One of my pictures made it to the front page of the infamous “failblog“, consisting of a picture of a very disreputable looking van with “Little Angels Program” spraypainted on the side. I had caught that image earlier in 2008 in Willimantic, CT while I was walking through the hill section.
It’s not Life or the New York Times or anything, but I’ll take what I can get. Probably should have color corrected that one before I sent it in …
I just posted 24 tracks (some are multiple versions of the same tracks) from the 2005 incarnation of the studio on mediafire. It’s mostly Jake, Natasha and I. A good deal of backing tracks provided by other musicians, featuring Bob Thurston on violin.
Link: mediafire
I’m getting to the point where I’m actually starting to track the guys who are primarily responsible for this awful financial mess, and. though there’s a lot of bad news, there’s also a lot of not so bad news. I rate any story where a banker doesn’t give the proverbial finger as a “good” story. I’m not advocating violence against people in the financial industry, but I’m surprised when it doesn’t happen.
Speaking of, has anyone noticed how White House press releases look an awful lot like straight up propaganda? I doubt the Heritage Foundation could have mocked up a nastier looking “fact sheet”.
I want to take this opportunity to thank “middle America” (the part of the map which shows up as “red” on most election nights, and has hosted so much racism and bigotry over the years) for giving us this amazing turd for the last eight years. And for the great senators and representatives. Remember Phil Gramm (R-TX), David Vitter (R-LA), (R-LA), etc?
I finally got around to upgrading the studio to use ardour 2.7.1, from the stock version which comes with the Intrepid Ibex release of Ubuntu Studio. It took minimal configuration to get my Behringer BCF2000 control surface working, and it worked amazingly well. Unlike in the past when I had to manually bind controls to their functions in ardour, pretty much everything was automated, so besides forcing udev to create a static link for it (so that I could plug whatever in whenever I wanted to without disturbing the actual location in /dev) everything just *worked* when I brought jack ardour up for the first time. I’ve been using ardour since the pre-version-number days, and I have to say that this impressed the hell out of me. Paul, you rock.
Apparently AIG, known mostly for its ability to go through large amounts of taxpayer money in order to cover outrageous bets, is reporting that it owes another 10 billion dollars that it hadn’t reported before, and which is not covered by the 150 billion dollars already allocated to it by the US government.
If that weren’t bad enough news, AIG has been taking advice from other industries and is paying out large retention bonuses, even after they were given sweet, sweet bailout green. I’m sure if their collars were blue instead of white we’d be hemming and hawing about how they couldn’t give their executive class performance bonuses when they’ve accepted government money, but why would there be any sort of equity or fairness?
Sometimes I think back to the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 and its 11,000 unread pages as part of an omnibus budget bill on the last legislative day before Christmas in 2000, complete with Enron loophole, and then I realize that Congress is pretty much *always* a day late and a few billion dollars short. I’m wondering exactly how the financial lobbyists who paid senators to legalize Credit Default Swaps, and basically caused this economic clusterfuck we’re enjoying right now, are enjoying the way they really gave it to the average American. If we hadn’t let the financial sector run wild with our retirement money, maybe, just maybe, we wouldn’t be in the incredible mess we’re in right now. It’s just sad how we’re gleefully handing the financial industry money so that they won’t give people credit the way they were designed to as a part of this ridiculous bailout. I’m so glad we didn’t give Mr Jug Ears his way on privatizing Social Security. Exactly how fucked would we have been then? I mean, we were less than 10 million votes away from Bush Jr doing the same damn thing. You’d figure people would learn, right?
Pure capitalism seems to drive pure greed and stifle innovation, yet it’s being spoon fed to us as the solution to all of our problems. “Don’t socialize anything”, they say, “capitalism means everyone can be rich!” More aptly, pure capitalism means a very few people can be very rich, and everyone else gets scraps. Do you feel those economics trickling down, and why does it smell like urine? We gave these jackals free reign under Bush and Company to do pretty much whatever they want, and eight years later they’re coming back crying about how they need *socialized* money, yet trumpeting capitalism by blaming it all on poor people. Of course, it didn’t have anything to do with greed, or a failure of government to give a crap, it’s all the fault of poor people. Don’t you see, if they had just made money and become rich like the rest of us, this never would have happened?
One more thing I’m a little cheezed about… I just found out that my dental insurance just cut me off, saying that I have used up my allowed amount for the year. What … the … fuck? I’ve been paying into this stupid system for a very long time, and I somehow feel that if they promise health coverage, I should *get* health coverage. The people who invented deductables, premiums and copays should be brought out and forced to eat their own shoddy dogfood. Sick people, in whichever way they’re sick, deserve medical attention and care. It’s not an *option* whether we treat them or not, if they’re sick, they need to receive care. I pay health insurance premiums and *still* pay out the nose for anything I need to have done. Where’s that lovely myth of employer-funded healthcare saving the day when I need it? Why can’t we have a single payer system like other *adult* nations and stop killing 18,000 Americans a year? I know, I know, we’re just starting to discontinue torturing people, so we’re supposed to get cut a little slack, but this is just ridiculous. Flush the entire health insurance industry down the toilet before they kill again. Oh yeah, those guys I was talking about … AIG? They’ve been fucking people out of benefits for quite a while. Why not shovel some more money their way? They’ve been doing such a good job, like the rest of the health insurance industry, of using your money to line their pockets so far, being one of the 10 worst insurance companies ….
“Don’t forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor.” – John Dickinson
I was astounded to read on Bloomberg news that, despite the lost of over 500 thousand jobs last month, and the current toilet-bowl rated economy, somehow the Dow Jones Industrial Average (and also S&P 500 and a bunch of other indicators) were going up as of 3:00pm EST. Why, you ask? Because some asshole in a suit made something up out of thin air. Some turd in an expensive suit said they thought they would make money because people are still buying “In Case Shit”. In fact, the entire idea behind the statistics induced fraud campaign we call the insurance industry is the same concept as the financial derivatives called credit default swaps. Yeah, really makes me want to trust them.
But really, is anyone worried that the financial future of this country is based on a bunch of guys making stuff up? Not that people in government don’t do the same thing, but these jokers actually make a living doing it. And even after an ungodly amount of capital being infused, the banks here don’t want to make loans, which was the entire reason we gave them so much money. Well, that and probably servicing Paulson. That guy has “I’m a cheap corporate whore” written all over him.
We’re probably going to let the auto industry fail miserably. I’ve advocated that before, but I’m not certain that we wouldn’t benefit from some sort of intervention. Definitely *not* bailing out assholes like Rick “I Deserve All My Millions For Losing Tons of Money for GM” Wagoner, that’s for sure. Maybe socializing pension and healthcare benefits, maybe something else. Michael Moore had an interesting take, being from that region of the country.
Anyway, it’s not like something is going to swoop in and save America from another recession/depression. We’re apparently losing our homes at an ever quickening rate, and it doesn’t look like there’s any relief in sight. You know, it would be wonderful to just declare that your mortgage was getting better and have it magically get better. Kinda sucks the rest of us live in the “real” world.
It finally happened. The spirit of giving and wonder which is supposed to accompany the “Holiday” season has finally given way to the actual seasonal sentiment of unrequited greed. A worker at a Wal-Mart was trampled to death by consumers who wanted to bum rush a store for toy greed, and two people were shot at a Toys-R-Us.
Look, this isn’t my holiday. I didn’t tell everyone to gussy up a bunch of chopped down trees, hang dangerous glass bulbs on them and blow money you probably don’t have on gifts that people probably don’t need. But if you’re going to promote a “holiday season”, you might want to consider actually living up to it. Try donating that toy money to a soup kitchen or relief fund of some sort. Volunteer somewhere, try actually making a difference in someone else’s life for a chance. That’s about the closest you’ll get to that vaunted “Christmas Spirit”. Gifts are cool and all that, but you can probably do more to show that this whole thing isn’t a bunch of co-opted pagan ritual hot air. The Golden Rule is *not* “he who has the gold makes the rules”, after all.
In case anyone has been living under a rock for the last few months, the economy is pretty well in the drink, and most respectible economists are predicting at least two to three years of recession.
Where to start? We’ve fed massive amounts of cash into buoying institutions where I wouldn’t invest in as much as a taco which have made killings screwing the crap out of our economy. The latest institution to receive sweet, sweet bailout green is Citigroup, which received a shocking 306 *billion* dollars of borrowed money. As of mid day on Monday the 24th of November, this amazing injection of capital has doubled Citigroup’s stock, and sent the dow spinning upwards, again. I’m not particularly fond of rich fuck bailouts (for references, see AIG, Goldman Sachs, etc), and honestly could care less if this particular investment and banking group went down in flames. They shouldn’t have been allowed to be one group, after all, if not for the foresight of such incredible assholes as Phil Gramm and John McCain. At the same time, lawmakers are scratching their asses and refusing to make *any* bailout offers to the automobile industry. As I’ve said in past, I’d rather they go down in flames, but to throw the monies to the wolves who caused this entire epic clusterfuck in the first place instead? Not that we have been promised that it will be paid back, which smells like a manure farm to me. If only they would consider dropping their sports sponsorship deals, or maybe consider not going on expensive junkets.
Or how about the increasing militarization of the United States? At last report, we’ve spent almost 5% of our GDP trying to bomb and/or blow up dark people. And now, they want to tie defense spending intrinsically to our GDP, while we grossly outspend every other nation on the planet? I mean, not that the United States isn’t now following the same folly that those loathed cheese eating surrender monkeys, the French, found out in World War II? You can’t exactly continue an outdated type of warfare in new scenarios — In the French’s case, it was continuing trench warfare against Germany’s tanks and blitzkrieg technique, in the case of the United States, it’s assuming that war is a game, with rules. Not that pointing penis-shaped objects at other people isn’t inherently childish to begin with, but our generals want their toys, even when a missile defense program is kinda pointless these days against shoe bombers and insurgents … What ever happened to domestic civic service? How is it that the only way young people are asked to be of service is by being a blood filled barrier between other people and bullets? The best the “conservative movement” was able to put forward was “Americorps”, which even Bush could give a crap about funding. yet the military gets carte blanche to spend however much they want on whatever they want. Amazing after Ronnie “Tear Down This Wall” Reagan more or less removed the military from the adjustable part of the budget, since we couldn’t have *accountability* messing with our ability to control that awful red menace. Yeah, that one, the one that collapsed on itself. All those missile defense shields? Put some fuckers on yachts, they did. I don’t think “defense” spending has been spent on “defense” in a very, very long time.
Then there’s George W Bush and his habit of trying to prove conservative ideology in the most idiotic ways possible. Apparently according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Bush flubbed numbers to attempt to prove that privatizing jobs is more efficient than having a government official perform the same duties. Of course, privatizing is *never* cheaper or more efficient due to profit overhead, so a bit of straight up lying is required to make the public *think* that big bad ol’ gov’t is a horrible idea. It’s probably a lousy idea to leave government in the charge of people who think that not only is it a lousy idea, but that that government is incompetent. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy …
By even the most conservative accounts, the “Christmas Season”, otherwise known as the season of greed and overindulgence, where the majority of retail sales are supposed to occur, seems to have been foisted onto us a bit early this year.
The strategy being employed by retail outlets, from rolling out the tinsel and sale items to playing every bad Christmas song ever written on their public address systems, seems to be an effort to push severely slacking sales by bringing the orgy of spending which supposedly accompanies the birth of some Jewish guy 2000 years ago (but actually just a co-opting of an old pagan seasonal ritual), a bit earlier than it is supposed to show up.
I think they’re forgetting something very vital in the attempt to buoy their sinking bottom lines … If the glut of spending for the Christmas season occurs earlier … it won’t happen later. It’s pretty basic, since there isn’t any extra money in the economy due to other horrendous, almost unthinkable greed which tanked our global economic institutions. It’ll spread the limited spending this year even thinner, but increase the costs to the stores, some of which will be open 24 hours a day.
In the midst of all of this news, the bastion of horrific worker treatment, Wal-Mart, is coming to the federal government with their hands stretched out, begging for federal bailout funds (as reported by MSNBC). Not that they aren’t already sucking funds out of the government in the form of subsidies, but that awesome example of capitalism can’t seem to keep its beak out of the warm embrace of corporate welfare. Let’s just say that Paulson is fucking us and our grandkids with our pants on.
And the Wal-Mart is also bringing back the concept of layaway, which they had previously abandoned, as they hadn’t required it to push through additional sales. Squeeze ‘em anyway you can, I guess.
The fat guy in the red and white suit, though an amalgum, would be rolling his eyes. My guess is that his haul of cookies and milk would be pretty piss-poor this year. I think homeowners are going to be more worried about rising foreclosures and soaring jobless rates. Maybe the words should be “all I want for Christmas is a federal bailout.”
Amid news of the overcompensated fatcat of General Motors heading over to Capitol Hill to prostrate himself at the feet of House Speaker Pelosi to beg for some of that sweet, sweet bailout money, without admitting that the pure capitalism he pimped to support his outrageous salary is now effectively dead, I see that Chief Financial Rape Artist Hank Paulson has just thrown another 140 billion dollars into the rabbit hole of non-accountability. This GM thing caught my attention for a reason; after a bit of “persuasion”, Speaker Pelosi is now on the floor of the House begging for her fellow legislators to throw the fuckers a bone.
This is the same GM that has been dumping SUVs on the market in a time when people aren’t buying them. The downturn in demand was reported in *2004*. I can’t honestly believe that there’s an issue with the idiots at GM understanding that, but more that they believe that they don’t have anything to change. They want to keep doing what they’re doing, and probably lay off a load of people who, as taxpayers, would be financing their operation. In case 2004 seems a bit familiar to some people, it was the year that same company unveiled a multi fuel car. Why, you ask, was I unaware of this? Because they did it in *Brazil*. Not here, but *Brazil*.
Much as horse and buggy whip companies fell under the wheels of progress as the automobile came to prominence, so must GM go under. They’re a dinosaur, which needs to be replaced with smaller lither companies which are interested in doing things other than churning out gas-guzzling monsters.
If a company the size of GM moved to electric vehicles, I would think that they would storm the industry and revolutionize American transportation. But that’s not the kind of forward thinking we’re seeing from one of the best paid CEOs in the industry. No, it’s all “stay the course.” I can swear I remember another chief executive saying that, and I don’t think it went too well.
I know Pelosi hasn’t been getting great press, what with Congress’s horrific approval ratings, but feeding money to these guys is just plain *retarded*. I mean, if we’re going to find a company worth saving, I don’t think it would be these guys, especially with their record of CEO Wagoner flaunting his huge salary as being “well earned” while his company lost billions of dollars.
I guess the legacy of the W presidency will be one of giving as much money as possible on the way out. I’m being witness to possibly the largest heist in *history*. These guys are walking off with money after having made horrific decisions, just because Americans can’t live with the idea of a (gasp) Recession, or even (horrors) Depression after we’ve been living off bubbles since Ronnie “Iron Curtain Smashing Cock” Reagan was in office.
It’s kind of funny to watch the fuckers on Bloomberg TV talk about how this is all “in our heads”, and that everything is the fault of skittish investors, as though the actual state of the market has nothing to do with the actual *money* that people have in there. The majority of Americans don’t have money to kick around like that.
Fuck GM. They’ve fucked up in a horrible, horrible way, and are now coming crying to the same people they have been laughing at for years, asking with tears in their eyes and outstretched hands for some of that sweet, sweet money from your unborn grandchildren. Die, GM. It’s about time.
Postscript: For the math…. GM wants 25,000,000,000 USD (25 billion dollars). Estimates range to about 150,000 jobs which would probably be lost if GM went belly up. Assuming that not a single GM car would be sold, they could continue to make payroll for over 3 years if the average pay of an actual GM worker was 50,000 USD a year. I’m sure they’re not getting paid that much, but assuming that … If the Feds mandated a complete changing of the guard in their useless management caste and also forced a new direction towards more fuel efficient vehicles and/or electric vehicles which are affordable for average Americans, there would be a serious chance of real change instead of the status quo. I’m not going to be holding my breath for it, though.