New Year; Dunno About Happy

Going Out On A Whimper



It could be fairly said that there's not enough of other things going on with this Dog to make for a cheery and hopeful New Year. Well, that's the breaks, folks.

I wanted to be able to focus on something hopeful for 2012, but like the mythical half-full glass, I can't see it. One principal reason can be summed up in a post at Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality With Both Hands blog, entitled "America's Financial Leviathan".

In 1950, finance and insurance in the United States accounted for 2.8% of GDP, according to US Department of Commerce estimates. By 1960, that share had grown to 3.8% of GDP, and reached 6% of GDP in 1990. Today, it is 8.4% of GDP, and it is not shrinking. The Wall Street Journal’s Justin Lahart reports that the 2010 share was higher than the previous peak share in 2006.

This is "rentier" capitalism, where a small number of people (relative to the overall population) are paid obscene amounts of money, every year, to move other money from one financial category to another: Cash to equities and commodities; cash to insurance against risk; equities to cash, and so forth.

Traditionally, the idea of a financial sector has been to move money into the hands of business through investment; into the hands of individuals through loans; or to indemnify business and individuals against loss through insurance. However, it's always been The Big Casino: The Game is rigged in favor of the house to bring in a consistent stream of revenue through investment in the markets, interest on loans, or monthly premiums on insurance.

Since the 1980's, 'growth' in the financial sector has been about less about putting money to work and more about finding new ways to increase revenue and thus net profits. Nothing wrong with that, on the face of it -- but for the finance 'industry', the past twenty-five years has been about increasing risk -- and making the hapless client assume that risk.

It gets even better: Now, the entire population of the United States has assumed the risk of it's financial 'sector', as the government paid some $1.2 Trillion in the year between November, 2008 and October, 2009 to keep it afloat. The banks own us, not the other way around.

And it gets even even better: An audit of the U.S. Federal Reserve banking system (one forced by Congress and the results of which had to be obtained last month through an FOIA request by Bloomberg News) that the Fed has made emergency loans and other forms of assistance totaling $29 Trillion Dollars to banks worldwide.

Much of this money has been to prop up financial 'houses' still filled with toxic debt and derivatives, and which is only being shuffled around. Who, ultimately, will be made to assume all that debt, that risk? Why, you. The banks certainly won't be left holding the bag; no, sir. Not our fault; not our problem -- it's the governments' problem... because We're Too Big To Be Allowed To Fail.

The individuals pushing money around these days add no value; they simply charge the economy in general for handling money and moving it around. If it was otherwise, there would be an obvious benefit to that kind of activity -- as in other sectors of the economy, like Silicon Valley, say: Where chips are produced, technology is invented and refined. The benefits there, while debatable in some sense, are still obvious.

Not so in "Finance". It seems to exist, not to perform a necessary function in the economy -- but to separate as many Marks from their money as possible, we the fools. As practiced today, it's a Thieves' College, a School For Scandal, and not something a human being with morals or ethics should involve themselves in.

Bernie Madoff is seen as a negative role model in 'Finance'... because he got caught. The lesson of Little Bernie isn't 'Don't behave like Madoff' or, 'Don't steal' -- it's Don't Get Caught.

Overall, however, it remains disturbing that we do not see the obvious large benefits, at either the micro or macro level, in the US economy’s efficiency that would justify spending an extra 5.6% of GDP every year on finance and insurance.

Lahart cites the conclusion of New York University’s Thomas Philippon that today’s US financial sector is outsized by two percentage points of GDP. And it is very possible that Philippon’s estimate of the size of the US financial sector’s hypertrophy is too small.

Why has the devotion of a great deal of skill and enterprise to finance and insurance sector not paid obvious economic dividends? There are two sustainable ways to make money in finance:

• Find people with risks that need to be carried and match them with people with unused risk-bearing capacity, or
• Find people with such risks and match them with people who are clueless but who have money.

Are we sure that most of the growth in finance stems from a rising share of financial professionals who undertake the former rather than the latter?

[Note: Bulletpointing added] ...And that sums up America for the past decade, and in 2011. It's why people -- and not enough of us -- are in the streets. And more of it to come in 2012.

And yes, Virginia; we are the 99%. Happy New Year.

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Mongo Thinks About Chuck Again

For The New Year
(Courtesy MobiusKlein)


Chaplin: Final Speech From The Great Dictator (1940)

I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an Emperor. That's not my business.

I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible -- Jew, gentile; black man, white. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that.

We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in -- machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little; More than machinery we need humanity; more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.

Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost...

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure!

Then, in the name of democracy, let's use that power; let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie!

They do not fulfil their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness...

Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting, the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.

The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up.

Even Dogs dream, man.

Have a safe, warm and excellent New Year -- and try to Pay It Forward in 2012.

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Day In The Life

A Bit Late, This: But Still Missed.

Look at me
what am I supposed to be?
what am I supposed to be?
Look at me
what am I supposed to be?
what am I supposed to be?
Look at me
Oh My Love Oh My Love

Here I am
what am I supposed to do?
what am I supposed to do?
Here I am
What can I do for you?
What can I do for you?
Here I am
Oh My Love Oh My Love
Look at me,Oh Please Look at me, My Love
here I am - Oh My Love

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Ask About The Free Eggs

Ridley Scott Completes Long-Planned Alien Prequel



Ridley Scott has been responsible for creating some of the most haunting and near-archetypal images in modern motion pictures -- and it's two films in particular that we recognize: Most definitely Blade Runner (1982), but also Alien (1979) -- not to mention Thelma and Louise, 'The Duellists', and later Gladiator.

Alien began a three-sequel spinoff, starring Sigourney Weaver -- James Cameron's Aliens; the relentlessly depressing Alien 3; and the Do Not See! Alien Resurrection. And, there have been the Predator-versus-Alien spinoffs as other producers attempted to assert the primacy of their Brand to be considered the ultimate Badass Movie Creature of the universe. My money, aber natürlich, is on the Alien.


How Many Ellen Ripleys Can You Find? It's Easy And Fun!

The concept was developed by a seriously disturbed Swiss artist, H.R. Geiger, and brought to life in Scott's initial film: Awakened from suspended animation-sleep by their onboard AI (nicknamed 'Mother'), the crew of the raw-ore-carrying spaceship, the Nostromo, are dispatched to identify the source of a repeating signal beacon -- apparently, in the far-future of Ridley's film, humans still haven't had First Contact with an intelligent alien species.

The beacon takes them to planet LV-426, where three crewmembers -- the Captain, Dallas (Tom Skerrit), the XO, Kane (John Hurt), and Warrant Officer Ripley (Weaver) -- land to find a crashed alien ship that looks like an unfinished Cyclotron. The ship is amazingly old, and filled with bays of large, leathery black eggs. Inside each one is...


Sold At Auction, 2007, For $126,500 US

Well, if you don't know this story, go find it on Netflicks. Alien is a classic piece of filmaking, in addition to being one of the top 10 science-fiction classics of all time.


Eddie Powell (1929-2000); One Of The Original Creatures,
Relaxing Between Takes In James Cameron's 1987 Aliens

This morning I stumbled across the news that Scott has just completed a new film, Prometheus, which stars Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron, and gives every appearance of being a prequel to the 1979 Alien.

One meme in the world of film criticism these days is that it's all about sequels -- that most of the films, in a time when it's hard to get people to spend money for a trip to the Monstroplex, that are successful have been based on prior releases.

Prometheus could be another one of these, but I don't think so. Scott has done his share of films with a Doggy odor (White Squall, and "G.I. Jane", just to name two; and yes, I understand the irony of using that phrase), but Alien is one of his signature films and it's hard to imagine any artist willing to risk placing a Dud on the shelf beside it.

Prometheus is scheduled to be released here in the U.S. in June, 2012. And, barring a new war in the Middle East or an unanticipated release of the re-engineered-to-be-massively-fatal H5N1 Birdflu virus, I guess we'll see.

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The Collect Call Of Chtulu

Lil' Michele Continues Channeling Chtulu: Ia! Ia Ftagn Iowa !!!!
(Is It Just Me, Or Does She Look Like Cameron Diaz?)

As Evan McMorris-Santoro noted in TPM this morning, the collapse of the Crazy Lady Pain Train For Aremica Campaign beneath the weight of its own irrelevance is nearly complete.

On Wednesday, Bachmann took time off the campaign trail to accuse Ron Paul of bribing her Iowa chair into switching teams. State Sen. Kent Sorenson (R) publicly flipped to the Ron Paul campaign in a surprise announcement at a Paul event Wednesday night...

Lost in the back and forth is the news, of course, that Bachmann lost her Iowa campaign chair just days before the caucuses. And that follows news that a pro-Bachmann Super PAC switched allegiances to Mitt Romney the other day.

And that comes after the story of a leader of the base Bachmann has courted so closely — the Iowa evangelical vote — asking her to step aside. And that’s just Iowa.

It would be truly amazing, watching the Rethug party eat itself, if the collateral damage to the rest of us wasn't potentially so severe. Their front-runner at the moment is a dwarfish paranoid; then Mitzy; and then that morally-compromised, overly-intellectual Guy. Then Le Gouvernour Placard Perry, who will say anything to be elected; and finally, Grand TurtleBear Michele Bachmann of the Church of Crazy Lady™.


Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Rant

I will be the first to say that Michele is hot. Hot, hot, hot. I'd do a weekend with her in an apartment above a video store in downtown Bangkok in a heartbeat -- plenty of up-close, uh, 'quality time', and I'd be cooking on a hibachi on the balcony.

But, aber natürlich, this assumes that her head would have to be in an exceptionally different place than it is today. It's just as true that Michele is deranged, possibly Botoxed to the gills; almost certifiably crazy -- but, Hot. So, I'm holding off on buying that pair of tickets on Air Thailand.

And, if you're a candidate for the Rethug nomination as presidential candidate, and the polls have you at the bottom of a pack of fools like Paul, Perry, Mitzy and The Newt and Little Ricky... that's really saying something, isn't it?

In South Carolina, Bachmann’s campaign recently asked for and then touted the endorsement of a progressive Democratic leader who only wants Bachmann to be the nominee because it would guarantee a second term for President Obama.

Well, The End is coming soon. I hear the sound, far-off, like the wet slapping of tentacles against rocks by the sea -- and it sounds like the Call Of Chtulu. In fact, it sounds remarkably like the voice of Ron Paul.

Meanwhile: Auf nicht wiedersehen, Michele, you nutter.

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Got That Right

Just Sayin'


(Courtesy Plutocracy Files)

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Cheetah (1929-2011)

World Mourns Loss Of 'Gentle Spirit'


Cheetah On His 77th Birthday In Retirement, With Photo
Of Weissmuller, Who Never Visited Him

The New York Times reports that Cheetah the Chimpanzee -- who, next to Rin-Tin-Tin, Lassie, 'Alf', and Puffy The Dog from There's Something About Mary, was one of Hollywood's most famous animal stars -- has died. He was at least 80 years old; twice the normal life span of normal Chimpanzees.

Cheetah played the comedy relief opposite Johnny Weissmuller in the "Tarzan" films (he did not, as some have reported, play the role of 'Bonzo' in the defining moment of Ronald Reagan's film career, "Bedtime For Bonzo"). Weissmuller, born in Austria-Hungary, emigrated to the U.S. to become the Mark Spitz of the 1920's, winning five Olympic gold medals in swimming and setting dozens of records before appearing in twelve Tarzan movies. Weissmuller died in 1984.



"Debbie Cobb, the outreach director at the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbor, Fla., where Cheetah lived," reported the Paper Of Record, "told The [Tampa, Fla.] Tribune that Cheetah was about 80 years old and died of kidney failure on Saturday."

In the Tarzan film series, whose golden age spanned 1932 to 1948, Cheetah was said to have appeared in the films made between 1932 and 1934, as a comic and sympathetic animal sidekick whose intelligence sometimes seemed to rival that of his human co-stars [former swimming star] Johnny Weissmuller (who played the titular jungle lord) and Maureen O’Sullivan (who portrayed his civilized love interest, Jane).

Cheetah had, in fact, been living with Weissmuller until 1960, when he was transferred to the Primate Sanctuary. Of some 15 chimpanzees kept at the sanctuary, Cheetah, Cobb reported, was "the most famous and an outgoing ape with a gentle personality, who had long outlived the 35 to 45 years that chimpanzees typically survive in captivity."

“He was very compassionate,” Ms. Cobb said. “He could tell if I was having a good day or a bad day. He was always trying to get me to laugh if he thought I was having a bad day. He was very in tune to human feelings.”


Word Of Cheetah's Passing Was Met With Spontaneous Public
Demonstrations Of Grief In Asia, Where 'Tarzan' Films Are
Still Cherished (Photo: NHKNot)

She said Cheetah was soothed by Christian music and also enjoyed fingerpainting and football, though she was unsure if the chimpanzee had any favorite teams.

The Times also reported that actress Mia Farrow, the daughter of Maureen O’Sullivan (they performed opposite each other as a mother and daughter in Woody Allen's 'Hannah And Her Sisters'), has gotten more or less the last word on the Great Ape, posting a comment on her Twitter page: “Cheetah the chimp in Tarzan movies died this week at 80. My mom, who played Jane, invariably referred to Cheetah as ‘that bastard.’ ”

Cheetah's real name is unknown. He leaves behind him no children, but a number of finger paintings, and a rich treasury of film memories.

---

Meanwhile, in other news: The head of Iran's navy announced during ten days of Iranian war games in the Persian Gulf that it would be "Like drinking a glass of water" to close the Straits of Hormuz to oil traffic. Today the commander of the United States' Fifth Fleet in the same region announced that the world "would not tolerate" a closure of the Gulf to shipping.

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Noch Einmal Mit Mehr: Apparently, questions have been raised as to whether the claims of the Florida primate sanctuary -- that the Chimp which died Saturday was in fact the Cheetah -- are true.

The sanctuary set off a stampede of news media coverage when it announced the death of a chimpanzee there over the weekend named Cheetah, who, the sanctuary said, appeared with Johnny Weissmuller in films like “Tarzan the Ape Man” (released in 1932) and “Tarzan and His Mate” (from 1934).

Ms. [Debbie] Cobb, 51 [outreach director of the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary], said that she had known Cheetah all her life and that he was born in 1929 or 1930. She said he had been brought to the sanctuary by her grandparents, who received him in the 1960s when Weissmuller’s estate “was being dispersed.” [Note: Johnny Weissmuller died in 1984]

“My grandparents picked these animals up,” Ms. Cobb said. “It wasn’t like you called a hauling company to go pick up a full-grown male chimp.”

Though the nearby Lion Country Safari in Loxahatchee, Fla., is home to a female chimpanzee named Little Mama who is in her 70s, some zoologists believe such animals are not representative of typical lifespans in captivity.

Ms. Cobb said that her sanctuary planned to post brochures from the 1950s and ’60s on its Web site that would show that its Cheetah had appeared in the Tarzan movies, and that the announcement of his death was not a “marketing ploy.”

“We have nothing to prove,” [Cobb] said. “It cracks me up how ignorant some people are, but I think that causes controversy, and isn’t that what it’s all about? I mean, really. I think people like controversy. These are real living beings to us here. These are relationships. We don’t care if it’s in the media or not.”

Meanwhile, Grieving Crowds In Asia Continue Mourning
Publicly For The Great Chimp. More Or Less.

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Boxing Your Ears Day

Yes, They Are

When anyone says to you, "Oh, the Tea Partei Republicans aren't crazy," hand them this letter from current Big Iowa Favorite™ Ron Paul (via his campaign for the Rethug presidential candidacy), soliciting donations:

I have unmasked the plot for world government, world money, and world central banking... officials... wholly owned subsidiaries of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations. The FEMA plan to suspend the Constitution...

I’ve been told not to talk, but these stooges don’t scare me. Threats or no threats, I’ve laid bare the coming race war in big cities. The federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS ... The Bohemian Grove — perverted, pagan playground of the powerful. Skull & Bones: the demonic fraternity that includes George Bush and leftist Senator John Kerry, Congress’s Mr. New Honey. The Israeli lobby, which plays Congress like a cheap harmonica. And the Soviet-style “smartcard” the Justice Department has in mind for you..

... That’s why I must send you Surviving the New Money, the Ron Paul Investment Letter, and the Ron Paul Political Report... What’s a middle-class American to do? Gold? Silver? Platinum? Rare coins? Real estate? Gemstones? ... Some investments will protect you. Others are like walking into the IRS and saying, “Take me; I’m yours."

I fear there will be welfare riots in the big cities. Massive unemployment. The destruction of wealth. The erosion of personal liberties. Vicious economic controls. The exaltation of envy. The suppression of privacy. Authoritarian clamp-downs. Bank and S&L closings on a massive scale. A world dollar crisis...

Trouble is coming, and you must be prepared. Surviving the New Money, the Ron Paul Investment Letter and the Ron Paul Political Report will be your survival kit, and if you act now, you can get this $224 value for just $99 — 55% off!… For just $99, get all this wealth-saving intelligence...

Astronomical professionals are discovering new planets circling distant stars every day; can we give these loons a planet of their own? There may not be as much air as there is on Earth, but the first forty million dollars is tax-free. Sure to please the mutant freakshow nutjob libertarian on your post-ExMass list.

(NOTE: Sudden increases in weight have been reporter with conservatism. An uncontrollable desire to beat children for their own good, and to tell complete strangers about a world-wide conspiracy involving reptilian aliens, black helicopters, the United Nations or the Tri-Bilderburg Commission, non-caucasians, and [eventually; always] Jews, have been observed. If you experience headaches, sensitivity to light and a desire to consume the flesh of the living, try and communicate this to your doctor, or simply attack and eat them. The ability to support views that have no basis whatsoever in scientific fact or common sense, spontaneous diarrhea and hair loss, speckles, and Bonzeiger's Syndrome are common side affects with conservatism. Just so you know.)

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Ему тридцать лет, которые человек из МОЛДОВЫ

Don't Trust

We are reliably informed that I.Rabschinsky, occasional commenter here at Before Nine, has just turned 30, on the day before Hanukkah (which means he gets nine days of gifts, this guy, I guess).

As we say in my generation, "Don't Trust Anybody Over Thirty".

I say this to I.Rabschinsky -- and to Moldavish Guy; you, also.

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Nadir

Bottom Of The Batting Order


This Chart Answers The Musical Question, "What Percentage Of
All U.S. Corporate Profits Is Generated By The Financial
Sector?" Answer? "Their Satanic Majesties Request", Or 26%


...And This One Tracks Financial 'Industry' Profit As Percentage
Of Overall GDP. (Source: Arbor Research, via Big Picture)

Tonight at sundown (aside from its being the second night of Hanukkah), the Winter Solstice will begin. This is physically the longest night of the solar year, the Nadir, the lowest point in a cycle of one orbit of the planet around the sun.

As a result, you'd expect the kind of mutant freakshow we're seeing these days.

• Republicans Continue Countdown To Self-Detonation: Bob Schaeffer, CBS News Washington correspondent since the Late Cretaceous Period, noted in last night's CBS Evening News that the current (i.e., most recent) impasse in Congress is a result of "both sides trying to undermine each other". On the BBC's American version of the evening news, Clinton-era Labor Secretary Robert Reich (and former BFF prior associate of Citicorp) commented in a segment on the effect to those living on unemployment of having benefits suddenly removed or slashed, "I try hard not to be partisan, but the Republican party seems to be the one" creating the current deadlock.
  
  Some Left Blogistan sites (e.g., TPM) report that, as a result of the refusal of the Rethug-dominated House to pass a Senate bill that would extend (by two months) both a Social Security payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits, President Obama's job approval ratings have become more positive. TPM reported 46.6% Approval vs. 48% Disapproval -- "There’s now a lot of evidence that the President’s approval numbers are rising after bottoming out at the end of the summer after the debt deal debacle," Josh Marshall wrote. "But they’re rising toward an almost total polarization. 50% for, 50% against. Very little middle ground."
  
  
  Your New Stratoliner: The One Per Cent, And Their Hats
  
  One interesting note: Little Rupert's Wall Street Journal, the "Tits 'n Tattle" scandal sheet of Rupert's empire for the financial class, ran an editorial criticizing Republicans for blocking the two-month extension in the House -- and mostly criticizing it as a poor tactic, rather than for the effect it would have on taxpayers and unemployed Americans.
  
  Heaven forbid that Little Rupert or Fat Roger would give a damn about the people they treat with such barely-disguised contempt.
  
  Rupert, that crafty ol' Aussie, is sending America's Rightist politicians a message: I Am Not Amused. Get Your Shit Together. But as much as he criticizes them, he has to support the Rethugs, and his NewsCorp will have to get behind whichever candidate, drooling, brain-dead and barking, it hoists for president in 2012.
  
  So, whatever scribbles are published on the editorial page of the WSJ tabloid don't really matter. Little Rupert is as much a hostage of a self-destructing political party as the Rethugs are hostage to their addictive love for Little Rupert's propaganda.
  
  MEHR: Not that long ago, the House Minority Whip, Stenny Hoyer walked to the floor of the House Of Representatives, and asked the Speaker Pro Temp, Michael Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania (standing in for President Boner), to grant "unanimous consent" for an up-or-down vote on the Senate bill the Rethugs deep-sixed yesterday.
  
  House Republicans on the Hill were with Speaker Boner at a photo-op. Meanwhile, as Hoyer made his request to the Speaker's chair on the House floor, Fitzpatrick simply ignored Hoyer and walked away... all broadcast on CSPAN.
  
  "As you walk off the floor, Mr. Speaker," Hoyer said to Fitzgerald's back, "You’re walking away, just as so many Republicans have walked away from middle-class tax payers, the unemployed, and very frankly as well from those who will be seeking medical assistance from their doctors — 48 million senior citizens.”
  
  In and of itself, business as usual in the United States Congress. But, providing the Democratic party with a telling image of Rethugs who don't give two hoots about The People, and which can be rebroadcast over and over and over? Priceless.



• Global Banking Structure Aims Free Money Nozzle At European Banks: The European Central Bank has loaned a massive 489 billion Euros ($639 billion US) to over five hundred European banks, at one per cent interest, for what the War Criminal Post reported as "an exceptionally long period of three years" in the ongoing attempt to keep the EU from dissolving into a bad fusion between "Apocalypse Now" and "Mr. Hulot Opens A Hedge Fund".
  
  It was the biggest infusion of credit by the European Central Bank in the 13-year history of the Euro; in a response I think is best termed 'irrational exuberance', the DJIA rose over 330 points. The ECB's move allows its client banks to borrow money, essentially, for free: 1 Billion Euros borrowed can become loans, and any interest charged on those loans above one per cent is pure profit.
  
  The problem is, these loans will act as life support for some financial players whose books are sagging with toxic debts that these ECB credit lines can't repair; the amounts of debt are too huge. It's just another means of postponing the Day O' Reckoning, kicking the can down a road paved with good intentions.
  
  But, hey; Little Angela's happy. So, s'all good. Right?



• Rethugs Say, VOTE FOR PLAYER TO BE NAMED LATER! Replicating the internal epic battles within the Rethug, Red-State World (something like Rodan vs. Monster Zero), it appears that Thugs will nominate Mitzy Perry Grand TurtleBear Ru Paul Mitzy Randyman Perry Ru Paul "Somebody Else" as their candidate for president in 2012.
  
  No kidding; a poll recently reported by CBS showed Republicans pretty evenly split between three potential candidates, so far: Romney and Gingrich, and "Somebody Else". It's a ringing, star-spangled endorsement of -- well, somebody. A write-in candidate who embodies true, conservative principles, like Lil' Bernie Madoff, or William Stafford, or the Zombified Ronald Wilson Rayguns-ah.
  
  The ever-tasteful Alicublog reports that the Special Bus Kidz at RedState are enthusiastically arguing in favor of... a Rick Perry candidacy.

  Fellas, there's probably a robot somewhere that would govern in the most consistently conservative fashion -- it wouldn't be hard to program; just get it to yell "More tax breaks for the wealthy!" and "I hates me a faggot!" at intervals, and to fart loudly when France or higher education is mentioned -- but it doesn't mean anything unless you can get people to vote for it.
  
  
  
  ...Perry makes George W. Bush look like Pericles. Nobody, but nobody, is praying, "Oh Lord, send us someone just like George W. Bush, only stupider." Just the other day... Perry misread Kim Jong Il as "Kim Jong the Second". That's like something out of a Cheech and Chong movie. Most observers... have moved on to wondering if Perry can tie a shoelace without coaching.

  I enjoy flailing, particularly when it reinforces stereotypes I have of conservatives as retrograde, Troglodyte morons, beating each other bloody with Wal-Mart shopping bags filled with The Collected Works Of Ronald Rayguns: "They fought so fiercely because the stakes were so small". Keep it up!



• Tubby Twentysomething Becomes New Leader Of Starving, Heavily Armed North Korea: A few days ago, this short, pudgy guy with weird hair and glasses died -- some say on a train: Kim Jong Il, ruler of the upper half of the Korean peninsula and a leader of a totalitarian, repressive state... and was reportedly someone who loved dogs and western porn, and really in his heart was kinda, sort of, a good guy. "The Kim Nobody Knew".
  
  His twenty-something son, Kim Jong Well, a short, pudgy guy with a very bad haircut who reportedly likes dogs, food and western porn, and in his heart is kind a good guy, replaced him. The CIA apparently had no idea that Kim Jong 2 had passed away until it was announced by North Korea's official media (there is no other kind).
  
  There immediately commenced massive (and in the last Stalinst, cult-of-personality culture on the planet, we mean massive) shows of public grieving. Thousands gathered publicly to cry and cry and rend their hair and fall weeping on the pavement, each attempting to outdo everyone else to show how sad they are that a totalitarian freak, who wore shoes with three-inch lifts and created policies resulting in starvation of his people and nuclear weapons, was dead.
  
  Kim Jong Well went to see his father lying in state, bowed without much expression, then reportedly went for pizza and some XBox action.

There's one other thing about The Winter solstice to keep in mind. This is the last of the old solar year, the bottom of the wheel, the Appogeian farthest point out in Earth's orbital motion. The planetary pole is tilted back; this is the longest period of darkness in a full turn around the sun.

And from midnight tonight, the Days will become incrementally longer, the nights shorter. From this long night we will all enter what I like to think of as The Season Of Rising Light -- from one point of view, the darkness being reduced a degree at a time, each day forward, until the top of the wheel, the Apex, next June.

And while waiting for someone to start singing "Here Comes The Sun", in the meantime, we'll still have the unfolding, everlasting clown show to watch.

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