Weimar Couture

& Capital (Offense) Accounting

Google searches here, photo credits after the break*

“The Corporate
Psychopaths Theory of the
Global Financial Crisis”
- Clive R. Boddy

Lest anyone mistake an association of RT's Capital Account and its stunningly perspicacious and intrepid host Lauren Lyster with this rogue's gallery due to their proximity herewith, DON'T.

As the embedded clip demonstrates from its edit point (24+ minutes into the video) I could not be in broader agreement with Ms. Lyster and company's appraisal of the current state of financial and political malfeasance and corruption at play in our benighted land.

Watch the whole video. Watch Capital Account every weekday night. It's a brilliant brick of reason and reportage tossed at the heads of those shown (above) here. The paper linked below the video is, also, more than a little apropos.

frebaYse economy journalism

The greater the Occupy resistence grows, and it will in direct proportion to an early spring thaw and continued marathon of the meretricious Republican primary pretenders, the harder is the top down sales invective from our corporate overlords.

No longer subjecting myself to the horrors of American broadcast/cable media, I'm thankfully ignorant of it's current state. There's a framework in play and if you're working for the crony capitalists that own the prole feeding news outlets, you know how to keep your job.

Just don't report on anything too substantively critical of the paymasters.

I weighed the options. And hesitated. It is one thing to be arrested as an independent journalist in a centrally located public square, where mainstream news cameras and spectators function as Klieg lights. They increase the likelihood that police officers involved will be held accountable. But it is another to get arrested in more distant outposts. Working journalists, after all, have been corralled and arrested, and occasionally punched, at demonstrations around the country, some on videotape. I often wonder about other independent journalists who have tried to cover Occupy events in out-of-the-limelight spaces. I also wonder about the communities who rely on them, and on student journalists, for news coverage that speaks to their particular concerns. “The news landscape has changed to the point where grassroots media is more important” than ever, argues Susan Mernit, editor-in-chief of the Oakland Local, a three-year-old startup that uses freelance and citizen journalists.

“How to Chill the Independent Journalist ”

Infantilizing Gadget Tree

Yeah, I use my spell-checker, but seriously...

I started poking around with a WiFi Kindle the other day for someone who's a generation or two removed from the Internet and was struck by how clunky and unresponsive it was to my “tapping.” Not only was it's general performance less than stellar, but entering text in search boxes and form fields was a gruesome adventure in learning, apparently, how much larger my fingers are compared to the demographic the Kindle's design team had in mind. I'm not a gadget-head, and so I can only judge the experience through my highly circumscribed interaction with the products I see walking (into me) down the street.

Season Of The Twits

Doll Steak

Test Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeat !

In Nocte

Mish → Stansberry

→ Hues of Context

Fatally Flawed Approaches to the Budget Deficit and Taxes;
Debt Will Swell
Under 3 of 4 Republican Hopefuls'
Tax Plans
↓
The Corruption of America
↓

Money is a disease, power an affliction.*

Where you're coming from determines what you'll see, and who you are shapes your perception. I agree with the broad outlines of Stansberry's argument, but question some of his assumptions and many of the conclusions found within the article at the second link above. The first assumption I take issue with is a certain unenlightened disinterest in vogue with  reactionary polemicists' arguments for the elimination of progressive taxation. Ironically this is a seamless fit with the general theme of “entitlement” as the source of widespread corruption in America.

Nothing Exceeds ...

... like

It is no accident that Americans cling to this dream. It involves American self-love on some deep, disastrously adolescent level. And Americans are very carefully and deliberately conditioned to believe this fantasy: by their politicians, by the news they get and the way they read it, by the movies and the television screen, and by every aspect of the popular culture. ... The brainwashing is so thorough that blunt, brutal reality stands not a chance against it...

James Baldwin - No Name In The Street p. 160

Disciples Of The Heart

Against this supercharged backdrop, the Anoka-Hennepin school district finds itself in the spotlight not only for the sheer number of suicides but because it is accused of having contributed to the death toll by cultivating an extreme anti-gay climate. “LGBTQ students don't feel safe at school,” says Anoka Middle School for the Arts teacher Jefferson Fietek, using the acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning. “They're made to feel ashamed of who they are. They're bullied. And there's no one to stand up for them, because teachers are afraid of being fired.”

“One Town's War on Gay Teens”

“l'enfer, c'est les autres”

The Rhyme Of The Ancient Historian

He is seeking to exorcise a history which is also a curse. He wants the old order, which came into existence through unchecked greed and wanton murder, to redeem itself without further bloodshed—without, that is, any further menacing itself—and without coercion. This, old orders never do, less because they would not than because they cannot. They cannot because they have always existed in the relation to a force which they have had to subdue. This subjugation is the key to their identity and the triumph and justification of their history, and it is also on this continued subjugation that their material well-being depends. One may see the history, which is now indivisible from oneself, has been full of errors and excesses; but this is not the same thing as seeing that, for millions of people, this history—oneself—has been nothing but an intolerable act, a stinking prison, a shrieking grave. It is not so easy to see that, for millions of people, life itself depends on the speediest possible demolition of this history, even if this means the leveling, or the destruction of its heirs. And whatever this history may have given to to the subjugated is of absolutely no value, since they have never been free to reject it; they will never even be able to assess it until they are free to take from it what they need, and to add to history the monumental fact of their presence. The South African coal miner, or the African digging for roots in the bush, or the Algerian mason working in Paris, not only to have no reason to bow down before Shakespeare, or Descartes, or Westminster Abbey, or the Cathedral at Chartres: they have, once these monuments intrude on their attention, no honorable access to them. Their apprehension of this history cannot fail to reveal to them that they have been robbed, maligned, and rejected: to bow down before that history is to accept that history's arrogant and unjust judgement.

This is why, ultimately, all attempts at dialogue between the subdued and subduer, between those placed within history and those dispersed outside, break down.

James Baldwin

Physical Graffiti

“Oil Fuel Gold GDP S&P House”

	Series		Oil Fuel Gold GDP S-P House Physical Graffiti	(Scale) Size		Period	ƒ(x)
1	OILPRICE		Spot Oil Price: West Texas Intermediate	5	Solid	M	Chg, $/brl
2	IQ11110		Export (End Use): Fuel oil	3	Solid	M	% Chg fYA
3	U6RATENSA		Total unemployed, plus *	3	Solid	M	Index (scV 100 fcp)‡
4	GVZCLS		CBOE Gold ETF Volatility Index	1	Solid	D, , cl	Chg fYA, %
5	IQ12260		Export (End Use): Nonmonetary gold	3	Solid	M	% Chg fYA
6	GDP		Gross Domestic Product, 1 Decimal	4	Solid	Q	% Chg fYA
7	SP500		S&P 500 Index	1	Solid	D	% Chg fYA
8	USSTHPI		House Price Index for the United States	4	Solid	Q	Index (scV 100 fcp)‡
9	SP500 / OILPRICE		S&P 500 / OILPRICE	3	Dotted	M	Index / ($/brl)
10	MSPNHSUS / OILPRICE		Median Sales Price for New Houses / OILPRICE †	3	Dotted	M	x / 1000

* all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons
‡ (scale value to 100 for chosen period = Recession Trough Nov 1, 2011
† us$1,000

How do you spend your time here?

Me? I do subversive re-writes of advertising.

We're All “Brothers” Now

No Name In The Street (1972)

I told him that Americans had no business at all in Vietnam; and that black people certainly had no business there, aiding the slave master to enslave yet more millions of dark people, and also identifying themselves with the white American crimes: we, the blacks, are going to need our allies, for the Americans, odd as it may sound at the moment, will presently have none. It wasn't, I said, hard to understand why a black boy, standing, future-less on the corner, would decide to join the Army, nor was it hard to decipher the slave master's reasons for hoping that he wouldn't live to come home with a gun; but it wasn't necessary, after all, to defend it: to defend, that is, one's murder and one's murderers. “Wait a minute,” he said, “let me stand up an tell you what I think we're trying to do there.” “We?” I cried, “what motherfucking we? You stand up, motherfucker, and I'll kick you in the ass.”

James Baldwin

Old Testament Nation

Jai guru deva om

Emphasis is mine.

There are many reasons to be horrified by prison assault — and sexual assault generally — but the degree to which it’s enmeshed in the American consciousness as just part of our system of “justice” is particularly disturbing. While it looks to me like more women than men are sexually assaulted every year, it is clear that entering the prison system greatly increases your chances of being sexually assaulted, regardless of your gender. And however you cut the statistics, it is clear that men in the United States are sexually assaulted in enormous numbers — they’re just men who we don’t care so much about, or who society has decided deserves it.

*

Mish Math i

Shed's (Disability Fraud) Spread

	Series		Mish Math i	(Scale) Size		Period	ƒ(x)
1	LNU00074597		Population with a Disability *	4	Solid	M	Thousands of Persons
2	GDP		Gross Domestic Product, 1 Decimal	2	Solid	Q	% Chg fYA
3	U6RATE		Total unemployed, plus ‡	4	Solid	M	%
4	UNRATENSA		Civilian Unemployment Rate	4	Solid	M	%
5	UNRATENSA * 1.377		Mish-timated Unemp. Rate with 25% Fraud	5	Dotted	M	% * 1.377
6	UNRATENSA * 1.125		Mish-timated Unemp. Rate with 10% Fraud	5	Dashed	M	% * 1.125

* Civilian Noninstitutional, 16 years and over
‡ all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons

DEF CON Artistry

Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo Echo Delta

	Series		DEF CON huh ?	(Scale) Size		Period	ƒ(x)
1	DGI		Federal National Defense Gross Investment	2	Solid	Q	Chg fYA, Bil $
2	DGIC96		Real National Defense Gross Investmen	3	Solid	Q	Bil Chd2005 $
3	FDEFX		National Defense Consumption Expend. & Gross Investment	2	Solid	Q	% Chg fYA
4	FGRECPT		Federal Government Current Receipts	2	Solid	Q	Bil $
5	FGEXPND		Federal Government: Current Expenditures	1	Solid	Q	% Chg fYA
6	GDP		Gross Domestic Product, 1 Decimal	2	Solid	~A	Bil $
7	FYGFD		Gross Federal Debt	2	Solid	A, FY	Bil $
8	DGIC96/FYGFD		(#2 / #7) Defense Gross Investment / Gross Federal Debt	3	Dotted	A	Bil Chd2005 $ ‡
9	FGRECPT/FYGFD		(#4 / #7) Current Receipts / Gross Federal Debt	3	Dashed	A	x * 100
10	FGEXPND/FYGFD		(#5 / #7) Current Expenditures / Gross Federal Debt	3	Dashed	A	x * 100

‡ (*5000)-6

WFKATGWOT

“... the war formerly known as the global war on terrorism ...”

Furthermore, acting on behalf of the United States, the president exercises this supposed right without warning, without regard to claims of national sovereignty, without Congressional authorization, and without consulting anyone other than Michael Vickers and a few other members of the national security apparatus. The role allotted to the American people is to applaud, if and when notified that a successful assassination has occurred. And applaud we do, for example, when a daring raid by members in SEAL Team Six secretly enter Pakistan to dispatch Osama bin Laden with two neatly placed kill shots. Vengeance long deferred making it unnecessary to consider what second-order political complications might ensue.

“Scoring the Global War on Terror”

But, it's all good, because there is a "bipartisan" group of senators who agree that Assad is a monster and because John McCain, World Leader, is in Cairo, using his well-known diplomatic talents to smooth over relations with another of our important allies in "the war on terror," a phrase that one day is going to send historians spiraling into fits of uncontrollable laughter.

“Waiting For A Friend”

“War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.”

Ambrose Bierce

via Juan Cole's Informed Comment

Ring of Iranian Bases Threatens US

US Interventions in the World since WW II

& via Tom Dispatch

Andrew Bacevich, Uncle Sam, Global Gangster

So... “what's on the television, then?”