Forgive the shortage of original posts. I’m going all Consumerist on you. Not only did Verizon go down, but my backup PAYG WiFi service, Karma, has proven to be utterly useless. I can see 24 WiFi routers from my apt, but Karma makes the excuse my signal must be blocked. Please. It also does not work in any of the four airports I’ve been in either. So exactly what good is it? So do NOT buy Karma, it’s a gimmick.
But e-mail subscribes, do visit the site today, I’ll be launching a really important trade post as soon as I finish it, probably by 8 AM. I did Links first to make sure you got your daily Antidote.
Experts Reshape Treatment Guide For Cholesterol New York Times. The fixation on cholesterol is really troubling. In France, I’m told, doctors don’t worry about cholesterol at a total cholesterol level of 250 v. 200 here. And looking at heart attack risk in isolation may be misleading.
Storm survivors ‘desperate for aid’ BBC
Eurozone Industrial Output Falls Worse Than Expected Business Insider
David Cameron insists that squeeze on public-sector spending is permanent Independent (Chuck L)
Syria: U.S. Starts Seeing The Real Alternatives Moon of Alambama
Big Brother is Watching You Watch:
Facebook Patented Making NSA Data Handoffs Easier Slashdot
The Opportunity Cost of the Global Dragnet Marcy Wheeler
ObamaCare Launch
ObamaCare Clusterfuck: Democratic hack Joan Walsh: “I have insurance, stupid.” Lambert
HealthCare.gov unlikely to be fixed by deadline Washington Post. Quelle surprise!
Democrats losing patience with Obamacare CNN
Pro-Obamacare ads targeting millennials stir controversy in Colorado Denver Post
Bitcoins Could Prove to Be Windfall — or Bust — for Political Campaigns Roll Call
Revealed: Obama’s 30 trips to tap wealthy donors Guardian
2008… Let me be clear: I will not do either. Candidate Obama Angry Bear. Guess the topic of this Obama lie.
How Franklin D. Roosevelt Botched Social Security CounterPunch (Carol B)
Detroit’s dilemma in dealing with bankruptcy Guardian
More problems for Rand Paul Daily Kos (furzy mouse)
UPDATE: Mob of Armed Gun Advocates Issues “Challenge” To Moms, If They Can Handle It Daily Kos (furzy mouse)
White supremacist Craig Cobb told he is 14% African in televised DNA test Independent (Chuck L)
Lloyd Blankfein: Goldman Sachs Employees Take Giant Pay Cuts In Stride DealBreaker. Please, no pitchforks.
Nonbank Mortgage Servicers’ Rapid Growth Alarms Investors American Banker
Biggest banks face forex questions Financial Times. Investigation wides.
Goldman’s Blankfein says he regrets troublesome pre-crisis trades Reuters. Another variant of the non-apology apology. The use of “troublesome” is a tell, in that they caused Goldman trouble. “Troubling” would instead suggest he was bothered when he came to know about them.
There is no “market solution” for ethics Cathy O’Neil
Occupy Wall Street activists buy $15m of Americans’ personal debt Guardian. I’m glad to see that they made their disclosure in November as they had promised, since they’d missed past self-imposed deadlines. However, looking at their website, I’m still puzzled by some things. They’ve raised over $620,000 and have a reserve fund of $60,000, so $160,000 of that has yet to be spent. Their last debt buy was in May. So it looks like they were very industrious in the first six months (their big fundraiser was November last year) and appear to have done little since then. That also makes their prickly response to our inquiries in September seem even more peculiar. And it does not appear that the reason for the delay for at least disclosing their debt buys (which didn’t require them completing their financials) was what I’d suspected, that they were looking to have a media splash in connection with another November fundraiser. In fact, if you look at the bottom of their site (in the Join in the Jubilee section, on the right, under the Donate to the Rolling Jubilee) they say they will stop taking donations as of December 31. That means they will presumably spend the $220,000 plus whatever else comes in due to their media coverage and wind up. I have other items I wonder about, but given that they are now changing targets to student debt, it all seems moot.
Central Banks Risk Asset Bubbles in Battle With Deflation Danger Bloomberg
Japan effect eclipses Fed taper concerns Financial Times
Andrew Huszar: Confessions of a Quantitative Easer Wall Street Journal. This is significant, if simultaneously frustrating. The idea the people within the Fed really had deluded themselves to think QE would help the real economy beggars belief. This was about rescuing the banks and the impact on the economy was an afterthought, although the folks within the Fed may have started believing their own PR that this would be a twofer.
The Looming Bond Fund Crash Paul Amery
Small Business Optimism Sinks On “Precipitous Decline in Hiring Plans”; Is Lack of Credit an Issue? Michael Shedlock
Economic False Positives CounterPunch (Carol B)
HOW TO BE A TENURED ALLY Academe
7 Things No One Tells You About Being Homeless Cracked
How Our Everyday Life Creates Our Character and Our Destiny Ian Welsh
Antidote du jour (furzy mouse):
110 comments
Comments are closed.
“Guess the topic of this Obama lie.”
What a way to begin the day.
The original black, White Supremacist, Clayton Bixby
Very not safe for work. Language and very funny racial overtones-
http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/7nnosh/chappelle-s-show-frontline—clayton-bigsby
Part 2-
http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/ga0sc4/chappelle-s-show-frontline—clayton-bigsby–pt-2
re, 7 things about homelessness: So maybe it’s not that surprising that 30 percent of homeless people are employed and a significant number of people in shelters have full-time jobs.
interactive map from Frontline: Where is Childhood Homelessness Getting Worse?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/social-issues/poor-kids/map-where-is-childhood-homelessness-getting-worse/
41 states saw a rise in homelessness among school-aged children last year. Fifteen states reported a gain of at least 10 percent while another 10 states reported spikes of 20 percent or more
USA USA USA
Aby,
Related article regarding the real Welfare Queens and corporate welfare today on Bloomberg’s site that contribute to the issue you highlighted:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-13/how-mcdonald-s-and-wal-mart-became-welfare-queens.html
Article mentions only a couple aspects of the nearly endless array of corporate welfare schemes in our country, but at least it’s a start.
My concern with the two corporate poster children the writer selected to make his point is the prospective impact of price hikes on their customers. Price increases are likely to be the elite’s go-to solution rather than other options such as those he mentioned.
Appreciate you bringing this to my attention Chauncey!
price increases have always been the inbred mantra…it’s the flour in their gravy!
“Sorrow happens, hardship happens, the hel with it, who never knew the price of happiness, will not be happy”
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
The final cruelty in the drip-feed process of blaming the elderly for society’s ills…
“I don’t think people do really want to look at older women as exemplars of fashion and beauty.” Why? Because they would look not only “slightly ridiculous” but “absolutely hideous.” – Alexandra Shulman, Vogue editor
Ageing fashionistas…
There are moral rules governing the clothes women wear, especially as they age.
“Many older women must still avoid the twin crimes of trying to look too young or dressing too old.”
“Companies that make a lot of money out of older shoppers, designing garments specifically to fit older women, didn’t want them labeled as targeted at this market – or even modeled on older women – because it’s so stigmatized. That’s where terms such as “classic” and “ageless style” come in: bizarrely, “ageless” seems to have become a euphemism for “age”.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/nov/04/ageing-fashionistas-women-over-60-older-colourful
Letter to The Guardian:
“Not only is the older generation now to blame for the country’s dire economic situation, the expensive housing market, cluttering up the NHS by not expiring quickly, and being a burden on the welfare state by claiming pensions and benefits, it appears that Alexandra Shulman, editor of Vogue, feels that elderly women trying to be fashionable are “slightly ridiculous and absolutely hideous.” This is the final cruelty in the drip-feed process of blaming a certain group for society’s ills, which are due to the failure of government policies. A first-year sociology student could see what lies behind all this rhetoric. Now we are ugly women as well.”
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/08/older-women-hideous
There is a gorgeous woman in my building, probably around 70, a model who still models. Huge eyes, fantastic cheekbones, thin with erect posture. I see her occasionally in photos. She looks great with her silver hair pulled back in a pony tail. And of course, she does dress stylishly.
And see Jacqueline de Ribes:
http://www.google.com/search?q=jacqueline+de+ribes&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=P6yDUuXNEMz94APXhIGwCQ&ved=0CKoBEIke&biw=1210&bih=806#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=VNhF-hDXCYsJfM%3A%3B14AqrVZK_09VKM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Farchivevintage.files.wordpress.com%252F2010%252F04%252F3991847666_72c66b7524_b.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Farchivevintage.wordpress.com%252F2010%252F04%252F29%252Fjacqueline-de-ribes%252F%3B1024%3B747
Strictly speaking Style and Fashion are synonyms. In execution they are not.
A woman can dress stylishly and it is timeless.
Fashionably? Maybe not so much..
this has long, long been the case. women of a certain age are ridiculed with -mutton dressed as lamb- commentary when they do try to stay fashionable, and lambasted as frumps when they don’t.
we have a very cruel society when it comes to women’s appearance, no matter the age, size, etc. though. so often times, you can’t win. if you don’t dress fashionably as a young person, you’re considered a nun. if you dress too fashionably, you’re suspected of trying to use the power of sexual politics in the wrong arena.
let’s not even get into dressing so as to cause unwanted advances, or worse.
the younger generation is quickly solving this problem, though. quite frequently, the only differentiation between the genders in my fellow college students is hair style, and wearing makeup (and THAT is not even that strong of an indicator). I hate to say it, but this is the punk/alternative/indie version of living in a world populated by Pats from Saturday Night Live.
one trend, that might be peculiar to Portland (where for a good 6 months out of the year, it may not appear that the sun has even risen at all): wearing slippers and pyjamas out in public. you don’t know whether people just got out of the hospital, ran to the corner for some milk before breakfast, or are mental health patients around here at times.
Obamacare and the broken promise: amazing how Obama and his Admin would rather keep their deal with the insurance companies than take Clinton’s advice and do something to restore all those cancelled policies to those who lost them. Venal SOB, isn’t he? No one should be surprised, I suppose. That’s SOP in Washington. After all, a deal is a deal, even a dirty one that has been exposed and hurts millions. What are they going to do to him after all? Pull his head off?
I don’t see how it would be possible to restore all the old policies.
It would drastically affect the risk pools as healthier people would stay with cheaper existing plans. Plus, insurance plans are regulated by states, which all move at different speeds. With ~ 6 weeks left until the old plans are all canceled…. I don’t see it happening.
Fixing the exchanges is the easier way out.
What has fixing the exchanges to do with fixing the very, very local economies of the millions of people whose policies have been cancelled? Perhaps you mean something else. In any event, the fact that restoring those policies to those who still want them back is bound to make things hard to a few insurance companies for a while is of no real consequence. In the end, of course, it might matter to all of us since the usual thing will surely happen: the cost will be passed back through to the paying small fry, annoying the living you know what out of them. Why, it might even create demand for a federal regulator and some new law about unfair and deceptive insurance practices! Oh, abominable thought!
Regarding trade, Wikileaks just announced that they are going to release a chapter from the TPP, “including negotiation positions from all 12 countries”. They also linked to a Bloomberg article where U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew says, “we do need to try and complete it this year”.
About an hour ago, reddit removed the Wikileaks press release from both its front page and from the worldnews section. This is how reddit works; it is a managed democracy. It appears to be a democracy until an article that upsets the powers-that-be makes it onto the front page. The post then disappears, and the moderators invent some excuse. People browsing reddit are no longer able to find the post. You can only see it if you know the URL or if someone gives you the URL.
Luckily, there was a large backlash in the comment thread of a lower-ranked article. The original post is now back on the front page. However, this has happened many times in the past, and RT was recently banned from the news section three days after it reported that the co-founder of reddit made a $1000/hour pitch to a “shadowy private geopolitical intelligence firm”.
This is no train wreck; it’s an asteroid strike. From the WaPo’s ‘Healthcare.gov unlikely …’ article:
A couple of weeks ago I was chatting with an IT guy who works for one of the Obamacare contractors. His beat is security. His opinion was that Healthcare.gov can’t be fixed — not by Nov. 30th; and not ever (which is fine with him: legacy code consulting for life, yeehaw!)
As in, queuing is the continuation of online registration by other means. Please maintain an orderly single file, comrades. Jokes about bombs will result in your arrest.
Struggle, comrades, struggle! Help gov’t workers meet their production quotas. You won’t be sorry!
Republicans latest Obamacare gambit is their ‘Keep Your Health Plan Act.’
Democrats, too, led by Bill Clinton who urged Obama to change law to allow Americans to keep their current health insurance plans.
Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois said that Democrats should be open to “constructive changes” to improve the law.
Senator Dianne Feinstein of California is joining Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana in sponsoring a bill that would allow Americans to keep their current insurance plans, even if the plans do not meet the new law’s standards for coverage.
Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.) co-sponsored the House GOP’s ‘Keep Your Health Plan Act.’
FUBAR!!!
As Lily Tomlin said, “No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.”
Also, no matter how much they spend on marketing (a/k/a ‘walking around money’ — nearly a billion in Kali alone), it’s never enough to meet quotas. From MarketHype:
http://tinyurl.com/pyk6bne
Less than 5-1/2 percent of quota. PRETTY GOOD, HUH?
Maybe some public floggings of the willfully uninsured would get people to take their civic duty a little more seriously.
My new Obamacare glitch…
So… I was one of the lucky (?) few who actually managed to establish a “profile” early after the roll-out of healthcare.gov. But like others, once I got into the site, it was rather useless. I found a lot of plans but few of them had the specific benefits detailed fully. So I was clicking on alot of different plans to do some comparison shopping, knowing full well that even if I ultimately was gonna go with an exchange plan, I certainly was not ready (or informed enough) to choose which plan would be best. I logged on after that, once or twice, and couldn’t get past the blank page that told me I was logged in but offered me nowhere to go.
Yesterday I logged in, maybe 3 weeks since my last attempt, to discover that I have an “application” on file. Somehow the system has determined that I choose one of the plans I was looking at and locked me into it. Mind you, the site tells me I haven’t yet completed the application, but nonetheless this incomplete application has me locked into a plan I did not choose. On the live chat, I told “Michael” of the problem and told him he needed to clear that plan from my profile so that I could look at others. He said he could not. He told me I have to “pay to start the plan” then call ARC (I assume that’s the insurer offering the plan I didn’t choose) personally to cancel it.
I told him that was ridiculous, that I would not “pay to start” a plan I don’t want not “call to cancel it.” I suggested that someoine needed to fix this BS and said goodbye, logging off without waiting for another worthless reply.
Unfickendenglaublich
Now you will get a bill and Experion will ding your credit if you don’t pay up. Genius linking them in from the start, eh?
I don’t see how they could bill me since I haven’t, and won’t, complete the application process…
because Experian “knows where you live!”…approximately.
well, you and that other Chris in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
IPPA Computer: Welcome to the Identity Processsing Program of Uhmerica! Please insert your forearm into the forearm receptacle!
[Joe inserts his arm]
IPPA Computer: Thank you! Please speak your name as it appears on your current federal identity card, document G24L8!
Pvt. Joe Bowers: I’m not sure if…
IPPA Computer: You have entered the name “Not Sure.” Is this correct, Not Sure?
Pvt. Joe Bowers: No, it’s not correct…
IPPA Computer: Thank you! “Not” is correct. Is “Sure” correct?
Pvt. Joe Bowers: No, it’s not, my name is Joe…
IPPA Computer: You have already confirmed your first name is “Not.” Please confirm your last name, “Sure.”
Pvt. Joe Bowers: My last name is not “Sure!”
IPPA Computer: Thank you, Not Sure!
Pvt. Joe Bowers: No, what I mean is my name is Joe…
IPPA Computer: Confirmation is complete. Please wait while I tattoo your new identity on your arm!
That’s just silly. They’d insert a subcutaneou RFID chip.
Idiocracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
Why Has Nobody Gone To Jail For The Financial Crisis? By Judge Jed Rakoff
“But if, by contrast, the Great Recession was in material part the product of intentional fraud, the failure to prosecute those responsible must be judged one of the more egregious failures of the criminal justice system in many years. ”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-12/why-has-nobody-gone-jail-financial-crisis-according-judge-rakoff-its-governments-fau
Today’s ‘Thinking Allowed’ is on how neoliberalism survived the meltdown:
“Neoliberal Economics
Duration: 28 minutes
First broadcast: Wednesday 13 November 2013
The truimph of Neoliberal economics in the post Recession world. Laurie Taylor talks to US Professor of Economics, Philip Mirowski, about his analysis of why neoliberalism survived, and even prospered, in the aftermath of the financial meltdown of 2008. Although it was widely asserted that the economic convictions behind the disaster would be consigned to history, Mirowski says that the opposite is the case. He claims that once neoliberalism became a Theory of Everything, providing a revolutionary account of self, knowledge, markets, and government, it was impossible to falsify by data from the ‘real’ economy. Neoliberalism, he suggests, wasn’t dislodged by the recession because we have internalised its messages. Have we all, in a sense, become neoliberals, inhabiting “entrepreneurial” selves which compel us to position ourselves in the market and rebrand ourselves daily? Also, why do work almost as hard as we did 40 years ago, despite being on average twice as rich? Robert Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy, suggests an escape from the work and consumption treadmill.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03h428y
Wow. That explains why I seem to be he only one noticing the Emporer’s tiny little one is exposed…
A good presentation by Mirowski. The Achilles heel of neoliberalism, however, is it actually explains nothing -it ruins and corrupts the social, the cultural, the political, and totally misunderstands the dependence of the economy on the biosphere. And as Ian Welsh observes, it kills people.
Nice link. Philip Mirowski, who has graced the pages of this blog before, would possibly describe the TPP and its ilk as a typical neoliberal response to market failure. In other words, the neoliberals’ solution to any market problem is more market. So, intellectually at least, the TPP is a recognition of market failure (by the perpetrators of market failure) and could be debated as such. It’s only one solution, and given the history of failure of neoliberalism (responsible for the hundreds of economic crises of the past 35 or so years), why should anyone in their right mind support such a solution? But, as was pointed out on this site not too long ago, the Democrats may not be good at much, but they sure are skilled in throwing their base under the bus.
For a contrarian and well researched view of the cholesterol myth check out
http://www.ravnskov.nu/cholesterol.htm
Karma: Their website says they have my area completely covered. I’ve never seen anything WiFi related in my area that would indicate I could log into their service. I’ve never gotten an ad for their service.
Weird.
I forgot to mention that of course they claim Manhattan is covered…..hence the lame excuses as to why it doesn’t work in my apt., or anywhere, for that matter.
Scumbags.
and yet no one made the obvious comment!
karma is a _____!!
*rhymes with ‘witch’
RE: More statins for healthy people $$$$ Booyeah. This piece was in the LA Times when in this morning. My immediate thought, “PhArma needs its profits and expanding the market for these nasty things will do just that!” (Old wine, new bottles).
Thanks for posting the link to the earlier comment though. I have a student working on the inflammation question, which is linked to higher levels of stress, and (Surprise!) eating too much processes grains and sugars and not enough fruits and veggies rich in antioxidants. This is where the science is headed right now, NOT cholesterol. But, of course, the cardiologists who wrote these new “guidelines” care little about science and probably have a nice lavish vacay in Aspen prepaid and waiting as a reward for their hard work.
It’s pretty bad yes.
“Those at high risk because, for example, they have diabetes or have had a heart attack should take a statin except in rare cases”
heart attack ok I can see that maybe, but statins make blood sugar go out of control. For a diabetic blood sugar is enough of a problem to control with careful monitoring without adding statins.
funnee, listening to npr tonight i heard a professor from yale pharma studies (whatever) suggest generic statins are going to see a bump in profits this year…of course big pharma plays both sides of that coin
“There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.”
…
“There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality.”
…
“But they used to take morphia and cocaine.”
…
“Two thousand pharmacologists and biochemists were subsidized in A.F. 178.”
…
“Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug.”
…
“Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant.”
…
“All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.”
…
“Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology.”
…
“Stability was practically assured.”
Huxley/Brave New World
The problem with healthcare:
http://sandandglass.tumblr.com/post/66866446807
As bryanw noted over on the TPP post comment thread, Wikileaks has released the entire proposed text of the agreement.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/house-pushing-back-on-trade-deal-more-detail-on-how-secretive-arbitration-panels-undermine-laws-and-regulations.html#comment-1605215
This is just one chapter of the agreement, which was leaked some time ago in other places. Still important, and alarming in its slavish promotion of corporate interests. Passage of the TPP and TAFTA would save multinationals a lot of money in bribes to politicians, because it would establish the absolute supremacy of corporate interests over national and local sovereignty.
Essentially the new regime would make legislating in favor of protecting the environment, labor rights, etc. an exercise in futility.
All a multinational has to do is complain to their corporate lawyer friends on the tribunal that a given law diminishes their expectation of future profits, and the taxpayers of France, the U.S., NY state or wherever, can either rescind the law or pony up billions in “damages.”
At least now corporations like Monsanto or Verizon face a global public who believe they can push back to require labeling of GMOs, respecting negotiated labor contracts, etc. People know most of their political elite has been bought off, but there is still a dim hope that they could vote in less corruptible leaders who would at least mitigate the harm done by the multinationals.
Passage of TAFTA and the TPP would eliminate any pretense of representative government. Most likely the traditional forms of elections and government would continue, but the “government” would have no real power except as the enforcement arm of the corporate will, and as another mechanism for extracting rents from former citizens who are now subjects.
Like the Roman Senate after Octavian elevated himself to become the Emperor Augustus, an important purpose of “government” in the post TPP/TAFTA age will be to preserve an illusion of continuity with earlier times– to lessen the dismay of people for what they have lost.
There is a school of cholesterol-sceptics arguing as follows (concerning all but a tiny fraction of the population).
(i) Cholesterol is necessary to your health.
(ii) Your main source is that you manufacture it yourself.
(iii) Cholesterol in food is of no consequence.
If you’ve been alert, you’ll have seen that the Conventional Wisdom allows (i) without really wanting to shout about it, admits to (ii), and for years vehemently opposed (iii). It’s fair to say that it has now backed down on (iii) without being able to cite any real evidence to justify its change of position. That’s because there never was any evidence for their old position anyway. So a generation of middle-aged women ruined their complexions by eschewing egg yolks for no reason at all.
(iv) Cholesterol does not cause heart attacks and so forth: the cause is inflammation. (What the principal causes of inflammation might be they are becomingly modest about: they don’t know, but tentatively offer a few hypotheses. My guess is “pathogens”; but it is just a hand-waving guess.)
(v) Statins do most people no good at all; in particular they do no good to women or codgers.
(vi) The group for whom statins do some good are middle-aged males who have already had symptoms of cardiovascular disease e.g. angina or a heart attack.
(vii) Statins do lower their cholesterol but that is coincidental; they do the good they do by reducing inflammation.
(viii) Statins are commonly accompanied by unpleasant side-effects that can be quite severe: muscle pain, loss of muscle strength, loss of memory, and of intellectual function. These side-effects can sometimes be reversed by stopping taking statins, but not always.
(ix) Doctors downplay to their patients how common and serious these problems are.
When I first came across these sceptics I had my doubts. The two lines of argument that changed my mind were these.
(a) The original proponent of blaming premature death on the consumption of fat in the diet – the source of this whole schemozzle – was an American medical scientist called Ancel Keys, who falls into the category “I wouldn’t trust this guy an inch”. The sceptics are divided in their view of him; some think him just a lousy scientist and nasty power-seeker, others think he plain lied. Here’s one discussion of his contribution: its flimsiness is apparent.
http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/12/22/the-truth-about-ancel-keys-weve-all-got-it-wrong/
(Paradoxically, he was sound on (iii).)
(b) I read one of the original papers on a trial of statins. It was quite clear how the authors had selectively reported their data to reduce the apparent frequency of unpleasant side-effects: but to see it you had to read the paper, it was no use reading just the conclusions and abstract. In my corner of science that behaviour would be called “lying”: why it is acceptable in medical science I have no idea. Anyway, ask yourself how many doctors bother with reading any more than the abstracts of papers. Or even the abstracts of reviews of many papers.
You pays your money and you takes your choice. I have rejected my GP’s advice – indeed, urgent advice – to take statins. After I’d done so a friend of mine, a retired epidemiologist, remarked that far more of his friends on statins had had serious side-effects than the literature would have had you believe was likely. Hey ho. Here’s a testable prediction: as the years roll by you’ll see more doctors eventually retreating from the “you must take statins” position. I hope you enjoy the less-than-frank reasons that they are likely to advance for that.
Google Lipitor and see the lawsuits and lawyers come up first.
Better post than article dearieme.
I have been a skeptic on cholesterol wich-hunting in general and statin drugs in particular. I know an older person who almost drowned in a pool as a result (I believe) of a precipitous loss of muscle strength, to the point of having a difficult time even getting out of the pool, after starting on a statin drug prescription.
Excellent recap of the case against the lipid hypothesis and statins. This is totally driven by the money. In addition to the cherry-picked research is the issue of unregulated, fraudulent foreign drug manufacturing that was uncovered in this Fortune article earlier this year. I suppose in the case of lipitor, it could be better to get a fake generic rather than the real drug.
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/15/ranbaxy-fraud-lipitor/
You can study (real) nutrition for about an hour and stump most docs with some basic questions these days. It’s purposely put at the bottom of western medical academia priority lists because there would be little to no need for pills and chemical cocktail treatments for preventable diseases.
“For the last half century, the medical establishment has vigorously promoted the notion that high cholesterol is a primary risk factor for coronary heart disease, and that a diet high in saturated fat and cholesterol causes heart disease. These hypotheses are widely accepted as fact by many physicians and the general public alike, despite the overwhelming body of evidence that suggests otherwise.
In the following articles, I review over fifty years of research demonstrating that:
1.High cholesterol is not the primary cause of heart disease.
2.Diets high in saturated fat and cholesterol don’t cause heart disease.
3.Consumption of so-called “heart healthy” vegetable oils is linked to heart disease, cancer and many other conditions.
4.Statin drugs don’t reduce the risk of death for most people, and have dangerous side effects and complications.
I also discuss the latest theories on what causes heart disease and a truly “heart healthy” approach to diet and lifestyle that is supported by both modern science and centuries of traditional wisdom.”
http://chriskresser.com/specialreports/heartdisease
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) science program “Catalyst” did a two-part story on this recently:
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3876219.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3881441.htm
It has created considerable controversy, and a lot of push-back from conventional medicine. The links above include both video and transcripts.
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/
It says a lot about Australian TV when you realise that it was left to the Govt. broadcaster to put the issue before the public, then it was left to the same public broadcaster to criticise its own performance in doing so. To its credit, the ABC did both.
@gordon… the handling of the matter was put to question.
The “Catalyst” show was a media driven event and not a unbiased review of facts and opinions. As the media watch presenter showed, massively one sided to the questionable mob.
The ABC has been under attack for yonks from neoliberals and have succeeded in partially staffing it. Bit of a stretch to call independent review of national matters Lefty, sans the private media players having more control over perception management.
If “Catalyst” had or any other media mob wanted to talk about health out comes they could have just done a show on industrialized food. Everything health is a by product of that case.
skippy… anywho… lots of well being centers popping up all over the joint, make financial fraud centers look respectable imo.
I’m not really sure about what you’re saying. I enjoyed both the Catalyst shows and the Mediawatch takedown. And even Catalyst critics must admit that Maryanne Dimasi is a lot easier on the eyes than Paul Barry!
Statins often treat a fake disease (high cholesterol with no other heart problems), meanwhile they cause a real disease: diabetes. How many people have statins made diabetic?
It’s Getting Late but the Sun’s Still Shining Bright as a Star in Heaven Itself
The financial links are getting more and more apocalyptic. I’m getting that “there’s gonna be another crash” feeling reading them but I still don’t quite channel it yet. How much money is there left to lose waiting for doom and gloom? With me, personally, not very much. The 4 horseman of the finanical apocalypse — Shedlock, Harrison, Martenson and Husssman — have lost me most of my money by now. I’m mature enough to realize it’s not their fault and I dont’ blame them, I realize it’s just my own impressionability, intellectual laziness and capacity for envisioning complete catastrophe. But it’s like being one of the dudes on that hill outside London in the 1600s waiting for God to come and end the world. I know how that dude felt. Looking at the skies, then at his shoes, then at London off in the distance, still there, then back at the sky. Then a few dudes drive by in a horse and hay cart looking at you funny and laughing. After a while you think “Well. What now?” It may be time to hit the pub and think about a plan B over a beer. Possibly option strategies.
Converts are usually more zealous…they usually hang out with the far right or the far left.
Maybe it’s time to go 3xQQQ…I know I have a lot of catching up to do.
I think what happens is that God does end the world and the Messiah does return and save souls — but it’s always on a person-by-person basis.
The zealots, they have the idea right but their math is wrong.
Saw a little Sarah Palin on teebee by accident at the gym yesterday. Missed the interviewer question, but Sarah went least a minute “answering it”. Couldn’t make heads or tails about what she said, but it included lots of gooblygook about her faith and almost divine insights on her feelings “about what is right”.
They must have been talking about something important, like how Sarah would run the world correctly, but my inter-set rest break ended then and I had to go over to the incline press machine.
But that got me thinking. What if they did a remake of the Flying Nun and cast Sarah in Sally Fields’ old role as the Sister With a Vista?
Elections coming up and you gotta plan ahead for this stuff.
Wonder if that would make the markets go up or down?
I nee a Goldman Sachs strategy that will make me money when the markets go up and will make me money again when the markets go down.
That way, I couldn’t care less which way the markets go or which party is in power.
holy smokes I can see that in my mind! that’s pretty good. If I was writing comedy for Saturday Night Live I’d work with that.
Has potential. A Presidential Flying Nun would have a drone escort piloted by Secret Service men.
But as Sarah flew close to the White House for a landing on the roof, she would be met by an escort of flying monkeys.
Or was that some other show?
“..With me, personally, not very much. The 4 horseman of the finanical apocalypse — Shedlock, Harrison, Martenson and Husssman — have lost me most of my money by now…”
Hopefully lost opportunity on interest only –w/ a slow burn on principle.
The thing is the Fed has control of the Time Domain, the aforementioned jockeys have none, it’s a rigged game.
“…may be time to hit the pub and think about a plan B over a beer…”
Let me know when you come up w/ plan B
Egbert Sousé: Ten cents a share. Telephone sold for five cents a share. How would you like something better for ten cents a share? If five gets ya ten, ten’ll get ya twenty. A beautiful home in the country, upstairs and down. Beer flowing through the estate over your grandmother’s paisley shawl.
Og Oggilby: Beer?
Egbert Sousé: Beer! Fishing in the stream that runs under the aboreal dell. A man comes up from the bar, dumps $3,500 in your lap for every nickel invested. Says to you, “Sign here on the dotted line.” And then disappears in the waving fields of alfalfa.
When I don’t make lots of money, I consider it “losing”.
Plan B = “Iron Condors” hahahahah
I’m adept at the making it part, the what do w/it is the thorny bit. That part of the game is rigged.
I think I am in love with that little lady on the ladder.
We have copying cats.
Do dogs copy as well?
No. Cats do everything better.
They do. They look where you look (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/dogs-follow-humans-gazes-infants-study/story?id=15291889) . I don’t think cats do that.
What happens to you if you discover you are 14% progressive, 14% tea party, 14% liberal or 14% conservative?
We’re a bit of everything, unless you fantasize about some personal purity ideals.
I am 100% fed up.
As they say, I give 110% in being 100% fed up.
Dear MLTPB;
Ask Tom Eagleton how far that 110% gets you.
No market solution to ethics.
More fundamentally, no math on people would be quite desirable…you are worth $9/hr, etc.
Similarly, we don’t subtract people – another math-gone-wrong.
Equally important, we don’t divide people…don’t imagine there are people fractions. People are whole.
Please don’t crap on Karma. I’ve used it in Atlanta since it came out and am very happy with it.
Yes, there are buildings where you can’t get a signal, but that’s not exactly Karma’s fault since they buy their Wifi from Sprint/Clear.
If you’re having tech problems with your computer accessing the router please get help before you trash a valuable service to your many readers.
I’m sorry, I DID contact them and got lame excuses. And there is no excuse for not having signal in the bloody middle of Manhattan, or the Austin, Dallas, Portland, and LaGuardia airports.
OK, here’s the thing on Karma.
1. Check the coverage map – https://yourkarma.com/coverage/10001 , lots of gaps. For Manhattan they state our “coverage is good. We cover 66% of it.”
2. Realize they buy their WiFi from Sprint, so they’re limited in helping you if you can’t get a signal.
3. All the boilerplate everyone clicks by points out #2
4. As a professional who needs a professional level “always on” service I well understand your aggravation, but by crapping on a “David” for not giving you what you don’t want to pay from from a “Goliath” you’re part of the problem of why we have so little satisfactory choices for wireless broadband.
5. In the buildings and airports you complain of having no signal, how do you know that ATT or Verizon’s signal would have gotten thru? Their coverage isn’t perfect either. I quit AT&T primarily cause my cell phone wouldn’t always work in my 25th floor condo.
6. You have a global audience who place a high level of credibility based on your financial expertise, many of whom would be perfectly happy with the Karma WiFi router. But thanks to you they won’t try it.
6. If Karma and other WiFi resellers fail we’re stuck with the monopoly telcos with their predatory pricing and even worse customer service.
7. Next time you’re in Atlanta, hit me up and I’ll buy you coffee at Lenox Square and show off my Karma. Have a great day!
Democrats losing patience with Obamacare.
More importantly, and not mentioned enough, people like you and me losing existing policies with Obamacare.
Central banks risk asset bubbles.
I think in China, they make People’s Dwelling Units as bubbles…each bubble is a dwelling unit.
Initially, each one was made of plastics.
Today, thanks to technologically advances, each bubble is constructed with paper yuan – the original inspiration might have come from the Blob VB3 micro house designed by Belgian architects dmvA.
That mob of gun advocates arent too smart, hanging that close together. If the photographer had been armed with a Joe Biden special, e could have taken them all out before they knew what hit them.
(Joe Biden special = semi-automatic shotgun)
So the new normal in American politics is that people holding a meeting can expect a gang of armed opponents to show up to intimidate them? That sounds a lot like the way the Klan used to operate, back in the day. The next step will be opposing political demonstrations in which every one is armed and “stands their ground”. Yee Ha!
Dear Gareth;
Don’t get too happy yet. That was exactly how many political problems were settled. Think the Lincoln county War, the War for XYZ Independence, the European Middle Ages, etc.
As for Street Sweepers, just like a Thompson on full auto. Just try to hold it down. It gets a life of its’ own.
http://blog.mpettis.com/2013/11/will-debt-derail-abenomics/
So far this all looks like an attempt by Abe to increase Japanese competitiveness and so increase its total share of global demand, but not by increasing Japanese productivity, which is the high road to growth, but rather by reducing the real Japanese household income share of what is produced. Japan (like Germany and China have done over the past decade) is attempting to increase employment by reducing wages, and this means that its workers will be able to purchase a declining share of what they produce. This effectively means Japan will be growing at the expense of its trading partners. As the Japanese become less able to consume all they produce, the excess must be exported abroad.
Is their any government that is trying to raise wages??? I hear we have to export more…but can’t we sell to “Mericans??? Oh yeah, most ‘mericans are getting poorer and poorer
Re: Confessions of a QE easer: That piece floored me. It made very clear what I had been thinking all along, but I assumed, as the MMT/economics rube that I am, that I must be missing something. It seemed so obvious that it was all just a ploy to inflate Wall Street and the TBTF’s, but I thought “It’s too obvious. It would be politically unpalatable such a display of oligarchy.”
Turns out, I underestimated the mendacity of the QE and PTB.
I just could never see that money getting anywhere near us down here in hell. It turns out, it never did, by design.
Eye-opening and really depressing all at once. There had to be a better way to do what Bernanke said he was trying to do, and many times I expressed that opinion. Of course, as usual, he was doing exactly what he wanted to do.
Hope he and Obama can go golfing with their rich buddies in the hot sun for all eternity, no water to drink anywhere.
Co-operative Revolution in Reading, PA
http://www.geo.coop/blog/co-operative-revolution-reading-pa
Big Brother in Seattle:
A New Apparatus Capable of Spying on You Has Been Installed Throughout Downtown Seattle. Very Few Citizens Know What It Is, and Officials Don’t Want to Talk About It.
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/you-are-a-rogue-device/Content?oid=18143845
RE: ACA website, An out of her depth Bureaucrat under pressure picking an aggressive calendar date to deliver a fix on failed website Frakenware without knowing the full cascade of problems..
What could possibly go wrong with that?
Thank you Yves, for the heads up on Karma.
Here’s our consumerist take on the economy:
We are boycotting the catalogue companies that sent us two of the same catalog to different names, husband and wife, at our address. For example, Herrington and Hammacher Schlemmer. What a waste of trees, all to buy a bunch of Chinese crap.
Also, you want us to spend money on Christmas presents in your store? We are only going to buy Christmas presents in stores that have Christmas decorations in their storefronts or those that do not pretend that we are celebrating some mega consumption secular “holiday” or “festival of lights”.
“Guess the topic of this Obama lie”
umm,
is it “tell the truth or lie”?
J. Frothingham Waterbury: I want to show you I’m honest in the worst way!
the MINTS, huh?
lemme guess, ¿Maldives, Iceland, Niue, and Tahiti?
http://www.businessinsider.com/jim-oneill-presents-the-mint-economies-2013-11
hmm,
what about the “SPIES” group of nations?
you know,
Sanada, Pengland, Istralia, Ewe Zealand, and the Sunited States?
Yves internet outages:
NYC can not deliver reliable internet connection, much less what I have in my apartment, fiber optic cable right into my closet at 50MPS, and the world is agog at the failure of Healthcare.gov. Any review of the speed of the IT innovations and the response for capital investment in the private sector, much less the Jurassic Park of IT, the Federal Government, should lead to an obvious conclusion. There is little to no institutional capacity for the design and implementation of IT within the Federal Government as a whole, and just about every agency within.
From the IRS, to the FAA and FBI, $Billions are regularly wasted, entire programs or projects within programs are entirely scrapped and started from the beginning. It is no wonder that after decades of a right wing drift of the nation and the political parties in power, that the wiring has been ripped out of the mechanism of government or never installed to begin with, as in the case of modern IT project management and implementation. The complete dependency of almost every agency of government on private outside contractors for almost any move in IT is the crippling Achilles heel of government. It would be like EXCLUSIVELY recruiting ex dictators and drug lords from around the world and sending them to West Point and Annapolis, and upon graduation, placing them in charge of the Pentagon.
————————————————————
* http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Projects-Processes/The-Ugly-History-of-Tool-Development-at-the-FAA/
Online exclusive: The agency wrote off $1.5 billion of its $2.6 billion investment to overhaul the nation’s air traffic control computer systems. What went wrong? (Just about everything.)
One participant says, “It may have been the greatest failure in the history of organized work.”
Certainly the Federal Aviation Administration’s Advanced Automation System (AAS) project dwarfs even the largest corporate information technology fiascoes in terms of dollars wasted. Kmart’s $130 million write-off last year on its supply chain systems is chump change compared to the AAS. The FAA ultimately declared that $1.5 billion worth of hardware and software out of the $2.6 billion spent was useless.
The AAS was supposed to provide a complete overhaul of the nation’s major air traffic control computer systems, from new tools and displays for controllers to improved communication equipment and a revamped core computer network. It didn’t even come close.
* https://www.informationweek.com/healthcare/interoperability/health-information-exchange-needs-a-simp/240163738
The federal government has encouraged the creation of these state and regional data exchanges as part of the evolution toward an infrastructure that allows secure sharing of patient data among healthcare providers. These HIEs are supposed to connect to providers and to other exchanges — though there’s a good argument to be made that HIEs are failing to provide that connectivity.
The Direct Project is one alternative promoted by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. The idea is to enable secure email between known, trusted participants, each of which has a special email address only available to healthcare providers. Email sent this way can include free-form messages but also patient data in XML — structured data that an electronic health records system on the receiving end can parse and import…… ………………
When I spoke recently with the CEOs of four cloud-based healthcare IT firms, they greeted state HIEs with unanimous skepticism, seeing them as a bureaucracy rather than a workable architecture. Here are their quick takes:
Practice Fusion CEO Ryan Howard: Howard points out that EHRs seeking Meaningful Use Stage 2 certification have to be able to demonstrate support for sending and receiving messages over the Direct Protocol, which means they have to demonstrate basic interoperability. “That eliminates a lot of the need for an exchange,” he says.
Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush: “Health information exchange should be a verb and not a noun. Exchange activity will iterate dramatically over time,” Bush says, and he is skeptical that the right structure can be dictated by “some federally sponsored entity.” Athenahealth does participate in HIEs anyway because the company wants to be easy to do business with no matter what model wins out.
CareCloud CEO Albert Santalo: “What I am a proponent of is that it should be a national infrastructure,” Santalo says. “I don’t think it makes any sense for every state to be building something.” The Direct approach is “a little better” than navigating the maze of HIEs, but it’s “just email,” he says.
Girish Navani, CEO of eClinicalWorks: The HIE centralized approach makes it too easy to spend time and money trying to build a perfectly secure system. Meanwhile, nothing happens. “The Direct Project is one practical way of sharing data because it’s peer-to-peer,” simplifying the security challenge, Navani says. But he thinks the better alternative will be for patients to provide access to their own data — using a phone or a QR code to unlock a health record in the cloud, much as they access their money with an ATM card.
One way or the other, health information exchange cries out for simplification.
* http://adtmag.com/articles/2004/06/14/failed-project-talking-or-tales-of-the-fbi.aspx
Some fumbled cases made it clear to many observers by 2001 that the FBI’s computer systems were far from state of the art. A modernization program was launched. Now, in 2004, that program is still struggling to get fully on track.
A report recently released by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB), which is empowered by the National Research Council, points out planning flaws in the Trilogy program. It is a rare and deep look into a failed promise to quickly modernize. The report concludes that, after many improvements, the program is not yet on track to success. …………..
…. We recently had an opportunity to speak with Ken Orr, a member of the CSTB as well as a mainstay of software engineering and data design over the years. A phone conversation with Orr, of the Cutter Consortium and Ken Orr Institute, helped to highlight some of the findings on Trilogy.
‘The number one problem is their [the FBI’s] enterprise architecture. They didn’t have one,’ said Orr, who noted problems with the project’s data architecture as well. Naturally, this is expanded upon in the full report.
The report notes that management of enterprise architecture design cannot be farmed out of an organization, nor can it be entrusted solely to a CIO within an organization. True management buy-in is also needed. The senior leadership of the FBI needed to be directly involved in creating this strategic view and supporting its implementation.
‘It’s an old organization. The systems they have been working with have been pretty out of date for a while and are very siloed. They are trying to change their stripes and that is hard,’ said Orr.
The change in marching orders after the terrible attack on the U.S. was natural, but it didn’t help a project already in trouble. It would also seem to evoke a variation on Fred Brooks’s Law, which states that ‘Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.’
———————————————————–
I have sold software, in the 21st century. Web based not web enabled system integration vaporware. There is not nearly enough internal organizational support for information technology to be well designed from end users, who are not IT experts, to IT experts who design, install and then train the end users. Institutional capacity in the Federal Gov is non existent or minimal in so many instances. Even standard institutional capacity to perform the statutory core missions of agencies, such as Social Security, has been eroded by non stop attacks for decades by the right ward drift in politics. People who used to work within the SSA, to plan and develop new program expansions or adjustments, were shut down. What used to be an internal function of the Social Security Administration, of any formal organization, to plan strategically for changing circumstances in order to maintain the organization’s mission integrity, has been forced to regroup outside of the agency it was once housed in.
http://www.nasi.org/
The National Academy of Social Insurance was formed out the wreckage of the deliberate destruction of the agencies internal planning capacity.
“Basic Annual Income”: has its time arrived?
A concept that has been pushed by left-wing French economists and columnists writing in Le Monde Diplo for the past couple of years is the notion of a “guaranteed” minimum income for all citizens(residents?) of a developed country, whether they choose to work – in the conventional sense of the term – or not. A piece published in the NYT yesterday echoed this theme, in reference to a movement in Switzerland to introduce such a scheme, borne from “direct popular action” stimulated by the artist Enno Schmidt. Skidelsky and Skidelsky also devote several pages in their book, “How Much Is Enough”, to the proposition of a “basic income” provided by the State directly, or by other contrivances similar to the EITC, but greatly expanded. There certainly seems to be at least anecdotal evidence that “serious people” are giving this idea more than passing notice, as – shall we say, a “logical” – response to the realities of late-capitalism in Western economies and the post-financial-crash world within which all but the plutocratic elite are struggling to find a decent place and means of survival. An excellent topic to take up here at NC, yes?
NYT reference:
Switzerland’s Proposal to Pay People for Being Alive
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/switzerlands-proposal-to-pay-people-for-being-alive.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fbusiness%2Findex.jsonp
Interesting terminology. Kleptocracy always aims to sever the connection between economics and the social purposes that lie behind our having an economy at all. Paying people for being alive is a kleptocratic formulation. It is only one step up from a bunch of parasites sucking on the government teat.
Consider how this differs from a commitment we make to each other for a just and equitable society in which we make sure that everyone has the resources for a decent and meaningful life.
I would give it a shot.
I think most people would still work – they would leverage the guaranteed income into negotiating better pay, more flexibility, etcetera. Some people would use it to quit their fast food job so that they could work more on their bands…and maybe learn quicker that they just aren’t very good musicians…and some might become stars quicker.
I am amazed at the number of people who work at sorting through garbage cans for stuff. What is amazing is that NOT ONCE have I see someone leave trash scattered after picking though garbage cans – which shows intrinsic human responsibility. And in talking to these people, I really get the impression that they view their garbage can recycling activities as their “job” – I don’t think any of them would stop if they got a guaranteed income.
Second, economists always are going on about lack of demand – there PLENTY of demand, its just that the people with demand don’t have MONEY. The criminals and idiots who screwed up the economy got far more money than they earned in a truly competitive and non corrupt free market (would all those MBS’s have been sold if people knew how fraudulent they were??? And why in the hell is it that keeping tricky financial instruments is the most important task of the government???). If so many trillons can be diverted to such as*holes, than how about a mere trillion to poor people???
I don’t know. That doesn’t sound like the sort of thing FDR or head plantation overseer Lord Keynes would approve of. :\
The big story in Obamacare will be the twenty to forty million Americans who will see the policies they have through their employers changed, canceled, and become more expensive. Since business compliance has been delayed a year, this guarantees the disasters of Obamacare will be an ongoing story and one which could well peak just before the 2014 elections.
The eurozone PMI out a week ago showed that except for manufacturing and services, the rest of the picture (employment and orders) was negative. Now industrial production down in the eurozone is reported down. Seems like reports of the EZ recovery were premature, again.
“The idea the people within the Fed really had deluded themselves to think QE would help the real economy beggars belief.”
More disheartening are all the people who believe the
FED’s ?belief? (or cover story to bail out fat cats) that QE helps the economy. People who believe in QE put forth the proposition that Bernanke (subprime is contained, and growth is just around the corner) is some great…..dare I say it? – maestro.
In the category: there had to be a reason for the crash because capitalism is such an alpha dog it could never just stumble and crash like that – Did anybody else catch the panel on CSPAN with Summers, Rogoff and Bernanke? Both Bernanke and Rogoff made quick, offhand comments about the climate and the environment as being very worrisome.
We are what we do. Ian Welsh
“To be is to do”—Socrates.
“To do is to be”—Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Do be do be do”—Frank Sinatra.
Restroom graffiti spotted by Kurt Vonnegut
“To be is to do” may have been derived from “The way to do is to be” (Tao Te Ching)
Nature or nurture?
I think Confucians were existenlialists in that they thought human nature could be molded.
Today liberals tend to be existenlialists and conservatives essentialists.
But Sinatra’s synthesis of the the thesis and anti-thesis is the way to go.
I second the ‘do be do be do’ way of life.
Sinatra was right.
Yea Welsh is right, although it’s all obvious to me. We may have been taught obedience as children as Arthur Silber is always discussing, but what is a lot more relevant to most poeple is what MAINTAINS it in adulthood. Much may have been learned in childhood but nothing is ever JUST childhood, everything is maintained for some reason and by some means. A society where work teaches a terrifying degree of obedience and survielence, locks adults in patterns perhaps formed long ago but offers them very little in means of escape.
hierarchy lasts because it is stable.
therefore, it must serve some deep psychological need in us to be both abuser, and abused.
and that’s what his post said to me. that we get locked into something that nearly everyone deplores and yet they all keep plugging in to keep it going. and it really IS a systemic form of abuse. because no matter now ‘nice’ we are to each other and how humane we tend to treat each other, you and your boss both know that if you could do without seeing each other every day you would do so.
there’s nothing worse than seeing people who don’t really want to be together trapped in place by necessity. that this seems to be most of us at some time or another, really does make you wonder why we’ve kept it going all of these thousands of years. hence my crazy conclusions above.
Moon of Alabama’s interpretation of the Syrian situation is scarily reminiscent of Afghanistan. There, the US supported islamist insurgents to get rid of the Russians. Then, after the World Trade Centre attack, the US attacked those same islamist insurgents essentially for getting out of line. There was never any thought given to a political solution, so far as I could see.
Now, in Syria (which is allied with Russia), the US is supporting islamist insurgents to get rid of Assad. But Moon of Alabama suggests those insurgents may not be easy to control. If the US follows the Afghanistan precedent, when the new islamist Syrian Govt. gets out of line, the US will just attack them in their turn.
This is foreign policy??
The US governments favorite game must be Whack-A-Terrorist.
So they breed Terrorists, send them to attack their enemies, and whack them off.
Would work great if the moles didn’t bite back and cost small fortunes, both to set loose and destroy.
Sort of like getting rid of a mice problem by having rats eat them, then the rats get loose and cause a new rat problem.
The Military Industrial Complex sure is smart.
Koch Bros – POTUS via Jamie Dimon “pipeline”
http://ianmasters.com/sites/default/files/mp3/2013mp3/bbriefing_2013_11_13c_reverend%20billy.mp3
“Then finally we speak with the anti-corporatist activist the Reverend Billy who is facing a battery of charges and jail time for a 15 minute musical protest he and his gospel choir staged as a mock-religious revival at a Chase Bank in New York City, last month. They were wearing toad hats to commemorate the Golden Toad, forced into extinction by climate change, and the $2.17 billion with which Chase has financed coal companies involved in mountaintop removal.”
re: How Franklin D. Roosevelt Botched Social Security, CounterPunch
Shorter Nasser: FDR is the spiritual godfather of neoliberalism, the right wing mob, and a primary author of the culture wars.
It is a travesty of contemporary politics that “liberals” or “progressives,” or whatever people want to call themselves, don’t see this even though it’s so obviously encoded in the public policy it should be staring them right there in the face.
No one is going to drag the Overton window in a humanizing direction by starting all the way over there.
Also, love the antidote du jour! How can I get that job?
Maybe there is hope….
http://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewzeitlin/jpmorgan-shows-exactly-how-to-not-use-twitter
“JPMorgan Shows Exactly How To Not Use Twitter”
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23AskJPM&src=hash&f=realtime
It only gets better….
OMG you are so right Oh My Heck. I have collapsed with hysterical joy after both the FT and NYT picked up this story. Came here to share it, you beat me to it.
It is like a fantasy for me; Revenge and Vendetta against Chase with thousands of my closest friends.
Sample posts: “I want to sell my grandmother. Which exchange do you recommend?”
“How do you decide which children to throw in the street?”
“Do you dry clean or just buy new.”
“Do all those regulators and politicians in your pockets tickle?”
“Of which are you most proud: Destroying the American economy or your new jet?”
This is absolutely delightful. Of course, JPM shut down the #ASK JPM but theres always the new #Answers JPM.
In my opinion, this is Twitter’s pinnacle. At least for me. (Of course I never had a dog in the Twitter feed before.)
FYI I used this link:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-13/how-jpmorgans-latest-pr-stunt-blew-its-face#comment-4152391
Moar…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/14/us-jpmorgan-twitter-qa-idUSBRE9AD03B20131114
Good question, though… “Did @jpmorgan sell TWTR short with #askjpm ?”
Some people think that it was shut down, but it is still live as of 10:30 pm, mst.
Popcorn? Check. Gin and tonic? Check. Later, gators…
down2long, check out my second link, in my first comment. I think it is still going on.