things: it maintains the tax cuts for the real job creators (the middle class, who own something like 95% of the small business in this nation and created something like 90% of our jobs) while forcing Mitt Romney to defend lower taxes for the wealthy, who clearly do not create jobs, particularly when their money remains in the Cayman Islands or Switzerland.

Or in the Hamptons.

This does force Romney's hand at a time when Congress is in session, albeit a bit on the early side to have much impact in the silly season later. Except that Romney's words had best be chosen very carefully or Obama will use them in the debate.

Obama seems to be a pretty decent lawyer. He's entering evidence now that can be used later at what can only be considered a trial: the Presidential campaign, in which an entire 100,000,000 member jury will weigh each word and then vote precisely how they are told to.

Altho, in fairness, people seem to be paying attention already and making up their minds.

In the back of my mind, I see something like $6 to $8 billion being spent by Republicans and their superPAC allies in an attempt to unseat the incumbent. I don't see a lot of jobs being created and I see a romp by Obama in November.

And these are the guys who swear they're smart businessmen?

 

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) 56 percent of the United States is in a drought. it will get worse. There will be food shortages and higher food prices. But hey, global warming doesn't exist!

 

2) You might have heard the story about the Florida man who was fired from his job as a lifeguard for saving a swimmer outside his designated zone. A few interesting facts:

1. The beach in Hallandale is a public beach.
2. The lifeguard positions were contracted out, privatized.
3. The contractor who fired the lifeguard claims that the insurance company kept their premiums in check by insisting on clearly defined rescue zones: swim outside those zones, even with a lifeguard on duty, you swim at your own peril.
4. The idiot, I mean, victim, was a full quarter of a mile outside the safe zone.
5. The lifeguard post was not left unattended while the lifeguard, Tomas Lopez, went off to bail yet another Floridian asshole out of life-threatening danger.
6. It's Florida.

I'm not sure what to make of this, other than the unidentified idiot who forced the situation ought to be thrown in jail for 30 days on moral grounds. On the one hand, rules are rules and its not like the guy started out in the safe zone and drifted off unwittingly. Where does the responsibility of a lifeguard end? A quarter mile? Half? A mile? Within line of sight? What if it's a false alarm, some douchebag playing at drowning to call attention to himself, leaving a person who might actually be drowning in the safe zone with less coverage? How can a lifeguard tell from a distance? Isn't the lifeguard's responsibility to the people who are there legally, primarily?

 

I lifeguarded when I was a youngster, and was fortunate enough to be assigned pool duties mostly (their own set of challenges, I assure you) but I have been involved in open water rescues and let me tell you, no matter how calm the water, they are far harder than pool rescues (which usually involve tossing a rope or a ring.) Kudos to Lopez for making the right call, since he saved a life, but this is a pretty knotty problem.

 

3) Ladies and gentlemen, but especially ladies, I present to you London's largest erection.

 

4) Excuse me....a WikiLeaks movie??

 

5) Welp, so much for that Syrian summit last weekend...

 

6) The reality of quantum computing is now two seconds closer.

 

7) International elections in the news.

 

8) The real threat the SCOTUS ACA ruling made to Romney's campaign.

 

9) Wow. Wingnuts sure are gullible!

 

10) California gets plenty of whales off shore and they delight tourists and residents alike. But this is once in a lifetime: these are blue whales, the largest animal ever to stalk the face of the earth.

Hey! You Think Ann Romney Ought To Be Investigated?

 

After all, she just accused the President of attempted murder and conspiracy...

Flip And Flop

Well, there's go ol' Mitt Romney again, tumbling through hoops to try to clarify a position that was clarified a week and a half ago, even tho that position was consistent with the position he took years ago as governor of Massachussetts, but inconsistent with the position he took during the primary campaign, which is now consistent with the position he's taken then:

 Just two days after Mitt Romney's top spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, said the former governor agrees with President Obama that the health insurance mandate does not represent a tax, the candidate reversed that positioning.

In an interview with CBS Wednesday from New Hampshire where Romney and his family are vacationing, the Republican candidate for president said due to the Supreme Court's majority decision, he too believes it's a tax.

"The Supreme Court has the final word and their final word is that Obamacare is a tax," Romney said. "So it’s a tax."

Ferhnstrom and Republican National Committee spokesperson Sean Spicer will likely fall on their swords over this.

Y'know, the Republicans used to be such a disciplined bunch of guys. You may not agree with what they stood for, but you felt they had come by that opinion honestly, and they kept their messages, however hateful and abhorrent, consistent.

That seems to no longer be the dynamic of the party, which we can trace to the Teabagger wing. It's hard to stay consistent when you feel your hands slipping off the life preserver that is winning elections. They'll lose, and keep losing, until they tell that wing to shut the hell up, and move to more moderate positions.

I think this dynamic, in part, played into the Roberts flip-flopping on ACA. While much speculation centers on his ego and vanity in what the legacy of a Roberts' court would be, weighing into that ego has to be a measurement of the insanity of the extremist right wing of both his court and the country in general. How could he not?

So when your political movement is affecting even the SCOTUS in ways that are harmful to your political aspirations, the time has come to jettison the loons.

Which would leave the GOP with precisely no base. Moderates have left the party in droves, now self-identifying as "independents" (and skewing that demographic rightward in the process), and many of those have found comfort in the arms of the Donkeys.

Which, of course, has given us on the left pause. After all, it was the likes of Ben Nelson and Blanche Dubois-- I mean, Lincoln that created the mess we found ourselves in when the ACA came to the fore in the first place.

Now, I've long held that a vital part of American democracy is two opposing forces wrestling over the issues of the day, but the key element has been two opposing forces with a single goal in mind: to legislate. Two opposing forces within the same party or two opposing forces that can't come to some understanding and get things done is an unhealthy situation.

See, as a winner-take-all electoral entity, America is subject to Duverger's Law. If you'd like a dirty and fast analogy, Duverger's describes American political parties as Sith lords: there can only be two. Never fewer, never more.

This is the extent of "choice" in America and as history shows, Duverger was spot-on. We've never had a viable third party but once, and that party ended up replacing the party it fractured from.

Screw that up, and you enter a period of extremist views, and some god-awful legislatin'.

Romney loses this November, and it should be a wake up call to the Republicans (whom you'd think ought to know better): get rid of the assholes and get back to work.

But it won't. And they won't. And that should bother us all.

 

Oh Dear...This One Is Going To Stick....

Romney outsourced fetuses.

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics. Coming during the heat of the GOP primaries, as Romney tried to sell South Carolina Republicans on his pro-life bona fides, the revelation had the potential to damage the candidate's reputation among values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion.

But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney's exit from Bain.

The Stericycle deal—the abortion connection aside—is relevant because of questions regarding the timing of Romney's departure from the private equity firm he founded. Responding to a recent Washington Post story reporting that Bain-acquired companies outsourced jobs, the Romney campaign insisted that Romney exited Bain in February 1999, a month or more before Bain took over two of the companies named in the Post's article. The SEC documents undercut that defense, indicating that Romney still played a role in Bain investments until at least the end of 1999.

That's gonna leave a mark. You could make the case that his direct involvement in Bain decisions made after he "left" is irrelevant. He created a culture where farming baby corpses was acceptable behavior, full stop. Granted, if he was not informed of the intents of Bain Capital, it's hard to blame him for decisions they made post-departure.

But as the Mother Jones article shows, Romney was directly and actively partcipating in the decision to acquire Stericycle. Indeed, it's impossible that he was not deeply involved: he was the sole shareholder of at least three entities Bain lists in an SEC filing with regards to its purchase of Stericycle.

Now, no one is denying that aborted fetuses need to be disposed of, and Stericycle seems to be a pretty appropriate organization to do so. Indeed, if it hadn't run afoul of nearly every OSHA regulation with respect to handling medical waste, and hadn't been forced to settle with the states of Arizona...Arizona!... and Utah for antitrust actions in those states, it likely would have slipped into the deep chasm of anonymity, and Romney's campaign wouldn't be in such serious trouble.

In case you were wondering why Obama has never been intimidated by the spectre of a Romney candidacy throwing gobs of money against the wall to smear him, this is why.

Romney is in a no-win situation with this: he has offended and pissed off the very people who grudgingly got in line to support him AND managed to make his lies the centerpiece of his campaign this week at a critical moment in the campaign cycle: the Fourth of July. Many people aren't going away because it's in the middle of the week, so they're staying home and paying attention to the news.

That sound you're hearing? The noise from the game Pac-Man when Pac gets eaten? That's the campaign theme for Romney now.

States? Right.

 

In the victory on the Affordable Care Act last week came a few disappointments. This is one of them, and one of the most important:

But what happens if states choose not to expand Medicaid to meet the new guidelines? That's where the conservative majority, joined by liberals Stephen Breyer and Elana Kagan, surprised a lot of people. As the law was originally written, the entire Medicaid package became an all-or-nothing deal: States that didn't want to meet the new, more expansive guidelines were free to do so. But choosing that option meant forgoing all federal Medicaid money. The Court on Thursday ruled that choice was "coercive." Roberts, echoing the arguments of the law's challengers, likened it to holding a gun to the states' heads.

The remedy was not as extreme as it might have been: The justices didn't strike down the Medicaid expansion altogether. But they insisted that states choosing not to expand coverage give up only the money that would have gone to covering the new populations. Those states would remain eligible for the funds that they already get, to cover people who already qualify for Medicaid under the old guidelines.

And yet, it's extreme enough: people who do not have health insurance and cannot afford it under traditional private insurance plans will not have as much opportunity to get it.

My suspicion is, as with stimulus funds, over the longer term states will give up and give in. Governors across the nation at first were foursquare against accepting those funds, but quietly, even the last holdouts like Chris Christie have reneged on those vows. Same thing will likely happen here.

But here's the thing: this isn't just about Medicaid. For example, did you know that if your state doesn't set its speed limit at 55 (or require seat belt use, for that matter), it is ineligible for federal highway funds? In the future, the Federal government will have a hard time instituting sane regulation in exchange for dangling road repair in the faces of governors like a cherry for a sundae. The courts are effectively saying "You can only refuse to give more money than the status quo."

So...this is a pretty effective demolishment of much social engineering that the Federal government could impose (and includes such right wing plums as defense contracts and even a potential military draft) while at the same time putting social engineering through tax impositions into jeopardy.

Even tho the courts were pretty adamant that the individual mandate was a tax, it does not mean every tax will be allowable. And it won't surprise me if another lawsuit is forthcoming on that point with respect to ACA, anyway.

 

Because Goodness Knows...

 

...the public should be prevented from using public spaces.

When Is A Second More Than A Second?

 

When it crashes your website because you employ Java.

FINALLY!

An explanation for Teabaggers.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) It's morning in America. All across the land, wingnuts are waking up and rising up as one, shouting, "I will never vote to re-elect Chief Justice Roberts again!" (link is to FrontPage.com. You've been warned.)

 

2) Appropriately enough, President Obama's home state of Illinois is moving fast to be the first state to the trough.

 

3) You keep dreaming there, snookums...

 

4) The other big development of the day, the contempt citation of Eric Holder by Congress, will likely also end up in the courts, and also end up with the GOP sucking egg-goop off their faces.

 

5) Now that Obama has prevailed on the signature issue of his first term, watch Republicans work overtime to find another issue to pin on him. Maybe they can blame him for the widlfires in Colorado? It wouldn't surprise me, he's become something of a demigod to them.

 

6) Interesting. Republicans have suddenly discovered Big Government, at least when it comes to Asian carp invading the Great Lakes. Ironically, environmentalists have a solution, but no one will listen because it doesn't cost enough and would require actual physical labor to implement. You know, jobs!

 

7) Cool website of the day.

 

8) Yesterday, I wrote about the crisis in Syria. Russia has backdoored a signal.

 

9) Google released a really cool new app this week: Google Glass, wireless HD video goggles that you can connect directly to a Google+ Hangout and broadcast. This might end up being a Facebook killer.

 

10) Errr, the phrase is "To boldly go where no one has gone before," Bill, not "show"...

 

Mitt Romney Can Quit Now

He called healthcare reform the single thing President Obama did in his first term and that striking it down would render Obama irrelevant.

 

Well...

World War III

You think I speak in hyperbole. I do not.

(AP) ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey deployed anti-aircraft guns and other weapons alongside its border with Syria, state television reported on Thursday, days after the downing of a Turkish military jet by Syrian forces heightened the tensions between the two countries.

A small convoy of military trucks, towing anti-aircraft guns, entered into a military outpost in the border village of Guvecci, which faces a Syrian military outpost across the border and where Syrian forces and rebels clashed in recent months, TRT television footage showed.

Several anti-aircraft guns have also been deployed elsewhere alongside the border. Some trucks were seen carrying self-propelled multiple rocket launchers, TRT footage showed.

As a member of NATO, Turkey has called on that group to stand with it. The NATO charter is pretty explicit: an attack on one member shall be deemed an attack on the alliance. Turkey's complaint is kind of small beer, since it's fighter strayed into Syrian airspace, except...

Except based on current foreign policy, there's strategic advantage for NATO (or at least the United States) to take an active role in Turkey. By occupying Syria, the US would have a clear path of friendly-ish nations to roll tanks through: Israel, Jordan/Syria, and Iraq.

Right to the Iranian border. Remember the first rule of chess: to control your enemy and win, you must control the middle of the board. If Syria were to fall into NATO hands, this would put Iran in an island surrounded by western forces, save for the north and nations like Kazhakstan and Uzbekistan.

Check. And if Iran does actually have nuclear weapons, there really is no telling what's next. Heck, even if they don't, Pakistan (nominally our ally) does and it's a mere hop, skip, and a smuggle to get them.

The distractions within the nation, the bombings of a Syrian television station and today's Justice Ministry bombings are indicative that the Assad regime does not have clear control. This will embolden the rebels to be sure, and that Turkey is on the border will give them a refuge in the north. In exchange, Turkey will have an antagonistic position that could come into play if they sortie across the border, then claim Syrian forces attacked them on native soil.

It doesn't matter what the facts will be, the "truth" will be that Turkey's sovereignty was assaulted.

The key development here, the one thing that could prevent now a crisis later, is a meeting in Geneva this weekend among UN special envoy Kofi Annan, the Syrian representative to the Arab League, and the heads of the Five Families, I mean, leaders from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

But I doubt it. I have serious reservations that this game of chess is anywhere near ended. Russia and China must see the threat to Iran, and given their previous support for that corrupt regime, will give it aid and comfort now. I'm not sure what would impel them to give Ahmadinejad a divorce, but one can pretty much see it's not Syria.

 

How Desperate Is Romney?

This desperate.

 

Clearly, even Condi Rice can see this disaster coming.

Charlie Rangel Must Go

 

It breaks my heart to have to type that, but Rangel has become a stultifying influence on the Democrats:

Rangel, who has represented Harlem since 1971 and is a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus, is battling a crowd of younger politicians in a redrawn district that is now heavily Latino. Most political watchers still expect him to be re-elected.

Rangel's opponents in the Democratic primary include state Senator Adriano Espaillat, who has strong Latino support; Clyde Williams, who worked in the Clinton White House and got a boost when he won endorsements from the New York Times and the New York Daily News; Harlem community activist Craig Schley; and businesswoman Joyce Johnson.

Once one of the most powerful members of Congress, Rangel now walks slowly through the halls of the Capitol with a cane.

He has survived difficult times before. The U.S. House of Representatives censured him in 2010 for ethics violations, including failing to pay income taxes, and he stepped down as chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means committee.

Now, I love me some Charlie Rangel. He's feisty but has a mind like a steel trap and can articulate a liberal position like few politicians before or after him. He's been one of the most important ideological figures in both New York City politics and on the national scene.

Unfortunately, it eventually went to his head. His ethical corruptions created a toxic environment not only for his authority and respectability, but it reflected in general on the Democrats. After all, if one of your oldest and longest serving statesmen has multiple apartments that he's charging to his campaign (and God knows what was going on in them) then your party is pretty much painted as corrupt and shady.

This is about the best opportunity to get rid of him. Indeed, it's such a ripe opportunity to primary him out and keep his seat that there are no less than four opponents vying for the Democratic nod. This pretty much guarantees Rangel's re-nomination despite demographic and jerrymandering changes that altered his district from predominantly black to overwhelmingly Latino. It's a five way race, which means it will come down to commitment from the candidate's base, something Rangel has in spades.

 

Self-Awareness

As you are reading this, your computer may itself be learning from you.

Google scientists working in the company's secretive X Labs have made great strides in using computers to simulate the human brain.

Best known for inventing self-driving cars and augmented-reality eyewear, the lab created a neural network for machine learning by connecting 16,000 computer processors and then unleashed it on the Internet. Along the way, the network taught itself to recognize cats.

While the act of finding cats on the Internet doesn't sound all that challenging, the network's performance exceeded researchers' expectations, doubling its accuracy rate in identifying objects from a list of 20,000 items, according to a New York Times report.

There is no truth to the rumour that the study was funded by pirate cats from the planet Procyon, reaching out to their terrestrial counterparts for help in stashing their loot in litterboxes and the like.

Cats like to dig, you see.

The interesting bit of this is, scientists never specified to the network what it was looking for, only feeding it images of cats along with tens of thousands of others. The network developed the concept of "cat" along with parameters for objects that fit the description well enough to be included in the results.

 

Things that think gain self-awareness, the ability to recognize one's unique place in the world and a concept of self. Things that don't think remain inert, and incapable of accepting change.

 

Sound like anyone we know?

New Commenting Format

You, too, can have a bigger p-ness.

JS-Kit, aka Haloscan, aka Echo, is closing in the fall, so I'm experimenting with new ideas in commenting. Let me know what you think-- you know, if you can...

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) So George Zimmerman felt that his life was threatened. And he has a point: a kid sitting on top of me, even if I weigh a hundred pounds more than me, bashing my face in and banging my skull against the ground would be a threat to me, and he wouldn't have to say a thing. But then I'd remember I sort of brought this on myself and while I'd fight to get away and maybe even end up killing him, I wouldn't try to justify it as some heroic act of self-defense. George? Just imagine how threatened you'd feel if some black hooded figure followed you in a car for fifteen minutes in a neighborhood that you don't live in. You murdered an innocent man, and you will pay for that in some way.

 

2) When Romney spoke at that Hispanic leadership conference yesterday, how many audience members were remembering how he had to fire his migrant gardeners because "I'm running for President, for God's sake"? I'm thinking it wasn't enough, and I'm thinking liberal Latinos need to get out in front of this and start blanketing the airwaves with that sound bite.

 

3) Remember, this guy was heavily influenced by American "pundits" like Pamela Geller and Daniel Pipes. When he is sent away to prison for the rest of eternity, so should they accompany him as accomplices.

 

4) A "failure of leadership" is code for "The US won't sign the damn thing anyway, so why bother?" Barack Obama ought to unilaterally sign the agreements then dare Congress to knock it off his shoulder.

 

5) Weaker Boener, where are the motherfucking jobs?

 

6) Four years too fucking late, Moodys. You should have done this when all those CDOs and CMOs were on the books making them gobs of money.

 

7) Let me get this straight: Barack Obama protecting Alberto Gonzalez through the use of executive privilege has the conservative clown car up in arms? Ooooooooooooooookay............

 

8) Remember that second scientific paper about the avian flu and it's pandemic potential that would have given terrorists a blueprint for how to build a virus? It's been published.

 

9) You're fifteen hundred feet from summiting Mount Everest when a cop pulls you over...

 

10) Say, you know who else liked a nice rack?

Why the FUCK Didn't You, Madame Speaker?

"I could have arrested Karl Rove on any given day," Nancy Pelosi said to laughter, during a sit-down with reporters. "I'm not kidding. There's a prison here in the Capitol ... If we had spotted him in the Capitol, we could have arrested him."

You mean like so many on the left asked? Begged? Pleaded? Why not?

"It doesn't serve our country, and it undermines the true purpose of contempt of Congress."

Get the fuck out of here. No, seriously, GTFO! When are the Democrats going to get it through their thick skulls that the only way they're ever going to right the ship of state and get to a place where Republicans are willing to be flexible and negotiate is to smack the fucks on the snout with a 2x4?

If the Teabagger movement tells us anything, it's that Republicans are not only perfectly willing and capable, but seem to enjoy sinking into the gutter in order to stop this nation from doing, well, anything except a war that Republicans themselves declare (else why the argument over Libya?)

The Democrats are the human in the middle of a pack of rampaging junkyard dogs and you know how you beat down a pack of junkyard dogs? You don't try to soothe them or bribe them: you take the lead dog, and crack him across the nose to show him who is boss.

Arresting, even just arresting, Karl Rove would have gone a long way to making the GOP realize you're serious and to be taken seriously.

My God, woman, these are the thieves and crooks who stole elections, raped our nation, destroyed her good name and credit both domestically and internationally, Murdered thousands of our young men and women for wars that had no point and no end, and plundered the values of our homes! Fuck "contempt of Congress," they are traitorous, murderous slimy bastards who if we had a Bastille and guillotine would be lined up at La Barrière!!

Arresting Karl Rove would have been, as they say, a nice first step.

How much different would the first four years of the Obama administration have been if, say, you had on January 1, 2007, slammed your gavel down and said "I will entertain a bill from Congressman Kucinich authorizing an investigation into a bill of war crime charges against officials of this Administration"? Or criminal negligence for ignoring the urgent warnings surrounding 9-11? Or hell, any number of things including charges of voter caging in 2004 or rigged elections in 2000?

I can tell you this much: Karl Rove would have spent the last six years running and hiding and spending money on lawyers and not building a superPAC war chest (after persuading five SCOTUS justices to pervert the First Amendment) to try to get the HNIC out of the White House. The Republicans would have thought twice before raising the birther issue, or banning abortions, or passing "Stand Your Ground" laws.

They would have respected you. Yes, they would have worked overtime to get rid of you, to take Congress over anyway, but guess what? It happened, despite your gestures of conciliation. You know who else reconciled with a tyrant hell-bent on destroying nations?

"Peace in our time," my lily-white ass!

 

Mysteries Deepen

 

It looks as though it's possible some of the bones of John the Baptist may actually have been buried in a church in Bulgaria for centuries.

 

John the Baptist is a pivotal figure in Christianity. He prophesied the coming of the Christ, baptized Christ (imagine trying to dunk Him under water...) and was beheaded by Herod for condemning Herod's marriage to his niece.

 

The legends surrounding John the Baptist are myriad, especially in the former Byzantine Empire. John is essentially the patron saint of Eastern Orthodox Christianity and it's said that his bones were gifted by Byzantium during the Crusades, possibly as incentive or reward for assistance during the Crusades.

 

John's head is rumoured to be now held in the Vatican, but it may have been the single most important relic the Knights Templar held, apart from the San Greal (Holy Grail).

 

If these are John's bones, they would be the first tangible physical proof to confirm contemporary accounts of the era of Christ's birth, including Josephus's narrative, which is widely cited as one of the few historical accounts of the existence of Jesus (along with Tacitus and Suetonius.) John is mentioned prominently by Josephus and the Biblical accounts of events in Jesus' life are confirmed by Jospehus.

I Knew They Were Slow, But...

 

Fossilized turtles caught in flagrante delicto.

Ruminations

 

It strikes me that this election cycle seems to be a good one to try to get a liberal message out in the ether, to effective re-frame the context of our arguments that have been so thoroughly deconstructed by people of evil intent.

 

The Dark Side, if you will.

 

After all, the past few years have seen a signal change in the electorate: it has gone from what seemed to be a unified body of sheeple into a fractured coalition of people looking for change, whether they be angry Teabaggers or calmer, more thoughtful Occupiers.

 

Both pictures are an inaccurate reflection of the American people, I ought to point out: we have neither been fully comfortable with a conservative agenda, nor has Occupy ushered in an new era of enlightenment.

 

But both sides have raised questions, good questions (yes, I just paid the Teabaggers a compliment, such as it was); Questions about privacy, the role of government, the responsibilities of citizens to themselves and to other citizens.

 

Liberals need to frame answers. In particular, in light of the budget issues that are raised like bogeymen whenever conservatives feel the agenda is slipping away. The temptation has been to ignore them, ignore the fears they try to raise, and it's gotten us precious little progress in America. We're stalemated at best, and stalemates in society lead to backslides.

 

We have to rebut these criticisms our positions get and then take our case to a higher level. The question is, how? How do we ask taxpayers to let us pass tax hikes on the richest one percent to pay for services we deem vital, like healthcare, like education, like infrastructure repair, like science and the arts?

 

One thing that occured to me this morning was to appeal to something even more primal than greed.

 

Common sense. Particularly when it comes to families.

 

Here's the thing: people will be cheap when it comes to themselves. They believe they can either do without something or pay less than someone else (this is why stores put things on sale, even though they know they won't lose all that much money.) People are really good at sussing out the price of something. They suck at sussing out the value of something.

 

Our job is to point out that, not only are they missing the bigger picture of value, but the price they're paying is high, as well.

 

Take education: a parent will think nothing of complaining about how high school taxes are, or the school budget is, but ask them to pay for educating their child and let them go out and actually price what a quality education costs, and suddenly they start to realize they had a bargain.

 

So here's my thought: pose these budget items as a legacy. Is it worth a couple hundred bucks a year to ensure your kid gets a better job and make more money? Is it worth a couple hundred bucks a year to make sure your kid can live a longer life with better health, keeping the environment clean so he or she can breathe clean air and have clean drinking water? Or have health insurance when you're too old to work and pay for his insurance? You'd leave him the money in your will, obviously, but this is an instance where you could put that money to work now and leave him a better and bigger legacy.

 

Is it worth a few hundred bucks for him to have a good infrastructure? You'd buy him a bike because it's fun, but what if you took that money and put it towards a better rail system or safer streets? You'd give him a body guard if he needed one, but why not pay that money towards your police and ambulance services? You'd put out a fire at his house, so why not pony up the money to hire a professional who'll answer the call?

 

Aren't these things-- your child's mind, his income, his safety-- worth just about anything?

Y'Know, Life Could Be Worse

 

You could get beaten by your meat.

I Like DREAMing

I'm glad Obama at least made a passing reference to the status of undocumented immigrants last week.

 

If, like me, you missed the news, President Obama has ordered the DHS to stop deporting young undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children. You have to be under 30 without a criminal record, brought here before you were 16, and either be enrolled in school or have a diploma or have completed military service with an honorable discharge.

 

It's the tip of an enormous iceberg, but it's a start. We are a nation of immigrants. Our economic growth depends on immigration, and it is absolutely not a coincidence that our nation's economy started to fracture and striate the moment the Federal government started crackdowns on immigration, both legal and illegal. In order to put this economy back on track, immigration has to be a linchpin to any strategy that involves the long-term economic health of the United States. Period.

 

Some would criticize this move as pandering to the Latino vote, and that sentiment is echoed in Romney's latest politcal ad (a true pandering if ever there was one) and Romney's inability to state a clear case as to whether he'd overturn this latest Presidential order should he take over the office.

 

There's your pandering. Romney has in the past said he would overturn the DREAM act, of which this is an extension. Over the weekend, altho he tried to beat up the President for the policy, he never once said he would overturn it. That's having your cake, eating it too, and trying to share it with your base AND the crumbs with Latinos.

 

 

Light Blogging

Due to an underestimation on my part with regards to a challenge I put to myself over the weekend, blogging will be a bit light the next couple of days.

 

- I didn't keep up with the news during either my prep or my recovery.

 

- I can barely move my fingers.

 

- Work piled up on the one day I took off from work.

 

I anticipate that, by Wednesday, I'll be my old crabby self. Please forgive me and bear with me. Your patience is greatly appreciated.

Just Remember....

 

The National Enquirer broke both the John Edwards and "Blue Dress" Clinton stories.

Hm, This Is....Interesting

 

Presumably, the trees are just the right height

The Fix Is In

Well, well, well, to no one's surprise, the Egyptian high court has thrown out election results and left the "interim" military government in place.

 

Any bets on how much international pressure was brought to bear, considering a significant portion of the parliament would have been Muslim Brotherhood officials?

One's A Murderer....

....the other a two-bit grifter.

I Can Hear The Right Wing Cheering

 

And yet, they missed the point of David McCullough Jr's commencement speech:

You see, if everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless. In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another–which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality—we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point—and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole. No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it… Now it’s “So what does this get me?”

 

(ed note: That's the part they're cheering...here's what they missed)

 

If you’ve learned anything in your years here I hope it’s that education should be for, rather than material advantage, the exhilaration of learning.  You’ve learned, too, I hope, as Sophocles assured us, that wisdom is the chief element of happiness. (Second is ice cream… just an fyi)  I also hope you’ve learned enough to recognize how little you know… how little you know now… at the moment… for today is just the beginning. It’s where you go from here that matters.

As you commence, then, and before you scatter to the winds, I urge you to do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance. Don’t bother with work you don’t believe in any more than you would a spouse you’re not crazy about, lest you too find yourself on the wrong side of a Baltimore Orioles comparison. Resist the easy comforts of complacency, the specious glitter of materialism, the narcotic paralysis of self-satisfaction. Be worthy of your advantages.  And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life. Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big.  Work hard.  Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer; and as surely as there are commencements there are cessations, and you’ll be in no condition to enjoy the ceremony attendant to that eventuality no matter how delightful the afternoon.

The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant life, is an achievement, not something that will fall into your lap because you’re a nice person or mommy ordered it from the caterer. You’ll note the founding fathers took pains to secure your inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—quite an active verb, “pursuit”—which leaves, I should think, little time for lying around watching parrots rollerskate on Youtube. The first President Roosevelt, the old rough rider, advocated the strenuous life. Mr. Thoreau wanted to drive life into a corner, to live deep and suck out all the marrow. The poet Mary Oliver tells us to row, row into the swirl and roil. Locally, someone… I forget who… from time to time encourages young scholars to carpe the heck out of the diem. The point is the same: get busy, have at it. Don’t wait for inspiration or passion to find you.  Get up, get out, explore, find it yourself, and grab hold with both hands. (Now, before you dash off and get your YOLO tattoo, let me point out the illogic of that trendy little expression–because you can and should live not merely once, but every day of your life. Rather than You Only Live Once, it should be You Live Only Once… but because YLOO doesn’t have the same ring, we shrug and decide it doesn’t matter.)

McCullough's not telling everyone to back off, to stop thinking of themselves as special. He's telling them to BE special, because right now they are not, but they can be.

Contrast that with the conservatives who want to stop public education (which McCullough not only implies an endorsement for, but waxes poetic about the rapture of learning for learning's sake...could you imagine a student learning to learn and not to memorize?) and decertify teachers' unions and dismantle any program that doesn't lead to a bigotry of soft expectations.

In other words, conservatives cheer the very thing McCullough is mocking!

 

Yes, But Hey, Let's Destroy Unions and Pensions!

 

You poor kids will have to support your parents while your kids are still in college.

 

My dad worked 45 years in construction. He was union. He got full health insurance for him and his family, including us younglings until we were 21 or out of college. This included full eyecare, dental, and disability coverage. The man didn't work an hour of overtime (although he did skip nearly every vacation he could so he could bank the paid time off.)

 

We were far from rich-- when he was out of work, we made do on sandwiches for lunch and dinner from the ham my mom would boil on Sundays-- but he managed to sock away a few bucks here and there such that he had about $250K put away when he retired. He and my mom almost outlived that money, but then they did not live a frugal retirement.

 

Had he not received a pension and Social Security, he would have easily outlived that money, and just around the time I was starting a family.

 

I look at my current circumstances and realize that I, too, feel I have put away almost enough to carry me through retirement and leave a little something for my kid. Before the 2008 market crash, I was a lot more certain. I worry that by the time I do retire, I won't be able to.

 

And I don't have a pension. I have a 401(k) and I make contributions to it to the maximum allowable. Hell, I even borrow against it when the markets tank just so I can force myself to guarantee some return on my investment (nothing like paying yourself interest.)

 

Companies used to match 401(k)s. I once worked for a firm that would match your withholdings, then match it again (that's right, you tripled your money on day one.) Now, I'm lucky if the corpoRATocrat ponies up a thousand bucks a year.

 

I look at my daughter, and feel she's the luckiest person on the face of the earth: she has three sets of elders working full time, all of whom will leave her money when they pass on. You see, there are no siblings or cousins around. She's it.

 

And even then, I feel this horrible twinge that it won't be enough. I've squirreled away some money for her, and she has some money that my folks put in trust for her, and that's barely going to get her started in life.

 

She'll be a leg up on me at her age, to be sure, but my future held promise. This world does not.

Short Answer

Yes!

 

This has been another episode of Short Answer Theatre.

What the Fuck???

 

 

Oops!

No Matter How You Slice It

 

Ocean warming is our fault.

A study published last weekend on Nature Climate Change claims to give the lie to the notion that if the world is warming, it’s not our fault.

With the kind of certainty that will send the Heartland Institute reaching for Plan C (“the world should focus on mitigation”), the study, The study, Human-induced global ocean warming on multidecadal timescales, ends with the bald factual statement: “We have identified a human-induced fingerprint in observed estimates of upper-ocean warming on multidecadal timescales”.

Alternatively, as oceanographer Professor Nathan Bindoff of the University of Tasmania put it speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “No matter how you look at it, we did it”.

That creaking sound you hear is the wingnut machine gearing up to find someone else to blame. So much for "personal responsibility," huh?

The capitalist system, at least as espoused in this country, pretends that individual pursuits will create a greater good. And that only works in closed systems, and with heavy (Adam Smith* was quite clear on this point) governmental supervision with the potential for intervention.

(*side note: I'd actually give capitalism a try if we agreed to stick to the rules Smith laid out, by the way, and stop whining that "government is the problem.")

Why should government get involved? Because a person might be smart, but he's short-sighted. People as a body are stupid, but still short-sighted. If anyone doubts this, the lessons of Easter Island make it quite clear. There, an entire civilization cleared every tree off an island, destroyed the entire vegetative ecosystem and then vanished, mostly through exodus but in large part by simply dying off.

They killed themselves off in their greed.

A government that can identify and track a problem is in the best position to find solutions that restore some form of balance to the equation. It's not perfect, mostly because it's human, but it is a damn sight better than warning everyone to stop doing what their doing.

That turns into a global game of Steal The Bacon, where everyone sort of eyes everyone else and says, "You go first." Problems like this that affect everyone demand leadership that everyone will listen to. After all, how many decades have scientists warned Americans...hell, the world, about the dangers of cigarette smoking? Yet it wasn't until the governments of the world rolled up their collective sleeves and started imposing regulations and laws that we saw smoking decline.

"Libertarians" would say that it's an individual decision to smoke or pollute his environment, and I'd say, "Great! If that person can stand living in a bubble completely cut off from the rest of us, fine. He or she can smoke and pollute and litter to his heart's content."

But it's a societal problem that has consequences far beyond the little bubble that person lives in. This is the point "libertarians" don't get. You pay for someone else's mess. This is akin to asking you to wipe someone else's ass.

In this study published in Nature Climate Change, shows that naturally recurring events can only account for about ten percent of global oceanic temperature rise.

Meaning humanity scored an "A" in fucking the planet up!

Global climate change can't be traced to a single people...although the US would have to be at the top of any list of culprits...but it can be attributed to the cumulative effects of arrogance and greed of individuals, coupled with a lack of internal censors and individual responsibilities.

As we've seen, people pretty much suck, full stop, but they suck in particular about problems that are not their immediate concern. Even when you show them the consequences of their actions-- if you're old enough, you remember the pollution commercial from the Seventies where an actor portraying a First Nationer weeps at the damage done to his land-- many choose to ignore those consequences or come to some bizarre Kubler-Ross level of mourning that they get trapped in: usually denial, often anger.

It's going to take that level of presentation, an abrupt disaster broadcast 24/7 across the world that cannot possibly be denied as global oceanic warming or sea level rise, for Americans to come to grips with it. I figure if maybe Pensacola, Florida, or Biloxi, Mississippi were suddenly swallowed up by the sea, never to return, that might do it.

But then I thought that before Katrina hit.

 

Holy Crap!

 

A dingo really DID eat "my baby"!

Forward, Into the Passed!

It's easy to look around and see reasons for discouragement: Teabaggers are louder and more obnoxious than ever, the conservative right seems determined to lurch the country forward into the 19th Century, and even Europe is contemplating dismantling, albeit slowly, it's pro-citizen models of government.

 

Ignore them. Ignore them, ignore them, ignore them. In the background are signs that real progress on real progressive issues is taking place, and slowly, which means they'll be harder to stop or reverse.

 

Gay equality is one area where progress has been painfully slow, but being made nonetheless. Women's issues have been bubbling up, and the exposure of such shameful statistics as the ratio of salaries (77 cents for a woman to a $1 a man earns) and healthcare premiums has shown that issue will not go away quietly.

 

Here's the report that has me most hopeful for the future:

Seems like teens have gotten the memo that cigarettes are bad for you; however, the same isn’t true for marijuana, according to a study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.Released late last week, the government study revealed that in a nationwide study of 15,000 high school students, pot is now more popular among teens than cigarettes, CBS reports. Eighteen percent of surveyed students in 2011 reported smoking a cigarette in the past month, while 23% reported smoking marijuana in the last 30 days.

Perhaps thanks to the anti-smoking campaigns in ads and in schools, or to the personal experiences teens may have with family members or relatives with lung cancer, cigarette use has been on the decline over the past few years.

Let me extend this a bit for you and leap to a logical if distant conclusion-- pot will be legalized and it will be legalized within our lifetimes.

If, for the first time in history, more teens are smoking joints and bongs than butts, this means pot is more acceptable in that age group. While cigarette consumption is slowing among teens, marijuana use is increasing.

Eventually, these kids will grow up and eventually, they're going to wonder why they can't toke but they can smoke. And they'll seek to change that.

The war on drugs is a lynchpin of much of conservative policy in America, from crime fighting to homeland security to immigration policy to even foreign policy-- you don't really think Jamaica wants pot to be illegal, do you?

By taking away that weapon, much good will come to society and in some unexpected ways. True progress will be made, as people realize how badly they have been lied to by people looking to instill fear of rabid potheads rampaging up and down neighborhoods looking for money to support their addiction.

Hey, you and I both know that heads are about the most mellow people you'll ever meet...maddeningly so, sometimes...and that this whole "gateway drug" nonsense is just an attempt to portray "hippies" as criminals.

And if conservatives could lie about stuff like that about as innocuous a substance as marijuana, what else will they lie about?

No one should draw from this report the conclusion that in due time we'll be living in a Nirvana, a progressive utopia that will see all men and women unite in brotherhood and sing "Kumbaya" around a campfire and bong.

No. We're still humans and we're still fucking idiots.

We'll just have to find a new form of idiocy.

In the meantime, don't Bogart, man!

 

Boy, This Is A Tough One

Your double take of the day:

 

Fear of the dark may cause insomnia.

The Answer to the Zombie Apocalypse

 

Zombie bullets

Get Me A Fainting Couch!

 

Republicans lie! My stars and garters!

Looking For Life On Mars?

 

Try the peaks of Peru.

Don't Be So Quick To Judge!

 

Who among us hasn't nipped down to pub for a pint or six and left his eight-year old daughter behind, sobbing hysterically?

 

And been a Conservative British Prime Minister?

Nobody Asked Me, But (Redux)...

 

I heard this amazing statistic this morning on the radio and had to go dig it up for you:

Asked about the likelihood that they themselves will become rich, Americans surveyed seemed to be slightly less optimistic than they were in 1990. Twenty-eight percent said it is at least somewhat likely they'll become rich, down from a peak of 34 percent in 1996.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and we've scientifically determined that's about 30% of us.