You said it!

You've got me blowing, blowing my mind
Is it tomorrow or just the end of time?

-- Jimi Hendrix

In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone. . . . There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.

-- John Kenneth Galbraith, 1989

There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars. . . . The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations. . . . But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.

-- John Kenneth Galbraith, 1992

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.

-- Mark Twain

Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.

-- John Dewey

Being a prophet is a horrible business!

-- Henryk Ibsen, Peer Gynt

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

-- Ezra Pound

O generation of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing.

-- Ezra Pound

The End of the World

Archibald MacLeish

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb —
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing — nothing at all.

The Second Coming

William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

McPalin Action

Today I ordered McCain and Palin and action figures. I already have a George W. Bush Naval Aviator figure — fully poseable — and a "Jennifer" 101st Airborne Military Police figure. So I ordered McCain and Palin. Turns out those two aren't made.

I hope they get here soon. I need them to do a action animation before the election.

I think Jennifer looks eastern European.

Sarah Palin — Tinpot Petty Dictator

Late on a Friday, the news breaks that Sarah Palin did indeed abuse her power as Governor of Alaska. Late Friday so that the fewest possible people will actually get the news.

"Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, the chief investigator of an Alaska legislative panel concluded Friday. The politically charged inquiry imperiled her reputation as a reformer on John McCain's Republican ticket.

Investigator Stephen Branchflower, in a report by a bipartisan panel that investigated the matter, found Palin in violation of a state ethics law that prohibits public officials from using their office for personal gain."

PDF of report

The Guardian | NY Times | BBC | McClatchy | Washington Post
| Ha'aretz | Le Monde | San Francisco Chronicle

CORRECTION - Baby Doc Bush Lies and Media Sits On Its Hands (as usual)

ABC News is breaking finally running a story on NSA spying on Americans. Bush administration officials, including the President and General Michael Hayden (current CIA Director), repeatedly denied that the US was listening in on phone conversations of Americans. This claim is directly refuted by two former military linguists who took part in the eavesdropping program.

AFTERDOWNINGSTREET.ORG got this one OVER A YEAR AGO, but the pissants in the US media mainstream had their heads up their asses as usual.

The News Cycle of the Blogosphere
Submitted to AfterDowningStreet.org by davidswanson on Thu, 2008-10-09 20:04.

By David Swanson

Here's a typical example of how the news cycle works now that the blogosphere interacts (or doesn't) with independent and corporate media:

July 1, 2007, AfterDowningStreet.org Breaks Story of NSA Whistleblower Adrienne Kinne
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24183

May 13, 2008, Democracy Now picks up the story of Kinne
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/13/fmr_military_intelligence_officer_...

May 19, 2008, AfterDowningStreet.org Breaks Story of NSA Whistleblower David Murfee Faulk
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/33525

October 9, 2008, ABC News picks up both stories with a focus on phone sex
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=5987804&page=1

October 10, 2008
Congress notices, yawns, scratches its ass, goes back to what it had been doing. Talk shows make jokes about the phone sex.

-- AND now back to our regularly scheduled rant --

Yet another impeachable offense by the most criminal administration in American history?

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley has written extensively on these issues.

CNN has the story.

ABC News:

"Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), called the allegations "extremely disturbing" and said the committee has begun its own examination.

'We have requested all relevant information from the Bush Administration,' Rockefeller said Thursday. 'The Committee will take whatever action is necessary.'

'These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones,' said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA's Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003"

Monkey-Prez Mockery

Time is rapidly running out to mock Monkey-Prez. After the election the only chance we may ever get will be during the trial of Bush for crimes against humanity. So we gotta strike while the iron is luke warm. Let us now consider our Glorious Leader.

Bush embraces that cowboy image. Well, let me tell you, I know cowboys. Cowboys are friends of mine. And Mr. Bush, you're no cowboy.

Consider, HAVE YOU EVER SEEN BUSH ACTUALLY RIDING A HORSE?! No. According to former Mexican President Vicente Fox, George is a-scared of horses. Now what kind of cowboy is that?

Bush also likes gettin' down with the troops. But see this guy off to the right? He's making sure that Monkey-Prez can actually complete his order. The problem? Baby Doc Bush doesn't like his greens.
And last, whom does His Gloriousness resemble here? Your Dishonorable Irritation says . . . Truman Capote! What do you think Bush would make of that?

BBC: Monkey-Prez "vows to stabilise US economy"

Feel better? Irritated that your not-particularly-honorable ranter should denigrate monkeys? I agree. I irritate myself. An itch I can't scratch.

But the buffoon Bush remains. What are we to do? Here's a passage from the BBC:

President George W Bush has promised the American people the US government is working "aggressively" to restore stability to the economy.

Speaking from the White House, Mr Bush said recent market turmoil was being driven by "uncertainty and fear".

He spoke as world markets tumbled amid rising fears of a global recession, despite interest rate cuts and huge cash injections by central banks.

He also defended the recent $700bn (£410bn) rescue plan for Wall Street.

Mr Bush said the bail-out package he signed into law a week ago was big enough but added "it will take time to have its full impact".

Others have noted that the Bush blather closely resembles in style his lies following 9/11 and leading to war.

As for taking "time to have its full impact": Yes it will take time for the Republicans to totally annhilate the United States.

Sadly, I see little evidence that the Democrats will do much better. Check out Obama's economics team — almost entirely out of the Clinton deregulation/Greenspan cult.

Bush Administration Caught Lying — Again

ABC News is breaking finally running a story on NSA spying on Americans. Bush administration officials, including the President and General Michael Hayden (current CIA Director), repeatedly denied that the US was listening in on phone conversations of Americans. This claim is directly refuted by two former military linguists who took part in the eavesdropping program.

AFTERDOWNINGSTREET.ORG got this one OVER A YEAR AGO, but the pissants in the US media mainstream had their heads up their assholes as usual.

Yet another impeachable offense by the most criminal administration in American history?

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley has written extensively on these issues.

CNN has the story.

ABC News:

"Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), called the allegations "extremely disturbing" and said the committee has begun its own examination.

'We have requested all relevant information from the Bush Administration,' Rockefeller said Thursday. 'The Committee will take whatever action is necessary.'

'These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones,' said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA's Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003"

As the World Burns

Remember how the $700 billion kickback to Wall Street was going to solve the problems?

The AudASSity of Hope — a word in progress, brought to you by The Last Leftist

Stay tuned. Today, my little droogies, we shall examine Barack Obama's promise to America. War, Environment, Health Care, and THE ECONOMY. Has Obama changed his tune to win votes, planning to be the politician he promised, or is he showing his true colors?

O, my fellow proles, I despair. Obama's proto-cabinet is thick with Clintonistas, the very people who gave us a substantial portion of this current collapse. Deregulators, privatizers all.

PART 1
OBAMA'S PRIVATEERS
THE ECONOMY and THE ADVISORS

Austan Goolsbee — prof at U. of Chicago, the most rightwing economics department in the world, doesn't mean that he's a rightwinger, but he stridently opposes any single-payer solution to the health care crisis. After Obama made noises about the US opting out of NAFTA, it was Goolsbee who purportedly told Canadian officials that Obama was just waffling to please voters.

Robert Rubin — Clintonian, Goldman Sachs Co-Chair, Citigroup, Harvard economics BA. Was one of the leading deregulation advocates under Clinton. To more populist members of Clinton's economic team, Rubin said that the rich "are running the economy and make the decisions about the economy." Citigroup has been one of the hardest hit banks in the subprime mortgage crisis.

Jeffrey Liebman, Clintonian, prof. at Harvard (which university's business school can claim more of the idiots behind this the economic crash than any other). In the past has advocated privatizing social security.

David Cutler, another Harvard clone with an interest in health care. Very much in the muddle middle. E.g., “The rising cost … of health care has been the source of a lot of saber rattling in the media and the public square, without anyone seriously analyzing the benefits gained.” Or "Take a typical person aged 45. . . . They will spend $30,000 more over their lifetime caring for cardiovascular disease than they would have spent in 1950. And they will live maybe three more years because of it.”

Daniel Tarullo

Michael Froman

Karen Kornbluh — former Clintonian


MORE SOON.

Navy Sonar Harms Whales

Follow-up on post a few days ago about the oceans getting dangerously noisy. In addition to changes in oceanic chemistry (specifically, greater acidity) allowing greater transmission of human sounds, there is simply more sound. One of the foremost sound sources — the US Navy. The NRDC has a report on Navy Sonar harming whales. Today, October 8th, the Supreme Court heard arguments in case brought by the NRDC to challenge the Navy's adherence to the law. NPR's Nina Totenberg covered this. See also the Los Angeles Times | National Geographic | Nature | the BBC.

Piled Higher and Deeper

O my little Droogies, the trooth is painful, which is why we must laff at it. Laff laff laff. More to lafff about right here, courtesy of the magazine named (increasingly oxymoronically) Scientific American. Your ever-pessimistic author always on the lookout for the good news in the Decline and Fall of Human Civilization:

• 2,000,000 plastic bottles are discarded in the U.S. every five minutes
• 450 mountaintops have been removed, decapitated, in West Virginia and other southeastern states in the past 3 decades to mine coal.
• "Let this be our national goal: at the end of this decade, in the year 1980, the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need."
  —President Richard M. Nixon, State of the Union address, January 30, 1974
• If rising carbon dioxide levels increase global temperatures by one degree Celsius, the resulting air pollution could kill an additional 1,000 people in the U.S. and 20,000 people worldwide each year.
• Of the European Union, Japan, China, Australia, Canada and the US, the United States is dead last in fuel efficiency. (China beats us in fuel efficiency — gotta luv it.)
  

Pathogens Accumulate in Sealife

Oceanus, a magazine put out by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has a piece on "a wide variety of disease-causing microbes" found in marine wildlife. Human activity has played at least some role — introducing microbes to the sea through various kinds of waste, fostering antibiotic resistant organisms, etc.

Questions for McCain & Obama from Three Economists

An op-ed piece in October 7's New York Times, worth reproducing entirely. Three economists raise questions for the candidates:

JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ, professor of economics at Columbia, shared the Nobel prize in economics in 2001 and has advised the Obama campaign:

1. When the current bailout of Wall Street fails to turn around the economy and reinvigorate credit markets, will you propose another one? How large should it be? Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke have said what is needed is a restoration of confidence in the economy. But won’t the failure of this bailout destroy confidence, with disastrous consequences — as happened in Indonesia and other East Asian countries when similar bailouts failed 10 years ago?
2. More than a million people have lost their homes in the past two years. A million more are expected to lose their homes in the next 12 months or so. Do you support a more direct program of relief for homeowners? The government pays more of the mortgage costs of rich homeowners, through larger tax deductions, than of poorer homeowners. What would you do to correct this injustice?
3. President Bush pushed tougher bankruptcy laws that were supposed to reduce bankruptcy and lower lending costs. But the new laws made it more difficult for ordinary Americans to discharge their debts, and encouraged reckless lending on the part of lenders, who thought they could more easily force poor borrowers to repay. Would you make any changes in the bankruptcy laws? Currently, it is more difficult to restructure a mortgage on a primary residence than other debts. Do you support bankruptcy reforms that would make it easier for people to stay in their homes?

R. GLENN HUBBARD, the dean of Columbia Business School and the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2001 to 2003:

1. Does the financial crisis indicate that we need more regulation? Or is the problem less one of too little regulation than of poorly focused regulation? The crisis had its origins in part in international capital flows that led to extraordinarily low interest rates. But high-risk mortgage lending drew some of its breath from regulatory interventions. Some heavily regulated financial institutions managed to get themselves in trouble. And it was government-sponsored enterprises, no strangers to regulation, that stimulated the demand for questionable mortgage products. Shouldn’t the next president be standing up to protect markets instead of sowing doubts about them?
2. The Federal Reserve has had to step into the political fray to an uncomfortable degree. Are we asking too much of the Fed? Should we create a strong financial regulator that would stand shoulder to shoulder with the Fed?
3. The existing capital standards for financial companies helped create the illusion that risky assets were “safe.” A reformed system could mandate more capital, to support incremental risk-taking, during a boom and lower such capital requirements in a bust. By changing capital cushions over credit cycles, banks would be less likely to be forced into asset fire sales. Would you support such a change?
4. Do you support the appointment of a presidential commission to report quickly on the causes of the current crisis and present options for regulatory reform?

MYRON S. SCHOLES shared the Nobel prize in economics in 1997. [The Times neglects to mention that Scholes was one of the founders of the notorious Long-Term Capital Management — the hedge fund bailed out by Greenspan's fed. But for that endorsement of Wall Street criminality 10 years ago, we might not be seeing the disaster we are now. Scholes was also implicated in illegality in 2005 in the case of Long-Term Capital Holdings v. United States. It should could come as no surprise that Scholes oozed out of the deeply right-wing University of Chicago Department of Economics.)

1. Discuss the tradeoffs for our economy, if any, between growth (so-called trickle down) and redistribution (so-called sprinkle around) policies.
2. At this moment, there seems to be an overwhelming cry for retribution, in the form of new regulations aimed at our financial services industry (so-called Wall Street). To what extent do you believe that these measures are necessary? How will you judge the benefits and costs of the choices to be made? How will the new regulations take into account the evolution of the financial services sector in trading securities or goods and services, financing businesses and homes, saving for college or retirement, and reducing and transferring risk?
3. Individual innovation and creativity in our society are the cornerstones of our economy. They create wealth and improve the nation’s welfare. Through innovations, the 20th century became the American Century. Will the 21st century be so as well or will it become the Global Century? How, if at all, would your administration foster innovation in the following areas: the provision of health care for our citizens; an immigration policy that attracts and retains the best; educational policies that increase the value of our human capital, our most important resource; helping people accumulate enough retirement savings; international trade and manufacturing; the evolution of information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology and neuroscience; the allocation of water, food and energy and the development of alternative energy sources; and, to some, the most important, the environment?

Fish at Five Miles Below Ocean Surface

Your got it -- five miles below the ocean's surface.

Bad Goes to Worse

The Guardian has a story reporting that International Monetary Fund "raised its estimate of losses to the US banking system to around $1.4 trillion (£800bn), 45% up from the $945bn it estimated in April and reaffirmed just two months ago."

So the bailout of $700 billion may be half what is needed.

Chris Hedges on Dennis Kucinich's Scathing Criticism of Obama

Chris Hedges, onetime New York Times reporter, critic of US Middle East war-policy, has a piece on TruthDig. Here is some of the Rep. Dennis Kucinich's comments, as relayed by Hedges:

“This was the largest single act of class warfare in the modern history of this country,” Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who led the fight in the House against the bailout, told me by phone from Cleveland. “It is a direct attack on the American people’s ability to be able to stabilize their homes and their neighborhoods. This single vote will define the careers of everyone. We are back to taxation without representation, to markets that are openly rigged.”

“We buried the New Deal. . . . Instead of Democrats going back to classic New Deal economics where we prime the pump of the economy and start money circulating among the population through saving homes, creating jobs and building a new infrastructure, our leaders chose to accelerate the wealth of the nation upwards. They did so in a way that was destructive of free-market principles. They ripped away all the familiar moorings. We are in an uncharted sea where the traditional roles of the political parties are being switched. The Democrats have unfortunately become so enamored and beholden to Wall Street that we are not functioning to defend the economic interest of the broad base of the American people. It was up to the Republicans to protect not just a so-called free market but the American taxpayer and attempt to block this. This is an outrage. This was democracy’s Black Friday.”

Acidic Oceans

A few days ago, I posted an account of how the oceans are becoming noisier as a result of increasing acidity. Here is another story from Britain's Observer on growing oceanic acidity.

Homo funestus — The End of Life on Earth

One quarter of all mammalian species on Earth face extinction. One quarter.

So it's an overstatement to say humans are destroying all life on Earth — so far. Still, the narcissistic Homo sapiens may be interested to learn that it is on the endangered list. The BBC has the story on endangered mammals.

My own view for some time has been that Homo sapiens would be better named Homo funestus or Homo fatalis.

We are a modern equivalent of the sabre tooth cat. Our massive brains are the product of competing and incompatible selective pressures. On one hand, a brain well-suited to problem solving, tool creation, etc., serves well to advance the survival of an organism — us — that is otherwise quite ill-adapted — weak, slow, poor vision, poor hearing, poor olfaction, easily hunted. . . .

But, as the history of the past two or three thousand years makes clear, this large brain has also enabled a war-like self-destructiveness. No other species so rapidly annihilates not just one habitat but all of them.

See also

• the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
• CNN story
• New York Times
• Scientific American
  

The November Not-So-Surprise

2000 — The Republicons, through one of two or three worst Supreme Court decisions in American history, successfully pulls off a Very American Coup.

2004 — Diebold and the Ohio Secretary of State deliver the state of Ohio's electoral votes to the Bush imperium.

2008 — Across the country, the Republicon Party is working to intimidate voters, strike voters from the rolls, and otherwise set the stage for another coup.

Steal Back Your Vote. We can combat the Republicon campaign to destroy the Constitution and democracy.

Believe it. Check former Republican LA District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi's essay in The Nation.

See also:

Bruce Ackerman. "Anatomy of a Constitutional Coup", London Review of Books. 8 February 2001.

The February Surprise (or Mind Your Vs and Ps)

According to John Nichols in The Nation, Katie Couric has released a bit more of her interview with Sarah Palin. (Why the hell she can't release the whole thing is anybody's guess. My guess is that the McCain Controllers are leaning on her and her masters.)

Couric evidently asked Palin which VPs she most admired.

"Palin's response? 'My goodness, I think those who have gone on to the presidency,' said the governor, without blinking."

Whoa, Nelly! Now, Nichols notes Nixon -- Eisenhower V who became P. And we all know where that went. (Palin promoted George H. W. Bush -- a one-termer. What's that about?)

BUT BUT BUT, my little droogies, let us consider that she speaketh in the context of McCain — aging, of indeterminate health, prone to heart-attack-provoking rages, psychotic, and terribly terribly terribly unsettled of mind (not unlike some others who shall remain unnaméd).

So let us consider some other Vs:

• Harry Truman, ascended following DEATH of FDR
• Lyndon Johnson, ascended following ASSASSINATION of JFK
• Andrew Johnson, following ASSASSINATION of Lincoln
• Chester Arthur, following ASSASSINATION of James Garfield
• Theodore Roosevelt, following ASSASSINATION of William McKinley
• John Tyler, following DEATH of William Henry Harrison
• Millard Fillmore, following DEATH of Zachary Taylor
• Calvin Coolidge, following DEATH of Warren Harding

O my little Droogies, do we see a pattern? What O What can dear Sarah be thinking?

Do the Republicons have a little plan? A February Surprise to follow the January 20th inauguration of a President McCain? Following the death of Henry VIII, Lady Jane Grey ruled England for all of nine days. How long does Sarah hope McCain will last?

Will he or won't he?

What the . . .

"Parents Give Up Youths Under Law Meant for Babies"

The New York Times reports on the disastrous consequences of a Nebraska law designed to save unwanted newborns from abandonment.

"The biggest shock to public officials came last week, when a single father walked into an Omaha hospital and surrendered nine of his 10 children, ages 1 to 17, saying that his wife had died and he could no longer cope with the burden of raising them."

SOLID GOLD ART!

A GREAT ARTISTE has unveiled a solid gold statue of model Kate Moss -- the largest solid gold statue since antiquity -- at the British Museum, no less! Given that it is solid gold, and given that it is the largest gold statue of Kate Moss in two or three thousand years, it's probably the GREATEST WORK OF ART since . . . something Larry Flint or Bob Guccione. Certainly better than any of those dead things by Damien Hirst.

What? Do I hear a question? "What about Da Vinci, Picasso, Rembrandt?" All dead dead DEAD! And if they were so great, why didn't they work in SOLID GOLD?!

The BBC has all the exxxciiiting details, plus photos of the masterpiece in its most innntriiiguing pose.

Did I mention that it's SOLID GOLD! Fifty kilograms -- 110 pounds for sorry non-metric Americans like me. . . . Makes me think of those Solid Gold Dancers.

I have an idea for a LARGER GOLD STATUE -- GILD KATE MOSS! (Gild, not geld, . . . please read carefully.)

HIV May Date Back a Whole Century

Scientists studying different "ancient" strains of the HIV virus now believe that a common ancestor of the HIV strains may have jumped from apes to humans a century ago or more.

As in the case of other diseases before it, increasing urbanization may have facilitated the development of HIV.

Nothing bleak here -- just a great example of scientific research. Wish we could devote more energy to research like this than to blowing up people or bailing out greedy, greasy toads on Wall Street.

Rate of Fires in Amazon Rainforest Continues to Increase

The Guardian runs a story on the efforts of Brazil's environment minister to combat the burning of the Amazon rainforest. Biologist E.O. Wilson, among others, have made the case that there is more biodiversity in the Amazon than in the rest of Earth combined.

- Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

- If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.

- The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.

— E. O. Wilson

(See also this Audubon Magazine article.)

Seas Becoming Noisier

This has been a concern for several years, not least because of massive sonar arrays deployed for military purposes. Science magazine has an essay on a new element of this concern -- noise travelling further because of higher acidity in the world's oceans. (Lower pH means higher acidity.)

Wealthy investors hoard bullion

The Financial Times reports on wealthy investors hoarding gold directly — the equivalent of stashing the cash under the mattress.

Industry executives and bankers at the London Bullion Market Association annual meeting said the extent of the move into physical gold was unseen and driven by the very rich.

So much for the "optimism" of Tuesday's 500-plus boost on Wall Street.

Look on the Bright Side

In the overall scheme of things, the Wall Street crunch will in the long run pale in comparison to all the other disasters Congress, the President and elite American glitterati are ignoring.

News organizations, Congress, "experts" everywhere are fretting about the stock and financial markets, screaming blue murder over how we will all be affected (conveniently omitting the fact that fully half of all Americans still own no stock of any kind in any way, even once we take into account 401k plans).

But let's not forget the bigger picture:

• Credit card debt: nothing in the "bailout" to help Americans with crushing credit card debts and outrageous interest rates. (See PBS/Frontline interview with Elizabeth Warren.)
  
• Healthcare: nothing in the "bailout" to address soaring medical costs and the crushing inability of Americans to pay them. (PBS | Washington Post | HHS)
  
• Pensions: Corporations are doing their best to escape existing pension obligations. Major plans have been suffering financially. (Wikipedia | About.com | The Nation)
  
• Peak oil: the media love to mock concerns over the finite oil supplies of the Earth, but it seems likely that Saudi Arabia has passed its peaked and thus, in all probability, the world. (Energy Bulletin | The Nation)
  
• Dying oceans: Coral reefs are dying in many parts of the world. In other areas, severe oxygen depletion is making sea life unsustainable. Most commercial fish populations are in danger of collapse. (Reuters 1 | Reuters 2 | Science | New York Times)
  
• Mass extinction: Rainforests are the focal points of the mass annihilation of land life on the Earth, but it's happening everywhere, including the US. (E.O. Wilson | American Museum of Natural History)
  
• Global warming: The one thing most people are now aware of. The nasty little tidbit — to date, each estimate of global temperature rises has proved to be too conservative. (Wikipedia | New York Times)
  
• Geopolitical instability (War): Thanks largely to the United States (meaning, the Bush regime, its pet Congress and passive news organizations), war runs rampant from Israel through to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Russia is flexing its muscles. Venezuela is building up. The Sudan and other regions of Africa are a mess.

The list goes on.

(See also the This American Life/NPR collaboration: "The Giant Pool of Money".)

As the World Turns

Whoops . . . turns out there is a whole world out there which is indeed unaffected by the money masturbaters on Wall Street. Reuters has a story on "dead zones" in the worlds oceans. Dead zones are areas severely starved of oxygen, making life impossible for many aquatic organisms.

Reuters also has an account of the decline of the world's coral reefs. Coral reefs have been called the oceans' rainforests.

The Idiots Lose Their Fudge

There is a great deal more here than meets the eye. But for the moment let us savor the shock of an elite in business and government who cannot fathom that we the people are not quite the sheep they take us to be.

US Radar and Troops Deployed to Israel

Defense News and al-Jazeera (largely picking up the News story) are reporting that the US has deployed an "x-band" radar to Israel along with 120 US troops to operate and maintain it. This would the the third deployment of this kind, following one to northern Japan and the more notorious case of the Czech Republic (which is receiving a more powerful system).

The Israel deployment clearly targets Iran. Japan might aim at China though northern Japan puts the array much closer to Russia. The Czech Repubic targets Russia and the Middle East, despite protestations of the US to the contrary.

So again, we see an old Cold War mentality -- encircle Russia. And we see the new obsession -- Iran.

X-band radar uses the high-frequency, short-wavelength microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Because it is of much higher frequency, it can be used to resolve much smaller objects with greater detail.

Check The New York Times, CNN and others to see whether they carry this. Prediction: They won't.

Whispers of Heavenly Death, Whitman

WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH

BY WALT WHITMAN

1.

WHISPERS of heavenly death, murmur'd I hear;
Labial gossip of night—sibilant chorals;
Footsteps gently ascending—mystical breezes, wafted soft and low;
Ripples of unseen rivers—tides of current, flowing, forever flowing;
(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?)

I see, just see, skyward, great cloud-masses;
Mournfully, slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing;
With, at times, a half-dimm'd, sadden'd, far-off star,
Appearing and disappearing.

Some parturition, rather— some solemn, immortal birth:
On the frontiers, to eyes impenetrable,
Some Soul is passing over.

Massholes Seek Repeal of Income Tax

The New York Times has a story on a Massachusetts ballot initiative to entirely repeal the state's income tax (all 5.3% of it -- a flat tax). Massachusetts ranks 23rd among the 50 states in its "combined local and state tax burden".

Across the pond, Bush Poodle (that is, Britain's leading war criminal, the former PM Tony Blair) proposed drastic reductions in British taxes a few years ago. Voters overwhelmingly rejected the ideas and scoffed at the blunderhead Blair. The British, unlike many Americans, understood that taxes actually serve a purpose. It would be a laugh to see Massholes pass this and then see them scream bloody murder when their pet services are cut.

Thirty years of neo-con Republicans and Democratic Leadership Council Democrats have left us with a citizenry that seem genuinely to believe that "less government is better government" is invariably true.

Bailout Bullsh*t

John McCon Conquers the Republicons!

Does that McCon 'promise' to 'suspend' the campaign already sound terribly old. Here is the little tin dictator meeting the little tin conman for a nice little not-a-campaign photo-op.

The Nation has more on the latest Republicon con.

Senator McCon Chickens Out

Senator McCain claims he has the best interests of the nation at heart by putting his campaign "on hold" to attend to the resolution to the financial crisis. What a crock. McCain's chicken-out is another cynical campaign gimic. He's afraid. He's worried his meds won't be sufficient to contain his temper in debate. And he's worried that he'll take a pastin' at the hands of a significantly better debater.

Whoever has the Least Will Pay the Most

Jobs in New York City

1969

• New York City private sector jobs = 3.2 million
• total city population = 7.9 million

2008

• New York City private sector jobs = 3.1 million
• total city population = 8.3 million

Over roughly forty years, the city has gained four hundred thousand residents and lost one hundred thousand jobs.

And now the widely-admitted 'engine of New York's economy' is collapsing. Any guesses how the trend will go?

But the Titanic is Unsinkable!

What analogy best fits the current economic disaster and boondoggle?

Rome is good. The Visigoths sacked Rome almost 1600 years ago — AD 410. What did the Romans think as they witnessed the conquering hoards approaching? I imagine sheer disbelief. Incredulity. "But this is Rome. Rome! The greatest city of the greatest empire in the world!" And Rome fell.

Better, I think, is the Titanic, particularly for how the least fortunate were treated. In the middle of frigid, iceberg-thick waters, the Titanic steamed ahead full-speed. Even as the ship began to sink, people insisted, "But the Titanic is unsinkable!" Then, as the first class and some second class passengers boarded lifeboats, the poor — the steerage passengers — were physically barred from the boats.

We the People are the steerage. Ignored. Even disdained by the likes of Alan Greenspan, George W. Bush, John McCain.

The Republicans Are Coming! The Republicans Are Coming!

Faster than greased lightning, the Bush administration (lead by Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson -- when did Bush ever lead?) has come up with a $700 billion bailout package for Wall Street (and that is a very conservative estimate on the net cost; real cost is probably closer to two trillion or more).

What should strike any observer (and we the people have definitely been sidelined) are the contrasts.

1. Rapid reaction to the Wall Street collapse, despite Bush's insistence that ours be a responsible "ownership society".

2. Public funding to bailout private institutions.

Contrast that with the response to Hurricane Katrina -- thousands still living in trailers, a city still struggling.

Or take Social Security. Republicans (and a dismayingly large number of Democrats) have insisted that (A) Social Security faces failure and (B) the only solution is privatization of social security.

So in the case of Social Security:

1. Continuing government inaction, despite years of claims that there is a problem, and

2. Proposed private solution for a public institution. Bush and, most notably in this time before the election, John McCain have both argued that privatization of Social Security is the only solution. That is, placement of the management of our retirement in the hands of Lehman, Bear Stearns, AIG, Citigroup, etc.

The sheer hypocrisy of the privatization zealots will be seen when the continue to call for turning over Social Security to Wall Street.

There is another crisis to which the Bush administration did respond remarkably quickly -- they 9/11 attacks. Within days the Bush administration was calling for war on Iraq. We know how right they were about that — Weapons of Mass Destruction, Saddam Hussein tied to the attacks.... Sarah Palin, candidate for the vice presidency, claims — seven years down the road — that Saddam Hussein was tied to the attacks.

Take from the People, Give to the Rich

Economist Michael Hudson has an essay on Counterpunch.org railing against the massive theft of regular Americans' wealth to serve those he calls the "banksters" (after FDR).

Late last night or early today, the Bush admin et al. revealed that the ballpark figure for the bailout will be $700 BILLION. Add to that the $300 BILLION for Fannie and Freddie and $85 BILLION for AIG, we're up to almost $1.2 TRILLION. Now add $1 TRILLION for the Iraq/Afghanistan/Iran wars. And bear in mind that NONE of these is actually resolved yet. And consider that the US pension system is also in grave trouble. Now imagine a bankrupt United States. (Or one where the Fed just prints and prints and prints money -- driving down the dollar, driving down the dollar value of debt, and driving inflation through the roof.)

Take a Pill

I'm Hugh Sansom and I Approved This Message

By the cash register at the Park Slope toy Mecca were three books with very similar subtitles: "An American Story", "An American Life", "An American Journey". Three books -- Barack Obama, John McCain, Hillary Clinton.

Didn't get Hillary's, but Obama and McCain are trip. Charles Bernstein or Ron Silliman would go to town on these. I'll try to soon. One initial note: Images in McCain are exclusively photographic. Obama has 60s/70s style illustrations in addition to photos. McCain's images are almosts entirely images picking up on his "war hero" mythology.

What a crock. Mythology. Storytelling of the Zth order. Still there's something telling about the style, the titling. "Barack Obama: An American Story". "John McCain: An American Life".

Would make much sense to say "Barack Obama: An American Life" — he's still in the midst of his. Not so McCain. No images suggesting a McCain childhood. Barely anything suggesting he has had a live outside the military.


Above, American history courtesy of "John McCain: An American Life". A book aimed at eight or nine-year olds offers much the same explanation, albeit in simpler language, that is offered to high school students. I suspect that, with appropriate window dressing, most college students would accept this line, too.

Change "communism" for "Islam" or that revolting expression "Islamo-fascism" and you have the line today offered by John McCain, Bernard-Henri Levy, and broad spectrum of 21st Century bigots.

On a personal front, McCain meets Nixon.

Now the Lies Hit the Fan

Tonight, after a day of mayhem among the Little Tin Gods of Wall Street, everyone is busy telling us that We the People have nothing to worry about. Our modest bank accounts are federally insured, etc. etc.

Lighten up, folks. We have three decades of government and corporate mismanagement to tell us just how much the federal government cares about us -- ZIP. NADA. When Long Term Capital Management failed and billionaires and Nobel Laureates were at risk, Alan Greenspan jumped right in to save billionaire butt. Likewise Bear Stearns a few months ago. Bill Clinton was just as happy to deregulate as Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. And sadly, Barack Obama's financial advisors are solidly in the Clinton-Democratic camp.

Now, the High Priests like Ben Bernanke have figured out that not even the billionaires can all be bailed out. Only The Idiots -- George W. Bush, John McCain, and company -- repeat the nonsense -- "the fundamentals are strong". Those who know (whether they really care or not) are indeed comparing this time to 1929. Obama and Greenspan have both done so in the past few days.

The fundamentals are not strong.

• Americans are in debt up to their ears.
• Housing is tanking.
• There is precious little manufacturing in the US today.
• The dollar is weak.
• Education is getting poorer and more expensive.
• Health care is getting poorer and too expensive to afford at all.
• Official unemployment is up, real unemployment is still higher.
• Retirement accounts are going bust.

Just what fundamentals do The Idiots have in mind?

And through it all, We the People will be ignored. Believe it. Three decades -- health care, education, manufacturing, retirement, housing -- all under constant attack from conservatives and moderates too self-absorbed to care about the middle class and poor.

A great case in point -- Charles Rangel, once a champion of the less fortunate or just plain average. Today, that fat old slob is defending a tenement-level rent on the multi-room palace he has in Harlem. He cheats on his taxes and defends that. This is what we can expect from among the best we have in office. The Dennis Kuciniches are ignored entirely, just as loud-mouths like yours truly (better informed, better spoken loudmouths than yours truly) are ignored.

_________________
Some Rational Reading

Creative Destruction on Wall Street, by William Greider at The Nation

Nouriel Roubini, NYU economist

Toxic Lehman, by Peter Morici, professor at the University of Maryland School of Business

The Chicago School's Record of Infamy, by Michael Hudson, economist, professor at the University of Missouri, and specialist at Chase

The Economic S--t Hits the Fan

Late this evening, September 14, 2008, the New York Times posted a report online:

In Frantic Day, Wall Street Banks Teeter

In one of the most dramatic days in Wall Street’s history, Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself to Bank of America for roughly $50 billion to avert a deepening financial crisis while another prominent securities firm, Lehman Brothers, hurtled toward liquidation after it failed to find a buyer, people briefed on the deals said.

The humbling moves, which reshape the landscape of American finance, mark the latest chapter in a tumultuous year in which once-proud financial institutions have been brought to their knees as a result of tens of billions of dollars in losses because of bad mortgage finance and real estate investments.

They culminated a weekend of frantic around-the-clock negotiations, as Wall Street bankers huddled in meetings at the behest of Bush administration officials to avoid a downward spiral in the markets stemming from a crisis of confidence.

In short, federally sanctioned insider trading is in full swing. What to do to avoid major market meltdown on Monday ... and worse beyond?

The creditors are panicking. The get-richer-quicker schemes -- the years of the long con aimed at the average American -- are falling apart. The world of Alan Greenspan and the Chicago School. The well-quantified world of modern Economics. The proofs, the figures ranged in columns before us. The world of Michael Bloomberg, where only "little people pay taxes" (Bloomberg's own words).

In my more optimistic moments, I imagine the heads of JPMorgan or UBS or Citigroup in a position like that of the Romans in 410 as the Visigoths sacked the greatest city of the Western world. "But this is Rome!"

The myth could no longer be sustained. Even the truest believers finally had to concede what a few "naysayers" -- "nattering nabobs of negativity" -- had been warning of for decades, even centuries.

Unlike Rome, the triumph of the American Empire, will have been remarkably shortlived. Maybe "patriots" (whatever they are) can take some solace in the notion that "the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long".

Recent Global Warming Unprecedented in 1,300 Years

From the McClatchy news service:

A new scientific study adds evidence that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere fluctuated a bit over time, but that the sharp increase during the past few decades is bigger than anything in at least 1,300 years.

The report was published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Its conclusion is that temperature increased and decreased a little over the centuries, but the fluctuations were small enough that the line was roughly flat, like the shaft of a horizontal hockey stick. Then, from about 1980 to now, temperature increased sharply, more than any increase before — like the blade of the hockey stick.

For the past 10 years, climate-change skeptics have been calling the hockey stick bogus. Now the scientists who studied the climate record and produced the original hockey-stick graph have done a new study using more data from more sources — and they got the same pattern.

The new study "establishes further evidence that the recent warming isn't just part of a typical cycle," said climatologist Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

"Of course, this alone doesn't establish the cause of that warming — that it must be due to human influences," Mann said. That's left to other scientific studies of the climate.

Forces of nature — changes in the output of the sun's energy and volcanic eruptions — and random variation explain the changes in climate before industrial times, Mann said. But only if human factors are taken into account — particularly the production of long-lasting, heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels — can scientists explain the unusually high recent temperature increase, he said.

September 7, 1964

Forty-four years ago this week — September 7, 1964 — the Democrats aired an ad condemning Barry Goldwater for the war-mongering beast he was.

Today, we are again faced with a presidential and vice-presidential candidates — John McCain and Sarah Palin — who so adore war that the stakes are too high for any person to vote for them. Sarah Palin has expressed her unalloyed support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And she has now added hypothetical support for a war against Russia ostensibly under the terms of the NATO treaty. McCain has left no room for doubt regarding his desire for military action against Iran (the thing that most likely won him the support of that revolting anti-Muslim bigot and war-lover, Sen. Joseph Lieberman).

President Johnson, for all his faults, got it right forty-four years ago:

"These are the stakes: To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the Dark. We must either love each other, or we must die."

Palin on Palin

Where is Michael Palin when we need him? Perhaps he can clarify the baffling choice of Sarah Palin for VP. Sarah Palin is lying every which way she can. We need Michael to tell us:

1. How are they related?
2. Is Sarah part of a secret British attempt to re-invade the God-Fearing United States of America (G-FUSA)?
3. Is G-FUSA being undermined by a terrorist contingent of right-wing Christian Fundamentalist book-hating bible thumpers?
4. Where is The Holy Hand Grenade when we need it?
5. And has Sarah Palin been alive since the Holy Inquisition after making a pact with Torquemada, first Inquisitor General of Spain?

Set This House on Fire

Originally, the US Forest Service fought every forest fire — until scientists and others demonstrated that forest fires are a natural part of the ecosystem's development. Indeed, a forest could only develop in healthy way if there were forest fires. Some pine cones, for example, would only open and release seeds when charred by fire.

Then the great Yellowstone fires of 1988 came. The fires were in no small measure the result of many years of failure to allow natural smaller fires. But the public and small-minded, self-interested politicians were indifferent to scientific fact. Policy reverted to its old approach — fight every fire. Nevertheless, it is universally recognized that fires are normal and larger fires result when smaller fires are not allow to proceed naturally.

The federal government's financial policy is similar. Irresponsible policy in the service of a select few and to appease popular demand makes a massive conflagration inevitable. The question here is what counts as a fire. Regular folks losing a home — that's not a fire. Just as in the great parks — the government only really cares when wealthy owners are at risk. The pressure to fight every fire has grown as more and wealthier people have built their MacMansions in the great wilderness.

Likewise now on the economic landscape. The government's concern was reached a fever pitch as risk has embraced the rentier class — the wealthy creditors, the people who make the loans. These people are scarcely affected at all by growing interest rates or by fraudulent or usurious loan practices. But they are directly affected when the dollar (and thus the value of what they are owed) drops or when debtors begin to default en masse.

Sarah Palin — Religious Fanatic, Religious Bigot

Juan Cole, professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan, writes on the fundamentalist Christian extremism of Sarah Palin.

"[T]he values of [John McCain's] handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers. On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick."

Beat Them at Their Own Game

Police in Minneapolis/St. Paul arrested, detained, recorded, photographed people for the mere act of dissent or, in another astonishing leap down the slope to [fascism, authoritarianism, anti-democracy, police state?], journalism.

Fortunately, some of these tactics are easily subverted. All can be subverted to some degree.

Looks Can Be Deceiving
So, among other things, police photographed tattoos. Anyone with kids knows about water soluble tattoos. We need fake tattoos for adults. More broadly, demonstrators, dissenters, etc., should modify their appearance. Hairstyle, facial hair in the case of men, clothing, eyewear can all be varied. And the more respectably we dress, the more formally, the more likely the small mind moderates and conservatives are to overlook us. Witness the The Yes Men.

Turn the Tables
Recently, New York police were shocked, awed and enraged when onlookers photographed and videotaped a cop bodycheck a bicyclist during a Critical Mass bike ride. Normally, that vile apologist for government intrusion, Michael Bloomberg, and his little toad Ray Kelly would have instantly issued a defense of police actions -- as they did most notoriously during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Here they had to be more circumspect.

We all need to have cameras. We must be brazen and public in our recording of public officials and their henchmen. This has worked in some small measure in Occupied Palestine, where Israeli occupation and colonial forces are marginally less eager to shoot blindly at Palestinians, thanks to some efforts to distribute cameras among the population, as Ha'aretz has reported. Cell phones can be great for this. (Watch for cell carriers to start monitoring what we photograph.)

The Less-than-Lethal Weapons
The government is deploying new categories of weapons and monitoring devices. We've heard about Tasers and rubber bullets, both described as non-lethal, though facts prove otherwise. Manufacturers have coined the term "less-than-lethal", perhaps to avoid liability with the more sweeping "non-lethal". Among the most recent of these is "Silent Guardian", developed by Raytheon to direct a concentrated beam of microwaves at "the enemy" or "protestors". The weapon causes a sensation of excrutiating burning in the skin. Raytheon claims it's safe. They're lying.

Lethal or not, this is another weapon that can be defeated. Wet clothing, a fine wire mesh (with a gap between wires of less than the wavelength of the microwaves) would tend to counteract the weapon's effect.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

— W. B. Yeats

The End of the World

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb —
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing — nothing at all.

— Archibald MacLeish