Safe haven

Friday October 30, 2009

. . . .It's Friday, the end of what's been an almost impossible two weeks for me, but we're rolling on up to it now. It is Halloween Eve after all.

. . . .I like Bill Maher's take on Halloween. "Let's be honest here now, Halloween is an excuse to finally dress like a hooker."

. . . .For all the pertinents, i.e. if you're reading this in the Facebook Notes, or as a feed, and how to get to the external site for the music; if you're looking for some information on the permanent site for my Mom's tribute page and how that'll be set up, or how to turn the podcast/playlist/soundtrack on and off to watch embedded videos, scroll down and catch the opening paragraphs of the last couple of days.

. . . .Today is momentous at your local multiplex. Today, October 30th, Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day opens up. If you've never seen Boondock Saints, of course, you have no idea what I'm talking about, and you've not seen one of the best movies ever produced. In fact, if you've not seen the first one, put it in your Netflix or Blockbuster order list.

. . . .On the tech front, I've found it pretty interesting to track the progress of the H1N1 virus using the Google Flu Trends map, but it gets realllly interesting when you compare that one with a new type of map, TrendsMap, which maps Twitter chatter and tweets. Using viral tracking techniques within social media is actually far more accurate than hospital or doctor's reports, which aren't real-time, but are cumulative from the past weeks. These two maps are real-time.

. . . . . .Onto the biggest news of the last couple of days, first a chart, then all the analyses, and finally my own. From Ezra Klein in the Washington Post:

Good news for people who like good news

"Knock knock."

"Who's there?"

"Quarterly GDP."

"Sigh. Quarterly GDP who?"

"Quarterly GDP growth, yo! I'm back!"

. . . . Reaction from Andrew Sullivan:

A Stimulus Upswing Of 9.9 Percent Since Obama Took Office

[At] long last, the American economy is growing again. Jobs, however, are still tricky to come by. Initial jobless claims declined by 1,000 from the previous week, but remain 10,000 about their level on October 10. Continuing claims fell to their lowest level since March, but this primarily reflects the exhaustion of benefits; workers receiving extended benefits are not counted in the total. So while the end to contraction has stopped the labour market bleeding, recovery has yet to begin the healing. Growth is good, but absent job creation it is difficult to get too excited.

Jon Hilsenrath of the WSJ is worried that the rebound is unsustainable. But please try and get some perspective. Only six months ago, we were afraid the entire global economy would be in a continued death spiral by now. It isn't. One reason is that the Bush and Obama administrations pushed through emergency - and expensive - programs to prevent a second Great Depression. They may not be enough; and the deleveraging of the Bush debt (public and private) may take a while. But this is a real and tangible gain, given the very real likelihood of total meltdown only a few months ago. It is not cheer-leading to note that. Much much more is needed to tell if this recovery is self-sustaining. But a 3.5 percent gain is better than a 6.4 loss. In fact,

The two-quarter swing in the rate of growth of 9.9 percentage points was the largest since 1980.

. . . .Yglesias, with Christian Romer's take on the numbers:

CEA Chief Christina Romer blogs on the GDP numbers:

After four consecutive quarters of decline, positive GDP growth is an encouraging sign that the U.S. economy is moving in the right direction. However, this welcome milestone is just another step, and we still have a long road to travel until the economy is fully recovered. The turnaround in crucial labor market indicators, such as employment and the unemployment rate, typically occurs after the turnaround in GDP. And it will take sustained, robust GDP growth to bring the unemployment rate down substantially. Such a decline in unemployment is, of course, what we are all working to achieve.

One of the things that makes American politics weird is that nobody in the administration is really supposed to talk about the fact that this is much more up to Ben Bernanke than it is up to Barack Obama. There’s disagreement as to whether expansionary monetary policy should be halted as soon as GDP starts growing or else should be continued until we have unemployment a few percentage points lower. This is a very important debate. But it’s a debate over which the country’s elected officials have extremely little formal influence.

. . . . .Paddy over at The Political Carnival:

Another topic that won't be mentioned on Fox today.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The U.S. economy grew at a 3.5% annual rate in the third quarter, ending a string of declines over four quarters that resulted in the most severe slide since the Great Depression.

The growth, reported by the government Thursday morning, was slightly stronger than expectations. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast 3.2% growth in gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation's economic activity. The economy shrank at a 0.7% rate in the second quarter.

The positive GDP report is one more sign that the economy has likely pulled out of the deep recession that started in December 2007.

. . . .Cesca, with the last word:

We're not feeling it yet, but in a technical sense the recession is done. GDP grew last quarter by 3.5 percent. The first growth in the economy since 2007.

Griping from wingnuts about how it would've been higher and sooner had there been no economic stimulus plan in 5... 4... 3... 2...

. . . . And now, the important take on it, the one from Krugman, who, along with Roubini, spent since 2005 predicting all of the meltdown that would occur, by the numbers, in order, with everyone calling them doomsayers, which they weren't, and specifically, Krugman, who was screaming for a larger stimulus package from the beginning. Was he right? Yes, the numbers say so, and sheer fundamental economic principle. When private spending dries up, as it did when the speculative credit bubble burst and AIG punched a $50 billion (in real, honest to god paper dollars) hole in the fabric of the universe. His take on all of it, from the New York Times on Thursday, with a much more important chart:

Growth and jobs

Just a quick note on the GDP report. Obviously, 3.5 percent growth is a lot better than shrinkage. But it’s not enough — not remotely enough — to make any real headway against the unemployment problem. Here’s the scatterplot of annual growth versus annual changes in the unemployment rate over the past 60 years:

BEA, BLS

Basically, we’d be lucky if growth at this rate brought unemployment down by half a percentage point per year. At this rate, we wouldn’t reach anything that feels like full employment until well into the second Palin administration.

. . . .My own take? It is extremely simple and I've said the same thing time and time again. A recovery that does not include jobs is not a recovery. The top 1% of Americans making money again utilizing the same fast and loose de-regulated shady derivative trading practices while more and more people lose their homes and declare bankruptcy is not a recovery. There is no recovery period, in a country that has lost it's manufacturing base as it was shipped overseas along with jobs. This is not a recovery, and personally, I'll go a step further and state that these GDP figures are extremely early, and in light of the fact that they follow the first time in history that GDP was negative for 4 consecutive quarters makes all of the celebration a little premature. I maintain this, that 2010 will be even worse than 2009 with a steeper decline and bigger crash as all the commercial mortgages come due at the end of the year and they can't be paid, and go into default and foreclosure.

. . . .Now that's where we've been, and maybe where it's headed, but let's take a look at where we're at economically right here, right now.

. . . .Yglesias, on the type of society that we've built, and myth of upward mobility, (which was touched on here earlier this week talking about the Billionaire Bailout society), and the best part is, the analysis comes from the very conservative Brookings Institution:

Pete Davis mentions a new book that sounds interesting. He observes that we like to think of the United States as a land of opportunity, “but a new book, Creating an Opportunity Society, by Ron Haskins and Belle Sawhill of the Brookings Institution proves otherwise.”

That’s what we like to think, but a new book, Creating an Opportunity Society, by Ron Haskins and Belle Sawhill of the Brookings Institution proves otherwise. They took a close look at intergenerational mobility and found that 42% of American men with fathers in the bottom income quintile remain there as compared to: Denmark, 25%; Sweden, 26%; Finland, 28%; Norway, 28%; and the United Kingdom, 30%. They present a wealth of new and old research evidence to support the conclusion that if you’re born poor in America, you’re likely to remain poor.

This basic result has been known for quite some time, at least in liberal circles (conservatives like Greg Mankiw believe the U.S. is ruled by a genetic aristocracy). And the interpretation seems pretty clear. The high level of income inequality in the United States leads to highly unequal opportunities for American children, whereas the low levels of income inequality in Nordic countries lead to more equal outcomes.

Davis says the book “is not a liberal polemic,” but I’m not really sure where else any analysis of this issue would lead you. One of the co-authors, Ron Haskins, has definite conservative credentials so I’ll be interested to see what kind of conservative ideas are in here, but “make America more like Sweden” doesn’t strike me as a very promising foundation for bipartisanship.

. . . .And Ezra Klein, with another take on how we arrived at the financial fiasco that we're all living in:

I'm a bit late on John Cassidy's thoughtful overview of the financial crisis, but it echoes Henry Blodget's take, not to mention my own:

Imagine that you and another armed man have been arrested and charged with jointly carrying out a robbery. The two of you are being held and questioned separately, with no means of communicating. You know that, if you both confess, each of you will get ten years in jail, whereas if you both deny the crime you will be charged only with the lesser offense of gun possession, which carries a sentence of just three years in jail. The best scenario for you is if you confess and your partner doesn’t: you’ll be rewarded for your betrayal by being released, and he’ll get a sentence of fifteen years. The worst scenario, accordingly, is if you keep quiet and he confesses.

What should you do? The optimal joint result would require the two of you to keep quiet, so that you both got a light sentence, amounting to a combined six years of jail time. Any other strategy means more collective jail time. But you know that you’re risking the maximum penalty if you keep quiet, because your partner could seize a chance for freedom and betray you. And you know that your partner is bound to be making the same calculation. Hence, the rational strategy, for both of you, is to confess, and serve ten years in jail. In the language of game theory, confessing is a “dominant strategy,” even though it leads to a disastrous outcome.

In a situation like this, what I do affects your welfare; what you do affects mine. The same applies in business. When General Motors cuts its prices or offers interest-free loans, Ford and Chrysler come under pressure to match GM’s deals, even if their finances are already stretched. If Merrill Lynch sets up a hedge fund to invest in collateralized debt obligations, or some other shiny new kind of security, Morgan Stanley will feel obliged to launch a similar fund to keep its wealthy clients from defecting. A hedge fund that eschews an overinflated sector can trail its rivals, and lose its major clients. So you can go bust by avoiding a bubble. As Charles Prince and others discovered, there’s no good way out of this dilemma. Attempts to act responsibly and achieve a cooperative solution cannot be sustained, because they leave you vulnerable to exploitation by others. If Citigroup had sat out the credit boom while its rivals made huge profits, Prince would probably have been out of a job earlier. The same goes for individual traders at Wall Street firms. If a trader has one bad quarter, perhaps because he refused to participate in a bubble, the results can be career-threatening.

Thomas Frank calls this a "smart-for-one, dumb-for-all" problem. What's rational for the individual is fatal for the collective. It's why we'll never get rid of bubbles. They don't rely on people being stupid, or even evil. They just rely on irrational profit streams that are then tapped by rational imitators. This is why the most important aspect of financial regulation is crude, strong limits on leverage so no single bank can owe enough money that the system relies on its health. We can't protect against the occasional fire. But we can protect against it consuming everything in the neighborhood.

. . . .Which does nothing more than echo my own position on why, even as a free-market proponent, I scream for regulation of Wall Street and the speculators and am willing to storm the battlements to get the anti-trust exemption removed from the health insurance companies. The day that corporations were legally ruled to be a unique entity (1963 Supreme Court) with all the rights and privileges of any other citizen, and those "citizens", those "entities", received special treatment, laws, and privileges different than other flesh and blood entities and citizens, all capitalist and free-market priniciples were thrown out the window and we started marching down this road towards a corporatist state. Reaganomics was a total failure, and there has been nothing but a disaster from day One using trickle-down and supply-side economics. Those corporate "individuals" were treated differently in tax law, the ability to move profits offshore untaxed, in regulation and in privilege than the voting citizens of this Republic, and did so solely to profit themselves, and not be contributing members of the Republic. There's two things here, (a) the video below and (b) an upcoming Supreme Court ruling next week, which has been flying under the radar, that will if decided the way it most likely will go, will cement forever the corporatist state that we now live in, and seal off forever, the rights of the individual. You've all been too busy paying attention to everything else that they want you to pay attention to even know about it. Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, which could be on the docket as early as next Tuesday, Nov. 3 could well seal off the citizens of this Republic forever from their own government. The United States Supreme Court will more than likely lift the ban on corporate political spending, at which point we truly will have become the United States of Goldman-Sachs, GE and AHIP. The $1.6 billion in lobbying money that AHIP threw at the members of Congress in the run-up to the Health Care Debate will be chump change. The $6 billion dollars spent lobbying and in campaign contributions this last election cycle will be a tiny figure, and no vote in Congress will ever again have the voice of the people as any influence at all on it.

. . . Now, this video (remember, go up to the top left where the podcast is, and pause it, middle button) comes via Taibbi, from the MonkeyBusiness blog. Fair warning, it's loaded with f-bombs, rants and raves, but the guy is a genius, uses a bat, fer Chrissake, knows the data, is loud and gets the entire overall, 30 year pattern that's taken shape by a government (both parties) that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman-Sachs and JP Morgan Chase:

"Hell, It Takes Even Eli Manning Six Years to Make a Hundred Million Dollars!"

Get a bat and turn the music up. Then cut up your credit cards and send them back from where they came with a big GFY message....and pull your money out of the big boys and put it in the local community bank...if you can find one. I love this guy. Lots of F-bombs so be forewarned.

. . . .It is profane, loud and dead-on. I love this guy, he's saying the same shit I've been saying for years now, and he's saying it loud, and he's right. I feel like I just met a long-lost twin brother of a different mother.

. . . .A word real quick here about health care reform, since I've been surprisingly quiet about it, for me at least, all week. Both bills, the Senate and House versions suck, and here's why. The Senate version, despite it's public option, mandates coverage, which ultimately, without breaking the anti-trust exemption of the health care insurance companies, will lead to them price-fixing as a cartel. The House version is worse, with a very weak option, that ultimately leads to the government mandating the prices for health care, and does not provide a true public option, which in a marketplace setting would force lowered costs and value, instead, government wonks will set pricing, which ultimately will lead to disaster.

. . . .It's been almost a week since I went after one of my favorite used-to-be wingnut headliners, but once again, Caribou Barbie proves that she knows absolutely nothing of politics, and is in the game for one thing and one thing only, attention and money. (Kind of like the $300,000 dollars she took from the Chinese government to speak in Hong Kong, with no press there. Can you say Manchurian Candidate?). From The Political Carnival:

Iowa Republicans wince at Sarah Palin's $100K speaking fee

"Really, really odd". Yep, she is.

A conservative Iowa group’s effort to lure Sarah Palin to its banquet next month has had an unintended effect: Rather than exciting conservatives about the prospect of a visit from the former Alaska governor, the group’s plan to raise a six-figure sum to bring her to the state has GOP activists recoiling at the thought of paying to land a politician's speaking appearance.

(snip)

But representatives from other Iowa-based political advocacy groups said they would never consider shelling out money for what many politicians see as a privilege: the opportunity to speak to a room full of sure-fire caucus-goers who often serve as precinct captains and can be instrumental to a presidential candidate’s success.

“If somebody tells me they want me to pay an appearance fee, it tells me they’re not very serious about running for president,” said Ed Failor, Jr., president of Iowans for Tax Relief and an influential GOP insider.

“I found it really, really odd,” Failor said.

. . . .Here's what the tundra's favorite attention whore quitter will find out; that the wingnuts who touch themselves and wince whenever her name is mentioned will, and have, already turned the enslaved eyes towards Newt Gingrich, the grandfather of their movement, now that he's thrown his hat in the ring already. I full well realize that there is a tiny cult element of the hard-right that snake-handles, speaks in tongues and prays daily for her to be President, but face it slaves, she just wants to cash in. Buh-bye bitch!!

. . . .Now, let's contrast that crass, ignorant, cash-hungry wannabe caribou with this.

. . . .I remember being absolutely appalled that George W. Bush never attended a military funeral in his entire time in office, basically his entire time that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were being prosecuted. I remember being furious that he would not allow the media to cover military men and women who had paid the ultimate sacrifice coming home. The only thing I distinctly remember is the ridiculous picture of GWB in a flight uniform standing on a carrier deck with a "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him, and 3,000 more deaths over the years in front of him.

Wednesday night at midnight, the Air Force base at Dover:

. . . Agree or disagree with this man, but he, at least compared to his predecessor, knows and understands the consequences of his policy decisions.

. . . .. . . .And that's the way it is:

. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.

. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.

. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.


. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.

. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.

. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.

. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.

. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.

. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.

. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.

. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.

. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.

. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.


. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.

. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.

. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.

. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.

The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell

You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .

[where: Gregory, MI 48137]