Football is a game you play with your feet.

This one is a pick ’em at my house.  The troll side of me feels a good deal of sympathy for the hapless Lions.  The part that is not under the bridge roots for the community owned Packers, so far undefeated, to continue a perfect season.

Not that the Lions are having a bad year, especially for them.  At 7 – 3 they are off to their best start since 1991 after 9 losing seasons in a row.

Both teams sport high powered offenses and all the pundits are predicting a scoring fest (over/under is 55).  This means of course that it will be a boring defensive struggle decided by a lonely field goal, or perhaps a solo safety.

Well the 18th Annual Big Balloon Parade took place as scheduled on November 20th in downtown Stamford this year.  They had 21 giant helium balloons and featured the debut of 3 new balloons, Hagar the Horrible, Smurfette, and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Returning favorites included the Sesame Street Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Kermit the Frog, The Cat in the Hat, Mr. Potato Head, Popeye, Scooby Doo, Garfield, Fred Flintstone, and Clifford the Big Red Dog.  Eleven Marching Bands escorted the balloons and floats and over 1000 volunteers participated in the UBS Parade Spectacular sponsored by Stamford Town Center and The Advocate.  The Honorary Marshalls were Laura Linney, John Benjamin Hickey and Gabourey Sidibe, who star in Showtime’s series “The Big C” which is filmed in Stamford and David Letterman personality Alan Kalter served for the 8th year as Master of Ceremonies.

Oh, maybe you thought I was talking about another Big Balloon Parade, one with only 15 giant balloons (though they have a lot of smaller ones too).

Well, it’s the 85th anniversary of the first Macy’s Christmas Parade in 1924, though to be fair they only started the balloon thing in 1927 with Felix the Cat and initially filled it with air.  When they used Helium the next year they had no way to deflate it so they just let it float away until it popped.

From 1942 – 44 Helium and Rubber were too valuable to the war effort to waste on crass commercialism and there was no parade so this is really the 79th edition, but it is the first with a female Grand Marshall- Amy Kule.

Sonic the Hedgehog is billed as one of their two new balloons, though it’s a retread (that’s a rubber joke) of a previous incarnation.  The only really new one is Paul Frank’s Julius.  Tim Burton’s controversial B is actually classed as a “novelty/ornament balloon, balloonhead or balloonicle”.

Macy’s 15 GIANT Balloons are-

• Buzz Lightyear
• Clumsy Smurf
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid
• Super Cute Hello Kitty
• Julius
• Kermit the Frog
• Kung Fu Panda
• Pikachu
• Pillsbury Doughboy
• Ronald McDonald
• Sailor Mickey
• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Snoopy as the Flying Ace
• Spider-Man
• SpongeBob SquarePants

And their 11 Marching Bands are-

• Carmel High School, Carmel, IN
• Dobyns-Bennett High School, Kingsport, TN
• Hawaii All-State Marching Band, HI
• Homestead High School, Cupertino, CA
• Homewood High School, Homewood, AL
• Legacy High School, Broomfield, CO
• Macy’s Great American Marching Band, USA
• Miami University, Oxford, OH
• Nation Ford High School, Fort Mill, SC
• NYPD Marching Band, New York, NY
• Plymouth-Canton Educational Park, Canton, MI

NBC broadcasts from Herald Square at the end of the parade and has more set pieces and celebrities.  They’ll also have an 85th Anniversary Special at 10 pm.  CBS is sited farther uptown at Broadway and 42nd St. and concentrates more on the Balloons, Bands, and Floats.

It’s Holiday TV time again and just as every year the networks are junking up your schedule with special events replacing your regular shows.

I provide these diaries as a public service so you can find some distraction from the friends and relatives that if you really liked you would see more often.

This particular edition covers the cooking overnight period on Wednesday through the start of the Throwball games Thursday.  Special holiday liveblogs tomorrow are the Big Balloon Parade and both games.  Saturday and Sunday are the final Formula One races at Interlagos.  Other than that we’ll continue to maintain our regular schedule as closely as we can out of consideration for our readers.

Marathons are 4 half hour episodes or 3 hour episodes in a row and noted at the start, for current TV Listings I recommend Zap2it.  As always the shows I highlight are the ones I would consider watching, your tastes are probably different.

Que lastima.

Egyptian generals to cede power early

By Leila Fadel and Ernesto Londoño, The Washington Post

Updated: Tuesday, November 22, 1:21 PM

CAIRO – Egypt’s military chief announced Tuesday that the embattled armed forces leadership would hand over power to an elected president no later than July 1, 2012 – earlier than previously expected – even as he defiantly defended the military’s handling of mounting opposition protests.

In his first address to the nation since he took power in February, Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi appeared angry, accusing protesters of “insulting” the military despite its efforts to govern the nation during a difficult transitional period. He warned  that “any other efforts aimed at hitting us and destroying our spirits and the trust between the armed forces and the people will not be helpful.”

…

“We never killed a single Egyptian, man or woman,” Tantawi said in his speech. “The Egyptian military believes it is part and parcel of the Egyptian people.”

…

As his speech ended, many protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square responded in unison with loud chants of “Get out! Get out! We will not leave! He will leave!”

…

The pledge to hand over power to a civilian leadership was first announced by presidential hopeful Mohammed Salim al-Awaa after a meeting with the ruling generals. The promise marked the biggest concession by the military leadership since anti-government protests began last weekend, mushrooming into a national revolt.

…

Awaa told the state-run news agency MENA that the generals agreed to halt the bloody clashes that have left at least 33 people dead, try individuals responsible for violence against protesters and release dozens of people arrested in the past four days.

…

After emergency meetings with civilian political leaders, the military council also said it would accept the resignation of Egypt’s caretaker cabinet and institute a national salvation government, MENA quoted Awaa as saying.

The cabinet, which offered to resign Monday to protest the crackdown by security forces, is still waiting for a written response from the generals, a spokesman said.

Think it can’t happen here?  USA!  USA!

Pregnant #OccupySeattle Protester Miscarries After Being Kicked, Pepper Sprayed

By David, Crooks and Liars

November 22, 2011 08:00 AM

Jennifer Fox, 19, told The Stranger that she had been with the Occupy protests since they started in Westlake Park. She said she was homeless and three months pregnant, but felt the need to join activists during their march last Tuesday.

“I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in,” Fox recalled. “I was screaming, ‘I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.'”

She claimed that police hit her in the stomach twice before pepper spraying her. One officer struck her with his foot and another pushed his bicycle into her. It wasn’t clear if either of those incidents were intentional.

“Right before I turned, both cops lifted their pepper spray and sprayed me. My eyes puffed up and my eyes swelled shut,” Fox said.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer Joshua Trujillo snapped a picture of Fox in apparent agony as another activist carried her to an ambulance.

…

While doctors at Harborview Medical Center didn’t see any problems at the time, things took a turn for the worst Sunday.

“Everything was going okay until yesterday, when I started getting sick, cramps started, and I felt like I was going to pass out,” she explained.

When Fox arrived at the hospital, doctors told her that the baby had no heartbeat.

“They diagnosed that I was having a miscarriage. They said the damage was from the kick and that the pepper spray got to it [the fetus], too,” she said.

“I was worried about it [when I joined the protests], but I didn’t know it would be this bad. I didn’t know that a cop would murder a baby that’s not born yet… I am trying to get lawyers.”

Yup.  Culture of Life.  Fetuses are people too, except when Corporate ‘People’ use their Police to kill them.

Dirty Fucking Hippy.

24 dead in 3 days of Cairo anti-military protests

By MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press

34 minutes ago

The night before saw an escalation of the fighting as police launched a heavy assault that tried and failed to clear protesters from the square. In a show of the ferocity of the assault, the death toll leaped from Sunday evening until Monday morning. A constant stream of injured protesters – bloodied from rubber bullets or overcome by gas – were brought into makeshift clinics set out on sidewalks around the square where volunteer doctors scrambled from patient to patient.

…

(T)he vote has been overshadowed by mounting anger at the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which will continue to hold power even after the vote. Activists accuse the generals of acting increasingly in the same autocratic way as Mubarak’s regime and fear that they will dominate the coming government, just as they have the current interim one they appointed months ago.

…

“What does it mean, transfer power in 2013? It means simply that he wants to hold on to his seat,” said a young protester, Mohammed Sayyed, referring to the head of the Supreme Council, Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi.

…

“I will keep coming back until they kill me,” he said. “The people are frustrated. Nothing changed for the better.”

CLGC Memo (.pdf)

Video continues after commercial break.  You have to pause manually.

U.C. Davis Calls for Investigation After Pepper Spraying

By BRIAN STELTER, The New York Times

November 19, 2011, 7:44 pm

In one of the videos, the officer steps over a line of seated protesters, holds the pepper spray bottle in the air, then sprays it in the protesters’ faces in a coordinated fashion as eyewitnesses gasp and shout, “Shame on you.” Most of the protesters remain seated; police officers then forcibly remove and arrest them.

In a video taken from another direction, two officers can be seen dousing protesters with pepper spray at the same time. Though not visible in the videos, the operator of the Facebook page for the Occupy U.C. Davis organization claimed that one police officer “shoved a pepper spray gun down a student’s throat and pulled the trigger.” On Saturday afternoon, the Facebook page announced that protesters would be working with attorneys to pursue legal action.

…

A spokesperson for the U.C. Davis police did not respond to a request for comment Saturday. Annette Spicuzza, the U.C. Davis police chief, told The Sacramento Bee that the officers used pepper spray on Friday because the police were surrounded by students. “There was no way out of that circle,” she told the newspaper. “They were cutting the officers off from their support. It’s a very volatile situation.”

The videos, however, show officers freely moving about and show students behaving peacefully. The university reported no instances of violence by any protesters.

Eyewitnesses uploaded their recordings late Friday. In a statement on Saturday that acknowledged the role of the eyewitnesses in raising awareness about the police’s behavior, the university’s chancellor, Linda P.B. Katehi, said she was saddened by “the events.”

Foreclosure Firm Steven J. Baum to Close Down

By PETER LATTMAN, The New York Times

November 21, 2011, 2:51 pm

On Saturday, Joe Nocera, The Times columnist who originally wrote about the firm’s Halloween party, published another column about the controversy. In it, he quoted an e-mail that Mr. Baum had sent him last week.

“Mr. Nocera – You have destroyed everything and everyone related to Steven J. Baum PC,” said the letter. “It took 40 years to build this firm and three weeks to tear down.”

Good.  Mr. Baum, you are a heartless sack of shit and your firm and its employees are lying perjurers.  I hope you rot in a cell for the rest of your life, penniless and forgotten like the scum you are.

Promises fall short, Keystone XL pipeline’s foes say

Keystone projections don’t match revenue reality for counties

Cody Winchester, Sioux Falls Argus Leader

11:51 PM, Nov. 19, 2011

When TransCanada was pushing to build an oil pipeline in eastern South Dakota back in 2007, the company’s marketing strategy included newspaper ads that promised counties along the route more than $9 million in tax revenue.

But four years later, in the pipeline’s first year of operation, tax records show that the 10 counties crossed by the Keystone oil pipeline received just one-third of this amount.

…

(F)or fiscal 2010 taxes collected this year, the company paid only $2.95 million to counties and school districts, according to figures provided by county auditors and treasurers. This does not count tax revenue TransCanada paid directly to the state, some of which was refunded under an incentive program for large projects.

A look at what TransCanada promised selected counties in estimated annual tax payments and the actual tax payment in fiscal 2010:

• Marshall County: $937,804.50 promised; $286,280.98 actually paid;
• Clark County: $1,369,565,98 promised; $359,646.04 paid;
• Miner County: $1,140,855.42 promised; $391,047.39 paid;
• Hutchinson County: $1,140, 264.64 promised; $424,504.72 paid.
• Yankton County: $837,988.68 promised; $247,965.58 paid.

“That was the big sell on this, the amount that would come to our local governments,” said state Senate Minority Leader Jason Frerichs, a Democrat from Wilmot. He called the discrepancy “further evidence that there are many unanswered questions about the pipeline.”

…

Frerichs, meanwhile, has broader concerns: “If we couldn’t take their word for the property taxes … how do we know for sure they’re going to be there for the cleanup?”

So we lied.  Tough Shit.

Blaise Emerson, executive director of Black Hills Community Economic Development, has tesified in favor of Keystone XL at state and federal hearings. He said the relatively lower tax receipts from Keystone in the east does not trouble him, because taxes are only one reason to support Keystone XL.

“How I look at it, and hopefully the way most people look at it: Don’t cry over the fact that you didn’t get quite as much as you wanted,” he said. “Maybe the estimate was a little bit high, but you wouldn’t have that revenue at all if it wasn’t coming through.”

You can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You fucked up… you trusted us!

If you are an economist you should be more, not less, outraged by the corruption and fraud of our financial elites.  As Matt Stoller points out, they represent market inefficiencies and introduce far greater uncertainty than mere regulation.

Matt Stoller: Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto Cracks Open the Financial Crisis

Matt Stoller, Naked Capitalism

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Our essential economic problem is that our economy allocates resources through a mediating system of banks that are broken and/or corrupt. If you look at a chart of the recession, and then the recovery, you’ll notice that business investment perked up, but residential investment did not. The Fed lowered rates, bought Treasury bonds, and bought mortgage backed securities to lower rates for homeowners. But it’s not really working, because the monetary channel is corrupt. This indictment gets to that problem, it alleges tens of thousands of forged documents (or as a friend told me sarcastically, an afternoon’s worth of work for LPS). These documents represent foreclosures, economic loss, and clouded title. The indictments handed down, and the ones to come, show that corrupting our property laws and the basis of our economy is a crime.

…

First President Bush, and then President Obama, tried to reconstruct an economic system based on a corrupted transmission mechanism from the Fed to the real economy. This was the financial crisis, it’s why abstract derivatives based on subprime mortgages knocked trillions of productive output off of the economy. Corruption is really inefficient.

…

I think it’s important to begin considering criminal justice as a core element of economic policy. I’d like to hear from Suskind, Klein, Krugman, and others just where they think allowing massive systemic fraud fits into the analysis of what went wrong. After all, Eric Holder had ample prosecutorial discretion, so none of the usual arguments about political constraints apply. Allowing the corrupt monetary channel to continue was simply a policy choice. If the under-resourced Nevada Attorney General could make such a different policy choice, then a powerful by comparison White House and Justice Department could make it as well. And this sort of show of power does not operate in a vacuum. Taking on, and taking down, corrupt members of the elite would also have exposed all sorts of fracture lines, and would likely have change the Congressional dynamics that people argue is immutable. Bank executives would have had a strong personal incentive to fix housing problems and excessive debt loads, and politicians react differently when an act is officially deemed a crime.

The demand for justice, for a society to place certain activities outside of the bounds of socially acceptable, is not just about satisfaction of the public for wrongs committed. I get the sense that fraud for most economists is considered something of a side issue, a kind of aesthetic political problem to be ignored in favor of more significant questions of stimulus and regulatory policies. This is a baffling attitude. One of my favorite financial legal bloggers, Carolyn Sissiko, has pointed out that fraud actually can have significant macro-economic impacts by distorting bank balance sheets.

…

The felony indictments from the Nevada AG’s office are the first sign that the law enforcement community can take financial crimes seriously, that blowing up the economy through financial mismanagement can carry costs. There’s a lot of research to be done on the costs of fraud, and the costs of foreclosures. We don’t know that much about these costs, because there haven’t been investigations and there isn’t a lot of good public data. After all, we mostly just take our property rights system for granted, the notion that clouded titles or a broken $10 trillion mortgage market could inhibit growth simply was not imaginable a few years ago. What is clear is that there is a deep public hunger for justice. And I suspect, that if that hunger had been satiated a few years ago and if Holder had begun handing down indictments, mortgage servicer executives would have begun a serious loan workout program.

And our economy would probably be in much better shape. When you throw your capital into the hands of people who have no incentive to use it wisely, the economy suffers. When you enforce the rule of law, sound business models prevail and ordinary citizens have more confidence in the system and spend and invest accordingly. As an economic policy, justice works.

Unfortunately many economists are not scholars or scientists or even technicians, but merely enthusiastic members of the choir of Mammon, faith based believers who ignore evidence and logic.