Actually, I’ve been there for a convention associated with my club.

Not at the University, per se, my strongest memory of the event is a reception we had at a Children’s Discovery Center 150 feet below the surface in a Salt Mine which looked unfortunately similar to many classrooms of the modern design I’ve been to in that the walls were solid cinderblock painted in soothing colors and the lighting industrial florescent.  I understand some people couldn’t take the inherent claustrophobia long enough to stick around for the tasteless box lunch but I found it no different from many epistemic closures I have experienced in the past.

Speaking of salt (because I’m not really talking about the box lunch) there are two “Mainstream” schools of economics (which bears the same relationship to “science” of even the social type that a rattle shaking Shamen bears to a Medical Doctor), the “Saltwater School” that at least acknowledges John Maynard Keynes (in a weak tea Samuelson sense) and the “Freshwater School” of Friedmanite Monitarism which worships Hobbesian and Randian Social Darwinism.

Nature red in tooth and claw good (grunt).

We’ve seen the rise of some Heterodox Schools of which I most favor Modern Monetary Theory, with its main academic center at University of Missouri- Kansas City.  Among its prominent professors are Bill Black and L. Randall Wray.

They’ve seen Stephanie Kelton appointed Chief Economist on the Senate Budget Committee.

They publish a web site called New Economic Perspectives that I enthusiastically endorse and to which Dr. Kelton was a frequent contributor and this recently appeared there from Robert E. Prasch, Professor of Economics at Middlebury College (not noticably near any major water ways at all).

The State of the Union Speech and the President’s Credibility Gap

By Robert E. Prasch, New Economic Perpectives

January 21, 2015

Let us begin with the old adage that “talk is cheap.” The fact is that this president has had six years to demonstrate – in deeds rather than words – what exactly constitutes his priorities. Let us, as this is a website devoted to economics issues, set aside the Obama Administration’s genuinely horrific record on civil liberties (The sordid record is long, but highlights include unchecked domestic spying by the NSA; drones deployed to terrorize the citizenry of numerous foreign nations; proclaiming and defending the prerogative to unilaterally kill American citizens with ever stating charges, much less presenting evidence or seeking convictions in the courts; solely and exclusively prosecuting those brave individuals who alerted the public to the Bush Administration’s war crimes, even as he comforted or promoted those who committed the crimes, etc.). Let us focus solely on economic policy. What follows is a brief review of the low moments thus far. These are not presented in any order and is not a comprehensive list:

(1) Appointing failed regulators (Geithner and Bernanke) and failed economists (Summers) to senior positions to oversee the recovery of the economy and the reregulation of the financial system.

(2) Overseeing the bailing out the Too Big To Fail Banks (TBTF) through TARP, the several Fed QE programs, and (early on) accounting rules changes, while flat-out failing to admit that straight-out subsidies constituted the core of the “recovery” plan. By contrast, homeowners, including those that had been defrauded by these same TBTF banks or their subsidiaries, were left to the tender mercies of these same banks.

(3) Repurposing that modest element of the TARP legislation that was supposed to assist struggling homeowners into a ruse that would further bleed those same homeowners in order to further assist the banks and the fat cats that oversaw their collapse (Geithner’s memorably stated that bleeding homeowners through misrepresentation of their chances to have their mortgages refinanced was good public policy because drawing out a few last payments from broke families would “foam the runways” for the failed banks).

(4) Blocking (through highly visible inaction) the rewriting of U.S. bankruptcy law in a manner that would enhance the bargaining power of underwater homeowners vis-à-vis the TBTF banks.

(5) Working diligently to assist in the denial or outright cover-up of widespread and flagrant fraud on the part of TBTF banks and bankers. This fraud occurred in the origination of the mortgages, the sale of mortgage-backed securities, in the stringing along of struggling homeowners, and in the course of foreclosing on customers (and foreclosing on people who weren’t customers, also). Foreclosure fraud included the widespread forging of mortgages and liens that had been misplaced or destroyed. These forgeries were then presented in court proceedings as original documents.

(6) Working long and diligently to provide ex post legal immunity for bankers from Federal and State criminal proceedings on tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of instances of mortgage and foreclosure fraud.

(7) Working diligently to ensure that financial regulation would be a mishmash of meaningless sturm und drang that could – as all the adults knew at the time that it would – be unwound during the rule writing process that was to take place at a later date and largely behind closed doors.

(8) Participating in, and then promoting, the outright lie that the US government “made money” on the bailout of the financial system, including the bailout of AIG.

(9) Participating in the unwinding of the (all-too-few) meaningful Dodd-Frank Act reforms. Granted, we know that Treasury lobbied against the inclusion of these few meaningful reforms at the time, and that everyone knew that they would never become law, so the only remaining point of interest was how they would come to be annulled. Now we know.

(10) Passing George W. Bush’s investor protection (a.k.a. “free trade”) agreements with South Korea, Columbia, and Panama even though his government knew, at the time, that these agreements would harm the United States economy.

(11) The aggressive, unrelenting, and absolutely secretive pursuit of those monsters of all investor protection agreements dubbed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

While we are on this subject, I am in awe that in the State of the Union address Obama had the temerity to say, “We should write those rules [on trade]…That’s why I’m asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect American workers with strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe.” They say that if you have to lie, go big. After all, who is the “We” in that sentence? Not working Americans, we can count on that. Not civil society organizations concerned with workplace or environmental issues, to say nothing of people concerned with the cost of excessive patent or copyright protections that have become simple giveaways to firms. No, “We” does not include them, either. The “We” of that sentence refers to the hundreds of corporate lobbyists and trade lawyers who have been working, secretively, cheek-by-jowl with the most virulently anti-labor office in the entire executive branch, the Office of the United States Trade Representative. “We.” I love it. That’s real chutzpah.

(12) The persistent pursuit, albeit without a triumph (yet), of that greatest dream of all New Democrats, a “Grand Bargain” that would significantly cut payments to the elderly on Social Security (keep in mind that over ½ of all retirees have no measurable retirement incomes other than this enormously effective program).

(13) The aggressive and unrelenting effort to undermine teachers and privatize schools (or privatize school dollars in the case of “Charter schools”), on the thinnest of rationales such as the results of standardized test scores. This agenda has been maintained even though prominent studies appeared soon after the Obama Administration came into office demonstrating that Charter schools did not outperform traditional public schools, and often did somewhat worse.

(14) The eager adoption of the core of Sarah Palin’s energy program, “drill baby, drill,” by facilitating virtually unhindered hydraulic fracturing along with extensive offshore drilling.

(15) As with the Clinton presidency, anti-trust action against large and uncompetitive firms is most noteworthy for its absence. Personal favorites include last year’s US Air-American Airlines merger, which is an even worse deal for consumers than the United-Continental merger of 2010. But lets not overlook the forthcoming merger of Time-Warner with Comcast. Wow, could either of those firms achieve new lows in customer service? Stay tuned!

After six years in office, even the most loyal of Democrats can no longer feign to be ignorant of the substance and consequences of President Obama’s economic policies. Remarkably, the income of the median American household declined more during Obama’s recovery than during Bush’s recession! An optimist might describe the Obama Administration’s performance as pathetic or, as is the norm, present multiple excuses for it.

But the agenda and its consequences have not been pathetic by accident, or even from Republican Party interference, but by design. The failure is a consequence of a betrayal of the traditions and ideals of the Democratic Party so complete that it might, I say might, have shamed Bill Clinton (think NAFTA, WTO, the massive giveaway to the Telecoms, aggressive bank mergers, the repeal of Glass-Steagall & the ban against any regulation of derivatives, and so much more). Yet, despite this abysmal record, we are being asked to believe that President Obama and his senior economic advisors are concerned for the declining American middle class! That is to say that, after having lost both houses of Congress, we are to believe that the leadership of the Democratic Party is (finally) willing to do something about the ravages of thirty-five years of neoliberal economics.

Please excuse me for being skeptical. Excuse me for supposing that there may be an ulterior motive for this freshly minted interest in the economic fate of someone, anyone, who does not work on Wall Street or for a defense contractor. Indeed, I would like to remind readers that the last time we heard significant noise from the White House over the plight of working Americans, it was as part of an embarrassingly obvious effort to distract us from an upcoming Senate vote on the South Korea, Columbia, and Panama investor protection agreements.

Now, we know that the president and an embarrassingly large number of Congressional Democrats are anxious to rush through TPP and TTIP before the New Hampshire primary obliges them to pretend that they care about what mere voters, that is to say the sops that make up the rank-and-file of their own party, think about these certain-to-be-odious trade treaties. If I were to bet, it would be that concern over a coming backlash is the primary motivation behind Obama’s “liberal” State of the Union speech. But don’t take my word for it. Let’s test it. Let’s see how much of this agenda remains thirty days after these profoundly harmful treaties are ratified with, I am guessing, the affirmative vote of close to 50% of Democratic Party Senators.

So, what is to be done? I would suggest that those of us who still cling to the belief that the United States should and could be something other than a plutocracy have some serious thinking to do. While I have not addressed this topic here, I would also suggest that those of us who still believe that the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments were a good idea also have some serious thinking to do. This thinking is all the more important because, in this world of uncertainly and change, we can all rest assured that Hillary Clinton is not, and never will be, on our side. She and her long list of friends in the banks and amongst the defense contractors are opposed – adamantly – to our values and ideals. So, what are we to do?

Stated simply, it is time for those of us who are dissatisfied with the direction that this nation has taken over these past thirty-five years to begin to think and act strategically. I would submit that the dominant strategy pursued thus far – that of unquestioned loyalty to the Democrats – has been put to the test, repeatedly. We now have definitive evidence that, considered as a strategy, this approach been an absolute failure. Remember that in 2008 we voted for “Hope and Change. The issues of the day were President Bush’s random wars and the collapse of the financial system that was a consequence of the unthinking deregulation pursued by both parties. What did we get? The reappointment of Bush’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates who, as a prominent CIA official, previously disgraced himself in the course of his involvement in the Iran-Contra Scandal. In what world did such a reappointment constitute “Change”?

And what of the economy? Proven failures from Bill Clinton’s frenzied deregulation drive – Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner (amongst many others) were appointed to the highest offices. There they were joined by a bevy of Goldman and Citigroup alums who, we were told, would oversee the reregulation of the financial system. Really? When did that ever constitute “Change”? What about it constituted “Hope”? Was all the prattle about “Hope and Change” simply a joke? Was it just a marketing gimmick? I believe that we can now answer that question, definitively.

Returning to strategy, we can now conclude that “lesser evil” voting has, in no way or form, advanced our programs, ideals, or values. It has been tried, repeatedly, and it has failed. We now know that the DNC treats the rank and file of the Democratic Party contemptuously because they know that they, at least implicitly, have our permission to do it. Should we ever decide that we are tired of their contempt, this implicit permission will have to be revoked in a manner that this is both unmistakable and dramatic. This means, operationally, that the DNC’s contempt for us must be returned, and in kind.

Holding the leadership of the DNC accountable does not mean adding our signature to an online poll, or holding a sign at a “peaceful protest,” and then turning out to vote for the 1% favored candidate. Holding the DNC to account means denying them, and their massive entourage of Washington-based apparatchiks, something that they ardently desire – election or appointment to high office. This means that those whom Howard Dean once labeled the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” must be prepared to stand on the sidelines while “centrist Democrats” lose. We must not shy away from taking such action, rather we must openly embrace it. In the aftermath, we must be prepared for the massive opprobrium that will be directed at us by these same time-serving apparatchiks and sundry Washington hustlers who have long staffed the DNC, associated think tanks, and political campaign consultancies. As stifled would-be office-holders anticipating an easy passage through the revolving door, we can and should expect the DNC’s officialdom to be bitter about losing their best chance to acquire cushy jobs with low workloads and high payouts. To quote one of their icons, “I feel their pain.”

Let us be clear, what is being proposed here not about being “revenge” or “being in a huff.” It is a strategy, one that proposes to win by playing the “long game.” As the saying goes, first they will ignore us and then they will insult us, but if can hold the line and deny the time-servers in the DNC the things that they want, they will be forced to negotiate with us. The day after the professional insiders and boot-lickers of the DNC come to learn that they cannot win without their Democratic wing, is the day that they will begin to consider what we want, and actually begin to respond to it.

What do we know now?

Not as much as we thought we did about tonight’s panel.  Can’t find the list anywhere.  I see the Kinks are still with us.

Couldn’t think of a thing to ask about Cuba either, though on reflection it would probably have been something stupid like-

Are the Cigars as good as they say?

I wonder if someday he’ll be able to get Cornell West or Glenn Ford on the panel.  They would have fit right in.

Since it’s the end of the first week I feel compelled to make a snap (the yet unheard of Zorro in flying Z formation) judgement about what we’ve seen so far.

The show is very fast paced and you have to pay close attention.  The humor, such as it is, is very dry and Larry doesn’t stop and wait for you to catch up.  The panel discussion is highly intelligent and sets a standard that makes the Sunday Shows look like the vacuous preening and hackneyed cliches that they are.  Even the Republicans attempt to make sense and there is only a hint of ‘bottiness, mostly from the white guys.  ‘Keeping it 100’ should be a staple of every talking head program- it really reduces the clueless disconnectedness of most panels by exposing, or threatening to expose, it.  Larry Wilmore is a nice, likable character (who knows what he is in real life) who comes off as super smart but laid back and inofficious.

Continuity

We’re correspondents on a basic cable fake news show

That’s the waiting tables of being on television.

Next week’s guests-

The Daily Show

• Monday 1/26: Julian Castro
• Tuesday 1/27: Jill Leovy
• Wednesday 1/28: Oscar Isaac
• Thursday 1/29: Sarah Chayes

Jennifer Aniston will be on to talk about her Oscar snub for Cake and her new film, She’s Funny That Way.

NAFTA, TPP & The Clinton Global Initiative’s “Free Trade” Activism

By Gaius Publius, Crooks & Liars

1/21/15 10:36am

(L)et’s fix three pieces in our brains:

• Before NAFTA passed, Bill Clinton, Pete Peterson and a raft of “pre-NAFTA economic studies” predicted one million new jobs, increased exports, and a lower trade deficit.
• After NAFTA passed, we lost one million jobs, increased imports, and increased the trade deficit by a factor of almost 5.
• Pro-NAFTA companies, who promised to create new jobs here, moved existing jobs abroad almost as soon as it was signed.

The third piece counts. Clinton claims to have been mistaken on free-trade policy (as opposed to having been knowingly complicit with the damage). But I can’t imagine either Peterson or any American CEO didn’t have the obvious stapled in front of them – that when it’s cheaper to export jobs, you export jobs and pocket the cash. That NAFTA was going to be a gift of cash from the day it was conceived.

In other words, NAFTA was designed by its creators to export jobs, and “predictions” to the contrary were just propaganda. CEO substitution rule: When they mention “more jobs,” they always mean “more profit.”

The next NAFTA is called “TPP” (the Trans-Pacific Partnership), there’s a trans-Atlantic version in the wings (called, TPIP), and Barack Obama is playing the Clinton game with both. He and his corporate-controlled friends are pushing for them, starting with TPP, hoping that a Republican Congress can give him what a Democratic Congress could not.

Of course they’re promising “more jobs” again, but the deal itself and the negotiations are in secret, and they’ll only allow a vote under “Fast Track” rules – no amendments, just an up-or-down vote. All of this to promote deceptively named “free trade,” meaning freedom for the global holders of wealth to do whatever they want with it anywhere in the world.

…

Keep all this in mind when the phrase “lesser evil” turns up again in 2016. Just as Hillary Clinton is a carbon candidate (click to see why), she’s a “free trade” TPP candidate as well. Yes, she once said … sorta, under pressure of a political campaign … that NAFTA could have been better (“has not lived up to its promises”).

…

(T)he Clinton Foundation’s CGI is used as an agent of neoliberal policies. Swenson’s whole section on this is worth reading.

…

The do-gooder aspect of the Clinton family’s CGI – yes, family; the official name of the umbrella organization is “Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation” – obscures its definition of “good.” The organization promotes these “good” things – more carbon emissions in the form of fracked methane (“America’s natural gas”), privately-owned schools, privately-owned public infrastructure like bridges and roads – and it does so by hosting forums presented people like Robert Rubin, fracked methane CEOs, and other billionaire beneficiaries of these policies.

…

CGI sells “energy independence” – meaning continuing profits for “U.S.” oil and gas companies.

…

CGI sells privatized education, and road and bridge repair financed with “public-private partnerships”.

…

“Public-private partnership” means using corporate money to finance public needs, then giving the bulk of the benefit back to the corporation in the form of profit (most of which lines CEO-class pockets). Think parking meters in Chicago.

CGI also promotes studies in “behavioral psychology” to find better ways to influence (“nudge” … “gently urge”) changes in public behavior that benefit the billionaires.

…

The U.S. television viewer is already heavily “influenced” (nudged; propagandized) by what she watches. There’s a science to it, and CGI wants to help billionaires harness that science to their benefit.

All in all, the bottom line is clear. The piece closes by noting the obvious contradiction – how can a “meeting of one-percenters” address problems their own policies, eagerly pursued, are causing?

…

What’s the goal of CGI? The answer has to be – to prop up the One Percent (actually the 0.001%, the 1% of the 1%) while appearing to do good, or by doing enough good to appear to be all-good.

As to CGI’s managers, from the Clintons on down, are they failing to solve global economic problems out of ignorance of the obvious – that their proposed “solutions” are in fact the cause? Or are they failing for some other reason? If trade deals, to pick just one issue, are so bad for the average worker, are they too … what, dumb? … to see that, or too venal to cop to it?

And what about the Clintons themselves? What causes this family to collect millions for a foundation loved by “do-gooder” billionaires – and likely funded by them – a foundation that promotes policies that keep these people rich and the rest of us poor, despite its stated objectives?

There are several ways to answer these questions, some social, some intellectual, some financial. None is flattering.

…

I want to tie up this bundle. This is in part about TPP, but it’s also about Hillary Clinton and what CGI says about how she would act if elected. I want to ask three questions:

• Is there any question that NAFTA and TPP are good only for billionaires?
• Is there any question that the Clinton Global Initiative promotes billionaire policies, including but not limited to job-killing “free trade” deals?
• Is there any question that CGI’s activism represents policy directions that all of the Clintons, CGI principals, approve of?

And a fourth question:

• If the answers above are No, No, and No, how is Hillary Clinton the “lesser evil” on America’s most important domestic issue, extreme and worsening economic inequality?

I’m not sure I can answer that in a way that comforts left-leaning 2016 voters.

Yeah, usually I’m the first and last guy to break format.  The first because I need something that suits my style and the last because once you’ve set up something that works, why fix it?

Today I find myself caught between conflicting forces.  I’ve been much busier than you think in my personal life and the schedule that I normally adhere to quite rigidly (9 to 11 and 4 to 6 with the orchids) is shot to hell, has been since the holidays, and I expect it to continue at least through Groundhog Day.  This bothers me much more than it does you or should because it’s not necessarily bad news unless you pride yourself on certain expectations of performance.

The second is that there is one piece of earth shattering news that kind of eclipses everything else.

What?  Obama suddenly turned populist during the State of the Union?

You wish.  Microsoft is going to be giving away Windows 10 for “free”.

Allow me to explain.

Windows 8 was a stinker, a deal breaking piece of crap that was not only buggy as hell (ala Vista to which it was never too early to say Hasta la to baby) but fundamentally required businesses, only 70% of Microsoft’s market, to invest in exhorbitantly expensive hardware upgrades and even more in training costs.

Let me emphasise the training costs, most workers only know what the need to know to get the job done.  They are trained by the people around them to the level of competancy required in order to be productive and in most cases personel turnover is not high enough to justify a dedicated and highly compensated staff to educate them.

If you go into an office situation you’ll find that most desktops look and feel remarkably similar to the standard set down by Windows 95, the last radical interface introduced by Microsoft to gain wide acceptance.  This is true whether they run Windows 98, XP, NT, Server, Vista, or 7 (or variants of them like XP-64 Pro).

As a home user your experience is quite different.  Each default installation has all kinds of incompatible visual tweaks and cues and garish backgrounds and skins to make it look “fresh”, “exciting”, and “new”.  IT pros knew that there was always a secret hidden button that would restore the Windows “Classic” look and feel and eliminate training the basics of interacting between the screen, mouse, and keyboard.

But the business market is stable and not growing.  They buy solutions to problems and once the problem is solved have no incentive to change.  XP still has 18% penetration in offices, my Doctor’s for instance where they just rolled out a new paperless record keeping system that took Billions to develop and deploy.

Here is where economics and greed raise their ugly head.  Because the Stock Market is nothing more than a giant Ponzi scheme casino, profitability doesn’t matter- only growth.  I can charge you a Dollar for a program that is stable and requires no investment besides the nickle it costs for a CD to burn it on and make 95 Cents Millions of times a day.  Wall Street does not reward that behavior.

Nope, Mr. Market has already discovered the value of that and unless you’re into clipping coupons and collecting dividends at rates in line with the prevailing economy with little risk it has no attraction.  You want to be a Lion Tamer.

Apple ran into this problem early.  They had the Educational sector sewn up but were not making any progress otherwise with their proprietary and high priced hardware and software.  For them the solution was to get into the toy business.  Who needs a digital Walkman if you have a Walkman that works perfectly fine?  Nobody, not even a Walkman that plays TV.  But you can promote this attractive nuisance as a business category that is growing and in which you have a dominant position and attract lots of money from gamblers who you can con into thinking this is the next big thing no matter how tiny and insignificant it actually is.

At last even mighty Microsoft fell into the trap.  Windows 8 is an Operating System for toys and gadgets, not for working and businesses who were very unhappy.  To its credit Microsoft heard them, sacked those responsible for doing the Opening Credits in Norwegian, and rushed back to redo the User Interface.  Thus Windows 10 is born.

About that price

Microsoft’s 3 year obsolescence cycle is about more than driving new purchases.  They’ve also decided it’s not cost effective to be stuck with maintaining old products.  Likewise they are trying to reduce the number of them.  One goal which has not changed is making Windows work across many platforms (phone, tablet, PC) which Microsoft justifies on ease of use but is really intended as a cost reduction measure.  They’re also not above giving away software to get greater penetration and destroy the market, witness what they did very successfully to the Netscape Navigator browser with Internet Explorer.

Attempts to repeat that have a mixed record, Windows Media Player and CD Burner has not really killed Nero (which costs a pretty penny but is mostly bundled free with your optical drive) or StarBurn (always free), Windows Defender has not replaced the multitude of anti-virus programs (most of them no better than viruses themselves), nor has their speech recognition Dragon Naturally Speaking.

They’re under increasing pressure from other “free” applications like Goggle Chrome which is a browser based Operating System to Linux which does it all and is arguably better.  To counter this Microsoft has said for years that they want to move to a service based business model where you, as a consumer, don’t actually “own” anything and instead pay a yearly fee like your phone or cable bill.  Think this won’t work?  Ask anyone who’s had the misfortune to put Norton’s or McAffee’s anti-virus on their machines where it is practically impossible to remove and will brick your computer (i.e. turn it into a non-functional door stop) unless you pay for their annual update.

Also, in the gadget marketplace (phones and tablets), they are already giving it away in a desperate attempt to win share.  The profit margins in those appliances is virtually non-existant anyway, companies give you the hardware to get your signature on a long-term contract and then nickle and dime you into bankruptcy.

Will Windows 10 succeed?  The price is right but no amount of money is sufficient to compensate for the cost of re-training.  If it were everyone would be running Ubuntu.

Science and Tech News

• This animation of shrinking sea ice is a startling illustration of climate change, By Nick Kirkpatrick, Washington Post, January 22 at 4:29 AM
• Not Just Sea Level Rise: Melting Glaciers Release Vast Amounts of Carbon, Study Finds, By Zoë Schlanger, Newsweek, 1/19/15 at 3:23 PM
• Century Later, the ‘Chinatown’ Water Feud Ebbs, By ADAM NAGOURNEY, The New York Times, JAN. 20, 2015
• Water stress takes toll on California’s large trees, study says, By Taylor Goldenstein, Los Angeles Times, January 19, 2015
• Water Bounces Right Off This Super-Repellent Material, by Tanya Lewis, Live Science, January 21, 2015 02:40pm ET
• Nanotextures Inspired by Moth Eyes Prevent Reflection for Better Solar Panels, By James Maynard, Tech Times, January 21, 2:59 PM
• Cosmic archeologists read meteorites like hard drives, by James Temperton, Wired, 22 January 15
• NASA Spacecraft Closing In on Dwarf Planets Pluto and Ceres, By KENNETH CHANG, The New York Times, JAN. 19, 2015
• 25-million-year-old galactic dust provides insight into supernovae, by Australian National University, Astronomy Now,  21 January 2015
• Unlocking Scrolls Preserved in Eruption of Vesuvius, Using X-Ray Beams, By NICHOLAS WADE, The New York Times, JAN. 20, 2015
• Measles Cases Linked to Disneyland Rise, and Debate Over Vaccinations Intensifies, By ADAM NAGOURNEY and ABBY GOODNOUGH, The New York Times, JAN. 21, 2015
• U.S. Research Lab Lets Livestock Suffer in Quest for Profit, By MICHAEL MOSS, The New York Times, JAN. 19, 2015

Science and Tech Blogs

• NY Attorney General Proposes Not Terrible Cybersecurity Legislation, by Tim Cushing, Tech Dirt
• Broadband Industry Takes To Congressional Hearing To Praise Wimpy, Neutrality-Killing Proposal It Helped Write, by Karl Bode, Tech Dirt
• Snowden Documents Show NSA Can’t Keep Its Eyes On Its Own Papers; Harvests Data From Other Surveillance Agencies, by Tim Cushing, Tech Dirt
• Chris Christie, Port Authority Official Abused E-ZPass Data For Their Own Ends, by Tim Cushing, Tech Dirt
• MPAA Boss Chris Dodd Talks About Sony Hack & Free Speech… Ignoring How It Revealed MPAA’s Plan To Undermine Free Speech, by Mike Masnick, Tech Dirt
• That Study In Every Paper Claiming Title II Will Result In $15 Billion In New Taxes? Yeah, That’s Total Bunk, by Karl Bode, Tech Dirt
• Die Another Eh: What Does It Mean Now That James Bond Is In The Public Domain In Canada?, by Sherwin Siy, Tech Dirt
• Judge Tackles Police Use Of Radar To Scan Home Interiors And Comes Up With No Real Answers, by Tim Cushing, Tech Dirt
• European Commission’s Clever Ruse To Introduce Corporate Sovereignty Regardless Of Ratification Votes In EU, by Glyn Moody, Tech Dirt
• GCHQ Used Compromised Hardware To Suck Data And Communications Out Of Exploit-Resistant iPhones, by Tim Cushing, Tech Dirt

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

No News, Blogs, Video, or other Obligatories today.

What do we know now?

Mike Yard is a regular.  Tonight’s show is about the State Of the Union.  We were invited to submit our questions about President Obama.  Now I could have gone a different way with this and asked about the fact that African-Americans, who are wildly over represented in the less affluent demographics because of historic and persistent racial prejudice, have actually seen their economic position decline under the policies of this President, Obama, and that Police Violence against the African-American community has increased under his Administration and militarized Law Enforcement; but as I’ve indicated I think it does a disservice to The Nightly Show and Larry Wilmore to use a merely racial and tribal lens when watching.  African-Americans are Americans.  Their struggle is our struggle and class knows no race.

Besides, it’s too much research for midnight and I have other things to do with my life which include careful examination of the inside of my eyelids.

So instead I went with some things where the facts are undisputed-

How do you feel about Obama’s protection of torture, bank fraud, & indiscriminate surveilance, and his dozen+ new wars?

Would Larry have Bill Cosby on as a panelist?  Hell yeah!  And Mike Yard is actually funny-

Tonight’s panel is John Lovett, David Remnick, Amy Holmes, and Godfrey.  Sorry about last night, now that I know where to look I’ll try to include it.  Did I mention the Kinks?

Continuity

Admiral Zhao

This week’s guests-

The Daily Show

• Wednesday 1/21: Anne Hathaway
• Thursday 1/22: Jennifer Aniston

When last we saw Anne Hathaway she was a phantom in Hugh Jackman’s dying mind-

Tomight she’ll be on to talk about her debut as a producer (though she also stars) Song One.

The real news below.

Transcript

Transcript

The BBC and the Economist Combine to Try to Defeat Syriza

by William Black, New Economic Perspectives

Posted on January 20, 2015

The article abounds in unintentional self-parody. First, the article admits austerity is a major driver of the “political earthquakes.” For reasons that pass all understanding the BBC hired the Economist’s “Intelligence Unit” to write what any right-wing BBC columnist would have written for no additional fee. Given that the Economist is one of the entities most culpable for the economic malpractice of inflicting austerity on the eurozone the idea that it is good journalism for them to opine about their opponents is sad or laughable depending on how one responds to absurdity.

The Economist criticized the Prime Minister Papandreou for proposing a referendum on whether the Greek people wished to agree to austerity. How dare Greece engage in democracy! The BBC compounded the self-parody by hiring the Economist to criticize the Greek Party Syriza because it enjoys (according to polls) the plurality support of the Greek people in the upcoming elections – in a column supposedly celebrating “Democracy Day.”

Democracy, the will of the Greek people, and Syriza are the Economist’s great fear.

…

Unsurprisingly, the Economist does not say a word about what the “establishment parties'” insistence on inflicting the economic malpractice of austerity has done to the peoples of the eurozone’s periphery. It is the establishment parties’ insane and inhumane austerity policies and the war on workers’ wages on the peoples of Europe that forced Spain, Italy, and Greece into Great Depression levels of unemployment. The economically rational, and humane, party of Greece, Syriza, is described as “far left, populist.” What does this make the “establishment parties?” “Ultra-right wing parties of the plutocrats” would have to be the answer.

It isn’t Syriza that is “destabilising” – it is the troika’s insistence on forcing Greece into a Great Depression that is more severe and longer-lasting than the Great Depression of 80 years ago that is “destabilising.” It was the Washington Consensus’ demands for austerity and the resultant lost decade in Latin America that was “destabilising.”

What do we know now?

Shenaz Treasury is a regular.  We’re going to get a monologue followed by an extended panel discussion (in addition to Treasury, last night we had Talib Kweli, Bill Burr, and Corey Booker).

The Boston Globe says, “Comedy Central appears to have come up with a worthy partner to “The Daily Show,” with Stewart and Wilmore as the salt and pepper shakers of late-night TV.”

I have mixed feelings about that kind of praise.  The Nightly Show should not be judged on ‘diversity’ criteria as if it were a Short Bus special needs collection of tribal integration but on whether it is funny and enlightening.  My verdict is more enlightening than funny.  It moves very quickly indeed and the panel is intelligent and respectful.  This is not Three Stooges slapstick (not that there is anything wrong with that).

Brian Moylan at The Guardian loves that.

I wish The Nightly Show would get rid of the monologue altogether (or shorten it considerably) so that Wilmore could do what no one else is doing in late night and talk to other people well and intelligently. It’s hard enough for adults to squeeze a meaningful conversation about complex topics into 30 minutes and it’s even harder when the show is only devoted to the panel about half the time.

His favorite part is the ending segment, ‘Keeping It 100’, as in 100% Real.  In the premier Wilmore and his staff picked the questions for the panel members and his question was picked only by the staff- ‘What’s the last racist thought you had?’

Viewers are invited to submit our own questions in the future via Twitter.  Tonight’s topic is Bill Cosby.  Since we are nothing but slaves to media culture, of course we had to submit our own-

Is it true Cosby and Culp had a sexual affair while filming I Spy?

We expect we’ll be doing this every night so if you have a strong suggestion, post it and we’ll pass it along.

Continuity

What does your cat do all day?

This week’s guests-

The Daily Show

• Tuesday 1/20: Jennifer Lopez
• Wednesday 1/21: Anne Hathaway
• Thursday 1/22: Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Lopez will be on to whore The Boy Next Door which will be released Friday.  The film was shot in 23 days and probably looks like every minute of it.

The real news and Elmer Gantry’s web exclusive extended interview below.

If you must.  I’ll be watching Moonshiners and Big Giant Swords on Discovery.

Remember, it’s not what you say, it’s what you do.

As I’m sure is true with the shows themselves there are still some kinks to get worked out.

What do we know?

Larry Wilmore on Colbert Takeover: ‘Replacing Stephen Is Impossible’

By Andy Greene, Rolling Stone

January 16, 2015

Wilmore was chosen for the job almost a year ago, soon after David Letterman announced his retirement and CBS signed up Colbert. “Jon Stewart and I got together to talk about what we might do with the slot,” says Kent Alterman, the president of content development and original programming at Comedy Central. “He had this idea for this show with Larry as the host, since his whole career has really built him toward that moment. Considering Jon’s track record when it comes to discovering talent, you’d have to be a real idiot to argue with him.”

Stewart’s pitch was rather simple. “His basic idea was there were lots of underrepresented voices out there that deserve to be heard,” says Wilmore. “He envisioned it as a Daily Show/panel show, with me hosting it. I was surprised he had me in the middle of the bull’s-eye. My jaw just kinda dropped. I went, ‘OK . . . sure. That sounds great.'”

There is still no guest list, this is what Jon Looks like for the week-

The Daily Show

• Monday 1/19: Mike Huckabee
• Tuesday 1/20: Jennifer Lopez
• Wednesday 1/21: Anne Hathaway
• Thursday 1/22: Jennifer Aniston

Some continuity-

Alabama Justice

Mike Huckabee == Elmer Gantry (that’s an equation test not an assignment operator for the uninitiate).

I have here in my pocket – and thank heaven you can’t see them – lewd, dirty, obscene, and I’m ashamed to say this: French postcards. They were sold to me in front of your own innocent high school by a man with a black beard… a foreigner.

You want to read the whole thing?  It was written by Sinclair Lewis and dedicated to my meta namesake, H.L. Mencken.  I assure you that it will do more to feed your soul than any amount of time spent listening to this charlatan mountebank grifter.  Hot Dog?

But I do hope you’ll stick around for the Second Act.

16 April 1963

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

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You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

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You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: “Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

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I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

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Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather “nonviolently” in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

I wish you had commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: “My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.” They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience’ sake.

– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.