Du Kannst Mit Mir Sagt, "Bow Wow"

Translatory

A new feature available on Before Nine: we can now be translated into a wide variety of languages, all courtesy of the Gogglemachine (or, Das Googlegerät). This satisfies our annual technology requirement in service to the Superintelligent Parakeet who reads this blog.

So, now, if you have nothing better to do you can read these moderately amusing Things in French, Hindustani, Arabic, or good-old meat-and-potatoes English. Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys of all nations -- welcome!

Oh, and Trumpo !  Grand Turtlebear Teddy (Church Of I Kill You!) , and Hillary The Inevitable !

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And No One Is Suprised Too, Also

Not Like You Didn't See This Coming Or Anything

#Occupy Protests, New York City 2013 -- So Long Ago And Far Away

[ WIRED - Monday, April 4, 2016 ] On Sunday, more than a hundred media outlets around the world, coordinated by the Washington, DC-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, released stories on the Panama Papers, a gargantuan collection of leaked documents exposing a widespread system of global tax evasion.

The leak includes more than 4.8 million emails, 3 million database files, and 2.1 million PDFs from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that, according to analysis of the leaked documents, appears to specialize in creating shell companies that its clients have used to hide their assets.

“This is pretty much every document from this firm over a 40-year period,” ICIJ director Gerard Ryle told WIRED in a phone call, arguing that at “about 2,000 times larger than the WikiLeaks state department cables,” it’s indeed the biggest leak in history.

... the leak represents an unprecedented story in itself: How an anonymous whistleblower was able to spirit out and surreptitiously send journalists a gargantuan collection of files, which were then analyzed by more than 400 reporters in secret over more than a year before a coordinated effort to go public.

Immigrant Family Near Refugee Camp Near Macedonian Border (Marko Djurica - Reuters)

[ REUTERS ] The documents detailed schemes involving an array of figures from friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin to relatives of the prime ministers of Britain, Iceland and Pakistan and as well as the president of Ukraine, journalists who received them said...

The Kremlin said the documents contained "nothing concrete and nothing new" while a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said his late father's reported links to an offshore company were a "private matter".

Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson could not immediately be reached for comment on the naming of his wife in connection with a secretive company in an offshore haven which brought opposition calls for him to resign. Pakistan denied any wrongdoing by the family of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after his daughter and son were linked to offshore companies...

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MEHR, MIT "WIE ES IST, DAS MODERNE LEBENS":   

Man escapes car dangling on Malibu cliff, only to be hit by bus

[ REUTERS ] A man who nearly drove his sports utility vehicle over a cliff in the posh beach front community of Malibu managed to escape his dangling car unharmed, only to be hit by a passing bus as he stumbled away from the wreckage, police said.

The victim, who was not identified by authorities, was conscious and breathing after being hit by the tour bus and he was transported to a hospital for treatment after the accident Saturday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said on its Facebook page. 

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MEHR, MIT "WIR VERLANGEN EINE ERKLAERUNG, HERRN"

Iceland's Prime Minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, resigned today as a result of revelations in the so-called 'Panama Papers' that a shell company owned by his wife held approximately $4.1 million US in shares of Icelandic banks which had failed during the 2008 worldwide financial crisis.

Ironically, Gunnlaugsson (which we assume means "Son Of A Gun") was originally elected PM after the 'Great Recession' caused Iceland's over-leveraged banks to fail, and the right-wing government then in power was removed by a social movement that included numerous street protests -- much like those held yesterday in Iceland's capital, Reykjavik, which demanded Gunnlaugsson's resignation.

UND NOCH IMMER MEHR -- ER HAT VERMESSEN

Iceland's Prime Minister, Sigmundur Gunderfundersson, did an about face and told the People that no, he won't be resigning after all, and referred them all to Tommy ("Suck On This") Friedman. 

The Apex Of Civilization

"I Feel I Have Died And Gone To Heaven"

(Discourtesy courtesy of the rootin' tootin' Financial Times)

England is flirting with giving The Proles a taste of money. As the Earl of Grantham reminds Robert Crawley in the first season of Downton Abbey, "We all have parts to play." Ours, presumably, is to touch our caps as a sign of deference and gratitude as the Guvnor's Bentley, with its smoked windows, glides past. High and Low their estates He hath ordered them.

“I feel as though I have died and gone to heaven,” said Britain’s skills minister in a recent speech, as he prepares to preside over the fastest rise in the minimum wage in the country’s history.

The new policy, which starts on Friday, will see the wages for low-paid workers rise four times faster than average earnings this year.

The world will be watching. Governments in many developed countries are turning to minimum wage policies as they try to deal with inequality and anaemic wage growth.

The stagnation in wages in recent years has been blamed on the rise of global competition, the decline in collective bargaining, a slowdown in productivity growth and the way in which technology has “hollowed out” some middle-skilled jobs.

The majority of income and wealth continues flowing to the upper 0.01%. Businesses have effectively frozen wages for 'individual contributors' while increasing managerial and (in particular) "executive" salaries and bonuses. The wages of hourly workers have likewise been kept low, to increase profits and (one would assume) those nice salary and bonus packages for the predators competitors in corporate life. 

Globalization curtailed the power of unions or nearly destroyed them in places (like 'Murrika) where the manufacturing base was gutted. Hourly wage workers lost effective representation. Prices for goods and services continue to rise (my experience tells me, much more than the "less than two per cent inflation" claimed by the Federal Reserve), and not only for costs of living -- but of social mobility: the cost of a college education. The ability to afford a home. The ability to afford technology our culture requires -- not only to navigate within it, but to compete in it.

Middle Class families have some disposable income (and more goods and services, and social mobility for their offspring), but it continues to shrink. Meanwhile, those working for hourly wages are effectively being locked into a cycle of poverty and revolving-credit debt. 

Someone determined that hourly employees should receive a higher minimum wage ... so they can afford to pay more to the businesses selling them goods and services.  So, governments present Minimum Wage "experiments", or increases in Minimum Wages they already allow -- but these increases are only Cost Of Living Adjustments. They don't allow more leisure time, saving for college, or any real changes in the basic standard of living.  Meanwhile, The Rich Get Rich / And The Poor Get Children...

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Per the Financial Times' graphic, it would appear that New Zealand (member of the Commonwealth, mind) is the Bestest Place On Earth For The Peasantry™ , as it takes a workingman only eighteen minutes to 'earn' his reward. My god, man -- at that rate, he (or she; let us be fair) may receive -- rounding up -- 27 Big Macs per day if they wish!

While in the failing empire of 'Murrika, a working person may receive, by comparison, only 12 of these precious treats each day. Well, better luck in the next go; what?

And is there any more fair measure of the Good which wage-earning chaps might aspire to than the "Big Mac"? Only in a Golden-Age, From-The-Manor-House view would the merits of modern civilization be measured in the number of minutes one must labor in order to "earn" a mass-produced sandwich with questionable nutritional value.  You Proles live well, we are told, because you may feast upon these.  And taste the irony, one would assume.

And people wonder why there is an excess of Bad Bad Crazy in the world.  Yes they do.

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MEHR, MIT LINK:  In the same vein, this should have it's own post -- but if you've ever wanted to take a short peek behind the curtain and see the machinery back there, read this carefully.

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In The Land Of Smiles

The Insufficiently Cheerful Shall Be Punished

Over at the Soul of America is a link to the Tomclarkblog, which had many photos (as it tends to) showing aspects of this world, and (if you've been good) a poem.

Because I'm a Dog with the digital equivalent of crayons, I get to play with these pictures because Photoshop Ist Meine Besser Freund, and because I can.  Don't like? Tell it to the Grand Theft Auto Deer.

And there are also a few other things I've found and brought back from the Intertubes for you.  Enjoy.

Herr Trumpo's appearance at a Based Ball game causes certain reactions from those in the immediate vicinity.  (Original photo:  Rick Scuteri / USA Today / Reuters)

Once upon a Tyme, when the world allowed their love.

"That's  'Yes, Mistress', slave !!" (Mr Fish)

Die Polizei are people, too, also, and workers . And a trip to the bathroom after being strapped into Tac gear isn't a picnic. And those Balaclava masks itch. (Original photo:  Christian Hartmann / Reuters)

Letting Pandas hang out with stuffed, fake bears presents certain existential issues.

(Original photo:  Joshua Paul / AP)

 Grand Theft Auto Deer vs. Gangbangers. 
The 'Bangers don't stand a chance:  Deer gonna Fuck You Up (NYT Online)

You will need to read Japanese, and upside down, to wrest the full Yucks from this picture.

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(Photo: Gemunu Amarasinghe / AP)

I meant to end with this image, which Mr Clark used to end his own post. He had opened it with photos of the partially sand-buried bodies of migrants from the Middle East, washed ashore on a beach near Tripoli, Libya -- this is a photo of a person in a small boat, rowing on Inva Lake near Yangon, Myanmar (Burma) in late February.

It's a reminder: even with all the most terrible things imaginable happening in the world, the Earth abides. We may be on our way out as a species; it may not abide for us. But scenes like this are part of the world we inhabit, now, and will continue, misty and calm, whether we're there to witness them or not.

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My Favourite Joke

The Annual Miracle Of Purim

(Actually, this has nothing to do with Purim. It is in fact my favorite joke, containing a willfully stupid grocier, a passive-aggressive waterfowl, and the tantalizing promise of nourishment.

(It's also a good general example of how The Universe treats us. It has a has a habit of returning, with the same questions, until we solve them -- and then hits us with a change-up at the end: Wow! Didn't see that coming!).

A LITTLE DUCK walks into a grocery store. He waddles up to the grocier and says, "Hey -- got any duck food?"

The grocier thinks. "Um, no," he says finally.

The Little Duck looks up at him. " 'kay," he says, and goes away.

The next day, the Little Duck was back. He waddles in, looks up at the grocier and says, "Hey -- got any duck food?"   The grocier looks down at him; is this duck nuts? He was just in here!

"No!" the grocier says.  " 'kay," says the Little Duck, and he goes away.

The next day, the Little Duck was back. He waddles in, looks up at the grocier and says, "Hey -- got any duck food?"   The grocier spins around, looks down at him and says, "NO! I told ya -- I gots NO DUCK FOOD ! You come back in here askin' about duck food again and I'm gonna nail your little webbed feet to the floor!"

" 'kay," says the Little Duck, and he goes away.

The next day -- the Little Duck was back. He waddles in, looks up at the grocier and says, "Hey -- got any nails?"   The grocier thinks. "Um, no," he says.

The Little Duck shakes a little. "Ooo!  Okay ! Got any duck food?"

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The Collect Call Of Chtulu

When You're Lost In The Rain In Juarez

... and it's Eastertime, too.  Greg Stillson, GrandTurtlebear of the Church Of I Kill You !, may have been a Busy Wittle Evangelical Xtian; Oh Please let it be true. Break out the Good Popcorn.

REUTERS / WASHINGTON - Republican Ted Cruz on Friday denounced an article in the National Enquirer tabloid claiming he had extramarital affairs as "garbage, complete and utter lies" and accused his opponent Donald Trump of being the source of the story.

"It's tabloid smear, and it is a smear that has come from Donald Trump and his henchmen," Cruz told reporters at a press conference in Wisconsin, as the battle for the Republican presidential nomination reached new levels of personal rancor.

Trump issued a statement saying he was not responsible for the article. "I have nothing to do with the National Enquirer and unlike Lyin' Ted Cruz I do not surround myself with political hacks and henchman and then pretend total innocence," Trump said..

The National Enquirer, a tabloid known for its gossip and unflattering celebrity photos, published blurred images of five women with whom it said Cruz has had affairs. The newspaper did not name the women.

By Thursday afternoon, #CruzSexScandal was a worldwide trending topic on Twitter.

We have the Good Popcorn now, and will watch what happens next -- because, if you haven't been able to determine this on your own, an auto da-fe in America is a bit of a moveable feast: yesterday, Trumpo is all lit up; today, it's Stillson.  And the Corn Of Pone pops on as America's version of fascists stab publicly at each other; hee hee hee hee.

Shame that it signifies the continued unraveling of democracy here in the Respublik, but, hey; what are you going to do? You can't bite City Hall; it bites you.

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And No One Is Suprised

Crash Dick

Lehman Bros. CFO, Erin Callan (L), And CEO Dick, Circa 2008

As the 2008 Crash was still ongoing, the U.S. Congress (at that point, still controlled by Democrats) held hearings in the House Of Representatives; if the Crash had happened a year later, the Rethugs would have been in charge, and it's doubtful hearings would have been conducted.

One of the principal figures called to testify was Richard "Dick" Fuld, the CEO of Lehman Brothers -- before all the fun, valued in the multi-billions of dollars, the only "investment bank" to have utterly and completely failed when the Crash came, sending its employees into the street carrying cardboard boxes of personal items and a Thank You, then declaring bankruptcy in September, 2008.

His testimony came roughly three weeks later -- it had already been reported that Fuld would be paid $250 million in direct and indirect compensation for the year, before the bankruptcy was filed.

Mr. Fuld, by turns combative and contemplative, and often pained by interruptions of his answers, repeatedly denied that any misrepresentations [i.e., of the true value of CDOs being sold as investments to clients] took place. Even when confronted with internal documents that seemed to tell a different story, Mr. Fuld said he believed until five days before the Sept. 15 bankruptcy filing that Lehman remained in decent health.

“No, sir, we did not mislead our investors,” Mr. Fuld said in response to a question from Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, who wanted to know how Mr. Fuld’s public statements could be valid in light of efforts by JPMorgan Chase to secure $5 billion in extra collateral from Lehman in the final days.

“To the best of my ability at the time, given the information I had, we made disclosures that we fully believed were accurate,” Mr. Fuld said.

Now, Erin Callan, Lehman's Chief Financial Officer in the last eighteen-plus months before its collapse, has published a memoir of those times, "Full Circle". Callan had repeatedly warned both "Dick" and senior managers at Lehman that their exposure to toxic mortgage packaging in CDOs was not only "bad", but Ruh-Roh Bad. As the only woman in a testosterone-soaked boardroom atmosphere, not onkly was she being paid less, but "Dick" and his sycophantic buddies didn't feel they had to listen to her, either.

 This Little Piggie Had Roast Beef (Photo: Doug Mills / NYT)

When Callan ... took over as CFO, the plan to get rid of some commercial real estate assets was “in the 18th draft,” ... She pushes her colleagues harder on the topic pretty much from the start, a claim Callan substantiated by emails obtained by both the commission and the bankruptcy court examiner’s report penned by Anton Valukas...

Callan... was smacked down by the kind of diversionary tactics that men rarely are forced to confront in the workplace. These episodes are even more galling when recalling Fuld’s nickname: the Gorilla, so-called for a penchant for punchy patter... Callan nevertheless appears to be the only one who had the sexist card played against her – and at precisely the moment her persistence was most needed.

The New York Times in October, 2008 also noted,

While defending his own pay [~$500 Million between 2000 and the 2008 bankruptcy]...  Mr. Fuld was asked why Lehman approved nearly $20 million in payments for two departing executives about a week before the bankruptcy filing...

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The committee also released e-mail messages sent in June [2008] in which Mr. Fuld and George H. Walker, a Lehman executive and cousin of President Bush, responded in what Mr. Waxman called a mocking tone to a suggestion that executives at the company decline bonuses.

In November, 2008, "Dick" transferred ownership of the principal home he shared with his wife, bought by them in 2004 for $13.75 Million, to her for the sum of $100. He was named by Conde Nast Portfolio as the "worst American CEO of all time".  Fuld has not been barred as a securities trader and has continued to operate unhindered in the financial sphere since the Crash.

Lehman Bros. London Office Sign, Auctioned At Christie's, 2012

Callan saves one surprise [in her book] for the end. In January 2015, Fuld called her. It was their first contact since she left Lehman. He apologized for leaving her “on my own to handle things” and told her he still thought she was the best choice to be CFO... Fuld at the time, however, was months away from making his first public speech since Lehman’s collapse. He again would blame everyone but himself for the bank’s collapse. 

There was a crime, but no punishment. "Dick" lives very comfortably -- as do the heads of the Five Families, the Dimons and Blankfeins. Tens of millions of Americans (so far; you think this is over?) have been savaged by the greed and sociopathology of people like him.

Everyone knows what the Crash was like; c'mon, folks, you lived through it. This was less than eight years ago. And none of these persons have spent one day in jail -- think about that.

And -- very little has changed to prevent another Crash from happening again. Think about that.

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Lives Matter

Noch Einmal

Photo: Brussels, March 22, 2016 (Charles Platiau / Reuters)

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Am Grünen Strand Der Spree

Frühling

(Photo: Ebertstrasse, Berlin; ©Wikimedia Common)

 Unter Den Linden, Lovis Corinth, 1922

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Random Barking: Reposting Friday

The World Is A Box Full 'O Bad Crazy Weekend

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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