Id's Of March

Random Barking

JFK In Berlin, June 1963 (AFP / Esquire)

At Amherst College in late October, 1963, President John F. Kennedy gave a short speech in honor of  Robert Frost, but in a broader context of the Arts, and Artists (you can listen to it here). Roughly five weeks later, JFK was dead.

When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.

In the same speech, Kennedy also observed that A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces, but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.

(Kennedy made another, longer and more formal speech -- this time about science and the environment -- in October, 1963; read a transcript here. Then compare it with this.)

So, just a question: Whom do we honor, as a nation and a culture? What kind of persons are held up (and, by whom?) in America as examples of right choices and right action -- those who we hope our children will emulate and become? The values and behaviors we promote as the "content of our character"?

Insane Murderous Clowns :  ©2016, Victor Juhasz / Rolling Stone

The failure to bring Trumpcare to the floor of the House of Representatives for a vote was a blow to Wonderboy and the Clown Car government. Nearly every media organization (beyond Fox, the Washington Times, and Breitbart, now the White House's propaganda mouthpiece) used headlines  with some variation on "Republicans Pull Healthcare Bill; Sharp Rebuke To Trump".

Make no mistake: the Ryan/Trump plan would have created chaotic disaster. It would have thrown 16 million people, at a minimum, under a Trump In 2020 campaign bus, and directly caused physical pain and real misery. The healthcare industry would have gone into a competitive frenzy -- an inconvenience for the wealthy, but a catastrophe for the sick, the chronically ill, and the poor.

But, make no mistake about this, either: The largest factor leading to the bill's being pulled was not an overwhelming rejection of it in the Congress -- but because a key number of House Republicans, the self-styled 'Freedom Caucus' (whose Kangaroo Court-membership is secret) believed Ryan/Trump's legislation was insufficient. That the cuts and changes weren't severe enough.

Media organizations and any number of liberal pundits can crow about how terrible a blow this all is to Wonderboy, and Little Paulie Ryan. If it were due to a concerted and organized resistance to Trump and his cabal, we should be celebrating.  But it isn't: Trumpcare never made it to the floor because of the continuing struggle between traditional Beltway insider Republicans, and Alt-Right teabag, Evangelical crazies, for control of the Republican party.

That internecine war is far from over.  But no matter what your political analysis of all this is, once one side or the other in that conflict is dominant, or both sides make a truce in order to save the GOP from possible Midterm election losses -- the next time, there will be nothing (let me repeat that; there will be nothing) standing in their way.

After the bill was pulled, Schumer and Pelosi crowed about 'victory' -- but the Democrats had little to do with it. There is no organized Resistance. Paris is occupied and the Germans are free to go anywhere, say anything, take anything. They will lock down your borders -- no one can get in, but (depending on what happens in future) it's also harder to get out. Their judges will sit in your courtrooms. Their teachers in for-profit schools will build a curriculum around 'Alternative Facts'. They will pump chemicals in your rivers, CFC's into the air. And one day, they will come in trucks for your Communists and Jews -- they've already come for Latinos and Muslims.

And there will be nothing to stand in their way, until the Resistance is real, and not simply a pretty graphic or soundbite used to sell trendy clothing or music or tickets to an event -- and not until there is a real alternative to a political structure which benefits so few and takes from so many.

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MEHR, MIT EIN SCHLAG IM GESICHT:  Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute, which (according to SourceWatch) was founded before Bill Clinton's run for the to become the Democratic candidate for President, "and after the 1992 election gained notoriety as [his] 'idea mill'."  

The PPI is the think-tank for the Democratic Leadership Council, a group founded by primarily conservative southern Democrats, which essentially believes Republicans are people, too also, and that we should learn to compromise with them in order to, you know -- get stuff. Some things.  A few. One?  

Okay -- we'll let them take things from us, but they have to promise to think very, very seriously about giving us some things, too. How about maybe just 'lend' us stuff? 

Will Marshall contributed an op-ed piece for yesterday's The Paper Of Record, titled "Why Democrats Should Work With Trump".  The title says it all.  

This little crayon-written missive attracted 1,288 replies; no I did not read them all, but those which said, in essence Are you fucking kidding me? What planet are you living on, dude? were overwhelmingly in the majority.  My favorite:

[Peter, In Connecticut]

If someone is punching you in the face, try to get them to slow down, or maybe not hit so hard. Compromise is a wonderful thing.

(100 Recommend)

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Kleiner Mann, Was Nun?

Die Dreiziger Jahre


Ja aber, kleiner Mann, was nun?
Wenn's morgen anders ist, was tun?
Bedenke, dass die Welt sich dreht
Seit sie besteht!
Ja, kleiner Mann, was nun?
Wenn dich das Glück vergisst, was tun?
Oft wie ein Traume schnell vergeht
Im Winde verweht

Yes; but Little Man, what now?
When it's tomorrow, what do you do?
Remember that the world has been turning
since it was born
Yes, Little Man, what now?
When luck's forgotten you, what next?
It's often how a dream quickly passes
Of course, on the wind

Und musst du heut' vielleicht auch beiseite steh'n
Kann es doch morgen schon wieder aufwärts geh'n
Nur Kopf hoch! Kleiner Mann, was nun?
Wenn's morgen anders ist, was tun?
Vielleicht wird's auch, sei dir selber treu
Dann geht das Glück nicht vorbei!

And today perhaps you'll have to stand aside
Tomorrow you can continue on your way
Just keep your head up! Little Man, what now?
When it's tomorrow, what do you do?
Perhaps [tomorrow] will be true to you,
and luck won't pass you by!

-- "Little Man, What Now?" (1932)
    Music: Harald Böhmelt; Lyrics: Richard Busch

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(MEHR, MIT EIN TIEFES U. BLEIBENDES GEFUL DER ANGST: Whoa Whoa Whoa with the emails about the quality of this translation, already. It's why I have a deep respect for everyone who ever translated a novel or poem from one language to another. My ability with German is a few degrees past utilitarian; I like to imagine I have an apprehension of the Geist in Der Sprache -- and can approximate it in a way that's true to the author[s]. But, you know.)

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Random Barking: Tears In The Rain

Still Crazy After All These Years

So we don't believe that life is beautiful because we don't recall it; but if we get a whiff of a long-forgotten smell, we are suddenly intoxicated, and similarly we think we no longer love the dead because we don't remember them -- but if by chance we come across an old glove we burst into tears.
-- Marcel Proust

In My Head, The Theme To (The Original) 'Magnificent Seven' Plays, but The Dog grows old. Physically, mentally and spiritually (at least one of these three categories are very subjective) I am doing better than most of my chronological peers, but I am now officially, by government standards, old.  I was already that in the eyes of the Kiddies of Kiddietown (bless their tiny white cotton socks), where The Olds are treated by degrees as Replicant life forms; hideous, useless eaters, grown in vats.

Some days ago, The Girl Who Refused To Be Mrs Mongo (the heroine of yet another unpublished Steig Larrson novel by that name) took me to a seaside restaurant in an All-White enclave by way of celebrating. There was a view of The Bay, and the venue was architecturally pleasant -- but the food was oddly muted, not quite tasteless, reminding me of the old Woody Allen joke about his mother, "running the chicken through the deflavorizing machine."  I enjoyed the wine, though, as Dogs do, and The Girl and I discussed politics.

GIRL: Well, I voted. For Hillary -- and don't tell me about how much of a tool she is.
DOG: This election puts everything that's horrifying about America's political structure and our culture on display. Forget Trump; but I can't vote for her.
GIRL: But it's simple: you vote for Clinton, or you get something even worse.
DOG: So, choose between the lesser of two weevils?
GIRL: This is going to make me crazy. If Trump gets elected --
DOG: He's can't. It's simply not possible. Clinton is already elected. That should make you feel better.
GIRL: Okay; let's just drop it. What did you mean about ' two weevils'?
DOG: A bad Captain and Commander joke, but it applies to this election.

Over the weekend, I re-read an article by Laurie Penny about the DNC's Convention this year which made me want to puke, endlessly, like Ron sicking up Banana Slugs at Hogwarts after a spell gone bad.  Then, I read:  

... Al Franken... chants “Hillary, Hillary.” Fuck that guy. He’s not helping. The only way this could get more embarrassing is if they wheeled out Paul Simon to sing Bridge Over Troubled Water. Which is exactly what happens next. 

Now, before I say what I’m about to say, I want you to understand that I have been a fan of Paul Simon and his work since my father first played me the Greatest Hits when I was six years old.

... Outside, an epic summer storm is breaking over the Democratic Demilitarized Zone like the world’s laziest metaphor. ... I spend an hour sheltering ineffectively outside the Wells Fargo building [where] an independent internet journalist wearing a giant crystal pendant and no shirt starts explaining how he’s hoping for a Trump presidency to usher in the coming collapse of civilization.

Paul Simon's Greatest Hits, Etc., was released in 1977 (meaning Penny was born at roughly the same time that I was participating in America's geopolitical containment strategy in Southeast Asia), and I remember the cuts "American Tune", and Kodachrome, and Still Crazy After All These Years well.

But I could walk it back farther than that. It was here that I had a Proustian moment, stumbled across a forgotten glove: I knew Simon and Garfunkle when they were brand, spanking, never-before-heard new -- Sounds Of Silence; Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme; 59th Street Bridge Song, Feelin' Groovy; Bridge Over Troubled Water, El Condor Pasa; Bookends and Mrs. Robinson brand-new.

I listened to them with my now long-gone High School friend, JJ, while stoned on pot in the basement rec room of his house, the doors locked and the blinds drawn because, you know, pot was illegal. JJ's tastes in music were more reflective than most of the stoners in our small town, which leaned heavily towards Cream, Butterfield Blues Band, Spirit, Creedence Clearwater.

(JJ also introduced me to Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention -- and to Leonard Cohen. Wherever you are, buddy; for that, I am grateful.)

I listened to them outside the U.S. on a PX-purchased TEAC reel-to-reel, and in a string of apartments afterwards -- until the day I stood in an elevator and heard a version of "Feelin' Groovy" by Montovani or 1001 Strings oozing out of the Muzak -- and thereafter found myself listening to Bowie, the Stones, and later (Gott; Hilfts Du Mich) the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever and the BeeGees' Odessa album.

The TEAC R-to-R is still around, in need of repair; but the SNF and BeeGees albums are long gone. Some day, we'll say the same about Trump and Hill-o, and about America; and it will also be said of us.

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MEHR, MIT HUNDE:

STONE: Aningaaq. Is that -- is that your, is that your name? Aningaaq is your name?
ANINGAAQ: ["May Day? Aningaaq. Aningaaq, May Day?"] (Laughs)
STONE: No, no, no. My name is not Mayday. I’m Stone. Dr. Ryan Stone, I need help. [Dogs barking]  Those -- are dogs. They’re calling from Earth.... Woof, woof; yeah...
ANINGAAQ: (Laughs) ["Woof, woof ! May Day? Woof Woof Woof!"]
STONE: Yeah... Aningaaq, make your dogs bark again for me, would you please? Your dogs. Dogs, you know. Woof, woof. Dogs.
ANINGAAQ: ["Dogs don't sound like that -- they go, Aooooo!"]
STONE: Aoooooo. Woof Woof. Aooooo!
ANINGAAQ: [Aooooooooo!]
STONE: Yeah... Aoooo... Oh; I’m gonna die, Aningaaq. I know, we’re all gonna die. Everybody knows that. But I’m gonna die today. Funny, you know, to know that. But the thing is; I’m still scared. I’m really scared. Nobody will mourn for me; no one will pray for my soul. Will you mourn for me? Will you say a prayer for me? I mean, I’d say one for myself, but I’ve never prayed in my life; so. Nobody ever taught me how.

-- Sandra Bullock (Stone), Orto Ignatiussen (Aningaaq), Gravity (2015)  

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Random Barking: A Walk Into The Mime Field

No Big Apple Big Hug Mug For You

Oddly Familiar

(New York Times Online) For years, Jermaine Himmelstein, 24, has held a sign offering “Free Hugs” in public places like Times Square and Washington Square Park, a seemingly kind offer that could brighten the days of tourists and lunch-breakers.

For years, it hasn’t worked like that. The sign is a lie; Mr. Himmelstein has frequently accosted people who don’t tip him, in some cases assaulting them. Far from spreading joy, he was described in a 2013 profile in The New York Times as “a creepy legend.”

On Thursday, he was arrested and charged with robbery after punching a 22-year-old Canadian tourist, a woman, in the face at 46th Street and Broadway in Times Square, sending her to a hospital with severe swelling to her face... She had taken a photo with Mr. Himmelstein and refused his demands to pay him, the police said.

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If This Is Tuesday, It Must Be

Photograph Of Glen Fleshler For Absolutely No Goddamn Reason

 (Photo: Somebody)

Slow news day, relatively.  Good actor, though.

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Mongo Misses Chuck Also, Too

Es Müss Sein

Because it is so.

Random Barking: Reposting Friday

The World Is A Box Full 'O Bad Crazy Weekend

• ...looking for A Way Out.  It's Friday in Berlin, and someone remembers that without people who follow, the Leader is just another guy with a funny moustache -- or a weasel who lives on his head; or a thin woman with short, dark hair; or a chubby one with blonde hair.

Because of the perceivable growth of Germany's Afd of late, particularly as measured in last Sunday's elections in three German states — which had been dreaded but expected — much of the discussion I see & hear is similar to what's being written & said about the Republican Primary in the US — and particularly, in the case of the former, the voters' influence.

Most talk has had to do with how to stop the rise of fascism, and ... includes by default of context how to go about changing the minds of the people in a movement. The corresponding discussion in the US seems largely focussed on Donald Trump himself. It expands beyond that only in how it objectifies his followers with something akin to a couplet of consequence: "Look what he's letting them do!"  "Look what he's making them do!"

What these discussions do not do is soberly acknowledge that all of these growing gatherers will exist tomorrow, no matter what happens to Donald Trump or the AfD. 

• Meanwhile, in downtown Beltway, people who know the Village must be destroyed in order to save it (yes; I understand the pun and irony in using that old bromide, here) are lining up for a confrontation with... themselves.

The seminal event in the crackup of the Republican Party is not the rise of Donald Trump as their presidential nominee, contrary to popular opinion. It was the overthrow of John Boehner as Speaker of the House. That showed the power of the forty-odd members of the House Freedom Caucus, and their incompatibility with the GOP establishment and the compromises required by divided government (or for that matter, math).

The change in leadership at the top has not bridged this divide. Despite months of happy talk, the Freedom Caucus rejected Paul Ryan’s budget resolution, likely leaving the Republicans with ... the continuing irreconcilable differences between conservative factions. Trump will not be able to fix this either; only a purge of one side of the party or the other would.

The Freedom Caucus essentially wants to control government from a base of 40 members of the House, with only a few allies in the Senate and no president willing to agree to their demands. They want to defund Planned Parenthood, balance the budget through massive spending cuts, dismantle government healthcare programs, and overturn every executive order of the past eight years, regardless of not having the two-thirds support in Congress that would be required currently to override Obama vetoes and make that happen.

Conservatives had to beg Ryan to take the Speaker’s job. His prescient leeriness stemmed from seeing Boehner put in the impossible spot of rounding up votes for routine government functions. And absolutely nothing changed when he received the gavel.

• As an older Dog, I have nearly a 1-in-4 chance of living in poverty within the next 15 years (it would be much less if there was a Mrs. Mongo, but). In the near term, I have a 16.5%  (close to one in five) chance of ending up in the same situation within the next five years. Want to know what your chances are?  Go here and spin the big prize wheel, Me Droogies.

• What happened to John Titor? Bet you don't even know who that is, Pilgrim.

• If you were the Annie Liebovitz of North Korea, you could be in constant jeopardy: See the wonderful photoshoots of Kim Jong Fatboy, XBox Terror of the Korean Peninsula.

• A wonderful map showing the distribution of the only humans who matter High Net Worth persons around the globe, along with a guarantee you will not be among them (if you are, Please Burn In Hell). You will find this fun and informative.

• Hot, bad, and anything you want, (as it is said) for those who do. Try your might and main against the really smart kidz in the room, and win the coveted Tub Of Slaw.

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In A Just Universe We Are All Safe And Loved

But We Are Here

Yesterday a friend and I went to look at an assisted living community for her 86-year-old father. The facility's marketing person was friendly and low-keyed. The place itself was comfortable and clean; the average age of a resident was 83, and the men and women I saw seemed generally content and would easily engage with you if you stopped to talk with them. To live there in a small, one-bedroom apartment, would cost roughly $5,000 per month even without the range of assistance.

Later, my friend and I took a drive to another facility; it was a place her father could afford, but wouldn't feel comfortable in. She wanted to make a point about exclusivity. 

The place we went to was a 'community' run by a private corporation, like a suburb of single-story homes built within the past twenty years, all newer versions of the kind of GI-tract-style home built in 1948 which I had grown up in. It was on the top of a set of hills, surrounded by manicured lawns and trees, a cross between a park and a country club. 

We went into the community's main building, and walked through their dining area -- a broad room with tables and booths, actual silverware, fresh linen and bright napkins, good carpeting and dark, aged wood paneling; the place looked like the interior of a yacht club. The people in that room also seemed content, but in a different way -- they seemed dressed more formally for Sunday brunch than the people in the other facility; or, perhaps it was just me.

On the way out of the building, we stopped to look at an album with information about the residents -- "...after graduating from Stanford, he lived in London..." "was an officer in the U.S..." "...met his wife while working for the World Bank..." "...undergraduate degree at Yale...".  Most of the John Cheever short fiction I've ever read came to mind for a moment.

When we drove away, my friend said, "If you're accepted to live here, the entry fee is that you give the corporation who runs it about a million dollars. It's a loan -- they get to use that money for whatever they want. When you die, your heirs get the full sum back, but with no accrued interest.  And while you are living here, you pay about $10,000 a month for one of these homes. More, if you need assisted living," she said. "He could, but my father doesn't want to live in this kind of place."

"This is what the one-per-centers get at the end of their lives," she added. "And most of us won't even be able to afford the (first) place we looked at today."

I looked back at the place as we drove away -- at how clean, how quiet, orderly; how rich it seemed. It's one thing to intellectually consider how much better the Owners have it than the mass of the world's population. It's something else altogether to see it. 

I went away thinking about wealth, about inequity; about what Senator Sanders has been saying from The Stump, and the business-as-usual babble from Hillary The Inevitable ! I thought about things going on in the world outside Our Great Country, and about human suffering and history. 

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That led me to my usual blog-reading this morning, and I came across something that resonated.

One way or another, on a daily basis all of us struggle against the inane malestrom of useless human thought: con-artist commercialism, incoherence and illogic masquerading as clarity, and Exclusive and All-New ! that smothers human consciousness like a wet tarp. It does nothing to illuminate the landscape for other travelers or feed the soul.  And the Intertubes, a vast place, simply amplifies the prevalence of all of it (I'd include this blog in that list -- this is just a nighttime bus stop somewhere in the big middle of somewhere, or nowhere).

But -- one excellent thing about the Intertubes is, like other forms of communication, you may occasionally break out of the crazy Bardo-world of Amazon and Beyonce, CNN and Endless Living Through Twitting, and find yourself in a place where the sun is warm and the fields are green and open, the ocean is wide and blue, and people tell you the truth in complete sentences.

This bit of clear thinking (and you should read all of it), courtesy the Soul Of America, where there are cats.  I had to pass it along: Please consider.

If we had a society where everyone lived well whether they had a job or not, then we could make pure utilitarian arguments about employment. But when employment is required for people to be able to live decently, or even live at all, such arguments lead to treating huge masses of people as disposable, and consigning them to awful lives.

Again, this might be ok if we lived in a scarcity society, but we don’t. We produce enough food to feed everyone, we have the ability to house everyone, and so on... “Everyone should have a decent life, and that shouldn’t be contingent on whether they can make money for a billionaire.”

The economy and corporations exist to serve people, not the other way around. When they do not do so, the problem lies with them...

The core of any decent system of ethics, and thus of any political and economic order, is Kant’s maxim that people are ends, not means. When you forget that, you inevitably descend into monstrosity.

  --  Ian Welch, "Pure Utilitarianism and Capitalism"; Blog, March 5, 2016

MEHR, MIT ANGST AUS MITTELSTANDE: Rereading this post, I'm reminded how lucky we are to be able to focus on these kinds of issues, in a Western culture with cutting-edge technology. Which is another way of saying it reeks of middle-class stuff.  Guilty.

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Random Barking: Stuff Out There

You Have Questions. Mongo Has Something Like Answers.

 (Hideous Mongo Stand-In Courtesy Buzsharer.com)

Q:  Does the continuing slide in crude oil prices pose a threat to the economies of nations dependent on oil transport and sales?  And, could that have a ripple effect through the world economy ending in greater financial instability?
A:  It may, and, not at this juncture. I was more interested in seeing that Chelsea Handler, who isn't strapped down real well under the best of circumstances, wants Muslims searched at airports. All of them. Because Freedom, presumably; and what the hell is it that Handler does? Isn't her claim to fame that she's someone's girlfriend? She has, what; 300-page books in 32-point type about her vagina? (Okay; maybe not.) And I hear she drinks.

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Q:  How about Trump and Megyn Kelly?
A:  No one with a particle of self-respect works for any organization owned and operated by Lil' Rupert and his issue, and Roger The Fat. They're not a "positive source" in society, they are factories of lies. It would be like working for Goebbels' Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda, or the "news" bureau of the People's Fun Republic of North Korea.

     This l'affaire Donnie is a Tempest In A Thimble. It isn't as if Kelly has any talent or real importance (Trump has it right when he refers to her as a 'third-grade reporter'); and it isn't as if Trump is a real 'politician' or an individual who adds to the sum of human kultur. It's a witless spat between a blowhard and a bimbot, and as a Dog I have better things to pay attention to, such as licking myself in public. And I hear she drinks.

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Q:  Is star KIC 8642862 circled by a gigantic alien construction, such as a Dyson Sphere?
A:  Hope so.  As the old joke goes, "I keep hoping they'll discover intelligent life in the universe, because I haven't observed any so far" (see comments on Fox and Kelly, above).

Q:  Bill Gates just sold the Corbis Photographic archive -- millions of images, some of them classics -- to "Unity Glory International", a division of Visual China Group. Commentators are curious: just what will happen with the thousands of images in Corbis' archives of the 1989 demonstrations (and subsequent brutal crackdown by the Chinese government) in Beijing's Tienanmen Square?
A:  So -- one Oligarch sells other Oligarchs a part of his art acquisitions. As a result, the new owners may not allow public access to some of it, a form of censorship and repression. They may even alter the art -- why not? Who will stop them? They own it.

      This is not news to WeiWei, and countless other human rights activists in the Land 'O Mao -- or to George Orwell, who noted that He who controls the past controls the future. It's situations like this which make me think the world becoming like Lucas' THX1138 is the best-case scenario our species can look forward to.

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Q:  Allegations have surfaced that the well-publicized Wounded Warriors Project, a charitable organization which has claimed to provide direct benefits to seriously wounded veterans of Lil' Boots' wars, spends lavishly for junkets, conventions and meetings, hotel rooms, travel, etc. for its leaders and staff -- over $26 million dollars in 2014 alone.
A:  The effort necessary to recover from even relatively simple combat injuries, and what we now understand to be PTSD, is significant.  You can spend a lifetime trying to overcome events which (for draftees, during my time in the barrel) lasted a year -- or less, if you were invalided out.  Iraqi and Afghan war veterans dealt with multiple rotations and unit reactivations, which were not part of the of the Vietnam war experience. The need is for care and support.
     Since WW2, the treatment of veterans has been, mostly, a scandal.  The VA was is disorganized, even criminally so (anyone remember the VA managers, conspiring to falsify official and patient records, covering the fact that vets were being forced to wait for critical medical appointments, sometimes for months, with men dying in the process?). So when the Wounded Warrior Project appeared, it seemed this isn't a bureaucracy; vets themselves are organizing it. They'll do right by their brothers and sisters. And the organization promoted itself as putting the veteran's needs first. It's organizers wouldn't commit the usual offense of so many charities by providing executives and staff with high salaries and perks -- money which could have been spent on the veterans. Unfortunately, that's what appears has happened; and, the usual culture of fear has kept potential whistleblowers in line -- until now.
     Call me cynical; another disappointing story of human nature seeking its lowest level. Only, this in an organization who had claimed to put first the quality of life for men and women who came when called, and did more than what was asked. A lot of people will be more than just disappointed if the allegations are true; I'll be one of them.

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Q: How do you feel about the 2016 U.S. Presidential race?  Who will run? Whom do you support?
A:  As a Dog, I'm not guaranteed the vote.  But if I show up at the polling station in my neighborhood for the Primaries and the General Elections and act cute -- tail wag, sit up and beg; roll over -- they usually let me cast a ballot.  Normally, I vote for other Dogs.
     Everyone assumed the contest would be   Hillary !  Jebby !  Eventually, it might be -- but at some time in the summer of last year, Jebbo began to slump in the polls, and Trump quickly moved to the front of the Rat Pack on the right, just as Bernie Sanders has begun to edge out Hillary !  on the left.
     In different ways, left and right in America feel disenfranchised, ignored, impotent -- that the system Clinton and Bush represent is organized to benefit wealth and influence. Traditional politics only exists to make sure that feeding at the swine trough continues uninterrupted. Neither current popular favorite represents Business-As-Usual America, as Hillary and Jebby do -- Trumpolina and Bernie thumb their noses at the System, and people have responded.
     It should be pointed out that while Sanders is an authentic New-Deal, Progressive politician who wants radical changes made to The System, Trump claims to be a rebel while actually representing that System. Donnyboy panders to Joe-Tea-Partei voter by being the candidate who 'tells it like it is ... outspoken' and 'not afraid to go there'. Once in office, Trump would provide a continuation of tax leniency and loopholes for billionaires -- while the rest of us would continue to see flat wages, rising prices, but plenty of Monday Night Football and a ceiling on the price of beer.
     The vast cloud of political commentators have been saying (and the Old Guard in the Rethug party have been hoping) for six months that Trump would tank.  He hasn't. Trump wants... well, he can't articulate it very well, but under a Trump presidency, America would somehow be "bigger" "better" -- Leftists, immigrants, bimbos and foreigners better watch out.  People may not take Trump seriously -- but if he polls the most support and wins the majority of Republican primaries, he could become the party's nominee by default.
     Bernie Sanders is very specific about what he wants and who would pay for it (whenever he mentions it in a speech, the Old Guard in the DNC have an anxiety attack): nothing less than New-Deal Era socialism for Wall Street and the Banksters, and the 20 billionaires who own 99% of the country's personal wealth.  Right now, no one in the "financial and investment community" takes him very seriously -- but, again: if Sanders wins the majority of Democratic primaries, and  Hillary ! doesn't... And I hear she drinks. 

Let's pray to whatever energy form in the Universe which appeals to you (as Mistah Charlie, ph.d, might say) for a Sanders candidacy.

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     But, hey; we'll all get to see what happens. Well, most of us will. There are new, "curvy" Barbie dolls now, and there will be obese Barbies at some point, I'm sure. A White Person will play Michael Jackson in an upcoming British television biopic being planned. And (thank somebody's god), women still think that a Dog putting their snout into the ladies' crotches is 'cute', and they will rub your ears. Nice.

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Wheeeeeeee

Random Barking:  Dog Track Daze

Would Risking It All At The Dog Races Be A Better Retirement Option?

(Note: Do The Needful And Support Efforts To End The Abuse Of Racing Pooches)

The Great Curmudgeon, Blogger extraordinaire and member of the Kool Kidz, used to report days like today in the stock market under the title "Wheeee", and the usual note, "Another exciting day at the dog track." In fact, he still does.

And, it does appear to be an open question whether it's a better retirement option to bet your entire 401(k) on Greased Lightning in the fourth, as opposed to letting it ride on the Craps Table of the open market.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost over 1,000 points since the market opened on January 4th.

The plunge is historic -- the Dow has never dropped that far in so short a period of time.  And, since the market's last true high on May 19, 2015 (18,312), it's lost over 2,300 points.

(For a little perspective, in the 2008 Crash the DJIA went from a then-all-time high of 14,066 to 6,626 -- however, that took nineteen months, most of it in a 3,300-point slide over eight weeks in the fall of 2009; you can see it in the chart below.)

The DJIA, 2006-2016 -- As Your Significant Other Says, "Click To Enlarge"

The most obvious effect of a drop in the market is that the value of investments decreases; and, a company's value (it's Market Capitalization) also drops.  But the longer-term effects are hard to project. It's likely that hundreds of billions of dollars in stock value has been lost by investors, just on the Dow Jones -- the international stock market has lost over $2.4 Trillion US in just the past ten trading days  (international market losses in the 2008 Crash have been estimated at $15 Trillion; the GDP of the United States is $14 Trillion, just for comparison).

All of this has been happening against a backdrop of regional wars, migration; politics (in Europe and the U.S.); an increase in global terrorism -- and a lack of consensus, a tremendous irresolution, in the world over how any of it should be dealt with.

And, all the talking heads on finance programs, asked to explain what's happening and look ahead to the future, all say that future is bright -- but the market will remain volatile, possibly with further losses; be cautious! Or, maybe be ready to pick up a few bargains! Or not. Or some of both! Most of these people work for one major investment house or another, or have firms of their own; their clients wouldn't appreciate it if they simply said, "Hey, man; who knows?"

One question which keeps being asked (and by these same talking heads) is: has the 'recovery' of the U.S. economy since the '08 Crash been "real"? Corporations in the U.S. have been reporting record profits for five years -- and while the wages and salaries of their "individual contributors" (read: Peasants) have stagnated, salaries and bonuses for managers and executives have skyrocketed.

Millions of jobs have been added to the American economy since 2009 -- but are they sustainable positions, tied to businesses that manufacture or build things, and sell them? Or are they jobs with Uber and TaskRabbit, tech startups? As they part-time, working from home? Are they waitpersons or others in the "service economy", which can vanish with the next downturn? 

Companies like Uber and Airbnb, Facebook and Twitter, or Rovio (developer of 'Angry Birds') are worth billions, traded at hundreds of dollars per share -- and all of that value is blue-sky; strictly on paper. As in the Dot-Com era, the vast majority of Tech companies only provide access to online services which many might want to use, but which no one truly needs.  This is the current shiny new business model -- an economy (and an investment market) driven by businesses built on "sharing".

It's a Geek Dream: You build a business to do something cool -- a different way to do this or that with your smartphone, or connect to a a service. People's lives will be... just so much better! It'll be powered by software, available online or via mobile -- so you hire people whose lives revolve around coding, project management; 'presentation'.  And you need money. Lots and lots of money.

However, businesses like this don't create anything that has separate, definable and independent value -- like a hammer, or wristwatch or dinnerware.  The people driving the "sharing economy" sniff, "Making and selling things? So 20th century; not cool. Leave that to some poor people in Malaysia or Bangladesh. We're building the future."  But their businesses sell concepts; nothing more. Any business has to consider image and position and marketing; but in these days, it may be all these businesses are about -- appearance.

After manufacturing left the U.S. for elsewhere, and the businesses dependent on selling the things being manufactured closed... how were Americans supposed to make a living? Since Clinton's first term in office, the dream that keeps being touted (including by Obama in his most recent SOTU) is that, somehow, American workers will just have to become better educated, and trained, and take "tech jobs" in the "new digital economy." That rising digital tide, allegedly, will lift all boats.

My concern is that the present 'recovery' and the "sharing economy" is based on the development of businesses that are forced to quickly turn a profit in a vicious cycle: Venture Capitalists put their money into Tech startups specifically because the business models (unlike those for industrial processes, or manufacturing) have a rapid ROI. Everyone just wants to get richer. This same focus and method in the 90's helped create an overvalued, "overheated" Tech sector, better known as the Dot-Com bubble.  

If America's so-called recovery since 2008 had been a real sea-change -- for example, if more capital investment had gone into developing a new manufacturing base for next-generation technology to move away from fossil fuels, or create entirely new economic sectors for development and investment -- then, I'd feel more confident about the future.  With few exceptions, that didn't happen; so I don't.

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The global economy is more interconnected than even before the 2008 Crash. No matter how many Quants are running algorithms to analyze market action and so allow the firms who employ them to trade more effectively (and make more profit), there are simply too many variables in play for anyone to say what will happen next. So as it turns out, Hey man, who knows? really is what it comes down to.

I don't pretend to understand how international stock markets, international banks and finance corporations; falling oil prices and the effect on dependent sectors of the global economy; and how the stability of economies in China, the EU and the U.S. inter-relate and affect each other.  I've met people who make decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars in institutional investments on a daily basis. If they make a bad call, people could lose their employment; pensions could be affected.  You couldn't pay me enough to live with the level of stress associated with that.

One thing is true: investment markets are in part experiments in crowd psychology; John Maynard Keynes coined the term "Animal Spirits" in the 1930's to describe something already known -- that investment decisions can be influenced by emotion over reason:

Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is ... instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations... [Most] of our decisions to do something positive... can only be taken as the result of animal spirits—a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of [reasoned decisions based on weighing the data].
-- The General Theory Of Employment, Interest, And Money (1936)

It's an election year. Expect more "volatility and uncertainty", and of course, plenty of Animal.

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MEHR, MIT EL-ERIAN; For Those Who Do:  Mohammed El-Erian, Very Wired-In Guy, writes about current global market instability in Canada's Globe and Mail. While I believe there are some additional forces at work, his main points I've extracted here:

Financial markets are undergoing two consequential transitions... The first has to do with the shift from a prolonged regime of repressed financial volatility to an environment in which such instability is higher and less predictable. The primary reason is that central banks are less willing ... or less able ... to act as suppressors of volatility. 

...The second transition involves liquidity... Facing tighter regulation and sharply reduced market appetite for short-term [losses], broker-dealers are a lot less willing to take on inventory when the market overshoots. Other pools of capital, including sovereign wealth funds, also face constraints in increasing their risk-taking.

Left unchecked, these two transitions would feed each other, accentuating the general sense of financial instability and insecurity. The longer this continues, the greater the volatility... and the higher the risk that the instability could then spill back onto financial markets, fueling a destabilizing vicious cycle of economic and financial dislocations.

The good news is that such dynamics ultimately exhaust themselves. Unfortunately, that only happens after a lot of volatility, accompanied by a heightened risk of very sharp and disorderly declines in financial asset prices as well as contagion.

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Random Barking: Smokey The Bear Sutra, Peeps

You Must Remember This

The Fire Next Time: Obligatory Cute Animal Graphic

A few points about the Climate agreement and things Paris:  (1) It's a set of guidelines with no penalty for low- or non-performance. As an example, "Rich" nations are  'encouraged'  to collectively give "at least" $100 Billion US per year to "Poor" nations to help them in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But if they don't  -- or, the Banksters create yet another global financial meltdown and governments can't offer assistance -- well, gosh; it's not as if anyone were being held accountable.   (2) Even UN Secretary-General Ban Ky Moon said the agreement doesn't go far enough to curb emissions.  (3) The energy alternatives being stressed for "Poor" countries in the immediate future are natural gas and (cough cough) nuklar energy.  (4) Marie LePen is a fat, proto-nazi.

Yeah; I just threw that last one in there.  So sue me -- they'll come after you for mistreating an animal, bub.

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It's Just As Bad As You Thought

Persistent Aggravating Barking

Yet again, that terrible Dog gets on his little Soap Box and barks and barks and barks.

Josh Hoxie, director of the Project on Opportunity and Tax at the Institute for Policy Studies, recently published a study with a colleague, Chuck Collins, entitled "Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us".  Hoxie also contributed a piece to Reuters, providing an extremely high-level summary of the issues and alternatives. An even shorter form version: It's every bit as bad as you may have thought.

Or, maybe not -- it's possible people out there simply don't give a damn any longer. Or, they believe that Trumpolina will lead us "back to greatness", that Greg Stillson Ted Cruz will lead us all to Big Jesus. Once again, America -- holding a tear-stained image of Saint Ronald The Dim -- will sit tall in the saddle at the top of the Darwinian heap.

It's just possible that a large number of people are so willfully ignorant that they don't understand: If the current situation continues, their children and grandchildren will live at an enforced lower standard of living. All to benefit a tiny number of 'Owners.'  

...the richest 400 people in the United States together possess more wealth than over 60 percent of the country, a striking 194 million people and more than the populations of Mexico and Canada combined...

The Forbes 400 members have a combined fortune of $2.3 trillion. This is more than the gross domestic product of India, a country with more than a billion people. By comparison, the typical American family has about $81,000 in wealth — their total combined assets minus their debt. [It would take the combined wealth of] 36 million such typical families [to equal] the wealth of the Forbes 400.

The wealth gap in America is especially startling for people of color. Median household wealth for African-Americans is just $11,000 and for Latinos is $13,700...

Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Ogg Ogg

This rising inequality, which has accelerated in the last decade, has devastating implications. Extreme inequality has been linked to negative health effects... for everyone in these unequal societies, not just those at the bottom. In fact, according to British public health researcher Richard Wilkinson, we are better off living in a community with a lower standard of living but greater equality than living in a community with a higher income, but more extreme inequality...  [because] greater inequality tears the social fabric of society — we care less for each other and collectively suffer as a result.

High levels of inequality also erode social mobility — the ability of those born into poverty to climb the economic ladder into the ranks of the middle class. This is the result of a now-broken ladder of opportunity — the public investments in things like housing, education, and healthcare for those at the bottom and middle required to help people build wealth. Today, the United States is among the least socially mobile... countries in terms of earnings: children are less likely to earn more in real terms than their parents did...

Instituting a wealth tax or any other policy that strikes at the growing wealth divide is unthinkable in our current Congress, which has shown little interest in serious discussion about tax reform, especially before the presidential election. But a generation ago, the thought that Americans would be experiencing such massive inequality seemed similarly unlikely. If we fail to take bold action, wealth will continue to concentrate into fewer and fewer hands.

In the early Go-Go, "Lil' Boots" Bush years, the Department of Labor's bureau of statistics simply stopped reporting the number of layoffs announced in the U.S., and the amount of U.S. currency in circulation (a reference point known as M2).  Just -- stopped.  The CBO was also told to stop publishing a report which detailed how much the top layer of Our Wealthy paid in taxes, as compared with "ordinary" Americans.

When studies like Hoxie and Collins' are no longer news items; when reports that document how much of a Gilded Age is being created, at the expense of most of us, are no longer published or funded -- then you'll know things will have changed sufficiently that polite conversation, or impassioned civil discourse, won't be enough to bring about any kind of relief.

Past a certain point, the old claim that simply to be here in America -- to "live in the greatest country on earth" won't mean as much. And that thought should concern those 400 people in Forbes' little list. It ought to concern them deeply.  But I doubt it.

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MEHR, UND NOCH IMMER MEHR:  Not like things have changed in half a decade.

And it's not like I haven't barked about all this over and over, and again and again, as if repeating the same facts ten different ways might help bring about that change we all talk about but never see.  Talk about ego.

And, I don't have a good feeling about this mission. You shouldn't, either.

 Additional Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo At Close Of Blog Thing
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Random Barking: Turkey Day

Sad Vlad Eyes The Menu


Click To Enlarge -- It's Easy And Fun !

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You Cannot Un-See What You Have Been Shewn

Not The Details, But The Journey

The three persons and the Superintelligent Parakeet who read this blog know that Before Nine isn't exactly a repository of the sunny, perky, fun-filled bits of Life's flotsam, or warm moments featuring Kitties or Small Dogs. Rather the opposite -- but we do try for Teh Funny. In the Words of Saint Roger The Rabbit: sometimes, it's all we have.

When we bring on the funny bits, though, they usually leave a ring of Schadenfreude around the Tub 'O Culture that we collectively bathe in here in Blogtopia. It's a tall order, but someone has to fill it -- and passing these items on frequently results in rioting, bad press, and muttered threats about being hit on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.

... and today's offering is no exception:  I discovered a web news outlet which, on its face, looked like a virtual fountainhead of Teh Crazy: "Now8 News First In News", where we were told employees at a Target store in Kansas City (Missouri, or Kansas, wasn't specified) found a young woman lying on the floor of the Women's bathroom, pleasuring herself with an 'Olaf' hand puppet from the store, while singing "Let It Go" -- a recognizable tune from the Disney CG cartoon film, Frozen, which features little snowman Olaf as one of the main characters.

My first thought: Jeez; what a pathetic attempt to increase hitcount to this news site.  Or, it could be even more evidence of the Decline of Western Civilization, our being purchased by Commie Red China, and forced to sing "The Great Helmsman Is, You Know, That Guy".

The saga continued:

Kansas City Target employees walked into a scene in the woman’s bathroom on Tuesday that they say left them “speechless.” A 26-year-old woman with a history of mental issues ... was taken into custody after employees found her lying next to the trashcan in the woman’s [sic] bathroom crying as she sang the popular song from Disney’s 'Frozen', “Let It Go.” But ... [a]ccording to the employees... it was what she was doing while she was singing that left [them] in utter disbelief and shock. 

One of the employees described the woman in the bathroom as lying "on the floor with her pants around her ankles [and] with an Olaf puppet in one hand and a carrot in the other. What she was doing ... I don’t even have words for it."  The employee added that the scene would be "etched into my mind forever". Regarding the hand puppet, the employee said, "We definitely can’t restock that item.”

Another Now8 Story, And Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo

Then, showing Team Target loyalty, they took an opportunity for a cheap shot at a competitor: "We really pride ourselves on not seeing these types of things at Target. This is something you usually see at Walmart, not here.”

The [woman in the bathroom] ... kept repeating the same thing over and over again until police arrived: “Let it go, let it go, can't hold back anymore, turn away and slam the door!” ... Police say that [she] was listed as a missing person two weeks prior to the incident and had been off of her medication for schizophrenia / bipolar disorder.... [she] is currently under psychiatric hold in a Kansas City Hospital.

I laughed. I laughed hard enough to break things. It was straight up-from-the-gut laughter you can't stop. I laughed hard enough to involuntarily wet myself -- something which isn't that embarrassing for Dogs, but an event usually confined to literature, or very old persons. However, last week, I couldn't find my glasses for ten minutes; and together with this new incident, it seemed like another proof that soon, I'll be taken to the Vet and Put To Sleep.

Time passed; I padded back to the kitchen for some Single Malt, calmed down, and began writing this... and then saw a link on the "Now8 News" site, to another story -- one about a 61-year-old man, one Marshall Leonard, who set off an explosive device in a Tupelo, Mississippi, Wal-Mart parking lot because police would not allow him to have sex with a goat.  The article stated 13 people had been killed, and the goat taken to an animal shelter for treatment of, uh, abrasions in the neither regions.

As a Dog who has worked in both news reporting and law enforcement, and as a blogger who routinely Photoshops images to increase their humorous potential (example below), something about the Goat Story was off.

Obligatory Fake Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Thing

 It was the reference to Goat injuries, is what did it.  Even if you're a hack writer, you don't follow a paragraph about the death of thirteen people with a reference to a goat's, uh, "lacerations". If you're a news editor, you don't allow such manifestly poor reporting to see print, or you'll be explaining it to the Managing Editor the next day. And, with all due respect -- would your average Target employee use such a phrase as, "It will be etched in my mind" ? Maybe. Just maybe.

A look at a legitimate Mississippi news site yielded a story about 61-year-old Marshall Leonard -- the same person mentioned at the Now8 site -- appearing for a bail hearing. It seems Leonard was angry that a local sporting goods store would no longer sell the Mississippi state flag (with the Confederate States' "Stars and Bars"), so Leonard tried setting off a bomb made of fireworks in the shop's parking lot. Fortunately, the device made smoke and noise, but injured no one.

Then, we hit the Google machine to search local crime sections of legitimate news sites for Kansas City Missouri, and Kansas City Kansas, searching on the phrase, "Target store":  plenty of references to Target's planned layoffs, and to a Target employee arrested for "up skirt" photography in women's dressing rooms. But, no references to a crazy woman doing the She-Bop with a Disney character in a bathroom.

Just by chance, I did an image search on the photo of the straw-haired blonde who appears on the Now8 News site as the "26-year old woman" in the now-infamous Hand Puppet Incident.  As it turns out, the photo is actually of a 35-year-old woman named Tracey Mabb, who had "stripped off her clothing on a highway near Pompano Beach, Florida.

[Mabb] was "vulgar and indecent" as she pulled up her long shirt and showed passing motorists and pedestrians her breasts, vagina and buttocks while hanging out on the South Dixie Highway...  She refused to stop exposing herself and said, "I don't give a f---" to police officers...

The Google machine wasn't working quickly for me earlier; my initial search ("is now8news a hoax site") hadn't come back while I took the long road through Tupelo and Kansas City. When it finally coughed up its results, Snopes.com, for example, did have a longish list of Now8News stories that were, as my Oma would say curtly, "Falsch"; not true.

Proving Godwin's Law (Photo: Hoaxbusters.org)

But, we live in a time when all opinions are equally meritorious and all are given equal weight, rather than offend anyone or suggest an appearance of prejudice. In my Google search results, no one definitively would state that 'Now8 News' were purveyors of bullshit -- humorous bullshit; but, still.

So what started as an odd news story led to side-splitting laughter, momentary minor incontinence, intimations of mortality, single-malt whiskey, and then on to the kind of follow-your-nose stuff that reminded me of The Old Days -- before the Google machine.  It was all fun, and in the end didn't matter if the original story was true or not. The journey was good -- and as in so much else, that's what matters.

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It Is An Awesome Day

This is your day. There will never be another like it, and it is yours.

But, given that you inhabit a planet with nearly seven billion Others, you must share. And celebrate -- for today there are official events, places and items which are nonsensical and bizarre special. It is mandatory that you give a moment to consider, in bafflement wonder, at the things with which we occupy our time. 

October 23rd won't come again for another year -- and what will happen to us in the next twelve months? Who knows. Four Billion years of evolution, and we get all this.  And, of course, Hillary !  Jebby !

(But wait -- it could be Hillary versus The Jesus !  And wow, that would be different.  Right?  Of course it would. And if Benny were somehow to become President?  Along with punishment and domination, the American Taliban are all about Profit and Business -- signs of god's favor [Well, somebody's god, anyway] to his Elect.  George Leroy Tirebiter and Corporate America wouldn't care if our country resembled Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale", so long as they can make money and sell things. 'Individual Liberties' are just so overrated. And who cares what happens to the 'Little People' ?)

October 23rd is the official Mole Day. Pictured here is the greatest of all Moles, the character, "Mr Mole", from the 1984 stop-motion animation Teevee version of The Wind In The Willows.

It is the day of the Boston Cream Pie.  Don't poke it -- you'll only make it angry, and we won't be responsible for what happens to you after that.  You must eat it. It's your density *.
 

It is National Talk Show Host Day. Larry is frightening, but he is safely in Russia now, receiving money from Sad Vlad, The Putin, through his Teevee network. Larry's much younger wife probably doesn't like cold weather. But she will be happy about the money part, especially because they don't have a 'Good Vibrations' franchise in that Russia.

Today is national Slap Your Irritating Co-Worker day -- brought to you by the League Of Human Resource Professionals. Guaranteed that if you do slap an irritating coworker, HR (wherever you are) will have you in your manager's office so fast it will make you a believer in the speed of light as a universal constant.

It is national Pharmacy Buyer's Day. How often do you ever give a thought to the poor Pharmacy Buyers, who labor so? It's a Mitzvah, so get right on that, okay?  Have an aspirin. It's good for you.

It is National Canning Day ("We Can In Canada", for our northern neighbors, eh. Good day.)

It is also national San Juan Capistrano day. Swallows everywhere are too busy eating 1.4 times their body weight each day, just to stay alive, so they don't have time to notice.  And, it is national iPod day, but we include no photos of iPods because Apple is a wealthy corporation and can afford its own advertising.   Enjoy.

*  Extra-special bonus fun points if you picked up on the original "Back To The Future" reference here. Step forward -- and claim your Tub Of Slaw™. 

** Extra-Extra Special fun bonus points if you made the psychic connection between "Firesign Theatre" and "George Leroy Tirebiter" or "Tub Of Slaw™". 

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