Housing woes

Everytime I think I'm ready to move out of the paleolithic age, an irresistibly attractive cave goes on sale.

McLuhan's 100th

There will be 15 conferences on McLuhan in Europe this year commemorating 100 years since his birth. Very little seems to be happening in the USA, however. Will have to post a few things. Here's a mini-eulogy.

Sunday joke

A shipwrecked man is washed ashore where he meets a castaway. After an excited exchange, the shipwrecked survivor points to a shape in the distance and says, "What's that?" The castaway says "I built it myself. That's my church." The shipwreck survivor points at another shape nearby and says, "What's that then?" The castaway answers "I built that too. That's the church I used to belong to."

Guadalajara - decency preserved

From the Guadalajara Reporter last week:

Protestors taking part in the World Naked Bike Ride on Saturday, June 11 have agreed to wear swimsuits and underwear after Guadalajara city hall officials slammed the gesture as an offense against public decency.

Good.

The White House has a revolving door

The twin memes of radicalism and incompetence continue to dog this administration. Its CIO unveils a 25-point technology plan and then departs.

What would H.L. Mencken say?

"Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."

Convergence

Alan Keyes used to say that the problem in this country is not economic, it's moral.

The two converge when you consider "the US Government is now paying over 1/3rd of US incomes… and it’s financing this by having the Fed buy new debt from the Treasury."

This is much more than a dollar and cents transaction and its moral meaning must be clear to the actors involved.

A solution to the Greek crisis

This sounds radical:

1) Kick them out of EMU and send them back to their miserable drachma, which would, of course, suffer an immediate devaluation of 50% or more...

2) Allow European banks to continue to accrue interest on Greek government debt... the European Central Bank will issue scrip to the banks in the sum of unpaid coupon payments ... “I bought your paper from the guys you owe, and now you owe me..."

3) ...seize Greek assets everywhere in Europe, starting with foreign-currency bank accounts, Greek ships in international ports, and so forth...

4) Demand that the Greek government seize the property of Greek citizens who have not paid taxes and auction it to foreigners. That would bring in plenty of foreign exchange. Sell the Parthenon, too. Sell it all.

This sounds like a bankster's fondest dream. Outrageous? Compare it to the Icelandic option of default and I think this elaborate scenario has more chance of being realized.

The difference between Iceland and Greece is that the French and German governments hold so much Greek debt.

Weekend reading: Spinney's death spiral

Blogging will be light over the weekend. Those of you who have not yet encountered the famous Pentagon procurement spiral of death are urged to make time for this essential reading.

Spinney's study is a classic and is referred to constantly. Gates, on his way towards the exit has quoted the underlying idea more than once last week.

The real Wall Street dress code

You should dress according to your career path. Droll. And here's a special tip for the ladies, from a "man of a certain age" - cover up.

Cyber-bullying - arrests have begun

"They were just degrading everybody on there, it was ridiculous." Actually, a youth was mocking his classmates.

I had better tone it down, myself, then.

Driving safety mythology

John Adams is in fine form bursting these bubbles.

The finger-pointing has begun

"The Afghan war is lost. So now who'll take the blame?" - Guardian

Keep four more fingers free for Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Kosovo.

The decline and fall of "Gun and Garden"

What has happened to "Gun and Garden?" WHERE ARE THE GUNS? It's become a roaming garden variety city magazine.

Defending the dollar?

Extraordinary coincidences:

(1) Quebec raids Kitco; Kitco badly wounded

(2) Bitcoin struck by malware

(3) The World Gold Council (of all organizations) comes up with a clever new plan for keeping much Gold off the market

What will they think of next?

What would Nicolás Gómez Dávila say?

"Nobody in politics can foresee the consequences either of what he destroys, or of what he constructs."

"Nine tons of historical excrement"

No, not the Congressional Record: "waste that has been found in the sewer system of the town of Herculaneum, which was buried by an eruption from nearby Mt Vesuvius near Naples in AD79."

You send your daughter to Penn and she aces archeology, lands a gig in Italy, and gets to sift through this.

Girls, please get the grapes off the table.

Content analysis: "they feasted on sea urchins and dormice as well as fish, figs, olives and eggs." Insufficiently interesting, except for the dormice. Find a new project.

To capture "movement" votes

... the GOP must divorce free market support from big business support. Amen? A short piece from the Manhattan Institute points this out but the argument needs to be developed across the right.

The public-private museum partnership

An interesting tour d'horizon from the Art Newspaper: "As prices rise and museum budgets shrink, collectors are playing an ever bigger role in public institutions."

One collector says museums need to stop competing for pieces with private collectors and start applying slim budgets to marketing shows and driving traffic.

Trend noted: big collectors opening their own museums. Does that mean we can be done with tax-supported art museums?

Edwards' "two Americas"

As he was developing his "two Americas" meme, John Edwards' principal donor was a Mellon.

The man's mind was/is very compartmentalized.

Dodd-Frank?

They'll get to it when they get to it. "...they are running drastically behind schedule in writing their new rules." Poor things.

"The best cure for student radicalism is a normal working life"

Amusing but not original:

Becoming “radicalized”—whether your bearded prophet happens to be Marx or Muhammad—is essentially code for having too much time on your hands and a sense of smug entitlement. This is the essence of university life. With three years of sleeping late, anything seems possible.

"Tragic role" for labor unions in 2012

Telegraph: "Big labour is a paper pussycat, eight lives down."

Here, children....

When the teachers wanted a break, they would put on a movie for us. Something about Switzerland or science. Music videos seem to be the contemporary pedagogical dodge.

Operation "Empire State Rebellion"

Objective: Bernanke's resignation. It fizzled yesterday. (Scroll down.)

Geert Wilders in Tennessee

He was stateside last month and said:

My dear American friends, you cannot imagine how we envy your First Amendment. The day when America follows the example of Europe and Canada and introduces so-called “hate speech crimes” which is only used to punish people who are critical of Islam, that day America will have lost its freedom.

Much more here.

Cosmocracy!

Avoid it like the plague.

Gold standard Republicans

Bachmann, Pawlenty, Gingrich: they've joined a gold standard bus tour. Easy to unite on the what, harder on the how.

Lunch with the CIA (chew slowly)

The mad hedge fund trader had lunch with Leon Panetta and shares the results.

Interesting:

The long term outlook for supplies of food, natural resources, and energy is becoming so severe that the CIA is now viewing it as a national security threat. Some one third of emerging market urban populations are poor, or about 1.5 billion souls, and when they get hungry, angry, and politically or religiously inspired, Americans have to worry.

This sounds like a recipe for endless nationbuilding.

Any farm labor shortage

... can be filled by using criminal labor.

[GA Gov.] Deal suggested that people who are on criminal probation could fill the job openings: “There are 100,000 probationers statewide, 8,000 of which are in the Southwest region of the state and 25 percent of which are unemployed."

This Georgian idea dovetails in an odd way with events in Maryland, where the Democrat legislature tried to pass a law prohibiting employers from doing criminal background checks.

Of course, if you ran a farm in Georgia, you'd eventually have to do a background check to ensure you were hiring criminals.

Perhaps, eventually, non-criminals would sue. Unemployed college graduates; illegal aliens; teenagers tired of wilding; consider their needs before passing a criminal opportunities act.

Flannery O'Connor has a repository

Not underground, here, on the Web.

Summer is for shorter hair

Williambanzai7 is something of a financial stylist.

Al-Zawahiri's connetions

Muckety has one of its interesting little network charts drawn up for Ayman al-Zawahiri today. (Note - the expand function produces various effects from box to box)

What would Malcom Muggeridge say?

"Surely the glory of journalism is its transience."

USG puts out call for starship designers

USG has (borrowed) money for all kinds of projects.

From one darned jihad to the next

As much as chimps may prefer Glocks or H&Ks, I'm really struck by the resurgence in Model 1911 Brownings.

"M1911 comeback" gives 147,000 hits on Google. This is an old article but still interesting; the new article is in gun stores with every arms make putting out multiple variations on this venerable theme.

As a mere child I was taught the design was to stop the Moros of Mindano - Islamists peeved with Teddy Roosevelt and infused with lots of get-up-and-go. Well here we are 100 years later and...

(IBM just turned 100 as well.)

Job creation

... White House style.

Bitcoin fraud

... has begun. The claimant is a fraud or he was defrauded.

Renewable energy

Less so than you think.

Army revises its sumptuary laws (again)

The old Class A (greens) have been abolished in favor of dress blues. Wherever the A was worn, blues will now be worn.

The first time my father saw me in greens he said "You look like a Bulgarian railway conductor." The first time in blues, "Now you look respectable."

This would be an upgrade if Army folk didn't wear their battle fatigues absolutely everywhere at all times (even to Congressional hearings).

The debate continues!

Pipe or Cigar? Corporates or munis? Bourbon or Scotch? One hull or two? Cross-country or downhill? Sabre or épée? Mink or fox? Marienbad or Corfu? English or western? Oil or acrylic? Greek or Latin? Boarding or day? Gold or silver? Homburg or bowler?

Share the road

On a busy highway today I saw no fewer than two dead foxes. Share the road. We need foxes for hunting.

I still believe in John Edwards

"I still believe in John Edwards" gets you six hits on Google. That's quite a metric.

Top Gear demographics: your handy guide

No one wants a demographic mismatch in their television viewing; that would be socially and personally inappropriate. To save you, our worldwide readership, time that might be lost in inappropriate entertainment selection, we offer this brief socio-economic analysis of Top Gear.

English Top Gear (l-r): art school graduate (celebrity); public school boy (dilettante); public school boy (engineer)
Typical stunt: Have foxhunters and hounds try to catch an SUV cross-country
Audience appearance: well groomed, orderly middle class.
Program pace and tone: slow to moderate, needlessly competitive, slow repartee

Russian Top Gear (l-r): science institute graduate (analytical); macho proletarian (aggressive); clerk (docile)
Typical stunt: drive a car filled with explosives through a rocket barrage
Audience appearance: salt of the earth
Program pace and tone: fast, contrived, rapid repartee

Chinese Top Gear (l-r): hipster slacker (opinionated), white collar wage slave (intense); undergraduate student (verbose)
Typical stunt: See which powers a grain mill better, donkey or Cadillac
Audience appearance: random, young
Program pace and tone: slow; gaps in repartee

Australian original Top Gear (l-r): art school graduate (opinionated); formula car racer (relaxed); rally racer (chirpy)
Typical stunt: race to haul more gold ore in competing pickups
Audience appearance: farmers
Program pace and tone: slow to moderate, gregarious, little repartee

Australian new Top Gear (l-r): rally racer (chirpy), prole (droll), prole (dull)
Typical stunt: test drive a downmarket Ford
Audience appearance: farmers
Program pace and tone: slow to moderate, contrived, less repartee

American Top Gear (l-r): rally racer (self-conscious), prole journalist (cheerful), NYC comedian (out of his element)
Typical stunt: whatever BBC Top Gear did last season
Audience appearance: younger blue collar men
Program pace and tone: slow, sparse repartee

McLuhan comments on Republican debate

Not really, but his comments apply to all debates since 1976.

Notice his rough handling of the hapless middlebrows.

Label the picture

I choose Clients in search of a patron.
(Part of our hard-hitting, wall-to-wall Election 2012 coverage.)

Brass to reclaim programs

Senior generals are looking to restore military programs that Gates cut. This is like a bad conspiracy movie filmed by a left wing director.

We are China

Charles Hugh Smith:

Despite their many differences, the economies of China and the U.S. share a number of key traits: both are corrupt, rigged, crony-capitalist, rely on phony statistics and propaganda and operate with two sets of rules, one for the elites, and another for the masses.

I don't think anyone under 30 realizes how far we have come in the falsification of data, in the open courting and rewarding of cash patrons, and in the application of informality to government decisionmaking, waivers being a brilliant example of the collapse of law in the US.

This seems like a good place to plug Shadowstats, if you havent't visited that site yet.

For a vigorous, healthy democracy

... you need a monarchy. Awesome data from 2010.

Unacceptable!

Before PC foisted "unacceptable" on the world, we would say "stupid," "inhumane," "evil," "wrong," "bad," "cruel," "thoughtless," "illegal," "immoral," "fattening," and occasionally, "NFG."

The Republicans, swimming in the water pop culture provides, deem "Obama’s ‘New Normal’ Is Unacceptable."

I could focus on the substance of their post but "unacceptable" stops me cold every time.

Chasing yield

Let's see, an 17.25% payout annually, that's pretty good. Until you consider the yield to maturity!

The end of the Arab nationalist

Buried in these hollow musings about overseas social engineering (did you think that our government would limit this to the USA?) there lies a point that needs broader development: the Arab revolutions have thus far collapsed Arab Nationalist governments. The monarchies have survived but the secular dictatorships have fallen, with Ba'athist Syria and nationalist Yemen on the brink.

That Arab nationalist governments are being destroyed and their ideology is on death's door is an historic point something like the end of communism.

Dodd-Frank doomed

Any reasonable adult knew that Dodd-Frank was going to help political friends, hurt political enemies, and that any bark or bite would be removed in the application of the law. This story can be filed with all that shock-unexpected-surprise economic reporting.

Walter Benjamin = kitsch

An admirer of Benjamin notes that he has been rendered into kitsch by the cultural machine and that his fans are his worst enemies.

I would say that he has been made accessible to that vast middlebrow audience that over here torments us with the idiot reductionism of PBS, NPR, NYT, WaPo, etc.

Pallets of cash

You wondered what pallets of cash look like. Now you know. (Next year, this may buy a gallon of milk.)

"Going to Law School Was The Stupidest Thing I Have Ever Done!"

Okay, then!

We need this

We need a "Cannon Superstore." Imagine the possibilities.

Theodore Darymple

The writer we know by the pen name Theodore Darymple has a fan blog (with audio and video clips, for those so inclined).

What would Auberon Waugh say?

“Anyone wishing to communicate with Americans should do so by e-mail, which has been specially invented for the purpose, involving neither physical proximity nor speech.”

Humanity's right to cheap soda

... apparently extends to welfare recipients.

Corruption noticed

The Politico has done quite a spread on the scope of Obama's deep, personal corruption. Knowing their readers as well as they do, however, they had to take the sting out of the story by subordinating it to a big headline and investigation that proves talk show hosts sell advertising.

Give me my rights

All I ask for is that the federal government show the same respect for MY gun rights as they show for the gun rights of Mexican drug cartels.

I wonder if Howie Carr will say that on his show today. His favorite mantra is, "All I ask for is the same rights granted to illegal aliens in this country."

The deserving and undeserving poor

Peter Hitchens fights for the distinction.

What we think of when we pass a traffic camera

Maryland deploys speed cameras built like battleships. An irate public responds, nevertheless. Apparently here the flash was damaged but the camera itself survived.

In the first season of Top Gear, they tried to outrun the flash in a series of tests. Fail, as the kids say.

Army revises its sumptuary laws

The black beret began as a symbol of distinction awarded Ranger infantry. Rangers saw the green berets on Green Berets in the 1960s and did not want to be less special than the Special Forces.

Shortly afterwards, airborne jump school cadre began wearing cranberry berets.

The beret impetus had another source; the army was wearing ugly, lopsided baseball hats imposed by Creighton Abrams near the end of the Vietnam War (IIRC).

One of the Clinton generals, later eased out by Donald Rumsfeld, had the brilliant idea of making every soldier both special and elite by giving the entire army authority to wear the black beret.

The Army Times reports that the beret has been scotched for a field cap for line troops. There is a practical aspect to this. As one soldier noted, "I hate wearing a wet sock on my head. Plus it makes my head/skin break out."

Now if we could just go back to making the wearing of fatigues off post or in the office a UCMJ punishable offense, this old soldier would be quite happy.

"Rabbi to the stars"

One supposes the stars need rabbis, too. But what's this about rabbinical death curses?

First Things pans Atlas Shrugged

But then they would, wouldn't they? Meanwhile, Nathaniel Branden praises the film. But he would, wouldn't he?

"Underwater nation"

Jim Willie says the underwater nation cannot swim. If you like your commentary vivid, this is for you. BTW, large excess reserve accounts at the Fed? Many are currently loan loss reserves that disguise a bank's insolvency...

"False Keynesians"

Barack Obama has been victimized by "false Keynesians." Perhaps you heard this already.

Do you get the feeling that no matter what, Mr. Keynes is not going to be tarnished by this debacle?

Will it be inflation or deflation?

Jesse's arguments for inflation seem compelling:

The US is a democratic republic and a huge net debtor, in both current and future obligations. The choice of genuine deflation as such would therefore be a national economic and political suicide favoring foreign holders of its debt. I cannot think of a reasonable scenario for such a choice except for coercion such as war reparations and under heavy constraint. But it is a possible choice.

Further complicating the decision is the inescapable fact that the US holds what is still the world's reserve currency despite a movement to alternatives. A stronger dollar and monetary deflation would crush the world economy by destroying the interconnected global banking system as it is now constituted, in addition to devastating its own domestic economy. Deflation does favor the ends of a powerful few, however, so it cannot be said to be off the table.

If the status of world currency works against domestic fiscal policy, one has entered the land of Triffin's Dilemma.

The modern collector as WalMart shopper

Low comedy from flush middlebrow art collectors. But you were expecting, what exactly?

The search for authenticity has shifted, interestingly, to Iron Curtain era dissident art.

Activist court, international edition

Beyond Dispute: International Judicial Institutions as Lawmakers -

Today, it is no longer convincing to only think of international courts in their role of settling disputes. While this function is as relevant as ever, many international judicial institutions have developed a further role in what is often called global governance.

This is a paper today but it will be an entire scholarly discipline tomorrow.

Unnatural selection

The triumph of "women's health" issues may be reducing the number of women in the world - radically.

"The mirage of ennumerated powers"

From the Claremont Review:

The truth that dare not speaks its name then is this: there is no formula, no principle, nothing arising even out of the logic of the Constitution or the American regime that can furnish any hard limits that confine the federal government's reach or divide the local from the national jurisdiction.

And,

even with the guidance of the Constitution, even with some of the principles contained there, imparting a useful discipline, casting up warnings, the decisive grounds of judgment must be found elsewhere, outside the text.

Mladec = Blofeld?

Private Eye certifies his villainy. (Note to NYT readers, PBS watchers, and NPR listeners: the captions are switched.)

Not just a talk show meme anymore

Howie says:

There are two Americas. John Edwards was right. But not in the way that the Anthony Weiner of the last decade could have ever imagined. The two Americas are the Dreaded Private Sector, where the real unemployment rate hovers close to 20 percent, and housing prices have taken a bigger plunge than they did during the Great Depression. And then there’s Public Sector America, where the good times never end.

That Dreaded Private Sector needs to shape up. In a command economy, can't you just order it to shape up?

Privatizing the right to deceive

One of the benefits of being a state-owned enterprise is that all of the lying privileges the central state reserves to itself become available to you. Hence, the deceptive and manipulative behavior of GM, reported here would get an ordinary (unprotected) firm in trouble with the SEC. This is a testing of the waters; GM will likely push the envelope of "self expression" in this government-by-waiver. What's good for GM...

Repossess your bank

It didn't work this year but try again next year.

Head first

Gadad Bob has plunged "Head first into Christianity." If I were forced to predict how that would have come about for Bob in particular, the way it happened is the way I would have predicted: heavy reading of Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II. The really satisfying thing about this stage of the RC church (for me, an non-RC) is having had two world class German theologians at its head (if my may call the previous pontiff a German theologian). In this post, Bob makes a core insight "accessible" to all:

For to be born into the human state is to follow the realtor's eternal advice of purchasing the worst property in the best neighborhood. Life -- or the civilizing process -- consists of improving your properties.

And it is a never-ending project. We are all fixer-uppers. Some may have more superficial "curb appeal" than others, but when you actually see who lives inside, or inspect the foundation, or consider how high the roof goes, you may be in for a surprise. Conversely, some rather modest shacks can be mansions inside.

The "elevator story" on Orthodoxy

My own favorite "elevator story" on Orthodoxy is "This was Christianity before Charlamagne founded Roman Catholicism."

Apologies to the RC brethren!

J.D. Huneycutt has a funnier story.

Meanwhile, how long before we see door-to-door atheists?

AKP - less victory than publicized?

We have been overdosing on AKP victory stories but Spiegel says the Turkish Islamicists have not done well enough to revamp the polity.

BTW, how nuts is it to read a Boston/New York/Washington newspaper for analysis of a Turkish election?

Hackers vs. Bernanke

I wonder if these are the folks behind Climategate? Addison Wiggin has the new video of hacker demands on Ben Bernanke.

Art forgery stories

Can you get enough of them?

"The Arab awakening is turning into the Arab nightmare"

And this is a surprise to whom? The left.

"An Ollie North moment" for the MSM

That's what these Palin emails are, Quigley says. I say, let's wait a little longer.

Monarchism: a third way?

You missed it: "The Russian Imperial Union-Order organised a conference, 'The Monarchy and Progress.' Question: To side with communism or liberalism?

Conclusion: neither.

Why can't we have conferences like that?

"Greece will default sometime in 2012"

So says Taki, who adds:

... this prediction comes from the great oracle of economics Taki, the very same Taki who smelled a rat even before the Greek government was caught red-handed cooking the books under the advice of the poisonous giant squid, Goldman Sachs.

If Greece restructures any of its debt the wrong way, it'll enter technical default, and I think that's already happened. If I read Zero Hedge correctly, a default "event" has already occurred and lowered the national rating to CCC. Of course, more events are yet to come. "How can anyone take these Greek politicians seriously?" Let's not limit this to Greek politicians.

An evolutionist looks at churches

Proposes that Protestant "openness" is an invitation to extinction.

Bitcoin - more bit than coin?

John Robb, who is usually good with P2P, is down on bitcoin. Joel Bowman, part of a team of bubble watchers, says stop picking on bitcoin. Samizdata sees the fate of the Internet in the lowly bitcoin. Cryptome says what we have here is triple entry book keeping - a good thing.

It's hard to imagine goldbugs trading physical for blips. These bitcoin hoarders must be a different beast entirely.

There's no need to hedge risk

... because there's no risk to hedge. Welcome to zombieland where capitalism = nostalgia.

Regulators vs hippies

Yoghurt eaters patronizing a farmer's market in California are discovering that voting Democrat has consequences.

The generals were terrified

Some generals in command of our PowerPoint Army went four days without a PowerPoint slideshow. "Heartstopping."

Barofsky is our favorite ex-bureaucrat

Dan Rather sometimes acts like a journalist. Who knew?

“Counsel, you’re scaring me”, Mr. [Dan] Rather said. “You should be scared, I’m scared. You can’t not be scared.”, former TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky replied.

Profanity at the link.

Anthony Powell remembered

A few years ago, I gave my wife A Dance to the Music of Time and she liked it. She detests my politics but reads my novels!

I'm not, therefore a disinterested party. I had read it myself in the 70s after reading Evelyn Waugh's war trilogy. Waugh's books were strong drink - a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel told me how much he cried at the end of this trilogy. This brought a tear to my own eye. Blast sentimentality.

Powell's series was less striking, in terms of that sentimental chord, less cartoonish as well, and given the length, the civility, the resonance, you had the feeling this can go on forever. When it ends, you are at a loss and the loss has a tinge of surprise. It's good to remember Powell, and better to remember him at length. There is such a thing as the conservative novel.

Understanding the oligarchy and wage slavery

This is a good post, but Charles Hugh Smith can do much better: "Our Participation Fuels Financial Tyrrany." Smith is a wonder, sitting on the emerging left-right convergence, however he lacks certain basic reading in his education, such as the Fugitives' work generally and Man Against Money in particular.

Hell week for royalists

We're tired, very tired. (1) Queen's birthday. (2) Duke of Edinburgh's birthday. (3) Anniversary of Umberto II's departure from Italy.

All this hot on the heels of the death of Grand Duchess Leonida Georgievna, the Romanov heir, and her successor's visit to Russia (Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna).

No longer available in Greece

Courtesy, American Monarchist.

The tragedy of the feminized male

This Limbaugh meme of the tragedy of the feminized male (as being played out in the Weiner scandal) is powerful stuff. This is the old Limbaugh from 1984 and the kind of analysis on which he built his show. When the man was hitting on twelve cylinders (3 hours x 4 segments per), it was like four weeks of great newspaper columnist punditry in one show.

He needs to return to that level. The linked transcript is too long, but skim it: the meme is worth it. And excellent photoshopping!

Moldbug is back

And he's serving "slow history"...

Back in a new twitterized format

Let's try something different...