Sears, RIP

Who woulda thunk that once a libertarian hedge fund manager took over at the venerable American chain, applying his dumbo dinosaur ideology to the place (important note: make all of your employees who formerly worked together to make a business a success turn on each other, crucial, really...) would destroy it rapidly? 

The genius just had to "loan" Sears $400 million to save face, and now, now, Sears has posted a "dinner ring" with a swastika on it. My grandfather is turning in his grave, right now.

Qualcomm being sued by NY State Comptroller over political donations

Without any prompting, Qualcomm came around my blog J to the Power of 7 on a word search over Montgomery Blair Sibley. This was around three years ago. I had no idea why they came around, but when I did a little research, I found that they also do intelligence and defense contracting…and they have a revolving door policy between their executives and those at Ernst & Young, a major corporate services firm that specializes in corporate audits, and yes, the books that get cooked.

The latter firm is involved in uncovering such things in corporate institutions, but also have had allegations thrown at them on several occasions that they helped to cover it up. What does that have to do with the DC Madam? It might not be anything specific beyond the fact that her former prosecutor, Jeffrey A. Taylor, a Bush II interim appointee who was never fired by incoming president-elect, Barack Obama, and went on to a cushy legalistic job at Ernst & Young. Now, why would someone at Qualcomm do that word search on Mr. Sibley? I have no idea and have never expected a straight answer out of them–don’t have the resources, or the inclination to bother looking into it, life’s too short. But the fact remains that both firms are very closely-linked, Taylor works for Ernst, and someone felt compelled at the sister firm of Qualcomm to do research over Mr. Sibley. When I brought it to his attention, he seemed pretty interested–as interested as I was. It was just one more bizarre “coincidence” from the case. I don’t know if Taylor is still working at Ernst & Young these days, but I would assume so. What’s of interest to me is the connection not only to computer chips and CPUs made by Qualcomm, but their relationship with the Pentagon and American intelligence community, perhaps one similar to SAIC’s, another major league contractor. Qualcomm was never in Jeane’s phone records, but I believe someone fucked up here and showed their hand, for which I thank them!

And now, the Comptroller of NY State, Thomas P. DiNapoli, a Democrat, is suing Qualcomm over political donations to force transparency. NY State is one of the biggest shareholders in the corporation, and is asserting her interest in the firm. This is reasonable since the risks are very high to public investors, especially when so many were burned in the banking crisis of 2008 thanks to widespread securities fraud. This is a major reason for the economic crisis in countries like Greece, for example, just one of many. Consider that when politicians in DC start screaming for austerity measures because of the deficit. Hundreds of billions were spent to keep a lot of crooks afloat. That's called being robbed twice.

Here’s more at the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/nyregion/new-york-comptroller-sues-qualcomm-for-data-on-political-giving.html?hpw&_r=1&

And my observations on them in relation to the DC Madam case (the earliest are most pertinent): http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/search?q=Qualcomm

"What's it all about? Where is this all headed?"

Hey, fuck if I know. Why you askin'? Because you want answers, right? The key is knowing which questions to ask. Right now, as I write this, the world economy is on the brink once again, the for the second time in under five years. Why? Because we won't change, we refuse to, we're creatures of habit. The yammerers will go on about how we need to "get back on the gold standard and eliminate the income tax," which was all disproved and thrown on the shitpile of human history, gone, over, done. I could say I believe in unicorns, but that gets as many laughs from people with a real education. Good luck on the last one in these here U-nited States.

Does that faze the terminally ignorant and insane? Of course not, and now you know why wars occur, and some very big ones are coming. "There will be wars, and rumors of wars," was perhaps the easiest prediction ever made, human beings are an incredibly stupid species, yes we are. You irrational dummies are really the death of everything, you reactionary fools on the right.

I've been talking about a collapse on this page for the last six years and have seen one coming for far longer. 2008 nearly did the job, or rather, we nearly did it on ourselves letting criminals in DC and on Wall Street to run amok with their thirty year crime wave. Finally, this shit is coming to a head: we either reform our financial and campaign systems, radically scale-back our military, and reinvest in our workforce, or forget, show's over. As horrible as I imagine things are going to get, this is fair, this is just. We should pay for our apathy, our ignorance, and our tendency to fuck everything we touch up. No touching, no more. 

South America saw the writing on the wall decades ago and has succeeded in cutting away our influence in the region, which is good, democracy and empire cannot coexist. Neither can democracy and vast, unchecked wealth and influence, power. In less than one generation, America will become a shadow of its former self, and if you think you have, you really haven't, you ain't seen nothing yet. We will become a true pariah state that no one in their right mind will do business with without major conditions. The scales are really going to fall from the eyes of Americans once they realize that all this "freedom" was only the power to buy stupid, plastic crap they never needed so some asshole can get rich and to then take the money to dismantle democratic traditions and institutions, that's where we're at, the final stages of capitalism.

Are we too far gone? I believe so. This doesn't mean there aren't things that can be done to save what's worth saving, but collapse appears to be the only way left out of what's becoming a very ugly, scary place to live. We currently incarcerate more people than Russia, China, and all the other worst human rights offender nations on this earth combined, and we enslave them in what's called "privatized prison labor." The war on terror has eroded so many rights I've lost track, maybe even the surveillance state has too, let's hope so. 

Where is the outrage? It's where knowledge would have been in the minds of an ocean of profoundly ignorant Americans, waiting to be informed and  activated. Now you know why the Republicans and Democrats are defunding education (who wants to read anyway?). Ignorant people are easily controlled. But enough about the right, Libertarians, and irrational Obama supporters who refuse to criticize him for what is wrong.with his shredding of the Constitution in the war on terror.

For similar reasons, we're going to collapse as the former Soviet Union did a little over two decades ago. It's overdue without reform. What happens in the aftermath is determined by what we do now, and then. It had better be logical, natural, disciplined, united, and constructive. The alternative is everyone killing each other. When the rich have kicked away the social contract, this becomes not only possible, it can become inevitable. Without a sense of a whole, connected polity--a society--there is no point, and all will be lost. All the luxuries many enjoy, perhaps even the ability to feed oneself adequately, the right to vote, to be safe in one's person, to be able to travel without restrictions, to be able to assemble with others for political expression--all this can vanish in the blink of an eye in the current atmosphere. 

Will some get richer from a collapse? I don't think so, this is going to be more fundamental a collapse than that, what could have occurred had there been no FDR or New Deal, and that's where we're at right now. Yes: even the rich are going to lose their asses on this one. It will at least be worth it for that one. Everyone with a patch of dirt might consider taking up gardening since that could be all that's going on in the US soon.

Zuccotti Park (Wall Street occupation) images from October 7, 2011

All images the intellectual property of Matt Janovic and Isabel Martins. Copyright 2011.

Some visits to Zuccotti Park (the Wall Street occupation)

New York City--Me and my girlfriend paid a couple of visits to the Wall Street occupation over the last couple of weeks (on September 30th and October 7th), two days with marked contrasts for the site. September 30 was brimming with occupiers--as many as between 700 to 1,000 core individuals from New York were present (exact numbers are difficult to come by since how one defines an occupier can slippery at best), it was literally standing room only with "visitors" like myself.




It's my opinion that as this is a mostly symbolic action, "visitors" are just as worthy of being counted among the occupiers since we all share the same views about Wall Street and the bailout of the biggest American banks. We have come from all over the nation, from all walks of life and from a variety of age groups, a variety of demographics. What all of us share is that we're working class and that we're getting screwed by the economic sector and the political class. We know that working within the political process isn't going to bring about reform.




This occupation could go on record as the most photographed and recorded political event in American history to date, not even the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968.



Contrary to the contentions of early mainstream coverage, the occupiers aren't all twenty-somethings and they have a solid focus on why they're there and what their demands are: radical reform of the financial sector.

Also on that September 30 came some of the first representatives of American labor--the Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100--and we were present, recording the event...along with an NYPD surveillance pod on a crane and nearly everyone else there. The TWU has sued the City of New York for commandeering five MTA buses to arrest Wall Street occupiers crossing the Brooklyn Bridge and lost, the cops can arrest them if they refuse to allow the action. Interestingly, police on the curbside began enforcing pedestrian codes, as if on cue once the TWU showed, but I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusion. Had the cops not rioted again two nights earlier, beating and pepper-spraying occupiers once again, I wouldn't be so suspicious of their motives.

A number of plainclothes detectives were on hand as well as select NYPD who were photographing and videotaping everyone in the crowd. But many of the cops I've encountered were simply doing their jobs. An "us vs. them" mentality should be applied when brutality and extralegal behavior are present, but not as a default, my opinion.

There have also been unsubstantiated rumors that police planted among the occupiers were arresting individuals on the 5th of October--they have yet to be proven out. It's not the first of such rumors either that has been making the rounds. My own conclusion from both visits is that the core of the occupiers is well organized and know what they're doing. They're resourceful and could be ready for the long haul when the occupation itself ends and the real work of organizing begins, and a beginning is what this is. Right now, the police shenanigans at the Brooklyn Bridge and the resumption of extralegal brutality on the 5th of this month have seemingly thinned the ranks. That's if you only count them and leave out us visitors...

From September 30th:

Above: The TWU arrives on site, Sept. 30.

Above: Speeches by occupiers, not leaders. As no bullhorns are allowed by NYPD, every few words are relayed across the crowd by selected individuals, spaced-apart, so as to reach the farthest boundaries of Zuccotti Park.

All images the intellectual property of Matt Janovic and Isabel Martins. Copyright 2011.

Wikileaks mirror: http://213.251.145.96/

WWW--Hit it, I am.

There are daily updates on the State Dept. cables at this point. This is much bigger than the Pentagon Papers. Regardless of what happens, no matter what foolhardy legislation gets passed to ban this whistle-blowing, Pandora's box has been opened and the lid cannot be closed, ever again.

For those of you out there who don't get how the dissemination of technology works--too bad--you cannot stop this, it's a done deal. The negative response from the mainstream media was to be expected. A healthy democracy requires that the public not be deceived. We have to know the machinations of power to remain free. Sad and pathetic then that so many Americans are knee-jerking right now on this and insisting as is their wont to remain ignorant, to remain in the dark about what their government is doing in the name of corporations.

That's how a slave that's been beaten into submission thinks...if you want to call it thinking. Seeing yet another Populist-opening, Ron Paul (in his role of "good cop" to his son Rand's dueling banjo "bad cop") has been advocating for such leaks and saying there need to be more groups like them. This is interesting since he must be anticipating the next round of leaks--if they actually make it out the gate--coming from Bank of America, and possibly even Goldman Sachs and other major corrupt financial players on Wall Street. I'm skeptical of his sincerity and view most of what he says and does publicly as political theater. Let's not make it a tragedy, shall we? In Paul's hands, it's likely to be tragicomic.

Paul can say such things because he knows he'll never have to follow through on them. Like Democratic representatives who constantly crow over sundry social-ills--knowing full well thhat the political context is wrong to expedite it and that they're not going to do anything about them of any substance--he's just sounding off as he usually does. Great, have fun with that one, but what about fixing our nation? That's called rhetoric, folks, demagoguery, and it makes one wonder where all the adults went.

Recall that Paul's not so far removed from Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman in his wackiness. Today he's talking about taking down the Federal Reserve with a parallel system of backing currency with gold when everyone should know there's not enough in the entire world to do it. As usual, he's trying to create a false impression. The reality is, he's no Robert M. Lafollette, one of the very few genuine progressive Republicans that ever was, the legendary Senator from Wisconsin.

If the GOP ever had a soul, it lost it when Lafollette died in 1925, giving into corporate interests over the role of government in American life, the very forces the senator at that time railed strenuously against. In case you didn't notice, he lost to people like Paul and the rest of them now occupying our government via the GOP's corporate-political nexus. Does that sound like a friendly crowd to you? Paul isn't exactly a friend of the working man and woman at all and doesn't believe in a social safety net, but neither do most Democrats these days since they report to the same bosses.

Where does the Wikileaks release of State Department cables covering 1966-2010 fit into to all of this? The warnings of Mark Twain, of Marine Corps General Smedley Butler that imperialism will be the ruination of the United States.

The State Department figures highly in all of this since they lobby relentlessly for American corporate interests overseas all of the time. It's their primary job besides formulating the policies to expedite this overall agenda and--this is key here--selling it to an American public that they do their best to keep in the dark. They have every reason to since most of us would reject that agenda outright if we were to know of it in real time. Yelling "national security" gets results and keeps the locals at bay. This abuse of secrecy is what makes the "sell" easier and why at least half of the public goes along with the dumbshow that's going to take the rest of us over the cliff.

Wikileaks is doing the work of an impaired corporate-owned press, and now the real scrambling begins. The battle for your mind has truly begun, to keep it ignorant so that their agenda can continue, one that's a direct threat to you and everyone you know. It began this summer when the State Department realized their post-9/11 sharing of information with military analysts had backfired, coming in the form of the whistle-blower PFC. Bradley Manning.

Make no mistake: Manning is a hero, this is a turning-point, an opening, and we had better start taking it. Read the cables and decide for yourself whether the State Department is acting in your best interests and why you don't want to know the facts contained within them.

Give them hell.

On Robert Gibbs's remarks regarding the "professional left"

With all of the calls for him to resign or to even be fired (the latter coming from Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson), you have to wonder if Shakespeare ever imagined political theater so hollow, so empty that it's not even entertaining anymore, just pathetic. Why bother? Indeed. Gibbs's remarks were to the Moonie-owned The Hill, a staunchly conservative paper, meaning a cargo cult-within-a-cargo-cult, and apparently the outgoing press secretary felt quite at home in making the statements that he did. Why wouldn't he? He's the same kind of cretin. Yet, why? Why make such stupid remarks?

The answer is simple. He and the administration that he represents aren't especially different from--say--the GOP itself and hate their base at least as much. What choice are we left with here in a roundly rightist political culture that doesn't reflect or even acknowledge the views of the majority of Americans on social issues? That's what's known as a political crisis since there really is no opposition party in American politics, only two branches of one pro-business one; one that represents an oligarchy but not the public. Yes, now the president is worried that his agenda will be endangered (a good thing in the end) and is engaging in some last minute social spending such as a paltry $3 billion for those who have or will lose their homes. Then, there's the diehard municipal/teacher/police vote that was paid for with much more and will likely ensure more Democratic votes--the primary motive for doing it at all. This kind of a mess is nothing new to American history, but it is a regression, back to the bad old days of the 1880s-90s when the "robber barons" (now we simply call them the "rich," "CEOs," and "Wall Street"). Once again, thanks Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon, but you couldn't have done it without those wily Democrats.

Like an atomic clock going off exactly on time, a slack-jawed denizen on Facebook hit me with: "In the real world, what better candidate that can actually be elected would you suggest?" Besides being the usual straw man argument one gets from the unfortunate few middle-class whites who bother to vote (which is why registering poor and minorities is always a good idea), this kind of a comment ignores how rigged the electoral process is and that they keep voting for people who wish to impair it over and over again once they're in office, and that's for starters. There's a point where you're just another battered wife, a dupe, a mark, a moron. There was a better candidate than Barack Obama and Gibbs worked to take him down in 2004, for the the DNC and the Kerry campaign: Howard Dean. Yes, they've beaten Dean down into submission and made him parrot their absurd talking points, but there was a time, not so long ago...

But it was the Foghorn Leghorn-like Gibbs that worked overtime putting out attack ads against Dean and his reasonably progressive agenda--too reasonable for the DNC and its biggest backers. Dean's also from Alabama and has been advising on a Southern strategy for the Obama campaign/administration for some time. These are the same people that wanted Barack Obama in office and not someone like Dean since he might actually come through for the public and not Wall Street. In addition, when Team Clinton came onboard, we got more of the same cronies from that sordid, pro-business administration, making for a curious form of non-nostalgia. Why am I one of the only people in America who knows that Hillary Clinton has served on the board of Wal-Mart and is a major shareholder, for example? Thanks to a compliant media, never mind all the high talk of the Obama administration having to confront a "combative media," most Americans don't know this. One wishes they were combative, at least for the right reasons, which would be a very real change.

Gibbs is right(ist): I'd trade the Pentagon for a Canadian-style health care system in a heartbeat. For those who think we need defense spending that's 600 times greater than the next highest spender, you're the ones who are "crazy," and if you don't live to see the tyranny you're constructing, your children certainly will. With luck, it's all going to collapse before then anway. You've been lulled into a Pavlovian call-and-response--you feel fear when the political and economic establishment rings 'dem bells. What does that make you?

Would I be satisfied with "Kucinich as president"? Damned straight I would. Fire all of them. Fire the next ones if they're the same. Fire them all, and shut them out of the political process forever, and anyone like them that doesn't serve the public interest, let alone won't listen to them. Eventually, the public will stop speaking and start acting. At that point, Mr. Gibbs will have a lot of explaining to do. Will it be too late? Who knows, but he's going to own a part of the social chaos if it does in fact unfold, and as much as any Bush II operative. That's not a stretch since the Obama administration has kept most of them onboard.

President Obama is to the right of Reagan

In case you haven't figured this one out, ostensible President Barack Obama rhetorically "slammed" BP and the contractors that caused the oil rig explosion and leak fifty miles off of the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico three weeks ago and topped it off with a not-so-cute cherry from the past: a comment made by Republican President Ronald Reagan, that other GOP executive the whose policies the current president is so in love with. The President himself almost seemed to choke on it when he uttered it, but the Mighty Oz had once again been invoked, albeit indirectly, and ambiguously. Reagan stood for...what? Big business and deregulation, little else.

At least in Lincoln's case he was fighting for the preservation of federalism, a basically settled issue most Americans appear to have missed. In Obama's case, he's just continuing more of what we've seen over the last thirty years which went into warp drive under the Republican president. Reagan was also a lot of rhetoric and bluster, and offered little in the realms of real substance or constructive social action.

Indeed, President Obama and his speech writers are going to tell us what we want to hear in decidedly Populist overtones, but we all know that it's hollow, that it has no substance. Well, at least most Black Americans appear to based on more recent polling, whatever that means. Sure, as far as anyone can tell, nobody's running prostitution and sex-for-contracts out of the offices of the Department of Interior anymore, but that's because the GOP is out of the power for the moment. They tend to get caught with their asses hanging-out, they're slow like that. The American public can be counted on to bring them back into office before long out of mindless habit and few options, and they'll continue the Republicans' own version of wrecking society that's impossible to miss since they don't care what anyone thinks. The Democratic Party's incumbents are more cunning and sell themselves as being of the people. That's a myth that's dying hard, but dying it is.

Comparing President Obama's record so far in dealing with our current economic crisis, you'd have to wonder if his other favorite Republican president was Herbert Hoover, a man who was roundly despised by the WWII generation for his inaction during the first three years of the Great Depression. As a result of Hoover's stupidity, the GOP became a minority party for fifty years, give-or-take, but they did their best to cause as much trouble as possible after WWII. Being from the same mold as them, Obama's no FDR, not even close. Lincoln? At least in Lincoln's case he was fighting for the preservation of federalism, the Union. In Obama's, he's just continuing more of what we've seen over the last thirty years and is really just another advocate of deregulation. He is most likely to be viewed as a mediocre president in the intervening years, if he's lucky. But the Democrats know hope fiends when they see them, they know where to hit people where they live.

Indeed, President Obama and his speech writers are going to tell us what we want to hear in decidedly Populist overtones, but we all know that it's hollow, that it has no substance. Sure, as far as anyone can tell, nobody's running prostitution and sex-for-contracts out of the offices of the Department of Interior anymore, but that's because the GOP is out of the power for the moment. The American public can be counted on to bring them back into office before long, and they'll continue their own version of wrecking society that's impossible to miss since they don't care what anyone thinks. The Democratic Party's incumbents are more cunning and sell themselves as being of the people. That's a myth that's dying hard, but dying it is.

In comparing the Obama administration's record so far in dealing with our current economic crisis with the 1930s, you begin to wonder if his other favorite Republican president was Herbert Hoover, a man who was roundly despised by the WWII generation for his inaction during the first three years of the Great Depression. The reality is that we've strayed even further to the right in the last generation in a way that's hard to describe, partly because of the cultural wars on language, something the economic establishment always benefits from.

From the president's comments yesterday:

...Let me also say, by the way, a word here about BP and the other companies involved in this mess. I know BP has committed to pay for the response effort, and we will hold them to their obligation. I have to say, though, I did not appreciate what I considered to be a ridiculous spectacle during the congressional hearings into this matter. You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else. The American people could not have been impressed with that display, and I certainly wasn't.

I understand that there are legal and financial issues involved, and a full investigation will tell us exactly what happened. But it is pretty clear that the system failed, and it failed badly. And for that, there is enough responsibility to go around. And all parties should be willing to accept it.That includes, by the way, the federal government. For too long, for a decade or more, there has been a cozy relationship between the oil companies and the federal agency that permits them to drill. It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies. That cannot and will not happen anymore. To borrow an old phrase, we will trust, but we will verify. ...("Text of the remarks of Obama to the oil spill," Breitbart, 05.14.10)

Yes, it's also an old Russian saying, and has been used in other contexts. When politicians use it, it usually means that they're in deep shit and aren't a part of the solution (albeit, one day, we'll all be the solution!). Yes, he was also extending yet another laurel to those Republicans who so badly wants to woo. Why doesn't he get that it's never going to happen? Because he's operating under false assumptions. It's reminiscent of the Clinton administration for a reason: most of them are back in office. What should be implicitly clear is that the Obama administration isn't cleaning up the Department of Interior anymore than they're cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico.

But rest assured, the speculators are. In America, they always do. It helps to have your man in office seeding the bureaucracy with corporate executives and lobbyists (sometimes the same thing), creating that proverbial "revolving door" where the people are shut out, but the suits are always welcome. That's an bum rush, and the current administration is no exception in all of this. At this writing, they've yet to remove hundreds of Bush II appointees, an administration now going into its second year. That rarely ever occurs under the GOP. When they come into office, they sweep the place clean of past appointees with few exceptions. You might ask your president why he's so cozy with such questionable people who come fresh from the cocoons of Wall Street, most specifically from Goldman Sachs, but also coming from other "interest groups."

Only the public can reform government, and they're sitting on their hands, hoping, waiting, for someone to do it for them. That's certainly a big part of the problem with many of the attitudes surrounding President Barack Obama.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9FMOC7O0&show_article=1

Is there really a Tea Party Movement?

No, there is not. There's a loose conglomeration of the reactionary right, conservative (whatever that means) senior citizens who have been mislead in thinking that their Medicare is going to be cut, closet racists who had no problem with eight criminal years of Bush II but don't like having a black president, tax protesters, gun rights activists, the rural and suburban unemployed, wacko evangelicals, Libertarians, disgruntled former Republicans, militia nuts, neo-Nazis, and a lot of other people I'd never invite over for a drink or a cookout anytime soon.

What the so-called "Tea Party movement" is constitutes reactionary, rightist populism. In other words, misguided, misdirected populist rage that's apparently not willing to be "co-opted" by the GOP let alone the DNC.

In some crucial sense, they're the opposite side of the coin to the progressive left, meaning the majority of the public when you look at the polls regarding social issues and the spending to combat social problems. The majority is for a leftward reformist model, not a rightward trend. Where does that leave these red-headed stepchildren of the right? As far as anyone can tell, an ineffectual demographic minority that, yes, gets it that Wall Street is the problem, yet doesn't like the idea of New Deal reforms and progressive taxation of the wealthiest.

You know: the dumb assholes who still cling to the American Dream.

There is an off-chance that some of these folks will have that "road to Damascus" conversion and actually see that their own interests are best represented in joining the antiwar and progressive left in the streets (as well as on the Internet), in joining together to stop the corporate assault on our rights, but so far it's a pipe dream. Instead, we all harp on more fringe elements of this demographic, and while that's not entirely misplaced in its importance, it's not all about the problem children, it's about the overall group that's been labelled as "Tea Party." Some have implied that many of these self-styled "Tea Baggers" could only attend many of these events by being small business owners, and indeed, there's a kernal of truth to this. But it's not the entire story, some are simply retired baby boomers.

I'm not really sure why the GOP would even want this disparate gaggle of the terminally confused, but what else do they have left as a base? Yet, as stated before, the demographic is fundamentally mistrustful of the entire political establishment and stubbornly resists being used, of being co-opted. Regardless of that, they have been used pretty effectively by both the GOP and DNC to assist in a creating a smokescreen so that bogus health reform could be passed. It doesn't surpise me that this pseudo-movement began with Texas congressional representative Ron Paul since it's as confused in its viewpoint and message as much as he is. To add to the confusion, the mainstream corporate media affixed the labels to them and let things fly, and fly they have, right out the window.

Is there really a Tea Party movement? I don't think so, and it's not going to decide any national elections anytime soon. What it will do, and has done, is to provide one more spectacle, one more distraction, from the worthwhile goals of reformists and the dreams in the hearts of American populists of every stripe. The Mesopotamian priests used the corruption of language to control the builders of the Tower of Babel--but it went bust, and no one could understand each other anymore, and the pillar that was the society of that time, the work towards real civilization, remained unfinished and the people disbursed. The show was effectively over. Funny that religion is part of the equation again, but if it's broken don't fix it when it comes to holding onto power.

Campaign manager David Plouffe and the Obama administration aren't inspired by genius

Washington D.C.--The Obama administration's David Plouffe has written a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post (the January 24, "November doesn't need to be a nightmare for Democrats") that should ring familiar since the public wrote it first: the Democrats need to deliver on the promises of the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama, that of genuine progressive reform, real change. Most Americans know such promises coming from either party aren't going to happen without incredible demands or from the fact that events have left the political and economic establishment with few options.

"Progress" has never been a gift, yet Plouffe's read his Machiavelli and understands that you have to throw the mob something:

...After two election cycles in which Democrats won most of the close races and almost all of the big ones, Democrats have much more fragile turf to defend this year than usual. Add to that a historic economic crisis, stubborn unemployment and the pain that both have inflicted on millions of Americans, and you have a recipe for a white-knuckled ride for many of our candidates.

But not if Democrats do what the American people sent them to Washington to do. ...

It all sounds good, but which Obama are we going to get, and which Democrats? What amount of arm-twisting is the current administration willing to do? Even LBJ, once called "the King of the Senate," understood the power of the presidency, and he flexed it. It's sad to admit it, but in some respects, the 2008 McCain campaign (and Obama's other running-mates and opponents) were correct that the president isn't experienced enough with the ins-and-outs of the legislative process and what it takes to get things done. His rather feeble and continuing outreach to the GOP incumbency is one obvious indicator of this.

The public wants leadership. The public wants someone who's really on their side.

The President's ongoing desire for bipartisanship masks what should be clear to all: he's to-the-right of Ronald Reagan and Richard M. Nixon, just not to the extremists in the House and the Senate. His recent talk of freezing social spending in the midst of an almost unprecedented economic crisis has been roundly criticized by eminent economists who have all-but-given-up on him, it being just another capitulation to the minority party, a curious stance if ever there was one. Ploufee understands this perception--an accurate one--when he writes these agenda headers:

...--Pass a meaningful health insurance reform package without delay...

--We need to show that we not just are focused on jobs but also create them. ...

-- Make sure voters understand what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did for the economy. ...

-- Don't accept any lectures on spending. ...

-- "Change" is not just about policies. ...

-- Run great campaigns. ...

-- No bed-wetting. ...

This all sounds good, as most campaign rhetoric does, but what about the reality? Is it really a matter of perception? It is, but not the way that Plouffe paints it.

First, "Pass a meaningful health insurance reform package without delay": Plouffe is more than a little dishonest here, which is to be expected from a mainstream campaign manager. When the truth isn't on your side, divert. The Democratic Party and the Obama administration specifically and willfully dropped the ball on socialized medicine and capitulated to big medicine, pharma, and the health insurance lobby. How they're going to reverse this past behavior is a great question, but the Senate version of the health care reform bill is slanted to reward insurance companies with billions of dollars and a captive consumer base. Presidential adviser Rahm Emanuel has been instrumental in some of these problems, but so have "blue dog" Democratic incumbents in Congress. Nonetheless, the White House shares the greatest blame here. The GOP's role goes without saying, it's not progressive or constructive.

Second, "We need to show that we not just are focused on jobs but also create them": This is where the Obama administration has--once again--not done even remotely enough. International, world class economists have chided the president and Congress for the smallness of the initial $700 Billion stimulus program, an "impetus" that isn't especially higher than the appropriations for the needless wars in the Middle East which are being fought for petroleum corporations and aren't in the interest of the public, let alone promote a safer world or our national security. Don't expect the Obama administration or Congress to be receptive to demands over this. Public works projects only go so far, and we've had a scanty investment considering the desperate need to repair our national infrastructure, including real world (meaning adequate) investments in high tech and green infrastructure and mass transportation. However, I hear the military is now hiring, but hurry, their quotas are nearly met now.

At the rate jobs are vanishing, they're not even remotely doing enough.

Third, "Make sure voters understand what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did for the economy": This is Plouffe being redundant. Yes, we probably averted another Great Depression...for now. Without real reform in the financial sectors--which the Obama administration is fighting--we're likely to have one anyway, or very likely so, according to academic economists.

Fourth, "Don't accept any lectures on spending": This is true, except that much of the self-inflicted damage has been done. This would allow the Democrats more leverage in fixing the economy and getting us out of the mess we're in, but that doesn't translate into the will to do it, or even the ability, when you've already compromised yourselves on several fronts and handed the opposition all their talking points. The public kept telling the Obama administration this again and again over the last year and they wouldn't listen. That's called a leadership vacuum.

Fifth, "'Change' is not just about policies": Well, duh, but please explain why passing reasonable health care reform (meaning having a system like Canada's, the UK's, or France's) has been so hard then? We can talk about campaign reform and ethics reforms all we want, but my experience--and it's direct--is that Democrats aren't especially interested in it anymore than Republicans are, they just talk a better talk. The Democratic record for ethics enforcement is monaural and poor.

Sixth, "Run great campaigns": Considering the number of Obama/DNC supporters and volunteers that I know and know of who are angry over the last year and who feel used, this shit's not going to cut it, not even remotely. So what? More "appearances are everything" thinking.

Seventh, "No bed-wetting": This is just more hyperbole, more rhetoric. Right, stick to the script, grow a pair. Too late? Probably...

About all I was convinced of from Plouffe's opinion piece is that he understands a groundswell is coming if Democratic incumbents don't start delivering on a bare-minimum of their promises, that they must at least appear to show leadership qualities where they have shown almost none at all, instead bending over backwards for corporate interests and Wall Street. They've known for over a year that the public has wanted more and substantial action from them to fix the mess of the last administration and beyond, but they've refused to and won't listen to the public, the majority. Now, they claim, they want to listen, but only when it appears that they're going to lose their majority. How is this going to translate into leadership? Plouffe offers no answers.

From this, it seems obvious to this writer that they've learned nothing at all and will continue down the same path regardless. Americans might consider breaking their two-party addiction, and quick. Rhetoric isn't going to cut it anymore, results will. While the vote in Massachusetts for Scott Brown to fill the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat is being called a "referendum," there's another side to it: people simply wanted change, any change, and "renegade" candidates without an obvious connection to the political establishment have a real opening. To some extent, the outcome there was more about moving on from the Kennedy dynasty and the generalizations about its significance have been overstated, first by Republicans, then by just about everyone else (except me, it seems).

Voters in Massachusetts may have been voting against their interests (though it should be remembered that Brown was only elected to finish Kennedy's term), but the message that they want new faces in office is crystal clear. Democrats got complacent and arrogant, but the backlash in Massachusetts was a longtime coming. Simply running a "good campaign" and shaping perceptions does not a leader make. What's needed is a real opposition party that's actually different from the GOP and has the common good in mind. Best of luck with that one.

"November doesn't need to be a nightmare for Democrats," The Washington Post, 01.24.2010: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/22/AR2010012204216.html

More cries of "coup," this time regarding AIG from Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone Magazine--I haven't read a copy of RS since 1992, so you probably know from this fact that they don't elicit much respect or admiration from me.

At best, the publication has been patently mainstream from its inception, a cheerleader of the consumer model, and a part of what's gotten us into the economic crisis we're now inhabiting.

Occasionally, the dinosaur ownership realizes at RS how inane and unimportant that they've become (once, the criticisms came from old school RS writers like the late Hunter S. Thompson) and pays someone to write something substantial about where things are at.

Their political articles are often belated pieces that would have had a better impact had someone commissioned them when the corruption and crimes were everywhere--occurring literally out in the open, down the street from RS's NYC offices--but advertisers don't like political coverage, especially when they're involved in the mess, and that would mean spending the money on a full time investigative team.

This doesn't fit into all the wonderful business models of recent times, so they don't have one, because since the introduction of CBS's "60 Minutes," the news is supposed to be profitable and entertaining.

Somehow, in this peculiarly adamant pro-business environment, we're being entreated to ditties from the Fourth Estate itself that "democracy will be inhibited without newspapers," yet when we had all of them they did little to protect it, making for a zero-sum loss in the age of the Internet. Yes, coverage will definitely become deeply "impaired" for a time, and there will likely be further consolidations of media, but what future will the survivors have in a generally wrecked economy? Being king is fine, but king of the garbage dump doesn't sound very grand to these ears.

One might also factor-in how hard it is to do business during widespread strikes and insurrection, but that's what defense contractors are for.

Into this bloody fray comes a Rolling Stone article by Matt Taibbi on AIG and--please bear with me--the notion that the Wall Street bailouts have been a "coup."I don't believe that it's that simple, that many of these critics have been dangerously naive about our system and its promises because of their own "successes" ("You're just jealous."), and that they're finally discovering how America really works. You know: the American people are usually the last to know, because there are "unknown knowns," in the thankfully inimitable words of Donald Rumsfeld.

...["]When one considers the comparatively extensive system of congressional checks and balances that goes into the spending of every dollar in the budget via the normal appropriations process, what's happening in the Fed amounts to something truly revolutionary,” a kind of shadow government with a budget many times the size of the normal federal outlay, administered dictatorially by one man, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. "We spend hours and hours and hours arguing over $10 million amendments on the floor of the Senate, but there has been no discussion about who has been receiving this $3 trillion," says Sen. Bernie Sanders. "It is beyond comprehension." ... ("Back to the Big Takeover," Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, April 2, 2009 issue)

If it's a "shadow government," it's only because Congress delegated those powers to the executive branch and consciously did so over a period of decades. The article at least makes this point clearly enough. It should be added that Sec. of Treasury Bernanke has to answer to the President of the United States, ultimately, since he might have problems with how the money gets spent...or not. Taibbi is wrong--it really is all about money, the only thing Americans can be roused to action by. In other words, the Treasury Department isn't a separate branch of government, although Taibbi and others seem to be suggesting that it is. Were it that simple.

But this has been a real point-of-contention with me, since a "coup" means a real world transfer of power, generally to people who weren't originally "in-charge," with at least some essence of "finality" to it, however fleeting. Paradoxical--yes--and welcome to the world of power politics where language and logic break down above the atomic level. Sure, the Treasury Department and the Fed have significantly more power at the moment, that's true, and that's really an expansion of the power of the executive branch in the end. Former Vice President Cheney must be proud of his contribution to all of this.

Not since Hitler has so much confusion been sown in the halls of a modern government. It helped to have enablers and other fellow travelers along the way. So, these calls of a "coup" are more than a little belated--they actually sound weird coming at this moment. Habeas corpus has been nominally restored through the courts, but significant breaches in our Constitution are still there. There were many voices on the left who warned about the economic crisis and the war on terror's rollback of our rights from the start, and a few on the right, and so on.

But they weren't especially passionate voices, and they were ignored as they usually are.

Where were all these cries from the right and the mainstream media during the passage of the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act? Off making money at the time, they couldn't be bothered to care at the time. When I question some of the "coup counters," they tend to settle on the term "paper coup," and neglect to go into any further details. A real world analog would help, like Yeltsin's creation of the Oligarchs through the Russian State granting them mineral rights, or similar moves in South America during the last sixty years. That would have been a business luncheon for the Bush II administration.

Perhaps it just sounds good to the ears, that "c-word." It gives one the appearance of being prescient, prophetic, like Ronald Reagan (in appearance only). Granted, the term "coup" is taking over (pun intended) throughout the political spectrum.

Taibbi continues:

...The state is now being asked not just to call off its regulators or give tax breaks or funnel a few contracts to connected companies; it is intervening directly in the economy, for the sole purpose of preserving the influence of the megafirms. In essence, Paulson used the bailout to transform the government into a giant bureaucracy of entitled assholedom, one that would socialize "toxic" risks but keep both the profits and the management of the bailed-out firms in private hands. Moreover, this whole process would be done in secret, away from the prying eyes of NASCAR dads, broke-ass liberals who read translations of French novels, subprime mortgage holders and other such financial losers. ... (Ibid)

And this is new in American history, because...? Frankly, I don't get it--these are the very same people in control of the system in the end (the original ones, the ones whose names are being withheld on TARP payout papers), the same super rich "investors" and business bureaucrats inside and outside of our government who played, and lost. Welcome to the inherent ( il)logic of our economy, you missed the memo. Was there some arch-conspiracy, or some kind of a plan to this? Were you paying attention?

This makes a grand leap of logic that these people on Wall Street were and are competent.

Are you kidding? Does it really look like they're good at anything done above board, legally? They aren't good at business, they cannot rule or govern effectively or sustainably, and it will all crash no matter how much they attempt to leave the rest of us with the bill. Their time is up, it's a given, even with these machinations that induce the apathetic, cynical, and gullible, to ascribe godlike powers to a bunch of Wall Street (and truth be know, Main Street) clowns.

That they're not good at business is a given, but that most of them are criminals has yet to be proven, but will be. They're going to keep playing the same games because it's all they know, and when the rules don't favor them they change the rules. Does that sound sustainable? Let them have their fun, playing with their Monopoly money, but if they get their way, any recovery is going to be short-lived in a system whose time came at least a generation ago, the rest being mythology.

Americans have often wrongly measured their freedoms and liberties through economic indicators and their ability to purchase while neglecting the very existence of a quality of life and the social contract. There will be plenty of time to reflect on that now.

"Back to the Big Takeover," Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, April 2, 2009 issue: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover

"It's a coup!": Some more reflections on the Wall Street bailout reactions

"When small men begin to cast big shadows,
it means that the sun is about to set."
--Lin Yutang

WWW--It was coming from Michael Moore, Naomi Wolf, and from all-points-in-between on the political spectrum back at the end of this last September and October: the bailout of Wall Street was a coup because "we're all being robbed," case closed. That we're all being robbed is a certainty, but a coup? I still keep hearing this weird contention, yet I'm not seeing any proof that any of the players being bailed-out are different ones.

Why should we care if it's the same people? Because that's one of the main preconditions of a coup--someone else has to be in-charge, replacing the last group. What coup? It doesn't fit the definition, yet you have progressives and conservatives screaming one has occurred all over the place. Was there one? Well, yes, ages ago, and they missed it. They're making strange sounds over this, and I wanted to know why, and I've given it a lot of thought and reached a few tentative conclusions.

My belief: people like Michael Moore have had major investments on Wall Street like many of us have had (not me, however!), and that includes folks like Arianna Huffington, Al Franken, much of the wider society, and maybe even a few investigative journalists and media-outlet owners out there. But aren't they begging the question? That was my feeling back in September, and it still is, with a few more historical reflections.

Now, if you lost your ass on Wall Street and you heard that others were being bailed-out--and you weren't--wouldn't you be freaking-out and yelling too? Sure you would, and if you had a soapbox bigger than everyone else's, you'd use it, right? Perhaps. This shouting that the first bailout of the banks was a "coup" by some of these celebrities across the political spectrum reminded me of someone from our past: Father Charles E. Coughlin, the radio priest.

Today, most Americans have no idea who Coughlin was, but you could say that he was one-part Rush Limbaugh, one-part Michael Moore, and one-part Joseph Goebbels. Yes, this is about the 1930s and the Great Depression, what else would it be about? Coughlin was originally from Ontario, Canada and had confronted a group of the KKK who had tried to burn his church in an act of anti-Catholic hate, so he began with "progressive" and populist credentials. At the dawn of the Great Depression, Coughlin sounded like a voice of reason to many, and they supported him with money and activism. He went as far as founding a short-lived political party, the NUSJ (The National Union for Social Justice), and was most popular with Irish-Catholics during the 1930s, but had a much wider appeal.

Incredibly, he and Gerald L.K. Smith (a lieutenant of Huey Long) could be fairly credited with creating the white supremacist movement. How did it end up that way? From frustrated populist aspirations and a deep disdain for Western-style capitalism. Some people react dysfunctionally to social injustice because they're terminal racists. Where did it all begin for the "radio priest"?

Father Coughlin's American parish in Royal Oak, Michigan began doing radio broadcasts of his sermons sometime in 1926 out of Detroit's radio station WJR, the beginning of the radio age. It has been calculated that Coughlin had a listenership-peak of as many as 40 million, an incredible number for its time. Coughlin was radically populist one moment in his speeches, backing Roosevelt completely one day, and then making remarks totally against the New Deal the next depending on which way the political winds were blowing at the moment. For him--as with Limbaugh--it was all about ratings. In this respect, little has changed since the 1930s, but he accidentally pushed FDR further to the left, so he had some value.

While Coughlin was railing against Wall Street, he was heavily invested in it at a time when almost nobody in the general population was. Who had money then? Demagogues like Charles Coughlin, that's who; the radio priest was getting rich slamming Wall Street, from his appeals for donations, and his weekly radio program's advertising revenue. Unbeknownst to most Americans, by the mid-1930s, Father Coughlin was one of the largest holders of silver in America. In other words, he was a hypocrite in most respects, and vanity assured his fall. Coughlin began with very enthusiastic support of FDR's New Deal programs, but by 1934 he started having political aspirations of his own and began bitterly attacking Roosevelt and his policies. He also began broadcasting and writing anti-Semitic remarks and began his love affair with Continental fascism and the Nazi State.

By 1938, he reprinted the Tsarist secret police (Okhrana) forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in his own newsletter, "Social Justice," and was witnessed at a Bronx speaking- engagement doing the fascist salute. It was all downhill after that, as radio stations stopped carrying his programs and the Roosevelt administration moved on him to curb his ability to disseminate first his radio programs, then his newspaper and related literature through the postal system. By 1942, with his support of Nazism all-but-complete, Coughlin became a marginalized laughingstock, and went back to his tiny Royal Oak parish to live out the rest of his life in relative obscurity.

Interstingly, he had connections with a domestic fascist group called the "Christian Front," who plotted to overthrow the government of the United States. He never renounced his connection to them.

I don't think Michael Moore is exactly the same kind of creature as Coughlin, and this isn't some attempt to smear him with the same brush at all, because it's not accurate or fair. But there are a lot of parallels between his life and that of Coughlin, and he's not alone. New communications media have empowered many individuals in the last two decades like never before, and with that access comes the same kinds of issues that arose during the 1930s, a time when radio was first emerging as a force. But the cries of "coup" smack of similar hypocrisies that people like Coughlin once engaged in. One might ask such celebrities like Limbaugh and Moore (or even "conspiracy" writers/activists like Alex Jones) what their holdings on Wall Street are today. You might get a very surprising answer indeed, even with the contemporary prevalence of investment.

Now is definitely a time of demagogues, but the question is: "Who are they exactly? Who are the demagogues?" Rush Limbaugh and most of the right-wing noise machine certainly fit that bill, but there are others out there, right now, waiting for their time. Intellectual honesty is as good an inoculation as you're likely to get, a proactive solution for the ages.

3 days left of Bush II administration crimes under the color of authority!

Ed.--And it's still not coming fast enough. Let the hearings and investigations commence!! We're not taking "no" or "it's off the table" for answers anymore. That's done, it's over, and we're going to continue to demand and act on this. The public has had enough of this systemic-corruption.

Heads must roll, people must be investigated, and if found guilty, sent to prison. Where to start? Start anywhere, but let's finally begin getting to the bottom of the Bush II energy policy meetings and their role in the Wall Street crash. Then, we can party like it's 1929.

Quit fooling yourselves--the Democrats enabled a lot of this, and some of them are going to have to go as well, sentimentality-be-damned. The first thing President-elect Obama needs to do is purge the bureaucracy of every single appointment made by George W. Bush and--in turn--hirings made by those appointees.

The appropriate time for the creation of a Special Prosecution team is January 20th, the 21st at the latest. There can be no "putting the past behind us," as President-elect Obama stated recently on George Stephanopoulos's program "This Week:". It's an attitude that's unacceptable in a democracy after what's happened out in the open under George W. Bush, putting aside what we don't know. Three days left. It's too long.

A suggestion to President-elect Barack Obama for a Sec. of Commerce replacement

Washington D.C.--Now that New Mexico's Governor Bill Richardson is out--Ralph Nader, and for every reason you might imagine. Vetting Nader? You wouldn't even have to, he's cleaner than the busboys in the nation's capital, never mind the congressional pages.

The man is more than qualified, honest, incredibly disciplined and can handle the workload. Ralph Nader has done more good for the American public than any single politician in our history without being one, and because he's definitely not going to be in the pockets of Wall Street, the banks, the business sector, and so on.

He's your man, which is why I know you're never, ever going to pick him, sad.

Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, bilked Madoff investor found dead (A Charming Tail)

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”

---Oscar Wilde

Wall Street/Madison Ave.--No, no, the conspiracists haven't seized on this one...yet, but I'm about to. Besides, it's only been a few hours, the corpse is still warm and some of the ambulance chasers are still sleeping, what with all these goddamned time zones.

Yes folks, that's right, he was "murdered," it was "the government" (which is comprised of the American people), and they even kilt some before there was a Washington D.C.. Medics at the scene checked Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet (could he have a longer name? please?) for a pulse.

There was none. Normally, they wouldn't be alarmed by this as Villehuchet ran a hedge fund on Wall Street, but the patient was 65 so there were rules and procedures to follow. His papers were in disarray, pointing to...uh, something sinister, and he knew certain shady characters.

Losing $1.4 billion for your clients can be deliterious to one's health, and it appeared that Villehuchet's wrists--Agatha Christie stylee--were found cut, clearly by some intruder who wanted their money back, or at least coffee and a doughnut, some paper clips, and a reference.

The New York Medical Examiner stated today in the French newspaper "La Tribune" that Villehuchet's condition had not improved or changed--still no pulse. Members of the Religious Right were notified as to his condition at all times, and weren't going to be caught off-guard. They knew the chances this was an assisted suicide, the single most important issue facing the human race today. A videotape of Villehuchet was sent to former doctor/politician/human Bill Frist: "I say, I say, he's alive!" exclaimed the perfect human simulacrum of Foghorn Leghorn. God hates Pinellas County, it seems.

It didn't matter. The patient wouldn't budge, there was still no change in his condition. Neither would the economy, or Mr. Villehuchet's chances of recovering his investors' money from Bernard L. Madoff, death being that final mitigating circumstance.

So, the medics tagged-and-bagged the stiff and sent him to the Smithsonian where he'll be on-display next year.

Yes, it breaks one's heart that stellar names like the Rothchilds and Swiss bank clients are losing their asses these days, it's a crying shame. The phones at Access International Advisors are ringing and ringing, while Madoff's is ringing off-the-hook with one death threat after another. And what of the Astors? John Jacob Astor--the first American millionaire--made his first fortune selling bad whiskey to the Indians, there's worse, there's far worse.

$50 billion isn't chicken feed, after all. Like a good business Samurai...no, a clean murder by "the government" sounds better. It wasn't me, it was the big, bad government. It wasn't that I was stupid, greedy, and avaricious--it was the big, bad government, because they control everything, even when they don't (if you know what I mean, I don't).

Belly up to the bar boys: the Republicans knew that the 80th anniversary of the Great Depression was coming, they yearned for that underdog status since they don't know much else, and it was time to create another one just for nostalgia's sake. Besides, the little people needed some reminding, and they're looking wan and fat these days, but it won't last. They say that every country is three meals away from insurrection, but for America, it's just two snacks.

"Why not?" said the RNC's central committee members, "It's been too long, so very, very long. We miss it. Yes, why not?" They all agreed to agree with themselves as is their wont to do, and they all shook their own individual hands. Forbidden sex soon followed as the sun set on the Watergate...

And yet, Mr. Madoff keeps smiling on his way in and out of his now confiscated townhouse, wearing his dopey baseball hat and lookin' significantly more nebbish than he did just weeks ago. Stick 'em up! Bye-bye dumb old order, hello new one. It was 7:50 A.M. when they found Villehuchet's cold, dead body. The conspirator Madoff got out of the office before they came, months before.

Early to bed, and early to rise, though they say the morning sun at Rennes-Le-Château tends to get in your eyes. God knows Melville would love what's happening in New York City these days.