For New Year’s, maybe I’ll shoot you

Posted on January 3, 2012 by oddmanout215

Thanks, sweetie, just what I wanted for Christmas – a Glock 23 with an extended magazine that holds 33 rounds.

Where would we be without our right to bear arms and pretend we’re homesteaders, defending our sod houses against surprise attacks by West Indians and gangsta rappers? From The Telegraph UK:

According to the FBI, over 1.5 million background checks on customers were requested by gun dealers to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in December. Nearly 500,000 of those were in the six days before Christmas. It was the highest number ever in a single month, surpassing the previous record set in November.

On Dec 23 alone there were 102,222 background checks, making it the second busiest single day for buying guns in history. The actual number of guns bought may have been even higher if individual customers took home more than one each.

Explanations for America’s surge in gun buying include that it is a response to the stalled economy with people fearing crime waves. Another theory is that buyers are rushing to gun shops because they believe tighter firearms laws will be introduced in the future.

The National Rifle Association said people were concerned about self defence because police officer numbers were declining. A spokesman said: “I think there’s an increased realisation that when something bad occurs it’s going to be between them and the criminal.”

But anti-gun campaigners said those who already owned weapons were simply hoarding more of them due to “fear-mongering” by the NRA.

I honestly don’t know who’s crazier, the nuts who say we need hand cannons, even though crime rates are down and cops are armed like Army Rangers in Iraq, or the poor-schmuck liberals who count on cops, and the rule of law in general, even though our cops and laws are becoming increasingly oppressive. Here’s Constitution scholar Jonathan Turley on Barack Obama’s lame excuses for signing the National Defense Authorization Act:

You do not “support our troops” by denying the principles for which they are fighting. They are not fighting to consolidate authoritarian powers in the President. The “American way of life” is defined by our Constitution and specifically the Bill of Rights. Moreover, the insistence that you do not intend to use authoritarian powers does not alter the fact that you just signed an authoritarian measure. It is not the use but the right to use such powers that defines authoritarian systems.

Posted in Congress, mainstream media, Obama, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Beset by wenches at S. Philly parade

Posted on January 2, 2012 by oddmanout215

I forgot about the Mummers Parade yesterday, as I do every New Year’s, until I literally ran into it while jogging at midday. A dense crowd on the sidewalks at Broad and Washington was cheering, sort of, for a string band that was marching, sort of, toward City Hall. The band had stopped playing and come to a halt, and was waiting until its floats and other motorized props passed it and were in place, like an infantry squad waiting for the tanks to get in front.

It’s the same every year. The string bands stand around, march for a bit, stand around again. What they don’t do much of is parade, not until they get to City Hall, where the judges are waiting to assess their performances and choose the prizewinning bands.

I’m not badmouthing the event. Sax-and-banjo music is not my bag, it sounds like a blizzard of hornets, but the Mummers are hard-working, they’re trying to keep alive a primitive tradition.

One minute you’re in gray Philly and the next in some pagan outpost where wenches — young men in skirts and fools’ caps and face paint, with beers and parasols — are walking in broad daylight on a balmy winter day toward the post-parade party on “Two Street,” where there would be more beer and brawling and puking into the wee hours.

The balmy weather held last night, so Two Street must have looked like a bizarro world. I stayed in my own ‘hood after dark and saw trails of streamers and cardboard hats discarded by Mummers fans who’d marched through. It rained a little and there was a sheen on the streets that reminded me of the film noir Pushover. I half-expected to see Kim Novak in a black fur coat, standing on a streetcorner, waiting for her partner in treachery.

The Mummers have their bizarro world, I have mine.

Posted in humor, livable cities, Philadelphia | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

It’s 2012, and the frauds are still free

Posted on January 2, 2012 by oddmanout215

I wonder if the old Stones’ song “I’m Free” is on Lloyd Blankfein’s iPod?

The song crossed my mind while reading Danny Schechter’s article about the media’s “lack of any real investigation of Wall Street crimes, and the indictments of wrongdoers.” It’s not as if the evidence of high-level malfeasance isn’t there, or that high-powered news organizations don’t know where to look for the evidence:

… The barely exposed chain of criminality that started in some salon of securitisation and then rippled across the world… has its origins in Wall Street, where three industries colluded as a cabal to sell fraudulent subprime loans and then transfer fees and foreclosures from poor and middle class Americans to themselves.

Where is the examination of the pillars of our “FIRE” economy – Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. They became the interconnected cogs in a leverage machine to enrich themselves while plundering the rest of us.

So far, this story affecting so many millions has not really crashed through in the 1 per cent media machine, with a few exceptions here and there…

Schechter notes the connection between the corporate media’s indifference to Wall Street fraud and its indifference to signs of even bigger trouble ahead:

Just as many outlets did not warn us about the coming market meltdown, most are not warning us today about what will happen if the depression we are already sinking into deepens.

The military is making contingency plans as things get worse; reports the Telegraph, “The military planning work has come to light after The Daily Telegraph disclosed last month that British embassies in the eurozone have been told to prepare emergency plans for the demise of the euro and the possible civil disorder that could follow.”

This could be one reason for the passage of the new NDAA defence authorisation bill that provides for rounding up dissidents branded as terrorists while suspending legal protections.

Read the whole story to see Schechter’s short list of media people who are on the case regarding Wall Street fraud.

Posted in economic collapse, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, Occupy Wall Street, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Obama’s see-no-evil supporters

Posted on January 1, 2012 by oddmanout215

Happy New Year, Glenn Greenwald. Thank you for firing back at “progressives” who rightly attack Ron Paul for some of his views but ignore the fact that Paul, not Barack Obama, “advocates policy views on issues that liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed are both compelling and crucial.”

One of Greenwald’s points is that progressives who vote for Obama should at least admit their complicity in Obama’s betrayal of these crucial views, which wouldn’t even be addressed if Paul wasn’t a candidate:

…There are very few political priorities, if there are any, more imperative than having an actual debate on issues of America’s imperialism; the suffocating secrecy of its government; the destruction of civil liberties which uniquely targets Muslims, including American Muslims; the corrupt role of the Fed; corporate control of government institutions by the nation’s oligarchs; its destructive blind support for Israel, and its failed and sadistic Drug War. More than anything, it’s crucial that choice be given to the electorate by subverting the two parties’ full-scale embrace of these hideous programs…

Read the whole article. Greenwald isn’t saying vote for Paul. (Neither am I.) He’s expressing his well-reasoned disgust with Dems in denial about the fact that their party has largely disowned the principles that made it distinguishable from the GOP. Isn’t it high time the rest of us expressed our disgust by exploring alternatives to the dead-end two-party system?

Footnote: On Saturday Obama signed the NDAA, allowing for indefinite detention of people who are deemed enemies of the state. True to form, he all but apologized for signing the bill into law, but he signed it. Ron Paul opposed the NDAA.

Posted in Congress, Great Recession, mainstream media, Obama, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

‘The Apartment’

Posted on December 31, 2011 by oddmanout215

The best-ever New Year’s Eve movie is a dark comedy, but director/writer Billy Wilder knew exactly when to lighten it up, even during the attempted-suicide scene.

Jack Lemmon plays a bachelor with a dismal office job who curries the favor of his bosses by lending his apartment to them so they can be entertained by their girlfriends there. One of the girlfriends is Shirley MacClaine, who flips out when Fred MacMurray, the company’s big chief, tells her he has no intention of ditching his wife to be with her full-time.

Wilder made The Apartment, which you can watch on YouTube, a year or so after another of his classics, Some Like It Hot. I’d argue that his best movie ever is Ace In the Hole, definitely not a comedy.

Posted in arts, movies | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

‘Matchbox’

Posted on December 31, 2011 by oddmanout215

Yeah I’m sitting here wondering,
would a matchbox hold my clothes…

I hope I didn’t insult the memory of the late Carl Perkins by using lyrics from “Matchbox” in connection with the Republican dogs, big and small, mentioned in my previous post. Here’s the classic song, recorded in 1957, on the same day Perkins made impromptu recordings with other Sun Records greats — Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Perkins, probably the best of the rockabilly songwriters, also wrote and recorded the big hit “Don’t Step On My Blue Suede Shoes,” allegedly after witnessing a man in a barroom cuss his girlfriend for scuffing up his blue suede shoes while they danced. Elvis’s recording of the song, also a hit, is better known but not better than Perkins’ version. The Beatles recorded Perkins’ “Honey Don’t” and “Glad All Over.”

The Wikipedia entry about Perkins is full of good info. His autobiography Go Cat, Go and much of his music can be purchased online, including Original Sun Greatest Hits.

Footnote: Check out Greil Marcus’s insightful book Mystery Train for a transcript of the guilt-ridden Lewis arguing with Sun Records chief Sam Phillips about the devil’s influence on rock & roll — or something like that. This was when Lewis almost refused to record “Great Balls of Fire.”

Posted in arts, pop music, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 1 Comment

They’ll kill your vote if you let them

Posted on December 31, 2011 by oddmanout215

Let me be your little dog ’til your big dog come
— Carl Perkins, “Matchbox”

It’s worth noting as we head into 2012 that many of us aren’t going to change a damn thing about ourselves, resolutions or no. Most elected Democrats will continue to waffle and back-pedal, consulting the Weather Station every hour to find out which way the wind blows. Republicans will fight like dogs to kill what’s left of our rights, including our right to vote.

One of the GOP’s little dogs recently suffered a setback in his campaign to transform Maine into a feudal state:

Last month, Maine voters delivered a major rebuke to Gov. Paul LePage (R) and the Republican-held legislature when they approved a referendum restoring election day voting registration rights in the state. Earlier this year, state legislators passed a bill repealing the state’s 38 year-old law allowing citizens to register at the polls on election day.

As usual in these scenarios, the big dogs stayed far in the background, spending large sums in a futile effort to make sure the dirty work of LePage and the legislators wouldn’t be undone:

…Recognizing the referendum’s importance, voting rights opponents poured money into the campaign to repeal election day registration. In fact, just two days after the state’s campaign finance reporting deadline, a secret conservative donor funneled $250,000 into the race, allowing the No On 1 campaign to make significant TV ad buys in an inexpensive media market.

Per state law, however, the identity of donors must be revealed within 45 days after the election. In fact, the entire $250,000 worth of late money came from a single source: the American Justice Partnership.

The AJP is a conservative legal organization based not in Maine, but in Michigan… Though the AJP doesn’t disclose where its funding comes from, the Bangor Daily News notes that it has partnered with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the past, a group that has been instrumental in the proliferation of voter ID laws across the country.

The AJP’s secret $250,000 contribution ultimately accounted for over 78 percent of all the money raised by the No On 1 campaign. In other words, over three-quarters of the funding for opponents of election day registration in Maine came from Michigan…

The big dogs fund efforts by the little dogs — LePage, Snyder in Michigan, Corbett in PA, Kasich is Ohio, Cristie in NJ, on and on — to undermine the power and resources of those who believe in government by the people rather than the plutocrats. Count on them to spend a fortune in 2012, as sneakily as possible, especially on that well-groomed poodle named Mitt.

Posted in campaign finance reform, Congress, liar, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Did Obama not get it?

Posted on December 30, 2011 by oddmanout215

Why wasn’t job creation the president’s No. 1 priority when he took office? Why didn’t he make a serious, steady effort to get the real economy back on track? Did he really think the bailed-out banks — the banks that caused the crash — would lend the sort of money needed for massive re-employment projects?

You may have noticed that the same renowned economists are still urging the common-sense remedies that were ignored by Obama when he had the clout to implement real change. Here’s Joseph Stiglitz, in the recent Vanity Fair:

… What we need to do… is embark on a massive investment program-as we did, virtually by accident, 80 years ago-that will increase our productivity for years to come, and will also increase employment now. This public investment, and the resultant restoration in G.D.P., increases the returns to private investment. Public investments could be directed at improving the quality of life and real productivity-unlike the private-sector investments in financial innovations, which turned out to be more akin to financial weapons of mass destruction.

Can we actually bring ourselves to do this, in the absence of mobilization for global war? Maybe not. The good news (in a sense) is that the United States has under-invested in infrastructure, technology, and education for decades, so the return on additional investment is high, while the cost of capital is at an unprecedented low. If we borrow today to finance high-return investments, our debt-to-G.D.P. ratio-the usual measure of debt sustainability-will be markedly improved. If we simultaneously increased taxes-for instance, on the top 1 percent of all households, measured by income-our debt sustainability would be improved even more…

And here’s Paul Krugman today, reminding us of what he wrote three years ago:

… In Washington, in particular, the failure of the Obama stimulus package to produce an employment boom is generally seen as having proved that government spending can’t create jobs. But those of us who did the math realized, right from the beginning, that the Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (more than a third of which, by the way, took the relatively ineffective form of tax cuts) was much too small given the depth of the slump. And we also predicted the resulting political backlash…

Why didn’t Obama — and Congressional Democrats — realize there would be a backlash in the midterm elections if they failed to take a strong, determined stand against Republicans who, from the beginning, were dead-set on hurting recovery efforts? Why did Obama shun the Congressional Dems who urged him early on to change Washington’s cozy relationship with the so-called financial industry? (See Ron Suskind’s Confidence Men, Chapter 10.)

Yes, I know, dumb questions. Obama and the horrible Republicans who have a shot at the presidency, and most of the people in Congress, are products of a corrupt system that won’t change until laws are passed that prohibit the flow of big money to candidates who automatically become the property of the people who provided the money.

Posted in campaign finance reform, Congress, economic collapse, finance reform bill, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mid-term elections, Obama, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

New reason to ‘unlike’ Facebook

Posted on December 29, 2011 by oddmanout215

Any corporation running a venue that prompts you to “like” something is looking to violate your privacy, probably in order to make money but possibly for more sinister reasons. Only the truly naive will be shocked by Facebook’s latest transgression:

Facebook users could become unwitting corporate ambassadors under plans by the company to allow the site’s main news feed to carry sponsorship messages carrying their mugshots.

Beginning in the New Year, so-called ‘sponsored stories’ appear in the main news feed that Facebook users’ friends see. At present, if you click to ‘like’ a product, it does not always appear in the main feed. The new update will show friends your profile picture and the product you have ‘endorsed’ in much larger form in the main news feed – a move that the site admits is designed to bring in advertising revenue.

Facebook say the scheme is a vital revenue booster, which will help it claw back some of the $1 billion a year it spends on developing the site. The site claims that because the stories are labelled ‘Sponsored’, they will be less intrusive.

If a user decides to ‘like’ a product, the endorsement will also remain on their new, open ‘timeline’ profile, enabling companies to pay Facebook to feature their adverts more visibly.

But the announcement will infuriate users who feel that the social network is taking too much ownership over its 800 million members’ personal information.

Facebook users in the U.S. have now launched a legal action against the company to contest the commercial use of the ‘Like’ button.

Footnote: I “like” the phrase “claw back some of the $1 billion a year it spends on developing the site.” Poor Facebook! Poor little Zuckerberg!

Posted in mainstream media, Politics | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Japan’s job-killing robots

Posted on December 29, 2011 by oddmanout215

You thought Godzilla was scary? Wait until Nextage emerges fully grown from Japan:

Japanese firm Kawada Industries is on the leading edge of a growing industry that threatens to become a major disruptive force in the coming years: automated labor.

At a recent robot expo, Kawada showed off Nextage, a human-shaped robotic laborer the company says is intended to “work alongside” people. In actuality, the robot could end up replacing people whose job it is to carry out menial tasks on assembly lines. And at just 1,500 watts of power consumption while it is working — less than some hair dryers — the device or one like it could one day become a compelling alternative to sweat shop labor.

That much seems to be true for Chinese electronics manufacturer Foxconn, notorious for paying workers a pittance and demanding long hours. The company said earlier this year that it would build a robot manufacturing facility, and that it hoped to replace most of its workforce with automation in the next three years.

Posted in unemployment, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments