8,000 Year Old Giraffe Rock faboo mama (Carol B). Amazing.
Volcanoes, Not Meteorite, Killed Dinosaurs, New Study Suggests Huffington Post. Carol B: “Oh, phooey, I have a book from 15 or 20 years ago that made this argument. The Siberian Traps may have been instrumental in the Permian-Triassic die off. Why are we so attracted to extraterrestrial stuff?”
Scientists Forecast Dramatic Temperature Increase YaleGlobal (furzy mouse)
Infographic of the Day: The Next Step In Internet Domain Names Global Economic Intersection (furzy mouse)
Taleb’s Sokal Hoax Falkenblog (Richard Smith)
Monti Plans to Resign as Berlusconi Seeks Return to Power in Italy Bloomberg. Ooh, Mr. Market is not going to be happy, particularly since Berlusconi was talking about the cost of austerity to normal people! That’s not up for discussion. Put it another way: when Berlusconi is the most sensible guy in the room, you know things have gotten pretty bad.
Egypt’s Morsi Partially Annuls Decree Expanding His Powers Wall Street Journal
Thousands of US troops arrive near Syrian shore on USS Eisenhower RT (furzy mouse)
Feinstein amendment doubles down on NDAA’s assault on constitutional rights Guardian
Responding to Jon Chait on the Suddenly Possible Idea of Raising the Medicare Eligibility Age David Dayen, Firedoglake
China Labor Watchdogs Expose Dark Side of Global Toy Empire Michelle Chen, Firedoglake
Shorter Eric Cantor: “The Rights of White Men to Sexually Assault Women of Color Shall Not Be Abridged!” Lawyers, Guns & Money (Chuck L)
Bin Laden, Torture and Hollywood New York Times. When I saw the trailer for Zero Dark Thirty, I felt a light bulb go off in my head, as if this signaled that we had crossed the event horizon into the late Soviet “all propaganda all the time” school of information management, except we capitalists have better production values. Critics are eating up a movie that says that torture works. Can I resign from the human race?
The US Bureau of Prisons’ lack of compassion costs it dear Guardian
Origin and Early History of Platinum Coin Seigniorage In the Blogosphere New Economic Perspectives. It’s so hot that it’s history is being misattributed!
SEC’s Aguilar Warms Up to Money-Fund Overhauls Wall Street Journal. Wonder who got to him.
Deutsche Bank: Explaining The $12 Billion Loss That Never Was Colin Lokey, Seeking Alpha
For Fighting Foreclosures, a $100,000 Award New York Times. We linked to the announcement, nice to see the Times write the story up.
Reverse Mortgages Pose Big Risks for Seniors, Warn Attorneys and U.S. Officials AOL Real Estate (Carol B). Reverse mortgages = foreclosure futures.
University of Phoenix’ plot to corner the cheap education market Salon
Low-Wage Jobs Don’t Just Harm Workers — They Harm Their Children ThinkProgress
Saving Economics from the Economists Harvard Business Review (furzy mouse)
Antidote du jour (furzy mouse):
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Ah Zero Dark Thirty. I had the same reaction to the trailer. The other bit is that not only is a woman the centre of the movie, but a woman directed/produced it. I suspect that makes the propaganda just a little easier for people to take.
This passage in the NYT piece reveals Zero Dark Thirty’s pro-torture agenda. Unlikely I will see the film.
—“No waterboarding, no Bin Laden: that’s what “Zero Dark Thirty” appears to suggest. And the intelligence agents involved in torture seem not so much relieved as challenged by Obama’s edict that it stop.”—
Jeez, when are people going to realize that Bin Laden actually died in late 2001 or 2002? The Pakistanis publicly admitted that. He had Marfans Syndrome and severe kidney problems and was on dialysis. Nobody has seen him since. The videos don’t look like him, or could have been taken from before 2001. His supposed admission to 911 was on a video so grainy that the sound doesn’t match his lips. The story about his murder in the Pakistan raid has a million holes in it – none of the neighbors thought he lived there, the mission was very short and one of the helicopters blew up, the Seals’ stories are inconsistent, nobody has heard from his supposed family who lived there, you can’t possibly do a DNA typing on a helicopter, nobody on the carrier saw his body being dumped into the sea, and many of the Seals supposedly on the raid died in another mysterious helicopter crash. And so on. It was all made up. Besides, Bin Laden was probably a CIA asset until he died in 2001-2002.
So if the CIA was torturing people – and probably they were – it wasn’t to find the whereabouts of Bin Laden.
What we have here is layer upon layer of lies and false stories, all meant to thoroughly confuse the public.
The Stalinisy analogy is perfect — there is no such thing as the truth. Truth is infinitely malleable, completely subject to political demands.
Not sure if Bin Laden died back in 2001. He could still be alive for all we know. I agree, the whole story smells like a mess of dead fish. The early news releases had to be corrected practically on a daily basis. We still have no way of knowing what actually happened. And no evidence whatsoever that Bin Laden was in fact present in that house at that time. Just a story we’re expected to believe on the basis of zero evidence, a story that keeps changing even today. And, yes, Pat, what became of the women and children, has anyone from the media been given access to them?
There is something very wrong with this story and something very wrong with the way the Obama government communicates with the public. I voted for the guy, but I will never again trust what he says.
docG,close to my thoughts exactly, although I voted for Jill Stein in November:
—“There is something very wrong with this story and something very wrong with the way the Obama government communicates with the public. I voted for the guy, but I will never again trust what he says.—“
Paul Craig Roberts weighs in on the Osama Bin Laden myth. I trust this guy.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/11/26/the-osama-bin-laden-myth-2/
from the linked interview:
“Usamah: In fact, the Western media is left with nothing else. It has no other theme to survive for a long time. Then we have many other things to do. The struggle for jihad and the successes are for the sake of Allah and not to annoy His bondsmen. Our silence is our real propaganda. Rejections, explanations, or corrigendum only waste your time and through them, the enemy wants you to engage in things which are not of use to you. These things are pulling you away from your cause.”
these are precisely the reason that Occupy does not give a list of its “demands” or platform. as soon as you’re labelled, you spend all the time defending your position from slanderous attacks. whomever the interviewee was (Osama or otherwise) they were astute in many ways.
My interpretation of Obama’s Osama statement, at least at first, was that Osama bin Laden was off the table for the election debate. Nothing more. The subsequent stuff just reveals the utter contempt with which the elites hold the voters who put them into office and give them legitimacy. The cynicism is stunning.
Read “A World of Their Own” to see who Hollywood is.
This has been going on ever since the WWII propaganda pictures and things like Die Hard and Raiders of The Lost Ark. It never ends.
If it comes to torturing their historical enemy, Moslems, all is OK, because it’s for national security, because after all, their security is our security.
The parasite is now controling the host.
The CIA gives Bigelow access to information about bin Laden’s supposed execution, while the public is left to the changing story provided by the Administration. The fact movie critics can overlook the CIA propaganda link, as well as putting torture in a positive light, underscores the moral depravity of the American movie industry.
Propaganda on radio, movies and TV has been going on for a long time. I happen to believe most if not all cop shows are propaganda: the bad guys are always accurately identified, and they all fold under questioning by police. And CSI has magical superpowers to get their man.
I saw a History Channel show on YouTube the other week talking about some horrible terrorist attack, which was obviously designed to instill fear in the public.
On “NCIS” they constantly acquire evidence without warrants (while joking about it). About every other week they threaten some suspect with being thrown into Guantanamo, the black hole from which no-one emerges, just on the false say-so of the clear-eyed, square-jawed, Do-Right NCIS guy that whatever punk is a “terrorist” or a “threat to national security”.
It’s not acknowledged as the chilling Soviet gulag tactic that it is; instead—again—officially “disappearing” people is joked about.
My husband likes the show, but I find it appalling on every level.
P.S. When threatened with the bald fact that the so-called “Rule of Law” has been in effect, suspended in the US, the suspects always cave, of course.
I can’t help but wonder what the Average Joe thinks when they watch shows like this. Do they think “yay, law enforcement!”, or “gee, the law seems pretty iffy”…?
Director Bigelow is extremely intelligent and subtle. Most people did not comprehend the true, full meaning of “The Hurt Locker.”
07 and simplistic but still relative.
It’s not over ‘til …
Scientific ideas are always open to question and to new lines of evidence, so although many observations are
consistent with the asteroid hypothesis, the investigation continues. So far, the evidence supports the idea that
a giant asteroid struck Earth at the end of the Cretaceous—but did it actually cause most of the extinctions at 7
© 2007 The University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley, and the Regents of the University of California • http://www.understandingscience.org
that time? Some observations point to additional explanations. Further research (much of it spurred by the asteroid hypothesis) has revealed the end of the Cretaceous to be a chaotic time on Earth, even ignoring the issue
of a massive asteroid collision. Volcanic activity peaked, producing lava flows that now cover about 200,000
square miles of India; major climate change was underway with general cooling punctuated by at least one
intense period of global warming; sea level dropped and continents shifted with tectonic movements. With
all this change going on, ecosystems were surely disrupted. These factors could certainly have played a role in
triggering the mass extinction—but did they?
In short, the evidence points to several potential culprits for the mass extinction (Fig. 19). Which is the
true cause? Well, perhaps they all are.
Just as the extinction of an endangered species today
may be traced to many contributing factors (global
warming, habitat destruction, an invasive predator,
etc.), the KT mass extinction may have been triggered
by several different agents (e.g., volcanism and an asteroid impact, with a bit of climate change thrown
into the mix). If this is indeed the case and multiple
causes were in play, teasing them apart will require a more integrative approach, exploring the relationships
between abiotic factors (like asteroid impacts and sea level change) and extinction: which groups survived the
mass extinction and which did not? Birds, for example, survived the extinction, but all other dinosaurs went
extinct. What does this tell us about the cause of the extinction? Are there different patterns of extinction in
different ecosystems or different parts of the world? Do these differences point to separate causal mechanisms?
http://undsci.berkeley.edu/lessons/pdfs/alvarez_woflow.pdf
skippy, no mention of the magnetic pole shift? There certainly is evidence of that event in rock all over the world, and there are a lot of scientists investigating this today–it even made the Guardian a few days ago. This is the biggie, and it’s why the Piri Reis maps are of such interest, showing no ice in he Arctic.
Confluence of Events was the term used, methinks, applicable in most situations it seems.
In regards to the dinosaurs, the moon Io has volcanism due to the immense gravity of Jupiter squeezing it like an orange.
Now imagine the earth getting hit on one side with a ten mile rock traveling at 50k km/sec. If I struck my orange with a hammer on one side (not to smash it), what are the odds that something doesn’t happen to the other side? (bad analogy).
So what I am saying is the earth is a thin crust with melted filling in the middle (a calzone!). Any slight disturbance to the thing and all heck breaks loose.
I was thinking the same when I read that – what if the volcanoes were caused by the meterorite?
Why can’t we just get along and have both?
Tsunamis too.
or read the novel:
Lucifer’s Hammer – Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
Lucifer’s Hammer…love that book!
Well, it all comes down to the shock doctrine, dunnit? Noted geoscientist N. Klein claims it’s not extra-terrestrial.
The article on reverse mortgages is pretty revealing but doesn’t go into detail regarding what the affected couple or the majority of reverse mortgage holders spend the lump sum payment most opt for on. That information is particularly important, I think, given the new seemingly invigorated push for raising the Medicare age eligibility. People 62 and older are going to have fewer and fewer protections against unexpected expenses for a longer period of time, if Medicare eligibility is raised from 65 to 67.
There’s something a bit bitter and ironic about the failure of the reverse mortgage to allow seniors to remain independent in their homes, too, given the very large move on the part of states and the federal government to get people in nursing homes and other care facilities back into their homes, in part to decrease costs to Medicaid and Medicare.
You underscore the incredible frailty of the policy position taken by the knaves and fools occupying public office in the US who were given the option during the health care debate of extending medicare to all, and rejected it in favour of whatever beast Obamacare is. “We’ll show ’em, we’ll INCREASE the age of eligiblity, spoiled infant-brains that we are.”
For people who double-major, it’s
Saving Politics from the Politicians
and
Saving Economics from the Economists
Raising Medicare eligibility age.
Maybe raising the legal voting age is next, unless they raise the legal driving age first.
On the other hand, I can see airlines, sports/amusemnt parks and movie theaters lower their adult age to, say, 10, so they can sell more adult tickets.
I think I once saw a painting like that and I think it was called ‘Stop Fawning Over Each Other’ or something like that.
re: Zero Dark Thirty – I haven’t seen it, and only seen the trailer once. I’ll say I wasn’t thrilled when I heard the movie concept. But IIRC, this is the woman that dd hurt locker – which I found extremely disturbing in straight-forward and perhaps good way. Is it possible the reprehensible nature of this film is intended by the director as a call to recognize that reprehensible nature in our society? (you know, just thinking its possible the folks on NC might be a little cynical.
Or is it because the establishment’s favorite tool, co-optation, works so well on everyone as time goes by…
Rahm, Obama’s consigliere, was given his own crew and is trying to implement the old skim-casino-profits racket. From The Reader:
One day in Mayor Rahm’s Chicago
So the mayor’s promising to use casino money on schools while he diverts over $200 million a year from the schools to feed his TIF kitty. From which he recently took roughly $30 million to give to some of the world’s richest real estate developers to build River Point, an office high-rise in River North, one of the richest parts of town.
[snip]
Question: If the mayor’s closing schools, why does he need casino money to build new ones?
Answer: ‘Cause the mayor doesn’t really want to “close” schools so much as convert them into charters run by his cronies who pay their teachers shitty salaries. So he can continue his curious economic development strategy of building a better Chicago by eliminating its middle class.
Rahm trumped the Sicilian mob, and has replaced Lansky in power.The Zvi Mafia rules from the The City to DC-NY-Detroit-Montreal-Toronto-Chicago-KC-TheGulfCoast-New Orleans-Houston-Dallas-SanAntonio-Los Angeles to San Francisco and then some. The U.S. is Married to the Mob.
On movies and torture. Go watch S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine to see a movie about how torture doesn’t work.
Re: Saving Economics from the Economists
Ah yes, that’s what economics needs, more paeans to the wonders of the market, more starry-eyed apologetics for the status quo. The propaganda must be spread to the third-world.
By, “the economic system as it actually exists,” I don’t think he has in mind kleptocracy, fraud, manipulation…
This is the equivalent of the pickpocket bumping your shoulder while he lifts the wallet out of your hip pocket. Distraction.
The only economics textbooks anybody really needs is Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”.
Everything you need to know is in there — natural resource exploitation, worker abuse, power-mad insane management, out of touch head office in another country living on the fumes of its own delerium, a complete lack of regulation, and a fragile supply chain subject to breakdown at any time.
It amazes me this isn’t a primary economics text for entry level students.
But I guess only math matters if you’re learning economics and are serious about making the big bucks or becoming a profeser yourelf. haha
Coincidentally, my 9th Grader took a quiz (multiple choice) on basic economics and and the various types of economies.
The “Economy” and the label that I would describe as “Socialist” was never mentioned. When asked the question that would best describe a socialist economy, the answer was labeled “The Welfare State”.
My daughter got a lecture. The teacher will be hearing from me on Monday. This is BS propoganda and indocrination at a basic level.
It Happens Every Day
Lost my cell phone in mid-september, reported it lost and had my account suspended while i decided whether to get another smart phone.
had about 5 calls with verizon customer service over two days to work this out. each time they assured me, i would not be billed if the account was suspended and i did not have a phone. I still do not have a phone and the account remains suspended.
today, over two months later, I look in the mail and there’s a verizon bill for $273.52 for october and November.
I go to the local verizon store today and they asked me if I specified suspension “with” or “without” billing. the department I need to speak with to resolve this is not open sunday. so they said I’d have to call tomorrow.
economics in action! suspension “with billing”? AYFKM? I don’t have a phone and if somebody calls my number there’s a recording saying the number is not working. yeah, sure. what a deal!
it’s everywhere. health insurance, mortgages, cell phones, one scam after another. one lie after another. one fraud after another. every day.
Would you like your customer service “with” or “without” a brain?
You can get a lotta red wine for $273 too. bummer.
the wine store is one refuge from the flood of fraud
unfortunately, it is hard to find a Spanish wine for less than $8.99.
My “heuristic” is this: walk into store, survey the wire bin where the usual cheap $5 wines with screw-off caps are, then look at the Spanish wine shelf for a price that starts with a $5.
$50 does not qualify. It has to be $5.XX.
If it’s from Argentina or Chile or Portugal, not Spain, that is OK but not ideal.
If there is not a 5-handle to be found, return to wire bin and get one there with a 5 handle.
Even a robot could do this.
You were able to call? Amazing.
$8.99 sounds like a lot for Spanish wine. Especially after having your $273 stolen.
I’ve been having good luck with my homebrew beer commune. My tennis comrades cleaned out the Dunkel batch and part of the new milk stout batch, but we share in the cost of production, and the brewmeister gets his. So brewed up a nut brown ale yesterday and will do another Dunkel tomorrow.
I’ve become a yeast permaculturist too so I don’t need to buy that at the outrageous price the brew store charges. ($7.25) Now I got 5 strains from around the world sleeping in suspended animation in the freezer.
As long as I can still buy grain and hops the beer commune will prosper.
@ craazyman, jug of grape juice, packet of yeast, and a balloon. Prison wine!
I share your taste for Spanish wine.
On the home brew front, just made a special bitter, racked the porter, and kegged the bitter. I have a hard cider and a Kölsch maturing, and a Fraoch.
Cheers!
@craazyman:
Maybe Verizon will let you pay your bill “without money”!
ohmy, just wait till they get that Federal Reserve cartoon putsch going full speed into every grammar school, if not kindergarten. “Cartoon” propaganda without the Disney cost.
craazyman, what a brilliant observation. The poetic temper is required for telling that depth/breadth of truth about worship of the God Capital.
Francis Ford Coppola did Conrad justice, in his epic poetic “Apocalypse Now.”
Must credit Walton Family! At a time when POTUS seeks to give up two years of Medicare, Walmart will be expanding Medicaid and Obamacare! http://www.emptywheel.net/2012/12/05/walmart-takes-advantage-of-health-reform-it-championed/
In spirit of Christmas changes will be implemented in January.
the funding for medicare could be increased and the eligibility age not increased if it was made a public option and we could support it with our premiums instead of a private insurance cabal thru a mandate
Yes, I think that’s the administration’s ultimate, “market-state”-driven objective: To destroy Medicare entirely as a single payer system. And if they have to kill a few thousand old people to do it, well so what?
Lambert, it’s an “efficiency two-fer” for the Private Profiteers! The Rockefellers get what they want, every which way.
Torture with impunity, detention without trial, covert aggression, elite looting: the state sclerosis may be recognizably late Soviet, but the absolutism harks back somewhat further. A rotating cast of NCS desk jockeys are setting themselves up as magister utriusquae militiae for the USA’s decline and fall. The president’s handler is Brennan right now. If Ray McGovern succeeds in exposing Brennan, then Brennan will drop out of sight and get replaced. NCS has suborned or infiltrated every institution of government – including key controls the DC Circuit, FBI, Homeland Security, (and Treasury, since forever.) Congressional oversight is a joke, even Rockefeller admits it. The cancer is worse than in JFK’s day – they don’t have to kill the president, they just pick one and run him like an agent. Americans are never going to get NCS under control without the Rome Statute. That’s only the first baby step but the whole world will have to work together to stop these criminals. So kindly don’t resign, homo sapiens needs you.
julia, this is just the final act of the British Empire’s destruction of America. John Coleman (former MI6, naturalized American citizen), has been telling us the truth for years, and his frank speeches abound on YouTube. His knowledge is profound. He may be the last true expert on the contents of The Congressional Record, cross-referenced with all other hard information at his command through the decades.
Re: US Troops arrive on USS Eisenhower—a comment that shines some facts-on-the ground (sea) reality:
“There are so many inaccuracies in this article, it makes it pretty laughable. With the decommisioning of the USS Enterprise, there are only the TEN Nimitz-class carriers afloat, SIX of which are in port for long-term maintenance. They will not be out until the 2013-14 time frame. The FOUR that are available for duty across the ENTIRE planet each contain 6000 SAILORS, and only 75 Planes (3 squads F/B, 1ea F/ASW/AEW/SAR/etc). Each Carrier Strike group has ONE guided-missile cruiser, TWO guided-missile destroyers, and ONE submarine. You do not invade countries with sailors, there are not 8 squadrons of fighter/bombers onboard the Ike, there are not 10 destroyers in the Med, & etc.”
The Empire Haz No Clothes…
I’d also read a couple of days ago over at Moon of Alabama that the Ike was transiting the Med en route from the Gulf to Norfolk for emergency refit. Either RT has engaged in some really bad propaganda or they’ve really dropped the ball.
Re: David Dayen and Raising Medicare Eligibility Age— is it just me?
First, this week, Obama invited lefty/progressive journalists/bloggers to the White House for a meeting:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/msnbc-hosts-spotted-visiting-obama-white-house/
Next–immediately, Ezra Klein floats a trial balloon that this is a done deal, get used to it.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/08/1168316/-OMFG-I-hope-Ezra-Klein-is-wrong (Warning-Daily Kos link)
Next-Ezra interviews Peter Orzag, who repeats the same meme, with no pushback from Ezra. (Warning-Daily Kos link)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/08/1168368/-That-Shouldn-t-Happen-on-Rachel-Maddow-Show-Again
Conspiracy Theory—if those members of the “progressive media” who were in attendance, start pushing this trial balloon at their various outlets, then something truly stinks.
Obviously, these three have boarded the Gravy Train. They have completed their pro publica assignments, and they need not pretend anymore.
Re: Low-Wage Jobs Don’t Just Harm Workers — They Harm Their Children.
40 years ago, we used to think of this neglect of children as “character building”. I’m surprised the elites are not using the same framing now?
At least those kids whose parents couldn’t afford college could in some cases get good well paying manufacturing gigs. Do they now go on to manufacture meth?
Michigan State legislature does its dirty dealing behind locked doors; BCBSM can’t offer abortion coverage unless a seperate rider to the policy is purchased in advance.
http://www.aclumich.org/issues/capitol-shutdown/2012-12/1785
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
December 6, 2012
LANSING, Mich. – The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan expressed outrage today over the unconstitutional lockout at the Michigan State Capitol. Reports indicate that Michigan State Police blocked entrance to the capitol building today as hundreds of activists and protesters waited outside, including the ACLU of Michigan’s legislative director.
While the lockout took place, senators passed several extreme measures to limit insurance coverage of abortion care (SB 613 and SB 614) and allow objections to services based on religious beliefs, moral convictions, or ethical principles sincerely held by an individual or entity (SB 975). In addition, the House also snuck in a ban on abortion coverage to the legislation that converts Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan into a nonprofit mutual insurance company.
Michigan has an open meetings law. If you can’t go to court to enforce it, it’s because the judges have been bought. That is, the judges have been bought (nothing conditional about it).
“Obstetrics” is a lucrative business, isn’t it? Women are clearly chattel now.
Generations: Planet of the Apes
The core reactor of any functioning economy is small business infused by effective labor, which begets the middle class as some small businesses are so catapulted into efficient big businesses, and labor moves forward, leaving agency to fill the gap. Agency, University in this iteration, seeks to funnel marginal labor to big business, shorting the system to the end of its own growth.
Fiat monetary policy places the bottom end on life support, and substitutes agency for the organic growth signal to the rest of the system, encouraging big business and agency to grow symbiotically all out of proportion. Labor operates implicitly, through shared values, not explicitly, from central control down. First responders, teachers, and trade workers, corrupted by public works, are union, but they are not labor. They are middle class replacements for parents, yard apes monetized to protect the status quo at all cost, replicating nonperforming capital, with a WalMart, Costco, and Cabellas on every block.
Like any other living thing, empires age, and they age faster with inappropriate circulation. Capital can grow or die; it’s dc. Labor determines how it grows, ac. In times of peace, a deceptively complex pointer system is promulgated because you cannot tell friend from foe. Only in the heat of a real war are the delay pointers removed. In the meantime, the law becomes increasingly arbitrary, capricious, and malicious, a black hole. After so many generations of capital replication, the hash table is simply lost, hidden from itself, as the pointers themselves die off, and the system runs off on automatic, leading to arbitrary, capricious and malicious war contrivances, all over nonperforming legacy assets, petrol dollars in this case.
Cancer is a natural process. Labor just gets out of the way until the gravity threshold required to implement the next development is reached. Overall, the implicit side, income deferral, earns a return on investment in children, and the explicit side, asset conservation, earns a return on investment in pensions. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see the demographic imbalance. Capital and middle class are fairly simple replicating algorithms on either side of a mirror. Labor, providing the necessary circulation, is much more demanding in every way, but its algorithm is also simple, love for the next generation, spirit.
If you do not place your children first, you get tyranny, and tyranny begets tyranny. Raising humans requires care and attention over time. Institutions have never and never will work in this regard, which tells you everything you need to know about the yard apes pounding their chests for equal rights. An economy of well dressed yard apes bullying slightly more intelligent, poorly dressed yard apes, on down the line, should be of no surprise as the result. The name of the game is to be a non-controversial functionary, or face termination by the mob, to secure the status quo into infinity.
When the stated rules do not comport with the rules in practice, the result is decreasing system performance, increasing system demand by repeat offenders, and increasingly disillusioned users, practitioners, and taxpayers, all in positive, self-reinforcing feedback loop. That’s the point of due process. There is nothing more difficult than being a consistent parent, a bridge, in an increasingly irrational economy, which is why the yard apes have birth control, and think they are qualified to sit in judgment of parents as if they were peers, to enforce equality, to get theirs and yours.
Parenting is not about treating your children equally. It’s about treating them individually, consistently. Sometimes the older child has an earlier bedtime. Parenting, and the resulting economy, is about trust. Once you lose it, good luck getting it back, because the laws follows behavior, in a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop. Trust is based upon love, placing the next generation first in faith that it will return the investment. No government can love your children for you.
Right now, the yard apes are compiling their lists. If you are one of these young women stupid enough to wear sexually explicit garments to walk through crowds of yard apes, then you are stupid enough to get raped when the time, scale disorder, comes. Put on some fing clothes and act like a human, even if you aren’t one. Quality seeks quality.
I’ve gotten people $20, $30, and $40/hr jobs, and set others up in multi-million dollar businesses, but what you learn from that experinece is it’s like feeding pigeons. I just cut my third wife, who was exceptional in every way, but she would not accept responsibility. I will cut you lose without so much as a blink of the eye, if you are not prepared. The only way to learn is to take responsibility in a world than shuns responsibility, to do your part and no more. The last thing this world needs is another yard ape replicating yard apes to feed the institutional casino. Krugman is DR. Zaius.
Expect the virus if you have not been building up your immune system naturally.
Feinstein is a corrupt, egomaniacal fossil. The Senate is full of them. I mean all her amendment needed to say was that the NDAA did not apply to any US citizen anywhere at anytime, and to no person detained on US soil.
Not that it matters in the age in which we live, but the NDAA is an unconstitutional load. It violates the Fifth Amendment:
“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, … nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”
the Sixth Amendment:
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”
the Eighth Amendment:
“… nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted”
(I believe it was Scalia, that towering POS, who sophistically argued that indefinite detention was not a punishment because it preceded any conviction.)
and the 14th Amendment:
“nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Note that these amendments refer more generally to persons or the accused, that is anyone and not just to citizens. It is one of the grotesque travesties of the War on Terror that it creates a legal limbo where increasing classes of people can be held outside Constitutional protections and those of the Geneva Conventions. It should be an either/or.
Finally, I should note that the right of habeas corpus, one of the few personal protections embedded in the body of the Constitution and not in the Bill of Rights has been successfully abrogated in War on Terror cases. Only the form remains. It works like this. Habeas petitions are submitted in district courts in the District of Columbia. They are then routinely denied no matter how compelling the merits at the appellate level and SCOTUS denies cert (refuses to intervene).
The process we see in both with the NDAA and habeas petitions is called winnowing. You start with robust interpretations of our rights with the onus on the government, then there is a period of multiplying and extending exceptions to them, and after a while about the only thing left is the form and sometimes not even that.
5th amendment, 6th amendment, that shit’s gone. You’re not ever getting it back. Good riddance, the constitution’s crap. What the old dry gulch can’t take away, without the state paying the price worldwide, is
Article 9:
1. Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. No one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law.
2. Anyone who is arrested shall be informed, at the time of arrest, of the reasons for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of any charges against him.
3. Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release. It shall not be the general rule that persons awaiting trial shall be detained in custody, but release may be subject to guarantees to appear for trial, at any other stage of the judicial proceedings, and, should occasion arise, for execution of the judgement.
4. Anyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings before a court, in order that that court may decide without delay on the lawfulness of his detention and order his release if the detention is not lawful.
5. Anyone who has been the victim of unlawful arrest or detention shall have an enforceable right to compensation.
Article 14:
1. All persons shall be equal before the courts and tribunals. In the determination of any criminal charge against him, or of his rights and obligations in a suit at law, everyone shall be entitled to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law. The press and the public may be excluded from all or part of a trial for reasons of morals, public order (ordre public) or national security in a democratic society, or when the interest of the private lives of the parties so requires, or to the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the court in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice; but any judgement rendered in a criminal case or in a suit at law shall be made public except where the interest of juvenile persons otherwise requires or the proceedings concern matrimonial disputes or the guardianship of children.
2. Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall have the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.
3. In the determination of any criminal charge against him, everyone shall be entitled to the following minimum guarantees, in full equality: (a) To be informed promptly and in detail in a language which he understands of the nature and cause of the charge against him;
(b) To have adequate time and facilities for the preparation of his defence and to communicate with counsel of his own choosing;
(c) To be tried without undue delay;
(d) To be tried in his presence, and to defend himself in person or through legal assistance of his own choosing; to be informed, if he does not have legal assistance, of this right; and to have legal assistance assigned to him, in any case where the interests of justice so require, and without payment by him in any such case if he does not have sufficient means to pay for it;
(e) To examine, or have examined, the witnesses against him and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his behalf under the same conditions as witnesses against him;
(f) To have the free assistance of an interpreter if he cannot understand or speak the language used in court;
(g) Not to be compelled to testify against himself or to confess guilt.
4. In the case of juvenile persons, the procedure shall be such as will take account of their age and the desirability of promoting their rehabilitation.
5. Everyone convicted of a crime shall have the right to his conviction and sentence being reviewed by a higher tribunal according to law.
6. When a person has by a final decision been convicted of a criminal offence and when subsequently his conviction has been reversed or he has been pardoned on the ground that a new or newly discovered fact shows conclusively that there has been a miscarriage of justice, the person who has suffered punishment as a result of such conviction shall be compensated according to law, unless it is proved that the non-disclosure of the unknown fact in time is wholly or partly attributable to him.
7. No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again for an offence for which he has already been finally convicted or acquitted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of each country.
and much more. State of the art: better drafted and better protected with independent review and interpretive comments that restrict winnowing. Made for pariah states like North Korea or the USA, where there’s no prospect of legitimate rule at home. That is how you go over the government’s head when it has to be overthrown.
Hugh, maybe because the District of Columbia is the property of the British Empire.
As for Morsi, my understanding is this is a fake concession. He got his constitution written without judicial review (what he now says he is willing to concede) and he still wants the referendum to ge ahead as scheduled. This looks more like a head fake.
Lambert, is this behind the Fracking Putsch in America? Cui Bono?
http://econintersect.com/b2evolution/blog1.php/2012/12/09/infographic-of-the-day-chinese-investment-in-north-america