A few news operations are keeping the murder-mystery alive, the one about four dead Americans in Libya last September.
W'hoppen?
Our survivors on the ground cabled Washington about what they saw and experienced. None mentioned righteous Islamist outrage over a goofy amateur video hardly anyone except Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton had ever heard of.
Call those reports a set of "facts" reported to the White House, the Department of State, and an assortment of other Beltway centers for advanced white wash technology. (I use the term "facts" with caution but thoughtfully on grounds that they're closer to truth than the Rice performance on Sunday teevee.) Notice how quickly the facts turned into Suzie's odd video story which stood up for a day or two before even Chris Mathews found it untenable.
It all gets too complicated for mere day-by-day journalism, and it shouldn't be too long before the books appear. The first one to focus on the Obama/Clinton cover up should be titled: "When a Fact Hits a Whore House."
Jun 14, 2013
Jun 13, 2013
Morning Madness; The Sky is Falling
Grab your bugout bag, we are doomed.
Global Shares Pummeled Dollar Slumps as Rout Gathers Pace
Reuters says stocks are Down this week after having been Up all year long so woe is me. The writer is to be commended for exceptional word choice. In a world where even the dullest list of numbers must convey drama, "Pummeled" and "Slumps" are exquisite verbs, but their magic is overtopped by the ultimate horror of a noun. "Rout." (!)
Cue the teevee footage. Grainy old black and white film of American bread lines in 1931. Starving babies in1969 Biafra. Malnourished Chinese peasants any time from 2,000 B.C. to yesterday. This is it, folks.
So, what happened?
People who trade stocks for a living decided to sell a few of the stocks they have been buying since 2009. They're pocketing some of the cash they've made. It is not much different from you taking a look at that extra Glock you bought during the Bush reign and deciding a $200 profit on a $400 investment is plenty. Sell that puppy. If enough people do it, of course, the later sellers will make less money. The headline would read "Glock Crap Pummeled Plastic Melts in Teutonic Brick Rout."
The actual pistols don't change (nor does the health of Glockenmakers). They go bang today in whatever caliber they used yesterday. Sort of like Pfizer (PFE, NYSE, $28.38 premarket, down about 1 per cent in three days), maker of Viagra. The market isn't saying Viagra won't work anymore. At worst it's saying that profits of the pill may not be as big as they thought yesterday, even though old goats will still keep popping for them, even at $20 a pop.
(A certain economic nostalgia comes to mind, recollection of a time when, I'm told, a double sawbuck would buy it all -- a pound of raw hamburger, two vitamin E tabs, a half-ounce of rhino horn, plus an evening of professional services. And the old dude didn't even have to worry about the dreaded four-hour buzzer. But I digress.)
It is normal to wonder why all the traders' opinions changed so fast, and here Reuters helps us out:
"...there has never been a period when the Fed has started to take back stimulus that has left the markets untouched," said Hans Peterson, global head of investment strategy at Swedish bank SEB. "And this time it is a bigger exercise. We have moved markets from 2009 to 2013 on stimulus and now we are trying to take a step into a world which is more driven by natural growth. That transition will not be easy."
Or: Traders and investors like to trade and invest with Santa Claus money. They're afraid Chairman Bernanke is about to shave off his beard. He won't, of course, but the market panics merely at any hint he might trim it by one or two basis points.
Global Shares Pummeled Dollar Slumps as Rout Gathers Pace
Reuters says stocks are Down this week after having been Up all year long so woe is me. The writer is to be commended for exceptional word choice. In a world where even the dullest list of numbers must convey drama, "Pummeled" and "Slumps" are exquisite verbs, but their magic is overtopped by the ultimate horror of a noun. "Rout." (!)
Cue the teevee footage. Grainy old black and white film of American bread lines in 1931. Starving babies in1969 Biafra. Malnourished Chinese peasants any time from 2,000 B.C. to yesterday. This is it, folks.
So, what happened?
People who trade stocks for a living decided to sell a few of the stocks they have been buying since 2009. They're pocketing some of the cash they've made. It is not much different from you taking a look at that extra Glock you bought during the Bush reign and deciding a $200 profit on a $400 investment is plenty. Sell that puppy. If enough people do it, of course, the later sellers will make less money. The headline would read "Glock Crap Pummeled Plastic Melts in Teutonic Brick Rout."
The actual pistols don't change (nor does the health of Glockenmakers). They go bang today in whatever caliber they used yesterday. Sort of like Pfizer (PFE, NYSE, $28.38 premarket, down about 1 per cent in three days), maker of Viagra. The market isn't saying Viagra won't work anymore. At worst it's saying that profits of the pill may not be as big as they thought yesterday, even though old goats will still keep popping for them, even at $20 a pop.
(A certain economic nostalgia comes to mind, recollection of a time when, I'm told, a double sawbuck would buy it all -- a pound of raw hamburger, two vitamin E tabs, a half-ounce of rhino horn, plus an evening of professional services. And the old dude didn't even have to worry about the dreaded four-hour buzzer. But I digress.)
It is normal to wonder why all the traders' opinions changed so fast, and here Reuters helps us out:
"...there has never been a period when the Fed has started to take back stimulus that has left the markets untouched," said Hans Peterson, global head of investment strategy at Swedish bank SEB. "And this time it is a bigger exercise. We have moved markets from 2009 to 2013 on stimulus and now we are trying to take a step into a world which is more driven by natural growth. That transition will not be easy."
Or: Traders and investors like to trade and invest with Santa Claus money. They're afraid Chairman Bernanke is about to shave off his beard. He won't, of course, but the market panics merely at any hint he might trim it by one or two basis points.
Jun 12, 2013
Calling Paul Wolfowitz
...and all the other neocons to whom God spake about His Divine Plan for a world in the image of Peoria, Illinois:
Isn't it about time you guys started agitating to arm the Turkish rebels? Or at least declare Ankara a no-fly zone?
With the promised wind-down of Afghanistan adventuring, the prospect of minding our own business portends a period of boredom, and we could use the stimulation of training a fresh batch of American kids to get themselves shot while adjudicating tribal and cult snit-fits in the Stans.
i understand that this one gets a little complicated. We love the boss poltician, but the kids in the square seem to favor preserving a pretty workable constitution and not tinkering with a culture which tries to temper Islamist excess.
So what? A nice fresh little war always reminds foreigners how cool we can be about projecting our power.
Besides, it is a great way to give American teevee something to report instead of all this blather about the IRS cheating and NSA spying and Eric Holder running guns and eyeballing reporters, right down to their indictable skivvies.
i understand that this one gets a little complicated. We love the boss poltician, but the kids in the square seem to favor preserving a pretty workable constitution and not tinkering with a culture which tries to temper Islamist excess.
So what? A nice fresh little war always reminds foreigners how cool we can be about projecting our power.
Besides, it is a great way to give American teevee something to report instead of all this blather about the IRS cheating and NSA spying and Eric Holder running guns and eyeballing reporters, right down to their indictable skivvies.
Jun 10, 2013
Tinfoil hattery; why we bother
Some times I wonder why I should care. I'm an Older American. No matter what is taken from me, I can reflect on a life more interesting than ordinary, probably even "happier" than ordinary although that point is impossible to investigate. You see, I lack the talent to know the state of happiness of any of my fellows, not one.
Certainly I'm as adept as anyone else at identifying and classifying apparent happiness as measured by the the usual standards, the wherewithal to consume, the crude wit to identify current fashion and conform, the appearance of intensely satisfying personal relationships, and so forth. Just like Richard Cory who on that calm summer night went home and put a bullet through his happy head.
So, no. Any man's opinion on the pattern of activity in another's neurons is as suspect as a politician's promise. I can know -- and probably only imperfectly -- the state of my own synaptic patterns which produce the range of contentment from a heartfelt smile when I am alone to the ugliest possible frown, also in solitude.
New Dog Libby knows when she's happy. Well-fed, fresh from a Frisbee romp, ears scratched, she is satisfied in the deepest sense of that term. Only a magical Disney epic could endow her with care for what sort of life her grandpuppies would have. This reveals a defining difference between Libby and the man who fills her bowl. He thinks of his posterity. Like any beast, she would find that preposterous. She is a prisoner of the instant moment. Her master and all his fellows are cursed with a notion of foresight, the belief that they can observe current patterns and extrapolate into the future.
It is the curse of despair and hope when I, at least, would often prefer a stick to chase, a banana split, and a sound ear-scratching as I drift into dreamless sleep.
---
In this motley internet neighborhood of disorganized (and unorganizable) libertarians and ancaps, no one is surprised at the staccato new reports of universal spying. Most are on record as simply assuming it exists, that it is destined to exist by the very nature of coercive power, that is, the Power of the drones and command control over the 82nd Airborne, all the Marines, and millions of spies you never heard of, all charged with identifying Crimethink by invading private human thought.
I have no great-grandpuppies yet, but I probably will. With a bit of luck I'll cuddle them, and I'll certainly hope (the curse, again) they have choices in a world neither too brave nor too new, nor ruled by other Controllers of an Inner Party.
Certainly I'm as adept as anyone else at identifying and classifying apparent happiness as measured by the the usual standards, the wherewithal to consume, the crude wit to identify current fashion and conform, the appearance of intensely satisfying personal relationships, and so forth. Just like Richard Cory who on that calm summer night went home and put a bullet through his happy head.
So, no. Any man's opinion on the pattern of activity in another's neurons is as suspect as a politician's promise. I can know -- and probably only imperfectly -- the state of my own synaptic patterns which produce the range of contentment from a heartfelt smile when I am alone to the ugliest possible frown, also in solitude.
New Dog Libby knows when she's happy. Well-fed, fresh from a Frisbee romp, ears scratched, she is satisfied in the deepest sense of that term. Only a magical Disney epic could endow her with care for what sort of life her grandpuppies would have. This reveals a defining difference between Libby and the man who fills her bowl. He thinks of his posterity. Like any beast, she would find that preposterous. She is a prisoner of the instant moment. Her master and all his fellows are cursed with a notion of foresight, the belief that they can observe current patterns and extrapolate into the future.
It is the curse of despair and hope when I, at least, would often prefer a stick to chase, a banana split, and a sound ear-scratching as I drift into dreamless sleep.
---
In this motley internet neighborhood of disorganized (and unorganizable) libertarians and ancaps, no one is surprised at the staccato new reports of universal spying. Most are on record as simply assuming it exists, that it is destined to exist by the very nature of coercive power, that is, the Power of the drones and command control over the 82nd Airborne, all the Marines, and millions of spies you never heard of, all charged with identifying Crimethink by invading private human thought.
I have no great-grandpuppies yet, but I probably will. With a bit of luck I'll cuddle them, and I'll certainly hope (the curse, again) they have choices in a world neither too brave nor too new, nor ruled by other Controllers of an Inner Party.
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