No Soup For You

Nothing Fails Like Epic Failure!



Benny Bernanke shambled into a Congressional hearing today and said that the recovery was "modest" and would continue, and that he was really an lizard-like alien from Off The Earth.

He added that the Federal Reserve had no plans to do absolutely nothing by way of Quantitative Easing III to stimulate the economy, and make the sitting President more electable than the Rich Empty-Head Suit running against him.

Mr. Bernanke told a Congressional committee on Thursday that the Fed had not yet concluded that growth was slowing, nor that new measures to stimulate the economy were warranted. The Fed’s policy-making committee meets in two weeks.

“Economic growth appears poised to continue at a moderate pace over coming quarters, supported in part by running the presses at the Bureau Of Printing 24 hours a day an accommodative monetary policy,” Mr. Bernanke told the Joint Economic Committee, an assessment that on its surface was little changed from his last public remarks on the state of the economy in late April.

Beneath the surface of that forecast, however, Mr. Bernanke said that the Fed was confused. The government estimated that employers added only 69,000 jobs in May, a marked slowdown from the reported pace earlier in the year. But other economic indicators show a relatively steady, if lackluster, expansion...

Republicans ... pressed repeatedly for Mr. Bernanke to make a clear commitment that the Fed would take no further action to stimulate growth.


Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Ogg Ogg

Representative Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican, asked Mr. Bernanke to ... “take a third round of quantitative easing off the table.”

Democrats, by contrast, inquired politely after the Fed’s plans and showed surprisingly little interest in pressing the Fed for new measures to increase growth.

Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat, made the nearest approach, calling on the Fed to act forcefully, but she did not ask Mr. Bernanke to commit to such a course of action, nor to explain why he has not done so.

Surprisingly little interest. Says it all, doesn't it?

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Transit

Once In A Lifetime Event

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Random Barking

Wisconsin And Beyond


The Secret Ingredient™ Saving America's Future

In advance of the Wisconsin recall election results (I predict Gauleiter Walker will very probably hold on by the narrowest of margins, but hope I'm proven wrong) and the Transit Of Venus (no, not the sequel to That Book by Miller), I find myself lying passively on my Dog Rug, and growling.

It's not much of a secret to the three people and the superintelligent parakeet those reading this blog that I'm not a happy Dog. Some of that is personal, and some of it just the State O' The Nation and the World.

Nassim Taleb is a successful stock trader and commentator; his book The Black Swan is still widely read, and he's about to launch another book, Antifragile, arguing that for the average citizen in an industrialized society, "as you consume more data, and the ratio of noise to signal increases, the less you know what’s going on and the more inadvertent trouble you are likely to cause."

Taleb, as quoted in this excerpt, appears to argue that access to too much information has pushed us from 'equitable' humans into aggravated neurotics.

I disagree, at least in part. One of our problems (and, this is just one Dog's opinion) may lie in many people (and by that I mean Americans, principally) never having developed much ability in discrimination: The ability to analyze different sources, some offering contradictory or competing information, and determine a conclusion based on logic and experience.

This becomes complicated, aber natürlich, if the most accessible sources of information in a society are edited, sensationalized, delivered at a sixth-grade reading level, or are profoundly influenced by political or religious ideology. If your information sources are limited to, say, the Little Goebbels Rupert Network or The Lard Boy Radio hour, or the barkings of Mikey Wiener... if you live in Wisconsin the chances are high you'll be voting for Little Scotty Walker today.

Last night on PBS' News Hour, one of the editors at The Progressive (founded in Wisconsin during the Robert LaFollette era at the turn of the last century) made the observation that what Walker had done to the state was not a response to its fiscal issues, but to turn Wisconsin into a testing ground for socioeconomic theory of the political Right -- an example and a template for taking over other state governments, and in particular to break a state's labor unions.



The editor also made the observation that what's happened in Wisconsin over the past two years was simple fate: It all could have happened somewhere else, the union-busting and vote rigging and corruption, backed by Brownshirt Republicans and their Tea Partei allies. It happened in Wisconsin because the timing was right; that's all.

The intent of the Right is to dominate, brutalize and control what they perceive as a world dominated by vicious godless Leftists. They fantasize about a hard, bloody struggle to "win back" America for the Gipper and Jesus. The editor didn't say this, but she didn't have to. It's what the Right in this country has been taught to want by the carnival barkers who lead them. They believe in the myth of their victimhood.

The editor didn't say precisely that -- but she added that what's happened in Wisconsin is another escalation in the cultural war between America's Progressive Left and the Xtian-dominated Right; and no matter what the results of the Recall, it was one more step towards... well, who knows what.

So, in advance of today's results, I thought I'd make an egotistical observation and quote myself, from August of last year:

Barbara Tuchman's 1966 book, The Proud Tower, is a history primarily of Europe in the two decades before the First World War; Chapter 6 is entitled, "Neroism Is In The Air" -- a comment by the French pacifist and critic, Romain Rolland, about what he perceived as Europe's then-cultural preoccupation with violence and unease, coupled with complacency, and which he saw as a recipe for destruction, strongman rule, and disaster.

In art and politics, culture and commonplace belief, Europe in the last years of peace before August, 1914, was speeding towards... something. No one knew what it was, but people felt it, like a wind that picks up ahead of a thunderstorm: You can see a peculiar light, the darkened and clotted sky, and smell the dust and the ozone. Even the deaf and the blind can tell something is coming.

Europe in these days is full of signs and portends, too. So is the Middle East. So is our own country. The so-called 'Arab Spring' (gone in the media, now, when the images of masses of people in the streets become tiring to Western eyes)' the mass riots across the UK over the past two weeks; the fact that one (and as of tomorrow, two) self-declared evangelical christians are declared candidates for the Republican presidential nomination; the bizarre shadow-play of the fake debt ceiling crisis manufactured by Rightist Tea Partei bullies which led to S&P's downgrading of U.S. sovereign debt and a $1.5 Trillion dollar loss in the U.S. stock markets in the past five days.

I don't know what you're feeling, but you don't have to be a Dog to see the clouds in the sky, and smell the ozone; Neroism is in the air. But few people are paying any attention, even though everyone knows something is desperately wrong. That common wisdom screams to be heard that things are incredibly out of balance; that jobs are what people need, not forced Austerity; and we must have cooperation rather than the vicious, tribal idiocy that has poisoned our national discourse for almost twenty-five years.

This is what makes me lie on my rug and growl, with the occasional soft bark. More polarization and division will lead to... what, exactly? But even with the major streams of information available to us being badly distorted and overly-commercialized, we can sense it won't be pretty.

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Morton's Fork

Siting on the sofa
On a Sunday afternoon;
Goin' to the candidates' debate
Laugh about it, shout about it,
When you've got to choose;
Either way you look at it, you lose

-- Simon and Garfunkel, "Mrs. Robinson" (1968)

(Cartoon: Mr Fish, Now A Regular Contributor In The Nation)

When the practice of politics becomes little more than deciding the color of posters advertising candidates, both of whose actual policies benefit a ruling elite, the question in America is not, How did we come to this?, but "Whaddaya talkin' about? Ahhh, go live in France, ya cheese monkey."

Right.

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I'm Your Love Rhino

Random Barking Fun: Just Add Absurdum



If we're lucky, this is what happens when we ruminate on our lives or news of the day which always seems to be sensationalized and grim: We focus, for no particular reason, on a thing that appears trivial... but as we keep rolling the Thing around in our heads (an advertisement; a line from a movie; the piano piece from the soundtrack of season 1 of In Treatment) it allows us to stop focusing on the darker side of reality.

In the banal repetition of something we can't shake, we're reminded of how absurdly important we think so many things, and ourselves, are -- of how the world is both at once; profoundly important, and ridiculous. And somehow, we regain our sense of humor and our balance. For a while.


Love Rhino: Click For Larger Image; It's Easy And Fun! (© Berke Breathed)

For me, this morning, it was the term "Love Rhino", from the finely tuned mind of Berkley Breathed, cartoonist and humorist who created Bloom County and "Outland", and Opus the Penguin, one of my favorite characters in the history of American comic strips (an equal First with Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes; but that's another story).


Opus: Click For Larger Image; It's Easy And Fun! (© Berke Breathed)

I was disappointed when Breathed decided to wind BC down in the early 1990's; it was as if the kid next door, whom you depended on to show you the Funny Side of things, told you he was moving away with his family.

For the past week, I've been either focused on my Witless Employ™ or the never-ending stream of not-so-good news; I was simply tired of it. And into my partially-empty Dog Brain came an image of that specific Bloom County strip, and the phrase, "Love Rhino". I couldn't get the phrase out of my head, but the rest of the day was tolerably, absurdly all right.

In the short run, what appears trivial may not save our life -- but in the long run it can make life easier to take. It's one meaning of humor.













Thanks, Berke.

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Let Them Eat Pictures Of Drawings Of Cake

WARNING: Not Happy Time Writing Follows
What Atrios Said


Eat Up; Courtesy Of Your Elders And Betters (Photo By Machine)

I'm not in the habit of reposting another individual's writing in full. It's an Intertubes tradition not to do so, as it betrays a lack of original thinking or insight or some Thing.

I am reposting this, however, for obvious reasons -- among which, I am just very, very upset about many Things in this Great Land Of Ours ©, and suspect that what Black writes about here is just more of what's to come.

Thursday, May 31, 2012
What Do You Expect Will Happen When People Have No Jobs And No Money

I knew we had a wee housing bubble because I knew that not enough people possibly had enough money to really afford that many houses at bubble prices. Similarly, I know the economy is going to continue to recover slowly, if it all, because people don't have jobs and money. I also know that if you deliberately enact policies with the obvious consequences of making large numbers of your population jobless, such as firing large numbers of public sector workers, then newly unemployed and broke people aren't going to spend any money because they don't have any.

The people who rule the world have jobs and money. They don't know what it's like to go from living paycheck to paycheck to living with no paycheck. They support the policies that they do because they cannot comprehend the obvious consequences of this.

Probably they're evil, too, but we'll never fully resolve that question...

by Atrios at 10:15

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Noch Einmal, Mit Schwein: Well, this makes me feel so much better.

May 30 (REUTERS) - Nationalised Spanish lender Bankia is offering a Spiderman towel to young investors as part of a drive to hold onto deposits after being taken over by the state in the biggest bank rescue in Spain's history.

The bank, which holds around 10 percent of Spanish deposits, is offering the prize to youngsters if they manage to save 300 euros ($380) by the end of the month...

Spain's fourth largest bank is in line for a 23.5 billion euro state rescue after it became clear the lender could not handle losses stemming from a property crash and compounded by a recession.

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Chicken Little And The Eurozone

Whither Europa?

The Baseline Scenario (a financial blog you should be aware of) recently posted an article (The End of The Euro: A Survivor's Guide) by Peter Boone and Simon Johnson, describing as inevitable the implosion of the Euro.

The ... European Commission (EC), European Central Bank (ECB), and International Monetary Fund (IMF) has proved unable to restore the prospect of recovery in Greece, and any new lending program would run into the same difficulties....

... the Greek failure mostly demonstrates how wrong a single currency is for Europe. The Greek backlash reflects the enormous pain and difficulty that comes with trying to arrange “internal devaluations” (a euphemism for big wage and spending cuts) in order to restore competitiveness and repay an excessive debt level.

This is the result of the principle of Austerity, of forcing huge budget cuts on 'profligate' EU member nations through their governments, as a precondition to qualify for loans to (first) prop up their banks, and then, their governments' sovereign debt.

Through it all, the 'Greek Problem' was advertised as Europe's worst. Europe and the rest of the world watched as one Greek financial crisis was temporarily stemmed by band-aids made from hastily-patched-together ECB- and IMF-brokered loans. But no matter what was done, there was always another crisis, another loan, and even more draconian demands by the Austerians to cut more civil service workers and sell even more national assets to the Oligarch class of investors.

And, Austerity was the inviolable principle upon which the future of the European Union (through the Euro) rested. There would be balanced budgets and, after a period of 'pain' suffered by its citizens, Europe would find a sustainable prosperity while the US and Asia continued generating deficits and increasing national debts.

The Greeks were stunned by how much of their quality of life at least two Greek coalition governments were prepared to negotiate away. Eventually, state-owned monopoly businesses were being sold off to Oligarchs; it was suggested even the nation's ancient cultural artifacts might be sold. Ultimately, we were treated to the spectacle of Greeks rioting in the streets of Athens -- several times -- while elections (under immense pressure from outside the country) voted in new Greek parliaments whose representatives who would vote to accept the ECB-IMF terms -- the Austerity cuts -- to receive bailout loans, which would reduce the quality of life for Greek citizens even further.

And this scenario has played out twice in the past five years. It's about to occur again. But now, after years of financial reporting since the 2008 Crash, it has become clear that Austerity is a failure, a plague which kills economic growth. And finally over the past few weeks, the Greeks and the French spoke loudly at the ballot box: Enough.

EU leaders and financiers have begun to try and make Greece's leaving the Eurozone sound like it's an inevitability with a silver lining. The Greeks simply will not bring their spending under control, even after all the assistance good, frugal Europeans have given them -- so, let them go! It's for the best; and after that the EU can go about the business of rebuilding itself... under the banner of Austerity, or course.

Faced with five years of recession, more than 20 percent unemployment, further cuts to come, and a stream of failed promises from politicians inside and outside the country, a political backlash seems only natural. With IMF leaders, EC officials, and financial journalists floating the idea of a “Greek exit” from the euro, who can now invest in or sign long-term contracts in Greece? Greece’s economy can only get worse.

Some European politicians are now telling us that an orderly exit for Greece is feasible under current conditions, and Greece will be the only nation that leaves. They are wrong. Greece’s exit is simply another step in a chain of events that leads towards a chaotic dissolution of the euro zone.

The European Central Bank has claimed that the financial deals it has created to support the problems of Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland, are sound. But according to Boone and Johnson,

...the euro system claims on troubled periphery countries are now approximately 1.1 trillion euros (this is our estimate based on available official data). This amounts to over 200 percent of the ... capital of the euro system. No responsible bank would claim these sums are minor risks to its capital or to taxpayers.

These claims also amount to 43 percent of German Gross Domestic Product, which is now around 2.57 trillion euros. With Greece proving that all this financing is deeply risky, the euro system will appear far more fragile and dangerous to taxpayers and investors...

We agree: Once it dawns on people that the ECB already has a large amount of credit risk on its books, it seems very unlikely that the ECB would start providing limitless funds to all other governments...

The financial crisis in the Eurozone for the past five years has followed this pattern: An economy in crisis in the Republic of [Fill In The Blank], followed by their promises to "adhere to the principles of Austerity", followed by loans organized by the EU. Then, an identical crisis somewhere else or in the same place, and more promises of austerity followed by another loan.

But while it's interesting to understand some of the nuances in the labyrinth of international finance, let me skip the boring details and go right for the meat, as Dogs tend to do:

• This pattern of crisis isn't sustainable. At some point, through a combination of human error, regime change at the ballot box (a la France and Greece), malice or Acts Of God, the ECB and IMF will not be able to arrange financing necessary to keep the Eurozone whole.


• Given enough time, the international banking and investment structure would like to "unwind" all the debt that was created before (and after) the Fall of 2008. Unfortunately, their method -- there, as over here -- is to slowly and carefully shift that debt burden from private corporations to The People. Only, there isn't enough time; there is far too much debt to be hidden or passed along.

Too many Europeans understand that they are paying for the greed and sin of the Banksters, and they will at some point say Basta!! This is almost an inevitability -- and what, exactly, it will do to the world economy depends on how willing European politicians and Banksters are to deal with the reality that the Euro's days are numbered.

If human nature is constant (and sadly, it is), you can see the coming months as a large number of EU politicos, American and international corporate financiers all fight a long, bloody rearguard action to stave off the collapse of the Euro system salvage as long as possible. It doesn't have to be this way -- but blindness and bloody-mindedness seem to be the order of the day.

For the last three years Europe’s politicians have promised to “do whatever it takes” to save the euro. It is now clear that this promise is beyond their capacity to keep – because it requires steps that are unacceptable to their electorates. No one knows for sure how long they can delay the complete collapse of the euro, perhaps months or even several more years, but we are moving steadily to an ugly end.

Whenever nations fail in a crisis, the blame game starts. Some in Europe and the IMF’s leadership are already covering their tracks, implying that corruption and those “Greeks not paying taxes” caused it all to fail. This is wrong... We cannot blame corrupt Greek politicians for all that.

It is time for European and IMF officials, with support from the US and others, to work on how to dismantle the euro area. While no dissolution will be truly orderly, there are means to reduce the chaos... Most importantly, Europe needs to salvage its great achievements, including free trade and labor mobility across the continent, while extricating itself from this colossal error of a single currency.

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MEHR: ... So, don't believe a Dog when he tells you the Eurozone is goin' down! How about the chief executive of the EU's version of the Fed, the European Central Bank?

FRANKFURT — The president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, warned Thursday that the structure of the euro currency union had become “unsustainable” and criticized political leaders who he said had been slow to respond to a regional debt crisis now well into its third year...

Greece, progenitor of the debt debacle, is in political turmoil once again, and this time it is in danger of dropping out of the euro zone altogether. Spain, with one of the region’s largest economies, is in the grip of a banking crisis, and there is a growing sense that the danger to Spanish banks is of an entirely different order of magnitude from that in suffering but small Greece.

The clearest danger signal may be the euro currency itself. It is at a two-year low against the dollar, as investors who can do so are pulling money out of the euro region.

U.S. officials are also displaying increasing concern. President Barack Obama spoke with European leaders by video conference this week and the U.S. Treasury Department dispatched a senior official, the under secretary for international affairs, Lael Brainard, to Berlin and other European capitals to get the message across.

Any questions?

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Greco-Spanish Wrestling

Random Barking

The news is chock-a-block with stuff as a bad Exmass fruitcake, but it isn't even June yet. I'd prefer we not get too far ahead of ourselves.

The Greeks continue to come to a boil, which threatens stability of the Eurozone and the Euro. Depositors have transferred some of their money out of Greek banks -- not a full-fledged bank run, but a potential warm-up. Their current government is definitely Left, but whether they tell the EU ministers and the ECB to suck Adam Smith's underwear take their Austerity plans and go away is anyone's guess.

Meanwhile, Die Eisen Kanzellerin continues to say that Austerity is the only overarcing policy for the EU she will accept. She's had to claim this week that there are no contingency plans for Greece to exit the Euro and the Eurozone, but there was some minor embarrassment when it was revealed that yes, Angela, such plans have been made and are being updated. Not sure why this was such a flap; contingency planning is another form of prudence.

However[I'm sorry; have to use the phrase] the Greek Chorus of sensible financial analysts, all demanding that growth through deficit spending by individual European governments, continues to grow louder with each report showing GDP shrinking in Britain, Italy, Spain, (certainly Greece) France, and even Germany.

If The EU 'stays the course' on Austerity and refuses to pull back from Stalingrad compromise, then Germany's current government may be responsible for pushing the continent further into the current Depression off the fiscal cliff into another Recession.

Which will, of course, kick the United States economy in the balls to the curb, as we move into a Presidential election race between an empty-headed, rich Suit Talking-Head, desperate to be elected; and a Chicago political Suit whose core values seem to be not pissing off rich people, and whom is desperate to get re-elected.

The first will just fuck The People (without dinner, I add) and, when We try to get his attention later in a crowd, will push a copy of the Big Book O' Mormon at us, flash a smile and say, "Hi; great to see you", then disappear into an exclusive elites-only gathering behind a phalanx of bodyguards.

The Re-electable Other will allow The People to be gangbanged by the Tee Partei and then have all manner of ready explanations as to why he couldn't prevent this from happening. Then, he'll flash a smile and disappear into an exclusive elites-only gathering behind a phalanx of bodyguards.

It's all quite upsetting. And which of these two wins may be decided, in part, on how quickly the EU and its central bankers can run round-the-clock, pump-and-shore parties below decks on the good ship Austero.

Many observers in the U.S. believe that the EU / Eurozone stuttering into collapse, or a larger implosion of global financial markets resulting from a crisis in an individual European country on the brink, would not be good for The Re-Electable Other, and allow the Rich Suit to claim it was all Obama's fault.


Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Rant

Ah, but what's this? Now, Spain begins to deteriorate financially, prompting another set of depositors to transfer billions of Euros out of their banks. Ratings agencies downgrade the perceived quality of those banks, which force even more depositors to transfer funds to other banks, perceived as being safer bets.

Franco crawled from his grave, took one look at a recent (Rightist) newspaper and promptly crawled back in. Bankia, Spain's largest financial institution, announced on Thursday that it needs $19 Billion Euros in 'assistance' from -- well, somewhere -- just in order to keep from declaring bankruptcy and setting off a world-wide financial Armageddon.

It's curious, isn't it? The world's major banking and investment firms can each declare that their own individual problem is enough to ignite a global financial collapse, if they don't get a bailout. And over time another, and another, noch einmal; usw., usw.

The amount of debt created during just the last ten years -- a great deal bound up with Real Estate -- has been sitting in the middle of the global economy like a partially-defused Thousand-Pound bomb. Since 2008, the combined efforts of the world's central bankers (and friends) has managed to stop the bomb's timer (allowing those with wealth to figure out methods of saving as much as they can -- even while millions of Us become unemployed), but that's all. It gave them time, so it was said, to find a solution, to "unwind" the debt and somehow pull the fuse out of the Thousand-Pounder before it went up and brought the whole edifice down.

But, the Europeans (and the Amerikanischer Tee Partei) demanded that the only solution was Austerity -- proof that as government spending decreased and national debts were brought under control, The Magic Market Confidence Fairy would coax investments in equities, and push banks into loaning money to develop businesses and hire all those peasants unemployed people. The banks said Oh; fuck you, by the way. They wanted more free bailout money, even as they made more profits. Unemployment grew. And Austerity as a plan was proven incorrect, as it turned out.

And, while all this has been going on, investment banks have continued trading in Derivatives, or Credit-Default Swaps -- and the amounts of those which would need to be paid in the event of a financial collapse is in the hundreds of trillions. This is why the situation in Greece, and Spain (Italy and/or Portugal will be next) is worth watching.

It's like being a spectator at a slow-motion automobile accident between two cars driven by rich crack addicts, playing Chicken by driving head-on at each other: They knew exactly how they got into this situation; they knew what getting addicted could do to them; but they did it anyway.

We enabled them, too. We could have demanded a little more finance regulation, listened a little less to Little Rupert's propaganda factory. We believed everything the Whorehouse and Casino of the Free Market showed us. Now, we're living through history, a thing we somehow believed we were immune from, helpless to do anything about the impending crash -- even move out of the way. Because, however it happens, we're going to get struck by debris as a result.

But, I'm only a Dog, and no one listens to me. Tonight, I'm going out with friends, a couple and their children, to (no joke) a Greek restaurant owned by two brothers. I've been going there occasionally since they opened in the early 80's, and am treated like a relation (non-Greek; but, still), which makes it easy to get a table. The food is great; it's one of a handful of places in The City where you can get Retsina and a dog bowl full of Spanakopita.

It'll be a good time. And moment to moment, that's the best we can expect. I can live with that.

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As We Speak

Annular Eclipse Of The Sun

...is happening, right now. I wasn't aware that it was even happening -- was just settling in to eat a Dog Bowl of Couscous and Garbanzo Beans, and catch up on Season 4 of The Wire, when I noticed an odd cast to the sunlight outside; a phone call from a friend about something completely unconnected to the periodic passages of Sun and Moon clued me in ("Why don't you know about this?").

Eclipses occur every 177 days, 4 hours, observable from somewhere on the Earth, and are all predicted by the slow gravitational-orbital dance of our M-Class star, Sol, and our Moon. Today's free light show has a specific name, too: SE2012May20A, and you can find out whether you missed anything, here. For this eclipse, the greatest region of Totality occurs in a band which runs just north of the San Francisco Bay area.

Years ago, I, uh, ingested psychoactive chemicals (all part of the Yout Scene in those times long ago) and climbed a small mountain in order to be the highest thing in three counties, and watch the sun go down. I have the scars on my corneas to prove it. I won't be reenacting that little slice of stupidity today.

Now, if we were in Darkest Kinjubistan, a hundred years ago, we could fool the natives into believing we were Gods by using the Eclipse as a sign of our power. Or, so Hollywood would have us believe.

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Dog Stuff Dog

Sinful Wages

I, uh, have a life with a job in it. And on occasion I had damn well better pay attention to that fact because I don't do well as a certain kind of statistic. Just sayin'.

So for a brief time, I'll be focused on other things. It doesn't mean that I don't love you all as only a Dog can -- unreservedly, with slobbering and a certain level of low-key Would You Just Let Me Out The Door, Already whining -- but I gotta do That Dog Stuff.

Back soon.

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