Tony Bologna Is One Solid Citizen

Little Tony Bologna, At Work In And Around Wall Street

Once upon a time, in another Dog's life, I had a certain occupation. Occasionally, my peers and I would refer to an individual as a 'Solid Citizen' -- an ironic, sarcastic term ("Yeah; he says he doesn't deal Blow. He's One, Solid Citizen").

So it was with a mixture of empathy for anybody hanging their ass out in a situation with five hundred things that are almost guaranteed to go wrong, and you gotta be fuckin' kiddin' me, that I watched a gone-viral video of a person now identified by contemporaneous videos and still photos as Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna of the New York Police Department, pepper-spraying four "Occupy Wall Street" protestors for absolutely no reason. And, apparently a few minutes later, Bologna pepper-sprayed a second group of protestors.

And, as it turns out, Tony's been a problem before -- in 2004, during the Republican National Convention.

You can see additional photos of Little Tony here, in action during the "Occupy Wall Street" protests.

MEHR: I've truncated this post; originally, I went on in a lot more detail describing how and why, from a law enforcement perspective, Bologna and his actions need to be addressed, quickly. People who exercise judgment that poor are a danger to civilians, and to their own.


This Idiot Shouldn't Be Allowed To Drive, Much Less Carry
A Weapon: Little Tony Spreading His Brand Of Joy, 2011

Apparently, an investigation will happen -- though I don't have any great hopes. The New York City Police's civilian oversight board has received hundreds of complaints about the inappropriate use of pepper spray over the past six-plus years... and found merit in just 22 of them. And an Internal Affairs review, while no picnic, may only result in something as simple as a Letter of Reprimand.

My advice? Tony should consider early retirement.

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MEHR: Not even a Letter Of Reprimand. Why am I not surprised.

Little Tony got rotated to Staten Island from the 1st Precinct, where he would be less visible; but as it turns out, not much of a hardship for Der Spritzer.

A week after Inspector Bologna, 57, was hit with internal disciplinary charges for running afoul of departmental rules regarding the use of pepper spray, a law enforcement official said he opted to accept the department’s proposed penalty: the loss of 10 vacation days.

And he was summarily transferred to a job on Staten Island, the official said, which happens to be where Inspector Bologna, a veteran of nearly 30 years on the city’s police force, lives. Such moves are approved by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who police officials say oversees all transfers.

The commute for him in his new assignment, thus, will be shorter than for his former job as a commander in southern Manhattan.

After 30 years on the job, Little Tony probably receives far more than the standard ten vacation days of a new employee; vacation time increases with seniority, plus there is 'banked' or rollover vacation time year-to-year.

Tony was essentially docked two weeks' pay, rotated out to a place where no one would see him for a while. Is that sufficient? I dunno.

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Well, This Was Not A Boating Accident

That's A Quarter Of A Quadrillion Dollars

Here's a snappy new word to learn: Quadrillion. It's what comes when you have too many Trillions. I've barked about that before.

Zero Hedge (via Counterparties) brings us this little piece of snappy news, too (paragraphing added for clarity):

The latest quarterly report from the Office Of the Currency Comptroller is out and as usual it presents in a crisp, clear and very much glaring format the fact that the top 4 banks in the US now account for a massively disproportionate amount of the derivative risk in the financial system.

Specifically, of the $250 trillion in gross notional amount of derivative contracts outstanding (consisting of Interest Rate, FX, Equity Contracts, Commodity and CDS) among the Top 25 commercial banks (a number that swells to $333 trillion when looking at the Top 25 Bank Holding Companies), a mere 5 banks (and really 4) account for 95.9% of all derivative exposure...

(HSBC replaced Wells as the Top 5th bank, which at $3.9 trillion in derivative exposure is a distant place from #4 Goldman with $47.7 trillion). The top 4 banks: JPM with $78.1 trillion in exposure, Citi with $56 trillion, Bank of America with $53 trillion and Goldman with $48 trillion, account for 94.4% of total exposure.

As historically has been the case, the bulk of consolidated exposure is in Interest Rate swaps ($204.6 trillion), followed by FX ($26.5TR), CDS ($15.2 trillion), and Equity and Commodity with $1.6 and $1.4 trillion, respectively.

And that's your definition of Too Big To Fail right there: the biggest banks are not only getting bigger, but their risk exposure is now at a new all time high and up $5.3 trillion from Q1 as they have to risk ever more in the derivatives market to generate that incremental penny of return.


(Chart: via Zero Hedge)

[There is in all this]... one massively flawed assumption, namely that in an orderly collapse all derivative contracts will be honored by the issuing bank (in this case the company that has sold the protection, and which the buyer of protection hopes will offset the protection it in turn has sold). The best example of [how this assumption] almost destroyed the system is AIG: the insurance company was hours away from making trillions of derivative contracts worthless if it were to implode, leaving all those who had bought protection from the firm worthless, a contingency only Goldman hedged by buying protection on AIG...

...if any of these four banks fails, the repercussions would be disastrous. And no, Frank Dodd's bank "resolution" provision would do absolutely nothing to prevent an epic systemic collapse.

Lastly, and tangentially on a topic that recently has gotten much prominent attention in the media, we present the exposure [of] the biggest commercial banks.

Of particular note is that while virtually every single bank has a preponderance of its derivative exposure in the form of plain vanilla I[terest] R[ate] swaps (on average accounting for more than 80% of total), Morgan Stanley, and specifically its Utah-based commercial bank Morgan Stanley Bank NA, has almost exclusively all of its exposure tied in with the far riskier FX contracts, or 98.3% of the total $1.793 trillion.

For a bank with no deposit buffer, and which has massive exposure to European banks, regardless of how hard management and various other banks scramble to defend Morgan Stanley, the fact that it has such an abnormal amount of exposure... should perhaps raise some further eyebrows...

And there's this:

The ECB board member accepted that banks bear much responsibility for the economic crisis in Spain and elsewhere, with cheap mortgages and other lending, but said that punishing them could lead to huge unemployment, lower living standards, and a lending squeeze.

"If one just follows the principle that the ones who did wrong should pay (for their mistakes) then the results can be unacceptable," he said.

Absolutely; protect the criminals, forget the crime; let them continue the plunder right up until the last moment. Gosh; I can't wait for the day that the world's first Trillionaire is announced. I'm sure it'll be soon!

I continue to be reminded of a poem someone once told me about -- where a crowd of people, inside a circus tent during an unusual storm, were so preoccupied watching a clown attempt to light matches with his toes that they failed to notice the top had blown off the circus tent, and that the unusual storm was actually the end of the world.

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What's Goin' On

Europa, Europa

The crisis within the European Union, involving its banks, interconnected economies, and loan structures to bail out the 'peripheral' Eurozone nations [the so-called PIIGS: Portugal; Ireland and Italy; Greece, and Spain], continues.

The difference between the U.S.'s financial problems and the EU's, is that shared currency, the Euro, which is the financial prop behind the political structure of the Union. The EU is a realization of the dream of European political cooperation, and to organize as an economic bloc to compete with Asia, Russia, and the United States.

Having a single currency in the Eurozone not only makes it possible to sell goods and services between member EU countries, but to negotiate trade or industrial agreements -- with China, or Brazil, say -- around import-export, or the price of steel, cotton and foodstuffs, that benefit all the members equally: Italy doesn't receive a better deal than Poland when buying raw Indonesian rubber.

Another difference between the financial crisis Here, and There, is that Europe's crisis involves a series of interdependent, failed national economies. In the PIIGS nations, their governments stepped in and paid taxpayer monies to pay to bail out their failed banks -- what we did here in the U.S. But, their economies aren't as diverse and large as ours.

By taking on more debt to bail out their own banks and keep paying for social services for their populations, Greece ended up running a national (i.e., public) debt equal to nearly 150 per cent of their GDP. Germany's debt-to-GDP ratio is nearly 75%; France is at 84%; Italy and Ireland are at 118 and 94 per cent respectively. The world's most indebted nation is Japan, with a national debt equal to 225% of its annual economic output (These figures are for 2010, via the International Monetary Fund; the full list is here). By contrast, the United States' national debt is equal to roughly 92% of our GDP, which is bad enough.

Piggie, Piggie, Piggie

The PIIGS received loan packages from the European Central Bank (ECB), primarily from French and German banks. But, they have had to agree to enact 'New Austerity' principles -- cuts in government spending, even the sale of national assets, resulting in a radical downward shift in the quality of living. Services provided by governments would continue only at reduced rates, if at all. Budgets would be slashed. The PIIGS governments would have to shrink their payrolls -- and in Europe, a government job is more common than in America, and that would mean immediate higher unemployment rates.

Another complication is the vicious cycle of national bonds: The PIIGS nations issue government securities, like any other country, to generate revenue (We've done it with China for almost twenty years, and it's paid the interest on our National Debt). The amount of interest charged on those bonds indicaes how other governments and institutions feel the PIIGS are creditworthy, good investments. The higher the interest rate on those bonds means there's less confidence among investors that they'll be being repaid.

It also means the PIIGS will have to make good on those bonds, down the road when they come due. The interest rate on a five- or ten-year bond can go up or down, of course, which means as a government becomes more solvent, the less they'll have to pay in future -- but the focus now is on the short term. Can Greece, for example, make its ECB loan repayments on time, and pay back its treasury bonds at whatever interest rates?

Meanwhile, the citizens in the PIIGS countries don't agree with a lopsided bailing out of the rich, and many have been angry enough to participate in large and widespread demonstrations against the New Austerity, with strikes by unions, civil disobedience and even rioting.

'New Austerity' has been insisted upon by Angela Merkel of Germany and Andre Sarkozy of France -- principally because the risk for the ECB loans to the PIIGS is being borne by German and French banks. Unfortunately, Austerity kills any possibility of government job creation, or future private-sector growth -- private business can't grow in countries where The People can't afford to buy anything. And if the ECB loans are to be repaid on time, jobs and growth are critical.

Scrood, Tattood: We Will All Go Together When We Go

Greece has already missed one deadline this year, and the EU had to scramble to put a second loan package together, which didn't seem to work either. It's pump-and-shore belowdecks on the Good Ship S.S. Grecia -- and chained to the Greek economy are the French and German banks. They are chained to American, British and Asian banks; the European stock market; and the American and Asian markets. The Greek ship of state is also chained to the S.S. Italia, the Lisbon, the Eire and the Espania.

The Greeks can abide by the terms of New Austerity, and make good their government's decision to spend like crazed weasels when times were good, and to prop up Bad Zombie Banks with taxpayer money when things got bad for them. This would require the Greek people to live at lower standards of living, paying for the salvation of the rich, and selling the Parthenon to Russian Oligarchs. This is unlikely.

They could walk away; the Greeks could simply say, "No We Can't!" to the New Austerity, and default on it's ECB loans. French and German banks would suddenly be unable to borrow short-term money (as all banks do from each other); their stocks sink in the market, and stock exchanges all over the world would take a broad nose-dive.

As capitalization disappears, corporate businesses spend less and lay off more employees, or engage in more ruthless offshoring and outsourcing to remain competitive. Unemployment rises. Prices overall rise. Our economy, large as it is, becomes more vulnerable to the ripple effects of individual commodity price increases -- especially oil, but nearly all raw materials.

This is essentially the part where all of We, The People are, as my father used to say, screwed and tattooed.

That Sinking Feeling

There's a variant on this, where the Greeks pull their economy out of the Eurozone, and re-adopt the Drachma as their currency. Their economy would be quickly hit with massive inflation; on international markets, it could take hundreds or thousands of Drachma to equal a Euro -- but paying back loans with inflated currency is simpler at the macro level, and less painful, than before.

However, this might be the beginning of the end for the Euro, and the Eurozone; in which case the French and German banks end up taking it in the shorts, again. And, after a few months, 90% of America's population finds itself waking up to discover it had been forced to, uh, 'Do Things' the night before, and finds We all have a brand-new tattoo we don't remember getting.

The third possibility for the European debt crisis is the rapid implementation of a new financial structure for the EU -- something that would more tightly bind the EU economies and political structures together, and insist on the New Austerity, on making The Peoples of Europe pay for the greed-driven errors of Bad Politicians and Bad Banksters.

Putting a new, über-finance structure in place over the EU could preserve both the Euro (the financial structure of the EU), and the political Union. This is possible, but remember that not all EU member nations use the Euro (the UK is the largest, still using the Pound), and at this point it would take a tremendous effort of united political will. I'm not sure the Europeans have it. We certainly don't -- our government is about to be shut down, again, by the same Brownshirts who nearly did it a few weeks ago.

When Little Timmeh! Geithner went to Europe earlier this month and lectured the G20 finance ministers and central bankers on the need to fix Europe's economic issues or everything would blow up, he wasn't wrong. However, they felt insulted at being spoken to by Timmeh this way -- given that the global financial real estate and derivatives market which created this crisis was a Made-In-USA product from top to bottom, and exported around the globe.

One way or another, whatever happens There will come to live with us, Here; and that right soon, if any one of a dozen things goes wrong before the end of the year -- and the Bad News will all play out in a matter of weeks, not years, if it happens.

The international financial and economic structure is so tightly interwoven that the basic issues which created the crisis -- greed, a lack of transparency and regulation; more greed, and the general spinelessness of a political structure in service to wealth -- almost guarantees failure.

Since the Crash in October of 2008, government and finance efforts on both sides of the Atlantic have been an attempt to slow the rate of fall for the major economies. That was accomplished with a lot of free money being given to incompetent and greedy men, and with little or no cooperation on the part of the financial or corporate business structure -- banks won't lend; corporations are piling up as much cash reserves as they can.

Panic has started to set in, a bit; it's Every Man For Himself, abovedecks, on the U.S.S. Columbia. The speed of our fall since the end of 2008 has diminished; some days you don't even know you're still heading for the ground -- and, there's still plenty of teevee, plenty of Little Rupert's entertainments to watch that will keep your mind off that constant, sinking feeling.

But we're still falling. And, if you fall from fifty thousand feet going 150 MPH, or from one thousand feet at 50MPH, it doesn't matter. When you land, you'll still be dead.

Buy your popcorn now, while you can afford it, and before the stores selling it close. And, I say; more deck chairs from Port to Starboard!

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MEHR: Paul Krugman, one of the smartest humans on Earth, mentioned in his New York Times Opinion Page column this Monday morning:

On one side, Europe’s situation is really, really scary: with countries that account for a third of the euro area’s economy now under speculative attack, the single currency’s very existence is being threatened — and a euro collapse could inflict vast damage on the world.

On the other side, European policy makers seem set to deliver more of the same. They’ll probably find a way to provide more credit to countries in trouble, which may or may not stave off imminent disaster. But they don’t seem at all ready to acknowledge a crucial fact — namely, that without more expansionary fiscal and monetary policies in Europe’s stronger economies, all of their rescue attempts will fail.

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Wir Sind Die Piratenpartei!!

Berlin Tells Chancellor Merkel's CDU: ARRRRRRR!

Harrrr! Und (Trotz Der Witze) Dann Ihr Hab Gesiegt!

Ooo. Here's some news: Elections were held in the Mark of Brandenburg and Stadt Berlin today -- meaning Germans were going to the polls, even though there was Bundesliga action on the teevee. And when Germans voluntarily give up watching soccer to vote, it's serious. Trust me.

The vote went decisively for the Center-Left, rather than Chancellor Angela Merkel's Center-Right coalition.

Per Bloomberg News, The SPD (Social Democratic Party, the Socialists), the main German opposition party to Merkel's government, "extended their 10-year rule in the German capital after beating Merkel’s Christian Democrats [CDU] into second place." Merkel’s coalition partner in the Brandenburg-Berlin Council, the FDP (Frei Demokratische Partei, or Free Democratic Party) lost all its seats in a Regional Assembly for the fifth time this year.

This appears to be significant, though Berlin's politics don't necessarily reflect the rest of the country. But, it's clear that voter sentiment towards Merkel's policies, principally the 'New Austerity', won't win her any votes and may eventually remove the CDU's Center-Right coalition in a populist-SPD comeback.

Klaus Wowerweit, the extremely popular SPD (and openly gay) Regierender Bürgermeister of Berlin, not surprisingly won an easy re-election. But most surprising of all, the Pirate Party, Die Piratenpartei (be advised their site is in German, so Gib' Ihren Deutsch An!), ran a slate of candidates on platforms of digital freedom -- principally free access to wireless and Net Neutrality -- and won a not-statistically insignificant 8.9% of the city-wide vote.

This is significant because even if a portion of those who voted Arrrrrrrr! did so as a protest, it means support for the coalition which pushes Merkel's policies is deteriorating. We'll see.

Meanwhile, Fünfzehn Mann auf des toten Mannes Schrankoffer - Yo Ho Ho, und eine Flasche auf Broadband! And three Hochs! for the Pirates Of Berlin!

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This Will Be On The Final

Please, Take Notes

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Everyone seated? All right; please listen carefully to what I'd like to discuss this morning. And, I suggest you take notes, because this will be on the final examination. In fact, it will probably be the final examination.

In 1970, Edmund Snow Carpenter, an anthropologist and early partner with Marshall McLuhan in investigating how the effects of modern media influence culture change, published a book entitled They Became What They Beheld.

One of the main threads Carpenter wove into the book is how modern media uses imagery to communicate concepts that are primal, even archetypal from an anthropological point of view -- not to educate, or raise the general consciousness of a planet-wide culture in creative and positive ways... but in service of commercial profit, and politics.

The book's title, "They Became What They Beheld", is Carpenter's central point: That cultures are shaped and reinforced by the sounds and images they accept, passively or by choice, and immerse themselves in.

We live in a society where the principal images around us reinforce desires to possess and consume products and services. They show us that some of the products and services are exclusive, and access to them is limited -- but that having them will mean a better quality of life. Or as accountant Leo Bloom shouts to Max Bialystok, I want everything I've ever seen in the movies!!

And, access to those products and services, to an assumed better quality of life, is equated with superiority and the (assumed) personal attributes of 'superior' persons -- youth; physical beauty; intelligence; and to be lucky, to escape the petty problems and major disasters of life by stepping inside a Magic Circle, an ineffable quality of being where you should be, all the time (as Carly Simon once noted), where life just keeps getting better and better.

But because a Magic Circle is, by its very nature, limited, not everyone can step inside. And because money is the principal medium of exchange, having huge amounts of it determines who will will have access to that wonderful life.

So, in such a culture driven by sounds and images which reinforce these ideas, how much money you have is gauge of your worth as an individual -- or, as the Yuppies of the 80's used to quip, "Your [net worth] is your report card in life".

And since relatively few will enter the Magic Circle to live that Good Life, this paradigm also assumes that the majority of people in the society will not, and that their lives will be less comfortable, and more difficult, than those with more money. And that, somehow, they are not superior -- and consequently, not youthful, not pretty; or intelligent, or 'lucky'.

...Nietzsche called us, 'The Bungled and the Botched', said Jeff Bridges' character, Jack Lucas, in "The Fisher King"; We take poisoned aspirin; get gunned down at Dairy Queens... [We] strive for greatness, but never quite make it...

There is a part of our national mythos that anyone in America can, with hard work and perseverance, become rich, and presumably enter the Magic Circle, too: America as the Land Of Dreams.

This may be true in a few cases, but not for the majority. And there are other myths, too - of the gold strike, the lottery win; the belief that 'god' or 'the odds' will line up the Jackpot Bells on the slot machine of life, and suddenly place you inside the Magic Circle, where everything is easy.

These same assumptions and equations are reflected in politics, where money is also the medium to purchase just another set of exclusive services -- influence, and therefore power, which becomes another gauge of superiority among the wealthy who live inside the Magic Circle.

The same sounds and images that reinforce a top-down pyramid of personal worth and value are used in politics, to reinforce a similar set of ideas.

In America, a significant portion of the media is controlled either by corporations, or very wealthy individuals with very conservative points of view. This gives private, partisan interests a bigger megaphone than public interests -- and the messages about politics from those private, partisan interests can be summed up as

• (1) Big Government is against The Individual;
• (2) A majority of politicians are corrupt, incompetent, venal, and do not operate in the public interest;
• (3) 'Liberals' / 'The Left' are crazy ("Moonbats") at best, or truly evil (Muslims, abortion doctors; communists; George Soros) at worst;
• (4) In a contest with The Powers That Be, or with wealth and influence, the Little Man always loses: It's Chinatown, Jake.

In the introduction to "In Old Mexico", one of his satirical songs, Tom Lehrer spoke about his friend, Hen3ry (not a typo), who graduated from medical school to specialize in "diseases of the rich", and whose philosophy of life was Life is like a sewer -- what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

If the majority of the people passively accept the images and messages that surround them and help to define their culture -- if they accept their role as consumers, the siren song of the Magic Circle, and the notion that personal worth is measured by personal wealth... then they have become, as Carpenter's book touches on, what they beheld; the images of what they desire (or are taught to) have shaped them.

In politics, it's a matter of having all the warning signs present, and choosing the most self-destructive path anyway. I'd be happy to use nazi Germany as the most spectacular example -- but instead, try and remember the end of Terry Gilliam's breakout movie, Time Bandits: The hero, a little boy, has traveled around the universe, had amazing adventures; had almost been destroyed by The Evil One (David Warner), but was rescued by God at the last moment (played by Sir Ralph Richardson: "I'm giving you all a twenty per cent pay cut, backdated to the end of Time... Yes; well, I am the 'good' one; Um Hmm").

He finds himself back at home in an English suburb, with his house apparently on fire -- which had started in a toaster oven. His parents open the TO to find a lump of black, steaming... well, something (We know it to be a piece of the defeated Evil One). The Boy yells at his parents, "Mum -- Dad -- don't touch it! It's pure evil!" The parents turn to look at him, look at each other; then both turn back to the smoking lump, touch it simultaneously and disappear in a brief, fiery flash.

In case you haven't figured it out, this isn't a poor analogy for the current political situation in the United States. Let's look at the screen behind me: Over at Digby, David (thereisnospoon) Atkins has a post about Harold Simmons, one of the billionaire backers of Monsieur Le Gouvenour Placard, Rick Perry, of the utterly failed state of Texas. Simmons' money was behind the 'Swift Boat Veterans For Truth', which helped to derail John Kerry's election to the Presidency as much as vote-rigging in Ohio and voter suppression elsewhere did in 2004.

It seems that Mssr. Le Governor was willing to ignore safety concerns about storage of toxic radioactive waste in the Cockroach State, even suppressing reports by a state employee and ultimately transferring him -- all to make sure the company engaged by Texas to store the waste, owned by Simmons, was not subjected to any scrutiny for increasing public risk due to possible mismanagement. And, Simmons is one of Perry's solid sources of cash for his drive to the White House; Yah-hoo.

Recall that when George W. Bush was selected President, there was a sense that things wouldn't be so bad, because Bush had a record of cooperative with Democrats in the legislature, and no terribly onerous scandals involving outright corruption. He was, until he moved into the Oval Office, the sort of Republican who could take up the mantle of the "compassionate conservative" and people would believe him.

There had been indications of Bush's absence of character throughout his life, but his record as a politician did not suggest that he would be the most corrupt and hyper-partisan president in America's history.

Rick Perry's record, by contrast, is incontrovertibly and ostentatiously corrupt and incompetent. It's all on the record[.]

Then, as you can see on the screen behind me, here -- Atkins concluded his post with this paragraph:

If a majority [of] this nation elects Rick Perry president, its citizens will deserve every moment of suffering they receive. There will be no excuse.

I'd like you to copy this paragraph. Copy it down word for word. When the final is given at the end of the term -- in November of next year -- please reread this paragraph.

Please remember today's lecture, and be prepared to answer accordingly. Or, not.

Any questions? No? Then that's all for today.

Goodnight, and good luck.

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Not What I Wanted

Blogger ate a very long post I'd written this morning about the President's September 8th speech to Congress, and what the future may hold. It was a pretty decent post -- concise, and worth a read -- and it went up in a cloud of electrons.

It was a reminder that no matter how much labor you may put into something, it can all come a-cropper in a moment.

Today, ten years ago, we also lost things in a matter of moments -- lives and loved ones; two huge buildings; a national sense of security.

Ultimately, because of what happened that day, we would lose our credibility as a nation; more lives in combat zones. We would lose our collective privacy and Fourth Amendment Constitutional guarantees to a still-secret surveillance system; and finally, we would lose our economic security (The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since September, 2001, is approximately $800 Billion; the cost of all budgeted military expenditures has been roughly Two Trillion Dollars).

Predictably for a Day of Remembrance and an anniversary, the media was full of September 11th, 2001; it became depressing very quickly, because there has been damn little reflection on what the aftermath of that day has brought us -- in my opinion, the beginning of the end of the American Empire. Lil' Boots, and President Cheney, and all their enablers, did us for the rest.

Now here we are -- broke, tired, angry, and ready to start a war... with each other.

Thanks, Lil' Boots. You had help, but were such an awesome figurehead for your class.

Over at The Big Picture, Barry Ritholtz had his own posting which pretty much said it for me. You should follow the inside link to read his personal recollection of 9/11:

Relentless Media Hype
By Barry Ritholtz - September 11th, 2011, 11:51AM

I’ve already had my say about what happened 10 years ago. I do not feel a compelling need to revisit it again and again and again.

MSNBC is replaying their September 11, 2001 broadcast; the WSJ made their entire 9/12 paper available online. Other outlets are doing similar “tributes” if thats the right word.

I don’t know if anyone else feels this way, but the relentless 9/11 coverage and tributes feels both ghoulish and exploitative. Sorry, but this is simply too much, I’ve had more than I can take of this. I do not care to spend the entire day crying, but if I watch any more of this coverage that is what will happen.

To those people who can find some consolation in this, I wish you well. Its a macabre spectacle to me. I need to find something more joyous and upbeat.

And I have to tell you; I hate the song 'Amazing Grace'.

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A Reprint: Long, Strange Trip

(This was originally posted in September, 2010)

Nine-Eleven



On November 22, 1963, I was on the playground for 10:00AM recess at my elementary school when teachers called classes back inside prematurely. After a few minutes, the school's public address system was broadcasting the carrier for CBS' radio network, announcing the shooting of JFK in Dallas and, ultimately, the audio portion of Walter Cronkite on CBS television announcing the President's death.

Where were you when John F. Kennedy was shot? was a fixture in the cultural landscape for a large number of people (now referred to by the Younger Set as 'Bloodsucking Useless Boomers') for a long time, due to the magnitude of the event and because it was shared in real-time by the cutting-edge media of the early 1960's.

So, September 11th, 2001: Where were you on 9-11? I had gotten up to go to work around 5:30AM PDST, and as usual turned on KQED-FM's NPR news. After stepping out of the shower, I heard a report that a plane appeared to have crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York -- I've been in Manhattan and had seen how huge those buildings were. To me, "A plane" meant a Cessna, or similar light aircraft.

I remembered seeing a 1945 film newsreel about a B-25, flying through dense fog, directly into the Empire State Building. A similar incident at the WTC would be tragic, I thought; but it was an accident, for crying out loud, on the other side of the continent, distant. No one in their right mind would deliberately kill themselves, I sighed, and I shaved.

At some point the report was updated; I heard the words "jet airliner", which moved the entire event in my mind from 'Cessna-going-off-course' to the category of Did-You-Call-The-Coast-Guard-About-This?-It-Was-No-Boating-Accident.

Turning on CNN, I sat on the edge of an armchair, watching an image of the WTC towers from CNN's Manhattan headquarters, and other shots from a helicopter hovering over the Hudson. A few minutes after I sat down, I watched as the second airliner slammed into the second WTC tower.


Images Like This, and Worse, Were Broadcast And Published
In Europe, But Not In America (Photo: UK Guardian, 2001)

No joke: Aside from Holy Fuck, the only thing I recall thinking was, This is what standing at the curb in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, watching the Archduke Franz Ferdinand being shot, must have been like. I knew immediately that what I was seeing was another line in the sand being crossed, an event with consequences that would be immense. The dice were in motion in the Crapshoot that is our Universe, and what I was watching on my television was the proof.

It also seemed unreal, a Hollywood special effect -- as if CNN would break for a commercial at any moment; the joke would be on us; and it would turn out to be this generation's War Of The Worlds broadcast.

I sat watching as the South and North towers collapsed (Wikipedia's timeline of the events puts that at 6:59 and 7:28 AM PDST, respectively), flipping back and forth between networks for coverage of the airliner plowing into a wing of the Pentagon. Finally I left to make my way to work on mass transit.

In a BART car, I was amazed at the languid attitudes of the crowd of commuters -- reading books and newspapers, a few tapping on laptops -- as if it were just another Tuesday morning. No one appeared stunned; there was no animated conversation about current events.

Finally, I turned to a woman sitting opposite me, reading a folded copy of the (pre-Little Rupert) Wall Street Journal, and asked if she was aware of what had just happened that morning. "Yes," she replied, adding in a please-pass-the-salt voice, "There are supposed to be more of them [i.e., airliners] in the air to hit other targets."

Had anyone estimated how many? "No," the woman shrugged, and went back to her WSJ. I don't know what surprised me more, her matter-of-fact attitude, or her piece of news.

---

That was September 11th -- a red line on the American calendar in so many ways, the culmination of a large number of threads in our history, and the pacts and choices successive administrations have made since America decided to follow an Imperial course.

The attack on the Trade Center towers could have been another kind of defining moment for America. Our government and institutions could have taken it as an opportunity to press for a solution of the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy; we could have opened a dialog with others, rather than dictate to them.


Lil' Boots, 2004 Republican Convention:
Feared And Bigger Than His Daddy, At Last

I'm not suggesting it coulda been a Kumbyah moment; I am saying that it was a crossroads moment, and that our choices mattered. But, the government was run by men who had no interest in anything except power (personal, partisan, and financial) and policies that meant the use of force in furthering that power. What else could we have expected from the likes of Lil' Boots, President Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld? From the PNAC crowd, Fat Karl Rove, Little Tommy DeLay, and Lard Boy?



(And remember, these geniuses had been discussing how to invade Iraq just days after Lil' Boots first inauguration. September 11th was simply an excuse.

And, they believed it would be simple, 'Roses All The Way', 'Greeted As Liberators' ... so no one planned for occupation, or fighting an insurgency for seven years; or for the effect on the U.S. military of multiple redeployments and 'stop-loss' denials of separation. They never conceived of failure; therefore, it wouldn't happen.)

So what followed from 9/11 shouldn't have been a surprise: An utterly unnecessary, even illegal invasion of Iraq, supported by intelligence about WMD's invented by right-wing operatives to create a causis beli, and pushed in the national media by sociopathic egos 'journalists' like Little Judy Miller, and pundits like David Brooks and William Kristol, and Little Tommy Friedman, to name but a few.


Palettes Of $100 Bills, Baghdad, 2003 (Photo: UK Guardian)

And let's not forget the $12 Billion in cash (at least; no one really knows), piles of U.S. currency shrink-wrapped and paletted and airlifted to Iraq. Some $9 Billion in cash cannot be accounted for. And all the cool new powers used by that dry-drunk, Frat-Boy younger son of an American ruling-class family; or all the power available to President Cheney.

There was plenty of money to put in C530's and airlift it: 363 Tons of it. There was plenty of money being made from the war, and tax breaks to the wealthy which reduced taxed income to the government; but there was no money to cover special health care, and Lil' Boots wanted to privatize Social Security because there's just no money.

Let's not forget Guantanamo, 'black airlines' flying suspected terrorists to secret CIA prisons, and the extra-legal, secret program of 'renditions'. Let's not forget Abu Ghirab. Let's not forget people like John Woo, whose written suggestions created what he still claims is a "legal" basis for torture as national policy.


Civilian Casualty Of Baghdad Suicide Car Bomb, 2007

And what followed wasn't just prisons and a lack of due process for terrorist suspects, but the development of a matrix of information -- based on the unprecedented data-mining of domestic email and cellular and telephone traffic, of banking records and public record databases; the rise of a government/corporate State surveillance and intelligence apparatus that outstrips the wildest dreams of the Gestapo and the KGB.


Obligatory Cute Small Animal Being Interrogated At
Undisclosed Location By CIA In Middle Of Blog Rant

And, very little seemed to be about defeating Al-Qaeda, capturing Bin Laden and Al-Zwahiri -- otherwise, we would have finished the job in the mountains of Tora Bora in October of 2002, and Iraq would never have mattered. We would have kept Lil' Boots' promises to the Afghans about rebuilding their country, instead of ignoring it -- at least half the reason the Afghan Taliban were able to come roaring back, and are now as strong as they were in 2001, if not stronger.

The 'Go-Go', Lil' Boots Bush years were about a larger Rightist agenda; it was about deregulation, defense contractors, and higher profits; and it was about Fat Karl's dream of rigging elections for permanent Republican rule of the United States.

Victory, to these clowns, had a very different meaning -- and little of it was military.

But let's not forget, too, how dissent or criticism of what would become that unnecessary war; of even more power given to people with poor impulse control, was looked upon in the immediate aftermath of September 11th.

• Andrew Sullivan (9/16/01) -- The middle part of the country--the great red zone that voted for Bush--is clearly ready for war. The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead--and may well mount a fifth column.
• Robert Stacy McCain (9/27/01), columnist for the All Perfect Great Father Moon Washington Times -- Why are we sending aircraft carriers halfway around the world to look for enemies, when our nation's worst enemies--communists proclaiming an anti-American jihad--will be right there in front of the Washington Monument on Saturday?
• Robert Horowitz (9/28/01), Los Angeles Times -- The blood of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and tens of thousands of Americans is on the hands of the antiwar activists who prolonged [the Vietnam War] and gave victory to the communists... this country was too tolerant toward the treason of its enemies within.

Those who dissented, who believed the country was manifestly on a wrong track, were smeared as 'helping the enemy', a 'fifth column' for Islamic fundamentalism. "You are either with us, or with the terraists", as Lil' Boots so bravely told other governments of the world after the World Trade Center attack.

The chittering hatred all sounds like standard Tea Party rhetoric, now; from their point of view, to dissent and criticize is really only permissible when you're attacking the Left -- that socialist, illegitimate ruler in the White House; the dirty hippies; all those "in rebellion against god".

Our economy continues to implode, and it has never been clearer who is benefiting from the policies of the Right; but, then, it's been a long, strange trip from September 11th, 2001. Few things should surprise us any longer.

I remember another Lil' Boots quote:

We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: In history's unmarked grave of discarded lies. (Applause)

-- George W. Bush, Address To Joint Session Of Congress

Is that appropriate as an epitaph for those who wish to do America harm?

Or, does it speak to how we have allowed ourselves to be lied to, and led; will it end up being our epitaph, a closing quote for the United States Of America?

There is no ‘populist’ version of a world where some few are born booted and spurred, and the many are born saddled, and ready to ride, and that's precisely the world which conservatism is trying to conserve.

---

Reprint Heaven: Conservative Youths Rage Against The Machine

Tacky Peasants; Serve Us Our Drinks!

Elena Kagan; First Day Of Confirmation Hearings (Photo: AP)

[PREDICTION: This picture will be pulled by Google/Picasa]

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- At the U.S. Capitol yesterday, some fifty self-described D.C. "youth conservatives" protested against the nomination of Elena Kagan to the United States Supreme Court.

"We're, like, just very upset that this kind of person is, like, going to be on the Supreme Court?" said Britney Hollingsworth, 20, a student at Georgetown University and president of its local chapter of Campus Young Republicans. "I mean, oh-kay; Hell-o?? I mean just, like, you know, look at this person. She's just won't do, at all."

Some Of Fifty Young Conservatives, At The Capitol

"Most of these, uh, kind of people, you know?" added Caroline Wilksberry, a 19-year-old Freshman at Brown University, "They just don't represent us, you know, mainstream Americans? I had my driver bring me down here today, you know? Because I saw her [Kagan] on television and just thought, you know, 'Ugh'. I mean, she's so tacky. Plus, she's part of a liberal conspiracy to make us all, just-- " Wilksberry waved one hand in the air -- "like, peasants!"

"Rully, rully true," Hollingsworth said. "I mean, I don't want this Kagan person on my Supreme Court. Let's just, you know, like -- put it right out there, you know? Let's just 'speak truth to power', okay? She's, like, not like Chief Justice Roberts, or Justice Kennedy, or even Justice Scalia or Justice Alito. I mean, they're Catholics and all, but they're on the right side. Kagan's just not, you know, 'batting for the team'."

Britney And Caroline At George Will's House In Georgetown

For The Protest After-Party (Photo: YoureNotOurCrowd.kom)

"Not the actual girls' team, added Wilkesberry.

Were the protesters implying that Kagan was homosexual? "Oh, dear; I wouldn't know about that," Hollingsworth responded. "I think Carrie -- and don't let me, like, put words in your mouth, or anything -- what she means is that Kagan's, like, you know -- like, 'not mainstream'."

Then, were they commenting on the fact that Kagan, 50, is Jewish? Both young women responded in the negative. "That's just so unfair, you know? What an awful question," Hollingsworth said. "We, like, have tons of Jewish friends and stuff. My father's accountant is Jewish; I mean, they're like, fine, okay? I've even been to that thing they have at Easter, which isn't Easter. I was in Tel Aviv -- okay, just to change planes; but, I mean, still."

"Me too," added Wilksberry. "I've changed planes there."

"Was that when you and Kiki went to Davos?" Hollingsworth asked.

Other Youth Conservatives Relax In New York City

"No, that was that 'Spring Arab Thing'," Wilksberry responded with a giggle. "Anyway -- we just think Kagan is a tacky socalist. They need a lot more spa days -- and Kagan could stand some exercise -- 'Boot camp for you, girl!' And she was the legal-something for Harvard; I know, but it wasn't like she went there, but because they hired her, okay? Hell-o? And she denied the military to do its constitutional duty to serve and protect, you know; or whatever that scandal was that she did. Plus -- oh! oh! Here's something --"

"I so totally know what you're gonna say!" Hollingsworth added.

"Totally," Wilksberry said. "Okay. Okay -- I know, okay; I know a guy at Yale whose family's groundskeeper was, like, some Communist? Or who went to some twelve-step program they have for Communism, or something? And he told this guy I know that he had seen Kagan in, like, Nicaragua or Cuba or someplace, in 1970!!" Wilksberry paused, smiling. "I mean, there you are!"

"They should, like, be asking her about that in there," Hollingsworth said, pointing in the general direction of the Capitol.

Steven Prescott Kingsford III, Near The National Mall

When it was pointed out that Kagan would have been nine years old in 1970, the two women, and a number of other Youth Conservatives in earshot, gave hoots of derision.

"Hoot! Hoot! That's the liberal media for you," said Steven Prescott Kingsford III, a Sophomore at Princeton. "If you do an analysis of every legal interpretation Kagan has ever made, you can see she quotes radical extremists and Communists. And if things go much further this way in America, I guess we'll just have to hire a bunch of these fundamentalists to run things for a while and get people like Kagan off our backs."

"Hoot!" added Edward Biddle Barrows, who accompanied Kingsford from Princeton, where both are on the university's Lacrosse team. "The ladies here," Barrows said, gesturing at Hollingsworth and Wilksberry, "Are perhaps too polite to say; but, Kagan just doesn't measure up to service on the high court. Not in any way."

Barrows, And Friends, In George Will's Basement At The

Protest After-Party: Lacrosse High Five

"It's like promoting your cook to become your business manager," Hollingsworth said. "Not that such people like that can't, you know -- whip up one hell of a meal on short notice. But to do an investment analysis, or make a decision involving, like, you know -- big stuff? Well, they're just not up to it." Flipping her blonde hair fetchingly, Hollingsworth smiled. "Kagan should just realize her limitations."

"When you have to hire persons," Kingsford added, "they have to be adequately trained; have some seasoning. They have to be -- the right sort. Kagan isn't; not trained, not seasoned, and not right."

"That is so right on," Wilkesberry said. "I'm not going to stand by and watch the interests of people who matter in this country be compromised by a woman who dresses like a Sunday school teacher in Bar Harbor."

Decide Between Buying 200,000 Forested Acres In Western 

Canada, And Investing In Bonds? Above Her Pay Grade!"

"Sweetie, she couldn't teach Sunday school," Holligsworth responded, and the party of Youth Conservatives laughed before going off, as they noted, "for cocktails". A protest after-party was held at George Will's Georgetown home, where the Youth mingled with the likes of Will, Red State's Erik Erikson, newly-married Megan McArdle (trailed by son, Megalon, and his wranglers), and a special-surprise guest appearance by Charles Krauthammer's hair colorist.

Kagan completed her questioning by Senators as to her qualifications for a position in helping to shape the legal basis for American society. Red State later claimed Kagan had been seen buying a book on Marxist political theory in the "Gay and Lesbian" interest section of a local McBorders.

In fairness, it should be pointed out that Red State also believes Jonah Goldberg's tome, Liberal Fascism, is as important a book as Rand's The Fountainhead, or the two metric tons of Ezra Pound's unpublished anti-Semitic writings.

---

You've Made Your Bed

Wie Lange Noch?

...Ein Mensch ist kein Tier!

Denn wie man sich bettet, so liegt man
Es deckt einen da keiner zu
Und wenn einer tritt, dann bin ich es
Und wird einer getreten, dann bist’s du.

...A human being is not an animal!

For as you make your bed, you must lie in it,
and no one there will tuck you in
And if anyone does the kicking, it will be me
and if anyone gets kicked, it will be you.

-- Brecht/Weill, "Dann Wie Man Sich Bettet"
(Then As You Make Your Bed)

Barry Ritholz posted about a long piece which appeared in The Washington Post, "Breakaway Wealth" (paragraphing added for emphasis):

There is a huge Washington Post special report on Breakaway Wealth in the US. More than most other industrialized nations, the US has seen the top 0.1% compensated in vastly disproportionate numbers versus the rest of the populace.

There are at least several reasons to be concerned about this, beyond basic fairness:

• 1) Nations that have extremes wealth disparities tend towards social unrest. Usually, its banana republics and dictatorships, but it could happen in a corporate-owned quasi democracy as well.
• 2) CEOs and other company insiders have been engaging in a massive grab of shareholders wealth for decades. Its gotten appreciably worse in the 2000s.
• 3) Management is now trying to hide their compensation from the business owners — the firm’s shareholders.

The Post article noted, "Here’s one financial figure some big U.S. companies would rather keep secret: how much more their chief executive makes than the typical worker. Now a group backed by 81 major companies — including McDonald’s, Lowe’s, General Dynamics, American Airlines, IBM and General Mills — is lobbying [Congress] against new rules that would force disclosure of that comparison."

Ritholz said, "Legalized theft of shareholder assets, approved by a corrupt Congress. What little respect I had left for the GOP is now completely gone. This is not 'business friendly' — its [sic] utterly corrupt theft of shareholders."

The Post also provided a photo gallery of the twenty richest individuals in the United States in 2011, according to Forbes magazine.

Ritholtz included the following charts from the WaPo article; click on them to make them larger and more readable. It's easy and fun!

The Gap Between Rich And Poor:
The United States Compared With Other Nations

(Graphic: The Washington Post)

What Professions Are The Top One-Tenth
Of One Percent Of United States Earners?

(Graphic: The Washington Post)

A Growing Inequality:
The Top Get Richer; The Rest, Poorer

(Graphic: The Washington Post)

The most interesting thing about all of this isn't even so much that it's happening -- it's that everyone knows it; for years, now, what's left of an independent media not owned by Little Rupert or Comcast or General Electric has reported on it. And apparently nobody gives a damn, and no one in a position to affect this situation will do anything to stop it.

And when London-style underclass riots begin to happen in this country, people will say, "I just don't understand why this is happening", and demand the rioting miscreants be put in labor camps to clean up toxic spill sites, until they've sufficiently received enough Jesus, or something.

But, I'm only a dog, and no one listens to me.

---

A Nation Of Laws

Corporate Police Are People, Too

I am pissed off here. The family hired a private prosecutor -- unacceptable! They conducted a private search!

Now, if we let them get away with that, rich people won't go to the cops any more. You know what they're going to do? They're going to get their own lawyers to collect evidence -- and then they are going to choose which evidence they feel like passing on to the DA!

And the next victim isn't going to be rich, like von Bülow; it's going to be some poor schnook in Detroit who can't afford, or who can't find, a decent lawyer.

-- Ron Silver As Alan Dershowitz In Reversal Of Fortune (1990)

SF Weekly recently reported that in July of this year, employees of Apple Computers had impersonated San Francisco Police Department officers in order to gain access to, and conduct a search of, a home in the city's Bernal Heights neighborhood for a new prototype iPhone that had been lost by an Apple employee at a bar in San Francisco's Mission District.

As chronicled by Carl Franzen of TPM ("SFPD: We Stood Outside When Apple's Investigators Tossed Man's Home"), a man living in the house, 22-year-old Sergio Calderon, initially told SF Weekly that six persons, wearing badges and identifying themselves as SFPD, rifled through his belongings and computer and "threatened" him over the missing phone. Calderon told the "investigators" that he had been at the bar where the phone was lost, but did not have the device and knew nothing about it.

In an update with the Weekly, Calderon later clarified that only two of the six "SFPD" who appeared that night entered his home, while the other four waited outside. The two persons who entered the home also asked Calderon if everyone living in the house - including multiple family members of his family - were American citizens. Calderon told SF Weekly all occupants of his house are in the U.S. legally.

One of two persons searching the home, a man who called himself "Tony," provided Caldeon with a phone number. SF Weekly called it and spoke with Anthony Colon, who admitted being a former San Jose police officer, and said he now works at Apple as a "senior investigator" but refused further comment.

The SFPD issued this statement:

After speaking with Apple representatives, [SFPD was] given information which helped us determine what occurred. It was discovered that Apple employees called Mission Police station directly, wanting assistance in tracking down a lost item. Apple had tracked the lost item to a house located in the 500 block of Anderson Street.

Because the address was in the Ingleside Police district Apple employees were referred to Officers in the Ingleside district. Four SFPD Officers accompanied Apple employees to the Anderson street home. The two Apple employees met with the resident and then went into the house to look for the lost item. The Apple employees did not find the lost item and left the house.

The Apple employees did not want to make an official report of the lost item.

As TPM's Franzen continued, "it remains to be established exactly why SFPD officers didn't file an official report and why the department allowed them to escort Apple's private investigators on a search of a man's home... also, more troublingly, it raises the question of whether SFPD has assisted Apple before, off-the-books, how many times, and in what capacities."

All of this begs the questions -- whether America is what it claims to be, a nation of laws which ensure equality and to protect The People by limiting the excesses of greed or power by the state, or private interests.

And, as our Republic appears to sink slowly in the west (which the ancient Egyptians associated with the Land of the Dead) and the fabric of our culture loosens even further ... whether the idea of a nation of laws has ever, really, been true.

And whether, as experience seems to show, the power of the state can be bought like any other commodity, in furtherance of private and corporate interests.

---