A Monk at the Door

Santa Day 2011

2011-12-12T18:44:00.001-08:00

Check out this website I found at plus.google.com

The Growth of the Artist, By Stages

2011-11-27T01:59:00.001-08:00

Check out this website I found at issuu.com

http://issuu.com/mike_finley/docs/ms_-_the_growth_of_the_artist?mode=window&v...

Dayton Names Joyce Sutphen as Minnesota's Laureate

2011-08-23T17:00:00.001-07:00

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Joyce Sutphen is a very readable, very likable poet who will make an irresistible ambassador for Minnesotans. She will put the lariate to laureate.

Birmingham for Tariq Jahan by Carol Ann Duffy | UK news | guardian.co.uk

2011-08-13T06:52:00.001-07:00

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Under the Sea - Free MP3 Download, Lyrics & Chords

2011-07-18T12:51:00.001-07:00

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Jason Mash - Sailing On The Sea ...

by Drgfe Asdfr

Sun rays over the Sea (Preview)

by Vince Bergeron

The Sea is Divided

by Kevin Fernald

Under the Rain

by Metehan

Under the Sun

by Burakcil

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"Under the Sea," by Jon Finley ... an older song recently refurbished

Mike Finley's Video Poems

2011-07-14T06:03:00.001-07:00

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I brightened up my page

YouTube - ‪something-dogs_0001.wmv‬&rlm

2011-06-10T08:41:00.001-07:00

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Something nice for the dogs

YouTube - ‪A Great One, by Mike Finley‬&rlm

2011-06-08T07:02:00.001-07:00

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A Great One ... it was anything that was great ... that gives you a thrill .. that lifts you out of your shoes ... you will recognize these pictures

YouTube - ‪Summer's End‬&rlm

2011-06-08T07:00:00.001-07:00

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I created this frame for a piece I wrote about the end of summer ... but I liked the frame so much I threw away the picture.

The Kinks - Tired of Waiting

2011-03-08T22:10:00.001-08:00

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An analysis of the military perspective

2011-03-08T22:00:00.001-08:00

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Who called Koch robbin

2011-03-08T21:54:00.001-08:00

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The reason why

2011-03-08T19:22:00.001-08:00

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The Doors Yes, The River Knows

2011-03-08T18:49:00.001-08:00

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Jr Walker & Allstars - Shotgun

2011-03-08T18:47:00.001-08:00

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China newspaper says Charlie Sheen has embarrassed his president father

2011-03-08T17:58:00.001-08:00

Home >> Beijing >> Two Cents >> Opinion

Charlie Sheen is not filial

Source: Global Times

[10:34 March 07 2011]

Comments

By Hao Leifeng

Actor Charlie Sheen is a classic example of the difference in Western and Eastern values and norms.

Ignoring public pleas from his father, Sheen has continued a weeklong media blitz, exhibiting obvious signs of mania. With no firm hand to guide them, Western media has deliberately goaded him into making increasingly delusional statements, more concerned about "winning" higher ratings than Sheen's own sense of pride, or the negative example his brash public admissions about his private sex life and unverifiable international conspiracies could be setting for society.

How many young people have been led astray by Sheen's boasts about his substance abuse and freewheeling sex life? And that was when he was in character on national television, as a randy bachelor in Two and a Half Men.

Sheen attracted 1 million Twitter followers in just 24 hours, yet more evidence that microblogs spread the most unhealthy contagions in society like a disease. Chinese family, coworkers, or the authorities would have taken firm steps to make sure someone like Sheen did not make a public spectacle of himself.

Take Edison Chen, who humbly apologized and slipped away to Canada. Or Li Gang's father, who wept as he sought forgiveness on his son's behalf.

The fact that Sheen continues to embarrass himself unabated, becoming even a hero to many, points to the vast differences in cultures.

His employers are unhappy that he was distracted with prostitutes and drugs, and didn't show up to work on time. Why not take a tip from the Chinese business community, and make visits to a KTV parlor part of Sheen's workday?

And instead of epic parties at his home with porn stars, why not keep Sheen occupied with business banquets?

Sheen goes on television and boasts that he has two girlfriends, who both sleep in the same bedroom. Is he too poor to set up his wives and mistresses in different houses?

In Chinese society, these problems are dealt with delicately and privately. Sheen is like a typical Westerner throwing fuel on the fire with each interview and tweet. It is almost as if he feels no shame and is loving the attention.

Racism, spousal abuse, addiction, politics, mental illness, boasting about mistresses, - these are all subjects best dealt with behind closed doors.

As much as Sheen has lived a life most Chinese men can only fantasize about, our admiration of him can only go so far. He has not only lost face with his public rants, but also crossed a cultural barrier no Chinese can abide.

He ignored his own father's advice to keep quiet, who was once the president of the US. Sheen is a disgrace, unfilial to his father and his fatherland.

Martin Sheen should at once go on television and tearfully apologize on behalf of his son for his inability to keep up appearances and keep his mouth shut.

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If there is a God

2011-03-07T21:13:00.001-08:00

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Lives - The Tire Iron and the Tamale

2011-03-07T21:08:00.001-08:00

Each time, when these things happened, I was disgusted with the way people didn’t bother to help. I was stuck on the side of the freeway hoping my friend’s roadside service would show, just watching tow trucks cruise past me. The people at the gas stations where I asked for a gas can told me that they couldn’t lend them out “for safety reasons,” but that I could buy a really crappy one-gallon can, with no cap, for $15. It was enough to make me say stuff like “this country is going to hell in a handbasket,” which I actually said.
But you know who came to my rescue all three times? Immigrants. Mexican immigrants. None of them spoke any English.
One of those guys stopped to help me with the blowout even though he had his whole family of four in tow. I was on the side of the road for close to three hours with my friend’s big Jeep. I put signs in the windows, big signs that said, “NEED A JACK,” and offered money. Nothing. Right as I was about to give up and start hitching, a van pulled over, and the guy bounded out.
He sized up the situation and called for his daughter, who spoke English. He conveyed through her that he had a jack but that it was too small for the Jeep, so we would need to brace it. Then he got a saw from the van and cut a section out of a big log on the side of the road. We rolled it over, put his jack on top and we were in business.
I started taking the wheel off, and then, if you can believe it, I broke his tire iron. It was one of those collapsible ones, and I wasn’t careful, and I snapped the head clean off. Damn.
No worries: he ran to the van and handed it to his wife, and she was gone in a flash down the road to buy a new tire iron. She was back in 15 minutes. We finished the job with a little sweat and cussing (the log started to give), and I was a very happy man.
The two of us were filthy and sweaty. His wife produced a large water jug for us to wash our hands in. I tried to put a 20 in the man’s hand, but he wouldn’t take it, so instead I went up to the van and gave it to his wife as quietly as I could. I thanked them up one side and down the other. I asked the little girl where they lived, thinking maybe I’d send them a gift for being so awesome. She said they lived in Mexico. They were in Oregon so Mommy and Daddy could pick cherries for the next few weeks. Then they were going to pick peaches, then go back home.
After I said my goodbyes and started walking back to the Jeep, the girl called out and asked if I’d had lunch. When I told her no, she ran up and handed me a tamale.
This family, undoubtedly poorer than just about everyone else on that stretch of highway, working on a seasonal basis where time is money, took a couple of hours out of their day to help a strange guy on the side of the road while people in tow trucks were just passing him by.
But we weren’t done yet. I thanked them again and walked back to my car and opened the foil on the tamale (I was starving by this point), and what did I find inside? My $20 bill! I whirled around and ran to the van and the guy rolled down his window. He saw the $20 in my hand and just started shaking his head no. All I could think to say was, “Por favor, por favor, por favor,” with my hands out. The guy just smiled and, with what looked like great concentration, said in English: “Today you, tomorrow me.”
Then he rolled up his window and drove away, with his daughter waving to me from the back. I sat in my car eating the best tamale I’ve ever had, and I just started to cry. It had been a rough year; nothing seemed to break my way. This was so out of left field I just couldn’t handle it.
In the several months since then I’ve changed a couple of tires, given a few rides to gas stations and once drove 50 miles out of my way to get a girl to an airport. I won’t accept money. But every time I’m able to help, I feel as if I’m putting something in the bank.

Justin Horner is a graphic designer living in Portland, Ore. This essay was adapted from a message-board posting on reddit.com.

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Fastnacht

2011-03-07T21:03:00.001-08:00

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Op-Classic, 1992 - Homophobia and the Bible

2011-03-06T15:44:00.001-08:00

Every week, the Opinion section presents an essay from The Times's archive by a columnist or contributor that we hope sheds light on current news or provides a window on the past.

This week, we highlight an Op-Ed written by Peter J. Gomes, a Harvard University minister and theologian who died this week at the age of 68. You can read his obituary here.

August 17, 1992

Homophobic? Re-Read Your Bible

By PETER J. GOMES
Peter J. Gomes, an American Baptist minister, is professor of Christian morals at Harvard.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.
Opposition to gays' civil rights has become one of the most visible symbols of American civic conflict this year, and religion has become the weapon of choice. The army of the discontented, eager for clear villains and simple solutions and ready for a crusade in which political self-interest and social anxiety can be cloaked in morality, has found hatred of homosexuality to be the last respectable prejudice of the century.
Ballot initiatives in Oregon and Maine would deny homosexuals the protection of civil rights laws. The Pentagon has steadfastly refused to allow gays into the armed forces. Vice President Dan Quayle is crusading for "traditional family values." And Pat Buchanan, who is scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention this evening, regards homosexuality as a litmus test of moral purity.
Nothing has illuminated this crusade more effectively than a work of fiction, "The Drowning of Stephan Jones," by Bette Greene. Preparing for her novel, Ms. Greene interviewed more than 400 young men incarcerated for gay-bashing, and scrutinized their case studies. In an interview published in The Boston Globe this spring, she said she found that the gay-bashers generally saw nothing wrong in what they did, and, more often than not, said their religious leaders and traditions sanctioned their behavior. One convicted teen-age gay-basher told her that the pastor of his church had said, "Homosexuals represent the devil, Satan," and that the Rev. Jerry Falwell had echoed that charge.
Christians opposed to political and social equality for homosexuals nearly always appeal to the moral injunctions of the Bible, claiming that Scripture is very clear on the matter and citing verses that support their opinion. They accuse others of perverting and distorting texts contrary to their "clear" meaning. They do not, however, necessarily see quite as clear a meaning in biblical passages on economic conduct, the burdens of wealth and the sin of greed.
Nine biblical citations are customarily invoked as relating to homosexuality. Four (Deuteronomy 23:17, I Kings 14:24, I Kings 22:46 and II Kings 23:7) simply forbid prostitution, by men and women.
Two others (Leviticus 18:19-23 and Leviticus 20:10-16) are part of what biblical scholars call the Holiness Code. The code explicitly bans homosexual acts. But it also prohibits eating raw meat, planting two different kinds of seed in the same field and wearing garments with two different kinds of yarn. Tattoos, adultery and sexual intercourse during a woman's menstrual period are similarly outlawed.
There is no mention of homosexuality in the four Gospels of the New Testament. The moral teachings of Jesus are not concerned with the subject.
Three references from St. Paul are frequently cited (Romans 1:26-2:1, I Corinthians 6:9-11 and I Timothy 1:10). But St. Paul was concerned with homosexuality only because in Greco-Roman culture it represented a secular sensuality that was contrary to his Jewish-Christian spiritual idealism. He was against lust and sensuality in anyone, including heterosexuals. To say that homosexuality is bad because homosexuals are tempted to do morally doubtful things is to say that heterosexuality is bad because heterosexuals are likewise tempted. For St. Paul, anyone who puts his or her interest ahead of God's is condemned, a verdict that falls equally upon everyone.
And lest we forget Sodom and Gomorrah, recall that the story is not about sexual perversion and homosexual practice. It is about inhospitality, according to Luke 10:10-13, and failure to care for the poor, according to Ezekiel 16:49-50: "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy." To suggest that Sodom and Gomorrah is about homosexual sex is an analysis of about as much worth as suggesting that the story of Jonah and the whale is a treatise on fishing.
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The Bobby Fischer Defense by Garry Kasparov | The New York Review of Books

2011-03-06T13:09:00.001-08:00

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Smashing 'Demon Government' - JSOnline

2011-03-06T07:17:00.001-08:00

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John Gurda is a Wisconsin historian who inspired me, when I was living in Milwaukee in 1983, to junk PR and write books on my own.

Home Again, Home Again by Marilyn Taylor : American Life in Poetry

2011-03-06T07:09:00.001-08:00

Check out this website I found at americanlifeinpoetry.org

This'll get your day off to good start

2011-03-06T04:52:00.001-08:00

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What a splendid group of doers

2011-03-04T05:33:00.001-08:00

Obama Honors National Medal of Arts And Manatees

Why would John Edwards make a sex tape? I'm beginning to wonder about his judgment.

2011-03-03T10:33:00.001-08:00

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Ugh ugh ugh

2011-03-03T09:20:00.001-08:00

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Homage to Randy Newman

2011-03-03T06:45:00.001-08:00

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Beauty

2011-03-03T06:40:00.001-08:00

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Kurt Elling & Klüvers Big Band - Norwegian Wood HQ (Sweden '11)

2011-03-03T06:25:00.001-08:00

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some singing

Dreamland - Caetano Veloso

2011-03-03T06:17:00.001-08:00

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Andy Pratt - Can't Stop My Love

2011-03-03T06:14:00.001-08:00

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The Beach Boys - Funky Pretty

2011-03-03T06:12:00.001-08:00

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Morning Bus-Riding Thoughts

2011-03-03T05:35:00.001-08:00

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A good one by Mary Ellen Shaw

Klecko called out nationally for worst tattoo...EVER

2011-03-03T05:33:00.001-08:00

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I don't really understand the Reagan phenomenon. I think he was an actor, and he portrayed men behaving with courage and decent and humility, and it seeped into his political personality. But as to who he really was -- no one has a very clear picture of that. I am an admirer of Jimmy Carter, whom Reagan pretty much butt-raped. I see depth and genuineness and troubledness in Carter, where with Reagan, it is hard to get past the great image. I am aided by this that I lived in California during his tenure -- he was much more a redneck in California than he was as president.

Miss Dionne Warwick - Don't Make Me Over (Year 1967)

2011-03-03T04:57:00.001-08:00

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Balloons, by Mike Finley

2011-03-03T04:55:00.001-08:00

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Instructions for Falling, by Mike Finley

2011-03-03T04:54:00.001-08:00

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Brennan Vance Cinema Reel on Vimeo

2011-03-03T04:52:00.001-08:00

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Confronting the father with video

Writers No One Reads

2011-03-03T04:50:00.001-08:00

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General Monk and His Wife

2011-03-03T04:46:00.001-08:00

« James I. | Main | Philip and Mary »

General Monk and His Wife

FROM the same MS. collection of Sir Thomas Browne, I shall rescue another anecdote, which has a tendency to show that it is not advisable to permit ladies to remain at home, when political plots are to be secretly discussed. And while it displays the treachery of Monk’s wife, it will also appear that, like other great revolutionists, it was ambition that first induced him to become the reformer he pretended to be.

“Monk gave fair promises to the Rump, but last agreed with the French ambassador to take the government on himself; by whom he had a promise from Mazarin of assistance from France. This bargain was struck late at night; but not so secretly but that Monk’s wife, who had posted herself conveniently behind the hangings, finding what was resolved upon, sent her brother Charles away immediately with notice of it to Sir A. A. She had promised to watch her husband, and inform Sir A. how matters went. Sir A. caused the Council of State, whereof he was a member, to be summoned, and charged Monk that he was playing false. The general insisted that he was true to his principles, and firm to what he had promised, and that he was ready to give them all satisfaction. Sir A. told him if he were sincere he might remove all scruples, and should instantly take away their commissions from such and such men in his army, and appoint others, and that before he left the room. Monk consented; a great part of the commissions of his officers were changed, and Sir Edward Harley, a member of the council, and then present, was made governor of Dunkirk, in the room of Sir William Lockhart; the army ceased to be at Monk’s devotion; the ambassador was recalled, and broke his heart.”

Such were the effects of the infidelity of the wife of General Monk!

Posted by misteraitch at July 8, 2005 09:30 AM

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The wikipedia article on George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle (1608-70), doesn’t mention this incident. The Duchess of Albemarle’s name was Ann, née Clarges, a woman of ‘low extraction,’ reckoned by Samuel Pepys to be ‘ever a plain homely dowdy.’

Posted by: misteraitch at July 8, 2005 09:15 AM

¶ This article is repeated almost verbatim from its original in early (1790s) editions of the Curiosities.

Posted by: misteraitch at June 29, 2006 09:53 PM

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Monk gave fair promises to the Rump

Your Man For Fun In Rapidan: Richard Riggins, Grade Four: Revisited

2011-03-03T04:20:00.001-08:00

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The story of a young boy who misses his father. Good, albeit sad, work. Peace to young Richard Riggins!

If you have missed the fiction and essays of Brad Zellar you have a great treat in store for you. he has one of the surest writing voices I know.

Last American Baker: Kobe Bryant, Private Suites and Year of the Rabbit

2011-03-03T03:59:00.001-08:00

1 comments:

<img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_DkGmSl91nqc/Sip9QM44JBI/AAAAAAAACbQ/6h8d4bbIJ0g/S45/close-up.jpg" width="35" height="35" class="photo" alt="">
Mike and sometimes Rachel said...

Rachel is a rabbit, you know, so I am familiar with the quirks of that group.
People born in the Year of the Rabbit are articulate, talented, and ambitious. You are virtuous, reserved, and have excellent taste. You are typically admired, trusted, and are often financially lucky. You are fond of gossip but tactful about it and too kind to be destructive. Rabbit people seldom fly off the handle. You are clever at business and being conscientious, you would never back out of a contract! You would make good gamblers for they have the uncanny gift of choosing the right thing. Nevertheless, you don't gamble often, as you are by nature conservative and discreet. Rabbits have been known to lie with woolly Sheep, wise Pigs, and tiny Dogs.

March 3, 2011 3:56 AM

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A Rabbit Reflects

2011-03-03T03:57:00.001-08:00

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Hats off to the Duke

2011-02-27T14:11:00.001-08:00

His death was announced by the Los Angeles Dodgers.
In the 1950s, the golden age of New York baseball, the World Series almost always meant red, white and blue bunting at Ebbets Field, Yankee Stadium or the Polo Grounds. October afternoons provided a national showcase for baseball’s premier center fielders — Snider of the Dodgers, Mickey Mantle of the Yankees and Willie Mays of the Giants.
“They used to run a box in the New York papers comparing me to Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays,” Snider recalled on the eve of his 1980 induction into the Hall of Fame. “It was a great time for baseball.”
Snider starred at the plate and in the field on teams that won six National League pennants — and finished second on the final day twice — in his 11 seasons with Brooklyn. He also hit the last home run at Ebbets Field before the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles after the 1957 season.
But he could be moody when unable to achieve the perfection he expected of himself.
“I had to learn that every day wasn’t a bed of roses, and that took some time,” he said. “I would sulk. I’d have a pity party for myself.”
As pitcher Carl Erskine, his Dodgers roommate, recalled in “Bums” (Putnam, 1984) by Peter Golenbock: “Every place he went, no matter how good he was, they’d say, ‘His potential is so great, he can do even better.’ And this was a real frustration for Duke. He saw himself as not measuring up.”
Usually the only left-handed batter and the prime slugger in a lineup also boasting Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella and Jackie Robinson, the silver-haired Snider propelled deliveries from all those right-handed pitchers high over the right-field screen at Ebbets Field and onto Bedford Avenue.
Snider hit at least 40 homers in five consecutive seasons, 1953 to 1957, matching a National League record held by Ralph Kiner. He was the only player to hit four homers twice in a World Series — against the Yankees in 1952 and in 1955, when Brooklyn won its only World Series championship. And he captured the National League home run title in 1956, hitting 43 homers.
Playing for 18 seasons, he had 407 home runs, 2,116 hits, batted at least .300 seven times, had a lifetime batting average of .295 and was generally among the league leaders in runs batted in and runs scored.
Snider shined in center field, although Ebbets Field denied him the outfield expanse enjoyed by Mays at the Polo Grounds and Mantle at Yankee Stadium. He moved back on the ball brilliantly, unleashed powerful throws and never — to his recollection — collided with right fielder Carl Furillo.
Edwin Donald Snider was born on Sept. 19, 1926, in Los Angeles and was brought up in nearby Compton. His father, Ward, seeing him return proudly from his first day at school, at age 5, called him the Duke.
Snider signed with the Dodgers’ minor league system out of Compton Junior College in 1944 for a $750 bonus and debuted in Brooklyn on opening day 1947 with a pinch-hit single against the Boston Braves. But his arrival was hardly noticed. That was the day Robinson broke the major league color barrier.
Snider was envisioned as the successor in center field to Pete Reiser, but he was overanxious at the plate and frustrated by the curveball. Branch Rickey, the Dodgers’ general manager, and his aide George Sisler, once a great hitter with the St. Louis Browns, worked with Snider in spring training in 1948 to teach him the strike zone. Snider credited Rickey’s guidance for making him a Hall of Famer.
Snider flourished in 1949, his first full season with the Dodgers, when he batted .292 with 23 home runs and 92 R.B.I. The following year, a Duke Snider Fan Club was born.
But Snider’s moodiness affected his relationship with the fans. When he was booed by Dodgers fans in midsummer 1955 after a prolonged slump, he fumed. As he recalled in “The Duke of Flatbush” (Zebra Books, 1988), written with Bill Gilbert, he told the sportswriters: “The Brooklyn fans are the worst in the league. They don’t deserve a pennant.” The complaint made headlines.
Pee Wee Reese, the Dodgers’ captain and Hall of Fame shortstop, teased Snider over his outbursts, and Snider later reflected how “Pee Wee taught me to control my emotions more.”
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Why Phones Disappoint

2011-02-22T03:39:00.001-08:00

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1934 Truckers' Strike (Minneapolis) : Library : MNHS.ORG

2011-02-22T03:28:00.001-08:00

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Sarah Palin is so full of baloney. Gov. Walker passed TAX CUTS before declaring a budget crsis. Just what is happening nationally. Tax cuts for the rich, pays cuts for working families.

2011-02-19T03:58:00.001-08:00

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Going ... going ... gone?

2011-02-13T09:54:00.001-08:00

While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite. It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.
So what we get in this democracy of ours are astounding and increasingly obscene tax breaks and other windfall benefits for the wealthiest, while the bought-and-paid-for politicians hack away at essential public services and the social safety net, saying we can’t afford them. One state after another is reporting that it cannot pay its bills. Public employees across the country are walking the plank by the tens of thousands. Camden, N.J., a stricken city with a serious crime problem, laid off nearly half of its police force. Medicaid, the program that provides health benefits to the poor, is under savage assault from nearly all quarters.
The poor, who are suffering from an all-out depression, are never heard from. In terms of their clout, they might as well not exist. The Obama forces reportedly want to raise a billion dollars or more for the president’s re-election bid. Politicians in search of that kind of cash won’t be talking much about the wants and needs of the poor. They’ll be genuflecting before the very rich.
In an Op-Ed article in The Times at the end of January, Senator John Kerry said that the Egyptian people “have made clear they will settle for nothing less than greater democracy and more economic opportunities.” Americans are being asked to swallow exactly the opposite. In the mad rush to privatization over the past few decades, democracy itself was put up for sale, and the rich were the only ones who could afford it.
The corporate and financial elites threw astounding sums of money into campaign contributions and high-priced lobbyists and think tanks and media buys and anything else they could think of. They wined and dined powerful leaders of both parties. They flew them on private jets and wooed them with golf outings and lavish vacations and gave them high-paying jobs as lobbyists the moment they left the government. All that money was well spent. The investments paid off big time.
As Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson wrote in their book, “Winner-Take-All Politics”: “Step by step and debate by debate, America’s public officials have rewritten the rules of American politics and the American economy in ways that have benefited the few at the expense of the many.”
As if the corporate stranglehold on American democracy were not tight enough, the Supreme Court strengthened it immeasurably with its Citizens United decision, which greatly enhanced the already overwhelming power of corporate money in politics. Ordinary Americans have no real access to the corridors of power, but you can bet your last Lotto ticket that your elected officials are listening when the corporate money speaks.
When the game is rigged in your favor, you win. So despite the worst economic downturn since the Depression, the big corporations are sitting on mountains of cash, the stock markets are up and all is well among the plutocrats. The endlessly egregious Koch brothers, David and Charles, are worth an estimated $35 billion. Yet they seem to feel as though society has treated them unfairly.
As Jane Mayer pointed out in her celebrated New Yorker article, “The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry — especially environmental regulation.” (A good hard look at their air-pollution record would make you sick.)
It’s a perversion of democracy, indeed, when individuals like the Kochs have so much clout while the many millions of ordinary Americans have so little. What the Kochs want is coming to pass. Extend the tax cuts for the rich? No problem. Cut services to the poor, the sick, the young and the disabled? Check. Can we get you anything else, gentlemen?
The Egyptians want to establish a viable democracy, and that’s a long, hard road. Americans are in the mind-bogglingly self-destructive process of letting a real democracy slip away.
I had lunch with the historian Howard Zinn just a few weeks before he died in January 2010. He was chagrined about the state of affairs in the U.S. but not at all daunted. “If there is going to be change,” he said, “real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves.”
I thought of that as I watched the coverage of the ecstatic celebrations in the streets of Cairo.

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Why crazy people tend to like Nietszche

2011-01-15T08:32:00.001-08:00

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The Recombinant DNA of the Mash-Up - Interactive Feature

2011-01-10T04:21:00.001-08:00

via nytimes.com

I feel such grief for this boy's parents

2011-01-09T00:49:00.001-08:00

Perhaps not since the full-on throes of the Civil Rights era has a single state been so beset by crisis, conflict, and now catastrophe. Chronicling Arizona politics has been a trying and tiresome experience on many levels, with few points of optimism at hand to buffet the constant blows of injustice and brutality. The open persecution of people of color at the level of both bodies and minds; the outright hijacking of the state's politics by far-right figures with white supremacist ties; the bankrupting of the economy while private interests gain tax breaks and write favorable laws for themselves; the decimation of the public infrastructure including the education and health care systems -- all of this and more has been front and center for beleaguered Arizonans in recent years.

Today, with the tragic shooting of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and a Federal Judge who had previously been the target of anti-immigrant protesters, among perhaps a dozen other victims, we have before us a sobering reminder of the political "climate of fear" that has been fostered by certain demagogic elements here in Arizona. While I remain committed to the challenge of finding the positive news in the daily cycle, reality nonetheless intrudes and at times demands our attention. This is one of those instances, and if there is any justice to be found in this madness, perhaps it will finally provide the impetus for us all to move beyond the politics of fear and rage. As Matt Bai has opined in the New York Times, "the question is whether Saturday's shooting marks the logical end point of such a moment [of rhetorical recklessness] -- or rather the beginning of a terrifying new one."

Time will tell, but if recent events are any indication, it will be an uphill struggle that is not merely confined to Arizona. "Even before the shooting of a U.S. congresswoman on Saturday, the state of Arizona was in the throes of a convulsive political year that had come to symbolize a bitter partisan divide across much of America," writes David Schwartz for Reuters. "I feel huge sorrow, that's just been building in southern Arizona for some time, this hate, hate, fear, somewhat around SB 1070, somewhat around health care reform. It definitely heated up when President Obama was elected," said Molly McKasson Morgan, 63, who participated in Tucson politics and knew Giffords. "It's never been this angry, it's never been this divisive," said Alfredo Gutierrez, a former state lawmaker.

These trends of divisiveness and open hostility have been manifesting for some time here. Following the passage of SB 1070 and approaching its date of implementation last July, I observed the growing tendency toward violence and its unabashed cultivation:

"One of the unspoken tragedies and implicit intentions of Arizona's anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, is the promotion of a climate of fear among certain segments of the population. This fear-mongering strategy has been cooked up by the bill's leading proponents and most likely beneficiaries: the governor, rightwing state legislators, and an unscrupulous sheriff who shall remain nameless.... Fostering an environment of racialized violence is the harsh reality of Arizona's drive toward legislated intolerance. For those who might feel saturated by the incessant news about immigration, or who wonder 'what's the big deal?' about SB 1070 and the like, this is a reminder of the stakes involved. Will there be a climate of escalating fear, hatred, and violence that takes over, or will this be a tipping point toward social justice and human dignity instead? Politics and legalities aside, this is the basic question that the Arizona dilemma is posing to the nation...."

Whether or not it turns out that the gunman in the Giffords shooting was politically motivated, the overall climate in which it occurred cannot be dismissed, and a recitation of some of the key background details is essential for a fuller understanding. For one, John M. Roll, the federal judge killed in the shooting, had been at the center of the state's complicated political battle over immigration. In February 2009, he received hundreds of threats after he allowed a lawsuit filed by illegal immigrants against a rancher to go forward. "They cursed him out, threatened to kill his family, said they'd come and take care of him. They really wanted him dead," a law enforcement official told The Washington Post in May 2009. While there is no indication at this point that Roll was the gunman's main target, it is telling that he was in proximity on the fateful day and that he himself had previously been harassed for a perceived pro-immigrant bent.

The suspect in the shootings has been identified as 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner of Tucson. He had an apparent preoccupation with "literacy" rates (which could be a veiled reference to ethnicity), and in online profiles listed among his favorite books Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto. In a recent YouTube video, Loughner described himself as a U.S. military recruit who had recently filled out an application to join the Army. In a message posted on his MySpace account, titled "Goodbye friends," he said: "Dear friends ... please don't be mad at me. The literacy rate is below 5%. I haven't talked to one person who is literate." In a rambling YouTube message referring to a new currency, Loughner stated: "I know who's listening: Government Officials, and the People. Nearly all the people, who don't know this accurate information of a new currency, aren't aware of mind control and brainwash methods. If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn't have happened." There are conflicting reports about whether he acted alone, although Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has noted that investigators are "not convinced" that he did, according to a report by the New York Post. Dupnik says that Loughner may have come to the parking lot with another person who was "in some way involved," and poignantly lamented that Arizona has "become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

Giffords' Tucson office was vandalized last March after she voted in favor of President Obama's controversial healthcare bill. She had been named as a campaign target for conservatives in last November's elections by Sarah Palin for her strong support of Obama's initiatives. Palin infamously published a "target map" on her website using images of gun sights to identify 20 House Democrats, including Giffords, for backing the health care law. The map used actual target markers on locations where these Democrats lived, and listed their names. "We're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action," Giffords said in an interview with MSNBC last March. "We've had hundreds and hundreds of protesters over the course of the last couple of months," she said. "Our office corner has really become an area where the Tea Party movement congregates and the rhetoric is really heated. Not just the calls but the e-mails, the slurs."

At an event in 2009, which was similar to the one Giffords was holding at the time of the shooting, a protester was removed by police when his pistol fell to the supermarket floor. Giffords' Republican opponent in the November 2010 congressional race, Tea Party candidate Jesse Kelly, was criticized for a campaign event he held at a shooting range, advertised with the words "Get on Target for Victory in November," "Help remove Gabriel Giffords from office," and "Shoot a fully automatic M16." Giffords narrowly won reelection to her third term in the House of Representatives -- and during the course of the campaign it was revealed that she was one of three Democrats in the nation to receive contributions from MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, resulting in the newscaster's temporary suspension from the network.

After the shooting, Giffords' father told the New York Post, when asked if his daughter had enemies, "Yeah, the whole Tea Party." He added that politicians constantly face danger. "They always get threatened," he said, sobbing. According to a report by The Hill, Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips condemned the attacks, but warned supporters that the Tea Party movement would be blamed by political opponents. "While we need to take a moment to extend our sympathies to the families of those who died, we cannot allow the hard left to do what it tried to do in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing," he said. The Tucson Citizen's "Three Sonorans" blog further reports that the building housing the Mexican-American Studies program at the University of Arizona was vandalized at almost the same time as the shootings occurred, and that Judge Roll had recently been assigned to hear the lawsuit challenging Arizona's new law (HB 2281) banning Ethnic Studies. Authorities were also called later that evening to Giffords' office as vigilers assembled there, when a suspicious package was removed and secured by the bomb squad, according to an Associated Press report.

For her part, Giffords has been a strong proponent of solar energy, and has generally been known as a moderate to conservative Democrat among Arizona's Republican-dominated congressional delegation. Giffords was first sworn in as a Representative on January 3, 2007, and is the first Jewish woman and third woman overall in Arizona's history to be elected to serve in Congress. In her first month in office, Giffords voted to support increased federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, raise the minimum wage, endorse the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, and adopt new rules for the House of Representatives targeting ethical issues. Giffords also voted to repeal subsidies to big oil companies and invest the savings in renewable energy. She is a member of the House LGBT Equality Caucus and has been noted as "a strong supporter of gay rights." She also advocated for the repeal of $14 billion in subsidies to oil companies in favor of renewable energy subsidies and the establishment of a Strategic Renewable Energy Reserve to increase research in clean energy, develop greater efficiency, and improve conservation. Giffords has supported stronger border enforcement and comprehensive immigration reform as well. She is the only member of Congress whose spouse, astronaut Mark E. Kelly, is an active duty member of the military.

"I am a third generation southern Arizonan and I went off to school, was working for Price Waterhouse in New York City, and was asked to come home to run my family's tire and automotive business," said Giffords in a 2007 C-SPAN interview. "I first got involved with politics frankly because I was frustrated when I was opening up my newspaper every single morning and seeing my great state of Arizona continuing to be at the bottom, whether it be poor-people funding, or mental health funding, or making sure that we could preserve our beautiful open spaces -- and in life you can either complain about something or you can try to fix it so I decided to run for political office...."

Details about this situation continue to unfold, but some things are eminently clear. We can continue in this downward spiral of vitriol, fear, and hatred, or we can turn the corner and begin working toward values of community, inclusivity, and equality. On the one hand lies our imminent destruction; on the other our potential salvation. If this tragedy is to have meaning in this moment of utter senselessness, then we must opt for the latter -- not just in Arizona, or even merely America, but for all the peoples of the world. For today, though, I simply want to express my deepest condolences to all of the families affected by this heartbreaking episode, and likewise to all Arizonans struggling to find cause for hope in these times of ongoing despair.

Books by this author

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This Blogger's Books from

Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization, and Urban Ecology of Homelessness
by Randall Amster

Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action
by Elavie Ndura-Ouedraogo

Follow Randall Amster on Twitter: www.twitter.com/randallamster

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Mike at Trotter's Café, jan 26, 7 PM

2011-01-06T16:23:00.001-08:00

Event:

Wed, 01/26/2011 - 7:00pm - 8:00pm

Mike Finley
Join us the last Wednesday of the month for a reading of new work by writers. Participants live in the neighborhood and share their work with us. Come for dinner and a glass of wine; stay for the reading.

via trotterscafe.com

Ain't life ironic

2011-01-04T05:00:00.001-08:00

via tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com

Happy snow time

2011-01-02T08:58:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

Beautiful

2011-01-02T07:28:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

Does poetry matter?

2011-01-01T16:22:00.001-08:00

Does poetry matter?

via startribune.com

Charles Bonnet syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2011-01-01T05:29:00.001-08:00

via en.wikipedia.org

NM gov. declines to pardon outlaw Billy the Kid

2010-12-31T14:05:00.001-08:00

via talkingpointsmemo.com

New Mexico governor Lew Wallace, who possibly wished to pardon Wm. Bonney, authored the biblical novel "Ben-Hur."

U.S. changes how it measures long-term unemployment

2010-12-29T05:39:00.001-08:00

via usatoday.com

This is what I have been maintaining

2010-12-29T05:37:00.001-08:00

→ Washington’s Blog

The following experts have – at some point during the last 2 years – said that the economic crisis could be worse than the Great Depression:

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan (and see this and this)

Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker

Economics scholar and former Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin

The head of the Bank of England Mervyn King

Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman

Former Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead

Economics professors Barry Eichengreen and and Kevin H. O’Rourke (updated here)

Investment advisor, risk expert and “Black Swan” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Well-known PhD economist Marc Faber

Morgan Stanley’s UK equity strategist Graham Secker

Former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae Edward J. Pinto

Billionaire investor George Soros

Senior British minister Ed Balls

How could that possibly be, when the stock market has largely recovered? (Let’s forget for a moment that the stock market rallied after 1929, but then crashed in a double dip).

To find out, we’ll look at a couple of comparisons to get an idea of what is going on in the rest of the economy. And then we’ll compare the government’s efforts in the 1930s to today.

Housing Crisis Rivals Great Depression

As I noted last month, the current real estate slump rivals the Great Depression:

Zillow’s Stan Humphries said:

The length and depth of the current housing recession is rivaling the Great Depression’s real estate downturn, and, with encouraging signs fading, will easily eclipse it in the coming months.

During the Great Depression, home prices fell 25.9 percent in five years. The U.S. housing market is now down around 25 percent from its peak in 2006.

As housing price expert Robert Shiller pointed out in September 2008:

Home price declines are already approaching those in the Great Depression, when they plunged 30% during the 1930s [i.e. over a 10-year period]. With prices already down almost 20%, it’s not a stretch to think we might exceed that drop this time around.

As I wrote in December 2008:

In the greatest financial crash of all time – the crash of the 1340s in Italy …. real estate prices fell by 50 percent by 1349 in Florence when boom became bust.How does that compare to 2001-2007? The price of Southern California homes is already down 41% [that was before the first-time homebuyer credit, Hamp and other governmental programs temporarily boosted prices]. Southern California hasn’t fallen as fast as some other areas, and we’re nowhere near the bottom of the market.

Moreover, the bubble was not confined to the U.S. There was a worldwide bubble in real estate.

Indeed, the Economist magazine wrote in 2005 that the worldwide boom in residential real estate prices in this decade was “the biggest bubble in history“. The Economist noted that – at that time – the total value of residential property in developed countries rose by more than $30 trillion, to $70 trillion, over the past five years – an increase equal to the combined GDPs of those nations.

Housing bubbles are now bursting in China, France, Spain, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, and many other regions.

And the bubble in commercial real estate is also bursting world-wide. See this.

In addition, the percentage of Americans who owned houses during the 1930s was much lower than today, which means that a larger portion of the public is being hurt from falling home prices today as compared to the Great Depression.

Meredith Whitney, Nouriel Roubini (and here), Zillow, Case-Shiller and even S&P have been calling a double dip in housing.

States and Cities In Worst Shape Since the Great Depression

States and cities are in dire financial straits, and many may default in 2011.

California is issuing IOUs for only the second time since the Great Depression.

Things haven’t been this bad for state and local governments since the 30s.

Loan Loss Rate Higher than During the Great Depression

In October 2009, I reported:

In May, analyst Mike Mayo predicted that the bank loan loss rate would be higher than during the Great Depression.

In a new report, Moody’s has just confirmed (as summarized by Zero Hedge):

The most recent rate of bank charge offs, which hit $45 billion in the past quarter, and have now reached a total of $116 billion, is at 3.4%, which is substantially higher than the 2.25% hit in 1932, before peaking at at 3.4% rate by 1934.

And see this.

Here’s a chart summarizing the findings:

(click here for full chart).

Indeed, top economists such as Anna Schwartz, James Galbraith, Nouriel Roubini and others have pointed out that while banks faced a liquidity crisis during the Great Depression, today they are wholly insolvent. See this, this, this and this. Insolvency is much more severe than a shortage of liquidity.

Unemployment at or Near Depression Levels

USA Today reports today:

So many Americans have been jobless for so long that the government is changing how it records long-term unemployment.

Citing what it calls “an unprecedented rise” in long-term unemployment, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), beginning Saturday, will raise from two years to five years the upper limit on how long someone can be listed as having been jobless.

***

The change is a sign that bureau officials “are afraid that a cap of two years may be ‘understating the true average duration’ — but they won’t know by how much until they raise the upper limit,” says Linda Barrington, an economist who directs the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

***

“The BLS doesn’t make such changes lightly,” Barrington says. Stacey Standish, a bureau assistant press officer, says the two-year limit has been used for 33 years.

***

Although “this feels like something we’ve not experienced” since the Great Depression, she says, economists need more information to be sure.

The following chart from Calculated Risk shows that this is not a normal spike in unemployment:

As I noted in October:

It is difficult to compare current unemployment with that during the Great Depression. In the Depression, unemployment numbers weren’t tracked very consistently, and the U-3 and U-6 statistics we use today weren’t used back then. And statistical “adjustments” such as the “birth-death model” are being used today that weren’t used in the 1930s.

But let’s discuss the facts we do know.

The Wall Street Journal noted in July 2009:

The average length of unemployment is higher than it’s been since government began tracking the data in 1948.

***

The job losses are also now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all job growth from the previous expansion.

The Christian Science Monitor wrote an article in June entitled, “Length of unemployment reaches Great Depression levels“.

60 Minutes – in a must-watch segment – notes that our current situation tops the Great Depression in one respect: never have we had a recession this deep with a recovery this flat. 60 Minutes points out that unemployment has been at 9.5% or above for 14 months.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David M. Kennedy notes in Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford, 1999) that – during Herbert Hoover’s presidency, more than 13 million Americans lost their jobs. Of those, 62% found themselves out of work for longer than a year; 44% longer than two years; 24% longer than three years; and 11% longer than four years.

Blytic calculates that the current average duration of unemployment is some 32 weeks, the median duration is around 20 weeks, and there are approximately 6 million people unemployed for 27 weeks or longer.

Moreover, employers are discriminating against job applicants who are currently unemployed, which will almost certainly prolong the duration of joblessness.

As I noted in January 2009:

In 1930, there were 123 million Americans.

At the height of the Depression in 1933, 24.9% of the total work force or 11,385,000 people, were unemployed.

Will unemployment reach 25% during this current crisis?

I don’t know. But the number of people unemployed will be higher than during the Depression.

Specifically, there are currently some 300 million Americans, 154.4 million of whom are in the work force.

Unemployment is expected to exceed 10% by many economists, and Obama “has warned that the unemployment rate will explode to at least 10% in 2009″.

10 percent of 154 million is 15 million people out of work – more than during the Great Depression.

Given that the broader U-6 measure of unemployment is currently around 17% (ShadowStats.com puts the figure at 22%, and some put it even higher), the current numbers are that much worse.

But it is important to look at some details.

For example, official Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers put U-6 above 20% in several states:

California: 21.9

Nevada: 21.5

Michigan 21.6

Oregon 20.1

In the past year, unemployment has grown the fastest in the mountain West.

And certain races and age groups have gotten hit hard.

According to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee:

By February 2010, the U-6 rate for African Americans rose to 24.9 percent.

34.5% of young African American men were unemployed in October 2009.As the Center for Immigration Studies noted last December:

Unemployment rates for less-educated and younger workers:

As of the third quarter of 2009, the overall unemployment rate for native-born Americans is 9.5 percent; the U-6 measure shows it as 15.9 percent.

The unemployment rate for natives with a high school degree or less is 13.1 percent. Their U-6 measure is 21.9 percent.

The unemployment rate for natives with less than a high school education is 20.5 percent. Their U-6 measure is 32.4 percent.

The unemployment rate for young native-born Americans (18-29) who have only a high school education is 19 percent. Their U-6 measure is 31.2 percent.

The unemployment rate for native-born blacks with less than a high school education is 28.8 percent. Their U-6 measure is 42.2 percent.

The unemployment rate for young native-born blacks (18-29) with only a high school education is 27.1 percent. Their U-6 measure is 39.8 percent.

The unemployment rate for native-born Hispanics with less than a high school education is 23.2 percent. Their U-6 measure is 35.6 percent.

The unemployment rate for young native-born Hispanics (18-29) with only a high school degree is 20.9 percent. Their U-6 measure is 33.9 percent.

No wonder Chris Tilly – director of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UCLA – says that African-Americans and high school dropouts are experiencing depression-level unemployment.

And as I have previously noted, unemployment for those who earn $150,000 or more is only 3%, while unemployment for the poor is 31%.

The bottom line is that it is difficult to compare current unemployment with what occurred during the Great Depression. In some ways things seem better now. In other ways, they don’t.

Factors like where you live, race, income and age greatly effect one’s experience of the severity of unemployment in America.

In addition, wages have plummeted for those who are employed. As Pulitzer Prize-winning tax reporter David Cay Johnston notes:

Every 34th wage earner in America in 2008 went all of 2009 without earning a single dollar, new data from the Social Security Administration show. Total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined ….

And see this, this, and this.

Food Stamps Replace Soup Kitchens

1 out of every 7 Americans now rely on food stamps.

While we don’t see soup kitchens, it may only be because so many Americans are receiving food stamps.

Indeed, despite the dramatic photographs we’ve all seen of the 1930s, the 43 million Americans relying on food stamps to get by may actually be much greater than the number who relied on soup kitchens during the Great Depression.

Inequality Worse than During the Great Depression

I recently reported that inequality is worse than it’s been since 1917:

Most mainstream economists do not believe there is a causal connection between inequality and severe downturns.But recent studies by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty are waking up more and more economists to the possibility that there may be a connection.

Specifically, economics professors Saez (UC Berkeley) and Piketty (Paris School of Economics) show that the percentage of wealth held by the richest 1% of Americans peaked in 1928 and 2007 – right before each crash:

As the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein wrote in June:

***

Krugman says that he used to dismiss talk that inequality contributed to crises, but then we reached Great Depression-era levels of inequality in 2007 and promptly had a crisis, so now he takes it a bit more seriously…

Robert Reich has theorized for some time that there are 3 causal connections between inequality and crashes ….

Reuters wrote an excellent piece on the issue of inequality and crashes (discussing the first three factors) last month:

Economists are only beginning to study the parallels between the 1920s and the most recent decade to try to understand why both periods ended in financial disaster. Their early findings suggest inequality may not directly cause crises, but it can be a contributing factor.

***

Inequality is actually worse now than it’s been since 1917.

The War Isn’t Working

Given the above facts, it would seem that the government hasn’t been doing much. But the scary thing is that the government has done more than during the Great Depression, but the economy is still stuck a pit.

Specifically, many economists credit World War II with getting us out of the Depression. (I disagree, but that’s another story).

This time, we’ve been at war in both Iraq and Afghanistan far longer than we were in World War II. But our economy is still stuck in a rut.

Moreover, the amount spent in emergency bailouts, loans and subsidies during this financial crisis arguably dwarfs the amount which the government spent during the New Deal.

For example, Casey Research wrote in 2008:

Paulson and Bernanke have embarked on the largest bailout program ever conceived …. a program which so far will cost taxpayers $8.5 trillion.

[The updated, exact number can be disputed. But as shown below, the exact number of trillions of dollars is not that important.]

So how does $8.5 trillion dollars compare with the cost of some of the major conflicts and programs initiated by the US government since its inception? To try and grasp the enormity of this figure, let’s look at some other financial commitments undertaken by our government in the past:

As illustrated above, one can see that in today’s dollar, we have already committed to spending levels that surpass the cumulative cost of all of the major wars and government initiatives since the American Revolution.

Recently, the Congressional Research Service estimated the cost of all of the major wars our country has fought in 2008 dollars. The chart above shows that the entire cost of WWII over four to five years was less than half the current pledges made by Paulson and Bernanke in the last three months!

In spite of years of conflict, the Vietnam and the Iraq wars have each cost less than the bailout package that was approved by Congress in two weeks. The Civil War that devastated our country had a total price tag (for both the Union and Confederacy) of $60.4 billion, while the Revolutionary War was fought for a mere $1.8 billion.

In its fifty or so years of existence, NASA has only managed to spend $885 billion – a figure which got us to the moon and beyond.

The New Deal had a price tag of only $500 billion. The Marshall Plan that enabled the reconstruction of Europe following WWII for $13 billion, comes out to approximately $125 billion in 2008 dollars. The cost of fixing the S&L crisis was $235 billion.

CNBC confirms that the New Deal cost about $500 billion (and the S&L crisis cost around $256 billion) in inflation adjusted dollars.

So even though the government’s spending on the “war” on the economic crisis dwarfs the amount spent on the New Deal, our economy is still stuck in the mud.

Given that the government has done so much, but we are still mired in a situation which in many ways is comparable to the Great Depression, it is not a very radical statement to say that the government is doing the wrong things to address the downturn.

I hope that the economy recovers. But the above comparisons are worrisome, indeed.

More on this topic (What's this?)
Wikinvest's new Portfolio Tracker gives you real-time news from over 500 sources.

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Read more on Unemployment (U.S.) at Wikinvest

via nakedcapitalism.com

Mark Twain’s 5,000-page autobiography due out soon

2010-12-27T11:01:00.001-08:00

via exiledonline.com

Stealing copiously from Norwegianity's links today

"It's a Wonderful Life": The most terrifying movie ever - Film Salon

2010-12-27T10:49:00.003-08:00

via salon.com

We live in Pottersville, not Bedford Falls

The most terrifying movie ever

2010-12-27T10:49:00.001-08:00

via salon.com

Welcome to Pottersville

The best Christmas movie ever « Mercury Rising 鳯女

2010-12-27T10:43:00.001-08:00

The best Christmas movie ever

Posted by Charles II on December 25, 2010

Watching the classic Christmas movies makes it clear how much of what we understood America to be is simply gone. Oh, the segregated America of the movies still exists in much of suburbia and rural America. Even in the big cities, the melting pot is still very lumpy.

But despite the deep flaws of that America, many of the movies of the 1930s and 1940s showed three things that have been erased from our consciousness of America: the corrosive nature of highly concentrated wealth, the need for and redemptive power of progressive change, and the sense that we are all in this thing called America together. Nowhere is that clearer than in the movie Boys Town.

The basic story of Boys Town is very simple. A priest, Father Edward Flanagan, is confronted with the destructiveness of children who have been abandoned by or are currently being abused by their parents. Many, like the fellow in the opening scene of the movie, turn into violent criminals. Trusting in the power of God (and gently bullying a local small businessman into making donations), Flanagan scrapes together the money first to rent a house, then to buy a farm, which becomes Boys Town. His greatest opponent in the community is a newspaper publisher who, supported by “the good Christian women” (I think this is how it is said, but am not positive), thinks delinquents need to go to prison.

Flanagan’s credo is that “there is no bad boy.” One of the boys Flanagan accepts is the younger brother of a career criminal, Joe Marsh. Joe, although boastful of his own exploits, has some residual streak of decency which causes him to ask Flanagan to care for his sibling, Whitey, on the grounds that Whitey doesn’t have what it takes to succeed at crime. Whitey will test Flanagan’s faith that there is good in all children.

Boys Town is a pure democracy, where the boys set the rules. After picking a fight with and being licked in a fair fight by the present mayor, Freddie, Whitey does everything he can to corrupt the system, offering favors and offices to others. The election features Whitey, Freddie, and a crippled child who (since I’m not positive of his name) I’ll call Paul. Paul wants to run for mayor, and Flanagan encourages him, mentioning obliquely FDR as a role model. For his campaign Whitey simply stages a triumphalist spectacle worthy of a George Bush. Freddie rails against corruption. But Paul says that because Whitey cannot be allowed to win, he will withdraw so that Freddie can defeat Whitey. Instead, the boys recognize that only Paul unselfishly cares about the general welfare, so they elect him.

Continues below

Whitey tries to leave the school, but the school “mascot,” a little boy named Pee Wee who has been Whitey’s only real friend tries to tag along. Pee Wee is struck by a car and seriously injured. Whitey is devastated. He tries to join the other boys in a prayer for Pee Wee but can’t handle it. He drifts away and into town. There, he is present at the scene of a bank robbery, being committed by his older brother Joe. Joe is startled and shoots Whitey in the leg. Joe helps him to a church, swears Whitey to secrecy, and anonymously calls Father Flanagan.

But the bank’s watchman has been murdered, and Whitey is a suspect. The newspaper publisher starts a campaign demanding that Boys Town be closed down. Whitey, determined that he will not be the means by which the place he has grown to love is shuttered, goes to where the robbers are hiding and tells his brother that he will not honor the pledge of secrecy. The robbers take him captive. Meanwhile, other boys have trailed Whitey, and they get all the other boys in the school to confront the robbers. Father Flanagan, arriving late at the scene, finds the boys so determined that he cannot turn them away. Instead, he leads the righteous mob.

Facing down the guns of the robbers, the boys seize them. Whitey’s role is clarified and he is redeemed.

As a bonus, Boys Town has a classic Steve Gilliard line, where Whitey says that he likes the Yankees, and another boy says, “You would!” (a detail that I mischievously include to see if PW will read below the fold). Plus, Father Flanagan is played by Spencer Tracy.

This movie makes some extraordinary claims

– It asserts that human beings are inherently good
– It defines the fundamental causes of juvenile crime as abusive or neglectful parents
– It claims that there are constructive solutions to juvenile crime rooted in love, rather than punishment
– It shows pure democracy as the means to purge corruption from governance
– It shows the biggest opponents of reform as the yellow press and “the good Christian women”
– It recognize FDR both as a visionary, and as a man of great personal courage who overcame disability

Any genuine Christian will recognize these themes as fundamentally about the transformational power of love. It is love that takes us as we are and, rather than punishing us to make us conform, restores our inner peace that allows us to conform.

It is love that sees us as equals, and it is therefore love that demands democracy. It is love that recognizes the destructive power of self-righteousness and how that, in turn, leads to the slanderous, sensation-seeking press. Consider the pursuit of Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinsky: had every person who had shared his sin declined to participate, the Congress could not have mustered a quorum to impeach him, the newspapers could not have sold enough copy to run their presses and the cable stations would have had no advertisers.

Christmas is mentioned only once in Boys Town, and then just as a moment for a quiet miracle of the heart, as a local businessman is moved to bring the hungry boys a Christmas dinner. But the movie is infused with the miracle of love. It is the miracle of love, and not the story of the carpenter’s son per se that is Jesus. When people forgive, when they treat one another as equals, when they set aside their self-righteousness and accept their own imperfection, then Jesus walks among us.

And so, Boys Town, which is not about Christmas, is one of the best Christmas movies. It doesn’t involve angels and extravagant miracles. In it, there are no magic answers, no credo to boast about, no vengeful God striking down the wicked. Instead, it shows God present in the smallest acts of kindness. It shows the miracle of love transforming those who are willing to let it do so. It shows that wrong is brought down not by individual heroes, but by ordinary people who have been granted the power to run their own lives. It claims, along with Paul, that in being granted perfect freedom, we become genuinely good.

This movie could never, ever be made today. Even if it were, it would in this bizarre age be damned as “socialist.” Instead, it is this age that is damned, damned by its own unwillingness to accept love as the only legitimate power on earth.

PS: Read this from Brother John.

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The source and destination of happiness

2010-12-27T10:29:00.001-08:00

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Anton's Syndrome -- the patient's denial that he is blind

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Who we really are

2010-12-27T10:27:00.001-08:00

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What caused the Civil War 200 years ago April 12?

2010-12-27T08:51:00.001-08:00

The coming year will mark the 150th anniversary of the onset of the conflict, which is usually dated to April 12, 1861, when Confederate batteries opened fire at 4:30 a.m. on federal troops occupying Fort Sumter. Union forces surrendered the next day, after 34 hours of shelling.

The Civil War has forever captured the American imagination (witness the popularity of reenactments) for the gallantry and heroism of those who fought and died, but also for the sheer carnage and destruction it left in its wake. Anniversaries heighten that engagement, and I still recall the centennial of the war in 1961 as a time when kids with no previous interest in American history were exchanging Civil War trading cards along with baseball cards.

My neighborhood friend Jon Udis got a subscription to Civil War Times Illustrated, and our regular discussions of sports heroes Bill Russell, Johnny Unitas and Carl Yastrzemski were briefly interrupted by talk about Grant and Lee, Sherman and "Stonewall" Jackson.

But our conversations, like so many about the war, focused on people and battles, not on why the confrontation happened in the first place. There remains enormous denial over the fact that the central cause of the war was our national disagreement about race and slavery, not states' rights or anything else.

When the war started, leaders of the Southern rebellion were entirely straightforward about this. On March 21, 1861, Alexander Stephens, the Confederacy's vice president, gave what came to be known as the "Cornerstone speech" in which he declared that the "proper status of the Negro in our form of civilization" was "the immediate cause of the late rupture."

Thomas Jefferson, Stephens said, had been wrong in believing "that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature."

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea," Stephens insisted. "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth."

Our greatest contemporary historian of the Civil War, James McPherson, has noted that Confederate President Jefferson Davis, a major slaveholder, "justified secession in 1861 as an act of self-defense against the incoming Lincoln administration." Abraham Lincoln's policy of excluding slavery from the territories, Davis said, would make "property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless . . . thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars."

South Carolina's 1860 declaration on the cause of secession mentioned slavery, slaves or slaveholding 18 times. And as the historian Douglas Egerton points out in "Year of Meteors," his superb recent book on how the 1860 election precipitated the Civil War, the South split the Democratic Party and later the country not in the name of states' rights but because it sought federal government guarantees that slavery would prevail in new states. "Slaveholders," Egerton notes, "routinely shifted their ideological ground in the name of protecting unfree labor."

After the war, in one of the great efforts of spin control in our history, both Davis and Stephens, despite their own words, insisted that the war was not about slavery after all but about state sovereignty. By then, of course, slavery was "a dead and discredited institution," McPherson wrote, and to "concede that the Confederacy had broken up the United States and launched a war that killed 620,000 Americans in a vain attempt to keep 4 million people in slavery would not confer honor on their lost cause."

Why does getting the story right matter? As Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's recent difficulty with the history of the civil rights years demonstrates, there is to this day too much evasion of how integral race, racism and racial conflict are to our national story. We can take pride in our struggles to overcome the legacies of slavery and segregation. But we should not sanitize how contested and bloody the road to justice has been. We will dishonor the Civil War if we refuse to face up to the reason it was fought.

ejdionne@washpost.com

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Our condolences to the Hatch family

2010-12-26T09:33:00.001-08:00

Comment of the day: Eric M. Larson on Anne Hatch.
We noted Monday that Anne Hatch, daughter of former state Attorney General Mike Hatch, was found dead in Chicago, apparently from suicide.

The last time Anne Hatch was in the news, she had been arrested outside a Chicago nightclub after an altercation with police. We mentioned that. Some commenters thought we shouldn't have.

Eric M. Larson would have liked a more thorough accounting. His version:

I'm all in favor of bringing up the 2005 trial... as long as we're honest about it and do some reporting beyond merely saying "a judge acquitted them" and reporting nothing else.
Anne and Elizabeth weren't merely "acquitted" -- they were vindicated by the judge who noted that the prosecution's witnesses contradicted 1) the police report written at the time of the incident, 2) recorded audio of Elizabeth's arrest, and 3) security video of the incident. That's as close to "they lied!" as you're ever going to get in a court ruling.

The police abused their power, the Hatch women stood up against that abuse, were maliciously prosecuted for it, and were declared innocent in court. The _full_ story is an example of Anne Hatch's bravery and character, but it's hard to find that story today because it's locked behind newspaper pay-walls.

Some of us still remember the court case from when it was a "current event" and the media's selective memory of it today is really frustrating.

Read the original post here.

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Louis Winthorpe III: I had the most absurd nightmare. I was poor and no one liked me. I lost my job, I lost my house, Penelope hated me and it was all because of this terrible, awful Negro.

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I have put in about 150 hours working for this cause this year, and helped raised about $19,000. We must raise $7000 before January 1 to fulfill obligations to new schools.

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WITNESS STATEMENT OF MICHAEL MOORE

2010-12-14T06:28:00.001-08:00

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December 14th, 2010 2:58 AM
WITNESS STATEMENT OF MICHAEL MOORE

WITNESS STATEMENT
(CJ Act 1967, s.9 MC Act 1980, ss.5A(3)(a) and 5B;
Criminal Procedure Rules 2010, Rule 27)
____________________________________________________________________________
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL MOORE
Aged: Over 18
Occupation: FILM MAKER AND AUTHOR
____________________________________________________________________________
This statement (consisting of 2 pages each signed by me) is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and I make it knowing that, if it is tendered in evidence, I shall be liable to prosecution if I have wilfully stated anything which I know to be false or do not believe to be true.
I, MICHAEL MOORE, care of Finers Stephens Innocent, 179 Great Portland Street, London, W1W 5LS make this statement and say as follows:
1. I am a filmmaker, author and political commentator and I produce as my exhibit [MM/1] evidence of my identity in the form of a photocopy of my passport/driving licence. I am an American citizen.
2. I am aware of the various allegations Julian Assange faces in Sweden. I am willing to act as security for Julian in the sum of twenty thousand dollars USD$20,000.
3. I am the director and producer of Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko, and Capitalism: A Love Story, four of the top nine highest-grossing documentaries of all time. In September 2008, I released my first free movie on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, documenting my personal crusade to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections. These experiences underpinned my conviction that it is the duty of a free press to probe, and hold government and the powerful to account – and that citizens must be properly informed and have access to information in order to exercise their democratic rights.
4. Governments have always been discomfited by a probing press. With the hollowing out of newsrooms, in large part as a consequence of the new digital world, old media have largely abandoned the territory of investigative journalism.
5. I support Julian, whom I see as a pioneer of free speech, transparent government and the digital revolution in journalism. His commitment to exposing the follies of government and business offers the greater society a chance to protect itself from these follies. Some aren't just follies. Some are crimes. What do we do with someone who informs the authorities -- and in this case it is the free people in a democracy who are the "authorities" -- that a crime has been committed? Do we arrest HIM? Do we try to shut his mouth? Do we hound him, threaten him, track him down and hunt him as if HE is the criminal? He bravely informed the citizenry of what was being done in their name and with their tax monies. That is no crime. That is an act of patriotism. He should be thanked and honored, not abused and jailed. It dishonours this court to be used in this way, holding this man without bail. Julian has made the world, and my country in particular, a safer place. His actions with WikiLeaks have put on notice those who would take us to war based on lies that any future attempts to do so will be met by the fierce bright light provided by WikiLeaks and intended to expose those who commit their war crimes. His actions will make them think twice next time -- and for that we all owe him a debt of gratitude.
6. I believe that Julian takes pride in his reputation and as any journalist would understands that if he were to abscond he would ruin his reputation in the media and journalism industries.
7. I regret that I am out of the country and therefore I am unable to attend court and explain in person that I expect Julian to observe his bail conditions. I am offering to stand and provide security for him abiding by his bail conditions to the value of USD$20,000.
8. I understand that by acting as security for Julian I risk forfeiture of the aforementioned sum to the crown if he breaches his bail conditions by absconding or by not attending Court as and when required.
9. The money which I will pay to the Court, to be held as security, is my own. As I am abroad I am unable to produce any statement as evidence of these funds. However I have already transferred the sum of USD$20,000 into the client account of FSI.
10. I have not been indemnified against the loss of this money in the event of Julian breaching his bail conditions, and understand that if I were to be so indemnified it would amount to a separate criminal offence for which I could be imprisoned.
11. I have been advised by Julian’s solicitors that it would be prudent to obtain independent legal advice in relation to my liabilities as security.
12. I have no previous convictions.

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Friends mourn St. Thomas student killed in blaze

2010-12-14T04:52:00.001-08:00

Home | Local + Metro | St. Paul

Friends mourn St. Thomas student killed in blaze

The funeral for 20-year-old Michael Larson will be held on the school's campus, where his pals remembered him as a lover of sports and lazy Sundays.

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Friends are remembering St. Thomas student Michael Larson as a fun-loving friend who was always up for hanging out or attending sports events.

St. Thomas University students resumed classes Monday with the start of finals week, two days after Larson died in a fire at a house he rented with three friends at 1795 Selby Av. School officials are working with Larson's family to plan his on-campus funeral, scheduled for Friday. Details are still being worked out.

"We are all mourning for Michael Larson," said Jane Canney, vice president of student affairs at St. Thomas. "He was so well-loved. It's also during finals time, and it's a challenging time for students."

St. Paul Fire Marshal Steve Zaccard said Monday that the cause of the fire is still under investigation. It apparently began Saturday in the enclosed porch and engulfed the house, forcing three people to jump out of second-story windows. The fire was reported about 3 a.m. Zaccard has said that arson is not suspected, and that the smoke detectors were working.

Larson was the lone fatality and was found on the first floor near the couch where he had gone to sleep. The Ramsey County medical examiner's office said an exact cause of death could be determined in the next day or two.

Friend and roommate Cameron Cochran, who was home at the time, described the 20-year-old from Woodbury as "a guy you could never find in a bad mood." Larson, whom friends called by the nickname "Carson," loved sports. For his 20th birthday this summer, Larson and some friends played a game of pick-up baseball at a nearby park.

"We hadn't done that since we were 14," Cochran said.

Larson, a sophomore, had just decided to major in mass communications with the goal of becoming a sports writer, Cochran said.

Jahi Bernard first met Larson when both were freshmen. They shared a dorm room and then moved into the house on Selby.

"Carson loved to celebrate National Relaxation Day," Bernard said jokingly, noting Larson's love for TV sports and lazy Sundays. "Apparently, it's a national holiday, and he loved to celebrate it."

St. Thomas is working to help Larson's roommates find temporary housing, work out their finals schedules and meet other needs, Canney said. A bookstore loaned the roommates books that were lost in the fire, the school will buy their books next semester and a student group gathered clothes for them, Canney said.

The school also is working out plans to collect contributions to help the roommates and Larson's family, she said.

"This has really fractured many, many students and faculty who knew him and loved him dearly," she said.

Chao Xiong • 612-270-4708

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Comment on this story | Read all 1 comments | Show comments

This is how they should have written the first article on this story. Condolences to the family and friends of Michael.
posted by jrock612 on Dec 13, 10 at 9:28 pm |

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One block from our house .... in the middle of the blizzard ... now it is all ice and charred house ...

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