Solution to Reaganomics: the NFL model

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My blogworld pal Dan Solomon writes a column called Down and Distance for a separate blog. His general topic is the nexus between politics and football that endlessly invites people to draw metaphors between the two domains. In his latest column, Dan points out something completely obvious that only Senator Bernie Sanders could possibly grasp (assuming he's a Patriots fan): the NFL is a wildly successful business enterprise because it has transformed its business model to include a huge helping of Socialism while retaining its fundamentally competitive character. Check it out, because it has a certain amount of relevance to this.

Rhetorical question

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If John McCain can't even face down Obama in a debate, how can he chase down Osama in a cave?

The eyes have it

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A small throwaway question today from Atrios:

What's wrong with McCain's left eye?

I haven't noticed anything wrong with it, but evidently more observant people have, including Big Otis. Keep an "eye" on this detail because (some highly suspicious individuals think) it could be the raw meat for an unprecedented, premeditated "October Surprise" involving the withdrawal of Senator McCain from the Republican presidential ticket.

Since the press started calling McCain/Palin out on their overt lying (about almost everything) in the past 10 days, I've been inviting friends to consider two interrelated questions: How can John McCain remain as the Republican presidential nominee for another 2 weeks at the rate he is now going? Where do you see his campaign 3 weeks from now, given that celebrity journalists are calling him a liar, a mudslinger, and a bumbler?

I have never believed that John McCain would a viable candidate for president in 2008. I do believe that no one in the GOP inner circle saw this result in the making last winter, thinking instead that Rudy Guiliani or Fred Thompson would steal Amerika's heart. Ever since McCain became the last man standing in the moribund Republican field this past spring, I've believed that he has only been some kind of "placeholder" who will move or be moved out of the way when the time comes. For a month or two, recently, I blogged extensively about my hypothesis (i.e., fear) that the Republican Brain Trust would pull a sensational last-minute sleight of hand maneuver before or during the Minnesota convention, and roll out a "serious" dream team of Petraeus/Lieberman '08 to the nation's surprise and delight. That did not happen, thankfully. But I think it's clear that the Republican grandstand play involving Sarah Palin was sufficient "proof of concept" that a nonlinear political media development involving some telegenic unknown could set the corporate press off into a shit-eating fugue for weeks on end, because that is exactly what happened. However, the Republicans missed out on their big legal bait-and-switch opportunity, I think, by failing to be really bold at the convention. That leaves only extralegal tactics from this point forward.

Big Otis thinks the Petraeus ploy may still be in the works, except with Mike Bloomberg pinch-hitting for Lieberman. I think that direct scenario is much less likely now than it was in August, though, because any good stage magician knows that you don't repeat the same trick in front of the same audience twice during the same show. That is not to say I would rule out the possibility that Petraeus and Bloomberg (or even Lieberman) will be heading the Executive Branch in 6 months. But if it happens, I now believe it will happen as the endgame of a complex and probably extralegal "Plan C."

Shuffling McCain aside would be the easiest part of any Machiavellian political coup in the works by shadowy interests. Remember that left eye observation and keep it in mind. Lots of medical problems could cause a person's left eye to go "wrong." Both B.O. and I were close to someone whose personality changed radically, and who subsequently lost the capacity to take care of herself, due to the effects of brain tumors that may have spread there from other affected organs. Believe me: if something like that were responsible for the disintegration of McCain's personality over the past year (not that it was all that together before then, according to every impartial report I've read), then it's not funny. Not a topic for mockery, or schadenfreude, or glee. But it could provide the opportunity that the soulless power within the bowels of the GOP requires to package the most devastating October Surprise ever delivered to Americans. If Michael Myers really existed, he would be the Republican Minister of Propaganda.

"To create jobs"

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I challenge any politician, economist, or journalist to point to the corporate charter of a single Fortune 500 company whose stated mission is "to create jobs." Until this Fifty50 Challenge is successfully met, all politicians, economists, and journalists need to shut the fuck up about how businesses create jobs.

Businesses are not founded "to create jobs"; they are founded to enrich their owners. Corporations are not chartered "to create jobs"; they are chartered to earn profits for their stockholders and dodge taxes.

I have spoken. Long live StuporMundi.

Bush bailout speech: I report, you decide

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Coupla things struck me while listening to Bush's address to the nation about the financial crisis a few minutes ago.

First, as McCain "suspends" his campaign to chicken out of his first debate with Obama... um, I mean, fly to Washington and save America Herself, The President of the United States --- "our first MBA president", in fact, as NPR's Adam Davidson informed me --- could barely spare 14 minutes before his bedtime to read a canned speech about the proposed $1 trillion Republican Wall Street welfare package.

Second, President Bush spent almost all his time stumbling through his sanitized Republican textbook version of the origins of the investment banking collapse, but neglected to mention either the role of Reaganomics or the cost of his proposed giveaway. Neither omission is surprising, but large slices of his audience have at least some understanding of both those issues, and some citizens may consider the President (even more) cowardly (than usual) for not acknowledging their own intelligence regarding the salient facts.

Third, he sounded completely disinterested in what he was saying as if he already knew that he would be moving into his parents' cushy basement in Kennebunkport on 20 January 2009. (The got a big-screen TV down there, and five different kinds of beer --- in their own kegs!)

And fourth, he ended his speech with the plaintive closing, "Thank you for listening." To which I say, "You're welcome, man, you're welcome for wasting 15 of my precious minutes." Doesn't this fool understand that some of us have blogs to tend to?!?

I have no idea what Bush's handlers thought his speech might accomplish considering that 80-something percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, and by a margin of 2 to 1 they believe that Republicans are responsible for current U.S. economic problems, and 0% believe the U.S. economy is improving. My hypothesis is that Cheney made him give the speech just to "torture" him; just to submit him to a little more humiliation plus the unpleasantness of staying up on a Wednesday night past bedtime.

Update before I've even posted: Blogger's spell checker flags Kennebunkport as a misspelling. The options it offers for correcting the error are "Outspokenness" and "Drunkenness"!

Vocabulary note to Senator Obama

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Dear Senator Obama,

There is no such thing as a Republican "economic philosophy." Philosophy is "[l]ove and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline." I think the term you are searching for is Republican "economic ideology." Ideology is "[a] secular religion, inferior to spiritual religion owing to its absence of love, wisdom, morality, and self-discipline; but equivalent to it in terms of reliance on absolute authority, dogma, wishful thinking, and inattention to applied reality."

Please make a note of it.

Your friend,

---StuporMundi

Wise sayings

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Fuck Morgan Stanley: I'm plowing all my money into Morgan David!

By George, I think I have it!

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Taxpayer-funded universal healthcare for U.S. citizens is Socialism, but taxpayer-funded welfare for global financial corporations is Free-Market Capitalism.

Happy Sunday

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Some people are beginning to think that a fascist free-market coup is rapidly coming to fruition after decades of false starts and persistent efforts. I fervently hope that point of view is an overreaction to garden-variety sinister events. But I have not felt so uneasy about current events since October 1973, when the Yom Kippur War broke out around the time that Nixon was actively quashing the independent investigation of Watergate crimes that was being led by special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Memories are hazy, but I seem to remember rumors of behind-the-scenes nuclear brinksmanship versus the USSR at that time, which were feared in part to be an insane "wag the dog" exercise (during a shooting war in the mideast!) decades before the term had been coined.

Happy Sunday. Write to your Senators and Representative immediately about the enormous criminal transfer of wealth that has been "proposed" by the Bush Administration.

Where the cow things roam

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For my little niece-y, who visited Uncle's blog yesterday, I present a picture of a cow thing. Is this the mighty creature that was tapping gently at your patio window one dark and scary Corn Belt night, sweety?


Editor's note: picture is copyrighted by some guy named "johncabranes", and was downloaded from his Flickr photostream for purposes of personal, not-for-profit research or education only.

Wise sayings

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It is OK if Republicans chant "drill, baby, drill", but it is not OK if Democrats chant "burn, baby, burn".

Big Otis checks in

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From his maize-infested midwestern outpost where the "cow things" sometimes roam after dark, Big Otis shares his economic and political concerns of the day:

It's coytens I tell ya. Like a fucking bomb went off. Everything is fucked up --- not just what we own. This week only gold keeps me in the game.

McCain must feel like a damned janitor who somehow ended up in an operating room with an anesthetized patient in front of him, a scalpel in his hand, a full surgical crew standing by awaiting his command, and millions watching him on the TV monitor. And then someone lets a pig wearing lipstick into the OR.

As a bonus, Mr. Otis, M.S., also provides a link to this HuffingtonPost column by an economics professor who does a very workmanlike job of explaining what is happening in the financial sector right now. The author of the essay, Howard Schweber, also provides a bonus "conspiracy theory" that sounds a lot like the kind of stuff Naomi Klein talks about in The Shock Doctrine.

Tomorrow I'm finna run out to Borders and purchase my copy of the 2009 -- 2012 Mayan calandar while my dollar is still worth a Jefferson nickel.

The double cutout

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I am becoming unnerved. Something abominable is happening to this country. It is much too big even for my supreme capabilities in analysis and synthesis. The improbable, certifiably stupid and insane Republican presidential ticket is only the tip of an enormous iceberg, as if that weren't by itself enough to make me suck my thumb in wonder by the banks of my own lagoon. This post is a preamble to a large interpretive writing project that I will compose and publish in a series of concise, nonsequential essays.

To address just this iceberg tip at the moment, consider this: for more than 2 weeks our national mass-media dialog (monologue, actually) has largely fixated on a snide, petty, unintelligent nonentity of a provincial politician, Sarah Palin, who was elevated to the status of national sensation by the Republican party and the corporate media. During those 2 weeks Palin has been revealed to be a serial liar, a possible obstructor of justice in an Alaska investigation of prohibited personnel practices, and ridiculously ignorant of political and economic fundamentals... for starters. Her running mate --- "former POW" John McCain --- and his campaign organization have absurdly played the "sexism card" to preempt criticism of her, or even making her the subject of parody on Saturday Night Live. McCain has finally gone off the deep end with his serial lying and slander of Barack Obama, and is no longer even trying to hide it. All this has been reported widely, and it makes me sick to even recap it for conversational purposes. It is even being reported with some degree of accuracy in certain quarters of the corporate media a the same time as some opinion polls appear to show that the Republican Big Lie Campaign is working with "voters." All that is enough to fray the nerves. But there are hints that something more interesting may be happening.

It is now the middle of September. The Republican campaign is utterly out of control by any traditional measure. Only residual decorum now prevents celebrity journalists from saying the obvious on TV: that McCain is mentally, emotionally, and morally unfit for the presidency, and that Sarah Palin is a lightweight joke whose ethical hijinx and lack of intelligence will not stand up to another month of even mild media scrutiny. So what happens in October? Surprises, that's what.

The ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin are the tactical equivalent of a deadlocked Republican Convention. By that I mean the current GOP ticket is untenable, even if the polls say most Americans want to be led by war-crazed moral degenerates. War is bad for children and other living things, as the dumb old hippie poster revealed to us, but furthermore it is also bad for the quarterly profit targets of most transnational corporations. The plutocrats and organizations with the greatest vested material interest in running the U.S. government own far too much of the status quo to allow a President McCain or Palin to get us into a nuclear exchange with Russia or Pakistan.

So Big Otis has got me thinking, once again: what is the real significance of Karl Rove and U.S. News calling out McCain on his filthy campaign of lies? Is the Money Wing of the Money Party preparing to pull the rug out from under John and Sarah? If so, what next? Big Otis seem to think that McCain and Palin may essentially be what are called "double cutouts" in the espionage profession --- "agents" who are enlisted to execute a plot, but not the plot they believe they were recruited for. It is not hard to think of at least one story line in which an aging, confused senator and a mendacious, narcissistic governor will have served their purposes within the next few weeks and are brushed aside in a move much more sensational even than the coming out part of Sarah Palin. Shock and awe.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that anything violent or even illegal would be required to brush McCain and Palin aside. Any method would serve, because it would quickly pale in significance to the rollout of the most mind-bending quadrenniel October Surprise ever. Petraeus/Lieberman '08? Possibly, but the details hardly matter at this point. Anything that gets the corporate media quivering with excitement and the "moderate, undecided voter" throbbing with patriotism would suffice.

This has been my "preamble," admittedly a bit overwrought and driven by anxiety. My exegesis on what the submerged bulk of the iceberg consists of will begin soon. As of now, my working keywords for the exegesis are cognition and awareness. Don't you dare miss it!

Work in progress [updated]

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A two-week project that probably will be completed successfully this weekend: right-brain residential wiring. Just tested the circuit and loops; one dumb mistake (black load at top left not actually connected to panel) and one understandable one (not visible, relating to some hidden wiring).


Snapshot taken on Sony F717 is lit by low-intensity fluorescent Sears worklight, hand-held at 1/30 second manual exposure at ISO 800, messed-with a bit in Adobe Camera Raw (my favorite new photo post-processing tool). Noisy exposure, as would be expected, but not bad in terms of sharpness; was expecting at least a bit of motion blur since it usually feels like I have the DTs when I'm trying to force myself to hold something very, very still.

Update: my slow but peerless right-brain circuit analysis capabilities turned out to be correct, and I have officially cracked the Circuit A15 atom! The black lead to the stove hood (upper left) was incorrectly spliced into a kitchen wall switch loop and the lead to the overhead sink lights (not visible) wasn't spliced into anything at all. The solution is shown below for education purposes; note how the junction has been simplified. The new snapshot was produced with the same camera, lighting, and Adobe Raw settings used in the earlier one, but my hand wasn't as steady (I really do have the DTs this morning, I think). Anyway, I have to go now: I'm waiting for those three new plumbers I just hired.

Moose droppings!

It's time for a Moose droppings! riddle!

Q: How do you turn a sow's earmark into a silk purse?

A: By lying and lying and lying about it!

Editor's note: as you can see, and therefore it goes without saying, today's edition of Moose droppings! would not have been possible without Josh Marshall and Talking Points Memo. [Holy crap! Four military fighter jets just scrambled about a mile outside my home office window at about 800 ft --- no kidding! I gotta log off now and head for the basement --- might be a "maverick" flying one of those birds!]

Moose droppings!

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Editor's note: "Moose droppings" is your Fifty50 dispensary for links to mind-bending stories about "Amerika's Governor," or "Alaska's GILF," or the "Pig With Lipstick," or whatever you wish to call Sarah Palin. Credit for the title of this hopefully short-term feature must go to VAR Of The DAR, who originally invented it for an even more ridiculous blog than the one you are now reading.

Today's dropping: Mayor Sarah's BYORK* policy!
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* Buy your own "rape kit."

It was a simpler time

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Back before Michelle Obama had something to hide, before the Bush Doctrine, even before September 11 was a pre-conjugal glint in the eyes of some oily transnational villains, it was a simpler time. A time when Mavericks Roamed The Earth. A time when politicians considered each-other's families off limits. It was a time when high-profile political wives had nothing to hide.

Josh Marshall makes a funny

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One of the things I like about TPM is the style of humor employed by Josh Marshall. It's sort of a throwback to a more innocent time in that he rarely swears or relies on topical pop culture references. When he uses terms like "malarkey" and "bamboozlement" they have an automatic ring of authenticity, and they arrest the eye for a moment.

Today Josh and company seem to have gotten impatient with Obama's defense of his "lipstick on a pig" remark, in the face of McCain's phony outrage about it, even though McCain has repeatedly used the phrase himself (not to mention his own well documented public sexist insults of Chelsea Clinton, Janet Reno, his second wife, and others). So the TPM gang does its part to help the Obama campaign and other weak-kneed Democrats get over their defensiveness and "embrace the pig."

I think the logo is cute and devastating. And TPM even provides an example of how to employ the pig in a commercial. Very nice --- wicked, but not vicious. This is the kind of stuff that the "moderate undecided voter" can instantly understand. And the laughter at the end is a nice touch.

Political gang fight metaphors

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Earlier this campaign season I heard someone from the Obama campaign --- maybe The Man himself --- talk about bringing a gun to the Republican knife fight that is a political campaign. At the time I appreciated the sentiment but not the metaphor.

Instead of bringing a gun to the Karl Rove knife fight, Obama needs to break out the Jackie Chan moves. Aerobatic wheel kicks transmigrating into fists pumping like the pedals of Vinnie Paul's kick drums. Head butts, scampering up walls like an insane hermit crab, then dropping his shell 15 feet down right to where McCain is getting "a little thin on top." Bonking people with their own weapons in outstandingly humorous ways. That kinda thing.

In fact, I believe there are now some early signs that Obama may have this very suite of tactics in his game plan. (Can't find the @#$#^@! links I had earlier and am too tired and irascible to go harvest them again; I'm finna go to sleep now.)

Armageddon is not just for church

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Sometimes Atrios irritates me with his reasonable-liberal-everyman shtick. Even though he is a proud and closed-minded atheist, he sometimes tries to show how liberal-minded he is by insisting that a candidate's religion should not enter into the public discussion.

I agree with his core principle, of course: the domain of governing and public policy-making should be completely divorced from everyone's religious doctrines. But because Republicans have been working for over a generation to conflate Church and State, and to demonize all political opponents for not being members of their club --- and because the corporate media have completely normalized that concept to most of us --- sometimes it is prudent and appropriate to pay attention to the religious dogma to which officials and candidates subscribe.

So what if Sarah Palin truly believes the dogma of her Assembly of God Pentacostal denomination, which according to CNN includes a belief in "the 'end times' --- a violent upheaval that they believe will deliver Jesus Christ's second coming"? Wouldn't it be useful to know whether Governor Palin or her congregation believe that humans are empowered to help God implement Armageddon? Because in a few months Palin or someone like her may gain possession of The Football, and I think it would be best if that person is not one who comes into the game thinking it's first-and-goal.

Wise sayings

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Cannonball Adderley was Charlie Parker not on heroin.

Rudy sez...

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"Ya ever seen the inside of one-uh them new lightbulbs? I broke one the other day. Ya know what's in there? Diodes an' shit! I thought there was just supposed to be gas in there! I'm not puttin' any-uh those in my house! I don't want the government watchin' everything I do all night!"

As seen on dansolomon.com [updated]

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Last night I responded to an open invitation for guest posts issued by my blog-world friend Dan Solomon, who is busy resettling back in the U.S.S.A. after living in teh England. I offered Dan a StuporMundi Exclusive looking back on my Petraeus/Lieberman '08 fugue, and why I believe the principles behind my strategy would have been sound for Republicans. I'm very gratified that he posted it, and I thank him. Take a look if you like.

Update: Go read my post on dansolomon.com, goddamit!!!

Fantasy presidential debate question

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Moderator: Senator McCain, do you think the pregnancy of Governor Palin's underage daughter out of wedlock demonstrates the failure of abstinence-only sex education programs in Alaska, or does it merely indicate that the Palins failed to raise their daughter according to homespun Christian family values?

Senator McCain: That is a private matter, my friend. Although I am reluctant to speak of it publicly, I once was a war hero!

Home-made applied research [updated]

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This evening, 1 September, I begin the first part of a two-phase experiment in which I test and compare the longevity of two different kinds of shaving razors. The objectives are to (1) see how long each razor can provide an acceptable shave and (2) determine whether the disposable give-aways that I steal from the gym are of higher quality than the replaceable cartridges I obtain in exchange for cash at the drug store.

First up: a disposable teal-colored Shick Xtreme3 ComfortPlus Xtra-Smooth "flexible" razor with "Vitamin E & Pre-shave Oil". Don't you agree that's quite a name for something what takes whiskers off your face? The performance period of Phase I is estimated to be approximately 2 months.

Update: I forgot to tell you my @#$%*#@^&! hypothesis! I wish to determine whether the promotional giveaways provide superior quality and performance to the blades you have to buy. If that is not the case, then it is difficult for me to figure out why the manufacturer would provide such largess. The object of the giveaway must be to persuade the gym rat to abandon an established brand preference in favor of the sampled brand. My experiment inaugurates a new topical area for this blog: brilliance in marketing. "Ask for yours today!"

Work in progress

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I'm periodically reproducing recent photographs under the heading of Work in progress. What's "in progress" isn't the perfection of a given picture, but my work toward developing some genuine technical skill in photography. Several of my jobs dating back to 1977 have included photography as a central duty. In the '70s I was mostly interested in subject matter that appealed to me, composition, and capture of Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment". Matters such as film exposure and high-quality darkroom printing were of theoretical interest, but they were too much to think about or too much trouble to achieve. So now, as I resume a formal interest in photography after a 25-year hiatus, I am starting with fundamentals. But they are the fundamentals of digital image-making, the technology of which in fact makes it possible to develop technical skill much faster, with less waste, and with much less expense.

The photo below was taken at the head of an odd little nature trail that occupies a vacant lot between two vintage commercial buildings across the street from WEFT, Champaign's community-operated radio station. The nature trail was constructed by a gentleman called "The Prairie Monk," who hosts a weekly radio show on WEFT. He has gardened the lot with plants typical of the native midwestern prairie, and littered it with purposeful-looking junk. I shot this view with the Sony F717, and was quite surprised by how much color the photo captured versus how I had halfway seen it via eyeball. Unfortunately, there is one small patch where the highlights are blown out by a sunray at left foreground.

I processed the Sony's JPEG using CS3's Camera RAW tool. Warmed the white point a bit, cranked up highlight recovery to 100, brightened a bit, sharpened somewhat using the clarity slider, and very slightly increased vibrance. The shot doesn't look like much at small scale, but I believe it would be much more interesting printed at a large scale where the forms and textures could pop out at you. Click the thumbnail below for a larger view.

As an aside, I will say that I'm surprised how differently the photo renders through a web browser versus what it looks like displayed directly in Photoshop or Bridge. Fortunately, Adobe provides a program called Adobe Device Central so one can inspect how a photo is rendered for different end uses (inkjet printer, browser, cell phone, etc.); unfortunately, I lack the energy to learn anything about it at this point in the evening.

Status quo we can believe in [updated x 2]

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Item 1, from HuffingtonPost: "In November 2006, then gubernatorial candidate Sarah Palin declared that she would not support an abortion for her own daughter even if she had been raped."

Item 2, from Reuters via TPM: "The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child."

I believe it's true that in most states, having sex with a 17-year-old constitutes statutory rape whether it was forcible or not. In at least some jurisdictions, a minor male can be prosecuted for statutory rape even if he is the same age as the female.

Supply your own analysis.

Update: an anonymous McCain aide told Reuters that rumors" about Bristol Palin's pregnancy were spread by the Obama campaign. Next up, no doubt: rumors that baby Palin is Obama's love child.

Later update: And when famous preachers and right-to-lifers start crying crocodile tears about how liberals are trying to politicize the Palins' private family matter, I hope that someone reminds them (with a blunt object) that the so-called right-to-life movement politicized everyone's unplanned pregnancy a generation ago --- including Bristol Palin's --- with their strident ideological opposition to reproductive rights for women.