What is the job of the CEO?

If you talk to people about executive pay, you'll find pretty universal outrage, particularly about CEOs of companies that are run badly or are bad corporate citizens. Sometimes in these conversations, someone will give lip service to entertainers and athletes who also earn ridiculous amounts of money every year, but that outrage is highly selective.



If, for example, Mets shortstop José Reyes manages to score a $100 million contract with another team as a free agent, there will be a certain hue and cry (particularly among Mets fans) that no one deserves that kind of money. There will be calls to WFAN screaming about Reyes' greed in New York, but if, for example, he signs with Philadelphia, no one in Philadelphia, not even the unemployed guys who are a step away from foreclosure and eating food pantry beans right out of a can, will utter a peep. Justin Bieber can score $300,000 for a single concert and nobody bats an eye. Not even the cast of Jersey Shore, a bunch of not-terribly-attractive, boorish young people with very little grey matter in their collective crania other than a knack for self-promotion, scoring $100,000 an episode generates a lot of griping. We're remarkably forgiving of big paydays for those who entertain us, because we know and can see what they actually do.



We're also forgiving of CEOs who do their jobs well and who contribute genuine value to their companies. I'm not talking about those who lay off 10,000 people so that the cost side of the balance sheet looks good enough to make the analysts at Goldman Sachs happy for the next three months. I'm talking about the relatively few guys like Steve Jobs, whose value to Apple is beyond dispute, even if, as seems true at least in the short run, he is NOT completely indispensable. Jobs is reported to be sitting on 5.5 million shared of stock in the company he founded, which at yesterday's closing price of $389.99, is over $2.1 billion. No one should take his much-ballyhooed $1 annual salary seriously, but by any business measure -- innovation, enriching the lives of many people, and yes, contributing shareholder value, Steve Jobs since his return to a dying company in 1997 is worth every penny.



But what of the rest? What of former Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg and current CEO Lowell McAdams? What of eBay CEO John Donahue, who comes out of Mitt Romney's company-destroying Bain Capital? What of General Electric CEO and Obama confidant Jeff Immelt? Are they delivering the same degree of value in the big picture as Steve Jobs did? Or are they mostly about ways to run the company to enrich themselves?



Today the New York Times talks about how the mission of today's CEO seems to be less about running companies for the long haul, fostering innovation, new products and services, and new ways of delivering them, and more about satisfying Wall Street's short-term emphasis analysts through avoidance of taxes to the point where they themselves earn more than the companies they run pay in taxes:

The companies — which include household names like eBay, Boeing, General Electric and Verizon — averaged $1.9 billion each in profits, according to the study by the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal-leaning research group. But a variety of shelters, loopholes and tax reduction strategies allowed the companies to average more than $400 million each in tax benefits — which can be taken as a refund or used as write-off against earnings in future years.



The chief executives of those companies were paid an average of more than $16 million a year, the study found, a figure substantially higher than the $10.8 million average for all companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.



The financial data in the report was taken from the companies’ regulatory filings, which can differ from what is actually filed on a corporate tax return. Even in a year when a company claims an overall tax benefit, it may pay some cash taxes while accumulating credits that can be redeemed in future years. For instance, General Electric reported a federal tax benefit of more than $3 billion in 2010, but company officials said they still expected to pay a small amount of cash taxes.



The authors of the study, which examined the regulatory filings of the 100 companies with the best-paid chief executives, said that their findings suggested that current United States policy was rewarding tax avoidance rather than innovation.

Steve Jobs has in many ways been a throwback to innovators and who actually did something -- guys like Henry Ford, who for all that he was a notorious anti-Semite at least recognized that when more people get paid enough to be able to buy your products you can sell more of them. Guys like our own Melina's grandfather, Himan Brown, who even though David Sarnoff got all the glory from being an early broadcasting pioneer, recognized the power of radio to deliver stories to the masses. Today's CEO is all about the books, not the products. And increasingly it's all about the taxes -- and meeting analysts' demands by trying to pay as few of them as possible, and preferably none.



And in this kind of environment, Barack Obama thinks corporations will hire people just because he gives them a $5000 tax credit?

Behind-the-scenes tour of the galley kitchen on the P&O Pacific Pearl cruise ship

Exactly where and how does a ship prepare 8,600 meals every day for the passengers and crew onboard at sea? A behind-the-scenes tour of the Pacific Pearl main kitchen held all the answers.


The Chef's Table

The galley tour forms part of the recently launched Chef's Table, held in the privately enclosed Wine Room and bookable by any passenger. Up to three Chef's Table dinners for 14 passengers

Mr. President, good luck getting enough disaffected whie males to make up for this

It's REALLY crowded under this bus:

Whites and women are a re-election problem for President Barack Obama. Younger voters and liberals, too, but to a lesser extent.



All are important Democratic constituencies that helped him win the White House in 2008 and whose support he'll need to keep it next year.



An analysis of Associated Press-GfK polls, including the latest survey released last week, shows that Obama has lost ground among all those groups since he took office. The review points to his vulnerabilities and probable leading targets of his campaign as he seeks to assemble a coalition diverse enough to help him win re-election in tough economic times.

He had such a coalition in 2008. And the minute he took office, he threw us all under this bus so he could pursue his love for conservative white people.



How's that working out for him?

White independent voters, who divided their support evenly between Obama and McCain in 2008, may be the president's biggest challenge now. Just 3 in 10 white independents say Obama deserves to be re-elected and only 41 percent say he understands the problems of people like them.



Obama didn't win the largest share of white voters in 2008, when they made up 74 percent of the electorate. Still, his inroads were enough to beat McCain.



Fifty-six percent of all whites approved of how he was doing his job in the first three months of his presidency. But that support has fallen, with only 36 percent now liking how he's doing his job, while 59 say Obama deserves to be voted out of office.



In 2008, Obama won the backing of most whites in the Northeast and was competitive in the Midwest and West, outperforming the previous two Democratic nominees. Now, majorities of whites in every region but the Northeast say he deserves to lose in 2012 and that he is not a strong leader.



The outlook is negative for Obama among white voters in the Midwest and West, regions where so many electoral votes are at stake.



More than 6 in 10 white voters who did not graduate say the president deserves to be voted from office, while 53 percent of white college graduates say as much.

Real high-percentage move there, dude.

We're back

Well, it could have been worse.



The power came back on sometime this afternoon, well ahead of schedule. How long it'll last remains to be seen, as I am still hearing generators, which means that there still parts of the area not restored.



For some strange reason, our electrical substation is located in the middle of an area prone to flooding in the next town. Why utilities build substations in flood plains and nuclear power plants on faults and areas at risks of tsunamis is a mystery to me.



But our Grand Seepage Adventure of yesterday seems to have paid off. We were doing just fine, and the sump pump was doing its thing until 8 AM when the power cut off. Immediately we started getting seepage, not into the unfinished part of the basement, where it would have been easy to clean up, but the finished part. So we spent the day putting down towels to soak up the seepage, wringing them out, putting down fresh towels, and running to the laundromat to dry the wet towels. Not exactly a fun day. I'm lucky in that my employer has an on-site gym with shower facilities, so I was at least able to go in early and take a hot shower, something poor Mr. Brilliant wasn't able to do until this evening. But while driving to work this morning, feeling grubby and without my morning caffeine jolt-o-rama, I was reminded of that Simpson episode that's a parody of "The Shining", where Homer is muttering "No TV and no beer makes Homer something something." Only for me it was no TV and no coffee.



We were lucky. No trees fell on neighboring houses (Thank you, Almstead Tree Care, for monitoring our old oaks so well; yes, I'm paying you $1500 a year for the privilege, but no houses were destroyed by them). We didn't have so much as a branch fall (again, thanks to Almstead Tree Care, who takes care of these branches when they need cutting), and when I look at photos of the area and people with five feet of water in their basements for the third or fourth time this year, I count my blessings.



I think Ken at Down with Tyranny put it best:

First, to those outside Irene's path, forced to put up with all our yammering: So sorry! I realize how tedious are impending natural disasters that may permanently change the lives of other people. And then when they turn out to be not such a big deal, well, jeez! (Though don't tell that to the folks in Vermont and upstate New York, suffering "Worst Flooding in 100 Years," but what's 100 years really? And heck, they didn't even get a hurricane, just a ratty tropical storm!)



And speaking of the hurricane turning out to be less big a deal than the worst-case scenarios, to those inside Irene's path who were dissatisfied by the outcome: Again, so sorry! What's the point of planning for those worst-case scenarios if they don't happen? This group, by the way, includes people who are offended by official "overreaction," like shutting down New York's transit system, which -- to add insult to injury -- then took hours and hours to begin to restart. Just because these folks are too stupid or too lazy to try to understand (a) why it was thought appropriate to shut the system down (and never mind all the damage that was done by the "disappointing" storm, or what would have happened if, say, populated subway trains had been trapped in flooded tunnels, or populated buses had been struck by some of those 600-plus trees that fell), (b), why the shutdown had to be announced so early and put into effect so long before the brunt of the storm was expected, and/or (c) why the system took so long to reboot (including, for example, the tiresome requirement that every foot of subway track be walked before the trains could be restarted), well, I truly am sorry.



Sorry, folks, next time we'll try to arrange a disaster that lives up to your exacting specifications -- and then just keep it to ourselves. So sorry!

The media is taking no end of crap for hyping this storm, and the excellent response by NYC Mayor Bloomberg, New York governor Cuomo, and yes, even our own bully-in-chief, Chris Christie, are being chalked up to "post-Katrina paranoia." Well, I for one would rather see an excessive preventive plan that turns out not to be necessary than to have to see images like this one (warning: graphic and disturbing image) ever again.

Katrina: The 6 Year Itch

It would be easy to dismiss the failures in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in New Orleans six years ago today on Monday, August 29, 2005, thusly:



It was a storm of virtually unprecedented size and ferocity, so much so that levees, pump stations and emergency preparedness plans were immediately overwhelmed. And, up to a point, that was true. Katrina's rainfall extended from the Gulf Coast up to, amazingly, much of northern New England and even Canada. In terms of sheer, destructive, landscape-altering power, the likes of Katrina hadn't been seen since 1969's Hurricane Camille.



But, of course, it doesn't explain all the failures of local, state and especially the federal government. As disaster tends to do, the heroism of individuals came to the fore, such as that 21 year-old man who essentially commandeered a bus and drove dozens of refugees all the way to Houston.



And, as far as police, media, military and government authorities, Katrina brought out the worst in them as well as highlighting their real attitude and ultimate agenda toward a vulnerable citizenry. In short, Hurricane Katrina was a harsh headmistress instructing us as to how not to conduct an emergency response and she betrayed the shocking inhumanity of those in power toward those not in power, including passive and active racism that resulted in the deaths of nearly 2000 innocents.



Since Irene made landfall and hit New England just yesterday right after being downgraded to a tropical storm, I think I speak for millions when I say we breathed a sigh of relief not only at the far lesser damage she'd left in her wake than her big sister Katrina but relief that we didn't have to rely on Uncle Sam to bail us out.



It would literally require a book or a long miniseries documentary to list all the failures in judgment and humanity before, during and after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast.



These failures actually began to quietly rack up back in 2002 when George W. Bush denied the necessary funds to the Army Corps of Engineers the money they needed to fix the levees and pump stations. By this time, the New Orleans levees was a stereotypical government project: Ongoing for roughly 80 years by Katrina's landfall, it still had never been completed. Later, the Army Corps of Engineers, not the Bush administration, was sued for its negligence. Years later, the Bush administration had the chutzpah to request that Louisiana pay the ACOE $1.5 billion to help complete work on the levee.



Just a year before Katrina, a computer simulation was done to see how a Category 5 hurricane would affect New Orleans. The fictional storm, Hurricane Pam, provided the scientists with data that would prove stunningly prescient: The simulation predicted that 80% of the city would be under as much as 20 feet of water and would pack winds over 150 mph. The only miscalculation was that Katrina, at the height of her fury, was packing winds of 185 mph.



The Bush administration paid a GOP-friendly New Orleans consulting firm, IEM or Innovative Emergency Management, $500,000 to draft out a disaster evacuation plan that was apparently never written. “We can’t find your plan. Neither can FEMA,” the BBC's Greg Palast told an IEM representative who was hiding behind a glass wall. “I guess it’s kind of hard to evacuate a city if you can’t find the plan itself.”



Meanwhile, back in Crawford, in between ignoring Cindy Sheehan and going to GOP fundraisers, Bush was getting briefed by Michael Brown, head of FEMA (by now long since demoted to below a Cabinet-level position) and NHC's then director, Max Mayfield, tried to brief the "president" about the storm's likely outcome, including the topping if not the breaching of the levees. Bush then cut his vacation short... to go on another GOP fundraiser in San Diego so he could compare himself to FDR.



Was this a lapse in judgment on Bush's part? Sure. But there were several. The day Katrina made landfall, Bush helped John McCain celebrate his 69th birthday and had cake with him. He also got a guitar and played it while hundreds drowned, thereby becoming the Nero of the 21st century.



Then, when his vacation was officially over, Bush did flyovers to view the damage but not low enough to see the half-eaten corpses of African Americans and alligators floating in the streets of the French Quarter in highly toxic water nor to see the coffins that had been washed from what was supposed to be their final resting places.





Then Bush landed, thereby grounding rescue helicopters so he could tell former horse inspector Michael Brown, "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie."

Geraldo Rivera of Fox News September 5, 2005 in perhaps his finest hour from a dark and damp Convention Center packed with 25,000 refugees. The Convention Center wasn't built to take in even one.

Sure, part of Geraldo's conduct was theater but underpinning that was a shocked disbelief shared by many of us that our government could be so cruel, callous and essentially worthless in the face of a storm. That same night, from the Super Dome, Shep Smith had a similar epiphany and was practically screaming at the injustice of the horrors he was witnessing while host Sean Hannity sat in his climate-controlled sound stage 1500 miles away and calmly but idiotically asked Smith for "context." 55,000 people were packed into two large buildings with no food, water or medical aid while all those things and more awaited them on the other end of the bridge.



Meanwhile, Blackwater, arriving in New Orleans unannounced, would eventually get $70,000,000 of "security" contracts from the Bush administration while Halliburton would get billions in cleanup contracts over local businesses and would qualify for small business tax breaks simply because the oil services behemoth didn't ordinarily get cost-plus no-bid cleanup contracts. Then Bush tried to suspend the Bacon-Davis Act so that the people doing the actual cleanup would get paid under minimum wage.



The USS Bataan sat off the coast waiting to have their 800 hospital beds filled and saw not one occupied. The ship also had the capacity to desalinize daily 100,000 gallons of salt water yet was not used.



70 nations had pledged and offered well over a billion dollars in money and aid and we'd refused it with the arrogance of a pirate captain who would not allow his crew to be rescued by another ship. Wal-Mart trucks trying to deliver water and ice were diverted from where it was needed the most to where it wasn't needed. It looked, for all the world, as if the Bush administration was committing genocide under our very noses.



The aftermath was hardly any better. Charter schools began replacing the public schools so that the children who'd once attended those schools could no longer afford to go to them. Houses and entire neighborhoods were razed and replaced by luxury condos. The gentrification had begun and Mardi Gras suddenly started looking a lot whiter.



The former residents of NOLA were shunted to tiny trailers bought by FEMA that contained dangerously high levels of formaldehyde. Right wing cocksuckers like Neal Boortz began calling the victims "scumbags" for being unfortunate enough to get in the way of Katrina and embarrassing the Bush administration. Their jobs were gone, their homes were gone and, in many cases, their families were gone.



Then in 2009, just days before leaving an office that he'd shamelessly stolen while being stupendously unqualified for it, Bush snarled at mild media criticism over Katrina and claimed that he'd rescued 30,000 people as if the 1800 deaths were unavoidable and unworthy of mention. Let me know if I've forgotten anything because I know I have.



The overall impression we were getting from both the media and the government was that, at the slightest sign of anarchy, black people would immediately resort to barbarism and rape, kill and loot at the first opportunity. The facts speak otherwise: It was the white people, especially those in unaffected Algiers Point and the New Orleans Police Department, especially at the Danziger bridge, who were the ones who'd resorted to barbarism.



Note that I am not providing the usual linkage because these and many other clusterfucks, the countless hundreds of moral, mental and administrative failures are, I would hope, eternally etched into our collective memory. These and many other stories that didn't make the grade for the 5 and 10 o'clock news should serve as a referendum that our government, especially when run by right wingers, is far more prone to position itself rather than the infrastructure and its citizenry for damage control.



And when the government's credibility is impugned, no matter who's in power, we the people will be snarled at and eventually deemed expendable.

El Capo, Surry Hills

El Capo means "the boss", and there's no question about who's in charge here. From the bad ass murals on the wall, to the pallet-load of dollar bills that doubles as a stool, El Capo feels like a seedy drug den come-to-life comic book-style.


El Capo

The pine tables are set with buckets of help-yourself cutlery and a box of domino tiles. The chairs are a colourful mix of wooden and metal

Forget the next world, in THIS world you're on your own*

On Friday Nate Silver wrote about the monetary cost of a storm like the one currently battering the east coast:

The procedure I have used to estimate economic damage — this is going to get a tiny bit technical — is to regress the logarithm of economic damage on three independent variables. The first two variables are the storm’s wind speed, and the distance of the storm from New York City, at its closest approach to Manhattan. The third variable is how many fatalities the storm caused in the Southern United States (these were significant in the cases of Hurricane Donna in 1960, Hurricane Agnes in 1972, and Hurricane Floyd in 1999), which is used as a proxy to segregate out damages caused in the South from those in the Northeast in the case of storms that made multiple distinct landfalls. The figures I am going to show you, therefore, reflect estimates of the economic damage to the Northeast from various types of hurricanes, including but not limited to the New York City metro region.

Click through to the article to see the full-size chart. But we are talking about $3.5 to $5.6 BILLION in economic damage from a storm just like this one. And that's just damage to the city, not to anywhere else. The numbers for damage in the range of this storm, by the time it's over, will be staggering. After wreaking havoc from North Carolina to Maine, it's almost unimaginable.



Of course thanks to Eric Cantor, whom President Obama lacks the courage to confront, we're all going to be on our own after this one, because King Eric refuses to give one dime of Federal aid unless it's offset by spending cuts elsewhere -- and presumably he's going to want those spending cuts to come out of Social Security and Medicare. So if you're, say, in your late fifties or early sixties, you might get federal aid to repair your house, but you're going to pay for it later on.



Even if you don't think you're going to need help because you have insurance, you might want to guess again, particularly if you do not have flood insurance (and most of us who don't live in a designated flood plain don't, though I am seriously reconsidering that).



And that of course brings us to Ron Paul, who thinks FEMA isn't necessary and we should go back to the good old days of the Galveston Flood:

Citing the Galveston hurricane in 1900 that obliterated much of the Texas coast, the libertarian-leaning congressman said Americans were able to rebuild their cities and put up a seawall without the federal government's help.

Yup, thems was the good ol' days, yessirree:

The citizens of Houston knew a powerful storm had blown through and had made ready to provide assistance. Workers set out by rail and ship for the island almost immediately. Rescuers arrived to find the city completely destroyed. It is believed 8,000 people—20% of the island's population—had lost their lives. Estimates range from 6,000 to 12,000. Most had drowned or been crushed as the waves pounded the debris that had been their homes hours earlier. Many survived the storm itself but died after several days trapped under the wreckage of the city, with rescuers unable to reach them. The rescuers could hear the screams of the survivors as they walked on the debris trying to rescue those they could. A further 30,000 were left homeless.



So many died that corpses were piled onto carts for burial at sea.The dead bodies were so numerous that burying them all was not possible. The dead were initially weighted down and dumped at sea, but when the gulf currents washed many of the bodies back onto the beach, a new solution was needed. Funeral pyres were set up wherever the dead were found and burned for weeks after the storm. The authorities passed out free whiskey to sustain the distraught men conscripted for the gruesome work of collecting and burning the dead. More people were killed in this single storm than the total of those killed in all the tropical cyclones that have struck the United States since. This count is greater than 300 cyclones, as of 2009. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

There's a part of me that says, "Yes, let's let the Ron Pauls and the Eric Cantors of the world run things. Let's have the country run by people whose staffers call the police when their constituents try to get a meeting with them, and who charge $15 per question and who assume that everyone who lost his/her job because the CEO ran the company into the ground or outsourced everything to low-wage countries is a drug addict. Let's have a country where the people in this Daily Show segment are in charge:







The one problem with this is that once the teabaggers get a taste of the country for which they clamored, they'll scream bloody murder to have their programs reinstated. But it will be too late.



(For those who didn't get the title reference...)

Hurricane Irene Open Thread

I plan to spend Saturday in my basement, giving it a long-overdue decluttering and cleaning -- getting ready to wet-vac after the power goes out and the pump stops working.



So consider this an open thread. If you are in Irene's path, keep us posted on how you're doing in the comments.

So whose button will this guy be wearing, Bachmann's or Perry's?

Meet your average Republican:

A 24-year-old Oregon man — who told police that he was a “Christian warrior” — has been charged with a hate crime for allegedly firebombing a mosque last November.



Cody Crawford faces 10 to 30 years if convicted of firebombing the Salman Alfarisi Islamic Center, which is about 200 feet from his house. Although his DNA has been connected to the crime scene, Crawford has maintained that he’s “100 percent innocent.”



In an unrelated incident, Crawford had ranted to police about Muslims, according to court documents.



“You look like Obama,” he said to a McMinnville officer in December. “You are a Muslim like him. Jihad goes both ways. Christians can jihad too.”



The documents reveal that Crawford also told authorities that “only Christians could understand him, that he was a Christian warrior that they were persecuting.”



“You will never know the truth about the mosque,” he allegedly said.



The firebombing came just two days after Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who had occasionally attended the mosque, was arrested in connection with a plot to bomb a Christmas tree lighting ceremony Portland.



Mohamud’s plot was reportedly uncovered with help from the Muslim community.

Caturday

Funny how many people in this video are male.







(via Elayne)

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - Music to wait for oak trees to fall by

This is a little premature, but I wanted to be the first (and this version is GREAT):







And more eye-rollingly obvious storm songs:







OK, so it's the wrong day of the week:









And yeah, this is kind of a stretch:





Here at Casa La Brilliant, we've done about all we can do. My biggest fear is of our huge old oak trees falling. We pay an arborist a ton of money every year to keep an eye on the trees, but with this saturated soil and up to a foot of rain coming, who knows? Stay tuned.

Escapades From New York

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari Goldstein)



"In a Democracy, nothing good has to happen in secret; and nothing good ever does. Secrecy is the enemy of Democracy. The more we allow our government to act outside of public accountability and the Rule of Law, the less it is our government, and the more it becomes instead an authoritarian occupying police state." - VoiceofV



"(I)t’s always a good day when you can bag a sand nigger." - NYPD cop after unlawfully arresting Prof. Ravi Shankar



When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. - Misattributed to Sinclair Lewis



In a somewhat gentler, more trusting age, John Keats in "Ode on a Grecian Urn" synonymized truth with beauty. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know."



Unfortunately, with industrialization and the inevitable acceleration of destructive technologies, the resultant paranoia and geopolitical intrigue, the truth is often not as beautiful as Keats preferred to think in 1819. Often, it's downright fucking hideous with enough bad guys, good intentions and shortcuts to Hell to fill both Snake Plissken movies.



The front page, above-the-fold story on the Huffington Post was a disturbing one even to people who keep as suspicious an eye on the NYPD as it keeps on those in the New York/New Jersey area. The United States, at least technically and officially, does not have a national police force (not even the FBI qualifies but more on them later). Yet this "mission creep" on the part of the NYPD, often operating an hour or more beyond their jurisdiction (New Jersey) but given unprecedented latitude by the federal government, is but the first step in the establishment of that dreaded national police department. And the establishment of a national police state is surely one of the unmistakable hallmarks of the beginning of Fascism. But before we can begin to fully appreciate the emerging and self-denying fascist state of affairs in the Land of the Free, we must first begin to remember when America really was a democracy in which due process and the rule of law was actually respected and enforced.



To begin with, the National Security Act of 1947 forbade the CIA from domestic surveillance, a fact that the CIA, even on its website, seems loath to admit it, as does, strangely, the Wikipedia entry on the subject. It was possibly the most important or at least the most transformative legislation ever signed by President Truman. It established the creation of the US Air Force, and federalized both the military and intelligence communities into much the same organizational framework that was in place until George W. Bush came along 55 years later with his own transformative but far less efficacious agenda.



The CIA's handcuffing on domestic matters did nothing to temper their desire to tamper in them and the names of their operations and general attitude was one of contempt for both the legislative (which funds it) and executive branch. It's no longer the realm of conspiracy theory to say that the CIA had funded assassination programs abroad (Operation Phoenix, which, contrary to popular reports, was not shut down at the end of '72 but continued through to the 80's in Iran). More widely-known but less understood was the now-infamous MK ULTRA assassination program barely touched on in the opening chapter of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine.



The Central Intelligence Agency had overthrown several left wing governments and helped install corporate-friendly right wing dictatorships, most notoriously Pinochet's Chile on September 11, 1973. Ergo, it only follows that the CIA would establish its tentacular reach within our borders and get around the National Security Act by working in collusion with city law enforcement agencies such as the NYPD.



However, the NYPD, rather than being a mere proxy for the CIA in its domestic surveillance and racial/religious profiling, is also overstepping its jurisdictional boundaries, often operating across the river in New Jersey, an hour beyond its jurisdiction. At some point, the NYPD will reach a point of entropy beyond which they will cease being as effective as they as an intelligence-gathering apparatus. But no one as yet knows where that point is, much less where their extrajudicial jurisdiction extends. Yet where ever that is, often it does so without the knowledge of state or city government and even the FBI is left in the dark.



The usually supine New York Times, of course, chose not to get in on this action although another article in the US section that also came out this morning reveals that the FBI, which has been locked out from this CIA/NYPD connection, was nevertheless engaged in the same activity and, for the most part, pulled up a wide but empty net, even resorting to instigating and entrapping terrorism suspects. But, at the very least, it shows that the nation's top law enforcement agency and top intelligence agency are on the same page whether or not they know it.



But the CIA's recent meddling in domestic affairs is certainly not a new one. Just 20 years after Truman's National Security Act, the CIA developed Operation Chaos, not to be confused with the equally farcical KAOS of Get Smart infamy. Operation Chaos was intended to investigate foreign influence upon student demonstrators and other antiwar activists.



In today's time, such blatantly illegal racial profiling has resulted in countless violations of civil liberties of countless citizens, such as the arrest, release and paying off of Ravi Shankar (no relation to the sitar master). We've known for years the TSA under the advisement of the intelligence community, has put well over 100,000 Americans on terrorist watch and No-Fly lists, including the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. When one adds up the tote board, the safest rule of thumb for one to adopt is, If it's a government agency, it's out to get you.



Escapades From LA



Now, let's consider Posse Comitatus, the 1878 law forbidding (Ha, ha) the Commander in Chief from putting federal troops on the streets of America. It was barely over three years ago that we were treated to this shockingly clueless (no one once ever mentioned Posse Comitatus) and brainlessly breezy news report about 2300 Marines landing in Indiana and all over the Midwest for what was obviously martial law exercises.



The militarization of our urban police since the creation of SWAT teams in the 1960's is due largely to the sale of items ranging from handguns to tanks between the DoD and law enforcement agencies such as the NYPD and LAPD. This is a legitimate concern that crosses ideological boundaries. 14 years ago, it was addressed by World Net Daily's Joseph Farah in "The militarization of the domestic police." Said the usually factually- and lucidity-challenged Farah:

What gives? Why is all this deadly hardware purchased with U.S. taxpayer dollars to fight foreign enemies now being turned on unsuspecting American civilians at the very moment they are being disarmed by local, state and federal governments?



The militarization of local police departments is getting so brazen even many local governments are having second thoughts about the program. In Los Angeles, for instance, one of the nation's biggest police departments is saying it was a mistake to accept the bayonets and is shipping them back to the Army.



More than 6,400 surplus bayonets went to law enforcement agencies between Oct. 1, 1996 and Sept. 30, 1997, according to the federal Defense Logistics Agency in Washington. But what on earth would domestic police departments do with bayonets?



For once I agree with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Farah's outrage was obviously channeled through a purely libertarian/2nd Amendment prism ("at the very moment (we) are being disarmed by local, state and federal governments") but his concern is nonetheless a very valid one shared by both sides of the Great Ideological Divide. Why were 6400 bayonets sold to local law enforcement during that year?



And, it only follows whether or not one has corroborating evidence, that a Central Intelligence Agency that would act complicitly with the NYPD would also do the same thing with the other massive police presence on the other coast: The LAPD. We know the government has heavily militarized the LAPD. Why not use them to spy on Latino communities and even to exterminate them by arranging drug trafficking by coordinating with the LAPD (Anyone who's even heard the late Gary Webb's name knows what I'm talking about)? If you're going to violate the letter of a law as large and as important as the National Security Act, you might as well get your money's worth and go for broke. And why stop at the coasts? Why not also involve other large police departments in the flyover states? Frankly, I'm amazed the authors of the HuffPo article never even raised that all-but-certain possibility that the CIA is spying on the entire United States through local law enforcement proxies. We've known for 6 years that the NSA was doing so with the collusion of the telecom giants and at the behest of the Bush administration.



The CIA's incredibly cynical view of minorities in South Central and East LA in coordinating with the LAPD, since the Bobby Kennedy assassination widely seen as "a lapdog for the CIA", borders on genocide. In using the Los Angeles Police Department to ensure a steady flow of drugs coming into LA, the CIA thought it was establishing plausible deniability that it had been violating the National Security Act.



Meanwhile, Uncle Sam's jihad against Muslim communities continues regardless of a recent Gallup poll that stated 93% of American Muslims remained loyal to the US government that has merely ramped up surveillance and entrapping them. If you insist on drawing blood and you pick at the same patch of skin long enough, then eventually you'll get your wish and draw blood.



The FBI, aided with all sorts of dodgy, PATRIOT Act federal laws that criminalize noncrimes by prefacing them "conspiracies to commit...", has set up a Minority Report setup whereby previously innocent men are tempted to commit terrorist acts and charged with crimes they hadn't actually committed. Considering that bigotry and cynicism to which ordinarily law-abiding Muslims have been subjected have already embittered them, an asset or paid informant (of which the FBI has many, such as Agent Provocateur Hal Turner) wouldn't have to work very hard to radicalize them. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.



Yet once word gets out at how much Muslim Americans are maligned and religiously profiled by the very government to which they inexplicably swear unswerving allegiance, the FBI's post COINTELPRO actions could eat up that patriotic capital very quickly. And then we'll have a very real Muslim problem with which to contend.

Olka Polka Bakery & Deli, Campbelltown

It's a long journey on the train out to Campbelltown, but the trip is well worth it when there's freshly baked rye bread at the other end. For my latest column for Time Out Sydney I headed to Olka Polka, a Polish bakery and deli that's been a godsend for homesick ex-pats for almost a decade. 

The business has no relation to Sammy and Bella Jakubiak, the NSW sisters who used the same name for

If you're going to get rid of Medicare, you're going to have to give people a way out

Forgetting for a moment about the utter ridiculousness of the right's insistence on how much they revere the sanctity of life at the same time that they want to pull the medical rug out from everyone who reaches the age of 65, the fact remains that if the elderly cannot obtain medical care, or if they WANT to leave before becoming a tremendous cost to society, we're going to have to come up with a way to do it.



Yesterday in the New York Times, we read about a couple who decided to exit peacefully and without violence -- through self-stafvation -- and got kicked out of their assisted living residence:

As it happened, the elder Rudolphs had a long and satisfying old age in Albuquerque, N.M., where they lived for 60 years; they gardened and volunteered with the Boy Scouts and served as leaders in their Presbyterian church. When their large house and gardens became difficult to maintain, they built a smaller one in a neighboring town, then moved again to a retirement community.





“At that point, some health issues began to emerge,” their son said. Mrs. Rudolph broke her hip and was in and out of rehab, suffering frightening episodes of delirium.



“Dad had a permanent catheter,” said Neil Rudolph. “Physically and mentally, they began to go downhill.” In October, they entered an assisted living facility called The Village at Alameda, thinking it would be their last home.



The Rudolphs faced increasing pain and debility. Mr. Rudolph, 92, suffered from spinal stenosis; Mrs. Rudolph, 90, had become largely immobile. Both showed symptoms of early dementia. So in January, they set in motion their plan to stop eating and drinking.



And the facility tried to evict the couple. The administrators, apparently on orders from the corporate legal department in Maryland, told the family the Rudolphs had to leave the next day.



Current management would not comment beyond an e-mailed statement saying that when a resident “requires alternate placement, medical attention, or a level of care beyond the facility’s capabilities, we have an obligation to notify a medical provider.” Fundamental Long Term Care, the firm that owns the facility and more than 100 others in 14 states, did not respond to requests for interviews.



As Neil Rudolph recalls the events, he protested that the couple — already on Day 4 of their fast — had nowhere to go. He also pointed out that their contract required 30 days’ notice of discharge. The following day, administrators called 911, reported a suicide attempt and told the paramedics to take the elder Rudolphs to a hospital.



So much for the peaceful passage.



Voluntarily stopping eating and drinking — as the Rudolphs had learned from consulting with Compassion & Choices, the largest national organization working to expand end-of-life options — is a legal way to hasten death without drugs or violence, usually in about two weeks. In a survey of hospice nurses in Oregon, published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2003, respondents reported that most of their terminally ill patients who had deliberately refused food and fluids had “a good death,” with low levels of pain or suffering.



“They said, ‘That’s what we want to do,’” Neil Rudolph said, emphasizing that his parents’ decision was hardly impulsive or caused by a bout with depression. He and his sister, Elaine Spence, and their spouses had come from Colorado to be with their parents and had called in a hospice organization. “We all discussed what it meant and whether they were sure,” he said.



When his parents said they were, he helped them write a statement affirming their decision and then told the assisted living administrators about their plan.



Shortly thereafter, two emergency squads, from the Albuquerque Fire Department and Albuquerque Ambulance Services, converged on the scene. Neil Rudolph’s wife called a reporter from The Albuquerque Journal, to whom the elder Rudolphs gave outraged and lucid interviews. The emergency crews soon called a doctor at the University of New Mexico’s emergency medicine department, part of a consortium that consults when a 911 call brings a situation outside the norm — and this certainly qualified.

The Rudolphs were eventually able to check out the way they wanted to, but it was only because their children rented a house for them and, with the help of hospice and taking turns in a round-the-clock vigil, were able to provide the necessary care. What about people without the resources to rent a facility away from the medical community, or without children, or with children who are unable or unwilling to provide this kind of care and oversee this kind of exit?



We can't have it both ways as a society. We can't rail against "greedy geezers" and have politicians screaming about how much it costs to keep the sick elderly alive and at the same time put roadblock after roadblock in the way of a dignified exit. If we can't have an exit that doesn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and agonizing pain and indignity, and we can't obtain medical care, what are we supposed to do when our time is up?

Wednesday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

Today's honoree: Tom Degan, who tears apart the media creation that is Rick Perry.



Money quote:

If this were 1960 it would have been a lot easier for me to dismiss our man Rick as a half-witted fringe candidate not to be taken seriously by anybody. Unfortunately 2011 is not 1960, and extremist politicians who would have felt right at home at a Nuremberg rally circa 1933 are pretty much the norm these days as far as the "party of Abraham Lincoln" is concerned. Rick Perry's candidacy isn't any political freak accident; it is fait accompli.

It isn't just about the hit to my retirement planning

Back in 1995, I took the money out of my then-employer's 401(k) and put it into an IRA that contained mutual funds and some individual stocks. One of those stocks was Apple, and my new account had 40 shares of Apple purchased at $38/share. A 2-1/2 for one split later, and a small investment in Apple stock started to play a sizable role in my retirement planning, for all that the Apple products in my house consist of an iPad that was gifted to me and a PowerMac G5 that had outlived its usefulness at its former corporate home and had been relegated to the computer recycling dumpster.



Still, for all that Casa la Brilliant is not an Apple home, (unlike that of my father, which ought to be used in Apple commercials), the company in many ways led me towards my IT career. Yes, as an administrative assistant at Standard & Poor's I used first a Wang word processing terminal and then an IBM AT-class computer, which boasted a 286 processor, 512K of memory, and a 40mb hard drive; but it wasn't until I moved to the IT group and fell in love with the little white elongated cube that smiled at me when I started it up that I started along the path towards a world that led me to believe that I could write programs and make pretty pictures for presentations.







When the history of my generation is written, it'll be about the ones who crashed and burned, or the ones who we thought Changed Everything but ultimately changed very little. But if in the future, the gadgets that people use to enrich their lives and obtain information continue to evolve, it won't be Bill Gates that they'll remember as the great historic figure, it'll be Steve Jobs.



And so aside from the financial hit that I'm going to take tomorrow, as Chicken Little investors start dumping Apple stock (making it a good day to buy, as far as I'm concerned), I find Steve Jobs' resignation from the CEO position at Apple to be some of the most melancholy news I've heard today:

Silicon Valley legend Steve Jobs, who has been on medical leave for an undisclosed condition since Jan. 17, resigned as chief executive of Apple Wednesday, saying he could "no longer meet" the duties and expectations of the job.



Interim CEO Tim Cook was immediately elevated to CEO, while Jobs, 56, will stay on as chairman of the board.



"I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know," Jobs said in a letter to "the Apple community" that was released by the company. "Unfortunately, that day has come."

It isn't that Jobs is saint. Unlike his peer and rival Bill Gates, Jobs never decided to parlay the ridiculous amount of money he made out of the company he started in his garage with Steve Wozniak so long ago into a post-midlife career as a big old cuddly philanthropist. And opinions vary as to whether he's this nice, humble, zen guy, or a ruthless asshole. But when you look at where technology is now, with a world of information at our fingertips, and how reports on the Weather channel giving advice on what to do about your phone service don't even MENTION landlines but show clip after clip of people carrying iPhones, or when you walk into an Apple store and whether you feel a lack in your life or not, you immediately think WANT. NOW. SRSLY. -- or when the Apple store itself makes it into a song lyric to a hit Broadway show, you know that what Steve Jobs has done over the years is nothing less than change the world we live in. It isn't so much that he created products out of thin air, but he has always had a sense of the intuitive mind and a great sense of design. Sure, Apple has always built great products which it's been able to sell at a premium price, but Jobs has arguably been the first CEO-as-cult-figure -- something all to rare in our greed-obsessed times.



While there are no accompanying reports about the state of Jobs' health, one has to assume that nothing could tear him away from this company except, as he wrote in his lette, he can no longer meet his duties as CEO, that a deterioration in his health is at least a contributing factor to his decision. I'd love to believe that he's accomplished everything he wanted to and now he feels he can step down, but someone with his drive and his constant yearning to explore the limits of technology and our potential to be enriched by it doesn't reach that point in a normal lifetime.



Steve Jobs is exactly my age, which adds another ominous dimension to his decision. No matter that he's achieved in his career a level of immortality that even the most legendary cultural figures can rarely hope to achieve; 56 is not a particularly old age.



I hope that he has many more years ahead of him to continue to explore and dream for his own enrichment after spending thirty years exploring for ours.

Best. Freudian. Slip. Ever.

Give a Republican enough of an opportunity, and he'll reveal himself every time. Listen carefully to what Rick Perry says 16 seconds into this video:

You have to wonder about a man who can so blithely kill so many people

There's something about Texas Republican males, with their cowboy drag and their cushy lives lived at the same time as they fancy themselves to be the heirs of heroes of the Old West. We all remember George W. Bush mocking Karla Faye Tucker, something that shocked even the smarmy Tucker Carlson at the time. But George W. Bush was a rank amateur in the executions department compared to the latest Republican darling candidate, Rick Perry:

In his nearly 11 years as the state’s chief executive, Perry, now running for the Republican presidential nomination, has overseen more executions than any governor in modern history: 234 and counting. That’s more than the combined total in the next two states — Oklahoma and Virginia — since the death penalty was restored 35 years ago.



[snip]



As the 2012 presidential race unfolds, Perry’s record will inevitably become part of the debate in a country where the number of death sentences handed down continues to fall and some states are renouncing executions. Polls show that capital punishment remains both popular and controversial. And although all of Perry’s main competitors, including President Obama, support the death penalty, Perry’s role stands out.



He vetoed a bill that would have spared the mentally retarded, and sharply criticized a Supreme Court ruling that juveniles were not eligible for the death penalty. He has found during his tenure only one inmate on Texas’s crowded death row he thought should receive the lesser sentence of life in prison.



And Perry’s role in the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Wil­lingham — who supporters said should have been at least temporarily spared when experts warned that faulty forensic science led to his conviction — is still the subject of investigation in Texas.



Perry has been unapologetic.



“If you don’t support the death penalty and citizens packing a pistol, don’t come to Texas,” he wrote in his book lauding states’ rights, “Fed Up!”

Yee-hah!



This week, the West Memphis Three were released in a hideous deal that allowed them to plead guilty but still proclaim their innocence. They're free, but with clouds over their heads and uncertain legal status. It's a deal that allowed an inept and corrupt and bigoted prosecutor's office to save face, because after all, isn't protecting officialdom the primary function of the justice system? In states like Arkansas and Texas -- states that Bible-thump the most loudly and invoke Jesus every chance they get -- it would seem that this is the case.



In the wake of the release of the West Memphis Three, consider the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, a man that Rick Perry knew was innocent and for whom he refused to grant clemency anyway. If you aren't familiar with the Willingham case, go read David Grann's haunting 2009 New Yorker article. But Willingham isn't the only questionable Rick Perry execution, there are more.



We all remember how, as a presidential candidate in 1992, Bill Clinton allowed Rickey Ray Rector, a man so brain damaged and so unable to understand what was going to happen to him, that he saved the pecan pie from has last meal to eat later. It was a horrific, cynical decision made by Bill Clinton specifically to give him "tough-on-crime" cred with the unable-to-string-two-thoughts-together-at-once, "Ooh, shiny!" independent voters so beloved by politicians and pundits. But where Rick Perry is concerned, it's not about trying to gain tough-guy cred, because Perry's entire persona is all about the unique Texas cowboy drag that all politicians out of Texas seem to need to wear, even the late and beloved Ann Richards, who also signed off on her share of executions. But Perry took the execution of people who don't know what's happening to them a step further than Bill Clinton's cynical decision. Perry went so far as to actively vetoed a bill in 2001 that would ban the execution of the mentally disabled.



But in the Willingham case, Perry's office seemed to have gone out of its way to make sure this execution was carried out regardless of evidence of Willingham's innocence:

A 2004 Tribune investigation raised the possibility that Perry, who was governor when Cameron Todd Willingham was executed, approved the lethal injection of an innocent man. That article found fundamental flaws in the arson theories used to convict Willingham.



In a clemency plea four days before the execution, Willingham's attorney raised questions about the forensics. Perry has said he examined the information. But he did not delay the execution.



Perry has downplayed a series of reviews by fire scientists who sharply criticized the original investigation, describing the scientists as "latter-day supposed experts."



The Forensic Science Commission was created by the Texas Legislature in 2005 to improve forensics in Texas as well as investigate specific complaints. The Willingham case was among the panel's first complaints.



According to Bassett, the governor's attorneys questioned the cost of the inquiry and asked why a Texas fire scientist could not be hired instead of the Maryland expert whom the panel settled on.



In December, Bassett's nine-member panel voted to hire Craig Beyler of Hughes Associates to analyze the fire investigation and write a report. That report, made public in late August, contained withering criticism of the fire investigation, and joined a drumbeat of findings critical of the investigation.



Beyler was scheduled to discuss the case at an Oct. 2 commission meeting in Dallas, but three days before, Perry replaced Bassett and two other commission members.

It's easy to say that there are always going to be mistakes in the justice system, and the execution of the innocence is just a risk we have to take in order to show that we're tough on criminals. But the presence of the death penalty, and the blithe heedlessness with which it is carried out in states like Texas and Arkansas, has done nothing to deter crime. Perhaps the citizens of these states are just fine with this, at least until THEY are unfortunate enough get caught up in the web of their states' corrupt justice systems, as Cameron Willingham and the West Memphis three found themselves. But the decision to sign off on a writ of execution, or to refuse to even consider a clemency request, should not be easy ones. A body count of over 200 people indicates that Rick Perry not only finds it easy, but revels in it. One can only wonder what a man like this will do with the world's largest military at his beck and call.

Salt Grill by Luke Mangan

It's true. The main thing you have to look forward to on a cruise is the food. With four days at sea on-board the P&O Pacific Pearl, our seemingly endless hours of idleness were broken only by meal times. Our visits to Salt Grill by Luke Mangan were a particular highlight.


Salt Grill by Luke Mangan

Dining at Salt Grill incurs a nominal surcharge for passengers ($30 at lunch and $40 at dinner

Head, Desk, =Thunk=

So which is it: Stupidity, laziness, or just plain venality:

Senate Democrats, who are desperate to stimulate the economy but don’t have the money to pass traditional stimulus legislation, will turn to cutting business taxes when they return to Washington this fall.



In doing so, they will try to drive a wedge between business interests and the GOP leadership, who has tried to block almost every element of the Democratic agenda, by pushing a round of corporate tax breaks, say Senate Democratic aides.



The strategy has appeal on two grounds.



The legislation would stimulate the economy at a time when many economists argue the government must step in to revive demand despite it not being politically feasible to pass traditional infrastructure spending bills. It would also force Republican leaders to either endorse the Democratic agenda or block proposals that are popular among corporate leaders and domestic manufacturers.



But the plan is not without pitfalls. Democratic leaders could find centrists and liberals within their caucus divided over how to structure the tax cuts and whether they must be paired with infrastructure spending programs, as some liberals might demand.



Democrats have found themselves at odds with the business lobby for much of their reign in the majority, fighting over healthcare, cap-and-trade and other regulations. And they were disappointed businesses did little to help them in their standoff with House Republicans over raising the debt limit, even though business leaders saw the mere threat of a default as dangerous.



Their new plan could net them the support of groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which traditionally supports Republicans — both politically and financially.



Their first tax proposal is to make the corporate research and development tax credit permanent. The second is to pass an Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit. This would create a 30 percent tax credit for companies that manufacture new clean-energy technologies, which Democratic aides say would help create thousands of new jobs around the country.



A third idea is to extend the payroll tax cut Congress enacted in December and expand it to employers, reducing the cost of labor. And a fourth option is to give employers tax breaks for hiring new employees, an idea Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee panned in 2009 but now seems more attractive.

Corporations are sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash and enjoying record-setting profits. What on earth makes these Senate Democrats think that more tax breaks are going to encourage them to open their coffers are hire people? Again, Democrats are buying into Republican memes, in this case the discredited one of supply-side growth. Companies do not hire people out of the goodness of their hearts, they hire people because said people can make them more money. How do comppanies make money? By selling goods and services. To whom do they sell goods and services? To the masses of people who right now aren't buying because they're either unemployed or terrified of losing their jobs. If people aren't buying the goods and services that companies produce, there's no reason to hire people. I don't know why this is so difficult for Senate Democrats to understand.



Or perhaps it isn't, and instead the Democrats in the Senate are just cheap whores, willing to be bought off for far less campaign cash than corporations traditionally shower on Republicans. In the post-Citizens United era, and with all this cash sitting around corporate coffers, there's certainly a lot of cash available to those willing to do the corporations' bidding.



So remind me again: Outside of Dominionist theocracy and scientific denial, what is the difference between Republicans and Democrats where the middle class is concerned?

In case you think getting hitched would cause Driftglass to lose his edge

Uh-uh. Ain't gonna happen.

Dispatch from Cluelessistan

Mitt "Corporations Are People Too" Romney, you know, old "I'm unemployed too" -- is planning to quadruple the size of his house in La Jolla, California:

Romney has filed an application with the city to bulldoze his 3,009-square-foot, single-story home at 311 Dunemere Dr. and replace it with a two-story, 11,062-square-foot structure. No date has been set to consider the proposed coastal development and site development permits, which must be approved by the city.



The former governor of Massachusetts purchased the home three years ago. According to a description from the listing agent, the Spanish-style residence at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac is sophisticated and understated in its décor, “offering complete privacy and unsurpassed elegance.”



Tentative plans call for new retaining walls and a relocated driveway, but would retain the existing lap pool and spa.



“This offering represents a truly unique opportunity for a buyer who appreciates the scarcity of this caliber of real estate,” the listing said.



Constructed in 1936, the three-bedroom, 4.5-bathroom home was among the first built in the Barber tract neighborhood, according to the La Jolla Historical Society, and has a stretch of lawn sloping to the white sand beach.



“I wanted to be where I could hear the waves,” Romney told a gaggle of media last year at a book signing in University City. “As a boy we spent summers on Lake Huron and I could hear the crashing waves at night. It was one of my favorite things in the world; being near the water and the waves was something I very badly wanted to experience again.”

The Romneys also own a $10 million lake house in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire and a townhouse in Washington, DC.



We now return you to the endless right-wing litany of shrieking over Barack Obama's two week stay in Martha's Vineyard. Because only Republican presidents are allowed to take vacations. Especially when they wear "rancher" drag while doing it, because that makes all the manly-men of the media feel all, like, you know, manly.

El Loco, Surry Hills

Food should always be fun, which probably explains why I've taken such a shining to El Loco of late. There's nothing fancy, with Mexican-style street food served in takeaway trays and margaritas dispensed in plastic cups, but that's half the appeal - chowing down on messy deliciousness as you perch on a metal stool at a table covered in plastic prints.


El Loco Mexican cantina y barra

El Loco

Now we'll see what Obama is made of

Does Barack Obama care about anything he ran on in 2008, or is he just another shill for big money interests, especially Big Oil? We will soon find out:

Already, more than a thousand people have signed up to be arrested over two weeks beginning Aug. 20 — the biggest display of civil disobedience in the environmental movement in decades and one of the largest nonviolent direct actions since the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle back before Sept. 11. (Among the first 500 to sign up, the biggest cohort was born in the Truman administration, followed closely by FDR babies and Eisenhower kids. These seniors contradict the stereotype of greedy geezers who care only about their own future.)

The issue is simple: We want the president to block construction of Keystone XL, a pipeline that would carry oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta down to the Gulf of Mexico. We have, not surprisingly, concerns about potential spills and environmental degradation from construction of the pipeline. But those tar sands are also the second-largest pool of carbon in the atmosphere, behind only the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. If we tap into them in a big way, NASA climatologist James Hansen explained in a paper issued this summer, the emissions would mean it’s “essentially game over” for the climate. That’s why the executive directors of many environmental groups and 20 of the country’s leading climate scientists wrote letters asking people to head to Washington for the demonstrations. In scientific terms, it’s as close to a no-brainer as you can get.

But in political terms it may turn out to be a defining moment of the Obama years.

That’s because, for once, the president will get to make an important call all by himself. He has to sign a certificate of national interest before the border-crossing pipeline can be built. Under the relevant statutes, Congress is not involved, so he doesn’t need to stand up to the global-warming deniers calling the shots in the House.

But the president does need to stand up to the fossil fuel industry, which has done its best to influence the decision. Since the State Department plays a role in recommending a decision, the main pipeline company helpfully hired the former national deputy director of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign as its lead lobbyist. WikiLeaks documents emerged recently showing U.S. envoys conspiring with the oil industry to win favorable media coverage for tar sands oil. If you were a cynic, you’d say the fix was in.

Still, the final call rests with Barack Obama, who said the night that he clinched the Democratic nomination in June 2008 that his ascension would mark “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Now he gets a chance to prove that he meant it.

We have our first clue: The author of this article, Bill McKibben, was arrested outside the White House today:

Police arrested 65 environmentalists outside the White House Saturday as they staged a demonstration urging President Obama to block a proposed pipeline that would bring oil from Canada’s oil sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries.



People arrested include Bill McKibben, the prominent climate activist and founder of 350.org; Jane Hamsher, who founded the popular liberal blog Firedoglake; and Gus Speth, whose career includes co-founding the Natural Resources Defense Council and chairing the White House Council on Environmental Quality in the Carter Administration.

We have yet to see Barack Obama stand up to any industry, so its hard to imagine him standing up to the petroleum industry.



To keep up with this, visit Tar Sands Action.

The lunacy of Sarah Palin supporters

MSNBC's Martin Bashir fights back against the froth-mouthed Palinistas who are freaking out because he dared to point out that their anointed deity is making a shitload of money, and that maybe money, rather than a run for higher office, is the point:

There's nothing here that's wrong, or even insulting to the glass jaw of Evita Mooselini. Especially when her own husband admits she's in it for the money:

I don't object to anyone going for the money. Yesterday I shocked some co-workers by expressing some admiration for Jersey Shore's Snooki, because here's a young woman of no achievement, little grey matter in her cranium, she's 4'9" tall and chubby, and she's been able to parlay that into enough money so that she never has to work again. At a time when working Americans are seeing the lives they've been living pulled out from under them because the wealthiest corporate executives simply do not have enough money yet to fill the vacant black hole in their souls, it's hard to judge those who through skill, luck, or even just plain cynicism, have the opportunity to go for the lucre.



The problem isn't Sarah Palin deciding to go for the money. After all, with all the lawsuits against the Palins stemming from Evita's abuse of power while governor of Alaska, I'm sure they ARE deeply in debt -- or were, until Palin realized that in most cases, she can knock just about anyone, even fellow religious fanatic and model Republican Stepford wife Michele Bachmann, off-camera. The problem is that she's painting herself as some kind of public servant while she's doing it, and trying to dupe some of the very people from under whom the rug is being pulled, that she gives a shit about them.

Oh For God's Sake Let It Go Already

I don't know if it was Rick Perry telling a reporter that he has to ask Barack Obama if he "loves America" or what, but as we head into the 2012 election season, Birtherism is back.



David at C&L:

A conservative website claimed Thursday that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has promised to investigate President Barack Obama's eligibility to run for re-election.



According to WorldNetDaily, about 325 so-called birthers gathered Wednesday night to sign a petition alleging that Obama planned to use a fake birth certificate to run for office in 2012.



Jerome Corsi, author of, Where's the Birth Certificate? reportedly presented Arpaio with the petition during a one-hour meeting Thursday.



"Arpaio told the tea party leaders the complaint is within his jurisdiction, and he will be forced to investigate," WND wrote. "He said he expects political pressure, but he pointed out that as the chief law enforcement officer of Maricopa County, he's taken an oath to respond to citizens who approach him about enforcing the law."

Head, desk, etc.

Blueglass and Nasty Bastard

Oh thar be weddin' bells in Blogtopia(™ Skippy) this weeked. Driftglass and Blue Gal tied the knot yesterday, and Bustednuckles and his beloved, Nasty Girl, are heading down the aisle on Sunday.



Who says the left doesn't believe in the sanctity of marriage?



Ah, weddings. I'm all verklempt....

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

It just does not get any better than this.

Except maybe this:

Maybe.

Around the blogroll and elsewhere: Fox, henhouse, etc.

If you read one thing today, makie it Matt Taibbi's blistering expos&eactue; on how the SEC has been covering up Wall Street crimes for over a decade.



Al Franken hasn't forgotten where he came from.



Can Bustednuckles remain the Ornery Bastard we all know and love after he's quit smoking and drinking and made an honest woman of Nasty Girl? Inquiring minds want to know.



Driftglass takes a stroll down memory lane and reveals the true origins of the Tea Party.



In The Book of Mormon, Andrew Rannells as a Mormon missionary in a crisis of faith sings of believing that God's plan includes him getting his own planet. Ebay co-founder Peter Thiel doesn't go quite that far; he just wants to found his own libertarian country. And Roy Edroso has some things to say about that.



Digby points out the obvious -- that if you're looking for Democrats to protect the social safety net, guess again.



Evita Mooselini didn't succeed in taking attention away from that other girl that the captain of the high school football team has been eyeing, so she's taken her dollies and dishes and gone home.



OK, now I'm sorry I linked to Politico.



Lynn explains Michele Bachmann.



Arthur Silber on the riots in England.



DCap is making movies again.



I need another life-killing project to put me on 80 hour weeks again so jurassicpork starts posting here again. Meanwhile, he puts it all together over at his place. Don't tune him out just because he "goes there." He's not Alex Jones.



But just because I'm working a normal workweek now doesn't mean I don't have to show up. So it's time for me to get ready to hit the salt mines. Talk to y'all later.

Cumulus Inc, Melbourne

It's barely 10am but we just manage to score one of the last remaining tables at Cumulus Inc, the casual cafe bar restaurant by Cutler & Co's Andrew O'Connell. The room is bright and airy, warm with the chatter of breakfast diners and the constant hum of the coffee machine. A dark bar counter runs against the window side of the room; on the other side is the marble white counter of the open

A Beautiful World We Live In

Are you fucking kidding me? We're now going to 24 ourselves into cheering for warrantless domestic surveillance?



The show's description of itself:

Mysterious billionaires. Presumed dead CIA agents. A machine watching your every move, listening to every phone call. Person of Interest premieres September 22, 9/8c on CBS, but before it does, watch this exclusive video giving you interviews with cast and crew about what makes this a show you won't want to miss.

Goodbye, Bill of Rights. You always were a thorn in the side of our military-industrial-infotainment complex overlords.

I am not ready for my childhood to be "retro" -- but it is.

When we first bought our house, a friend came over with her mother on the day we closed, took one look around, and said "You are going to be working on this house until the day you die."



After fifteen years and about $60,000 worth of siding, windows, roofing, gutters, a refinished basement, two water heaters, a furnace, and an upgraded electrical panel, I'm still ashamed to have a party. The longer you live in a house, the more daunting it becomes to have work done in it.



My next project (and I know my limitations so I don't end up on Renovation Realities), was going to be the downstairs bathroom. It's a 1950's cape cod house, so the bathroom is one of those tiny 5 x 7 functional-only bathrooms. I had a bath designer come out, and explained to her my vision of a step into yesteryear with gleaming white subway tile, a pan shower replacing the hulking seafoam-green tub with the massive rusting chip in it and the curved bottom that plots to kill me every time I step into it, and white hex tile with black accents. I knew the minute she walked in the door that her company would not try to get this job, because she came armed with a fat stack of glossy brochures from the kind of high-end cabinetry companies to which I'm sure the Real Housewives of New Jersey refer when remodeling their bathrooms every five years, sending the old fixtures to Green Demolitions.



Then Mr. Brilliant was laid off in January, and I started looking around said bathroom, and suddenly it seemed like a waste of $10,000-$15,000 to gut a bathroom with plaster walls and replace it with sheetrock. Yes, it's one of those 1950's tile bathrooms, but while most bathrooms of that era that are seafoam-green-and-black have the black tiles as accents, mine has black wall tile with the green accents. So I started to reconsider. We're hoping not to have to age in place, because the property taxes in New Jersey will kill us, assuming we're ever able to retire. So it may not pay to do the shower conversion right now. The tile is in good shape, and while the floor is a dull green that needs replacement and a new subfloor, and the holes in the ceiling that had to be punched so that a leaking pipe from the upstairs bathroom could be replaced have to be patched, but it occurred to me that perhaps this bathroom could be saved for the cost of a new vanity or sink, a few boxes of hex tile from Home Depot, a new mirror and a couple of well-placed shallow wall cabinets, a new light bar, and the labor to deal with the difficult stuff.









So I started looking around for photos that others had taken of their sow's ear bathrooms turned into silk purses. It isn't so much that I wanted to return it to its 1950's glory, though I did recently find on Freecycle a listing for an original seafoam green sink and toilet and thought about it for about five minutes until remembering that the seafoam green is the part of this bathroom I loathe most. But in these austere times, the days of the $20,000 Zen retreat seem to be over.



While looking for others who had scaled back their plans, I stumbled on Pam Kueber's very cool Retro Renovations site. Pam isn't just about learning to live with mid-20th-century tackiness, she's about reveling in it as some kind of Golden Age of Design. For someone like me, who is old enough to remember chrome-wrapped boomerang kitchen tables and who worships regularly at the altar of Gustav Stickley, it was difficult to wrap my mind around this concept. But Pam's enthusiasm, and that of her readers, is so infectious that I almost found myself starting to appreciate the design sensibility of my childhood.



Almost.



But who knew that there is, in this country, an entire subculture of people who, instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to make their midcentury houses look like McMansions, have chosen instead to restore them to their original hideous glory, with pink bathrooms and ugly Don Draper sofas and pink kitchen appliances and tulip chairs.



If you watch This Old House, or read the magazine, there's always a bit of self-importance about restoring an old Queen Anne, or a Victorian, or especially a Craftsman house (which is my own particular favorite design aesthetic). Perhaps it's because these eras all pre-date anyone who's still alive today, which gives them a hushed museum quality to which that kind of reverence fits. But the mid-20th-century aesthetic, with its absurd turquoise kitchens and seafoam green bathrooms and bright orange sofas and kidney-shaped coffee tables, has a kind of gleeful tastelessness that after you read Pam Kueber's blog, makes you kind of understand it, even if you aren't quite ready to contact that guy getting rid of the seafoam green bathroom sink.



Today Pam Kueber has attained that revered condition of Blog Nirvana -- a LONG profile in the New York Times. Go check it out, and then check out Retro Renovations.



As for me, next time I go to get my hair done, I'm going to check out World of Tile on Route 22 in Springfield. Who knows, they might have the same seafoam green and black floor tile that I have now, and perhaps when it hasn't been trod on for fifty years it looks awesome.