Perspectivating

While he was at Yale, George W. Bush was chosen to be a member of the secretive Skull & Bones society. His father, George H.W. Bush was also a member, and his grandfather had co-founded it. Skull & Bones are assigned nicknames when initiated. George Bush the Elder's nickname was "Magog." Via Alternet:

In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France's President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated.

In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:

"And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them."

Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:

"This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins".

The story of the conversation emerged only because the Elyse Palace, baffled by Bush's words, sought advice from Thomas Romer, a professor of theology at the University of Lausanne. Four years later, Romer gave an account in the September 2007 issue of the university's review, Allez savoir. The article apparently went unnoticed, although it was referred to in a French newspaper.

The story has now been confirmed by Chirac himself in a new book, published in France in March, by journalist Jean Claude Maurice. Chirac is said to have been stupefied and disturbed by Bush's invocation of Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq and "wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs."

(Note: graphic above is of Breugel the Elder's painting "Little Babel.")

Porn Industry Seeks Federal Bailout

"I never thought it could happen to me...or my government." Another gem from Larry Flynt's fecund mind:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry.

Francis said in a statement that “the US government should actively support the adult industry's survival and growth, just as it feels the need to support any other industry cherished by the American people."

“We should be delivering [the request] by the end of today to our congressmen and [Secretary of the Treasury Henry] Paulson asking for this $5 billion dollar bailout,” he told CNN Wednesday.

Flynt and Francis concede the industry itself is in no financial danger — DVD sales have slipped over the past year, but Web traffic has continued to grow.

But the industry leaders said the issue is a nation in need. "People are too depressed to be sexually active," Flynt said in the statement. "This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex."

"With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It's time for congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America. The only way they can do this is by supporting the adult industry and doing it quickly."

This must be filed under "Spreading Democracy." (Googling "Penthouse" for that cover above was, umm, interesting.)

Large Hadron Collider Rap

If you read the headline, "Scientists Seek to Re-Enact Big Bang," you can be forgiven for automatically forming a few crystals of concern and asking, "Now what hells are you damned fools going to unleash?"

While smashing nuclei together at the speed of light (probably) won't create a black hole strong enough to suck Lake Geneva into some nth-dimension, an ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) success in creating dark matter and quark-gluon soups will open a new age of high-energy science.

First, beady-eyed scientists will claim they can weaponize the reaction and make the atomic bomb look like a holiday kiddie-sparkler, which is why the US paid half a billion bucks to CERN for observer rights. On the bright side of the dark side, even more scientists will try to figure out how to use it to make clean energy, which is why the CERN consortium spent $4 billion on building the world's most advanced superconductive 17-mile long underground particle accelerator. It's located in an area famous for making the world's most precise watches.

A 23-year old intern from Michigan State, Kate McAlpine, wrote and produced a rap video while working on ALICE. It's delightful, instructive, and possibly the best argument ever for getting Midwestern white girls into rap.

Psyche's News Roundup

Political Affairs Magazine - Leak Reveals Cheney's Plan for Iran Attack

On Track for U.S. Collapse, by Michael S. Rozeff

AlterNet: Blogs: Video: CNN's Jack Cafferty Calls On Viewers to Overthrow Bush [VIDEO]

Rumsfeld flees France fearing arrest | world news

Insanity Is Trump: Bush And The Prudent Man Rule

US agency apologizes for news conference on fires | U.S. | Reuters

Climate - The Future Is Drying Up

Media Matters: Jamison Foser: Matt Drudge's Mini-Me (craprocratic media)

Digby: The Art Of The Hissy Fit | Campaign for America's Future

Matthew Yglesias (October 25, 2007) - The Fit

TheHill.com - Internal Dem memo faults party message - Republicans can trigger neurons
called .amygdalae. in the temporal lobe (sounds about right)

Genetic Disorders Hit Amish Hard, Centuries Of Intermarriage Make Rare Diseases More Likely - CBS News

Leaks: Comcast's "We Don't Throttle BitTorrent" Internal Talking Points Memo

Bold Move Pays Off on Flickr (look)

Lookout Below: Global Financial Acid Reflux

Banque National de Paris (BNP) Suspends Trading In Three US Real Estate Funds

This is big. Watershed. The sub-prime implosion is spreading to international banks, including the oldest bank in France, which halted trading of key US mortgage-backed security funds because they can't pay scared investors by foreclosing on homes. In response, the EU Central Bank opened the credit window as wide as it would go, pouring out $100 Billion new Euros yesterday. Overnight interest rates went up anyway, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average went down almost 350 points. The Federal Reserve and the largest US banks couldn't stem the tide, even by buying underlying stock derivatives at 100:1 leverage.

American Home Mortgage, a top-10, well-respected mortgage lender, filed for Chapter 11 protection 3 days ago. If you are holding regular mutual 401k funds, and were considering taking them out into something more defensive, now would be a prudent time. The skids might be averted yet, but if not, here's how the official blame might be pronounced: it's irresponsible of people to not pay their mortgages, and the French were irresponsible to start the avalanche. Nothing to do with the past decade's monetary policy of easy loans to rubes. Nothing to do with inflated appraisals, property flipping, and hefty closing fees to look the other way. Nothing to do with giving zero-down home loans to the tune of a million dollars.

Time to duck:

PARIS -(Dow Jones)- French bank BNP Paribas (13110.FR)sparked renewed credit market concerns Thursday after its asset management unit said it temporarily suspended three of its asset-backed securities funds because of a lack of liquidity in the market.

BNP Paribas Investment Partners suspended the calculation of net asset value, the issuance of subsciptions and redemptions in the funds.

The market for ABS - securities backed by assets such as mortgages, loans, leases and credit-card debt - has come under pressure recently as a related consequence of problems in the U.S. subprime mortgage market. BNP Paribas’ move follows similar action this week by WestLB Mellon Asset Management, the asset management joint venture of German state bank WestLB AG and the Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (BK).

BNP Paribas said that “the complete evaporation of liquidity in certain market segments of the U.S. securitization market has made it impossible to value certain assets fairly regardless of their quality or credit rating.”

As a result, the bank said it would suspend three funds - Parvest Dynamic ABS, BNP Paribas ABS Euribor and BNP Paribas ABS Eonia, which are now worth a total of around EUR1.6 billion, down from around EUR2 billion two weeks ago, a spokesman said.

All funds combined at BNP Paribas Investment Partners are worth more than EUR350 billion.

“The situation is such that it is no longer possible to value fairly the underlying U.S. ABS assets in the three above-mentioned funds” and “therefore unable to calculate a reliable net asset value, NAV, for the funds,” the company said.

The bank has been unable to find prices in the relevant parts of the U.S. credit markets since Monday, Alain Papiasse, head of BNP Paribas’ asset management services division told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview.

BNP Paribas Investment Partners, the unit managing the funds, was able to find prices quoted as late as last Friday.

“Since then, liquidity in some parts of the U.S. credit markets has dried up. To be honest, I don’t know why,” Papiasse said. There is no primary issuance and it’s impossible for those seeking to refinance ABS-related funds with any link to the mortgage market to do so, he said.

The valuation of the funds and the issue and redemption process will be resumed as soon as liquidity returns to the market, BNP said.

Concerns Throughout Money Markets

The suspensions sent further shock waves through an already sensitive money market.

“There is a certain degree of herd behavior here,” said Cubillas Ding, analyst at research and consulting firm Celent.

“Securitized assets that have underpinnings in the U.S. subprime market may now be difficult to put a price tag on, given market sentiment - as there is still lingering uncertainty whether the meltdown has greater knock-on effects down the line,” Ding said.

L'Exploration du Vent

(Very French accent:) Zere eez ho-ope fohrr us-all.

Dynamite commercial.

Collioure

It's true that when you travel
there's no avoiding Woody Allen.
Every sidewalk artist knows him, and the four
score and seven more sketch-worthy actors
who ambush you from here to Thailand;
transmutations of the monoculture from which we come.

Such harbingers. It reminds me how the prophets
said all the ends of earth express a single sum.
A few foretold of molten glass and crystal seas;
others were happy with brimstone and great heat.
I want to agree, but the spare visions seem to me
like airports in which we find ourselves undone.

Asphalt we may all become. Finally on vacation,
in Provence with Caitlin, all the ancient prophets
can kindly make a pilgrimage to kiss my ass.
We're staying in the backside of a decrepit hotel.
It has stood longer than our country, inconveniently
near a shifting border in a forgotten city,
where fortresses decay in dignified ways.

The Templars fled here, kapice? They hung 2,000 paintings
by pointillists and Fauvists who knew Picasso and Braque.
Painted for drinks and dinners, they were traded on this spot
for the famous fish soups of Rene and Pauline Pous.
I don't see 2,000, but Pauline was a beauty; Picasso
often did her justice in the hallways, and the rooms.

O'Brian the author chose wisely, and Machado
the poet presaged refugees who've not forgotten.
Above the alleyways before Mediterranean mornings,
we'll make love two or maybe three unhurried times.
I'll throw open our creaking, bleached-blue shutters
to admit insistent suns, and invite ascending diesel
fumes and fresh baguettes to join our breakfast.

I'll inspect them for guilt and disinfectants.
Listen, you prophets, this is no Disneyland.
Many were the hidden hands that plied genocides
and silenced honest speakers. You see that hilltop castle,
which floats alight on nothingness? It was once bewitched,
and much besieged. Real heads and bodies rolled on down
to where the Irish band plays 'Ghost Riders' on the shore.

Here is where we exported our most sacred
acts of oral sex to Britain. Here is where we formed
the words for cold and hot. It's where we made soap
from old enemies, and fed tobacco to circus goats.
This is where we ate the last bodies of Neanderthals.
Do you see the hilltops? Those are the same peaks
our forebears fled from, and never stopped to tell us why.

The goats ask for more. We had our first fight,
and miles take long to drive. Towns stagger.
One is named for a dead pig at Carcassone.
Another, near Cahors, for a brilliant whore.
But in Coillure, tonight, there was a gentleman
selling lighters deaf and mute in cafes outdoors.
He left a note with his predicaments at our table;
we bought it, and achieved an absence of America.

I still have it. It's curved like an Algerian dagger,
a shiny cerulean blue. When we tried it then,
and once again at 3AM, there shot out two plumes
of honestly dangerous flame. One jet for each cigarette
of the addicted couple we had become. We smoked,
and began to immolate the unframed paintings.
The paintings hissed like dying Cathars, and splaying
flames admitted the existence of a Great Horned One.

Le Vote

People make fun of France for being a nation of grognard surrendur-monkeys who mince over little morsels of unpasteurized cheeses, can't even make a decent beer, and are bitterly envious of America. I went to Provence on vacation once, not far from where Richard "The Neo-Con Prince of Darkness" Perle lives. Yeah. Sometimes I still dream of the morning markets where they sell flowers and wild mushrooms and those little morsels of unpasteurized cheese. I was happy as a clam. Too happy. To pry me out of France they had to shoot me with a tranquilizer dart, and threw a net over me so I could be shipped kicking and screaming back to the Greatest Country Ever. But anyhow, where was I...oh, right: I wonder how Americans will be stereotyped 50 years from now if, ahh, Asians happen to run the world?

The turnout for France's Presidential election was 80%. Nicolas Sarkozy, a Hungarian immigrant's son running as an anti-immgrant conservative, led the polls with a 30% take. Segolene Royal, a hard-ass officer's daughter running as a liberal, took 24% of the initial votes. Now it goes to a run-off. Whatever happens, France will be going through a few convulsions, as in, this is not your father's Chirac-mobile. I'm rooting for Segolene, of course, because Sarkozy's solution is to turn France into a police state. France had to deal with German invasions twice in the the last century, so she should be able to handle diversity.

Speaking of diversity: can you imagine who America would elect if 80% of the voters turned out now? (Hint: rhymes with "Osama.")

Here's an excerpt from the Yahoo! news story, which I won't bother to link to because the link will be broken a week from now. Seems the French can be out-done in the condescension department:

But France also is a nation deeply troubled, still haunted by riots by young blacks and Arabs in poor neighborhoods in 2005. Decades of high unemployment, increasing competition from more dynamic economies like China's, and a sense that France is losing influence in the world made this a passionate campaign.

("Umm, is there a Kettle here? Call for Mr. Kettle! Ah, there you are, sir. Allow me to introduce you to Mr. POT!") Maybe, maybe someday sooner than we think, America will have 80% of its voters turn out for a Presidential election. Like France, this country needs answers, and on all the same issues. As for votes, if the Bush Dynasty has taught us anything, it's that you have to turn out in overwhelming numbers.

Lewis Black On Travel

Lewis Black may be my favorite comedian, and here he's talking about travel. I originally went YouTubing looking for a Lewis Black monologue on the Holiday Season. I found a few, but I didn't want to send anyone over the edge, this time of year can be touchy. Not as touchy as having three kids running around a center fireplace, screaming and chasing a shell-shocked Jack Russell terrier and trying to take her temperature with a rectal thermometer (yes, that was the Christmas nativity scene at Casa Lord), but touchy nonetheless. And Lewis Black is for people who like their humor...black. Not just dark or a little off-color, but lovingly charred with a flamethrower, stuck on a spit and marinated in lighter fluid, then thrown into a magnesium barbecue and transmogrified into sooty carbon vapors.

So no holiday commentary from Mr. Black. But travel! Ah, travel. Me sooo trunky. I bought Lord Wife some 2007 calendars of Island Paradises, so she can put them up on her wall and long for them while slaving away on her keyboard editing documents like a washwoman over other people's torn, soiled, and hopelessly ugly clothing. The closest she's going to get to the Caribbean this winter is her corkboard, and hopefully we can set another all-time record for rainfall along about February. Like we just did in November. Me, I'd like to get to Italy. I long for Toscana and the topless beaches of La Spezia, the marble palaces cut out of the hill quarries of Enraux. "Fat chance, you imbecile," and some muttering under his breath was all I could get out of Santa when I brought up the subject. But Lewis Black, now, he made it to Italy:

"I got to Italy, I'd never been there, it's extraordinary. If you've not gone: unbelievable. I didn't know this--but Jesus Christ, he's, like...hoo-hoo, he's big there! Everywhere I turn there's Jesus! There's Jesus! There's Jesus! There's Jesus! He is like the Coca-Cola of Italy! And I'm Jewish, and I have to say, after three weeks there--I started to think he might be the Real Thing."

The inspiration for this blog, other than the need to go on the record about how messed up things are before I keel over and die like a canary huffing gas fumes while caged in a mineshaft, was how difficult air travel has become. (Our last family trip was during this summer's past Extreme Terrorist Scare.) I've lived in a bunch of places I remember with fondness, and like to talk about, and more that I don't but lived through ok, but you can say this about going Other Places: if the scales don't fall off your eyes pretty quick, you are one dumb and lost S.O.B.

Eiffel Nouveau

This is a cool idea. Take a cheesy tourist trinket commemorating some landmark, go to the landmark, and hold the cheesy trinket up in front of it so it's super-imposed.