Michael Jackson "Work and Soul" (part 1 of 4); the whole series gives excellent perspective. My takeaway (and there are many others):

Simon Johnson:

[Brit banking boffins] Haldane and Alessandri offer a tough, perhaps bleak assessment. Our boom-bust-bailout cycle is, in their view, a “doom loop”. Banks have an incentive to take excessive risk and every time they and their creditors are bailed out, we create the conditions for the next crisis.

Any banker who denies this is the case lacks self-awareness or any sense of history, or perhaps just wants to do it again. ...

The Haldane-Alessandri “doom loop” is fast becoming the new baseline view, i.e., if you want to explain what happened or – more interestingly – what can happen going forward, you need to position your arguments relative to the structure and data in their paper. ...

How can we believe that for the regulators, “next time is different“? Most likely, next time will be exactly the same, with different terminology: the financial sector “innovates”, regulators buy their story that risks are now properly managed, and the ensuing bailout (again) breaks all records.

Crossposted at ZBlogs, Firedoglake and TPMCafe

How can we get repealing bans on first cousin marriage on the US legislative agenda?

I think it would clearly help in getting started to consider why it has not already been raised as an issue, given facts like that no other Western country prohibits it and that the genetic arguments have been shown to be hollow.

I can see at least two big reasons why it's been neglected:

[cross posted at NPR Check]

Monday meant that there were only 45 shopping days before Christmas, and NPR was in full consumerism mode.

If you were casually listening to Morning Edition, you might have thought NPR was reporting on its own newsreader stars - Montagne, Inskeep, Siegel, Norris, and Block -

"[They]...have names like Mr. Squiggles, Chunk, Pipsqueak....[and] are embedded with a computer chip so they can squeak, chirp and respond"

- and not the $10 MUST HAVE TOY of the season - computerized hamsters:

Krugman asks, and answers "politics" (that is, right wing bromides like "government is the problem"). Of course:

Reuters:

On the auction block in Detroit: almost 9,000 homes and lots in various states of abandonment and decay from the tidy owner-occupied to the burned-out shell claimed by squatters.

Taken together, the properties seized by tax collectors for arrears and put up for sale last week represented an area the size of New York’s Central Park. Total vacant land in Detroit now occupies an area almost the size of Boston, according to a Detroit Free Press estimate.

So it's true: I'm a troll. The worst kind, too: condescending, pedantic, annoying, concerned. I guess we all have our failings, and these are mine. But so long as I'm going to be a purist, I have to rant like one. I like eating and I bet most people do too, that's my "motivation" here.

Hoss asks why urban (commercial) [not/for profit] {large scale/vertical} non-residential gardening is worthwhile. I was a good grrl, I didn't lose my cookies, immediately. But it's Saturday and I'm relaxed and silly, so this comment made me have a Sad:

A sit in at Humana Headquarters has gotten local media coverage.

It was actually one of the top stories, as building security allowed the protesters to remain inside after the building was locked.

Here's the video.

I didn't get to see the full story, only the recap at the end of the hour. But, this isn't the first single payer activism in my neck of the woods, but this is the first time I've observed any media coverage.

Progress!

WaPo:

The bipartisan initiative [Hold onto your wallets! -- lambert], largely eclipsed in the health-care debate, builds on a trend that is in play among some corporations and that more workers will see in the benefits packages they bring home during this fall's open enrollment. Some employers offer lower premiums to workers who complete personal health assessments; others limit coverage for smokers.

The current legislative effort would take the trend a step further. It is backed by major employer groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. It is opposed by labor unions and organizations devoted to combating serious illnesses, such as the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society and the American Diabetes Association.

Critics say employers could use the rewards and penalties to drive some workers out of their health plans.

President Obama and members of Congress have said [and of course, we believe them -- lambert] they are trying to create a system in which no one can be denied coverage or charged higher premiums based on their health status. The insurance lobby has said it shares that goal. However, so-called wellness incentives could introduce a colossal loophole. In effect, they would permit insurers and employers to make coverage less affordable for people exhibiting risk factors for problems such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

Or... Whatever! Pre-existing conditions are right back in the game, except now they're called "risk factors." Can anybody seriously believe that the bill won't create a whole industry devoted to finding "risk factors" and denying people care who have them? Or can plausibly be said to have had them, perhaps during rescission? Ectomorphs under the bus! Endomorphs under the bus! Black men have a higher "risk factor" for stroke? Under the bus! People who worked in chemical plants have a higher "risk factor" for cancer? Under the bus! People with blue eyes have a higher "risk factor" for uveal melanoma? Under the bus! Women have a higher "risk factor" for pregnancy? Under the bus!

It's the same old game: Collect premiums, deny care.

Pravda has what looks like a fine report today on AIDS programs in Washington, DC. Here's how they describe it:

About this Investigation
Over ten months, the Washington Post analyzed the spending, services, and finances of every specialized AIDS organization funded by D.C.'s HIV/AIDS Administration from 2004-2008, an estimated 90 groups, building a database from tax returns, audits, lawsuits, real estate records, D.C. Council records, and corporate and police reports. The Post also obtained grant agreements, invoices and government correspondence for about 60 of these groups. The newspaper interviewed dozens of people with HIV or AIDS patients, their families and service providers, and visited more than a dozen offices across the city.

The largest possible sum at issue seems to be $25 million, since that's the total sum available to non-profits, where the problems seem to be concentrated.

So, one question:

CC declines comment, but I didn't.

it's a class marker. non-elite women serve the "whore" function, it's how the elites define non-elites when not defining us "baby oven" or "handmaiden." elites can pay to have the real thing made, and it sets them apart, special. the semi-celebrity associated with the costume itself, and the social capital that creates, is reserved for elites. now, i don't define Con fans who do this as elite, as most of the time they do it themselves and it's almost an art these days, and surely a craft. but speaking simply as a status marker among the elite, it is on purpose that non-elite women rarely have access to the real costume, and frequently offered whore-esque "choices."

I'd like to start by saying i'm a longtime reader of graphic literature and speculative fiction of a wide range of genres.

The Patriarchy is hard at work here, employing a pretty wide range of tools here, tools which are literal pressures upon the shape of a woman, the way she shapes herself and is shaped.

[Cross-posted to OpenLeft. Feel free to add comments over there, too. --lambert]

The blogosphere is all atwitter over Alan Grayson's powerful rhetoric on health care insurance reform -- and don't get me wrong, I'm all for effective rhetoric.* Grayson said:

44,789 Americans die every year according to the Harvard study. and you can see it by going to our website at grayson.house.gov. That is 10 times more than the number of Americans who have died in Iraq and who died in 9/11. but that was just once. this is every single year. That's right. every single year.

Take a look at this. Read it and weep. And I mean that, read it and weep, because of all these Americans who are dying because they don't have health insurance. Now, I think we should do something about that and the democratic health care plan does do something about that. It makes health care affordable for those who can't afford insurance and it saves these peoples' lives.

Leave aside the fact that co-authors of Harvard study Grayson cites are single payer advocates; we're used to the public option crowd stealing the good stuff. The more the merrier!

What really gets me is that Grayson's wrong on one very obvious and important fact:

Via the great Field Negro, this from Naomi Klein:

In the late 50s and early 60s, angry white mobs were reacting to life-changing victories won by the civil rights movement. Today's mobs, on the other hand, are reacting to the symbolic victory of an African American winning the presidency. Yet they are rising up at a time when non-elite blacks and Latinos are losing significant ground, with their homes and jobs slipping away from them at a much higher rate than from whites. So far, Obama has been unwilling to adopt policies specifically geared towards closing this ever-widening divide. The result may well leave minorities with the worst of all worlds: the pain of a full-scale racist backlash without the benefits of policies that alleviate daily hardships. Meanwhile, with Obama constantly painted by the radical right as a cross between Malcolm X and Karl Marx, most progressives feel it is their job to defend him – not to point out that, when it comes to tackling the economic crisis ravaging minority communities, the president is not doing nearly enough.

That's how the Overton Window works, kidz!*

Now, Klein being Klein, she ties together (a) the reparations movement, (b) the "crisis in African-American wealth, (c) the bailouts (in which Obama played such a prominent role), and (d) the transfer of wealth to banksters:

Bill McKibben:

Word in the halls of the UN this week was that President Obama's speech on Tuesday—the first to the world body by this most admired of world leaders—was a dud, a towering disappointment. Coming at the beginning of what the UN has dubbed "climate week," the speech marked the beginning of a three-month push towards the global climate conference at Copenhagen. Obama used it mostly to downplay expectations. And it's those downplayed expectations that may prove to be tragically self-fulfilling.

[Just cross-posted to Kos. How about a recommendation? And welcome, Eschatonians, Paul Krugman, Digby, Andrew Tobias, and Sadly, No readers. And Avedon, you know I do.]

[And readers, if you want others to read this post, you can use the Digg or Reddit buttons below to recommend it.]

ONE CURRENT PERMATHREAD on Big Orange is that Krugman and Obama are feuding or having a vendetta. Which, when you take a step back, is bizarre. That movement conservatives and Villagers like stone Bush enabler William Kristol, like David Brooks, Broderella, and Andrew Sullivan are all good with Obama isn't even mentioned in passing by Obama's fan base. And yet those same enthusiasts spend inordinate amounts of time vilifying Paul Krugman, a true progressive who was there for us from the earliest dark days of the Bush regime.

Curious. What's really happening?  Read more…

Feeling a draft yet?

The Army is closing the books on one of the leanest recruiting years since it became an all-volunteer service three decades ago, missing its enlistment target by the largest margin since 1979 and raising questions about its plans for growth.

Digby is kind enough to post a Wall Street Journal piece a friend sent him so ALL non-subscribing readers can have strokes. Dancing on the graves of those who died to provide them this opportunity, Republican zealots in Congress are crowing about enterprise zones, the murder of union representation, and wresting the legal system from those who might want to complain. Here's some of what gets these necrophiliacs hard:

"Just yesterday (the Bush administration) waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region."

Well, yes, because you know how hard it is to find blacks and Asians down there, and hell, you can hardly find women anywhere.

"Now, Republicans are working on legislation that would limit victims' right to sue, offer vouchers for displaced school children, lift some environment restrictions on new refineries and...Yesterday, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would offer sweeping protection against lawsuits to any person or organization that helps Katrina victims without compensation."

Last thing you want is for people to demand recompense for losing their loved ones or everything they own by suing the assholes who could have prevented it. And never mind that much of the damage caused by the hurricane was the result of the destruction of the wetlands barrier around NOLA thanks to a callous disregard for environmental concerns over the last 20 years. Who needs environmental restrictions when there's lots more money to be made by the people who won't have to live with the result? School vouchers? All the better to eliminate that nasty universal free education cancer that resulted in all these over-educated drones thinking they actually had the right to expect a decent living. And as for protection against lawsuits for those helping Katrina victims, think of the experiments that could be done! All those folks exposed to toxic chemicals and bacteria! Why, I'll bet the EPA would have a field day mining that rich vein of poor people! Just offer them a nice baby bib and a video camera.   Read more…

A couple weekends ago I went down to my neighborhood non-corporate video sto' and picked up a copy of Sin City from the rack.

Me: "I just need something to take my mind off the hurricane stuff, I've been watching it on cable all weekend. It's driving me insane."

Video Sto' Guy: "This is good. It's violent, but it's a fantasy..."

Me: "Perfect."

Maybe I'm a cornball, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.

The film is done in black and white (+red). This is supposed to make it look like the graphic novel, but it reminded me of film noir from the 30's and 40's.

Back then reality was black and white. The difference between good and evil was obvious. Fascists and Nazis on one side, the allies and the Reds on the other.

Then, after WWII, everything went Technicolor and reality was confusing. The Corporate Public Relations professionals started taking control of the minds of Americans, who were lost In a haze of cigarettes and Better Living Through Pill-Popping, getting fat off casseroles and imperial profits.

In the late sixties and early seventies, brief moments of clarity. Black and White photography was cool. I only remember black-and-white photos of the MLK assassination. And of Malcolm standing by the window with his gun.

Reagan brought in the eighties with happy-colored propaganda about a "Good Morning in America". When I think of the Clinton years I think of neon raves and the x-files. The smart people are in charge, they know what they're doing. Don't worry your little non-elite head about politics, we've got this covered. Globalization is cool, everyone in the Third World will be a jet-setting dot-com exec in no time, you'll see.

Which brings us to the Naughties. From the get-go, George W. Bush's administration has been so rigidly ideological, so grossly corrupt that it has completely eliminated any "gray areas" there might have been in the American political landscape.

Sin City is ruled by a power-mad politician in league with corrupt cops and his brother, a cardinal who uses religion for political ends. The brothers and their demented progeny are responsible for horrible crimes against humanity. Sound familiar?

On the other side, we have courageous individuals who risk their lives out of a sense of personal morality and fight the powers-that-be to protect the most vulnerable.

Marv: This is blood for blood and by the gallon. These are the old days, the bad days, the all-or-nothing days. They're back! There's no choice left. And I'm ready for war.

I swear, if Howard Dean utters those words in a speech, I will vote a straight Democratic ticket for the rest of my days.

I'm not saying it's a realistic vision of the future. There don't seem to be any gay people or any women who weigh more than 100 lbs in Sin City. But if the future is going to be filled with scantily clad women standing around weilding giant weapons, I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be hot.

Now that I have your attention, forget humor for a moment and come with me to the world of boring, serious reality.

Today I want to talk about my I’m a depressed, prone to heavy drinking slouch with no spirit for activism. Actually, I have spirit for activism in spades, just not of the traditional kind so much. Here’s a section from an entry on my favorite topic, electronic voting, from the people formerly known as Disinfopedia, now Source Watch:

"Whoever certified that code as secure should be fired," said Avi Rubin , technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins and co-author of the report. He is one of about 900 computer scientists in the U.S., including the founder of the GNU e-democracy project (who has now abandoned it due to unresolved concerns about inherent problems of voting electronically), who has issued grave warnings about voting by computer.