No Place To Hide

The Tiger Rides Are Coming:"The financial crisis is 'attributable to inappropriate macroeconomic policies of some economies and their unsustainable model of development characterized by prolonged low savings and high consumption; excessive expansion of financial institutions in blind pursuit of profit." - China's Premier Wen Jiabao.

"The entire economic growth system, where one regional center prints money without respite and consumes material wealth, while another regional centre manufactures inexpensive goods … has suffered a major setback." - Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Rupert Murdock - "World financial markets are in a great state of disarray": "'It doesn’t really matter where you’re talking about in the world,” Murdoch said. “There’s no hiding place.'"

This bell tolls for you: "There's a sense among many, certainly here in New York, that we somehow had it too good too long, a feeling part Puritan, part mystic and obscurely guilty, that some bill is coming due." - Peggy Noonan

It's all around us, like particles in the air; everyone feels it, and feels it gathering into something else - something to dread, some first act of a most frightfull drama that will engulf the world.

I Wanna Be A Slave

The Boomers Got A First-Class Education - The GOP Will Never Let That Happen Again!: "'There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or by brainwashing; or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.'

Aldous Huxley
California Medical School
San Francisco California
1961"

Gulp !

The Obvious Prevails

Matt Damon Is From Where I'm From: "''Look, the best line about torture I've heard came from [retired CIA officer turned war-on-terrorism critic] Milt Beardon,'' Damon says. ``He said, `If a guy knows where a dirty bomb is hidden that's going to go off in a Marriott, put me in a room with him and I'll find out. But don't codify that. Just let me break the law.'"

That's how it should be. It's awful, it's an ethical mess, and it's barbaric from every angle. But it's the way it should be.

Zero Republicans

Masters of the Men's Room: "A nearly $820 billion stimulus package passed the House of Representatives Wednesday without a single Republican vote."

Repubs have nothing. They brought the country's economy to its knees, exposed the criminal intent and actions of major capitalists, and killed over 4000 soldiers fighting the wrong enemy.

They are liars and crooks and hardly far enough out of the ground to be sanitary.

Word to the mother - there's nothing that conservatives like better than a good lie that brings home the bacon.

Watch your wallet and watch your six.

Morning Dump - Joe and Mika Pull The Chain

Mika refers to Boxer's proposed education funding as "dumping" because she believes in a mythical capitalism that doesn't even exist - except in pompous tones at the breakfast table in a manse.
These days, Americans are surrounded by idiots like Joe and Mika who hawk books, kiss butt, rub each others egos, varnish their warped political pronouncements - all the while looking into the camera with a promise to viewers that their dribble is a value to someone.

It isn't.

Yet I watch, like a kid watching a house burn down.

Peter King - The Idiot

King of N.Y. Is One Sick Puppy - "Always has been", say those in the know : "Smile, say cheese and hold that pose till you hear the 'click'. A new bill introduced in the Congress by New York Republican Rep. Peter King requires mobile phones with digital cameras 'to make a sound' when a photograph is taken."

That's gonna be terrific! Now at concerts and weddings and impeachments you will hear a cacaphony of "clacks".

I urge folks to read more of what this asshat has proposed in the past. I can smell this guy - and so will you. He is a fake, mean man and cares about nothing except his unsane poltical stance.

Biden Cuts Another One

We knew he's the cringe-worthy gaffe-machine, but I actually thought he would self-correct. I shudder to realize that maybe he can't, and that maybe Joe Biden doesn't know that his mouth is digging a hole beneath his feet.

The Motor Home Driver

Black Like Him is Nobody's Goal - Clarence Thomas Unqualified for Emulation: "But he is not crazy, he's just... Clarence; Uncle Remus wearing a robe: an embittered, eclipsed, forgotten Negro -- outted by the most admired man in the world, the first African American President, a Black man who earned his way to the top, a self-made man, not an appointed man, who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and never forgot or rejected his people.

And Clarence Thomas? Once a footstool of the right wing, now just a footnote, He will be known now and forever for what he really is: The Unqualified Justice. Thank goodness Obama has pulled that robe off, and laid bare this pathetic little man who thought himself a king, but was and is, only a pawn. And Thomas knows only too well that the real king resides down the block."

Great, scathing article - must read it !

Clarence Thomas has famously expressed a lack of enthusiasm for the position he occupies and has declared that he would rather just drive his motor home. He might as well have said that his shit smells, for all anyone cares. He has proven to be a debased coin of the realm and nothing seems to be too low for him to grasp to further that legacy.

The Care and Feeding of History

Hmmm...: "Lincoln likely would have been appalled. How could he not? He was a 19th century white man who famously said in 1858 that 'there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which . . . will forever forbid the two races living together upon terms of social and political equality.''

How do you reconcile that with all those cartoons of Lincoln congratulating Obama? You don't. You simply recognize it for what it is: yet another illustration of how shallow our comprehension of history is, yet another instance where myth supersedes reality."

Yet, if Lincoln had lived from then to now I suspect that he would be pleased with the fact of President Obama.

On a Wing and a Pilot

All Hail Sully !! ... one guy on TV said it "was a miracle", and the other guy replied, "yes, a miracle of training and experience."

I say it was a magic choreography created by a bunch of very good people dancing with every move they knew.

It was humans supreme - All Hail Sully and the Ferries of the Shining City !

The Unbearable Lightness of Citizenship

Ted Haggert - Speaker Pelosi Sent Words of Comfort and Support After Scandal: "Our view of what it's like sitting in an emergency room and not knowing if your insurance card is going to work—I understand that emotion now. I know what it feels like to walk somewhere instead of driving somewhere to save gas. And so, I'm different. And I am optimistic about the new administration. This whole thing had changed me. I never dreamed I would be left out this quickly."

Healthcare - the humanity within citizenship

..."And we knew that if something happened, if that that support didn't come [from New Life]—because I was an incredible failure at trying to find a job that would work—we knew we would have to depend on programs that Democrats had put in place."

The Seventh Pooch

"I can't quit you!", cries Microsoft, and screws the pooch yet again!

Windows 7 beta hits the street: "I was looking for a 'mea culpa' and some solid integration tools and compatibility features. What I got was a prettier GUI and new ways to share music with my dog. Ugh!"

If you keep screwing pooches you're gonna get - wait for it - more dogs !!

The Big Chilada

Like so much else in W's America, there's no such thing as a Big Chilada: but to W it will always be the evil pretzel that almost killed him! "This is Bush's legacy -- a stunning series of alibis," writes Nora Ephron.

"It's true what he said: we misunderestimated him.

George Bush came into his presidency with a huge wave of goodwill. Not from me, but from many others. An amazing number of people who should have known better thought of him as a charming guy whose intellectual limitations would somehow be as benign as Ronald Reagan's, whose promise of a fairly passive presidency would be as survivable as Dwight Eisenhower's..."

"He was misunderestimated in every way. It was hard to imagine that this feckless leader could do so much damage.

"...after all these years in the dark, we're ready for a little overestimation. Which is, unlike misunderestimation, an actual word. But come to think of it, misunderestimation ought to be a word. I certainly know what it means."

Meth Labs on Mars

Life on Mars - Nasa discovers methane gas on Mars: "UK Mars expert Professor Colin Pillinger believes the methane can only point to the presence of life on the planet."

Out there in the ether you can still here Percival Lowell yelling at his family's trust fund managers, "Give me the fucking money you Edwardian retards!, they ARE CANALS !!! Live with it !!!"

Joe's Got the Conch

Joe the Magic Plumber Fights With Israeli Reporter:

"JOE: The story here is people are being killed and the media's slanting it and trying to make it Hamas is, uh, as far as, that Israel's being bad. Do you believe Israel is bad?
REPORTER: Do I believe it?
JOE: Yeah, do you?!
REPORTER: I'm Israeli, so...
JOE: So answer the question"
REPORTER: No, I don't think Israel is bad.
JOE: Do you think Israel has every right to protect itself?
REPORTER: Yeah.
[pause]
JOE: You do?!
REPORTER: Yeah.
JOE: Have you said that on air?
REPORTER: I'm just a reporter."

Many of America's more obnoxious middle-aged Republicans were conceived in the back seat of a car at an aging drive-in theater while Fox Movietone News blared out of a cheezy speaker box. That's the only way to explain why there is a whole slice of society filled with Joes that can't get it up unless Fox News is somehow involved.

"The culture of the Internet is that information wants to be free."

Eric Schmidt wishes that Google could save Newspapers: "I wish I had a brilliant idea, but I don't."

"I don't think our purchasing a newspaper would solve the business problems... Until we can answer that question we're in this uncomfortable conversation."

I shudder a bit to think that soon I won't feel that hard-to-fold thickness, where all the news is in your physical grip.

I want to ask, "is there anythnig here that we should be thinking about before we pull the drapes on printed things, and paint over the still-life of "Book on a Table" and "Man Napping with Sports Section Ripped to Shreds On His Lap?"

And while it might be true that "information wants to be free", it's also true that reporters need to be paid or you don't get any.

State of Shame

Mickey Rourke: "When you used to be a somebody and you aren’t anybody any more, you live in what my doctor calls a state of shame. It’s when you had a career, then you mess up and you don’t have a career any more — and it’s all your fault."

Are We Being Lied To About Pirates ?

Our breathtaking gullibility: "In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was 'to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.'"

"Think Global, Act Global"

Local, Schmocal, says outgoing US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson: "Mr Paulson cast the crisis as partly the result of a collective failure to come to terms with the way the rise of emerging markets was reshaping the global financial system. These imbalances – arising from differences in the inclinations of different nations to save and invest – are reflected in large current account deficits and surpluses around the world.

The US Treasury Secretary said that in the years leading up to the crisis, super-abundant savings from fast-growing emerging nations such as China and oil exporters – at a time of low inflation and booming trade and capital flows – put downward pressure on yields and risk spreads everywhere.

This, he said, laid the seeds of a global credit bubble that extended far beyond the US sub-prime mortgage market and has now burst with devastating consequences worldwide."

This is the new thinking, analog to the mental landscape of climate change, with events seen in global focus.