Far Side

© Gary Larson

Long time gone

Stop children, what's that sound?

It is hard not to be deeply conflicted regarding the goings on in Gaza. Hamas, which has always called for the total liberation of Palestine and the right of armed resistance, launches hundreds of missiles at Israel. Israel decides it has had enough and not only assassinates their military leadership, but also initiates strikes that kill large numbers of civilians. They threaten a ground war to finish the job.

Now Hamas is daring Israel to launch an invasion.

Both sides deserve ample blame. Hamas is behaving like a child that kills their parents and then cries about being an orphan. They want the right to resist but not to pay the eventual bill.

Israel, or at least some Israelis, have ceased to see the jailed as human beings. Like old testament warriors of yore, they want to smite the infidel. Perhaps some feel that they have a biblical mandate, I don't know, not being a particularly religious person.

Ariel Sharon's son Gilad wants to flatten Gaza.

We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.
There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire.
Were this to happen, the images from Gaza might be unpleasant – but victory would be swift, and the lives of our soldiers and civilians spared.
If the government isn’t prepared to go all the way on this, it will mean reoccupying the entire Gaza Strip. Not a few neighborhoods in the suburbs, as with Cast Lead, but the entire Strip, like in Defensive Shield, so that rockets can no longer be fired.
There is no middle path here – either the Gazans and their infrastructure are made to pay the price, or we reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip. Otherwise there will be no decisive victory. And we’re running out of time – we must achieve victory quickly. The Netanyahu government is on a short international leash. Soon the pressure will start – and a million civilians can’t live under fire for long. This needs to end quickly – with a bang, not a whimper.

I think that this type of thinking is very shortsighted. While the Palestinians can be rightly blamed for snatching defeat away from victory many times, the longer Likud chips away at a deserved contiguous national homeland for the Palestinians the longer both parties existence will teeter on such a precarious cliff.

The Palestinians will get nothing from provoking Israel with constant missile barrages and the Israelis are deluding themselves if they think that the status quo, jailer relationship in the occupied territories is in any way sustainable. I hope that we will see fresh thinking from both sides before the whole region turns into a denuded wasteland. Everybody will soon have the nasty weapons. Make a deal.


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Washington Post writer David Ignatius was on the radio today discussing Israel. Yesterday on Face the Nation yesterday he talked about his surmise that the Gaza incursion is a way for Israel to test the Iron Dome missile system prior to a strike on the real target, Iran. Whole thing has been well calculated in his opinion. Very interesting. Expose and pull the fangs of the snake to the south before you take on the more dangerous adder to the northeast.

*Stratfor Global Intelligence Israeli analysis.

Fotheringay

Rice Cooked?

I smelled a rat in Benghazi from the start. I first wrote about the incident on September 15 and many times thereafter. Republicans want Watergate style hearings. I personally think that it is time to put the whole thing to bed.More partisan chest beating is not what is required right now.

What do we know? It was a horrible tragedy. The State Department made the call that there was adequate protection in place. They were wrong. It wasn't intentional. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security Lamb and her boss, the Secretary of State, both took responsibility for the grievous error. Lamb had made the call to restrict the number of personnel and she now admits that it was the wrong call.

Secretary of State Clinton had promulgated a policy directive known as the "No Marines, No Bullets" State Department Rules of Engagement for Libya document some time within the past year and a half after the fall of Khadafi's dictatorship in Libya. It ultimately proved disastrous, causing the deaths of four americans. Somebody guessed wrong.

For the past two months we have seen the Pentagon, State Department and CIA pointing fingers at each other on Benghazi. The President assures us that he will hunt down the killers of what we now know were CIA operatives and not private contractors and bring them to justice. He also says that he gave the marching orders to Susan Rice and if anyone has any problems with it to come after him, not her, the President now riding a considerable wave of political capital.

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I also think we need to move forward. Nothing will be accomplished now by continuing to beat this to death. It will not bring the four men back.  It is obvious to me that the administration was soft pedaling the terroristic nature of the affair because they were trying to consolidate the political gains in the region that they rightly deserved for backing the Libyan uprising. That is what diplomats do, that's statecraft. They shade, they slant. They try to curry favor with recalcitrant players that might be friend or foe.

Over at the CIA they are now saying that they were reluctant to name the sources because they didn't want to divulge intelligence about how much they really knew about the nature of the terrorist threat. That is the most plausible answer yet and I hope that it is truthful. Way above my paygrade.

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Having said all that I would be afraid of having Susan Rice in the position of Secretary of State. I agree with Lindsay Graham on this. There is something about her mien that I have a hard time believing. And her behavior in the past has been both quite caustic and occasionally unhinged. Kerry, Hillary, Powell, there has to be a heavyweight out there that the American people can trust and believe.

Toots

Moonday matinee

A long week, after a pretty difficult month, post extended playtime. I just finished a weekend selling art and antiques in Del Mar. Thanks to some wonderful old and new clients I managed to make a go of it and keep the wolves at bay for what is hopefully a little while. Not exceptional but I can now cover and there are times in our life when that has to be good enough.

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I heard a very poignant story the other day on NPR. They were interviewing an older woman in New York, whose neighborhood was heavily impacted by Hurricane Sandy. Two weeks out and still no electricity. Her name was Shapiro and she might have lived in Far Rockaway. Through a series of snafus with the electrician, the city still wouldn't turn the power back on.

And this woman who sounded to be in her sixties starts to break down and very quietly cry on the radio. She said that she just wanted to be a child again for a half hour and have mommy take care of everything. Just thirty minutes. To be free from the stress. She was so genuine and it was so heartfelt and beautiful and I couldn't help but shed a tear.

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Congratulations to our great neighbors the Pechanga Indians who ponied up twenty one million to kill the Liberty Quarry. A little extortion game from Granite Construction. Per agreement Granite is not allowed to site a quarry within three miles south of the old site, which is pretty much on my doorstep. Wonder if they have anything in mind? Not like there is a great need for anyway, not having enough water to even deal with our present population base.

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Brian Bilbray has lost his congressional seat. Not a great year to be the anti hispanic candidate. Perhaps this is the first crack in the Republican congressional dominance in San Diego, Scott Peters joining Susan Davis. Excellent.

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Speaking of politics, word comes down the pike that Arizona blast reader Creech wants me to go fuck myself. Anatomically impossible but thanks for the sentiment. Something about the marxist, socialist takeover. Thanks for reading anyway KC. Room for all sorts of points of view at the Blue Heron Blast.

Of course the red staters are the biggest recipients of the federal dole and pretty much besides themselves at the moment. Keep telling everybody that your opponents are parasites, this will really help you at the polls. I think you should maybe even double down.

I was reading the Charles Reich biographical interview with Jerry Garcia, Signpost to new space and Jerry says something interesting, and I paraphrase. Whenever you are engaged in a communication medium, there is a bounceback effect and people actively try to change your message. Another sixties luminary, Abbie Hoffman, lectured about the trap of getting co-opted. The trick is to not stray off your message.

When I was taking architecture classes in college I once worked on a six month long project designing a futuristic office building, down to working drawings. It was a horseshoe affair designed on a four foot grid where sections popped in and out to a varying degree. Looked very cool. I stupidly consulted with an architect who worked for our development company and changed my whole concept three weeks before the completion date.

He said that the first rule was not building monuments to our self and I ended up watering it down considerably. I eventually got a c+. Professor said that he had been planning to enter it in a nationwide design competition but I let somebody bump me off my message and instead barely passed. Learned something.

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I have been listening to more political news on Sirius Radio, toggling between Fox, CNN and MSNBC. Now I am no William Safire but I have a pretty keen ear for language. And there is a new popular verb in Washington. Redound. Maddow used it two nights ago and Krauthammer used it right after the election. If like me you would have to check the meaning for certainty you would have found this definition;

redound [rɪˈdaʊnd]
vb
1. (intr; foll by to) to have an advantageous or disadvantageous effect (on) brave deeds redound to your credit
2. (intr; foll by on or upon) to recoil or rebound
3. (intr) Archaic to arise; accrue wealth redounding from wise investment
4. (tr) Archaic to reflect; bring his actions redound dishonour upon him
[from Old French redonder, from Latin redundāre to stream over, from red- re + undāre to rise in waves, from unda a wave]

A new fashionable word, sure to spread in the coming weeks like wildfire. Maddow knew what redound meant but pronounced Jason Mraz, Jason Emraz. Can't know it all.

Great concert tomorrow night at the Belly Up. Toots and the Maytals acoustic. If you get there early, score us a table.

Larry Williams

Goodbye Baby

 I guess that I should cover the topic that everybody seems to be talking about, the demise of Hostess. I am not going to pretend that I am, or have ever been a Hostess power user. But I can not lie, I have certainly dabbled with their wares.

My mother was a healthy food person long before it was fashionable and Wonder bread or balloon bread as it was known in many households, was verboten in our pantry.

Our sack lunches were always on whole wheat, along with a sour macintosh or spongy and bruised red delicious and the requisite carrot or celery sticks.

I longed to have one of those Donna Reed type smiling moms that would drop a drakes cake or snowball in the bag but it just never happened. I looked at my friends and their hypersweet and manufactured lunches with envy.

I never did the twinkie thing or the hohos in adult life. I hardly ate any of the hostess products except for a mere handful The fruit pies, mainly the cherries swimming in their thick, gelatinous amniotic fluid, the powdered donuts and of course the cupcakes.

The hostess cupcake was the flagship of the line and I never lost my taste for them. Chocolate cake with a creme filled center, nice little white icing loops decorating a frosting top. Pretty much the perfect junk food. And they came in a convenient threepack because two is just never good enough.

I breakdown for the threepack about once a year. You have to hide the evidence and not leave it in the car or you are totally busted. Important to not let them see you walking over to the trashcan outside because women just have this way of knowing  everything you have ever done.

I will miss the cupcakes and hope that the brand rises from the ashen grave like some confectionary phoenix.

The guy who runs the joint has had a pretty sweet ride the last several years, Tripled his salary when they went into their second bankruptcy. Nine other employees received massive pay raises as well. Sounds like a little Romney style harvesting to me.

Shakin' Street - MC5

Dog Whistle Blues

What once was an invisible dog whistle has now risen to a stark crescendo as conservatives try to blame their losses in the recent election on minorities and the young. By now everybody in the western world has heard or read the transcript of Romney's post election call to his donors;

Mitt Romney blamed his loss partly on policy items or "gifts" -- that President Barack Obama supported aimed at core constituencies, including Hispanic, young, and black voters.

"What the president's campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote, and that strategy worked," Romney said, according to audio of the call obtained by ABC News.

"It's a proven political strategy, which is giving a bunch of money to a group and, guess what, they'll vote for you," he added. "Immigration we can solve, but the giving away free stuff is a hard thing to compete with." 

I disagree with Mitt. They didn't vote for Obama because he promised them stuff, they voted for Obama because the other guys were a bunch of assholes. Which politician was it the other day who said that the problem was that not enough white men came out to vote? As if they should all vote as a monolithic block. That was one of the biggest hoots of the election, that Mitt was targeting uneducated white males. You got too much education boy, we don't want to talk to you.

Bill O'Reilly took up the white cause on election day.

“The white establishment is now the minority,” O’Reilly said. “And the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama’s way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?”

“The demographics are changing,” he said. “It’s not a traditional America anymore.” O’Reilly said 50 percent of the voting public are people who “want stuff. They want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama. He knows it, and he ran on it.”

Maine GOP head Charlie Webster thinks that there were too many blacks showing up to vote in Maine.

"In some parts of rural Maine, there were dozens, dozens of black people who came in and voted on Election Day," he said in an interview with WSCH TV. "Everybody has the right to vote, but nobody in town knows anybody that's black -- how did that happen? I don't know. We're going to find out."

Denise Helms didn't think it was that big a deal. She called obama a nigger on facebook after the election and mused that "maybe he would get assassinated." Now she has lost her job at Coldstone Creamery.

Helms says that she isn't a racist. "I didn't think it would be that big of a deal," Helms told FOX40 Sacramento in an interview outside her workplace at the Turlock Cold Stone Creamery. "The assassination part is kind of harsh. I'm not saying I'd go do that or anything like that, by any means, but if it was to happen I don't think I'd care one bit."

The October 28 AP poll on racial attitudes in this country shows that people have become more racist against blacks and hispanics in the last four years. A slight majority of Americans now harbor racial prejudices against blacks and hispanics according to the polling data.

Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.

In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.

"As much as we'd hope the impact of race would decline over time ... it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago," said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who worked with AP to develop the survey.

Most Americans expressed anti-Hispanic sentiments, too. In an AP survey done in 2011, 52 percent of non-Hispanic whites expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes. That figure rose to 57 percent in the implicit test. The survey on Hispanics had no past data for comparison.

The poll finds that racial prejudice is not limited to one group of partisans. Although Republicans were more likely than Democrats to express racial prejudice in the questions measuring explicit racism (79 percent among Republicans compared with 32 percent among Democrats), the implicit test found little difference between the two parties. That test showed a majority of both Democrats and Republicans held anti-black feelings (55 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans), as did about half of political independents (49 percent).

Kids are jumping aboard the racism express as well.

I think that the conservative strategy of blaming women, minorities and young will backfire badly. Voters don't like to be typecast as whores willing to sell their vote to the highest bidder. I voted the way I voted and have never taken a penny of government assistance. Neither have the great majority of democrats that I know.

I had hoped that we were farther along in terms of race than we apparently are. I think that this election is a sign post that the old guard has officially passed. Stoking the fires of racial division is not going to put the republican humpty dumpty together again.

Back to work

Alligator Point, La Jolla - Pastel E.H. Pohl

I am selling at the Del Mar Fair Calendar Antique Show this weekend. Show starts on Friday and runs through Sunday evening.

I have a great new selection of oils and watercolors including works by Alfred Mitchell, Maurice Braun, Ernest Henry Pohl, Sydney Laurence, Clarkson Dye, Carolus Verhaeren, Clyde Forsythe, Geza Kende, Don O'Neill, Phil Paradise, Donald Teague N.A. and Paul Grimm.

One of the Grimms is a monumental work, one of the five large works that once graced the now demolished Bank of America in Palm Springs. It has never been exhibited before, to my knowledge.

In addition I have an outstanding inventory of arts and crafts period woodblock prints including works by Lillian Miller, Elizabeth Keith, Bertha Lum, Helen Hyde and Norma Bassett Hall.

If you have the time, please stop by and say hello. I even have a few comp tickets left.

Right Place

Horrible Fail

KMGH Television - Denver makes a horrible mistake. Story here. I apologize but I didn't make this stuff up. Merely reporting. Hide the women and children.

The machines are getting smarter...

While many have remarked about people's resistance and difficulty with the speed of technological advancement, I think that the opposite supposition is also true, isn't it amazing how fast we find ourselves adapting to new technology?

I was writing a gmail to a group of friends yesterday and I mistakenly cc'd Fred Dannise instead of Fred Young, a member of my photography circle. Google asked me if I didn't in fact mean "the other Fred?" There must be an algorithm that knows that I normally group one particular Fred with these associates and not the other. Sort of amazing. I can now speak the name of a musical genre into my steering wheel and it finds an appropriate station, jazz, soul, bluegrass. If you aren't paying attention you may miss these things, the communication technology is moving forward so quickly.

I also took note that with my android update to ice cream from jelly bean, the email application on the phone will suggest the next word I might want to use in a sentence. I am not sure that this isn't a somewhat new technology as well. Thinking was so damn time consuming, now I don't have to!

Technology is getting more adaptive and possibly more self correcting. I wish I knew more about the way some of it works, like voice recognition software. Over time is it cueing on my voice and developing a baseline of my enunciation, then fine tuning the calibration? Inquiring minds want to know.

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One of my favorite short stories by my most favorite science fiction author Roger Zelazny is titled My Lady of the Diodes. You can find it in the compendium, Unicorn Variations or just read it here. The protagonist is a computer scientist who has had his work stolen by a large corporation. In his anger he creates a computer that helps him stage the perfect crime. Unfortunately the computer developed a gender and some unfortunate human traits. Worth the quick read.

I know that I have written about this before but Roger Zelazny was the kindest, smartest, most gracious artist I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. Absolutely brilliant, such a blessing to get to know him in our three too short encounters.

I had the chance to attend one of his lectures once at an early San Diego comicon. I believe that the lecture was filmed by Ray Zone. I was able to ask him some pretty involved questions about his writing and creations, questions that had him pondering and scratching his head a bit. I gave him a mask that I had purchased in Nairobi so it was probably in 1989 or 1990. If you have never read him, pick up Lord of Light and see if he is your thing.

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David Horsey / Los Angeles Times

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Great evisceration of faux political maven Jennifer Rubin at Atlantic.

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Next time a cop asks your 10 year old to wash his car, by god he better do it...

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Very thoughtful piece over at the Weekly Standard, Values Voters Prevail Again by Christopher Caldwell.

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Horrible fail in Denver.

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Don't you hate this guy? Put some clothes on, gramps, your narcissistic personality disorder is going to catch a cold.

Soul Twist

Veterans Day, Fallbrook

DELFONICS and Eddie Holman

While the latter is a bit gooey and overdone, the singer and backups are technically superb. A guilty pleasure. One of the Delfonics, Major Harris, died friday at the age of 65.

Cuckoo's Nest

I've never been the kind of fellah that likes to gloat. Rubs people the wrong way. Conduct your victories like funerals, as Confucius used to say. Besides all politicians sort of suck and I can't get real excited about the current regime either.

I live in a pretty conservative town and the Romney signs are still up in the tonier neighborhoods, sad beacons of tattered dreams. I try not to rub it in, people have a way of staying pissed off.

It was sort of crazy when I went to the gym at lunch after the veterans day parade was over and I was finally able to leave my parking space. I had gone to the ceremony and a VFW member brusquely pushed me aside on the crowded sidewalk so that a ribbon clad warrior could march through and give his speech to the crowd. I didn't stick around, Jesus always makes an appearance at the invocation and frankly if you've seen one of these things, you have seen them all.

Anyway I get to the gym and I start to hear this chirping. All of these undercover democrats started coming out of the woodwork. My god, you too, I thought. There was a time thirty years ago when I was one of ten in the Fallbrook Democratic Club. Avis and Cliff Stokes, Carlton Poling, Spence Hays, a couple more. You publicly proclaimed your party fealty at your peril in those days.  I kid you not, we were thought of as communists in those days, come to think of it, they still do. Now they talk openly about their party allegiance, without the fear of bodily harm, or figuring that we would protect each other if things came to a scrum.

We lost a lot of very colorful wack jobs in this last election, and I for one am going to miss them. Akin, Allan West, Mourdock, Joe Walsh. Future stars like Mia Love, ingloriously shunted out of office. (If you ask me, West could frankly go postal, the man is just not stable.)

Tin hat wearing, climate change denying, ovary legislating, birth questioning, red baiting scamps, all of them now sadly gone and they will be sorely missed by this scribe. No conspiracy theory was too outlandish, no truth unbended, no vile epitaph too left field for this group and now they are gone, gone like the hot desert wind.

But not all of them. Thankfully there are still plenty of legislators several bricks short of a full load. I put together a photo montage of some of the people we still have a chance to love and get to know and the looney base is still well covered, don't you worry. From plain venal and malevolent, McConnell and Gohmert, to stupid and psycho, I give you Steve King and Bachmann, and every shade of nutso in between.

We get all of these fine american representatives for at least a couple more years, mayan disaster preventing. I give you my faves from upper left; Nikki Haley, Texas ex Judge Louie Gohmert, Issa, evolution denying Paul Broun, science denying Tom Coburn from OK, the exorcist, Bobbie Jindal, your favorite martian, Rick Scott, Michelle Bachmann, Jim DeMint , Steve King and Uncle Mitch McConnell.

See, there are still enough inmates running the asylum to ensure us a hoot of a time, that is until the red states secede or the good lord comes back for his flock. They are rarin' for a fight. When you got right and principles on your side, you don't have to compromise. Get the popcorn ready, this is gonna be good, friends.

Rose Royce

Sunday Mailbag

Had dinner with Trace and Stan last night. Stan has been on a Roosevelt kick lately and sends me this clip. Lots of parallels with today's goings on and this immortal quote,"If Landon had given one more speech, Roosevelt would have carried Canada too." Dorothy Thompson

He also sent over this Move-on video which I can frankly take or leave. Several of their clips have been pretty unwatchable this election. Okay but a bit long and overdone.



Personally I find that watching the people gloat at MSNBC is almost as bad as listening to the Fox people dream up all their conspiracy theories for their recent defeat.

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An anonymous poster sends the Washington State Reefer fact sheet. And Jerry Brown wants Obama to back away from our bong.

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DeGoff sends this over,Volkswagen is supposedly getting an amazing car to market. Hudg sends this followup, 600 bucks very unlikely.

The Most Economic Car in the World will be on sale next year:

Better than Electric Car – 258 miles/gallon: IPO 2010 in Shanghai

This is a single-seat car.  From conception to production: 3 years and the company is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany.  It will be selling for 4000 Yuan, equivalent to US $600.

    Gas tank capacity = 1.7 gallons

    Speed = 62 – 74.6 Miles/hour

    Fuel efficiency = 258 miles/gallon

    Travel distance with a full tank = 404 miles

This is not a joke!  This new car will sell for around $600.00, and they won’t be able to make them fast enough--good just to run around town.  Here's a car that will get you back and forth to work on the cheap ... at 258 miles per gallon.  It is a one-seat Volkswagen.

The aero design proved essential to getting the desired result.  The body is 3.47 meters long and just 1.25 meters wide, and a little over a meter high.  The prototype was made completely of carbon fiber and is not painted to save weight.  The power plant is a one cylinder diesel, positioned ahead of the rear axle and combined with an automatic shift controlled by a knob in the interior.  Safety was not compromised as the impact and roll-over protection is comparable to the GT racing cars.

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R´says I have to watch this Maher clip. And read Rebecca Solnit's essay on disasters.



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Kip and T both sent over this thoughtful Frank Rich piece from New York magazine that I had already read. Used to be one hell of a magazine once upon a time. Felker.

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Warren has been sermonizing on Petraeus of late, the latest bigwig to get caught with his dick in his hand. As I said yesterday, he needed a little more cloak and a little less dagger. Joins a long list, Slick, Weiner, Spicer, Edwards, that power stuff is sure intoxicating. Women just love it. Another good presbyterian has fallen, just the kind the devil tries to tempt. Unfortunate book title.

The General...."demanded bananas on his cereal every morning.......Wheaties I hope!!

I have a question that may appear to be a bit "fey" but when he would appear to testify before Congress he appeared to be wearing innumerable layers of medals........the proverbial "fruit salad".....was he ever in combat....if so Grenada does not really count.........is "camp"back in vogue....not mentioned and does my memory have it correct ....that I remember  he was quite adamant on not admitting Gays into the military and bed rocked that on a professed strong Christian faith.......the CIA is and has been a well kept secret of being a leaky faucet......remember some years ago when there was a high ranking Agency alcoholic selling names of our agents to the Russians.....excuse the pun........for $500,000 a "pop"....

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Met an interesting cat at dinner last night who sent me this stuff today. The CIA's worldwide GINI Income distribution hotsheet by country. Here it is worst to best, well depending if you are a king or a serf that is. We may not be Sweden but at least we ain't Namibia, know what I mean?

This index measures the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income in a country. The index is calculated from the Lorenz curve, in which cumulative family income is plotted against the number of families arranged from the poorest to the richest. The index is the ratio of (a) the area between a country's Lorenz curve and the 45 degree helping line to (b) the entire triangular area under the 45 degree line. The more nearly equal a country's income distribution, the closer its Lorenz curve to the 45 degree line and the lower its Gini index, e.g., a Scandinavian country with an index of 25. The more unequal a country's income distribution, the farther its Lorenz curve from the 45 degree line and the higher its Gini index, e.g., a Sub-Saharan country with an index of 50. If income were distributed with perfect equality, the Lorenz curve would coincide with the 45 degree line and the index would be zero; if income were distributed with perfect inequality, the Lorenz curve would coincide with the horizontal axis and the right vertical axis and the index would be 100.

Nice sunset in Cardiff last night, well probably every night.

From C&D :

But it's an old day now.

It was a new day yesterday...

They're certainly not taking this very well. All the models were wrong, they had miscalculated their strength and support, there were traitors in the midst, not to mention noncooperative tropical events. It was obviously not enough to hate a foreign, marxist president, who knew that it was America herself that bore the blame for her fall and transgression? - sheer ignorance from a class that would rather believe in Santa Claus and an entitlement state than time honored American traditions like work and self reliance. Americans are after all, nothing if not a misguided and ignorant electorate.

No sooner did the results come in than Wall Street started swooning and industrialists started laying off and terminating the workforce, battering up the storm windows to seal off the coming apocalypse. My GOP pals are tearing their shirts, sitting shiva for the late republic, end times clearly being nigh at hand.

I am reminded of two things, when considering the import of the shifting demographic everyone is discussing. I read a remarkable biography on Jesse James a few years ago that recast the man as a confederate soldier who couldn't give up the ghost for many years after the war, a crony of Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson. For some, the war truly never ends.

Did you ever see the Beverly Hillbillies episode where Granny takes the family to the beach to fight off the dreaded invasion of the enemy interlopers named the grunions? It was classic television.

We spend so much time demonizing the other guy that we make progress in this country very difficult. We do it with a compartmentalized news filter that shuns contrary views from the other side and merely reinforces our pre-existing individual precepts.

Losing sucks. We are confident in the integrity and  certainty of our belief systems and models. Now we find ourselves at a national standstill and clear and cool heads must prevail if we have any hope of getting out of our current morass. Or we wait another four years and do nothing but muck up the works.

I would advise everybody on the right to chill and get over it. There weren't as many of you as you thought and you will have to deal with it for at least two more years, when there are quite a few senate democrat seats opening up and four years to go for the big enchilada. Maybe they will buy it next time. With all the money Shelly and the Koch's threw at it, they just weren't buying.

America didn't care for what you were selling this time or at least 51% of us didn't and that's all it takes around these parts. We may have despised Bush and Reagan but I don't recall us getting so verklempt. So ease up and let's work together for a bit. That doesn't mean John Boehner can do a Lucy Van Pelt kick the football routine on Obama. The President's too smart and won't fall for that.

It's going to be real tax revenue, you lost the election, you don't get to do it your way this time. Coming to the center doesn't mean conceding position to the loser. It means let's meet in the true middle. You will have to give something up. Obama will give something up. We will show America that the thing can still work if we remember the lessons of kindergarten. It's not always going to go your way but you still shouldn't crap in the sandbox.

You got filthy rich before the tax rates were changed, you will get filthy rich again, believe me. I call it American exceptionalism. Just don't flip out. Crawl out from under the sheets, get out of bed and take a walk around. It might not turn out as bad as you imagined. Tomorrow brings a new day. We can make this work.

Sheila Chandra

Hive Gestalt

One of the most interesting visuals in the last several weeks was the footage of the people in New York surrounding the CNN truck which was charging their cell phones in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Dying to get turned back on.

These pictures are from a Greenpeace mobile unit that also provided free cell phone charging and solar power after the storm in Queens. People were frantically trying to get reconnected.

I was thinking about this earlier today and I am almost willing to bet that in our brave new connected world, people would pick communication over food if forced to make a choice. I don't know for sure but that's how I would bet. We all suffer from the same new disease of simply having to be in touch. Everybody wants to know whussup?

The people of Terra are pretty much connected 24/7 nowadays. My first impulse in the morning is to check the phone for emails when I wake up. Used to be the little light on the blackberry - you've got email! Like pavlov I can not wait to tune back in.

Then on to the blast, see if I have any comments, spam or whatnot. Texts, voicemails, the whole megillah. I don't do social media like Facebook, because that was way too much of an energy suck. Got enough on my hands. But a lot of people do.

Like Leslie. Lots of friends, I hear that she puts up a lot of interesting content. Must run in the family. Last week she got into a bit of a Facebook flame war with an old poopy high school acquaintance from Michigan. Unfriended. Heard about it from three different people that day before I got around to asking her about it. Everybody is aware of the slightest tremor in the cyberforce, the butterfly in Tokyo's flutter  nudging the bored housewife ironing her sheets in Covina.

Many of us are living in some kind of dual Walter Mitty cyberlife, tending an invisible global flock, that exists tangentially and remotely, in a corporeal foreign universe, sort of like Schrodinger's cat.

I used to be really on top of the news. Now when I find something interesting, my wife has usually seen it days earlier on Facebook. A powerful tool. The 24 hour cycle is definitely dead, we all need real time these days. And fast.

I don't use Facebook anymore, like I said. I'm too obsessive compulsive, not enough time to do anything else. This blog is plenty and more. I've heard from a couple people who admit to slightly gripping when I take a break. Interesting. When I get back I usually over compensate, so there is a fairly even stream of content.  Job doesn't pay real well and it has to be fun for all of us. Hell, I'm flattered. Got a compliment on the blog this morning. Newish reader said that it was really great. I said oh, you like the photography and she said it was the writing that impressed her. It made me feel really good. Waiting for a really big depression so that I can write some more fiction. Sort of how I roll. Scorpio thing.

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Theodore Sturgeon wrote a great book called More than Human in 1953 that grew out of his novella Baby is three, a book that I recently reread. The book deals with something along the lines of a gigantic "groupmind." Man, during his exalted period of "homo gestalt." A seminal book, I highly recommend it.

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I wrote this little story a few years ago, Lord of the Western Marches.

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Fascinating article at Floating Sheep. Folks mapped geocoded racist tweets after Obama's re-election. Alabama and Mississippi, you win again.

Beyond Here Lies Nothin

November 3, 2012 performance.

Buckeyes for governmental intrusion

Two days since the election, an election in which Ohioans indicated their majority support for women's reproductive rights and personal choice by a 56 to 39% margin. I never, or rarely ever name names but can't tell you how many of my republican cohorts have recently told me that the GOP wasn't about to try to halt either abortion or contraception. Forget the social issues, Robert. Why didn't I understand that the important thing today was the economy?

Today, the Ohio GOP introduced the so called Heartbeat Bill H.B. 125 in the State Senate. This bill is so extreme that even the pro life groups wouldn't initially endorse it, fearing it would get shot down in the Supreme Court. The bill would ban all abortions after the fetal heartbeat is detected, without exceptions for rape, incest or life of the mother. Ohio Senate President Tom Niehaus (R-New Richmond) told The Cincinnati Enquirer on Thursday that the Senate plans to reconsider the bill in a lame duck session that begins next week.

On Oct. 12th, Gov. John Kasich (R) appointed Ohio Right to Life board chair Marshall Pitchford to the committee in charge of choosing someone to fill a new vacancy on the Ohio Supreme Court, and he appointed Mike Gonidakis, the head of Ohio Right to Life, to the Ohio State Medical Board. There is also an ongoing effort in Ohio to defund Planned Parenthood.

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It will take more than pandering to hispanics to save the GOP. The party needs to stop trying to tell and legislate what other people can or can not do with their lives and bodies. So pardon my skepticism. As Bob Dylan once so famously said, I don't believe you.

The quintessential High Flying Bird - Judy Henske

Remember Me? I'm the One Who Loves You

The end of the world as we know it...

"Now the two Americas disagree, sharply. Government decisions enthuse one and enrage the other. The election may be over, but the two Americas are still not on speaking terms."
Michael Barone

As you probably know, I have friends and confidantes across the whole political bandwidth. I assume that most of you do too and I have a piece of advice for you.

Walk very softly around the Republicans for a couple days. Some of them are feeling quite aggrieved right now.

I called S this morning and thought that I would play the gracious victor and extend the olive branch, time to work together for the good of the nation, etc., etc. Guess what, he would have none of it. In their minds they are the party of ethics and principles, and any talk of bipartisanship can well, wait until hell freezes over, thank you.

They were sunk by a lamestream media in the left's and the President's pocket, minority voters who are the real racists, how come over 90% of blacks voted for the biracial president?, 47% of the population that are takers and not makers, not to mention those damn fact checkers. "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers!" Rejecting advice to temper their message to respond to a changing electorate, instead they are set to move in the opposite, counterintuitive direction. "If only we had elected a real conservative" and "We are going to get that Chris Christie turncoat bastard."

Of course, as you would expect, some are calling the election a clear win for the right. Grover Nordquist basically did. McConnell and Will see it as a mandate for House Republicans hanging tough and the continuation of the status quo. "Americans put us here because they want gridlock and by god, we will give them gridlock."

America's favorite past time, well after football anyway, is watching crow being served and I acknowledge getting giddy on occasion post national re-set. Here are some of my favorite comments and tweets from the last several days.

"I've long believed that elections reflect which side voters hate more. To the extent that's true, 50 percent of Americans hate Republicans, and 48 percent hate Democrats."
Debra Saunders

“It has never made sense that my party, the party of individual freedom and personal responsibility, thinks the government should be involved in issues” like abortion. We are the party that trusts individuals to make their own decisions. That is one of the defining issues of the differences between Republicans and Democrats. So this is just bewildering to me.”
Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins

"People are suffering. The country is in disarray. If Mitt Romney cannot win in this economy, then the tipping point has been reached. We have more takers than makers and it's over. There is no hope. Mitt Romney was the president we needed right now, and I think it is so sad that we are going to be deprived of his brain power, of his skills in turning companies around, turning the Olympics around, his idea and his kindness for being able to push very conservative ideas on a country that no longer is interested in conservative ideas. It is interested in handouts."
Ann Coulter


Obama succeeded by suppressing the vote.
Karl Rove

Great nations and proud empires have always collapsed from within before they were conquered from without. President Obama's re-election mirrors the self-indulgent, greedy and envious nation we are rapidly becoming.

Cal Thomas

"There were two mandates last night. Speaker John Boehner and House Republicans got reelected in a very substantial way, and I think that Speaker Boehner can claim a mandate fully as much as the president. So the near future of this country, the next year or two, is going to be a question of how those two mandates work things out together, not how we assume that Obama has a blank check just for his single mandate."
Newt Gingrich

"I just cannot believe that the majority of Americans believe that incurring more debt is good for the economy, for our children's future, for job creators. I just cannot believe that the majority of Americans believe that it's OK to ignore the constitution and not have a budget. It's a perplexing time for many of us right now."
Sarah Palin


If, in celebrating his victory Obama wanted to give credit where credit is due, he might want to think about calling some of America's top journalists, since their favorable approach almost certainly made the difference between victory and defeat.
Fox News Editorial

In a country of children where the option is Santa Claus or work, what wins?
Rush Limbaugh

“Take your message of equality of achievement. … You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America.”
Allen West

We conservatives, we do not accept bipartisanship in the pursuit of tyranny. Period. We will not negotiate the terms of our economic and political servitude. Period. We will not abandon our child to a dark and bleak future. We will not accept a fate that is alien to the legacy we inherited from every single future generation in this country. We will not accept social engineering by politicians and bureaucrats who treat us like lab rats, rather than self-sufficient human beings. There are those in this country who choose tyranny over liberty. They do not speak for us, 57 million of us who voted against this yesterday, and they do not get to dictate to us under our Constitution. We are the alternative. We will resist. We're not going to surrender to this. We will not be passive, we will not be compliant in our demise. We're not good losers, you better believe we're sore losers! A good loser is a loser forever. Now I hear we're called 'purists.' Conservatives are called purists. The very people who keep nominating moderates, now call us purists the way the left calls us purists. Yeah, things like liberty, and property rights, individual sovereignty, and the Constitution, and capitalism. We're purists now. And we have to hear this crap from conservatives, or pseudo-conservatives, Republicans.
Mark Levin

TonyZ told me at coffee that the country needs to craft a center right party, so that we can have a competitive fight in the future. Not our job to fix them, Tony. They always say that if you are stuck in a hole, quit digging. But hey, feel free, dig away.

John Cipollina

This is sort of a guilty pleasure. I was at this and several other dead shows when John joined the dead on stage. I don't  remember if this one was Winterland or Oakland but you see Lee Oskar on harp as well as Keith and Donna. My favorite period for the band, especially 1977.

I was often backstage and can remember Cipollina nervously pacing back and forth like a tiger ready to pounce, so eager to get on stage and crank the sonic velocity up a notch. A master of the vibrato and one of the great psychedelic rock guitar players.

Coffee grounds

Bath of Diana - Alcazar, Seville

I am trying to sift through the dregs at the bottom of the post election coffee cup and would like to offer my take to anybody that is remotely interested.

This election actually gives me a little hope. No matter how much money rich guys (e.g. Sheldon Adelson, Koch brothers, Linda McMahon, etc.) throw at an election, it is not necessarily a guarantee that the american public won't see their way through it in the end. Perhaps the effects of the dastardly Citizens United case may not be as bad as once thought. Americans figure it out.

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Wacko is obviously out. Look at the losers in 2012, Akin, Walsh and Mourdock gone, Bachmann and Allan West are on the ropes. I see signs that the public is opting out of the fringe, electing more moderate people from both parties. Arizona has elected Republican Jeff Flake, a conservative with a high degree of integrity that often bucks the party line. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, our first openly gay senator. If you look at the Senate, it is definitely going to be a more liberal body.

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I think that people figured out who the real radicals were, they got a sense of the imminent peril to a safety net and decided that it was an important part of our society that shouldn't be jeopardized. Not to say that with an aging boomer population, we can not afford to pretend that we can continue with the status quo. We can't. Perhaps it is raising the retirement age, means testing, we have to find a way to deal with a problem that won't go away.

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I believe that this election is the last hoorah for a society long dominated by an old guard of old white guys. The country will ignore the vote of minorities and women in the future at their peril. Our country looks different now. People will not bow to a calvinist overlord. Americans don't like to be told what they can and can not do, especially if it is private matter between consenting adults and their spouses, comrades and/or embryos.

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Rasmussen and Gallup were way off as many poll watchers suspected. Rasmussen says today on his blog that the days of telephone polling are over - that isn't how people communicate any more. Interesting.

This race was very likely the last presidential election of the telephone polling era. While the industry did an excellent job of projecting last night’s election, entirely new techniques will need to be developed before 2016. The central issue is that phone polling worked for decades because that was how people communicated. In the 21^st century, that is no longer true.

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Experts from both sides of the aisle agree that the so called upcoming "fiscal cliff" will be catastrophic if implemented. Wouldn't it be great if both sides would stop the bullshit and work on getting something fixed before its too late? Show the country that there are still grown-ups in the room. Get it done sooner rather than later and stop posing and preening for the cameras.

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I thought Romney's concession speech was forthright and heartfelt. I belief I even sensed a touch of relief. He was the only electable Republican and he gave a great fight to the best of his abilities. I think that he would have been an effective manager and much less ideological than supposed. He won't get the chance to show us. Having said, most of my friends left and right agree that the real nexus and prize is the Supreme Court and its composition is even more important for how we are going to shape our country's future than the legislature or even executive branch for that matter. This election had serious consequences as I suppose they all do.

Going more conservative will not help the Republicans, at least I don't think so. The undecideds tend to be more in the center than on the fringes.

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I don't want to sound too wonky but Nate Silver was accurate in 50 out of 50 predictions.

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Romney was certainly not helped by the hurricane. His supposed non political relief event in Ohio looked a bit far off the weather map. But I think that his words did more to hurt him, Can you imagine if private industry really did take care of disaster relief? "Sorry Pal, we aren't going to fix your city or town because there is just not enough profit in it."Disaster relief would quickly turn into its own disaster. There are certain things americans do for each other. It's what makes us such a great people.

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I happen to agree with Donald Trump regarding the popular vote and the need to do away with the electoral college. No matter who won.  A Wyoming shouldn't  be equal to six california votes. Every American should have an equal say. This has been a prescription for a form of rural tyranny that our founding fathers would have blanched at.

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Netanyahu did not help himself with his blatant support for Romney. In fact his blunt and crude style will hurt jews in this country, already accused in some circles of putting the needs of Israel over those of the United States. I don't think he will be on Obama's Chanukah card list anytime soon.

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Mitt Romney's Mormonism never became a major issue for either his allies or his opponents. I think that this is a credit to our country. Anybody of any faith could one day be elected to the hallowed office, that is unless they are an atheist, muslim, scientologist or jew. Might even get a woman one day.

Hallway, Alcazar