The Myth Of Multi-Tasking

I don't know about you, but my concentration and retention don't suffer at all when I'm simultaneously scanning emails, Instant Messaging two friends on the other sides of the country, and listening to punk rock in my left ear while conducting a four-party conference call. No. I only get distracted when my wife up and destroys this peaceful tableau by sneaking behind me and making me jump out of my chair when she asks, "Is there anything you need from the grocery store?"

Maybe The Depression Wasn't So Great?

Hard to know what we're facing, exactly...but it is large, and bears striking similarities to an earlier event. With some different responses to consequences. The Fed is offering huge secret loans to banks to launder their soiled mortgage-backed securities. I was looking for a quid pro quo bankers got in return for temporarily freezing home loan rates. Here it is. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke pins the blame for the Great Depression on John Maynard Keynes, the gent he says was not aggressive enough in creating "credit channels" (printing money) for banks. That may be, but there's a "pick your poison" issue Bernanke seems to overlook, and loss of confidence in a currency may construct no better course. Via a Telegraph UK article, "World Bankers Resort to Firebreak:"

"This is a drastic action. The central banks want to place a fire-break to stop credit tensions spilling over into the broader markets and becoming the catalyst for a global economic crunch," said Ian Stannard, an economist at BNP Paribas.

While yesterday's joint move was sketched at the G20 a month ago, and fine-tuned in encrypted telephoned calls over the past month, the final trigger seems to have been the spike in the crucial three-month money rates that lubricate finance. Dollar and sterling Libor spreads have vaulted in recent days. Euribor spreads reached an all-time high of 99 yesterday morning.

"A co-ordinated move like this has the 'wow factor'," said Paul Mackel, currency strategist at HSBC. "But there's a lot of scepticism over whether this will be enough medicine to end the credit crisis. Is it already too late?"

Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, made his academic name studying the "credit channel" causes of depressions. He must have watched with growing alarm as the debt markets limped from one mini-crisis to another, failing to recover from their August heart attack despite three emergency rate cuts.

The asset-backed commercial paper market in the US has now shrunk for 17 weeks in a row, shedding almost $400bn (£196bn). Lenders are refusing to roll over short-term loans as they fall due, leaving borrowers desperately searching for other sources of money.

The crucial elements in the Fed's move yesterday is not so much the sum of money on offer - $20bn next week, $20bn the week after - but that all depository banks in America can draw from the tap anonymously, without the risk of being found out.

"People looked at what happened to Northern Rock in Britain and said we're not going to risk that, so hardly anybody has been using the Fed facilities," said Bernard Connolly, global strategist at Banque AIG.

The Fed is now spreading the net wider by allowing all US banks to use the Term Auction Facility, which offers secrecy and allows them to hand in a much wider set of investments as collateral to raise money, including mortgage securities. Perhaps some credit will at last reach those in urgent need.

How I Got Through Childhood

1958, the year this ad came out, was a good year. Goood year. Gosh how I miss my Nembutal Elixir! Looks like the lucky kid in the poster got a double dose.

Mucking Through The Mortgage Middens

Why does "Wall Street" exist?

Looking down from the bozosphere where theories live, its function is to finance innovation in exchange for higher average returns. Dig deep in the trenches, though, and you savvy up fast. You realize Wall Street's real job is to generate the most important thing in the universe: your bonus. Which should be an ample bounty borne on a padded carpet of minimal risk. That's what Wall Street is from the inside, when it works: a carpet ride designed to cushion you from banality, from boredom, and from risk while fleecing insufferable suckers.

People who want to live large are constantly seeking to engineer a popular sting, to hucksterize a wave of investors into waddling in and parting with their dough. Part tent revival, part holy temple, once a good scam is rolling, nothing can stop Wall Street from riding the wave until it really starts to crash. When the bodies pile up and the cops start to show up. Then the perps go look for a new wave. A lot of Wall Street types should be looking for a new wave right now, because like the S&L, junk bond, and dot-com crazes did before, the beautiful mortgage pipeline is going banzai.

The mortgage craze differs from the priors in an important respect. This time, they got people to bet their houses. Although the easy credit climate wasn't confined to housing, not hardly, housing is more or less the basis of broad prosperity. So when I hear the Fed say yet again that subprime write-offs won't spill over into the general economy, I think, "Hahahaha! These jokers should die."

Like ships with too little ballast, borrowers relying on top-heavy ARMs and exotic new payment schemes are more prone to capsize. Many mortgages are already "upside down," or value-negative, and exponentially more go upside-down every day. As credit naturally tightens across all borrowers, and banks have less money to lend because they've lost it, the process becomes self-accelerating. Even in a white-hot market like the San Francisco Bay Area, easy credit is gone: it takes $175k in household income to buy a million-dollar house, as it always should have. The problem, to quote (via Herb Greenberg) veteran mortgage salesman Mark Hanson, "...we have 90% fewer qualified buyers for 5 times the number of homes." 50x more homes on sale for every qualified buyer in the Bay Area. That's some powerful negotiating leverage.

Union Bank of Switzerland just wrote off $10 billion in quarterly losses and went to Singapore, the government of, for a cash infusion. 6,000 people in Cleveland just showed up to apply for 300 Wal-Mart jobs. These events are connected as directly as strands stretch across a spider's web.What we're staring down isn't a subprime crisis. It's not even a housing loan crisis. It's a systemic global credit crisis, a cancer on the entire financial body which cannot be excised, but can only be induced to recede by either steady or severe credit adjustment. How bad? Hard to tell. At least property has implicit value, unlike many of the financial instruments based upon home mortgage loans. But even in relatively unscathed Seattle, my house's real value could drop up to 50%. The bright side? We like the neighborhood.

Psyche's News Roundup

TPMmuckraker | What Pelosi Knew About Torture in 2002

Eschaton: Elites ("political-journalism-as-theater...of Maureen Dowd")

Raw Story | White House press secretary admits she didn't know Cuban Missile Crisis

Craig Unger: A Failure of Intelligence - Politics on The Huffington Post (Neoconnery)

2003 invasion of Iraq - Wikipedia (Whitehouse IP address edited Wikipedia)

User talk:143.231.249.141 - Wikipedia (House Republicans vandalizing pages)

White House Illegally Deleted Over TEN MILLION Emails | AfterDowningStreet.org

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Israeli anti-Arab racism 'rises'

ABC News: Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR

Daily Kos: Huckabee: women's role in marriage is to "graciously submit"

ABC News: How Are These Women Different? (thought is now a crime)

Open Left:: What Really Bothers Me About Obama

Street Prophets: One More Reason Not To Trust "The Religious Left"

Mortgage Crisis Forces Big Cuts at WaMu: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide UBS to Sell Stakes After $10 Billion in Writedowns

Carpe Diem: Jaw-Dropping Compensation: $1m College Coaches (vs professors)

6 Online Tools for Text to Speech you would not want to miss

Impacts Of Iran's National Intelligence Estimate

One if by CIA, two if by Them and The Other 15 US Spy Agencies. (Update: The information in the fresh report, already available to many in Congress, finally came to light because staffers in agencies were willing to go on the record, with tape rolling, if it wasn't released. To put their lives on the line. Thank you, little big people. For a lively discussion of particulars, head over to Sic Semper Tyrannis in the right margin.)

As for the NIE mini-coup, that would be a "two." Cheney's office sent the report back three times while (according to the BBC) daily calling for bombing. They finally couldn't alter it or further block publication. The report says Iran has not had a boom-nuke program since '03, stopping one after we invaded Iraq to spread democracy. Internationally, the report has had immediate repercussions. Domestically, it signals a decline in President Cheney's ability to push the agencies around. At minimum. Now, some very smart folks like uber-blogger IOZ ask, "How many divisions has the NIE?" and argue the report lacks import...that it won't stop an attack on Iran. Granted, and potentially true. Cheney could issue the command to flying space monkeys to bomb at any moment. But would the space monkeys still obey, and when you get down to it, how many divisions has Cheney? He has no direct authority, not unless Dumya is dead. (Perish the thought. No, really.)

Arguing the NIE's relevancy distracts from why it came out now, the mechanism by which it did, and its immediate effects. Domestically, the report made it through a hostile steeplechase because NIE formulation is now vetted by multiple agencies, and does not allow reports to be drafted by special committees (such as the OSP, or Office of Special Plans) without inter-agency review. This is a significant albeit weird prospect. First, agency cooperation worked, and that itself is rare. Next, our would-be saviors are people who unleashed nocturnal death squads and gave Iran weapons technology (aka Iran-Contra) in exchange for winning an election and the release of Foreign Service hostages. But even they have reputations to uphold.

The unity of purpose engendered by a Pearl-Harbor-Like-Event has officially been reversed, and the desk jockeys inside the Beltway have rolled up their sleeves in anticipation of working with the next Administration. Perception may not be reality, but heavily influences behaviors shaping it. Current perception looks like a unified anti-Cheney conspiracy: Iran is "A Dick Too Far," and policy should shift to multi-lateral pragmatism. It's time to deal with the Iranians, not by bombs but negotiations.

The coup has taken a long time. Over the past three-plus years, the Bush family along with the CIA, Nick Negroponte, Bob Gates, Condi Rice, and many rank-and-file professionals have been steadily fencing Team Cheney further and further in. They all want what's best for The Empire, of course, but the gradual realization has suffused that attacking Iran over its threat potential or antagonizing it with rhetoric, ineffectual guerilla proxies, and half-assed non-uniformed Special Forces teams are rotten ideas. The State Department has had a capable undersecretary in Nick Burns, who has wanted to bring the Iranians to the bargaining table from his first day under Condi Rice, and he's been gaining traction. As a measure of that traction, the "Iran is killing our soldiers in Iraq" meme has been downgraded. The battle for GWB's soul will continue, but Iran has been re-positioned as a potential threat, not an imminent threat. Come to think, who isn't a potential threat to the Bush Administration? Israel, I suppose, which says the report is purely bogus.

Internationally, the report's bogosity or veracity is irrelevant. Its currency is highly valued, the calculus of its effects straightforward, the timing impeccable. It appears right before the UN council meets to vote on a third round of sanctions, and just before Iran's Ahmadinejad meets with the Gulf Cooperation Council this week, where he will pitch the idea of mutual economic security. The US case before the UN is weakened, Ahmadinejad's regional case is strengthened. Israel's case for bombing Iran is marginalized, while Russia's case against a US missile shield extending into Poland and the old Eastern Bloc is strengthened. The Saudi case against demonizing the Shiites to the north is weakened, and the case for belatedly adding Cheney to The Dustbin of History is strengthened.

Springsteen: Put Your Makeup On, Put Your Hair Up Pretty, And Meet Me Tonight In Atlantic City

Bruce Springsteen reads the papers like you and me, and he can't track or control events any better than we can. He just has a lot more talent, and a little more time.

I first heard 'Atlantic City' over 20 years ago, wasn't in country when it came out in 1982. It, along with the entire anti-industry, garage-recorded, pondering-of-America album 'Nebraska,' knocked my socks off. Much of the inspiration for the songs came from headlines and real stories that a great balladeer worked into poetry. The line, "Well they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night, now they blew up his house, too," referred to the murder of Philadelphia Mafia boss Philip Testa by Little Nicky Scarfo of Atlantic City. Springsteen saw the headline one morning, and knowing something of the Mafia via their control over his concert venues, he knew retribution would be coming--"Down on the Boardwalk they're gettin' ready for a fight, gonna see what them Racket boys can do." The full lyrics:

Well they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night now they
blew up his house too
Down on the boardwalk they're gettin' ready for a fight
gonna see what them racket boys can do

Now there's trouble busin' in from outta state
and the D.A. can't get no relief
Gonna be a rumble out on the promenade and the
gamblin' commission's hangin' on by the skin of its teeth

Well now everything dies baby that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
Put your makeup on fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City

Well I got a job and tried to put my money away
But I got debts that no honest man can pay
So I drew what I had from the Central Trust
And I bought us two tickets on that Coast City bus

Now our luck may have died and our love may be cold
but with you forever I'll stay
We're goin' out where the sand's turnin' to gold
so put on your stockin's baby 'cause the night's getting cold
And everything dies baby that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back

Now I been lookin' for a job but it's hard to find
Down here it's just winners and losers and
don't get caught on the wrong side of that line
Well I'm tired of comin' out on the losin' end
So honey last night I met this guy
and I'm gonna do a little favor for him

Well I guess everything dies baby that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
Put your hair up nice and set up pretty
and meet me tonight in Atlantic City

How Henry Kissinger Saved The World

Ah, the good old days...like they were in Washington, D.C., 1972:

Nixon: See, the attack in the North that we have in mind...power plants, whatever's left--POL (petroleum), the docks...And I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people?

Kissinger: About two hundred thousand people.

Nixon: No, no, no...I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry?

Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.

Nixon: The nuclear bomb, does that bother you? I just want you to think big, Henry, for chrissakes. The only place where you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You're so goddamned concerned about civilians, and I don't give a damn. I don't care!

Kissinger: I'm concerned about the civilians because I don't want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.

(From the Nixon White House tapes, recorded on April 25th, 1972. Made public by the National Archives on February 28th, 2002.)

The Smell Of Sulphur

Chavez, the dictator and Devil, was finally defeated by the forces of democracy. I mean Hugo in Venezuela, not my dance instructor Emilio in Ballard, though they both have faces only a Mayan could love. (Curse you, Emilio: I will learn to Merengue yet!)

While glorious, victory was a close-run thing, righteousness out-pointing Chavez by 51-49. Even the Devil can overreach when he's possessing you, and that's when you can push him over the cliff while he's taking refuge in the bodies of pigs. As the Good Book says, behold, my name is Legion, for I am many. (Luke 8:30) Praise be to God and USAID!

You know what I don't get, though? Why Chavez lost the election. I mean, nothing else but divine retribution makes sense. No self-respecting dictator loses an election! Augusto Pinochet (Chile), god rest his Christian soul, never lost an election, at least not until the unwashed, misguided heathens voted him into exile in 1998. Alfredo Stroessner (Paraguay), the hardest working man in smuggling, never lost an election in 45 years. Tacho Somoza (Nicaragua), winning his first contest by the resounding score of 107,201 votes to 100, never lost an election to a living opponent, and even passed the baton on to his sons after he was killed by a commie poet. Rafael "Medals" Trujillo (Dominican Republic), the great patron of self-sculpture, never lost an election in 31 years. Not even to his own family!

I could go on, but let's skip over Haiti, Guatemala, Argentina, Panama, Honduras, Bolivia, El Salvador, and Brazil. And of course Cuba, the unholy mother of Miami. Dictators and devils should at least be reliable, and Chavez is a sorry, most untrustworthy dictator. It almost looks like he believes in democracy, which I find very disquieting. My faith is still strong, but in fact I can't decide whether to take comfort in the scriptures, or to sin by picking up that Harper's magazine that's been beckoning to me like a sway-hipped strumpet at the supermarket stand.

Will The US Bomb Iran...Or Should We Get Pakistan To?

At least one sober optimist says "No," almost convincingly enough to override my galloping skepticism. He said so in person, to an audience of me, my cousin-in-law, a fellow hordie, and 30-40 anti-war activists. How could this be? I'm not an anti-war activist! And my cousin-in-law may be an NSA mole. What were we doing there?

Well...of course I think bombing Iran would be the dumbest thing since the Children's Crusade, but it was only with the knowledge and encouragement my spouse that led me to an evening of dominant paradigm subversion. Lord Wife is a medical researcher of considerable talents who's on about as many list-servs as Isaac Asimov if he had been into email and weren't dead. Bombing Iran is a public health issue par excellence, so therefore, she knew that the Northwest International Health Action Coalition, along with a head-spinning variety of other organizations including the Network Opposing War on Iran (NOWI),was sponsoring a visit by Reese Ehrlich. Journalist. Author. NPR contributor. I and others went to the Keystone Congregational Church, not far from Casa Lord, to see him while my wife generously stayed home watching Lord Running Boy and his beloved cousin "Beatie" try to send each other to the ER.

Ehrlich was on tour promoting his book, 'The Iran Agenda: the Real Story of the US Policy and the Middle East Crisis,' and gave a slideshow detailing his visits to Iran and Kurdistan with Norman Solomon, on one trip accompanied for no explained reason by actor Sean Penn. They interviewed regular people while Sean Penn went first unrecognized, then was mobbed by paparazzi and autograph hounds. They met with journalists, and they crossed the border to see the anti-Iranian Kurdish guerillas (PJAK) who get their mayhem-funding from the US. Overall, Ehrlich's Iran spiel was well-reasoned, directly researched, delightfully positive and on-point; not only are we all sensitive people with so much to give, et cetera: too many important coalitions, not piss-ants like us, rather Coalitions controlling huge amounts of Money don't want Iran bombed. They want an Iran un-bombed not out of filial regard, but because they don't want oil prices to blow sky-high and make the looming recession any worse.

True enough. But has Reese Ehrlich ever witnessed The Attack Without Mercy? I didn't think so, and asked him: "Reese...if you were President...but you were from Texas, and were a former oil man...and your Vice President and mentor was a big-time Texas oil man...why would higher oil prices be so bad?"

Reese rightly answered that Bush and Cheney had obligations to all their Base, not just to the oil lobby. Rather than pointing out that those obligations don't matter much to, say, Israelis who think Iran has the launch codes to nuclear warheads on our Trident-class subs, or to religious fanatics who believe Armageddon will midwife The Messiah and The Rapture, or to national security hawks who believe Iran must be punished for humiliating The Empire even if it chooses to arm itself only with Stephen R. Covey inspirational date calendars, or to sadists who keep pictures of their dead victims in their desk and need to bomb stuff, I accepted his answer without antics. Actually, what I'd really, really wanted to ask him was, "Reese...do you think we can we get Pakistan to nuke Iran for us? Like, you know, instead of Israel?" (Damn. Should've asked it.)

Bottom line, he was able to get me to keep a more open mind that, no, it is not a fait accompli that the US will bomb Iran. After all, there are so many points in his favor, he could be right, and my reactive paranoia could remain sub-clinical. His practical explanations for bias in media reporting were the best take-aways, in line with his book, which says:

"Most American reporters I met saw Iran as an evil society and a danger to the United States. While many expressed disagreement with President Bush's policies, they believed Iran was developing nuclear weapons that threatened America. In short, their views tracked the political consensus emanating from Washington. Rather than proceeding from reality, they filtered their reporting through a Washington lens. When a Washington official makes a statement, even a false one, the major media dutifully report it with few opposing sources."

To paraphrase and assemble his off-the-cuff comments regarding how media bias works, and what to do about it: as a journalist at a major news outlet, you have to publish the story your editor wants you to write. Your editor works for one of three news corporations, none of which is at all interested in journalism. If you still happen to have your own opinion, insist on working for major media anyway, and you can't get a CIA or State Department official to go on the record with dissident information or views (thus risking their careers), you don't have a chance in hell at getting your story out. Pro-Washington, pro-Empire media bias isn't not only unsurprising, it's institutionally guaranteed. Read or listen to people interested in journalism, or advocacy, and make friends with Iranians.

Arab Oil Money Bails Out Citigroup

With a noose. Widely heralded as a wonderful thing in the US financial press, in reality Citigroup's deal for $7.5 billion in cash indicates outright panic. It was on very unfavorable terms. via Euronews:

Capital-starved Citigroup, the world's largest bank, has gone cap in hand to the Abu Dhabi's government investment arm, which has snapped up five percent of the bank for five billion euros. Above and beyond a price that values the banking giant at only 100 billion, the amount its market value has lost this year, Citigroup is paying a premium for its shot in the arm, as it is selling mandatory convertible securities to Abu Dhabi, with a fixed coupon of 11 percent, well above the average US junk bond yield of nine point four percent.

Abu Dhabi becomes Citigroup's biggest shareholder, and the purchase is just the latest international asset snapped up by an oil-rich Arab state, where cash is currently sloshing around looking for a home with the near-record oil price.

Gulf investors have splashed out this year to the tune of 47 billion euros, more than in the last two years combined. It is all part of their long-term strategy to build economies that can survive after their black gold dries up.

Where to start...ah, yes, the 11% interest rate. If my mortgage were 11 percent, let's see, I'd be paying twice as much for Casa Lord. Where can I find a CD which pays that? The Abu Dhabi bankers would rightly say the price they paid is fair, represents the risk associated with Citigroup stock and its termite-ridden loan portfolio, and was doing the company a favor by saving it. In terms of implied valuation, the biggest US bank is now a relatively small player on the global stage.

Dog The Bounty Hunter's European Vacation

via The Sunday Times UK:

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.

Legal experts confirmed this weekend that America viewed extradition as just one way of getting foreign suspects back to face trial. Rendition, or kidnapping, dates back to 19th-century bounty hunting and Washington believes it is still legitimate.

Read More...

Psyche's News Roundup

John Edwards Mocks Republicans Afraid To Take Questions From Democrats (if the Republicans cant handle the Democrats, how can they handle Al Qaeda?)

Rudy refuses to answer NYC questions - msnbc.com (beats up reporters)

Daily Kos: Rudy's Scandal Has a Name! (Sex ON the City - America's Playa)

Ron Paul on track to be biggest fundraiser - Jeanne Cummings - Politico.com

Kucinich: Biden's Warning of Bush Impeachment in Case of Iran War "a bit late" | News and Policy.com

President Bush: Faith key to international AIDS fight - CNN.com

dmiessler.com | I Dont Think the American Public Really Gets It: We're *Borrowing* Money to Pay for War in Iraq

Center for Citizen Media: Blog Archive On Klein's Errors, Times Semi-Stonewall and the Nets Power

Specialized journalism, a partisan press, online journalism students and cheap laptops: More stuff to argue about

Poll finds more Americans believe in devil than Darwin | Lifestyle | Reuters (Land o' Goshen)

Bloomberg.com: U.S. Florida Governments Reject Idea of Accepting Losses on Pool

Bloomberg.com: Exclusive Banks Sell 'Toxic Waste' CDOs to Calpers, Texas Teachers Fund

Calculated Risk: Reelin' In the Suckers (relying on advice from bankers who are selling the CDOs)

Mortgage worries prompt pullout

Tommys parents avoided being foolish [Burbed.com]

Nation & World | Sperm donor liable for child support, judge rules | Seattle Times

An adoptee uncovers the risks of knowing - Los Angeles Times

No Popcorn For Old Men

I've seen almost every known Coen brothers movie. I watched 'Blood Simple' in the International Cinema screening room in college, have quoted lines from 'The Big Lebowski' to my doctor ("Mark it 8, Dude!"), bought the soundtrack to 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?,' and 'Miller's Crossing' pretty much describes my job. Sometimes John Goodman storms unbidden down the flaming hotel hallways of my mind's eye with a shotgun roaring, "I'll show you the life of the mind, I'll show you the life of the mind!"

But I'm not going to see No Country for Old Men. I'm more curious about why the Coen brothers agreed to make the book into a movie at all. Those who have read the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, the title ripped off from a line in Yeats' Sailing to Byzantium (nice way to earn a Pulitzer, Co-mac), will know there's no artistic reason to make a movie out of it.

For those who haven't read it, nor seen the movie, I'll gladly spoil it with a review: there's a foreign super-assassin loose in New Mexico trailing stolen drug money. He has a strangely scrupulous, murderous moral code. He tracks and kills a Vietnam vet who found the drug money and wants to keep it. The sheriff played by Tommy Lee Jones is a war hero but can't catch the killer because he's a super-assassin. After killing the Vietnam vet and recovering the money, the super-assassin, name of Anton Chigurh, goes and kills the dead vet's young, innocent wife. Why? Because he said he would do so, and a promise to death is a promise. Tommy Lee Jones then feels very bad, and retires, knowing that pure evil is still out there and he wasn't man enough to stop it. Are we redeemed yet? No. And we never will be. Roll credits.

So to the Coen Brothers: screw you. Yes, I do mean both of you, Ethan. Why don't you go and do a re-make of The Hudsucker Proxy. That'd be fun. Better yet, start making children's movies. Here's a suggestion from the Winnie the Pooh genre:

Christopher Robin Must Die

Now that would be progress. And Cormac McCarthy, you need to start writing children's books. How about this one?

Baby's First Meat Grinder

I'm sure Francis Ford Coppola would be willing to direct. Let him.

The Beginning Of The World As We Know It (Part One)

Having gotten all the nice spiritual Rumi-stuff out of my system in the previous post, on to practical things; to the world's problems, and their solving. My ersatz leaders keep telling me how anything wrong is all my fault, so I thought, why not? Let's have a go and make it good. Our problems are only as big as the wind and the waves, as the sun and the rain.

At first, my working title was 'Why Democrats Are A Bunch Of Drooling Catamites.' You see, my case of Two-Party Immune Deficiency Syndrome (TPIDS) is late-stage, and the Democrats surely play their part as Complicit Mommy Government to perfection, as a companion and helpmeet to our Abusive Daddy Government. Whom it's our enviable task to either kill, beat sense into, or run away from. So, yes, let's start off with the Party of the Damned, or what I choose to call "the Dims." I changed the title above to something more active, with an eye to an ongoing series; by way of power law and microcosm, Dims are great projectors for our Big Problems. As the old military recruiting jingle goes, "what a great play-ace, it's a great waay...to start!"

Isabelita, the thoughtful cookie at Learning to Sequence, noted in the comments section of Shorter Clinton, Shorter Obama that Hillary:

'seems like a "kinder gentler" form of the GOP, and Obama seems insubstantial. There's not a single Democratic candidate I'd vote for; wonder if we can outsource the leadership of this country to, oh, say, New Zealand?'

Iz sums up my sentiments well. If Hillary gets elected, we will be renting and watching "Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS" as en-masse comfort food. Paradoxically, though, the inmates of Casa Lord have given money to Obama and were invited to lunch with his wife. We have an Obama sign hanging in our window. Yet, something inside me still wants to crisply slap each side of the guy's face with a pair of wet leather gloves and bellow like George S. Patton, "Be a man, fer chrissakes!! There are brave candidates out there fighting and dying, and you're hiding in the make-up room like a coward!" Sigh.

But what else is left? I've considered supporting Dennis Kucinich, and even Ron Paul, because at least they take an unequivocal stand against The War. The obvious political lesson they, or any well-choreographed goose-steppers provide, is this: Take a stand, you existentially challenged boobs, take a stand! (Note: See goose-steppers.) So at least Kucinich and Paul "get" the basic prerequisite. Fortunately or not, however, neither can get "elected."

It all starts with The War. In the beginning was The War. The War is run by the War Machine, which now makes up most of the country's remaining manufacturing base...you know, just like it did for The Soviet Freaking Union back in 1984. That being the case, if the Democrats truly didn't want us to invade/occupy/eternally exploit Iraq, would we still be there, or ever have gone? Would Cheney still be President? Would Hillary Clinton have been the one who first used the phrase after 9/11, "You're either with us or against us? (Yep, she was first, and beat Dumya to it.)

The truth is, the Dims support The War Machine, and that's why they support The War. They're bending over, busy slurping at the Money River, looking up to carp threats occasionally and then backing down to slurp again at the life blood of this nation, this precious gift of governmental innovation, as it runs in rivulets and rills down into the scuppers of FACISM. The same ugly thing this country pulled out all the stops to defeat 60-odd years ago, bombing every major city full of evil German and Japanese people to smithereens, not to mention the Italians and French who got in the way. People keep wondering and marveling how craven, how caved-in and sold-out Congress can be, but it's really simple. It's as simple as buying and selling hogs. Fascists love hogs. [Sotto voce: And fascism's better, because run! Cower! Twitter like fluffy yellow chicks, and be afraid! (Looking left and right for spies.) The only alternative is so-cial-ism. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!]

To paraphrase the idiot son of an asshole, "Being an Empire is hard work." Yes...yes, Fearless Leader, you masturbatory imbecile, it is hard work. So here it is, the answer, the solution to our problems: smarter work. The only way to save what's left of imperial standing melting away like run-off from a denuded hill, and our domestic freedoms at the same time, two-birds-one-stone style, is to wise up. And make a big, hard, brave yet obvious choice. A choice which is ultimately necessary anyway. Amongst smaller hard choices, the Democrats have to not only renounce The War, they must renounce The War Machine. Nothing much other than a tack into the wind, merely risking political and physical assassination domestically and a heapin' helpin' of Humble Pie internationally. So how, other than fitting our alleged representatives with electro-shock collars and pumping them full of 100 mikes of LSD, do we work them up to the gargantuan tasks common to vertebrates?

Somehow I can't picture my Senators (Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell) driving that bus in Selma. Actually, I'm picturing it right now as they're dragged off the bus by police and savagely beaten with batons. Ha-ha! To be realistic, look, we're dealing with a government that told us with a straight frigging face to go out and buy duct tape in case of a nerve gas attack, and that kerosene can melt steel. (Mental Note: I suppose duct tape could be used as a way to cover your mouth and nostrils so as to induce a less painful death. Kerosene and jet fuel don't melt steel, not in my back yard.) A direct frontal assault on The War Machine won't work. It would simply send Terminators after us like Skynet and shoot us with plasmatic death-rays.

But what we can do is start small. An insurgency they don't see coming, an infiltration, a Rat Attack. It's already got plenty of foot soldiers, even investors. We can do things that my darling Senators, the Bobbsey Twins, will enthusiastically support. They just won't know the full implications, and when they finally glom, it'll be ok by them. Because they care about money. Every Constitution, every Estate, is based on money, on a currency. A currency is a metaphorical basis for storing power and wealth. We need to switch the fundamental basis of our power and wealth. The US has switched its currency basis at least four times in its history, and it will do so again.

Power and wealth. And beer! Mmmm. The focus of our big ol' technologized Teddy Bear, our throwing-candy-to-the-children-while-it-kills-them War Machine, is oil. Our currency isn't The Dollar. Our currency is oil. This is a VERY BIG problem. First, its worldwide production has begun to go into decline--9.5 million Saudi barrels a day wen down to 8.5 over the past year, but they "could pump more if we wanted to!," sure, and Iran, well, they're desperate for nuclear power because the mullahs know how wildly overstated their reserves are, and the rate at which their wells are declining--plus, we're losing control of the damned stuff anyway. That's why we're building military bases on top of wherever we can find new, relatively helpless sources of it. Even if that quixotic effort starts getting a lot cheaper or miraculously succeeds, well...we're still, for all practical purposes...Going To Run Out of Oil.

We need to switch our currency. This implies a future Manhattan Project, a huge national investment and roll of the dice, on sustainable energy. And that will, at some point, happen. But the Rat Attack doesn't have to wait for a Manhattan Project. It can germinate and advance incremental change. Its weapons are not just wind farms and solar panels, not bipolar Priuses and biodiesel Passats, but all manner of gardening, all sorts of ruminants (including ponies), tree-planting, urban bee-keeping, de-centralized heating, and simply giving a damn. Raising chickens on your patio, damn the Bird Flu, full speed ahead. This is how the Amish and most of the world survive on two bucks a day. We should probably do A-OK on forty thou per capita. And if a schlumpf like me can do organic gardening,anyone can.

This might be a good place to note that Exxon's corporate profits were bigger than the Gross Domestic Product of all but about a dozen countries last year. Exxon and other distended, artificial, inhuman structures like it are The Enemy. These are the enemies who are stealing your money. By the way, they also want to kill you, slowly, so they can wring every last bit of useful output and consumption out of your body. They've calculated the calories, and want to turn the world into one big "Arbeit Macht Frei" concentration camp, their kapos as commandants, and they're succeeding. Every drop of oil you don't use and every ray of sunshine you do sends these monstrous mutants, and many of their large shareholders, into fits of depression and murderous rage. Because they know, deep down in their black insatiable selves, that no one owns the wind, the sun, or the rain. Although they've hired lobbyists to address that disadvantage.

We need to start an anti-oil insurgency, and it's going to be surprisingly easy. I belly laugh at the prospect because, you see, we're not going to have much choice. Soon enough, driving 40 miles to save five bucks on t-shirts made by slave labor fed by slop troughs in some distant Work Zone is going to look exactly like what it is: stupid. We're going to live in a world where you can walk, float, or teleport to bars and stores. I'm not speaking from high moral terrain here. It's simply going to be cheaper than going through violent machinations and invasions to coax flammable goo from under far-off ground.

I am the glorious Sun,
the ocean laden with pearls.
Within my heart is the grandeur of heaven,
Outside, the lowly earth.

I travel in this world like a bee in a jar.
But don't listen to my woeful buzzing
My house is filled with honey!

Rumi, The Dome of the Inner Sky

Better Than Conscious

New Scientist magazine has a happily intriguing article about a recent conference session in Germany titled The subconscious mind, your unsung hero. While working to replicate via machine how people make smart decisions, the extent to which even the most analytically oriented minds rely upon induction was a revelation. In the scientific method, the power of intuition and imagery is so discounted it amounts to persecution. It's also denialistic claptrap.

We have three brains in our sapient heads at least. The subconscious mind should be called the First Brain because it is automatic, always "on," ever chewing on the experiences, the myths, and, I suspect, often reaches back to the touchstones of genetic memories which may underpin and define human cognition. It goes in dream where reason is too unwieldy to lumber, too clumsy and fearful to tread. Like a bee in a jar flying between and across zeros and ones to carry pollen, the First Mind finds eternal beauties, weaves breath-taking insights, and comes up with honey-combed answers.

Einstein, for example, and many (if not most) great scientists were led to their discoveries by images which sprang whole from the subconscious. Einstein did not imagine the universe in a theoretical sense, it was rather something he perceived deep in his fibres and was always "back-processing" as a little boy. He didn't hit upon the theory of relativity as a logical deduction; it came to him as an irrational induction (or perhaps a process better called mental morphogenesis) whilst he was gazing up at the sun through half-lidded eyes, lying on a grassy hillside one sunny afternoon in Switzerland.

The phenomenon of inductive insight is probably very common, and hopefully it's something we all share from time to time. Of course, what set Einstein and others apart was superior ability to translate their inductions into rational, sequential codes, marrying their First Brains off to their Second Brains and creating offspring both brilliant and facile.

From the article:

The more I listened to what the assembled scientists had to say and talked to them about their work, the more it seemed that our higher consciousness alone is not what sets us apart from other animals. In fact, far from playing second fiddle to the conscious mind, subconscious thought processes may play a crucial role in many of the mental facilities we prize as uniquely human, including creativity, memory, learning and language.

New Scientist doesn't allow access without subscription or purchase, so I'll look around for a free online version.

Recent Iran Attack Hints

Blowing stuff up isn't all glory and honor. It takes a lot of logistics work to make things happen, and logistics are very expensive to fake. If you go to all the trouble of putting materiel in spot X, it's twice the trouble to move it back to spot Y. Logistics leave a trail. The Persian Gulf is getting crowded with aircraft carriers again, and Centcom is stockpiling jet fuel at its long-range bomber base in the Indian Ocean. Remember US Admiral William Fallon's statement that an attack on Iran won't happen on his watch? Sure hope he meant it. Other signs to look for will be the whereabouts of tanker planes necessary to rendezvous with the big bombers for mid-air refueling, with Diego Garcia a likely candidate.

(via Larisa Alexandrovna's blog and Naj's Stop the Second Holocaust)

"LONDON, Nov 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. military has stepped up chartering of tankers and requests for extra fuel in the U.S. Central Command area, which includes the Gulf, shipping and oil industry sources say. A Gulf oil industry source said the charters suggested there would be high naval activity, possibly including a demonstration to Iran that the U.S. Navy will protect the Strait of Hormuz oil shipping route during tensions over Tehran's nuclear programme.

The U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command (MSC) has tendered for four tankers in November to move at least one million barrels of jet and ship fuel between Gulf ports, from Asia to the Gulf and to the Diego Garcia base, tenders seen by Reuters show. It usually tenders for one or two tankers a month to supply Gulf operations, which include missions in Iraq."

A separate requirement is for a tanker to move 147,000 barrels of ship fuel from Singapore to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, close to the Gulf and Arabian Sea.

As Larissa notes:

'that is indeed unusual according to a military friend of mine, who in an email this morning wrote: "It has gotten my attention. I don't have an explanation."'

Diego Garcia:

The US is secretly upgrading special stealth bomber hangars on the British island protectorate of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to military sources. The improvement of the B1 Spirit jet infrastructure coincides with an “urgent operational need” request for £44m to fit racks to the long-range aircraft. That would allow them to carry experimental 15-ton Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs designed to smash underground bunkers buried as much as 200ft beneath the surface through reinforced concrete.

Wake-Up Call For Mr. Deep Throat

Feline-festooned bloggers Zoey & Me note that, as we enter the holiday season, Bush dramatically cut pay raises for Federal employees. So..if you were a government worker expecting a 15% wage increase next year, the one you'd been promised, how would you feel about getting, say...3%? Just a little lump of coal for 2.6 million to sit on while idling in Beltway traffic jams.

"Deep Throat" refers to a disgruntled federal employee who was the Deputy Director of the FBI, William Mark Felt. Felt served as deep background to Mssrs. Woodward and Bernstein. For the benefit of any youngsters who come here by accident, Woodward and Bernstein were the reporters whose investigation and articles fueled the Watergate Scandal, which in turn brought down another real hellhole of a Presidency, Richard Milhouse Bat-Shit Nixon's. The Nixon Administration had passed a less-qualified, politically chummy Patrick Gray over Mark Felt's head to be the new FBI Director. Felt didn't need to ask, "What's my motivation?" One may surmise he wanted Nixon, CREEP, the Plumbers, and pretty much anyone near the White House to rot in hell. Did a decent job of it, too. Regarding where anti-Bush disgruntlement can lead, Z&Me had a quality insight:

What’s really funny is history shows that when any president slashes or cancels raises to the underlings, moles appear from everywhere and news organizations are hopping with spicy inside tid-bits the administration would not have wanted made known. Hey, maybe we’ll finally find out who outed Valerie Plame.

True, and the Emperor's servants have a natural penchant for hollowing out the grain stores. But the moles don't exactly have a smorgasbord environment of leak options, the Washington Post ain't what it used to be, and the press already knows damned well who outed Valerie Plame. For example, the news that Halliburton got the $10 billion contract for cleaning up Iraqi oil fields before the war even happened, well heck, that was no leak--they proudly announced it all by themselves, like, "Get ready, America! We're gonna take a dump right on your face, woo-hoo-hooo!"

By all means, please, leak the dastardly documents, heap up the damning evidence. If any of pissed-off federal workers come across anything juicy, let me know in the comments section. But let's face it. The Washington Post or the MSM isn't going to bring this government down. Never was. For at least 6 years in the United States, a literary review magazine (The New Yorker, circulation less than one million) has been the #1 place where you go to break another Bushco-mondo crime/idiocy/lying/torturing/murdering/screwing Republican scandal. So enough with the newsprint. Call up Oprah, Colbert, the Daily Show. And here's hoping some of The Newly Screwed get all impromptu and hold a Bring Your Napalm To Work Day.

Psyche's News Roundup

TAPPED Archive | Hillary Clinton is bringing the Co-mentum and hinting that she'll appoint Colin Powell to help restore our standing in the world

Matthew Yglesias (November 28, 2007) - Bill Opposed the War? (no)

Head of Rove Inquiry in Hot Seat Himself - WSJ.com (wiped Rove's hard drives)

Fake News and Propaganda: Shaping Our Reality

S 1959 Will Label Us As Terrorists! Take Action to Stop It. American Everyman

The Associated Press: FCC Wants More Data for Cable TV Report

YouTube - FOX News Takes 32 Seconds to Explain We're in Iraq Forever

US withdraws subpoena seeking identity of 24,000 Amazon customers - International Herald Tribune

NPR : Connie Rice: Top 10 Secrets They Don't Want You to Know About the Debates

In precedent, Google to hand over blogger's IP

US airstrikes kill civilian roadworkers in Afghanistan | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

Alaska's `Papa Pilgrim' gets 14 years - Yahoo! News

Media Matters - Buchanan: "America [is] committing suicide" while "Asian, African, and Latin American children come to inherit the estate"

The tax cut ratchet - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog

Fed Official Opens Door To December Rate Cut | Durable Goods Orders Fall for Third Straight Month | Home Sales, Prices Fell Further In October - CNBC.com

The real reason why stocks are plunging - Nov. 28, 2007 Recipe for a meltdown

Pimco's Bill Gross: Our shadow banking system - Nov. 28, 2007 We have a secret banking system built on derivatives and untouched by regulation

Air-Mobile Blogging

The young luggage carrier zipping through the airport above is the biggest worry in my world, and will probably continue to be for some time. He is known in these parts as Lord Running Boy. But there are a lot of things to worry about. For example, I'm very anxiety-prone when it comes to racial differences, gays, and lesbians, these issues occupying spots on Page 27 of my single-spaced list of worries, right after my entry for "Do Koreans eat too much damned garlic?"

Air travel comes early on Page 2 of my List of Worries, whereas it used to be high on Page 1 of my List of Sinful Pleasures. In my younger days there as a word for people like me: "jet-setter." Air travel still held vestiges of glamor, adventure, and mystique. Now I'm not sure what connotations it should carry when a nation is deliberately and sadistically torturing a generation of travelers in the name of security.

Heard of "waterboarding?" Yeah. Victims call it dying, sure, but it's mercifully quick (as long as they don't revive you and repeat the process 5 times a day--then it's very annoying). By contrast, there is no end to "airboarding," a training process intended to induce cow-like obedience and placid paranoia, the abbatoir-queued tableau punctured only occasionally by the insane screams of travelers as they're tazered to death. This might be less disturbing to the seasoned, thick-skinned traveler if the entire world weren't being turned into one giant Airport Arrival Centre. ("Your Honor, there was reason to believe the subject might have had explosive charges/guns/knives/nuclear device/et cetera hidden in his shoes/pocket/jacket/trunk/et cetera, so I had no choice but to shoot.")

But allow me to share my reveries. Once upon a time, I was coddled by Icelandic stewardesses. Yes, that was the proper word, and every one of them would've looked at home in the pages of a men's magazine; they would touch your arm, and I assume were trained if not encouraged to pleasantly violate your personal space by resting their hand on the back of your neck while asking if you needed anything else besides the entire bottle of champagne at your disposal. One of my most delicious meals ever was a rib-eye steak with red wine glaze in the lonely Aer Lingus first class on a Christmas eve. Once upon a time, before Homeland Security, immigration-check guards greeted me with a welcome and a smile, showing what, for lack of a better word, seemed like respect.

Respect was all well and fine, but what about the glamor? You want glamor?? Glamor is when you're waiting in line for the bathroom on a 747 and a girl people pay money to take pictures of taps you on the shoulder and gives you her phone number. She doesn't care if you have to pee like a race horse. You're on a 747, flying to Tokyo, so you must be interesting. You might even be somebody. Over the ice caps of Greenland in the middle of the night, over Siberia, Sakhalin, the Mediterranean, and Formosa, I've imbibed umbrella drinks and smoked cigarettes while standing in the back of the plane with ten other people, having parties. Remember the Mile High Club? It existed.

Now, if people attempt to have sex on a plane, obscure fines and charges are levied and levelled at and against them. Sex on a plane is a crime against humanity, the hapless participants are pilloried in the press as perverted fools, and governments practically come out and say "Ewww!" I suppose it's a security threat of some sort, and potentially inconsiderate, but sex on planes was generally once considered a Good Thing. Or at least an acceptable thing which individual humans might discreetly do, as individuals, against better private judgement. Even for me, it's hard to believe it ever was so, hard to track the dots of change which led us to this place in which a stewardess does not caress my neck but has morphed into a flight attendant and looks at me like she wants to spray me with disinfectant or bug killer and says, "Fill out your arrival form." I ask, "Could I borrow a pen?" She's Dutch, on KLM, and coolly remarks, "You must be an American." This was in business class, and I assumed one could ask for a pen without being directly insulted. "Ah, yes," I reply..."and you must be a German." Then she makes the facial expression for I Will Have You Killed.

The cliche says that all good things have to come to an end. I had hoped it didn't encompass air travel. It was so grand not having to undress, get x-rayed, take off your shoes, squeeze out your toothpaste tube, have your leatherman confiscated, your baby woken up, held on a runway without heat, food, drink, or the freedom to leave your seat to use the bathroom for 6 hours, and it was lovely to never hear a woman burst into sobbing tears of angry frustration and her husband say, "Oh now that's just great! That's all we needed!" It was wonderful not being officiously treated like a perpetrator, a bother to disregard, a malefactor in waiting. It was the best, and I miss it so. Maybe if you work hard enough in the Ownership Society to own your private jet, it gets better.