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Sunday, February 5, 2012

Links 2/5/12

Puppy Bowl VIII: The ultimate puppy showdown CBS (hat tip Lambert). OMG, cute overload.

Spam maker Hormel to treat its pigs better Los Angeles Times (hat tip reader Lambert)

Largest optical telescope created BBC

Researchers feel pressure to cite superfluous papers Nature (hat tip reader Lambert)

Who really benefits from putting high-tech gadgets in classrooms? Los Angeles Times

Arizona GOP Lawmaker Wants A State Holiday To Celebrate White People ThinkProgress (hat tip reader furzy mouse). Lonely white people can always go to Maine or the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Greece on ‘Razor’s Edge’ as Debt Talks Drag On Bloomberg

Another tiny detail from Switzerland Golem XIV

Tens of thousands protest against Putin Financial Times

Driven Away by a War, Now Stalked by Winter’s Cold New York Times

Indian Military Goes French The Diplomat

Is US democracy being bought and sold? Aljazeera (hat tip reader May S). They have to ask?

Agribusiness Fights to Allow Children to Work in Manure Pits Matt Stoller, Republic Reports

Denver Health Becomes Profitable After Using Toyota as a Template Governing (hat tip reader May S)

Homeless Families, Cloaked in Normality New York Times

Charles Biderman on the US Non-Farm Payrolls Report Jesse

Do Manufacturers Need Special Treatment? New York Times

Why Do Dangerous Financial Criminals Roam Free? Alternet (hat tip reader May S)

California’s Solo Mortgage Probe Complicated by 2008 Deal Bloomberg (hat tip reader Deontos)

Why Does Our Infrastructure Resemble a Third World Country’s? Governing (hat tip reader May S)

Armchair Activist (hat tip Lambert)

Antidote du jour (hat tip George Washington):

Topics: Links

Email This Post Email This Post Posted by Yves Smith at 6:08 am

89 Comments » Links to this post

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89 Comments:

  • dearieme says:
    February 5, 2012 at 6:37 am

    That’s a bit of successful cat-herding.

  • Richard Kline says:
    February 5, 2012 at 7:01 am

    “Lonely white people can always go to Maine or the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.” Since the indigene population has been reduced to single digit percentages there by disease vectors &etc. But conversely, if we could get the substantial majority of wingnut rascit white folks to move to a reservation in central Arizona, and stay there, I think it would be worth it to the rest of us to write off the acreage and let them kill each other off in their own coventry . . . except for their kids, that’s the sticking point. *sigh* Just when a solution seems within reach . . . .

    • craazyman says:
      February 5, 2012 at 9:23 am

      what happens if you have a tan like George Hamilton?

      are you still a white person?

      or maybe just a white person during the winter? as long as you don’t live in Florida? or southern Arizona? or Palm Springs?

      Jesus. This is complicated. :)

      More work for the lawyers I guess.

      • Bill C says:
        February 5, 2012 at 12:05 pm

        Maybe we need another word analagous to “octoroon”…….
        tanneroon ? melanoroon ? crackeroon (but only in thhe South).

      • neo-realist says:
        February 5, 2012 at 12:22 pm

        If you’re good looking and or have blond hair, you get a pass from “the tribe”.

      • Praedor says:
        February 5, 2012 at 2:12 pm

        But…what about me? Way back, perhaps 100,000 yrs (or even less) there is “black folk” blood in me (and all other whites too). I want a day for people like ME. People who evolved from them darkies out of Africa…oh wait, that would be EVERYONE. Every last human.

        So, I guess a holiday for “black folk” is, technically, a day for ALL people afterall and we don’t need a “Hoorah for Whitey” holiday.

        • craazyman says:
          February 5, 2012 at 2:44 pm

          I want my own private day where I can have a harem of women from every continent while I drink beer and watch football.

          What’s so wrong with that?

          can we make this a national holiday — Blockhead Day? I think a lot of guys would go for that.

    • craazyman says:
      February 5, 2012 at 10:50 am

      I don’t think Jews hate white people. I was thinking of two of my past Jewish girlfriends. One of them was like snow-white during the winter, but per her in the sun in the Hamptons and whoa! it was like toasting a piece of white bread. I mean where did that stuff come from? I’ve seen black people much whiter than she was. The great mystery of it all. Just more work for the lawyers to untangle. Me, I saw f–ck it. I don’t care what somebody looks like or what their religion is. It’s all BS anyway. And I don’t know why anyone would. But I’m crazy. Right? At least I admit it and try to be careful about it. Your little songbirds will come back to your tree like crows. Forever is a long time to listen to the crows.

      • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
        February 5, 2012 at 11:51 am

        ? “Jews” aren’t *white people*? Who is a *Jew*? What is *White*?

        In the 1960′s, Roger Peyrefitte rocked France with his book, “Les Juifs,” which demonstrated that most of the French were “Jewish.”

        In America, to *be White* may be *to pass* inspection by the *undiscerning or the complicity eye. When Italians from *the Meridian* came to the USA, there were arguments (and books written) anent the question: “Are Italians White?” The same question arose for *Mexicans* and *Others of Color* from Texas to the bottom of South America, and finally for *Arabs*. All of *those people* were QUICK to declare that they were *White*, and to PROVE it they joined the *White* Master Class in order to separate themselves from the American descendants of slaves in America, who were forever to be *kept in their place* at the bottom of the fiscal ladder, so that they could aspire to rise to the status of the perennial racist 1%. Was/Is this not an unspoken CONSPIRACY?

        More than any of these post-Colonial immigrants, the African (and Afro-Caribbean) slaves and carriers of their DNA–many of whom had become affluent *Free People of Color* in the Colonial Era–are entitled to share in the wealth of the .01% of this nation. To our national disgrace, they have been betrayed and *kicked downstairs* egregiously, as Native Americans have been. At each turn of the screw, the native Aristocracy of these People of Color has lost ground by design: after the Civil War, Free People of Color were lumped together with ignorant descendants of slaves and kicked down the ladder of *upward mobility*; during Jim Crow, segregation made sure that the *lumpen People of Color* could barely rise a step, although *Negro higher education* provided opportunities for some; after *integration*, White and Black flight out of the *ghetto* communities robbed these working systems of bona fide, educated leaders, leaving the least educated and poorest to fend for themselves as the New Opium Wars were applied to their ‘hoods.

        Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Is it any wonder that Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon” revealed a callous *remedy* for hopeless Rage Against the Machine of the .01% kept in place by the striving .99% for the Brutal Totality of the 1% “Mind of the Master Class* of North, South, East, and West of the USA!USA!?

        So, since it appears that We the People the 99% are *All Black Now*, will we OCCUPY Government for the 99% at last? Will we remember our brothers and sisters at Foxconn, and the Monopoly Owners who extract their life blood, as we do so? Will we elect Just Leaders for a change We the 99% can believe in?

        Let’s make it swift and decisive: OCCUPY Charlotte 2012! But NOT to elect Hillary Clinton or one of the *Usual Suspects* suggested in Sunday’s NYT.

        BILL BLACK/YVES SMITH 2012: ECONOMIC JUSTICE NOW!

        Uppity Agents Unite! We have nothing to lose but our poverty.

        • craazyman says:
          February 5, 2012 at 2:50 pm

          You sound completely crazy. But smart. Smart and crazy. Maybe with OCD from too many CDOs. Not sure if you’re on meds or if you’re confined to a facility or what, but if you can tan and drink beer and you’re hot you can join us in a Blockhead Day celebration. haha.

        • Lidia says:
          February 5, 2012 at 6:09 pm

          I think Italians have only been considered “white” recently.

          True story: I (of Italian heritage) went to meet the parents of a Jewish college boyfriend, who lived in Nashville, TN. The mother took one look at me, and said, “at least she has our coloring”.

        • F. Beard says:
          February 5, 2012 at 7:07 pm

          A lot of Jews hung out in Rome during the Roman Empire till Claudius expelled them?

          So you might be Jewish, Lidia. Jew never know. :)

    • neo-realist says:
      February 5, 2012 at 12:20 pm

      Coupled white people with families like Northern Idaho.

    • ambrit says:
      February 5, 2012 at 12:40 pm

      Dear Robert;
      Jews are just like you and me! Surprise! They have their own internal power struggles, just like you and me! Surprise!
      One great example was the shameful treatment of the Ethiopian Jews during that regions civil war. Resistance to letting ‘Black’ Jews, (and those Ethiopians practiced one of the oldest versions of the Hebrew religion known,) into European settled Israel was so potent, the Ethiopians were half destroyed in the fighting before any meaningful help was sent.
      The other example that comes to mind is the genetic study done by the graduate students at the Israeli university that proved that an African tribe in South Africa, which also practices an archaic form of Judaism, really is descended from Jews in the way back. I believe Nova did an hour about this case. Those graduate students suffered through lots of grief for even daring to suggest such a ‘revisionist’ history.
      Oh well. My favorite theory is that Bigfoot are the descendants of one of the ‘Lost Tribes.’ “Hey, Rabbi, when the Lord curses you, he does it right!”

      • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
        February 5, 2012 at 1:04 pm

        ambrit, indeed the Ethiopians wear the *multi-colored coat*, the Tartan, of the Tribe of Joseph. Now do you comprehend why they might not be accepted as *One of Us* (Tribe of Judah) in the British Empire’s Strategic Wedge in the Middle East Oil Spoils domain carved out by the .01%?. Does the City of London live yet in Tel Aviv?

    • ambrit says:
      February 5, 2012 at 12:44 pm

      Mr. Kline;
      I have heard it said, and not just in jest, that when the AIDS epidemic finishes wiping out the Southern African negro population, the ‘right sort’ of Blanke population will move in and re-colonize the region. (Never let a good crisis go to waste.)

      • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
        February 5, 2012 at 12:51 pm

        ambrit, this is so *true to form* for the .01% People of No Mercy, that you must believe it. The Afrikaners bear the DNA of Leopold’s Belgium, of today’s EU and Central White Bank of .01% bucks, any way you slice&dice it.

        • aet says:
          February 5, 2012 at 6:03 pm

          Hybrid populations and are often simply more vigourous and generally enjoy better health than do the “purer” breeds – that is to say, than the relatively more in-bred populations. Or so it is, in the case of animals other than humans, anyhow – and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be the same for us, as well.

          Diversity is flexibility, when it comes to any species.

          • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
            February 5, 2012 at 6:15 pm

            aet, aren’t we all hybrids, even those with *no* Neanderthal? And how does it happen, actually?

            “ADAM’S CURSE” by Brian Sykes tells the tale of *Everyhuman*, and it aint’ pretty.

            It’s time to tell the truth: *pure* “Blood and soil” Monopoly grabs are bunk, Henry Ford’s theories notwithstanding.

          • ambrit says:
            February 5, 2012 at 9:03 pm

            Dear LBR;
            I’m with you on that Neanderthal DNA thing. Greg Bear had two good books centred around that very controversy recently.

          • Procopius says:
            February 6, 2012 at 4:21 am

            One thing I wondered about when I was a kid. Apart from the “hybrid vigor” thing, that is. If whites are so superior, why is it that “one drop of black blood” supposedly makes one inferior? I thought it should be the other way around. If blacks were so inferior, than shouldn’t “one drop of white blood” make them better? But obviously consistency wasn’t smoething they cared about. I wasn’t very conscious of it anyway; having grown up in segregated areas, I never met a black person until I joined the Air Force at age 18.

    • Yves Smith says:
      February 6, 2012 at 1:50 am

      We now have some disconnected-looking comments (immediately above and below) because a first time bigoted commentor showed up and I deleted his remark.

  • Klassy! says:
    February 5, 2012 at 8:28 am

    Umm.. that is far more cuteness than should be allowed in one image.

  • Paul Tioxon says:
    February 5, 2012 at 9:02 am

    IN RE: The Great White North. The Upper Michigan Peninsula is populated by UPPERS(pronounced–you–perz), the American variation of a Canadian, not to be confused with garden variety right wing hate groups.

    • Dan B says:
      February 5, 2012 at 9:59 am

      Are you sure it’s not U-Pee-ers? As in: “My aunt moved from Detroit to the U-P.”

    • Yves Smith says:
      February 6, 2012 at 1:54 am

      “American version of Canadians” I like that. I lived there a bit, and that fits, except it is a bit more blue collar than Canada. But a lot of working class intellectuals, which you really don’t see much of anywhere in the US.

  • spooz says:
    February 5, 2012 at 10:50 am

    regarding “Who really benefits from putting high-tech gadgets in classrooms?” I see a clear benefit for high-tech college education to reduce the cost and allow students with different learning styles to benefit from having taped lectures they can view in the comfort of their homes. I’ve checked out the Stanford and MIT lectures online and am impressed. This seems like a very cost effective way for young unemployed basement dwellers to add to their skill sets without going into debt. The question remains whether we continue to allow the outsourcing and H1B visas to contribute to the wage arbitrage currently underway.

    The benefit from cheaper textbooks can’t be underestimated. With some textbooks costing over $200, the cost of the iPad gets covered in one semester when you are paying $14.99 instead. I think my daughter paid close to $800 for her textbooks last semester.

    • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
      February 5, 2012 at 11:59 am

      spooz – “wage arbitration” — “Play it, Sam” (Casablanca). Play it again, and again, and again, and again, until it sinks into the brains of the 99%.

      It’s all about the *hedge* to profit the 1% at the loss of the 99%.

      • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
        February 5, 2012 at 12:48 pm

        Sorry about the ERROR above: NOT *arbitration* but *arbitrage*. Only 4 hrs sleep does affect the ability to think clearly. How my awareness tortures me with sleep deprivation, but this is the End Game, is it not? *Many a mile to go before I sleep” forever. “Oh my People.”

    • Praedor says:
      February 5, 2012 at 2:21 pm

      Cheaper text books? Really? Not going to happen just because hey go all ‘e-booky’. Case in point, both Amazon and Barnes and (Ig)Noble have recently started charging THE SAME PRICE for paper books AND e-books. See, there is no economic benefit from going ‘e’ at all. Sure, there’s a hell of a lot less labor and resources required to produce an e-book vs a paper book, but why should that matter? Charge the same price and reap the CEO bonuses!

      Note concerning the negatives of e-books: no archaeological evidence of literacy in the future. We currently have “books” in various hard forms (papyrus, skin, paper, etc) going back thousands of years. With e-books…there will be absolutely nothing. E formats are as intangible and as short-lived as cotton candy on the tongue. Who can still read an original WordPerfect document today? Who can even read data from a 5-1/4″ floppy? A 3-1/2″ floppy? E-everything is a bane for any form of long-term knowledge storage and transmission. That’s another discussion, however.

      • spooz says:
        February 5, 2012 at 2:58 pm

        Well, Apple’s textbooks max out at $14.99 compared to a typical cost of $200 and up. Ordinary paper books are typically under $20 so your comparison is apples to oranges. The cost savings on textbooks over the course of four years of college would be several thousand dollars at $14.99 per book.

        Your other point seems like an unsubstantiated opinion.

        • Praedor says:
          February 5, 2012 at 4:01 pm

          The ASSUMPTION is that text books will be cheaper. Initially, B&N e-books and Amazon e-books WERE cheaper. As more e-book readers were acquired and it started reducing the number of real books purchased there was sudden pressure on the publishers who seem to think they are owed a particular level of profit/income. So, to make up for the loss in income that e-books wrought, the scum raised the price of e-books so that they are the same as paper books. There is no reason to assume that text book publishers will roll differently. When the real hit comes to the CEO’s income stream you will see the price of e-text-books climb because really, only working people should see their income decline, NOT white collar/exec types.

          As for my second point, it is actually a real (and valid) concern in the scientific community: the short half-life of e-formats, and the fact that anything published as an e-book only will disappear in the future with either the technology OR with civilization (You do understand that no civilization is forever? You do know that we are no different than any other people throughout history who thought their way of life, THEIR civilization was forever?). There will be no future Dead Sea E-books. There will absolutely nothing except the previous thousand-year-plus old writings on actual substrate (stone, papyrus, linen, paper, etc). Binary 1s and 0s are in no way robust through deep time.

          • spooz says:
            February 5, 2012 at 4:58 pm

            Your ASSUMPTION is that Apple will go back on its plan to price textbooks at $14.99. I’ve been buying paper books from Amazon for more than ten years. I have not seen the price of books go down substantially since the introduction of e-books, and I have no problems paying less than $20 for a book as I have been paying for years and years. The spread between paper and Apple textbooks is HUGE. Apples and oranges, I still say.

            As to your second point, so archive them with backup copies in remote locations if you think there is going to be some invaluable loss. Sounds sort of tinfoilish armageddon talk to me and does not support the argument for cheap textbooks.

          • Lidia says:
            February 5, 2012 at 6:13 pm

            I agree with you, Praedor.

            A big thing that irks me about e-books is that they frequently have no fixed page numbers, so it is impossible to reference something in a work if you only have the e-version.

            You can’t just say, “somewhere near the middle of chapter 3″.

            I’m going to stock up on sheepskins and stone tablets.

          • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
            February 5, 2012 at 6:42 pm

            For Lydia replying to Praedor: so right: good luck finding a sentence that your kinetic sense would find in a bound book, middle of Chapter 3.

            Also, there’s a dirty little secret about reading e-book digital alpha under glass: It’s LINEAR–that’s right, as Marshall McLuhan would tell you, reading the non-tactile *text* trapped under glass page-by-page brings us back to PRE-TV “medium as the message” it’s actually *LINEAR SQUARED. Because even if it contains *video* and other bells & whistles, the reader/player can look at only ONE screen item at a time.

            With a bound book, not so. The human being is charge of the text of a bound book in multiple ways. The page-by-page unbook under the glass is but a facsimile, inacessible as text to the most fabulous “prehensile human hand”–our perfect tool for discovery and command.

            So there.

          • Lidia says:
            February 5, 2012 at 7:26 pm

            To Leonova:

            There is something unquantifiable about my quickly-fading interest in this medium. First I was a bit jazzed because, beyond the free out-of-copyright books which “covered” the purchase price, I could get books in English here in Italy, at a normal price, immediately. [There are few bookstores in Italy, and books in English, when you can find them, have extremely jacked-up prices.]

            The first two or three or five books thrilled me. I was immersed in the Kindle day and night. I love (and still love) the Web-to-Kindle options that allow me to email long blog posts to my device, for more comfortable reading.

            But, that said, I feel like each book is more and more like the last. The “new book” feeling is gone. The text all looks the same (boring). There’s no bolding, no italicizing even, and pictures are rudimentary. Quotations are indistinguishable from body text.

            Even books that I pay the print-verson cover price for (or more) are ridden with typographic errors, bad formatting, messed-up footnotes, no indices, and other inexcusable publishing gaffes.

            Despite having paid the full cover price or more, I can’t resell the books OR lend them (the lending feature only works in the US). When I get back to the States, I’m going to buy only physical books and keep the Kindle only as a reader for long blog posts and pdfs.

          • Lidia says:
            February 5, 2012 at 7:35 pm

            P.S. I actually had a back-and-forth exchange with a rep. from a publisher who had recently put out a book with really copious footnotes and zero hyper-links.

            So every time I came across a footnote in the text, it took me longer than it would have in a physical book to page through the 50 or more pages of endnotes to find the reference. I had to go to the main menu and, with several thumbstrokes make a bookmark at the origin of each footnote so that I could get back to the page I came from. Ironically, this is exactly what the computer is supposed to help us with.

            The publisher pleaded insufficient resources to have someone code in the hyperlinks, which I find absurd, seeing as they save money in not printing physical copies. The publishing world is going to continue to get sloppier and sloppier.

        • Tim Mason says:
          February 6, 2012 at 3:20 am

          Have you looked at what Apple actually wants to do with the textbook? Do you know what happens to your work if you do it with iBooks Author? Have you worked through the first couple of chapters of Wilson’s biology text, offered by Apple of a free sample of the future? If you do, you will discover that authors are locked in, bolted, and tied to Apple’s production line, and that the book as imagined by Apple is about as reactionary a way of using the possibilities of the web, and of digital media, as one might come up with.

      • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
        February 5, 2012 at 6:19 pm

        Praedor, ain’t that the pernt? Why burn books? so 1930s. Ignorance for All! Alleluia.

  • JeffC says:
    February 5, 2012 at 11:08 am

    Pressure to add superfluous citations isn’t seen only in business journals and in the life sciences. In December, under pressure from the editor and reviewers, I revised a paper submitted to an engineering research journal, the dominant journal in the electronic “circuits and systems” area, to add dozens of irrelevant references. If I wanted the paper published, I had no choice. And I’m a senior researcher nearing retirement, not a newbie assistant prof. But this journal, like most of its peer journals in electrical engineering, now routinely demands junk citations.

    The general consensus among the pressured authors is that this has evolved due to the heavy use of “bean counting” by tenure committees unwilling to take responsibility for applying actual judgement. This citation pressure comes primarily from the assistant profs who dominate the rolls of volunteer reviewers for the journals. They do it simply to increase the citation counts of their own papers.

    This farce has made citation counts nearly meaningless. The bean counters still act like citations indicate knowledge of and respect for the cited research. But I probably see a dozen junk citations of my own papers for every citation of that character, and this even though I refuse to play the game when I review papers.

    • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
      February 5, 2012 at 12:00 pm

      JeffC, that’s right: The FIX is in for the 1%. Comply or die.

      • ambrit says:
        February 5, 2012 at 12:50 pm

        Dear LBR;
        My recent ‘encounter’ with Big Pharma has shown me it’s literally comply or die. (Thus evolves the sensibility of what it means to extend ones lifespan. What, and how much, are we willing to pay for those few extra years? Expand that thought and you get; What and how much are we willing to put on the backs of our descendants for those few extra ‘luxuries?’)

    • Ransome says:
      February 5, 2012 at 9:32 pm

      Most likely citations are added to promote subscriptions and journal sales. Informa owns 1600 titles, a subscription may cost $500 for a few issues. A single seven article journal costs $250 for a set of pdfs. It’s a profitable business.

      • JeffC says:
        February 7, 2012 at 11:24 am

        That’s certainly not the case in my field, where the vast majority of authors have full online access to the journals in question through their university or laboratory library systems and do not pay for separate subscriptions. The universities purchase one institutional subscription covering, for example, the hundreds of IEEE journals (by far the dominant publisher in electrical-engineering research), and they do this irrespective of who cites what. So for once it isn’t about money. It’s about tenure.

        Re LeonovaBalletRusse’s comment on this being to benefit the 1%: Nonsense. Of course most of the awful social phenomena in our society ARE due to the 1%, but this is not one of those. The beneficiaries here are mostly untenured assistant profs, and these folks are roughly around 70th percentile incomewise (see wikipedia on household income and Baylor study on academic salaries), not the 99th. They do this out of fear of losing their careers through tenure decisions.

  • john says:
    February 5, 2012 at 11:12 am

    Like everything else, Puppy Bowl has totally sold out.

    • JTFaraday says:
      February 5, 2012 at 11:25 am

      Totally. I sent it to 2 of my nieces. Today they are celebrating their 1 year anniversary of adopting a dog or, as they call it, “his birthday.” So it’s right on time.

      But, personally, I thought yesterday’s sheep herding bunny was the best. My favorite antidote ever.

  • Lambert Strether says:
    February 5, 2012 at 11:25 am

    Some first-hand reporting from MacPherson Square yesterday. Note that this eviction is Federal; the Park is under the control of the National Park Service (Obama), and DC is under the control of Congress (Issa).

  • MyLessThanPrimeBeef says:
    February 5, 2012 at 11:54 am

    Is it just me, or does it look like a ‘cat fractal?’

    By the way, as the sole ‘vegetable rights activist’ here, may I suggest ‘fractal vegetable’ (please Google that), a.k.a. Romanesco broccoli, as our vegetable antidote du jour?

    It’s time we have some adorable vegetables here. Tell me, after looking at a cute ‘Roman cauliflower,’ you will still force your children to eat broccoli.

  • MyLessThanPrimeBeef says:
    February 5, 2012 at 11:57 am

    Greece may be on ‘Razor’s Edge,’ I bet Spain is on the ‘Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.’

    • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
      February 5, 2012 at 12:40 pm

      MyLess, Venizelos has an opportunity to enter history as a *game changer*, as a *traitor against his class* who *welcomes their [the bankers'] hatred*, as a HERO of the Global 99%, setting the stage for action. if not now, when?

    • Praedor says:
      February 5, 2012 at 4:02 pm

      So Portugal is on the verge of a hissy fit?

  • Max424 says:
    February 5, 2012 at 12:01 pm

    The canaries in the coal mine.

    http://www.protectmyholiday.com/news-articles.aspx

  • MyLessThanPrimeBeef says:
    February 5, 2012 at 12:03 pm

    Tens of thousands protest against Putin.

    Those Horse-Age revolutionaries from 1919 would have been celebrating back in October, 2011 if they were alive today, and they didn’t even have Facebook.

    Does Facebook slow things down? Is it less effective as a political media than paper flyers?

    • MyLessThanPrimeBeef says:
      February 5, 2012 at 12:07 pm

      What I mean to say, does Facebook tend to make you (by you, I meant those not protesting everyday except today) stay in at your dacha, drinking chai from your samovar in your pajamas, shouting revolutionary slogans in your bed, instead braving the cold, distributing flyers, while getting some exercise in?

      • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
        February 5, 2012 at 12:26 pm

        MyLess – yes, the *Soft Revolutionaries* posting in their *jammies* in text to be kept for the millenium in .01% vaults for strategic exploitation by the .01%

        Suck-uhs! Don’t say you weren’t warned.

    • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
      February 5, 2012 at 12:18 pm

      MyLess, Yes and Yes. F#$%Book is centralized for the Power, paper flyers are de-centralized for the People–more easily and quickly disperesed on the fly, less visible, less confiscatible, like underground *cash* on the black market.

      So what do We the People prefer: Reich III-IV *maximum efficiency* for the Power, or maximum *inefficiency* for the People? Think Hungary back in the day of the hard-copier, when *AA* came to town to fell The Wall.

      ATTENTION NC Readers: Did you catch that Weekend Edition Sunday NPR report on the *certain* end of cash (just way too old-fashioned, primitive, *inefficient* for the .01% today).?The Eye Pie in the Sky wants us ALL under “The Iron Heel” and NPR is doing us the *public service* of TELLING us that this WILL happen in short order. NOW.do.we.git it?

      BILL BLACK/YVES SMITH 2012: JUSTICE for the PEOPLE NOW!
      Chris Hedges: Secretary of State
      Michael Hudson: Secretary of the Treasury

      If not now, when?

  • Bill C says:
    February 5, 2012 at 12:10 pm

    Seeing the Spam article reminds me of how we used to eat it as kids in Virginia:
    Coat one slice Spam in cornmeal, fry until crispy, put on Wonder bread with lettuce, tomato and mayo……..yummmm

    I haven’t had one since the early 60s, so I’m not sure if I’d like it now, but I did then.

  • MyLessThanPrimeBeef says:
    February 5, 2012 at 12:11 pm

    Any Fourth or Fifth World country’s infrastructure will resemble a Third World country’s on a good day.

  • MyLessThanPrimeBeef says:
    February 5, 2012 at 12:14 pm

    Do manufacturers deserve special treatment?

    Small business/artisan manufacturerrs need no special treatment, only just those given to the financial industry.

    • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
      February 5, 2012 at 12:20 pm

      MyLess -brilliant insight. Why aren’t they storming the gates of Congress?

      • MyLessThanPrimeBeef says:
        February 5, 2012 at 2:42 pm

        Thanks.

        By the way, less is more, so they say, more or less (I admit it’s not precise, like much in life), my friends here can also call me MyMore if they like.

  • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
    February 5, 2012 at 12:57 pm

    link: “Why Does Our Infrastructure Resemble a Third World Country’s?”

    Uh, because it is a third world country? The *Gret Stet* of Louisiana, Colony of BigOil and Railroads since the *Civil War*, is the universal model for American Government of/by/for the .01% and its trickle-down Agents of the .99%, for the 1% Grifter Grand Total. USA!USA! is a Resource Colony of the Global .01%

    Dig it.

  • Hans Suter says:
    February 5, 2012 at 1:16 pm

    for having cats perform the way they do in this pic you certainly have to drug them.

  • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
    February 5, 2012 at 1:22 pm

    Re link to BBC: “largest optical telescope (ParAnal Set of T-scopes Linkedin Chile for research for .01% DNA getaway before the earth explodes) brings us to article on the Bubbles in the Universe by a *citizen scientist* — isn’t this the Cosmic Template for *inflation* in every guise? Inflation is built into the systems?

  • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
    February 5, 2012 at 1:31 pm

    Re link to ThinkProgress and article on *Celebration of White* leads to Santorum claim that *Gays don’t deserve marriage* — Wasn’t Santorum *prepped* as an altar boy to serve the Vatican’s interests while in public office in USA!USA!? Shall we call this RC Mind Control Prep School for *service* to the “NOBILITY and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII” (York PA, *TFP*, 1993)– featuring the *hard* doctrine of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now the Bavarian ex-Nazi *Hitler Jugend* Pope Benedict XVI? What did he learn in youth?

  • AccruedDisinterest says:
    February 5, 2012 at 1:41 pm

    “Is US democracy being bought and sold?”

    Meh, who cares? There’s a football game today, and pitchers and catchers report in a couple weeks.

  • LeonovaBalletRusse says:
    February 5, 2012 at 5:11 pm

    ATTENTION NC readers: Anent the Schmuckerberg 1% Profit Plan, here is a recommendation for F-bookers who will Stand Up to the Man the 1%: as an ACT taken decisively, in Solidarity with the 99%:

    F-book Citizens Unite! Show your Awesome Power and *PULL IT*. Just *PULL IT* to reverse the coup d’etat. En Masse, JUST “PULL IT” for the 99%, and take “one giant step for humankind.” Change the world: Just *PULL IT*. Be glad.

    *Free* text for tweeting. Anyone can take the credit.

    Uppity Agents Unite! We have nothing to lose but our poverty.

    *Leonova* for ISAIAH 55

  • Cap'n Magic says:
    February 5, 2012 at 8:16 pm

    Punk Economics: David McWilliams view: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAR0VRLRGHE


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