August 12, 2011 archive

This Week In The Dream Antilles

A week of economic fear.  And fighting in England’s streets.  An anxious week.  Your Bloguero heard  (do not ask how) that sometimes chefs lose their sense of taste.  This is called “ageusia.”  And writers, if they are similarly afflicted by a professional malady, what might they lose? What a disturbing thought. Alas, your Bloguero is relieved to state that he was wrong to propose the analogy: the loss does not come from tasting too many of one’s own concoctions. Not at all.  It is neurological.  It has other causes.  Completely.  Regardless, and if you will excuse his beginning this essay with these worrisome inner thoughts, your Bloguero will offer an excuse explanation. This Friday he is tired of reading is own written words.  And he fears the consequences to his remaining sanity of continues to spew them. What will he lose if he presses on?  He’s not going to find out. No way.  He will take the weekend off.  He will begin again next week, after the Ides of August.

But not to fear. Or be disappointed. This essay is not about to peter out and become wordless because of your Bloguero’s hypochondria. No. Your Bloguero has found remarkable words of Eduardo Galeano for you to contemplate:

On the shores of another sea, an old potter retires.

His eyes cloud over, his hands tremble, the hour to say goodbye has arrived. Then the ceremony of initiation begins: the old potter offers the young potter his best piece.  As tradition dictates among the Indians of northwest America, the outgoing artist gives his masterwork to the incoming one.

And the young potter doesn’t keep that perfect vase to contemplate or admire: he smashes it on the ground, breaks it into a thousand pieces, picks up the pieces, and incorporates them into his own clay.

Walking Words (1993).

Isn’t that wonderful?

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now, it is not actually a digest of essays posted in the past week at The Dream Antilles.  For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles. Please leave a comment so that your Bloguero will know that you stopped by. Or, even easier, just click the “Encouragement jar”. Your Bloguero likes to know you’ve visited.

————————-

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

Our regular featured content-

These featured articles-

The Stars Hollow Gazettte

This is an Open Thread

The Wisdom of Willie Sutton

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

You know, the math is the math regardless of what Karl Rove and neoliberal economists say.  Willie Sutton was right.

Where the money is

by John Quiggin, Crooked Timber

on July 25, 2011

My analysis is quite simple and follows the apocryphal statement attributed to Willie Sutton. The wealth that has accrued to those in the top 1 per cent of the US income distribution is so massive that any serious policy program must begin by clawing it back.



In both policy and political terms, nothing can be achieved under these circumstances, except at the expense of the top 1 per cent. This is a contingent, but inescapable fact about massively unequal, and economically stagnant, societies like the US in 2010. By contrast, in a society like that of the 1950s and 1960s, where most people could plausibly regard themselves as middle class and where middle class incomes were steadily rising, the big questions could be put in terms of the mix of public goods and private income that was best for the representative middle class citizen. The question of how much (more) to tax the very rich was secondary – their share of national income was already at an all time low.



One thing the Tea Party has shown is that, in the current dire state of the US, there are few penalties for abandoning moderation. What the US needs at this point is someone willing to advocate a return to the economic institutions that made America great – 90 per cent top marginal tax rates, strong trade unions, weak banks and imprisonment for malefactors of great wealth.

It seems to me that a good place to start would be a primary challenge to Obama (Bernie Sanders suggested this, and he’d be a good candidate I think). It would be impossible for the media to ignore completely, and might get enough votes to shift the Overton window. Whether such a challenge could form the basis of a mass movement, I don’t really know, but it seems to be worth a try.

I came across John Quiggan in this piece by Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism substituting for Glenn Greenwald at Salon.

Yves continues-

(T)he fares (verb definitions) of the have versus the have-nots continue to diverge. A new survey found that 64% of the public doesn’t have enough funds on hand to cope with a $1000 emergency. Wages are falling for 90% of the population. And disabuse yourself of the idea that the rich might decide to bestow their largesse on the rest of us. Various studies have found that upper class individuals are less empathetic and altruistic than lower status individuals.

This outcome is not accidental. Taxes on top earners are the lowest in three generations. Yet their complaints about the prospect of an increase to a level that is still awfully low by recent historical standards is remarkable.

Given that this rise in wealth has been accompanied by an increase in the power of those at the top, is there any hope for achieving a more just society? Bizarrely, the self interest of the upper crust argues in favor of it. Profoundly unequal societies are bad for everyone, including the rich.



You might argue: Why do these results matter to rich people, who can live in gated compounds? If you’ve visited some rich areas in Latin America, particularly when times generally are bad, marksmen on the roofs of houses are a norm. Living in fear of your physical safety is not a pretty existence.

Japan, which made a conscious decision to impose the costs of its post bubble hangover on all members of society to preserve stability, has gotten through its lost two decades with remarkable grace. The US seems to be implementing the polar opposite playbook, and there are good reasons to think the outcome of this experiment will be ugly indeed.

Memories of 1789 aside,  I would argue that even among the top 400 there will be winners and losers.  The $600 to $700 Trillion notional value of financial derivatives represents over 10 years of the entire World’s output.

Now some analysts see this as a reason to invest in Gold which I find absolutely nutty since Gold’s perceived value except as a non-corroding conductor and a malleable metal for personal adornment is nothing but hype and nostalgia for an economic system that was obsolete 120 years ago and produced exactly the same bad outcomes and inequality of the present one.

What I see instead is that “notions” of value are are about to change and those left without a seat when the music stops are going to take a 100% haircut on their spreadsheet electrons.

And who are they?  The top 20% who own more than 91% of it (38% just by the top 1%).

As Willy said, you have to go where the money is.

Yves again-

It’s easy to see how “big status differences” alone have an impact. The wider income differentials are, the less people mix across income lines, and the more opportunties there are for stratification within income groups. Thus a decline in income can easily put one in the position of suddenly not being able to participate fully or at all in one’s former social cohort (what do you give up, the country club membership? the kids’ private schools? the charities on which you give enough to be on special committees?). And lose enough of these activities that have a steep cost of entry but are part of your social life, and you lose a lot of your supposed friends. Making new friends over the age of 35 is not easy.

So a perceived threat to one’s income is much more serious business to the well-off than it might seem to those on the other side of the looking glass. Loss of social position is a fraught business indeed.

Or to quote Jim Morrison-

Five to one, baby.  One in five.  No one here gets out alive.  Now you get yours, baby, I’ll get mine.  Gonna make it baby, if we try.

The old get old and the young get stronger.  May take a week and it may take longer.  They got the guns but we got the numbers.  Gonna win, yeah, we’re takin’ over.  Come on!

Behind The Green Corn

Third Way Electoral Victory!

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Obama reelect numbers soften, poll says

By Scott Clement, The Washington Post

Posted at 04:54 PM ET, 08/11/2011

More than four in 10 Americans say they “definitely will not” support Obama in 2012, while fewer than half as many, just two in 10, are certain to back the president for reelection. The number of “definite” Obama voters marks a low in polls since November 2009 and has dropped four percentage points since a Post-ABC poll in June, and eight points since April.



Support for Obama has softened considerably on the left: In the new poll, 31 percent of liberals say they are certain to vote for Obama next year, down from 46 percent in June. One in five liberals says they “definitely will not” vote for him, while a 43 percent plurality says they’ll considering casting a ballot for Obama.

Obama’s 2008 election was fueled by winning majorities of key swing groups, including political independents, women and voters under age 50. But with 15 months left before Election Day, more than three times as many independents say they “definitely will not” vote for Obama in 2012 as say they “definitely will” – 45 percent versus 14 percent. And among women and those under 50, more say they’ll definitely oppose than definitely support Obama next year.

Gee, do you think that could be related in any way to this?

Consumer Sentiment Drops to Lowest Level in 3 Decades

Reuters

Published: Friday, 12 Aug 2011 | 10:01 AM ET

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan’s preliminary August reading on the overall index on consumer sentiment came in at 54.9, the lowest since May 1980, down from 63.7 in July. It was well below the the median forecast of 63.0 among economists polled by Reuters.

High unemployment, stagnant wages and the protracted debate over raising the U.S. government debt ceiling spooked consumers,polled before the downgrade of U.S. sovereign debt by Standard &Poor’s.



The survey’s gauge of consumer expectations slipped to 45.7, also the lowest since May of 1980, from July’s 56.0 and below a predicted reading of 55.3.

The Obama administration received poor ratings from 61 percent of respondents, the worst showing among all prior heads of state.



Bad times in the economy were expected by 75 percent of all consumers in early August, just below the all-time peak of 82 percent in 1980.

The survey’s barometer of current economic conditions was 69.3 in August, down versus 75.8 in July and below a forecast of 74.3.

Cartnoon

14 Carrot Rabbit

The Big ‘trickle down’ Con!

Everyone seems focused on this comment answer to a regular folk:

“Corporations are people, my friend.”

And to a degree they should be no matter what the corporate controlled supreme’s say. But it’s the Con phrase following that should also raise the ire:

“Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people.”

On This Day In History August 12

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on image to enlarge

August 12 is the 224th day of the year (225th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 141 days remaining until the end of the year.

It is the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. It is also known as the “Glorious Twelfth” in the UK, as it marks the traditional start of the grouse shooting season.

On this day in 1990, fossil hunter Susan Hendrickson discovers three huge bones jutting out of a cliff near Faith, South Dakota. They turn out to be part of the largest-ever Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever discovered, a 65 million-year-old specimen dubbed Sue, after its discoverer.

Amazingly, Sue’s skeleton was over 90 percent complete, and the bones were extremely well-preserved. Hendrickson’s employer, the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, paid $5,000 to the land owner, Maurice Williams, for the right to excavate the dinosaur skeleton, which was cleaned and transported to the company headquarters in Hill City. The institute’s president, Peter Larson, announced plans to build a non-profit museum to display Sue along with other fossils of the Cretaceous period.

Preparation and display

The Field Museum hired a specialized moving company, with experience in transporting delicate items, to move the bones to Chicago. The truck arrived at the museum in October 1997. Two new research laboratories funded by McDonalds were created and staffed by Field Museum preparators whose job was to slowly and carefully remove all the rock, or “matrix” from the bones. One preparation lab was at Field Museum itself, the other was at the newly opened Animal Kingdom in Disney World in Orlando. Millions of visitors observed the preparation of Sue’s bones through glass windows in both labs. Footage of the work was also put on the museum’s website. Several of the fossil’s bones had never been discovered, so preparators produced models of the missing bones from plastic to complete the exhibit. The modeled bones were colored in a reddish hue so that visitors could observe which bones were real and which bones were plastic. The preparators also poured molds of each bone. All the molds were sent to a company outside Toronto to be cast in hollow plastic. Field Museum kept one set of disarticulated casts in its research collection. The other sets were incorporated into mounted cast skeletons. One set of the casts was sent to Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida to be presented for public display. Two other mounted casts were placed into a traveling tour that was sponsored by the McDonald’s Corporation.

Once the preparators finished removing the matrix from each bone, it was sent to the museum’s photographer who made high-quality photographs. From there, the museum’s paleontologists began the study of the skeleton. In addition to photographing and studying each bone, the research staff also arranged for CT scanning of select bones. The skull was too large to fit into a medical CT scanner, so Boeing’s Rocketdyne laboratory in California agreed to let the museum use their CT scanner that was normally used to inspect space shuttle parts.

Bone damage

Close examination of the bones revealed that Sue was 28 years old when she died, making her the oldest T. rex known. During her life this carnivore received several injuries and suffered from numerous pathologies. An injury to the right shoulder region of Sue resulted in a damaged shoulder blade, a torn tendon in the right arm, and three broken ribs. This damage subsequently healed (though one rib healed into two separate pieces), indicating Sue survived the incident. The left fibula is twice the diameter of the right one, likely a result of infection. Original reports of this bone being broken were contradicted by the CT scans which showed no fracture. Multiple holes in the front of the skull were originally thought to be bite marks by some, but subsequent study found these to be areas of infection instead, possibly from an infestation of an ancestral form of Trichomonas gallinae, a protozoan parasite that infests birds. Damage to the back end of the skull was interpreted early on as a fatal bite wound. Subsequent study by Field Museum paleontologists found no bite marks. The distortion and breakage seen in some of the bones in the back of the skull was likely caused by post-mortem trampling. Some of the tail vertebra are fused in a pattern typical of arthritis due to injury. The animal is also believed to have suffered from gout. In addition, there is extra bone in some of the tail vertebrae likely caused by the stresses brought on by Sue’s great size. Sue did not die as a result of any of these injuries; her cause of death is not known.

Display

After the bones were prepared, photographed and studied, they were sent to New Jersey where work began on making the mount. This work consists of bending steel to support each bone safely and to display the entire skeleton articulated as it was in life. The real skull was not incorporated into the mount as subsequent study would be difficult with the head 13 feet off the ground. Parts of the skull had been crushed and broken, and thus appeared distorted. The museum made a cast of the skull, and altered this cast to remove the distortions, thus approximating what the original undistorted skull may have looked like. The cast skull was also lighter, allowing it to be displayed on the mount without the use of a steel upright under the head. The original skull is exhibited in a case that can be opened to allow researchers access for study. When the whole skeleton was assembled, it was forty feet (twelve meters) long from nose to tail, and twelve feet (four meters) tall at the hips.

That Makes Three

WBZ channel 4 Boston

Rick Perry

Rick Perry

Rick Perry

“Post 911 world”

“Post 911 world”

“Post 911 world”

http://www.google.com/#sclient…

Why indeed do lamestream media outlets run “commercials” for their own “news” programming?

Late Night Karaoke

Congressional Game of Chicken: Super Catfood Committee Members

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Yes, we are still playing and the Republicans have the advantage. So far they have won 98% of everything they asked for and are still holding hostages. The new extra-constitutional super committee of 12 will start work on the next round of hostage negotiations. Composed equally of Democrats and Republicans, three of each from the Senate and the House, the committee is tasked with finding $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts. Here are the members that have been selected by the leadership:

The Senate

Democrats

  • Sen. Patty Murray (WA) was selected by Reid to be co-chair of the committee. “The Mom in Tennis Shoes” is the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The feeling is that she will consider the electoral implications of the policy decisions.
  • Sen. John Kerry (MA) is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and is expected to be central to cutting defense spending.
  • Sen. Max Baucus (MT) is the chairperson of the Senate Finance Committee and is expected to be the leading voice on tax policy.

None of these Senators were part of the “Gang of Six” that was working with Vice President Joe Biden. They are not particularly trusted by liberals and some feel that Kerry is the weakest link. Baucus who was on the original Cat Food Commission, dissented because of cuts to Social Security and Medicare. He is also protective of the Affordable Health Care Act which was his “baby” as chair of the SFC. Kerry, however, has said that he supported the President’s “grand bargain” that put Social Security and Medicare under attack. Murray is a friend of the big defense contractors who received $5.2 billion in defense contracts in her home state.

The Republicans

  • Sen. John Kyl(AZ),retiring at the end of his term, was a member of the “Gang Of Six” who walked out of the talks and is the minority whip.
  • Sen. Rob Portman [OH], a freshman senator, was George W. Bush’s budget director and a member of the original Cat Food Commission .
  • Sen. Pat Toomey (PA), backed by the Tea Party and a freshman senator, was the president of Club for Growth and is the only Republican pick to vote against the debt ceiling compromise passed last week.

All three have signed “President” Grover Norquist’s pledged not to raise taxes.

The House

Democrats:

  • Rep. Jim Clyburn (SC), was a member of the “Gang of Six” and is a fierce opponent of cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
  • Rep. Chris Van Hollen (MD), also a memeber of the “Gang of Six”, is the ranking member on the House Budget Committee and opposed to cuts in the big three social safety nets.
  • Rep. Xavier Becerra (CA), has voted consistently to protect Social Security and Medicare.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has said that they’ll focus on economic growth and job creation, which reduces deficit.

Republicans:

  • Rep. Dave Camp (MI), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, is the head tax-law writer in the chamber.
  • Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TX) is one of Boehner’s deputies on the GOP leadership team.
  • Rep. Fred Upton (MI) is the only Republican with a moderate record.

All three have again signed the Norquist Pledge.

So there you have it. We are damned no matter what happens on this committee.

Abandoned Farmhouse

Farm

Abandoned Farmhouse, US 258 South of Washington DC

Load more