Funds Of Navarone

Greek Left Party Hangs Banners At The Acropolis, Near Athens
(Photo: Louisa Gouliamaki / Getty Images, New York Times)

More fun and games in the land that gave us the Olympics, the films Zorba The Greek and Never On Sunday; has terrific food and Retsina (a wine you have to want to drink), and was at one time filled with cartoon Germans and that bad guy who killed John Malkovich's mother in Elena, and later was the setting for a not very good 2001 film starring Nicholas Cage.



Unfortunately, the particular Greek Thing that prompted this display of political brouhaha could cause some very bad things here in the US of A if it is exported to the European Union.

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Panic In The Year One Zero

Dow Jones Drops 900+; Net Loss For Day = 357 Points



Some have argued that the United States should have to commit funds to a European economic assistance fund, because the circumstances that created this debt crisis was Made In The USA !!™

The Rightists who feel the United States is already insane for having spent taxpayer money to bail out pay for Little Lloyd Blankfein's masseur and car valet are righteously angry that anyone should even suggest helping the IMF to provide financial security for European countries burdened with debt.

Today, in reaction to the Greek debt crisis, European stock markets fell, the euro plunged to a value of $1.28 U.S; Gold rose to over $1,207 an ounce; and the DJIA dropped almost nearly ten per cent before recovering a bit towards the end of the trading day.

Does anyone at Rightwingnut central understand the term "financial interconnectedness" yet?

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Police Identify Incompetent Retard Terrorist Person Of Interest In Attempted Times Square Bombing

The 12th Incarnation Of The God Ra Takes Snapshot Of
Jerkwad Who Couldn't Blow Up Inflatable Love Doll, And
Nissan Pathfinder (Shortly To Become Evidence Jackpot)

ABC News indicates that "Federal authorities" are racing to apprehend the Person Of Interest (©) in the attempted Times Square bombing reported by almost every news outlet in those parts of the world that matter.

(At this juncture, I'm hoping these "Federal authorities" aren't, like, the Undersecretary of Inland Waterways and five janitors from the Rayburn Congressional Office Building.)

This person was described as a completely clueless murderous fuckwad "naturalized American citizen... from Pakistan" who had recently returned to the United States after spending five months there. Purchasing the now-infamous Nissan Pathfinder for several hundred dollars in cash, the deluded circus geek perpetrator loaded it with some fairly crude homemade explosives, and drove it to New York City.

Enraged with America and Freedom and having to drive for hours in Midtown without finding a parking space, the bomber apparently armed his home-made devices. Unfortunately (for him), they were such sorry excuses for bombs that he only succeeded in starting a small fire in the back of the Pathfinder.


Security Camera Captures Secret Terrorist Vehicle In
Times Square, And Enhanced View At Upper Right (BBC)

Finally, he stopped his vehicle directly in front of the All-Seeing Eye Of The 12th Incarnation Of The Sun God, Ra (Bow before his power -- yeah; that means you. You know who you are). Smoke was coming out of an open window in the Pathfinder, and the painful excuse for intelligent life bomber got out, scarpering off walking away into the crowd, unobtrusively leaving the Pathfinder's door open and its hazard lights flashing.

A few moments later, some passing tourists caught this video and sold it to CNN.

As most sentient humans now know, fortunately, the Pathfinder did not blow up -- a fact which has provided investigators with a treasure-trove of evidence. A retired NYPD detective told the New York Times, "He was trying to cover his tracks, but he left more clues than a guy walking into a bank to rob it without a mask... [He] left everything here but his wallet."


Special Timing Device (Photo: New York Times)

ABC added that there is apparent evidence that "the bomber did not act alone and had ties to radical elements overseas", with a "senior official" telling ABC News that in addition to the Person Of Interest (©), there are "several individuals believed to be connected with the bombing and that at least one of them is a Pakistani-American".

Meanwhile,

WEST HOLLYWOOD -- A woman believed to be suffering from mental issues is under arrest after sheriff's deputies say she stabbed four shoppers at a West Hollywood Target store.

Is this the time of Chtulu's return, or is this all just a run-up to 2012?

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Culture Of More: Screwing The Peasants

Department Of Justice Drops The Dime On Goldman-Sachs


"Moi, Un Criminelle? I Fart At You, Américains stupides!"
Fabrice Tourre, Prime Suspect BSD, Testifying Before The
Congressional Inquiry Into Causes Of The New Depression
Financial Crisis (Photo: Forbes online, 4/27/10)

Goldman-Sachs, home of the best money that money can buy, is reported to be the target of a Department Of Justice criminal investigation, prompted by information forwarded from the SEC.

Bloomberg and the NYT reported the story under National news.

The federal review, which lawyers say is common in such a high-profile case, is being done by the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Bloomsberg financial news reported. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit against Goldman Sachs on April 16, alleging fraud tied to collateralized debt obligations that contributed to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Based on public reports about the SEC matter, a criminal case may be difficult, said Douglas R. Jensen, an attorney with Park & Jensen LLP in New York ... “In order to proceed criminally in a case, you need to have very clear evidence of lying, cheating and stealing,” said Jensen...


"Dunno Why The Fuk I Be Heah; Um juss a Businessman; Capiche?"
Goldman BSD Blankfein Swears, Kinda, To Talk 'Bout Somethin',
Maybe (Photo: Jason Reed / Reuters / ABC News Online 4/27/10)

Little Rupert's Wall Street Journal, however reported it as "Politics" and with a little not-very-subtle spin informs us that Congress is really just trying to mislead the public:

Senators vs. Goldman
The committee members fumble toward finding the real villains
[Unsigned Article]

If an investor buys shares in General Electric, and then GE's stock declines in the future, is the New York Stock Exchange to blame? What if the investor chooses to purchase the shares through TD Ameritrade or Charles Schwab? Is the broker also responsible for the losses?

Senators interrogating Goldman Sachs executives yesterday appear to believe the firm has a duty to protect all of its institutional trading partners from making bad decisions... Yet much of the Beltway class, looking back at the financial crisis, now believes that gamblers who bet their money on an always-inflating housing bubble are the real victims...

...In sum, it appeared to be another bad day for the SEC's specific case against Goldman. But lawmakers seemed intent on finding the firm generally guilty of meeting institutional demand for subprime housing risk.


Messr. Tourre Leaving The Capitol: Calimari, Anyone?

It's like the age-old defense of the rapist: "Hey; She Was Askin' For It! She Wanted It!" It's really the fault of the banks and clients to whom Goldman sold those bad investments, because... they wanted it. They forced us.

We're not sure which of the politicians at yesterday's Senate hearing did the most to confuse spectators. Investigations subcommittee chairman Carl Levin of Michigan seemed unaware of the difference between a market-maker, whose role is to offer prices at which a client may buy or sell a given asset, and an investment adviser, whose role is to act in the interests of the client as a fiduciary.

Ranking member Susan Collins of Maine showed that she understood the difference, yet still decided to badger the market makers at Goldman Sachs to admit they weren't acting as fiduciaries. [Who have an obligation to advise clients about risk] Of course they weren't, as their sophisticated institutional customers would have known.

But the heart of the argument against The Masters Of The Universe is this: If you knew your investments were made up of crap, even if your role was not to act as a 'Fiduciary', didn't you still have an obligation to inform others they were selling bags of toxic waste?

Goldman's responses when questioned were to use the same logic as Little Rupert's anonymous writer in the WSJ. Come on, you idiots; We had no obligation to define risk to other players. We sold them stuff to make money. They were in it to make money.

They know how the game's played -- they lost! We won! And that's all that matters. That's how the free market operates, you fookin' Peasants. Do ya hate freedom, is that it?


Goldman's Legacy To Our Kultur.

But those kinds of answers just obscure and evade the real, basic question in everybody's mind: Didn't you have an obligation not to sell bad investments at all?

What's disgusting about the performance of people like Tourre and Blankfein this week is their inability to comprehend the legitimacy of that question. From the perspective of a player, A Big Swinging Dick In Wall Street, they haven't done anything wrong -- and if you believe we have... well, you stupid Peasants, we'll just buy our way out of it.


Who Cares About The Little People? (Cartoon: Abstruse Goose)

However, free of cant, the truth is that Goldman sold toxic crap, because they could. Because they wanted to make more money. It was the Game, Baby; the Game, and the payoff was More. The proof is that as a company, they bet against the performance of their own investments to win big if the subprime market collapsed -- or as Little Lloyd Blankfein put it in a memo, "short [on] mortgages saved the day".

Little Rupert's media suggests this is a political prosecution -- an attack on the 'Free Market' by the minions of a socialist scary Black Man who faked his way into the Presidency. It's true that the SEC is hard-pressed to remake its image as a guardian of financial regulation -- but that is because it did nothing to prevent the behavior Wall Street engaged in during those go-go, Lil' Boots Bush years (Remember him? Yeah, he was just, you know, some guy or other) which put us where we are today.

The "excesses of the free market" which brought about the destruction of the lives of so many people -- the Little People that our Masters Of The Universe don't give two farts about -- occurred because there was no oversight.

And no matter whether Little Rupert wants to spin this scrutiny of Goldman-Sachs as political; it isn't, and all of Warren Buffet's comments or Blankfein's appearances on television to blow smoke will not change that.

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Another Thing You Take For Granted

Leslie Buck [Laszlo Büch], 1922-2010


The Anthora Paper Cup, Designed By Leslie Buck (1959)

(Another post inaugurating a new Category here at Before Nine that talks about things so prevalent in our lives and culture that we simply don't see them... Things We Take For Granted.)

There are hundreds of items which mark our times, from music to favored colors and themes; technology and architecture; clothing, vehicles; hairstyles and eyeglasses; even the typefaces used in publications. And there are also humble things -- like the paper coffee cup.

Leslie Buck, the designer of what we've come to expect as the standard paper coffee cup, died at his home in Long Island yesterday.

Born Laszlo Büch in Czechoslovakia in 1922, he was deported by the nazis to Auschwitz and Buchenwald with the rest of his family; only he and his brother, Eugene, survived. They emigrated to the United States after World War II ended in Europe and opened an import-export business in New York.

In the late 1950's, they started the Premiere Cup Company, manufacturing (what; you were expecting socks?) paper cups. Premiere merged with the (not that much larger) Sherri Cup company a few years later, and Buck became its design director.

According to the New York Times, the Sherri Company "was keen to crack New York’s hot-cup market. Since many of the city’s diners were owned by Greeks, Mr. Buck hit on the idea of a Classical cup in the colors of the Greek flag. Though he had no formal training in art, he executed the design himself. It was an instant success.


All-Purpose Cups In The 1950's: For Hot Drinks, The Wax Melted

"Mr. Buck made no royalties from the cup, but he did so well in sales commissions that it hardly mattered, his son said. On his retirement from Sherri in 1992, the company presented Mr. Buck with 10,000 specially made Anthoras, printed with a testimonial inscription."


Leslie Buck In 1991 (New York Times Online)

It made Sherri Cup, Inc. a fortune. The concept was copied by other manufacturers, of course, but Sherri is apparently still going strong, having sold 500 million of Leslie Buck's design worldwide last year. Naturally, the standard white, 8-ounce card stock cup with the rolled lip and coated inner surface is now a standard item all over the planet.

Every morning, I get a tall cup of whatever Java that the Asian Breakfast Place near my office brews, but never paid much attention to the container I pour it into. I've seen cups like it from the moment I understood the concept of a paper cup, and until now had no idea who designed it.


Dairy Queen's Version With Rolled Lip And 'Safety Bulge', 1960's

The Greeks of the Classical world believed that no person ever died, so long as they remained in the memory of the living. No one knows whether that's so -- but give Leslie a thought next time you order a brew at Starbuck's, or Peets, or 7-11.

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The Delights Of The Jobless Recovery

In the words of The Great Curmudegon:

One gets the sense that elites have moved on, that the recovery is here and the foreclosure crisis is over. Neither is true.

I know how ironic this must sound, but Bloomberg reports that more and more Americans are exhausting their unemployment benefits without having found work.

What will become of them, when they have no money at all? Well, in the true spirit of the early Protestants who founded this great country, "The weak culls will have to fall by the wayside as nature intended. They are not of the Elect Of God, and therefore damned upon the Day of Judgment; and since their names are not writ in the Big Book O' Life™, who cares?"

Since the recession began, aid extensions added 53 weeks of assistance to the 46 weeks that had been in place. About 11 million Americans, roughly 70 percent of the nation’s jobless, in March received unemployment checks averaging $320 per week.

The challenge for lawmakers is that while benefits have reached record lengths, so has long-term unemployment. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 44 percent of the jobless have been out of work for at least six months, the biggest share since the government began keeping track in 1948.

According to the Bureau Of Labor Statistics, a record 6.5 million workers have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more. A study by the Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative which the Bloomberg article noted shows 3.4 million workers have been unemployed for more than a year.

So, the Math: 11 million unemployed. More than half of them have been unemployed for more than 6 months, and roughly a third have been out of work for more than a year. That doesn't count people who have already lost their benefits.

UPDATE: Time for this dog to find a new food bowl, and in the next six months. Other wise members of the pooch pack, look after yourselves, since no other dogs will.


Willie Wheelie Says: Sometimes Ya Just Gotta Hit The Road

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Senator Mongo Votes Yes

You Fools Are Actually Blocking Reform Of The Financial System??


Mongo tries to be happy, Immerhin

I have no idea what those clowns from the South are about. I think someone's telling them they'll receive a campaign contribution if they protect banks and Goldman-Sachs from the big bad Evil President.

Interestingly, the maximum the GOP, or any individual Rethug candidate, would receive in contribution from the Greed 'Financial' industry is small -- perhaps a few hundred thousand dollars. That's always been the case with Washington politicians, who appear to have much lower thresholds of whorehood than the Big Boyz and Girlz on Wall Street.

Compare an investment of a couple of hundred thousand on a wonky and (if you're lucky) skirt-chasing politico with the Billions these unregulated BSD Masters Of The Universe are making, personally. Even the average bonus at Goldman for 2010 (based on Q1 performance) is $308,000... and counting.

I didn't vote for these Mint Julep Redneck Yahoos; they didn't vote for me.

I try to be happy anyway, though.

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Alice Miller (1923 - 2010)

Dr. Alice Miller, author of a number of works regarding the effect of physical or sexual abuse in childhood, passed away on April 14th at her home in Provence, France; her death was announced on the 23rd by her German publisher.

Her obituary in The New York Times noted that her first book, The Drama of the Gifted Child (originally titled 'Prisoners of Childhood') set forth in three essays "a simple but harrowing proposition. All children, she wrote, suffer trauma and permanent psychic scarring at the hands of parents, who enforce codes of conduct through psychological pressure or corporal punishment: slaps, spankings or, in extreme cases, sustained physical abuse and even torture."

"Unable to admit the rage they feel toward their tormenters," the Times continued, "Dr. Miller contended [that] these damaged children limp along through life, weighed down by depression and insecurity, and pass the abuse along to the next generation, in an unending cycle. Some, in a pathetic effort to please their parents and serve their needs, distinguish themselves in the arts or professions. The Stalins and the Hitlers, Dr. Miller later wrote, inflict their childhood traumas on millions."

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Fascism

You Really Think It's Going To Look Like This?

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I Remember Finding Out About You

The Voices Tell Him To Be Angry: Get Thee Behind Me


(Photo: San Francisco Examiner, March 2010)

On his radio show (syndicated by Clear Channel Communications, which also syndicates Hannity, Lard Boy, and Little Mikey 'Savage' Weiner) today, Glenn Beck not only claimed that God has given him a plan, but that he is carrying out god’s will and anger.

Are you here to relax and be entertained, or ... will you pick up the mantle left to you by the Founders [as] a guardian of man’s freedom? Will you do it, because your children will ask you, "What did you do?" I believe your god will ask you, "What did you do?"

...god is giving a plan I think to me that is not really a plan... The problem is that I think the plan that the lord would have us follow is hard for people to understand. Because of my track record with you who have been here for a long time -- because of my track record with you, I beg of you to help me get this message out, and I beg of you to pray for clarity on my part.


Actual Quote (Cartoon: Auth / Philpadelphia Enquirer, 3/14/10)

This isn't the first time Beck has mixed religion and Rightist politics -- but this time, he crossed a line. He was no longer offering political commentary with what he claimed was spiritual underpinning... he was preaching. He was telling people what god wants them to do -- and of course god thinks exactly as Glenn Beck does because god is speaking to him.

Some blog commenters dismiss Beck for his histrionics and his crying, his Boy-Is-That-Out-There analysis of the relation of Religion and State. This time, they're saying he's gone over the edge; that with this Howard-Beal-like outburst, he's painted himself as a genuine, eccentric irrelevancy -- that (depending upon what he does next) this is the beginning of the end of his career.

I disagree. Beck hasn't reached the bottom; he may have just broken through a ceiling -- to a place where Fox 'News' and Little Rupert now support Beck's ridiculous vision of American history... because the 'christian' Right can be exploited, just as the mainstream Right has been.

Beck may be a huckster, not especially intelligent; but I think he senses that this is his breakout moment. It may be the way for him, in his chosen path as a propagandist, to become even more influential than the King, Limbaugh -- by claiming to be the voice of an audience no advertisers have really tried appealing to: The religious, ultra-conservative Right.

Murdoch's News Corp has catered to the Angry-White-Male, working-class conservative since the early 1990's; from a broadcast and advertising perspective, it was uncharted territory, and an undeveloped audience. Murdoch's made Billions exploiting it.

If Fox has been the functional equivalent of The Buffalo Bob Show for the Right -- one, long cartoon -- Limbaugh has staked his claim as the "intellectual" of that same Fox-News, Joe-Sixpack audience. But that audience is nearly all secular -- Rushbo can only claim to speak for social conservatives.

I feel Beck is after another audience altogether -- and it's very possible Murdoch will support the shift he presented. Little Rupert may believe his business model, originally used on the working-class Right, will work on an entirely new audience of religious conservatives... because Rupert may believe there's market share in it, and the advertising revenue which follows.


(Photo: CNN)

The plan that He would have me articulate, I think, to you is: Get behind me, and I don’t mean me, I mean him. Get behind me. Stand behind me; I truly believe I have done years now of reading the Founders, the diaries, their letters;, the Pilgrims, their diaries, their letters... and I will tell you that god was instrumental and they knew it.


Behold, I Stand At The Door And Knock --
Now Open Up, Or I'll Bust A Cap Somewhere

They knew that had very little to do with it. They just stood where they were supposed to stand, and they said the things that they were supposed to say as He directed ...but that’s what He is asking us to do is to stand peacefully, quietly with anger, quiet with anger, loudly with truth.

As usual, Beck was semi-coherent. He added that he was changing his delivery style -- that having already admitted he was an Entertainer, Beck now wants us to believe he's channeling the voice of god, which is telling him to tell people to surrender to god's will and whatever they do will be just right...

When we were -- and I’ve never told this story before -- when we were starting the TV show, there were things that I did that I wouldn’t do now because I had to be more of an entertainer to get people to go, 'What is this show at five o’clock?' I never said anything I didn’t believe, but I may have said things in an entertaining fashion.


Margaret Atwood's Vision Of The Future

There are people who want to force a Theocracy on the population of this country, as surely as there are Islamic radicals who want to see their concept of god controlling the world, delivered by the sword.

The Hutaree militia in Michigan, preparing for "war"; another group in the Midwest recently sent letters (based on a bizarre interpretation of the U.S. Constitution) effectively threatening every sitting state Governor. There are those who send their sons to join the military specifically to obtain combat training, to be used later in 'taking the country back' from godless hippies, immigrants, feminists and liberals. And all this is just the tip of the 'christian' Rightist iceberg.

The escalating language of conflict and hate that the Right has used to organize since the mid-1980's, when the 'Fairness Doctrine' was repealed and Right-wing radio was born, has now mutated into actions. Beck's often bizarre and nonsensical commentary with a definite religious basis has now become Prophecy.


Lies, Lederhosen, And Flirting With Sedition (Phaux)

On March 27th, Beck kicked off his ‘American Revival’ tour in Orlando, Florida. Entitled ‘The Future of History’, it is an eight-hour-long stage show that allows Beck to discuss "Faith, Hope and Charity". For the price of admission, Glenn promises that this event will give "information, inspiration and preparation to turn this country around".

BEck won't usher in the Republic of Gilead -- he's not a big enough false prophet for that, and the timing doesn't feel correct. But if the Rightist media has decided the 'christians' should have the opportunity to dominate social debate over the air, Beck's prancing and spewing may make it possible for someone else, one day, to submerge America in its own long night of repression and evil.

Not only do we have no idea what that means -- we believe such a thing could never happen, in America. Many Europeans, Germans in particular, understand what that means all too well.

UPDATE: From Today's (4/22/10) Beck Radio Dinner Theater Hour

"We are entering a - we are entering a dark, dark period of man. Um, I was, um, I was in the Vatican, and I was surprised that the individual I was speaking to knew who I was. And they said: 'Of course we know who you are. What you're doing is wildly important. We're entering a period of great darkness, and if good people don't stand up, we could enter a period unlike we have seen in a very long time.'

"It was odd to stand in the Vatican and hear those words. Of all places that would understand the Dark Ages. We are dealing with people who want to deconstruct the world. They say they are for progress, but their progress is to deconstruct. Their progress is to go backwards. Instead of inventing our way out of something. Instead of heralding achievement and merit, they destroy it. Instead of respecting life, we devalue it."

Becky doesn't say whether the "individual" was a Catholic priest, a Swiss Guardsman, or his Fox 'News' gofer. Or a voice in his head. But, whatever: What Becky does is not just important -- it's wildly important.

What a narcissistic dullard.

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