c-Blog

October 10, 2008

Obama Foresaw Opponents' Attacks

October 8, 2008

What is crashing is . . .

"the paper edifice set up as 'insurance' against default, meant to insulate the issuer against risk, and which then was turned into a profit center for larger institutions. Somebody owes somebody for every default; and that somebody is then owed by somebody, and so forth and so on down the line. The market in these things is opaque: no one knows who has what potential liabilities; in a number of cases, even the chiefs of firms involved probably do know the real exposure of their own companies. No one knows what someone might be called upon to settle up immediately; no one knows what financial firm can be relied on to make a payment tomorrow, or next Monday. The sum total of these various paper obligations is several times the total amount of real money on earth: the truth is that they cannot really be liquidated, certainly not all at once, which means that their purported value is merely an elegantly engraved fiction. When the market in them functions they are not usually liquidated, they are simply matched against one other and cancel one another out. But doing so requires their being taken at face value, or a regularized rate of discount, and maintaining them in this state requires ready access to credit for those holding them."

(Thanks, Magistrate!)

October 7, 2008

Does McCain Have a Problem with, Shall We Say, Dark Horses?

I so need one for my next party . . .

Sorry, everyone; Reuters replaced the video that used to be here with another about something much less important, like the 678-point drop in the Dow today (10-9-08), and I can't find the original video on their site. It featured a monkey working as a waiter in an asian restaurant.

"'Yat-chan first learned by just watching me working in the restaurant. It all started when one day I gave him a hot towel out of curiosity and he brought the towel to the customer,' [said] the 63-year-old owner of the tavern, Kaoru Otsuka . . . .

"'It's amazing how it seems to understand human words,' said 71-year-old retiree Miho Takikawa . . . ."

(Thanks, Ben!)

In Case You Didn't Notice, Congress Also Passed a $619 Billion Defense Bill

October 6, 2008

On a Lighter Note . . .

McCain as The Penguin:

Must See Re- the Current Economic Crisis

Naomi Wolf sums it up as of ca. Oct. 4.

Rep. Brad Sherman re- threats of martial law as of ca. Oct. 2.

Naomi Klein ("Mr. Risk Goes to Washington") as of ca. Sept. 24.

Naomi Klein as of ca. Sept 22.

(Dates above are the dates the videos were posted on YouTube, but I believe they are within a few dates of when the videos were recorded.)

While Lehman Pled for Federal Rescue,

. . . its execs were simultaneously securing their golden parachutes.

Lehman's CEO Richard Fuld, who testified before Congress today, has already taken home close to $480 million since 2000. Said Fuld, "I feel horrible about what's happened" -- but he didn't offer to return any of the money.

Another great post from HuffPo; thanks to Kadie for the pic!

UPDATE: Per Bloomberg, Lehman's "'key' money managers will get retention bonuses valued at $400 million when their investment-management business is bought by Bain Capital LLC and Hellman & Friedman LLC.

"Bain and Hellman on Sept. 29 agreed to buy most of the asset-management unit from bankrupt Lehman in a deal that values business at $2.15 billion, about half the buyout firms' initial bids. The purchasers will deduct the employee awards from the amount they pay the investment bank for the assets, Lehman's lawyers said today in a court filing.

"Under the proposed arrangement, which a U.S. bankruptcy judge must approve, Lehman employees and portfolio managers will get 16.8 percent of the equity in the purchased assets. The awards are valued using the 'gross purchase price' of $2.15 billion, which includes assumption of liabilities, according to the filing."

Re- this blog:

Thoughts for the year or whatever, in no particular order:

What a huge debt this nation owes to its "troublemakers." From Thomas Paine to Martin Luther King, Jr., they have forced us to focus on problems we would prefer to downplay or ignore. Yet it is often only with hindsight that we can distinguish those troublemakers who brought us to our senses from those who were simply troublemakers. Prudence, and respect for the constitutional rights to free speech and free association, therefore dictate that the legal system cut all non-violent protesters a fair amount of slack.
– Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Papineau v. Parmley, 465 F.3d 46 (2d Cir. 2006).

I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half.
– Jason "Jay" Gould, per Philip Sheldon Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States Vol. 2: From the Founding of the A. F. of L. to the Emergence of American Imperialism, P. 51 (1998, 2d ed.).

On the one hand, information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time.
– Stewart Brand to Steve Wozniak, at the first Hacker's Conference in 1984, per Roger Clarke.

A modern economic system demands mass production of students who are not educated and have been rendered incapable of thinking.
– U.N.E.F. Strasbourg, On the Poverty of Student Life (1966).

Knowledge is power.
– Sir Francis Bacon, Religious Meditations, Of Heresies, 1597.

A balance of power requires a balance of knowledge.
– moi (pre- 2000).

. . . Napoleon . . . said that it wasn't necessary to completely suppress the news; it was sufficient to delay the news until it no longer mattered.
– attributed by PRWatch to Martin A. Lee & Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1991), p. xvii.

The infowar is the new class war; and information is the new wealth.
– moi (2010).

Nothing is inevitable, except defeat for those who give up without a fight.
– "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (1961), script by Irwin Allen & Charles Bennett.

Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? . . . But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. . . . All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
– Hermann Goering, per Nuremberg Diary (Farrar, Straus & Co 1947), by Gustave Gilbert

The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous.
– George Orwell, 1984.

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders . . . . and millions have been killed because of this obedience . . . .
– Howard Zinn, Failure to Quit (South End Press, 2002; originally published 1993).

Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love.
– Julian Assange, IQ.ORG, "Witnessing," Wed 03 Jan 2007.

I used to be concerned about this mass audience thing . . . not anymore. There are overlapping circles of activity and . . . . It doesn't matter what the volume is . . . These circles are not sealed off from each other, they affect each other.
– Yvonne Rainer, in an interview by Lyn Blumenthal for "Women with a Past," Program Six from the series, What Does She Want (VHS 1987, Video Data Bank).

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
– John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1919).

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
– James Madison, Independent Journal, Wednesday, February 6, 1788, The Federalist.

[W]e forgot that the question is NOT, how do we get good people into power. The question is, how do we limit the damage the powerful can do to us?
– Chris Hedges, "The Failure of the Liberal Class in the United States," address to the Poverty Scholars Program, April 10, 2010.

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
– Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1977).

In all history, there is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War, ca. 500 B.C.

The opposite of good is not evil; it's apathy.
– Cindy Sheehan in her speech to the Veterans for Peace on August 5, 2005, just before she began her first vigil outside of Pres. G.W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX; see vimeo; see also HuffPo.

One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.
One beats and beats for that which one believes.
That's what one wants to get near. Could it after all
Be merely oneself, as superior as the ear
To a crow's voice?
– Wallace Stevens, The Man on the Dump (1923).

It's class warfare, [and] my class is winning, but they shouldn't be.
– Warren Buffet, CNN Interview, May 25 2005, suggesting we need to raise taxes on the rich.

The past is never dead. It's not even past.
– William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun, Act I, scene iii (1951).

Cui bono (To whose benefit)?
– attributed by Marcus Tullius Cicero to Lucius Cassius Longina Ravilla, ca. 125 B.C.

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it
.– Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Sophisms, 2nd series (1848), Ch. 1 "Physiology of Plunder."

The higher the buildings, the lower the morals.
– Noel Coward (1899-1973) (numerous sites attribute this to Coward, but I've found none that provides a more precise citation).

[T]he hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.
– Pres. John F. Kennedy, remarks in Bonn, West Germany, at the signing of a charter establishing the German Peace Corps, June 24, 1963, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963, P. 503, probably based on a passage from Dante Alighieri's Inferno.

He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.
– George Orwell, 1984 (1949).

[Y]ou always have to ask yourself: Why do I get this specific information, in this specific form, at this specific moment? Ultimately, these are always questions about power.
– Dr. Konrad Hummler, Swiss banking and media executive, interview 2011-07-11 retrieved 2021-08-15 from NZZ.

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
– H.G. Wells, The Outline of History, vol. 2, chapter 41, p. 594 (1921).

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is Enemy Action.
– Ian Fleming in Goldfinger (1959), as spoken by James Bond's eponymous adversary.

Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.
– attributed to Marshall McLuhan, http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/poster.html.

"Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing."

– Joseph Heller, Catch 22, Ch. 39, P. 407 (Simon & Schuster, 50th Anniversary Ed., 2011).

They'd rather some people die for your mistake, than that they lived, but that they lacked a leader.

– David Mamet, script for Hoffa (1992).

It was too late to prevent the great Fall, but it was still possible, at least, to cut short the intermediate period of chaos.
– Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation, P. 87 (ed. Bantam June, 2004; first published 1953).

You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
– Abraham Lincoln (1805-1865).

My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men. Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
– William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" (1883-1963) (I don't own this and find no online source that mentions where it was published; pls help if you can).

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
– Edmund Burke (1729-1797; see link re- variants and possible misattribution).

I consider it completely unimportant who . . . will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this: who will count the votes, and how.
– Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), per the Memoirs of Stalin's Secretary.

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.

– Mahatma Ghandi (1869-1948).

HECATE: And you all know, security
Is mortals' chiefest enemy.
– W. Shakespeare, Macbeth (ca. 1606), Act II, scene v, MIT's Moby Ed.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
– Frederick Douglass, "West India Emancipation" speech, Aug. 3, 1857.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
– Margaret Mead

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.
– Che Guevara, Intercontinental Press (Vol. 3 January - April 1965); also in Che Guevara speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings (1967).

The United States is the only nation in history to go from barbarism to decadence without any civilization in between.
– Norman O. Brown, Closing Time (described as a graffito in Paris, May 1968; p. 29, ed. Vintage Books, 1974).

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything;
That's how the light gets in.
– Leonard Cohen, "Anthem" (1997?)

We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, Chapter III, "Beauty" (1836).

Let's do something, while we have the chance! It's not every day that we are needed. . . . Let us make the most of it before it is too late!
– Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1949).

Take off your pants or go home.
– Chris Rose, "Real Life Returns," The Times-Picayune, Feb. 6, 2008 (Pullitzer-winning New Orleans-area newspaper, not long after Katrina).

If, one day, a people desires to live, then fate will answer their call.
And their night will then begin to fade, and their chains break and fall.
For he who is not embraced by a passion for life will dissipate into thin air,

* * * * *
Then it was earth I questioned: "Mother, do you hate mankind?"
And Earth responded: "I bless ambitious and aspiring souls,
Who do not flinch at danger. I condemn those out of step with time,
People content to live like stone."
– "If the People Wanted Life One Day," Abou-Al-kacem El-chebbi (also spelled other ways, such as Abu Al-Qasim Ash-Shabi), known as the "poet of the Tunisian Revolution."

Hatred never ceases by hatred;
But by love alone is healed.
This is an ancient and eternal law.
-- "Dhammapada," Ch. 1, the Twin Verses 5, as quoted by Maha Ghosananda.

There is no responsibility, without freedom;
No freedom, without power;
No power, without knowledge;
No knowledge, without love.

– moi (1976).

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.
– Oscar Wilde, Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis, p. 1051 (Wordsworth Edition, 1997).

. . . and in the morn
I'll bring you to your ship and so to Naples,
Where I have hope to see the nuptial
Of these our dear-beloved solemnized;
And thence retire me to my Milan, where
Every third thought shall be my grave.
– W. Shakespeare, The Tempest (ca. 1611), Act V, scene i, MIT's Moby Ed.