Of course, there’s so much chatter about that particular sporting event, but not much on really what’s happening in our country and the world — the future looks dumb: “Do you know the vice president of the United States?” Austin asks. “I don’t know who it it’s, it’s, it’s somebody….Bin Ladin,” one student responds.
Only gets worse as the days, months and years of tomorrow will only bring problems no amount of education can handle (with bad English).

(Illustration found here).

Despite the education, or maybe because of it, President Obama’s view of the earth’s environment has been toned down to the point even a Republican could understand — the words are less frightful and easier to swallow like a nice pat on the head.
In Obama’s state of the union last week, ‘climate change‘ was mentioned just once (not at all in 2011).
One must remember, the White House switched from ‘global warming,’ to ‘global climate disruption‘ because it’s much, much easier to pass on to the ignorant masses in the search for more politically palatable ways to put horrible news in a happy context.
From the Washington Post:

When he did utter the phrase, it was merely to acknowledge the polarized atmosphere in Washington, saying, “The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change.”
By contrast, Obama used the terms “energy” and “clean energy” nearly two dozen times.
That tally reflects a broader change in how the president talks about the planet.
A recent Brown University study looked specifically at the Obama administration’s language and found that mentions of “climate change” have been replaced by calls for “clean energy” and “energy independence.”
Graciela Kincaid, a co-author of the study, wrote: “The phrases ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ have become all but taboo on Capitol Hill. These terms are stunningly absent from the political arena.”
…
There is power in how language is deployed, and people setting policy agendas know this well.
In 2002, Republican political strategist Frank Luntz issued a widely cited memo advising that the Bush administration should shift its rhetoric on the climate.
“It’s time for us to start talking about ‘climate change’ instead of global warming. . . . ‘Climate change’ is less frightening than ‘global warming,’ ” the memo said.

And the GOP is into fear, but only in the fear itself, not the root cause.

A good view of the most-immediate future lies in the past.
The Green blog at the New York Times on the so-called “Little Ice Age,” which started at the end of the 13th century and lasted well into the 19th century and how this small speck makes a huge wad.
Money quote:

Bette Otto-Bliesner, a co-author of the study and a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, suggested that the study has important implications for the modern-day climate change discussion.
“I think people might look at the Little Ice Age and think that all we need to save us from rising temperatures are some volcanic eruptions or the geo-engineering equivalent,” she said.
“But when you see what happened when global temperatures dropped by just one degree and you look at current predictions of six or seven degree increases for the future, you realize how precarious things are for life as we know it.”
“I don’t see a lot of hope that we can somehow compensate for the climate trajectory we’re on,” she said.

(h/t The Oil Drum).

On that big game, my store is way-looking forward to it — more booze!
In contrast, supposedly, or at least theoretically, every alcohol-drinking US person will consume at least seven beers on Sunday.
As we slowly die, we scream, ‘Drink Up!’

Part of an e-mail yesterday from my youngest daughter, who lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota: Oh yeah, It’s like 50 degrees and sunny today. crazyness, right? I was sweating like crazy riding my bike to work this morning. Global warming man…
The kid’s got some sense — just talkin’ ’bout the weather.

(Illustration found here).

A warm winter, duh!
From Climate Central:

This week, it’s likely that warm temperature records will be broken throughout the eastern U.S., with forecast highs in New York City approaching 60°F on Tuesday and Wednesday, and reaching the mid-60s in Washington, D.C. According to the National Weather Service (NWS), record highs may also be set today in Islip, N.Y., and Bridgeport, CT.
It has also been unusually warm in the mid-section of the country.
As Paul Douglas wrote for the Minneapolist Star-Tribune, the Twin Cities missed setting a record high by just four degrees on Monday, topping out at 44°F, about 20°F above average for the date.
Douglas wrote that there have been just three subzero nights so far this winter in Minneapolis-St. Paul, down from the average of 19 to date.
“It’s been one of the mildest winters on record; at the rate we’re going this will easily be a “Top 10 Warmest Winter” in the Twin Cities,” Douglas wrote.

And it’s only gonna get worse — Dr. Jeff Masters at Wunderblog: But it strains the bounds of credulity that all of the extreme weather events — some of them 1-in-1000-year type events — could have occurred without a signicant change to the base climate state. Mother Nature is now able to hit the ball out of the park more often, and with much more power, thanks to the extra energy global warming has put into the atmosphere.
No one seems to be much concerned, however.

Despite all the warming, the US MSM still doesn’t connect the dots, or put two-and-two together, or use any other glib phrase to describe how Americans are walking around in January bundled up in a Slayer t-shirt seemingly without a care in the boiling world.
These warm countrywide temperatures ain’t no flash in the pan.
Joe Romm at Climate Progress:

Our science-based institutions, like the National Center for Atmospheric Research, have no difficulty straightforwardly explaining the connection between human-caused global warming and these monster heatwaves.
If only our news-based institutions could do the same.
Now as I’ve said many times, every story about extreme weather does not need to mention global warming.
But if you are writing about a heatwave that is so uniquely extensive in space and time — just the kind of heat wave climate scientists have warned would become increasingly likely — and you are devoting an entire science article to explaining why it’s been so warm, then, yes, it is incumbent on you to at least mention global warming.

And political irony from Craig Ferguson: “It was so hot in Washington that Congress had to install a fan on the debt ceiling.”

Beyond just talkin’ about the weather, we should be screaming, crying about it.

This is just another sign of the incivility and really the vulgarity of modern American campaigns. These campaigns have gotten so ugly and so nasty, that they’re now tarnishing the whole system.
I think it also underlines the coarseness of our culture in this age of social media when it is so easy to say anything about anybody and get no penalty for saying it.
…
I’ve watched a lot of presidents over the years but I can never recall a president stepping off Air Force One, which is itself a symbol of the presidency and American democracy, and being subject to such rudeness.

(Illustration found here).

Of course, Schieffer was discussing the incident between Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and President Obama on the tarmac involved in what seemed an intense conversation, with Brewer at one point pointing her finger in Obama’s face.
No audio, but the video/picture painted a scene not very cordial.
Brewer said later: “I respect the office of the president,” she said. “I was there to welcome him.”
Also later, Brewer reversed the action, putting a lie on top of a lie, claiming Obama treated her like an asshole: “It is what it is. I proceeded to say that to him, and he chose to walk away from me,” she said Thursday. Asked whether she regarded that as disrespectful, she replied: “Well, I would never have walked away from anybody having a conversation. And, of course, that is what it is. It is disrespectful for me.”
Such total bullshit.

A lie within a falsehood, from real-time to book time:

The argument stemmed from Obama’s feelings about Brewer’s 2011 book, “Scorpions for Breakfast.”
In it, she refers to the president as “patronizing” and claims he lectured to her as if she were a child during a 2010 meeting in the White House.
At the time of the meeting, the White House described their encounter as a “good meeting,” and even Brewer said it was “very cordial.”
But, later, in her book, she accused Obama of being extremely “condescending.”
“I said to him, you know, I have always respected the office of the president and that the book is what the book is,” Brewer said.

Back to Schieffer’s view on political rudeness — he still played the MSM line and didn’t tell the entire truth about the ugly rudeness now apparent in US politics : This vulgar, shithead activity stems from one, and only one,  nasty corner of the room — Republicans.
The GOP is the party of the rude, of the sneering asshole remark, of the racist, of the zilch compassion for the ordinary US person, and the absolute rude behavior in all workings in things political.
Since becoming aware of politics via the 1960 election between Jack Kennedy and Dick Nixon, I’ve never seen such total bullshit spewing from the lips of one group of assholes — and the big, massive problem is that the MSM will not point it out.
Just like John King of CNN and Newt Gingrich’s rebuttal of an opening question about Newt’s tangled martial operations — instead of slapping back at Newt’s lying hypocrisy, King MSMed himself, back stepping.
The GOP has been on this nasty forum awhile.

From Time magazine in September 2009 and the “You lie” incident:

So when Representative Joe Wilson, a little-known Republican and Army Reserve veteran from South Carolina shouted them at the nation’s Commander in Chief on the night of Sept. 9, heads snapped.
The House chamber took a collective gasp.
Nancy Pelosi, sitting behind Obama, tensed and scowled as if she had just witnessed a crime, her disgust unhidden.
Even President Obama, who had just dismissed conservative claims that illegal immigrants would be able to take advantage of health-care reform, was taken aback.
He looked to his left, adjusted his arm, part nervous twitch, part macho posturing, and shot back at Wilson, “That’s not true.”
And there, for a moment, the nation watched two men, elected to lead, call each other the worst thing in politics — dishonorable deceivers.
At the moment Wilson exploded, the outburst seemed like an assault on the President.
Soon afterward, it was clear that it had been a gift.
Wilson had, in an emotional expression, proven Obama’s point: the summer of town halls had been less a discussion than a circus, a forum where misinformation was vindicated by passion, where disrespect was elevated to a virtue.
Now the circus had come inside Congress.

Where it has mutated into a living, breathing creature eating at the US.
The problem is the MSM doesn’t call it out — the GOP gets away with it — even taking the circus out onto an Arizona tarmac.

The US drone war is the one conflict that’s always continually escalating — even as the US vacates an isolated Pakistani base from where UAV aircraft were launched will apparently not slow the operations down at all.
From Wired: The CIA just got kicked out of a major Pakistani launching pad for the drone war. But just because the agency is packing up its stuff like a dumped lover doesn’t mean the deadly flying robots will head home. They’ll just move to the airbases in nearby Afghanistan. Consider it the drone equivalent of crashing on a friend’s couch for a while.
These machines don’t need no introduction.

And this is the future.
George Jr. started the program, but President Obama has most-definitely put his mark on it.
There were about 30 strikes on Pakistan during Obama’s first year in office, up from about 13 strikes between 2004 and 2007 and in 2009, about 54 attacks, all also in Pakistan.
Last year, the war expanded to include Yemen, and a total of 122 strikes.
In 2011, there have been 81 strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen combined — of course, there’s still Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya, where hot ‘legal‘ wars are being conducted.

Although there’s been a lot of news about drones, last week, Iran got their hands on a piece of US equipment in the form of a RQ-170 Sentinel, when it was somehow downed inside Iranian territory.
And despite Obama formally asking for the craft’s return, Iran says no way jose, considering the Sentinel “war booty.”
From Time this morning:

“Their plane invaded Iran and Iranian forces reacted powerfully,” said Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi
“Now, instead of offering an apology to the Iranian nation, they impudently ask for the return of the plane.”
…
Vahidi said the United States should apologize for invading Iranian air space instead of asking for drone back.
“Iran will defend its stance and interests strongly,” Vahidi said in remarks carried by the semi-official Mehr news agency.

Some US officials say Iran won’t get much out of the captured drone, but Russia and China might as both are accustomed to copying military hardware from other countries and the innards of the Sentinel should have ant-tamper measures: At least, it’s supposed to, according to the Boeing engineer. “Dumbest thing in the world if it didn’t.”

Another brick in the wall in the nasty Iranian dust-up.

And now another big opinion in the ways of the war world: Richard ‘The Dick‘ Cheney says Obama is acting like a baby and he should man-up to the Iranians — in an interview with CNN on Monday, The Dick claimed Obama should have ordered an airstrike to  destroy the downed Sentinel.
Via Press TV: “The right response to that would have been to go in immediately after it had gone down and destroy it,” Cheney said, adding, “You can do that from the air. You can do that with a quick air strike.”
If your bowels are strong enough, view the CNN interview here.

Use of drones is really most indiscriminate and the US should be ashamed of how these machines kill without remorse and without human feelings.
See the horror of the aftermath of drone attacks here.

From War correspondent Eric Margolis via RT:

“…it is a cheap way to fight, and does not endanger any American lives.
“It is popular on Capital Hill because it appears to be having success and the military has got to come up with something, or the CIA saying ‘we are killing militants’ and filling a body-count list.
But there is a danger here, and that is what American intelligence professionals have been rightly saying for sometime: As the CIA becomes more and more militarized, it is losing its primary mission, which is to provide intelligence and information on an unbiased basis… it is now a participant [in the US’s wars], and its decisions and information will be biased as a result.”

As a result…

(Illustration found here).

Drone on…

I have given my whole life to newspapers.
I am convinced that they have abandoned their functions, and in an abject and ignominious manner, in the present war.
Nine-tenths of them, and even more than nine-tenths, print the official blather without any attempt to scrutinize it… It is a disgraceful spectacle, but I do not believe that anything can be done about it.
Roosevelt has taken the press into camp as certainly has he has taken the Supreme Court.
It has ceased altogether to be independent and has become docilely official.
– H.L. Mencken, June 10, 1944

Shift a few items around, and Mr. Mencken could be writing about the nowadays — the above quote comes from a diary entry.

Journalism as practiced today sucks through a small straw, and one wonders at the astonishment faced by Mencken if he was around right now, marveling at how even-more shitty the rank-and-file news business has become in just the last decade.

A decade of terror-induced hysteria.

(Illustration found here).

The so-called mainstream media — dubbed MSM, a set of letters which in its appearance intuits a sexual preference — has degraded itself into nothing more than a stenographer, printing lies and misinformation as if were plain truth.
One huge example: The 2008 Pulitzer Prize went to the New York Times for its story on those nit-twit military ‘advisors’ on MSM TV in 2003 waxing wonderful on the invasion of Iraq, who were, in fact, in the pocket of the Pentagon — delivering to a naive (and hysterical) US public George Jr.’s line on the whole Iraqi bullshit.
Great story, deserving of a Pulitzer, but who knows of it?
I’ve a good friend who follows the news real close, but he’s never heard of the NYT article — and he’s not The Lone Ranger, a vast-majority of US peoples have never heard of it either.
My friend’s problem?
He doesn’t go online.

In my humble opinion, the Internet keeps the MSM from becoming a government mouthpiece.
And now that might be a problem.
Via antiwar.com and blogger Crystal L. Cox:

A federal judge in Oregon has ruled that a Montana woman sued for defamation was not a journalist when she posted online that an Oregon lawyer acted criminally during a bankruptcy case, a decision with implications for bloggers around the country.
…
U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez found last week that as a blogger, Cox was not a journalist and cannot claim the protections afforded to mainstream reporters and news outlets.
Although media experts said Wednesday that the ruling would have little effect on the definition of journalism, it casts a shadow on those who work in nontraditional media since it highlights the lack of case law that could protect them and the fact that current state shield laws for journalists are not covering recent developments in online media.
…
Hernandez said Cox was not a journalist because she offered no professional qualifications as a journalist or legitimate news outlet.
She had no journalism education, credentials or affiliation with a recognized news outlet, proof of adhering to journalistic standards such as editing or checking her facts, evidence she produced an independent product or evidence she ever tried to get both sides of the story.
Cox said she considered herself a journalist, producing more than 400 blogs over the past five years, with a proprietary technique to get her postings on the top of search engines where they get the most notice.
“What could be more mainstream than the Internet and the top of the search engine?” she said.
…
Ellyn Angelotti, who teaches about digital trends and social media at The Poynter Institute, said the ruling was significant because so little case law has built up on online media.
But she believed it would have little impact on bloggers in general until the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a case, or more federal courts rule.
Kyu Ho Youm, a First Amendment expert and journalism professor at the University of Oregon, called the judge’s strict definition of a journalist “outdated” since so-called citizen journalists currently outnumber traditional journalists.
“When we talk about the shield law, we should pay more attention to the function people are doing than whether people are connected to traditional and established news media,” he said.

Yes, indeed.

And the time is approaching, case in point: The Protect IP Act, and its sister, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would allow the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders focused on shutting down websites accused of copyright infringement, and in the process, will limit free speech and innovation.
Both of these pending laws will change the outlook of the Net — both of which are called “Intolerable Acts” by Slate in a post yesterday:

SOPA would go even further, creating a system of private regulation to shut down websites that are accused of not doing enough to prevent infringement.
Keep in mind that these shutdowns would happen before a site owner could defend himself in court—SOPA could punish sites without even establishing whether they are guilty of the charges brought against them.
…
Rather than blocking online copyright infringement, legislation like SOPA and Protect IP would instigate a data obfuscation arms race, making legitimate law enforcement efforts all the more difficult.
If the United States decides that copyright infringement must be stopped at any cost, the required censorship regime will depend on ever more invasive practices, such as monitoring users’ personal Web traffic.
This counterproductive cat-and-mouse game of censorship and circumvention would drive savvy scofflaws to darknets while increasing surveillance of less technically proficient Internet users.

The Net could go a bit darker.

And a sense of why was captured last Sept. 11 by Spencer Ackerman at Wired:

Ten years ago today, 2,996 people were murdered, unleashing a pair of destructive, mutually reinforcing trends.
To prove their relevance, terrorists keep trying to attack the United States at home.
And the media and politicians react to it with hysteria, running in fear of getting blamed for a successful attack and perpetuating the gigantic, expensive, counterproductive National Security State.
As awful as the snuffing of so many souls on 9/11 was, the second trend has often proved more dangerous than the first.

I-Journalism might become ‘more dangerous‘ in the near future, and in its fashion, the MSM will end up the new porn.

Next Thursday will end the 110-year-old life of the Humboldt Beacon, a weekly covering mostly the southern part of the county, a victim to both financial and media woes.

Last week, from the only daily in this neck of the woods, the Times-Standard, which also publishes the Beacon:

The Humboldt Beacon newspaper — a local institution that has informed the Eel River Valley for more than a century — will cease publication next month, Times-Standard Publisher Dave Kuta announced Monday.
The Beacon’s last issue will be Dec. 8.
The Times-Standard will also cease publication of its Monday print edition after Jan. 2.
The two cost-saving moves will be accompanied by the layoffs of a Times-Standard photographer and the Humboldt Beacon editor.

And although the story also cites Kuta’s assertion all “the decisions are local,” a good-deal of the problems most-likely filtered down the industry’s food-chain.

(Illustration found here).

In a scenario that’s repeated itself all over the world the past decade, a shitload of local newspapers no matter the size, are owned by humongous media corporations — in our little patch of northern California, both the Times-Standard and the Beacon are owned by a company most-appropriately named the MediaNews Group, which according to a spiel on its site, ‘we impact nearly 20 percent of the nation’s households.’
MediaNews not only own little papers like ours up here (along with a slew of such along the length-and-breath of California) — 55 dailies in 11 states — but also some so-called worthies like the Oakland Tribune, The Denver Post, and The Detroit News.
The Tribune will also end Monday publication in January.
And apparently, MediaNews is creating belt-tightening measures all over its empire.
However, local is always down river.

Although MediaNews is called “privately owned,” in reality, it’s a child of a parent company, called the Affiliated Media Group, which as it works, now calls itself The Cross Agency, which in turn, is a subsidiary of Cross MediaWorks, Inc. — a provider of media sales and advertising services to the television advertising industry.
Earlier this month, it was reported Cross MediaWorks will team with Beat the Traffic, a leading provider of real-time traffic information for broadcast media and mobile devices, to help TV stations monitor highway conditions via simple, inexpensive tools.

Meanwhile, back to the group formerly called Affiliated Media.
In January 2010, Affiliated Media filed for bankruptcy: The company listed debt of $500 million to $1 billion and assets of $100 million to $500 million in Chapter 11 documents filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware.
One thought on the impact to journalism, posted at the time:

In the last line of the lengthy and complicated press release that originally announced the filing, the company said the post-Chapter 11 structure of MediaNews will create “a platform from which to develop, grow and participate in the consolidation and re-invention of the newspaper industry.”
Translated into plain English, this means William Dean Singleton, the ever-resilient chief executive of MediaNews, will use his newly streamlined balance sheet to pursue his long-time passion for extracting profits from struggling newspapers.
In even plainer English, this means merging profit-challenged properties in multi-newspaper markets and consolidating their operations at every level – in the newsroom, in the ad department and throughout the production chain — to wring fatter profits from what remains.
In the plainest English, this likely means more lost jobs.

Yes, indeed.

In 2008-09, newsrooms nationwide lost 5,900 workers, the largest one-year drop in employment ever for an industry census, according to the American Society of News Editors — though a loss of only 5,200 in 2010 must be considered good.

As a witness of such ‘belt-tightening,’ or better phrased, the gutting of  local newspapers, or like the Humboldt Beacon, out-right closure, I have both seen the operation and been a victim.
In July 1998, after a near-20-year hiatus from organized journalism (vs freelance), I landed a spot on The Five Cities Times-Press-Recorder, a bi-weekly in Arroyo Grande, California, on the state’s Central Coast (about half-way between LAX and SFO).
Just a few weeks earlier, the TPR had been purchased by the Pulitzer Publishing Co. from local media semi-magnates Dick and Maxine Blankenburg, who had owned the newspaper since 1959.
The TPR, and a nearby small, rural weekly, The Adobe Press (also published by the Blankenburgs), were folded neatly under the wing of The Santa Maria Times, a property Pulitzer had only recently acquired — Santa Maria, located inland about 50 miles south of Arroyo Grande, and is the biggest city on the region, even Santa Barbara to the south, or my then-hometown, San Luis Obispo, to the north.
And the Santa Maria Times at that time sucked — one of the worse newspapers in the world — bad writing, errors in stories, bad layout, bad editing, you name it. (I don’t know if it’s any better nowadays).
Pulitzer had a wonderful name for such entities as the TPR: Pulitzer Community Newspapers (PCN).

PCN division VP Tom Jackson, in announcing the acquisition of the TPR, spelled out the philosophy, but most ironically:

“The emphasis on quality editorial content and community service of these publications is consistent with our philosophy, and we are determined to preserve their status and role in the community.”

PCN then slowly sucked the TPR near dry.

During its heyday under the Blankenburgs — Dick and Maxine had built a decent print-media operation with its press running 24/7/365 — the TPR carried a newsroom staff of about two dozen and covered one of the fastest-growing areas of California
When I arrived at the paper, there was between eight and 10 reporters, a couple of photographers and some lay-out people — at the time, the TPR was still in the ‘paste-up’ mode of layout, way-behind technologically.
Slots at the paper were either out-right eliminated, or those positions shifted to the Santa Maria Times.
Or reporters were given more responsibilities with the same pay.
In December 2000, my slot at the TPR vanished — I was editor/writer for two newspaper sections, along with being the unethical ‘Special Sections‘ editor (worked directly with advertising) — and became a general news reporter with my newsroom hours reduced.
I quit the TPR for a few months in 2001, but returned to cover politics.
When I finally left in 2004 in a salary dispute, the staff there was down to about five.

Despite Pulitzer‘s slash-and-cut newspaper style, it too bought the bullet: In 2005 Lee Enterprises Inc., a multi-media outfit, bought Pulitzer for $1.46 billion, which led Pulitzer chairman Michael Pulitzer to joyfully exclaim, “They share the same tradition and journalistic values that Pulitzer does. In my opinion, we couldn’t have found a better match for the company.”
And this from a January 2005 St. Louis Post-Dispatch story on the transaction:

Early speculation inside the Post-Dispatch newsroom centered on a buyout by newspaper giant Gannett Companies Inc., publisher of USA Today.
But in the end, it was the lesser-known Lee, a quiet company whose profit margin is the envy of the newspaper industry.

And what comes around, stays around: Just this past Friday, Lee Enterprises announced it’s preparing to file a prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy within the next 10 days, claiming a big chunk of its roughly $1 billion debt comes from the Pulitzer deal — The company tried to refinance debt earlier this year but had to pull the deal amid lackluster demand.

Now one wonders will the TPR go the way of the humble Humboldt Beacon?

A woman shot pepper spray to keep shoppers from merchandise she wanted during a Black Friday sale, and 20 people suffered minor injuries, authorities said.
…
Fire department spokesman Shawn Lenske said the injuries to least 10 of them were due to “rapid crowd movement.”

And the pepper-sprayer got away — police were still looking for the woman.

(Illustration found here).

Despite all the pushing, shoving and pepper spraying, The National Retail Federation, an industry trade group, forecast a 2.8 percent increase in sales this holiday season, though, down from the 5.2 percent last year.
The big sales, however, just ain’t there: In a research note on Tuesday, Wells Fargo economist Mark Vitner said: “Bargain hunters may have a tougher time finding those markdowns this year, as retailers are keeping a sharper eye on profit margins.”
So that pepper spray really won’t do you any real good.

Reportedly, shoppers will be cautious today, and onto into (shudder!) Christmas.
According to Accenture, a global consulting firm, 72 percent of US consumers plan “careful” or “controlled” holiday spending with 88 percent spending the same or less than last year, but that flies in the face of a supposedly 19 percent of customers this year compared with 14 percent last year, who plan to spend $750 or more.

One idea for this ugly, Black Friday, is don’t spend.
Lindsay Curren, editor at Transition Voice, recommends doing a whole lot of different shit today, but also to celebrate Buy Nothing Day:

But the best part of Buy Nothing Day may not even be the sticking it to The Man part.
It really may be the profound relief of taking the day off from any and all forms of consumer interaction. If I go out, it’s for a walk.
I don’t drive, because that “spends” gas.
I don’t see movies, because even though we have a locally owned cinema three blocks from my house, it’s just the day I choose not to go.
Instead we keep our lights low and kick back for good reads, family games, a little outdoors time, and yummy Thanksgiving leftovers.
Buy Nothing Day has turned into my Thanksgiving bonus day — no cooking, just hanging and relaxing.
I believe if you try it, you’ll like it.
For me, the best path to success is planning to use Buy Nothing Day for ease and reflection.
Make sure you’ve got enough food on hand, some good stuff to read, and ideas for filling those glorious unstructured hours.
Talking to your family members can be so cool!
Or try throwing an old fashioned family theatrical.
Play charades!
Make cards!
Look at old family photos.
I don’t think you’ll miss the low, low prices at all.
And it’s just a small step from there to looking at what else you can give up in this frenzied culture to buy yourself some peace of mind and time instead.

If you do go shopping today, don’t forget the anti-pepper-spray solvent.

And my most-favorite actress, Natalie Wood, died on my birthday in a boating accident off Catalina Island, California.
Two decades later to the day, my most-favorite Beatle, George Harrison, would die on my birthday — odd that.

On Thursday, the LA Sheriff’s Department announced the re-opening of the investigation into Wood’s death: Homicide investigators are taking a new look at one of Hollywood’s most enduring mysteries after they were contacted by people who claimed they had “additional information” about the drowning, the sheriff’s department said in a statement.
A puzzle to be sure, but not that so ‘enduring.’

(Illustration found here).

Wood was a multi-talented actress who was going through a dry period at the time of her death.
She was then working on a two-bit science-fiction movie, “Brainstorm,” and had been involved in a string of bad TV movies and theater junk — her last really good flick was more than a decade in the past, “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,” (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon were nominated for supporting Oscars).

Wood was married to a jerk (I think), Robert Wagner — always felt she could have done a lot better — and she and Wagner always sailed their boat, Splendour, all over south California waters.
On this particular trip, Wood’s co-star in Brainstorm, Christopher Walken, was invited along.
Reportedly, Wood and Wagner got into a big argument, and later Wood wound up dead.

This whole affair seemed to have been settled decades ago, but Wood’s sister, Lana Wood, said that although she believes no foul play was involved, there might be something else: “I just want the truth to come out, the real story,” she said last year.

No matter, the results of the newest investigation could be interesting.
A press conference on the matter is set for today.

Wood was also in just one movie with my favorite actor, Steve McQueen (no, he didn’t die on my birthday, though, he was short a couple of weeks in 1980), in 1963′s, “Love with the Proper Stranger,” which Wood was nominated for an Oscar.
The artwork above was from that film.

Meanwhile, back to the more-horrid events of 2011…

Ralph Waldo Emerson, America’s greatest philosopher, visited Thoreau in jail.
Emerson asked: “Henry, why are you here?”
Thoreau replied: “Why are you not here?”
– In protest of the Mexican War, 1846

In those crackdowns this week on the OWS, a deep, sinking feeling of nefarious, dark workings:

Questions about the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) potential involvement in the violent crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street protests nationwide continue to grow today, with new reports that not only were they sighted at several of the crackdowns but in one case photographic evidence of DHS forces arresting a photographer at a Portland rally.

Apparently, for the powers that be, OWS got too hot for the kitchen.

(Illustration found here).

In the last few days, the operation of the US government in ‘closing down’ the OWS movement in cities across America would have given George Orwell a ‘I-told-you-so’ belly ache.
Reports indicate the nationwide police actions were coordinated events: And according to one Justice official, each of those actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies.
The 1 percent strikes back, huh?

And the pure nasty, mean-spirited approach to clearing New York’s Zuccotti Park makes a situation worse when authority does its so-called duty with glee.
Via Raw Story:

“Everything, everything we had: gone,” said Chris Carter, a New Jersey native and firefighter who has been part of the “Occupy” medical staff since the second day of the protests.
“All the medications we had: Tylenol, cough machine, two AED Defibrillators units, vitamins, an asthma inhaler. Nothing left.”
Carter pointed out that the medical staff lost more than $4,000 of equipment during the raid, raising a level of frustration in his voice where they likely will have to contact hospitals to handle simple tasks.
…
New York University law student Dee Armstrong observed how the sanitation department and police were aggressively dealing with all items, not just sleeping equipment.
“Police were cutting the tents so they couldn’t be re-used,” she said.
“And I kept hearing people say, ‘Give it to the homeless, give it to the homeless.’
Then they would throw them into a pile, and I think you could see on any of the footage that they just throw them into this huge dumpster, with claims that it was going to the storage unit.
But how on Earth are you suppose to find your items?”
She added: “Some people’s backpacks, textbooks, laptops, there was people’s laptops that were just thrown in the sanitation truck where you could see it on the livestream footage.”

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said OWS is welcomed back to the park, but no tents and other type gear.
And what about Bloomberg?
Matt Taibbi covered that already: Well, you know what, Mike Bloomberg? FUCK YOU. People are not protesting for their own entertainment, you asshole. They’re protesting because millions of people were robbed, by your best friends incidentally, and they want their money back. And you’re not everybody’s Dad, so stop acting like you are.
Yeah.

The entire nationwide/worldwide OWS movement is the neatest single event(s) I’ve seen (and felt) in a long, long time — in fact, the protests might be on a level of the Vietnam-era shenanigans 40 years ago.
Indeed, OWS has opened that nasty can of worms of badly-skewered financial dealings and revealed the banks run the country, and the world.
And despite US peoples’ attitudes about OWS has wavered in the last few days — mainly due to outside interests crashing the party — the bottom line is that now everybody knows there’s a humongous divide between the haves and the have-nots, creating a violent undertaste.

And in response to all this ugly shit by DHS and the like, OWS is calling for “mass non-violent direct action” today in cities across the US — in New York, planned events included “shut down Wall Street;” “occupy the subways,” a plan to gather at 16 hubs, and “take the square,” a reference to Foley Square, across from City Hall; in Portland, Oregon, plans include “occupy banks;” in Los Angeles, organizers called for a protest downtown, shutting down an intersection; and events are also planned in Boston, Minneapolis, and other cities.
Go get ‘em!

In capturing this OSW sense, Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture has some passionate words for the state of the US, a passion titillated by anger.
The heated scoop:

In America, we are too busy dropping the kids off at soccer, running around looking for sales and bargains, racing to keep our heads above water.
We seem to forget to get outraged.
Our control over our once Democracy — the one we had a revolution against a monarchy dictating decisions from afar — slips away from us.
Not with a bang, not even with a whimper, but with a 1000s acts of gradual ceding of power to the new Monarch.
We have given up hard won rights to a coordinated attack from all three branches of government; Our Congress has become the legislative branch of eBay — Congressmen are auctioned off to the highest bidder; they even have a Buy It Now button to get specific legislation passed.
The executive branch has fallen under the sunk cost fallacy, afraid to prosecute banks because we spent so many billions bailing them out.
It turns out that even our once venerable Supreme Court is just as corrupted, with lobbyists partying with Justices and backdooring ethics by hiring their wives.
In short, our new overlords are enormously well funded, well connected, relentless and perhaps most of all, patient.
This new King was not appointed by primogeniture, or even Divine Right, but by acquiring enough profits in the free market that they can buy control over society, even as they thwart that free market ideal for their own ends.
We have become, in short, a Corporate Monarchy.
The right question isn’t why am I angry, sad and outraged.
The proper question is, why aren’t you?

Thoreau would have screamed, “Fuck Yeah!”

My youngest daughter came down out of the mountains a week or so ago just finishing up a bad cold, and promptly gave it to me, thank-you very much!
Now after plying myself with homeopathic medicines – Oscillococcinum from France and Airborne from the US — and healthy doses of BC powders (845 mg of aspirin), I don’t feel quite like dog-shit anymore.
Maybe more like cat/chicken/ or some smaller-animal shit.

My illness, though, don’t come close to this planet’s health — a sickness on the level of bloated elephant shit.

(Illustration found here).

Despite being sick, the news keep churning forward and a lot of it is nutcase, bat-shit crazy.
Wonder the difference between, say, chickenshit, dogshit, batshit, and the human condition — all animals them.
We never say: ‘I feel like human shit,’ when we don’t feel good or we get mad, i.e., ‘You chickenshit asshole!,’ however, ‘You’re nothing more than human shit,” does have a certain ring to it.
Just wondering.

The big news this Sunday morning — beyond the bizarre double-earthquake yesterday in Oklahoma, the first a 4.7 early Saturday, then last night, 5.6-magnitude quake, the biggest in OK history — is still coming from Europe and the Greek financial tragedy.
Reportedly, blustering, nit-twit Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou expected to resign after putting together some form of coalition government to keep that Euro-bailout of $178 billion on collision course with destiny.
From CNN:

Taxi driver Irene Tsikimi, who has been driving a cab for five years, says business has shrunk, but the conversations she has with her clients all follow similar lines.
“They say there are no politicians they can believe in,” she explains.
“They don’t know who to vote for.
It feels like it’s a dead end.
I wouldn’t mind going into bankruptcy; the country’s lost anyway.”
She says that austerity has impacted her, and her customers, a lot.
“Now, not even rich people use taxis,” she says, “or just very few.
The middle class just don’t take taxis anymore.
It’s a job that doesn’t have a future here. “
…
The real Greek tragedy plays out behind closed doors, in the home of the pensioners who can’t afford to fill their fridge, the public sector parents struggling to pay the bills, or the 820,000 unemployed — from a nation of around eight million — scouring the Internet for jobs.
Most people have enough to survive but not to live the life they’d hoped for.
This is not yet about a nation of people on the bread line, but about a people whose dreams and future have been taken away from them.

All that does have an American echo, huh?
And this on Friday on the eve of Bank Transfer Day: U.S. regulators closed two more banks on Friday — one in Utah and another in Nebraska — bringing the total number this year to 87…Most of the banks that have failed so far this year had less than $1 billion in assets, illustrating the problems facing small banks. Many of community banks continue to be hit hard by the sluggish economy and their exposure to the troubled commercial real estate market.
From a frying pan into a fire — a no-winning environment.

Meanwhile, Herm ‘The No-Sperm’ Cain, is battling reality’s syrup by not fighting.
Cain got his panties in a bind last night during a dumb-ass Lincoln-Douglas style debate with Newt Gingrich (why would one even consider watching these two ‘debate’?), which within itself was clueless, but only when the narrative got jagged did the proceedings show a much-clearer, and enlightened perspective.
From ABC News:

“Don’t even go there,” Cain interrupted when a Washington Post reporter began asking a question about the sexual harassment allegations at a press conference following the two-man debate.
“Where’s my chief of staff?
Please send him the Journalistic Code of Ethics.”
Reporters pressed Cain as he tried to leave the room, asking him why he was avoiding answering questions about the accusations, but aides shouted over reporters, yelling “No gossip.”
“Are you not going to answer any questions ever again, Mr. Cain, this sexual harassment stuff, is that what you’re saying,” one reporter asked.
“You got it,” Cain said with a smile.
“How can you run a presidential campaign and be a frontrunner when you won’t answer questions about this?” another reporter asked.
“If you all just listen for 30 seconds, I will explain this one time,” Cain said to reporters before leaving the room.
“We are getting back on message, end of story.
Back on message, read all of the other accounts, read all of the other accounts, where everything has been answered.
End of story.
We’re getting back on message, OK?”

Cain ain’t got a lick of sense — he’s even dumber then Newt, but don’t believe he’s yet showed to be as dumb as Perry.
What a nasty crowd clawing for the White House.

Cain should be made to man up.
The best reason — power.
Todd Kelly at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen (h/t The Dish):

But sexual harassment isn’t the same as infidelity.
Sexual harassment, at the end of the day, is about the abuse of power.
What’s more, it’s about a particularly denigrating and malicious abuse of power.
I would go so far as to say that if someone has a pattern of perpetrating sexual harassment, he is the last person you want in power over others — and you should vote accordingly.

And with apparently the GOP base not giving a shit, and Cain still high in polls and cash-raising, the whole notion will most likely just blow away — the MSM sucks!

And people in the UK are having a time keeping vehicles apart.
For the second time in three days: Police said the crash involved seven cars and four lorries and happened close to junction 29, near Leyland, south of Preston, at about 01:40 GMT. One person was trapped in a lorry and had to be released by firefighters. Police said none of the injuries was life-threatening.
On Friday, 34 vehicles piled up in one giant crash, killing seven and injuring 51.

In the speed zone of a different whack and news item of the weekend — from Russia’s rt.com:

Dozens of cars wrecked, an army of traffic cops called to the scene — a taxi driver’s erratic odyssey brought chaos to Moscow’s roads at the weekend.
The cabbie, who was stark naked, told police, “I was flying on the wings of love.”
Moscow traffic police had to mobilize all its forces in a bid to capture the street racer in a taxi cab who managed to evade capture for some time. In the course of the chase, the suspect narrowly missed a bus packed with children.
…
Only after police opened fire on the car did the driver stop.
But this was only the prelude to the show proper.
As the man emerged from his vehicle, it became apparent that he was stark naked.
When pushed to the ground, he began chanting Save and Protect, passing on to the Russian national anthem, LifeNews.ru reported on Monday.
Not a drop of alcohol had passed his lips, as blood tests later proved.
So what lay behind the driver’s risky race?
A bleeding heart, the driver stated. “I was flying on the wings of love”, he said.
“My lover said she was not ready for a serious relationship, and I went to talk to her,” he explained.
…
Vitaly Grodic, a Moldavian national, insists he never drinks nor even smokes.
He proclaimed himself a Messiah, and promised to change the world for the better.
“When I was in the dark,” Grodic said, “Evil came and took my lover.
I wanted nothing but good.
But he took my lover.
Now I want to give birth to new life on this planet.
There will be no wars anymore because I’ve come.”
Mr. Grodic said there was no other God than him, and that he would fight against evil.
Those dozens cars that he ploughed into during the pursuit were all evil, naturally, the driver explained, and he could not but hit them.
The detained taxi driver has now been sent for psychiatric tests.
If proven to be of sound mind — which seems more than improbable — he may face charges of causing 17 traffic accidents and resisting arrest.
The policemen who prevented Grodic from crashing into children’s bus will receive state awards for their braveness.

Just can’t be my sickness — ain’t the world seemingly gone whale-shit crazy?