The Rule of the Violent

One of the interesting things that hard-core Glibertarians will say to you, when you mention the public order / public safety / national defense justification for having government, is "I don't need government to protect me, I have my guns!"

Let's do a little thought experiment, why don't we? First of all, let's identify when a gun is useful:

1. You have the weapon upon your person (it's not in a closet, in another room, or something like that).
2. You are awake and aware of your surroundings
3. You have identified a target,
4. You have identified that you wish to kill this target and are capable of doing so, rather than having qualms or doubts.
5. You are able to kill this person before he kills you.

Okay, so let's look at the advantages that a bad guy who has cased your place has in, say, a home invasion situation at 3AM:

1. He has the weapon on his person. You don't (weapons make lumpy sleeping companions, it might be as close as the nightstand, but it still isn't on your person).
2. He is awake. You aren't.
3. He is shining a very bright light in your eyes so that you can't see him. He can see you clearly.
4. He knows he wants to kill you. You, on the other hand, can't see him, don't know who he is or whether he has evil intent towards you, have qualms about violence and the taking of life that cause hesitation, and so...
5. He thus kills you before you kill him.

In other words, because the criminal can choose the time and conditions under which he will take you out, you're dead. The criminal is violent, has no qualms, has identified you as someone he wishes to kill, does not hesitate, is not only comfortable with violence and the taking of life but enjoys it, and you ... are ... dead.

So why doesn't this happen more in real life, you say? Well, actually, it does -- every evening, around the country, there are thugs breaking into homes with the purpose of making the inhabitants of that home either dead or harmless. Except they're called "police officers", and they're arresting *other* thugs. We as a society hire a lot of the violent types and put them to work for us policing the rest of the violent types and protecting us from them. Second of all, the majority of the worst of the violent types, the most amoral killers, are either in prison or refrain from excessive violence because they don't wish to go to prison. In short, the deterrent effect of having police officers and prisons is what keeps most of us safe at night despite the fact that if anybody really wanted to take us out, we'd be dead.

So what would happen if we did not have our own thugs and prisons to take care of other thugs? Well, then thugs would rule the world. They'd go anywhere they wanted to go, kill anybody they wanted to kill, take anything they wanted to take, and if you objected, you would be dead because they're amoral killers who identify *everybody* as someone they want to kill and thus will never hesitate, while you waste precious moments trying to figure out that this guy wants to kill you rather than being the harmless meter reader he's dressed as. Why do we know this is what happens? Because it's what has happened everywhere that government has failed -- Somalia, Afghanistan, the tribal areas of Pakistan, all of them are thugocracies where the majority are cowed and victimized by a vicious and violent minority. You, as an individual, have about as much chance of stopping The Taliban as a mosquito has of stopping an elephant.

But, you say, let's form some voluntary organizations to hire our own thugs! Well, okay. Let's say that everybody in my neighborhood joins together to hire some security guards to protect us from those OTHER thugs out there. So far, so good. But what if someone in my neighborhood doesn't want to pay his part of paying for those security guards? He's free-loading off of the rest of us -- he's getting security for his home, but WE are paying for it!

So what is the Libertarian answer here? Apparently, to say "can't happen! Never happens! yada yada yada!" But my dad was manager of a townhouse complex for a while, and I'll tell you this, it *does* happen, and is prevalent. Mr. Grouch says, "I don't think we need security guards so I'm not going to pay." Or, "I don't use the pool, so I'm not going to pay" -- even though having a pool in the complex makes his house more valuable. And you can't exactly move his house to *outside* the secured perimeter, so he's getting free security AND free benefit to his property values from having a pool in the complex!

In short, we've run into the fundamental problem with libertarianism: the FREELOADER problem. The other people in the complex will get tired of paying for freeloaders, and more and more of them will refuse to pay, until eventually the few still paying for the security guards give up because they can't afford it anymore, nobody pays, and the thugs just march right in and turn everybody into their own personal slaves. Only something that we can call GOVERNMENT that says, "No freeloaders, if you refuse to pay we'll seize your home at a tax auction and sell it to someone who WILL pay" handles the freeloader problem.

And what is the Libertarian answer to the freeloader problem? Apparently, from what I've encountered, to stick their hands over their ears, their second pair of hands over their eyes, and shout at the top of their lungs "I see nothing! I hear nothing! It doesn't exist, lalalalala!" Apparently the Libertarian answer to the freeloader problem is to move to some alternate universe where unicorns are real and cotton candy grows on trees and human beings are perfect. It's the same universe as the hardcore Marxists, in other words, a universe where human beings are perfect and do not behave the way real life humans in this universe behave.

In the end, Libertarians and Marxists are fellow travelers -- utopians whose philosophies have failed everywhere they've ever been tried because they do not take into account the actual nature of humanity: hairless apes, monkeys with delusions of grandeur, with all the vices you'd expect from monkeys such as a propensity to fling poo, selfishness, an inability to cooperate except insofar as led by an alpha male, and a willingness to follow that alpha male regardless of what he leads them into. Monkeys. That's all human beings are. Marxists and Libertarians pretend that humans somehow can transcend a million years of evolution and become perfect. That, in the end, is why Marxist and Libertarian theories have failed wherever tried -- reality simply is, and can't just be wished away by pretending.

- Badtux the Realist Penguin

Ah-choo!

But this ragweed don't make me sneeze. Cross Canadian Ragweed, singing "Suicide Blues" off of their self-titled album.

I guess you'd call this "alt-country" or "country-rock" or "country-blues-rock" or something along those lines. Me, I simply call it music.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Calcination

Scout Niblett has a new album out Tuesday, The Calcination of Scout Niblett. Here is the review I think best expresses why I like Scout Niblett's stuff.

I'll try to re-arrange my music queue to jump one of the tracks from the new album in line (I'm currently queued up to February 15th). Don't know if I'll manage it, most of the stuff I have queued up follows a particular progression, e.g., a heavy metal shredder one day, then Willie Nelson the next day (WTF? What does Willie have to do with a heavy metal shredder?! But it makes sense, and I'll tell you why). In the meantime, I already have the album on order, I'll do a review as soon as I get it some time next week.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Strings

Okay, so I have my guitars, now what about strings?

The Duo-Sonic is running Ernie Ball Skinny Top/Heavy Bottom strings (#2215), 10-13-18-30-42-52. It's a short-scale (24" vs. 25.5") electric guitar so straight 10's would be ultra-slinky and impossible to fret cleanly, the slightest pressure would send them way out of tune, and you'd really want to run 12's on the guitar. which would get you basically the bottom three strings. On the other hand, I wanted something slinky that I could easily squirm out of tune to get a sort of wavering psychedelic sound -- if I want a "straight" sound, well, that's why my acoustic guitar exists ;). This set of strings does what I want it to do right now, though I've thought about just putting straight 12's on there -- with the short scale, that would work about like putting 10's on a regular-scale Fender.

The Yamaha 335 acoustic was running Yamaha 12's when I got it. This is a size which is easy to fret on this guitar (easy for an acoustic, anyhow), stays in tune, gets reasonable volume. They sounded okay but were really messy, turning my fretting fingers black. I decided to put some coated strings both to get longer life and cleaner fingers, so I put some D'Addario EXP11 80/20's on there. Big mistake. The low strings are very chunky/rough-feeling and noisy when you move around, they don't have a good "feel" to them at all, and the sound is sort of muffled, the guitar doesn't have as much of a "ring" to it as with the Yamaha strings. And to top it all off, I paid close to $10 for this set of mediocre strings. So I'm not happy. If you have some good acoustic guitar strings that you like, drop me a line in comments...

-- Badtux the Guitar Penguin

Psycho bluegrass

Well, not exactly. This is The Avett Brothers, singing "Laundry Room" off of their album I and Love and You produced by Rick Rubin, who apparently isn't letting being promoted to co-head of Columbia Records stop him from going into the studio and doing his imitation of Rick Rubin reviving the career of Johnny Cash...

I haven't the slightest idea what genre to call this. Maybe "alt-country". Or somethin'.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

How the real world works

Leonard Cohen: prophet. Song is "Everybody Knows", this version is from his Live in London album.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Action and intonation

I was going to do some music tonight, but the action of a couple of my strings was too low (long-time issue) and I decided to fix it (finally!). Gah, I hate adjusting the action on a guitar with the Fender Classic three-piece bridge! Well, actually, after the second pair I pretty much hit it right -- I loosened the strings a bit, twisted the screw to pull the bridge back a suitable-seeming amount, used the teeny allen wrench on the height adjusters to bring'em up a couple of turns, and there we were, only the teensiest bit of fine tuning needed. It's the 5A and 1E strings that are the PITA with this bridge!

Ah well, at least I didn't have any plans for the evening otherwise, due to having to work late today...

-- Badtux the Music

Paul Krugman has a new book out

Or maybe it's just a revised edition of an old book? It's a book of essays called The Accidental Theorist, and economist Brad DeLong reviews it. To quote Brad:

Critics of Paul Krugman call him acerbic and boastful, unfair on the attack and unwilling to make concessions on the defense, certain that he is correct, and always sure that those who disagree are mendacious or foolish (or both). And I cannot deny that these criticisms are accurate. But all these are outweighed by one fact: he is almost always--not always, but almost always--right.

That being right thingy must chap some right wing Chicago ass big-time, yo.

-- Badtux the Economics Penguin

Math is hard

Yeah, things really suck now that the Democrats are now in the minority in the Senate, with only 59 Democratic senators out of 100 total. No way they can get anything done with only 59 votes out of 100 votes, such a small minority of votes in the Senate is powerless.

- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
I hear excuses!

Problem making up my bed

For some reason making up my bed never seems to be an easy task. I try my best to get the covers up (mostly because if I don't, my sheet turns into solid fur, and I don't sleep well on fur-covered sheets), but... well. Mencken and The Mighty Fang always seem to re-occupy the premises as soon as I get up to put the coffee on percolating. And no, I can't pull the covers up immediately after getting up because the cats are occupying *different* parts of the bed then, they don't jump off the bed until I leave the bedroom, at which point they jump off the bed to come beg food off of me.

The solution, it seems to me, is obvious: Buy a coffeemaker that has an auto-start timer, so that the amount of time between me getting up and me pouring the first cup of coffee is greatly reduced, hopefully reducing the time window within which my bed can be re-colonized. Sounds like a reasonable solution to me. Certainly more reasonable than disturbing two such warm furry cuddly critters who are cuddling with each other, right?

-- Badtux the Solutions Penguin

Summary of Supremes dance

More on the recent Supreme Court ruling overturning campaign finance limits. Here is a brief summary of what the majority ruled in that decision:

1. Money is speech. Now, to you and me, us moving our lips and actually, like, saying stuff is speech (or writing down what we would say and publishing it). But to the U.S. Supreme Court, money is the EXACT SAME THING as speech, and thereby restricting how much money you can spend is a restriction on free speech.. And Thomas Jefferson's grave could probably be harnessed for electrical generation purposes, it's spinning so fast at that notion.
2. Property has rights. Corporations are property of their stockholders. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the property was the thing that had rights here, and did not even mention the owners of the corporation.
3. Stockholders have twice the free speech rights of regular people. They not only have their individual right of free speech, but they also have the free speech rights of their property. In short, our rich and powerful who control our major corporations have twice the free speech rights of every other person in the nation even without considering the "money is speech" argument.

The intellectual bankruptcy of the U.S. Supreme Courts' ruling in this situation should be obvious to anybody with half a brain. This is as bad and as wrong-headed a decision as the Supreme Court decision that ended the Florida recount and selected George W. Bush as President in 2000, a decision which was so intellectually bankrupt itself that IN THAT VERY SAME DECISION the U.S. Supreme Court even disavowed it as a precedent, in essence writing it into public record that it was a bad decision being made for political purposes. This is what happens when you put Republicans in power -- they select Republican Supreme Court justices, who are just as intellectually bankrupt as the Republican Party itself. They are literally willing to say anything, no matter how stupid it sounds, if it furthers their cause of concentrating power into the hands of a few.

-- Badtux the Politics Penguin

Yeah, that about sums it up

Andrew Sullivan:

So we have a government fused with corporations, a legislature run by corporate lobbyists who have just been given a massive financial gift to control the process even more deeply; we have a theory of executive power advanced by one party that gives the president total extra-legal power over any human being he wants to call an "enemy combatant" and total prerogative in launching and waging wars (remember Cheney did not believe Bush needed any congressional support to invade Iraq); we have a Supreme Court that believes in extreme deference to presidential power; we have a Congress of total pussies on the left and maniacs on the right and little in the middle; we have a 24-hour propaganda channel, run by a multinational corporation and managed by a partisan Republican, demonizing the president for anything he does or does not do; we have the open embrace of torture as a routine aspect of US government; and we have one party urging an expansion of the war on Jihadism to encompass a full-scale war against Iran, an act that would embolden the Khamenei junta and ensure that a civilizational war between the nuttiest Christianists in America and the vilest Islamists metastasizes to Def Con 3.

I think the term Andrew is searching for is, "We're fucked."

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Cluck

Diane Cluck, "Here I Am". She's recorded a number of albums using karaoke boom boxes or something like that, i.e., very low-fi and I'm not quite sure what to think about them. But she certainly delivers live.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Are any RWNJ's *not* kiddie fuckers?

For real. Right wing nut job and Tea Partier Charles Dyer, aka "July4Patriot," arrested for raping a kid.

Most right-wingers love to fuck kids over, but usually just figuratively, not *literally*. As in, cutting off children's health care, fostering policies that lead to child hunger, underfunding schools, so on and so forth. But, as David Neiwert points out, there's an inordinate number of RWNJ's who really *ARE* kiddie fuckers, literally. As he explains: "Evidently, being a pedophile leads to resentment of the government -- probably for its desire to lock you away."

And these are the leaders of the "Tea Party" movement? Good job of being classy buddying up to these kinda folks, Republicans!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

All Americans have equal rights

But, the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled, some people are more equal than others. Because, they ruled, money is speech and thus if you have more money than someone else, you have more free speech rights than that person.

Reminds me of George Orwell's critique of Communism in Animal Farm: "Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer— except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs." Sounds like a description of American society over the past ten years... with bankers in the role of the pigs, and the security establishment in the role of the dogs. Welcome to Soviet America, citizen! Except instead of Party membership, your membership in the Millionaire's club determines whether you're one of those people who are more equal than others.

-- Badtux the Orwellian Penguin

Quote of the day

(Obama) is giving the GOP a free pass and they are cornholing him with the abandon of Larry Craig in an airport john. -- Earthbound Misfit talking about Obama caving on health care.

KKK starts a basketball league

A league for white basketball players. Which, apparently, is supposed to be a cleaner game with less fighting and stuff because, as Archy snarks, We all know that people without color, especially of the Southern persuasion, never cary guns into inappropriate places and that young white men, during their peak years of testosterone production, never flip anyone off, brawl with the spectators, or grab their crotches. All we need to do is look to ice hockey to know that this is true.

Bwahaha! The snark writes itself.

-- Badtux the Snark-appreciatin' Penguin

Bonus: The next ten to fifteen years are going to be brutal as whites become a minority and resort to more and more teabaggery-type attempts at intimidation in order to try to retain white privilege.

Wet crackers

"Another Song About The Rain", by the band Cracker, off of their self-titled first album.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin`

Somebody died

Teh Google News informs me that some nanny who played herself on the drama "Survivor" has died of breast cancer.

Must be news because dying of breath cancer is so rare. Except... according to the American Cancer Society, on average roughly 83 women in the United States die every day of breast cancer. Oh dear, it can't be that we have a double standard here in Amurka, where if it happens to a "celebrity" it's news, but otherwise... not news. Only a sick nation with messed-up priorities could value one human being more than 82 other human beings based solely upon one of them spending a few minutes on a television screen years ago (and doing nothing since), so clearly today was one of those rare days when only ONE woman died of breast cancer. Right? Right?!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Double-take headline of the day

"Dykes take over at Louisiana Tech."

I looked at that headline and was, like, "Wha? Militant lesbians took over a college campus?" I imagined out-of-control dykes with whips and leather standing on the college president's desk slashing him with their whips while shouting, "you WILL give more money to women's sports! You WILL provide a real women's studies program! You WILL provide contraceptives in the campus clinic!"

Then I clicked on the headline to see the actual story, and it was about... a football coach. BORE-ing!

-- Badtux the Bummed Penguin

John Kerry lost

He ran a shoddy campaign, refused to go on the attack to take on the lunacy of his opponent in the general election, did not express any sort of coherent or consistent message other than "I'm not a Republican", was stiff and uncomfortable during the few times he interacted with actual voters, and apparently went through a sex change operation and changed his name to Martha Coakley in order to run for Teddy Kennedy's old Senate seat in Massachusetts. And lost. Of course.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Bubbles!

The Dollyrots were a couple of Florida biology students by the name of Kelly Ogden and Luis Cabezas who were preparing to apply for med school when President George W. Bush was selected by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000. They looked at each other and said something along the lines of, "fuck it, we're doomed anyhow, instead of applying to med school let's find a drummer for our punk band and party all night long." And so they did.

Their music is a sort of bubbly alterna-pop, very tongue-in-cheek and fuck-it-all in nature. Nothing earth shattering, but they have fun, and their music is fun, so who the fuck cares.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Folk music loses a great

Kate McGarrigle, a national treasure of Canada and of folk music in general.

-- Badtux the Folkie Penguin

Quote of the day

Explaining how investors can value a worthless company at $500M: "A market can't regulate the intelligence of investors." (H/T).

The invisible hand appears to be attached to the arm of an utter cretin. But hey, I forgot, "the market is always right and properly values assets." Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Be prepared for your next airline flight

Things have changed somewhat since the Panty Bomber. So here's some handy tips for you to remember for your next flight:

Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Help the homeless, go to jail

Remember, zoning ordinances are more important than human beings. Just ask Dan De Vaul, jailed for letting homeless people camp on his ranch.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Electronic hot

Band is called Northern Kind, and it's kind of bubbly synth pop like you might have heard during the 1980's, except without all the reverb you would have heard on the voice during the 80's. Song is named "Automatic", off of their album Fifty Three Degrees North. Oddly enough, though the duo is English, their album did best in... uhm, Sweden. Hmm. Guess they like long-legged blond singers in Sweden, wonder why?

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

A new king is crowned

No, not the Reverend. But, rather, something altogether more important: PIZZA! Today's pizza for review is the Digiorno Crispy Flatbread Pizza, Pepperoni and Fire-Roasted Bell Peppers. So what's it taste like?

In a word: Yummy.

The crust: It has a toasty taste as a thin crust pizza should have, but also has an appropriate bready taste, like a freshly-baked loaf of bread. The pepperoni is plentiful and zesty. The cheese is rich and smooth and complements the zesty taste of the pepperoni quite well. The bell peppers added an interesting flavor of its own to the mix, and the sauce was appropriately tangy and well balanced with the taste of the crust and cheese.

The only real flaw of this pizza was that the sauce was a bit skimpy in places, a thin crust pizza cannot have much sauce on it or it becomes soupy, but the sauce was not evenly distributed and there were places where it tasted a bit cheesier-breadier than it should have (that is, it fell out of balance). Still, the cheese and crust were good enough that this was not obnoxious. Hopefully they will improve their quality control on how they spread their sauce in the future to spread it more evenly. But still, even with that flaw, this is the best frozen pizza I've ever eaten -- well, other than the Digiorno Rising Crust Pepperoni, which had similar traits. Digiorno's slogan is "It's not delivery, it's DiGiorno". In my opinion, this pizza goes way beyond any thin-crust pizza I've ever had delivered, which invariably ends up steamed and limp. Definitely two flippers up!

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

Oh yeah, almost forgot

Happy Perfect Token Negro Day to y'all. Today is the day where, all over the land, teachers present to their students and networks present to their viewers the image of the Perfect Token Negro -- mature, grey haired, pleasant, well-dressed, and so forth. Their Perfect Token Negro never crowds into offices of politicians demanding social justice, equal opportunity, and voting rights, never listens to that icky "rap" music that is so offensive to white bread honkey ears, never puts on bling or drives a big luxury car to display his wealth (hon, that's restricted to white people, when a black person does it that's scary!), and most of all, never, ever, hurts a white person even if that white person is trying to hurt him.

See, Perfect Token Negro is, like, PERFECT, so if the white man slaps his face, he'll just take it like the proper servile servant that he is, rather than fuck the white man up. Of course, Perfect Token Negro isn't *real* -- not at all like the Rev. Martin Luther King, who was a rabble-rouser who set up perfect photo ops to demonstrate Southern brutality against blacks but was no martyr until the day the bullet took him down -- but what the hey, the *real* Martin Luther King Jr. isn't around, so there's nobody to say, "hold it, Token Perfect Negro *ISN'T ME!*". Well, except for various leftover relics of the 60's Civil Rights movement, who, for reasons of their own, have helped elevate Perfect Token Negro to his pedestal, but so it goes.

And do I sound utterly cynical about "Martin Luther King Jr. Day" and all the festivities that go with it? Fuck yeah. It's all a scam, in the end, intended to keep people from taking effective action to better their plight by saying, "hey, Perfect Token Negro never would go outside the system like that and try to bust it up." So it goes.

-- Badtux the Cynical Penguin

Quote of the day

The Democrats are a clapped out, gut-free lobbyist machine. The Republicans are insane. The system is therefore paralyzed beyond repair. -- Andrew Sullivan

Thing is, the system didn't get this way by accident. It's part of a deliberate strategy by the Republican Party to make the nation ungovernable. Why they think anarchy and chaos will be good for them... all I can think is that they are channeling the ghosts of Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco, who both took advantage of anarchy and chaos to establish strongman rule in their respective countries, and quite expect to perform the exact same feat in the United States even though they themselves will be the cause of the anarchy and chaos. They are expecting 50%+1 of Americans to be total cretins willing to follow a dictator who promises them better times. And I don't know if I'd bet against them on that.

On the other side -- as Andrew points out, the Republicans are batshit insane. And have proved to be utterly incompetent. Look at Shrubbery the Lesser. Darth Cheney undoubtedly put him into power with the firm expectation that the Shrubbery would seize all the power that Darth Cheney wanted, then declare martial law when the nation descended into anarchy and chaos. Instead, the Shrubbery was a lazy little shit who did as little as possible (though what he did do -- get the nation into two quagmires, run up huge debts, etc. -- was bad enough) and who was so tired of being President by the time of his last two years of office that he never even considered simply seizing power at gunpoint. The goons who run the Republican Party know that they're so obnoxious, so obviously evil, that they can't get elected, yet their tools that they do insert into office tend to be lazy cretins with no real interest in following the Franco/Mussolini formula. But relying upon the incompetence of our enemies to obtain victory is stupid whether you're a progressive or the IDF in Lebanon 2006. The IDF, accustomed to easy victories over cretinous enemies, ran into a buzz-saw put together by the first competent enemy they had ever encountered and limped back home with its tail tucked between its hind legs. Sooner or later, they're either going to get a tool into office who isn't a lazy cretin, or they're going to figure out some way to get Diebolded into office. And then... well. Imagine Hitler if he'd had nukes and aircraft carriers. Ick.

-- Badtux the Apocalyptic Penguin

World's most dangerous job

Apparently the world's most dangerous job is #2 leader of al-Qaeda. At least, every other day you hear about the #2 guy in al Qaeda getting whacked, this time in Yemen. You'd think, like, there'd be as hortage of people willing to be promoted into that spot. But noooo, apparently not.

Well, either that, or somebody is lying desperately. Your call.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Ambience

This is "Allelujah", from the album subHuman by the "band" Recoil (Alan Wilder of Depeche Mode fame, with whoever he rounded up). The video was fan-made by Russian fans with Alan's permission, the Russian fans also rounded up the money to actually record and do the first pressing of the album itself. That was Alan's work-around to the problem that he can't find anybody willing to publish his music.

This seems like it's going back to an earlier model of the music industry, the patron model, which was the case up until the music industry was invented in the 19th century. Which perhaps is appropriate, since we're devolving back to a feudal economy (and Russia is our future -- they're already there) where a few filthy rich oligarchs are our noblemen and the rest of us... peasants. Or servants. Whatever. The problem with the patron model is that in the 18th century no petty nobleman or prince of the Church would have dared not have a court composer to compose tunes for the enjoyment of the court, but today's lords of the universe seem to have a singular disinterest in cultural matters. They're too busy snarling at each other for the last meat on the bones of nations to think about petty things like music. In Alan's case, the children of those oligarchs became interested in his plight and swooped in on a lark to make him a project. But that's hardly a real solution to the future of music, there are only so many children of oligarchs, and they tend to have singularly short attention spans.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

A reminder about my blogrolls

They got zapped in the transition from the old blog to the new snarkypenguin.blogspot.com blog, so if you don't see your blog there it's not a conspiracy or anything, it probably just got overlooked during the transition. If you would like your blog in my blogroll, or if there's an econo-blog you know about that I should be reading, just drop me a line in email or as a comment here. Note that if you don't have a reciprocal link on your own blog I may or may not add it to one of my visible blogrolls, but if it's interesting it will go onto *some* blogroll...

-- Badtux the Metablogging Penguin

Not so unusual after all...

Asian-American songwriters, that is. I mentioned previously that there didn't seem to be a lot of Asian-Americans in the American music industry, but here we are with a second one within the last three months. Singer is Priscilla Ahn, song is named "Dream" off of her album A good day. Great voice, we'll have to see whether she gets to use it.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

New guitar

My old Yammy was utterly worn out. Frets worn down, divots in the fingerboard, the works. So I replaced it with this new Yamaha FX335. Just a cheap plywood guitar, but has a pickup and sounds decent for what it is.

Song is "Everything Turns To Shit", from my White Trash Blues cycle back in the late 1990's. This was an experiment to see how well the new guitar sounded plugged in. Answer: Decent. Too bad the mook singing into the microphone doesn't sound anywhere near as good as the guitar.

-- Badtux the Songwriting Penguin

Okay, not all pop is bad

This is Paramore, off of their album Brand New Eyes. This is standard alterna-pop, nothing particularly earth-shattering there. Still, these youngsters do a great job with the form -- and these are youngsters. Hayley Williams was born in 1988. That means she was a whole 16 years old when she begged her way into the band in 2004... siiigh! Makes this penguin feel old. As well as somehow unworthy... I didn't accidentally stumble into what I wanted to do with my life until the ripe old age of 30. These youngsters who decide what they want to do with their life and then just go out and friggin' do it... I don't know if I'll ever understand'em, but may the Great Penguin bless'em, they make this world so much more colorful and interesting with their enthusiasm and energy.

-- Badtux the Elderly Penguin

Tunch has a posse

John Cole over at Balloon Juice is posting some pictures depicting his cat Tunch. I'm starting to see a pattern. Check this out and tell me if you can see it too:

Hmm... here is the result, a photo of Tunch applying the mighty Paw of Doom to a goggie who poked a wet nose where it was unwanted:

Think maybe John obeys a bit too well when Tunch says "Feed me"? Oh wait, I forgot, Tunch is just fluffy. Yes, FLUFFY. That's right, fluffy!

-- Badtux the Amused Penguin

A song for Pat Robertson

Man, if Frank Zappa were still alive he'd be having a field day with ole' Pat. This song of course was about Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker, but Pat gets mentioned in it too. The title, directed at all three of them BTW, is "Jesus Christ Thinks You're a Jerk".

Indeed. Indeed.

-- Badtux the Easily Amused Penguin

Revolution? Yeah right

So you want a revolution, you say? You say that the inevitable result of these asswipes on Wall Street looting and plundering the nation while millions of Americans are homeless and hungry is going to be these asswipes hanging from the nearest lamp-post? I got three words for you, compadre: Bull fucking shit.

Yeah, you got a lot of genuine rage out there, embodied by the so-called "tea party" movement. But somehow I doubt that a movement dominated by oldsters waving signs around saying "tea bagging for change!" (frisky granny, that!) while chanting “keep your government hands off my Medicare!” has the intellectual heft to connect the dots that we connect about who's to blame for their plight. One thing is clear: “Let them eat cake” is not a viable solution. But my fear is that the solution that the majority arrive at will be the same as the majority arrived at in much of the world as the Great Depression settled in — dictatorship by a “Strong Man” who promises to save them. That rarely turns out well, the streets typically run with blood afterwards, and the villains who created the Great Depression through their greed and stupidity were rarely the ones lined up against the wall, rather, labor unionists, Jews, socialists, etc. were the typical victims, none of whom had any hand in the collapse of the banking system that was the primary cause of the Depression (liquidity trap, y’know).

Reminds me of an old music joke: Q: How can you tell the drum riser is level? A: The drummer is drooling equally out of both sides of his mouth. Replace the word "drummer" with "teabagger", heh. So anyhow, these are the folks who are gonna storm the mansions of Wall Street moguls and pull them all out and string'em up from the nearest lamp post by their neck-ties? I don't think so, mah friend... these folks are so dumb they can't even *find* those friggin' mansions, much less figure out what to do once they get there!

So anyhow, that's my bet on the future of Amurka if we *do* have the "revolution" that some loons are advocating: Strong-man rule by a fascist dictator who promises to put to death all them Messicans, Negros, and soshalists that is bringin' our nation down and bring our nation back to its rightful place in the world glory hallelujah Ayeeee-men! That's the only kind of revolution I see in America's future. And the tea baggers will just run to be the stormtroopers for this asswipe, whoever he turns out to be. Face facts: The average American is dumber than a stump and as easily led to safety by a fascist asswipe as a dog is led on a leash. There just ain't "there" there, insofar as revolutionary capability is concerned.

-- Badtux the Unrevolutionary Penguin

I feel safer

From EBM, I find out that the TSA is defending America from a dire threat that would kill us all, all of us, I say, I say. Whew! That makes me feel a lot safer!

Oh yeah, that threat... An eight year old Cub Scout.

The horror! Oh the horror! (Shudder).

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Garbage

Well, not exactly. Shirley Manson *was* the lead singer of the band Garbage, but this is her solo act from the score to the Terminator TV series. Do check out the Garbage albums though, especially the first one, which is surprisingly good.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Good news!

Initial unemployment claims have begun to... fall?

Uhm, not exactly. 800K new unemployment claims were filed last week. You can say "new claims are declining!" only if you apply a seasonal "fudge factor" to them. That normally applies for the post-Christmas season because the Christmas workers get laid off during the first week of January. But retailers didn't hire a lot of Christmas workers this year, they simply ceased laying off as fast as previously. My suspicion is that the traditional "seasonal adjustment" that the BLS has always applied to the post-Christmas unemployment filings is no longer applicable.

- Badtux the Employment Penguin

Pat Robertson, douchebag

I’ve given up on commenting on Pat Robertson’s assholery. Every time he opens his piehole, you’re reminded of just how evil, venal, and stupid the man really is. It’s like throwing a pie at a barn that’s three feet in front of your face — there’s just no challenge in it, and it’s boring as hell after a while.

His recent comments blaming some supposed pact Haitians made with The Devil for the recent earthquake are just par for the course for this miserable excuse for a "man". You ask me, He ought to be airdropped into Haiti naked, with no ID or anything, and condemned to the same misery as those darkies he despises. ‘Nuff said!

- Badtux the Vicious Penguin

Crazy is crazy whether Muslim or Christian

Crazed Somali Islamist extremists who threaten death to cartoonist Kurt Westergaard for making fun of their invisible guy in the sky, meet crazed American tea-bagger Christian extremists who, err, threaten death to cartoonist Mark Fiore for making fun of, well, them.

Two peas in a pod, that, wot?

-- Badtux the Crazy-scryin' Penguin

A conspiracy of suck

One of the stupidest things I've ever encountered is the notion that the lousy state of public education here in the USA is somehow a conspiracy by "Them" (for some mysterious "Them") to make us stupid so they can rule us. Which is complete and utter bullshit. Look: school boards here in the USA are local. Schools are run by local communities, not by "Them". It's true that states can set a curriculum, but the curriculum is a minimum, and half the time the schools ignore the damned thing anyhow except insofar as it's embodied in exit exams because most of these curriculums are stupid and there's nobody in the classroom with the teacher to validate that she in fact taught every stupid thing in the curriculum guide.

So that whole conspiracy thing is bullshit. What you are seeing is the education We The People want. Parents don't discipline their little heathens and don't want the schools to do so, either. Parents don't give their children any intellectual stimulation at home and don't want their children to get any at school, either, because if the little brats could think their way out of a cardboard box then the little brats might start doubting some of the "truths" they're told by their parents about invisible guys in the sky and crap like that. The old people who dominate school board elections don't want anything taught in the schools that weren't taught in the schools when they were kids 60 years ago, and want the exact same teaching methods used in the classroom that were used when they were kids 60 years ago, despite the fact that the world is much different now from what it was 60 years ago and if you look at the actual numbers, 60 years ago was even worse than today. If the school district has "those" kids in it -- you know, THOSE kids, brown, maybe speak one of them thare foreign gabbles instead of God's language, the language He wrote the Bible in, English? -- they don't want to pay taxes to educate "those" kids and underfund the schools in that district to the point where all the good teachers and administrators leave, which means that the schools fall apart because only the incompetent or the venal are left. And so on and so forth. The only conspiracy in the U S of A, my friend, is the conspiracy of STUPID. 50% of all people are below average, and that average is pretty much suck.

Even authoritarian dictatorships don't crash their economic viability this way. See: South Korea prior to the democracy era, Singapore today, China today, etc. If someone conquered the U S of A they couldn't do a better job of destroying our schools than we've already done ourselves. Yet... the majority of kids do leave school with some basic skills like reading and arithmetic. It IS possible to get an education in our schools. Just horribly frustrating both for the teachers and the kids, both of whom are trapped in a system designed by cretins (a.k.a. We The People) for generating cretins. We get the schools (as a nation) that we want -- and deserve. Alas.

- Badtux the Former Teacher Penguin

Say cheese!

The Shat. Of course.

I have only one question: Why has there never been a cheese named after William Shatner?!

-- Badtux the Easily Amused Music Penguin

Leno/O'Brien

Who gives a shit? Turn your damned TV off. It's just a waste of time and makes you stupid (yes, we have scientific proof of that). Sheesh!

-- Badtux the WTF Penguin

Don't Be Evil

Google re-considers its China strategy, reconsiders whether staying in China results in sufficient complicity with evil to outweigh any good that it does. I suppose it helps that Google isn't making much, if any, money in China due to its refusal to host servers in China and the resulting costs of hauling queries to the nearest data center in a free country -- it's always easier to Not Be Evil if you don't lose any money by doing so. Still, maybe more companies should think about whether Being Evil outweighs any potential profits they might make in China...

-- Badtux the Evil Penguin

Foreclosures down? Don't bet on it

So the recent news is foreclosures are down in California, one of the bubble markets hurt worst by the collapse of the bubble. But is that good news? Well, not really.

The primary reason why foreclosures are down is because even though California is a civil foreclosure state, foreclosure actions are clogging up the legal system. Lenders' lawyers simply can't process foreclosures fast enough to clear them, local sheriffs can't hold sheriffs' sales fast enough, once foreclosures happen the unlawful detainer actions needed to evict the residents are taking up to six months to happen because there aren't enough process servers and skip tracers to track down and serve the former owners of the home, and even after the unlawful detainer notice is served, I notice on the Stanislaus County Superior Court docket that unlawful detainers filed in December have their case management conferences scheduled for March or April. Quite frankly, the whole system is completely clogged up in a way that hasn't happened since the Great Depression, it was not built for this sort of volume and it doesn't help that the Governator has judges working four-day weeks in order to save money, that's caused a backlog in all cases. In one case I have personal knowledge of, the lawsuit was filed in July, the summons was served in December, and the case management conference is in March! That's just plain nuts, no so-called "justice" system can operate like that and still be credible.

We could have had a "Day Zero" reset of the entire mortgage market -- basically, reset all mortgages to current market rates with freshly printed Fed money monetizing the difference -- but that would have "rewarded misbehavior" and thus been "wrong". So clogging up the entire legal system with this bullshit so that people can't handle their normal legal business in a timely manner is wrong? I pity landlords with deadbeat tenants, they can't even get the deadbeats out of their properties so they can rent to non-deadbeats because unlawful detainers are taking six months! If that isn't "rewarding misbehavior", I don't know what the fuck is... but deal is, not only is it rewarding misbehavior (deadbeat tenants who don't leave once lawfully evicted with 30 days notice), it's also punishing the innocent! At least monetizing the bubble would have not punished the innocent.

But whoa, I keep forgetting, America is all about lose-lose propositions. If everybody doesn't lose, then it's bad. That's our whole approach to *any* societal problem in America today, find a solution where everybody loses, because if someone wins, that person is "unfairly" benefiting from the solution. Siiiiiiigh! What a spiteful vicious buncha motherfuckers we Americans are, eh?

-- Badtux the Housing Penguin

Psych!

Steven Wilson is a one of the more interesting artists that emerged in the 1990's. With his bands No Man and Porcupine Tree he produced a number of albums that mixed 60's-style psychedelia with modern pop trappings that veered into trance, shoe-gazing, and everywhere else under the sun. As this song, "Puncture Wounds" off of his 2008 album Insurgentes, makes clear, he's still around and still writing some interesting music.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Uninspired

I moved the lyrics of the new song around into an order that worked better for what I was attempting to do, but I'm not happy at all with the result. Oh, I like the guitar work. Great drone, and now that I've played it another ten-fifteen times I hit it pretty much every time -- but the lyrics aren't ominous enough to go with the guitar work. Back to the drawing board, because the musical accompaniment is what I was aiming for as far as the general tone of the song (ominous and mysterious), but clearly I need to start over on the lyrics side.

And therein lies the secret of "the creative process" -- 1 part inspiration, 9 parts perspiration. Unfortunately the 1 part inspiration isn't with me today. Siiiigh!

-- Badtux the Songwriting Penguin

Reality

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Or a human sharing a home with a cat, for that matter -- honestly, do you know how often it is that I get to sleep on my entire bed, rather than just on whatever tiny piece my kittehs let me sleep on? Uhm, neither do I, it's been so long...

-- Badtux the Cat-owned Penguin

In the mode

Some bands just keep going and going like the energizer bunny and never seem to run out of steam. Depeche Mode certainly seems to be in that category, as far as I know they're the only survivor of 1980's electronica though they've moved far beyond their early sound. This is from their 2009 album Sounds of the Universe, and is named "Wrong". They still got it!

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Taliban has woodies

Nearly-undetectable wooden IED's, that is. They can't be detected by metal detectors because, duh, they have no metal.

Chank one up for the Theory of Evolution. The Theory of Evolution hypothesizes that natural selection -- the survival of the fittest -- will naturally improve the adaptation of a species for its environment. In Afghanistan, stupid people die, the smartest and fittest and most vicious people live. So we're breeding super-Taliban, just as we bred super-bugs with antibiotics earlier in this decade. They're getting smarter and smarter because the dumbest ones end up dead, leaving only smarter and smarter ones to come up with ways to bedevil the occupying force.

We declared victory in Iraq and (largely) went home. Time to do the same in Afghanistan, methinks...

-- Badtux the Evolutionary Penguin

Slidey!

An acoustic slide guitar being played blues-style with harmonica and an acoustic stomp box for the beat. This appears to be an advertisement for Ellis Guitars, an Australian custom guitar maker. No idea who the players are, Googling the names on the video does *not* turn up any Aussies... but this is some nice jazzy-bluesy riffing anyhow.

Updated: Have now located the players. They're a couple of teenagers from New South Wales (Australia), "Lightning Jack" Ceriani and Michael "Mic" Burley (*NOT* "Mick"). Good job, guys!

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

December's unemployment numbers

The actual unemployment number for December 2009 hit 17.3%, basically unchanged from the previous two months. Note that I am counting everybody who is available to work full time, who wants to work full time, who is not currently holding a full-time job. This is how unemployment was measured during the Great Depression (not with the bullshit statistical corrections currently applied by the Bureau of Labor Statistics).

So, where are we on the Great Depression Scale? Well, closing in on 1932. But not there. And hopefully won't get there, but that depends on continued stimulus, which has at least stopped the numbers from going upwards.

Sooo.... what about all this news about economic upturns yada yada yada? Utter nonsense. The economy can't turn up until consumption turns up. Government consumption has increased since January 2009, but that was more than offset by a reduction in private consumption as people lost their jobs. In other words, until people have jobs, and until people who DO have jobs feel secure in consuming rather than saving to create their own ad-hoc unemployment insurance since this country's system of unemployment insurance sucks donkey dicks, the economy can't turn up.

At which point you say, "hold it -- isn't this chicken and egg? You need jobs before the economy to turn up, but you need the economy to turn up before you can have jobs!" Oh bullshit. There's tons of things that can be done. First of all, you can un-outsource some of the jobs that have been outsourced overseas. Start taxing companies on their overseas operations on a level that would make it just as expensive to build shit overseas as it would be to build shit in America, and you'll see them swarming back to America like flies to a cow patty. It's a myth that overseas workers can build shit better than Americans can -- Toyota's American-built cars are just as good as their Japan-built cars, in fact, they export cars from the USA to Japan -- overseas is just cheaper, usually. Well, make it stop being cheaper, dammit! Now I hear you saying, "but... but... Smoot-Hawley! It made the Great Depression worse!" Oh bull fucking shit, imports during 1929 were only 4.2% of the United States' GNP and exports were only 5.0%, meaning that the most that the tariff could have affected the economy by was 0.8% net exports. US GDP fell by *30%* in the period 1929-1933. In case you can't add, 30% is a helluva lot more than 0.8%. And today the U.S. is a net *importer*, not a net *exporter*, so it would have *positive* effect on the U.S. economy to reduce imports by pulling back more manufacturing to the USA.

And even if we can't get the jobs back, we can get people spending again by making it *seem* like they have jobs, money-wise. Just set unemployment benefits at 80% of previous income, *for the duration of the recession plus six months*, and people will breathe a sigh of relief and start spending again, content that if they *do* lose their job, they'll have to cut back a bit but will still be able to keep their homes and cars. Unemployment payments in many states are bullshit. For example, Arizona's maximum unemployment benefit is $240/week, or $12,480 per year. Crap, that isn't even poverty level, the only thing you can rent for that little money is a cardboard box under a freeway aqueduct. Who the fuck is going to spend money right now when they know that they will be homeless if required to rely on the bullshit that is U.S. "unemployment insurance"? Instead, they're going to shovel every dollar they can get their hands on into savings as their own ad-hoc "unemployment insurance", basically seeming like they're *already* unemployed as far as the economy is concerned.

And that's just two ideas off the top of my head. Give me ten minutes and I can come up with a hundred more ideas. In short, there's a lot that could be done to increase employment and consumption and get the economy moving, either directly or effectively. But none of it's getting done, because politics in America has turned into partisan bullshit where nobody gives a damn about America and Americans, just about how many political points they can score. People who attack Americans are enemies of America, period. Remember that, next time you turn on Faux News and see "news" anchors attacking Americans...

-- Badtux the Economics Penguin

Wonderwall Part 4

The most ironic cover of "Wonderwall" *evah*! I can just imagine the Gallagher brothers looking at this and saying, "What bollocks!"

And this ends the Wonderwall Marathon. We shall return to normal music blogging momentarily ;).

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Covers

One of the things any band has to do when starting out is to do covers. First, that's what people expect when they go to hear an unknown band in the bar. They're okay with the band doing a few of their own songs, but they want to hear covers of their favorite songs too. But also, there's the simple fact that you have to know how songs are put together before you can write songs of your own, and the best way to do that is to listen carefully to other songs and deconstruct them and put them back together again in your own style as you play them.

You haven't heard any of the songs that I cover for the simple reason that I'm in no mood to worry about ASCAP, which has started trolling websites looking for covers so they can get the mechanicals due to the original songwriters. Besides, it's pointless -- given my (lack of) singing voice, you're better off listening to the original. Still, a list of lyrics printouts in my pile above my screen that I've played recently might give you an idea of what's at my fingertips influences-wise:

• The Animals/Traditional: "House of the Rising Sun"
• Steve Earle: "Goodbye"
• Pete Seeger: "Where have all the flowers gone"
• Steve Earle: "Ft. Worth Blues"
• Lucinda Williams: "Drunken Angel"
• Drive By Truckers/Jason Isbell: "Decoration Day"
• Cat Power: "The Sleepwalker"
• Bruce Springsteen: "Downbound Train"
• Townes Van Zandt: "Pancho and Lefty"
• Oasis: "Wonderwall". (Okay, I only learned this one because everybody else was covering it, so why not me? ;).

And of course a bunch of my own songs that get played from time to time when my fingers get itchy and want to play with my guitar. When I get the urge to play something, I print out the lyrics and prop them up against the drawer unit above my computer so it's at eye level with my microphone (I don't need to print out tabs or anything, I already know what the song sounds like, it's the lyrics I don't remember). Then when done, the printout goes into the pile above the screen. Thus my reference to a pile...

-- Badtux the Songwriting Penguin

And if you're a masochist... a quicky bounce of a *very* rough take of 18, this is about the fourth time through and I'm still deciding what I like and don't like so I can change it to be what I like.

Wonderwall Part 3

Chan Marshall (Cat Power) had a gorgeous cover in 2000 for her "Covers Record" with just her voice and what appears to be a borrowed acoustic guitar that she is very awkwardly strumming (it certainly isn't her Silvertone 1448 electric guitar, which she has a relationship with rather than this awkward strum).

The Gallagher brothers hate Wonderwall. They complain that every time they're in concert, the audience makes them play it. But if it was such a terrible song, would so many people be covering it?

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Music shortage?

If you made a suggestion for a song for the daily YouTubery, your request wouldn't get played until sometime in early February. Yeah, I have a *lot* of music queued up for you. No shortage of good music out there. Though can someone give me some pointers to things with horns? I have a brass deficiency!

Now back to the grindstone of figuring out how to make 18 work...

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Wonderwall Part 2

Ryan Adams covered it with just a single guitar and a cello. He also changes the melody slightly to deal with his vocal range, which is rather limited. Compare/contrast with the original in the previous posting...

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

18

I was listening to some new stuff on my iPod on the way to and from work today, and there was a song that made me stop and replay it a number of times. It was a very mysterious song that went around in circles back to a few key lines that repeated in various places and making more sense each time, almost a dirge, but slowly I picked out those critical lines, remembered some personal background on that artist, and figured out what it was maybe about. But thinking about it, I was like, wow, that's a really cool way to put a song together.

I've previously noted my biggest failing as a songwriter -- I'm basically a storyteller, not a poet, so I want to tell a story. But a good poem -- and a good song -- are as much about what they *don't* say as what they *do* say. The goal is to leave some ambiguity, some mystery, so that the listener can create their own story. It is as much about engagement with the listener as it is about saying something specific. So anyhow, "The Promised Land" wasn't a good vehicle for trying out that technique because it has a specific story to say, so instead I sat down and did a first rough cut of a new song called "18" tonight. No mp3 yet because parts of the lyrics are still "mumble mumble mumble" because I couldn't think of anything to fit there while I was just blurting out lyrics into the microphone (but I have no shortage of ideas of what to put there so that'll get resolved) plus the chord sequence and melody are going to change because I used one of my basic all-purpose sequences to avoid having the music get in the way of creating the lyrics while I was trying to put that together, but it'll go through the same process as usual -- I'll write down lyrics, try them out again singing them into the microphone, some of them won't "feel" right and I'll change them, wash, rinse, repeat.

As for someone who asks, "where do you get your ideas?", ideas are not something I'm ever particularly short of. In this particular case, it is a song about something that I read in the newspaper combined with something that happened to someone I know. The subject matter of the song I kept hitting the "repeat" button on knocked it loose, though it's an entirely different subject matter. The problem is too many ideas, rather than a shortage of them, and the only reason I don't get back to work and finish that desert novel is because of a time shortage, it's a lot quicker to write a song than a novel.

-- Badtux the Creative Penguin

Rock'n'roll, groovy!

Yeah, I felt it. Well, sort of. More like heard it, since it made the broom propped up against the wall fall over onto the floor with a "bang". It was like, "WTF is that all about? Musta been a small earthquake" kinda thing, not a "oh shit we're all gonna die!" kinda thing. Routine for the Bay area, in other words...

-- Badtux the Rockin' Penguin

War on... what again?

Just thinking about the Underpants Bomber. I haven't posted on it before because, well, there's no "there" there. Some cretin tried to light his junk, got tackled by other passengers, problem ended. Worthy of about 15 minutes on the nightly news, then story over until the moron goes to trial, at which point he gets another 15 minutes of fame. Yawn. BORE-ing.

But then there came the collective underwear-soiling reaction of the Reich Wing and their enablers in the press, a collective underwear-soiling that is still going on today, and slowly I realized that the Underpants Bomber is a perfect symbol of the "War on Terror". Because the war isn't *really* on "terror" (which, after all, is a tactic, and you can't go to war with a tactic). Rather, it's really a War on Clean Undies -- a concerted attempt to have the American public soil their undies whenever prompted to do so. And the Underpants Bomber's roasted undies are the perfect symbol to use to prompt the American people to soil their undies once again.

Clean undies. According to the Reich Wing, they're the terrorist's best friends. Soil your undies upon prompting by your Party commissars in the media, or the terrorists win!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Wonderwall

In the mid 90's, the Gallagher brothers claimed that they were going to be bigger than the Beatles. Turns out that this was their only real hit on American soil. Guess they had more ego than talent after all...

The most interesting thing about "Wonderwall" is not this original tune, but, rather, the many, many covers that have been done in different styles. I will explore some of those covers in further segments.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

This guy needs to talk to John Cochrane

John Cochrane is an advocate of the efficient markets hypothesis, which states that the market will always trend towards greatest efficiency and thus regulation in order to prevent market distortions and systemic risks is not necessary. According to John Cochrane, markets are always rational and efficient.

On the other side of the issue of the rationality and efficiency of markets, John Cochrane states that the financial crisis was caused by a speech by President Bush acknowledging that financial markets were in trouble, and not by the problems generated by insolvency at the nation's largest banks. In short, markets are so fragile and irrational that a mere speech can cause them to do hysterical and destructive things.

I have only one question now: Has John Cochrane talked to John Cochrane about this? Just askin'!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

So much for that "Christmas Bounce"

ADP reports December payroll down by 84,000. While this isn't the official figures -- they come out on Friday -- the ADP figures have by and large mirrored private non-farm non-governmental job gain and loss over the past couple of years. So all the desperate "shop! shop! shop!" action of December could not keep Americans employed... why are people talking about deficits right now, again?

-- Badtux the Baffled Economist Penguin

Jimi's ghost

Band is named The Black Keys, song is named "Set you Free", off of their album Thickfreakness. Kinda like Jimi came back as a skinny white boy from Ohio, just in Dan Auerbach's general approach to the guitar...

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

"a moral and practical failure"

Creators of modern death penalty disavow it, stating that there are "current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment.”

Which is no surprise here. Any system which lets O.J. off for killing his ex-wife, while putting a kid to death for driving a car, cannot be said to be even minimally adequate at doing its supposed purpose. The failings of the death penalty could perhaps be excused if it served as a deterrent to crime, but it doesn't -- states with the death penalty actually have more murders per capita than states without the death penalty, even when the socio-economic status of the residents (the factor most tied to crime) is taken into account. So it's clearly failing as a deterrent. The failings of the death penalty could perhaps be excused if it was the only way to keep murderers off the streets. But it isn't, life imprisonment without opportunity for parole costs less than the death penalty (due to all the checks and balances that are put into place to supposedly keep innocent men from being executed), and serves the same purpose.

Given all of this, it is clear that the death penalty is a moral and practical failure. It executes people for being poor minorities while letting wealthy people off the hook, and it is applied in ways which are an abject insult to the fundamental principals of justice. The only reason to have the death penalty given the fact that it is an unnecessary practical failure is because of blood lust -- a desire for vengeance. But blood lust and vengeance is not an acceptable principal for organizing a society around -- that way leads us into the realm of the Islamic and Israeli jihadis who try to kill anybody who has ever done them wrong, and in case you haven't noticed, both the Islamic states and the State of Israel are abject failures propped up only by Western infusions of vast sums of money (direct aid in the case of Israel, oil money in the case of the Islamists). Blood lust and vengeance is not Christian either, see Romans 12:19, which reserves vengeance to the Supreme Being. There simply is no -- zero -- justification left for the death penalty here in the United States, other than a justification of blood lust and vengeance which is completely contradictory to all moral codes that underly modern civilization.

-- Badtux the Law Penguin

Update: What effect has death penalty or lack thereof had on the murder rate in major states? Let's look at New York State vs., say, Texas. NY re-enacted the death penalty in 1996, and overturned it in 2004. So let's look at 2003 Texas/New York murder rates per 100k population and compare them to 2008 Texas/New York to see what effect the overturn of the death penalty law had in New York State. Let's see, 2003: NY 4.9 TX 6.4 , 2008: NY 4.3 for 13% improvement, TX 5.6 for 12.5% improvement, uhm, yeah, repeal of the death penalty made no -- zero -- difference in NY, it had same decline in murder rate that TX did!

Illinois - moratorium in 2000. What is 1999 murder rate vs. 2008 murder rate? IL: 7.7,6.1 for 21% improvement. TX: 6.1,5.6 for 8% improvement uhm, yeah, doesn't seem like the moratorium on the death penalty caused any loss of deterrence effect in IL either. Gosh, numbers, what great things they are!

The latest enemy of America!

What, you thought it was radical Islamists? No no, we all know what the real enemy of America is... 76 year old Jewish grannies from Brooklyn. Oy!

-- Badtux the Astounded Penguin

Does Jesus know about this?

Somehow, I get the feeling that this old lady doesn't know exactly what she's saying. Either that, or she has one kinky old man!

-- Badtux the Easily Amused Penguin

Hoisted from comments: "gives second coming a whole new meaning..." Uhm.... yeah ;).

Bad news

I've already queued up all the music for the rest of this week.

So what's the bad news, you say? I mean, that's good, right? Well... except that four of the videos are for covers of one specific mid 1990's song, done in wildly different styles by four different artists.

Sorry about that, folks. Just wanted you to see them many different ways that an artist can take one sappy ballad to make it theirs. The last one is the payoff, it's freakin' hilarious, the original songwriters probably freaked when they heard it...

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

From the blues to the garage

Song is called "Down on me", band is called Pink Reason, which is an often-homeless guy by the name of Kevin Debroux and whoever he can round up to play with him at any given time. To me it sounds sorta like if Jim Morrison had met Kurt Cobain and said, "dude! I can totally dig this grunge thing you're workin' on!"

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Next new song...

"The Promised Land". Sort of a bluesy song about looking for it, finding it, and losing it. And a bit more. Basically just making this note to myself so I don't forget what I was working on when I come back from work tomorrow...

-- Badtux the Haunted Penguin

Republican policies are good for... China and India?!

That appears to be the argument of Republicans when it comes to the previous decade... they say, well, yeah it was bad for Americans, but it was *great* for the Indians and Chinese!.

Republicans. Great for India and China, not so great for America. Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Deficits don't matter during deflation

Seriously. Especially deficits that are largely caused *by* deflation -- the majority of the current federal deficit is caused by a collapse in tax revenues combined with an explosion in unemployment-related expenses, both of which were caused by the real deflation in the economy.

Look: When you're in deflation, it is a reasonable and valid thing to PRINT MONEY. And a deficit during deflation is one way to do so -- simply issue $1 trillion in Treasury notes, have the Federal Reserve buy them, and voila, you just printed $1 trillion dollars that are going to end up in the hands of people who are going to spend it and thus create demand and thus jobs. The Chinese might not like it because it lowers the returns on their stash of Treasuries having all this freshly printed money showing up for Treasury auctions, but fuck the Chinese. If they don't like it, they can simply stop buying Treasuries. Ain't no shortage of other people wanting to buy Treasuries right now, it's the perfect mattress money instrument in a deflationary cycle because you know you're going to be paid at the end, whether with tax money or rollover from freshly-sold Treasuries or freshly printed money doesn't matter to you, and you don't have to worry about robbers breaking into your house and looting your money-stuffed mattresses. And this has the advantage of also getting that money out from under mattresses and back moving in the economy again, since the federal government is going to *spend* it, not use it to stuff mattresses, and the people who get the money are in turn going to spend it, and so on and so forth...

As for morons whining, "but... but... INFLATION!" -- uhm, look. Do you know what the non-energy-related inflation rate was in November 2009? Hint.... ZERO. Nada. Zilch. There was not any. Which is BAD, for reasons I've explained earlier you need a small amount of inflation in a capitalist economy in order to motivate money to come out from under mattresses and start contributing to economic activity. And December (when the numbers come out on the 15th) is going to be even worse, because the only way the Christmas retailers got *any* sales was by slashing prices.

But... but... the Federal Reserve has been printing money with all the abandon of the Weimar Republic finance ministry, you say? Who the fuck cares. According to the flow of funds data, all that freshly printed dough has been taking a loop through the economy, heading back into the banking system, and... and... uhm, is RIGHT BACK IN THE FEDERAL RESERVE as reserves. The Fed has printed about 4 TRILLION dollars since 3Q 2008, and flows to bank reserves on deposit with the Federal Reserve account to, uhm, err, 4.861 trillion dollars since 3Q 2008. (See table F.108, p25). It ain't doing *shit* to cause inflation, because if it's sitting on reserve in the Federal Reserve it's just high-tech mattress money, with a velocity of 0 and thus a contribution to economic activity of $0 (economic activity is velocity * money supply, no velocity -- under mattress -- means it don't exist as far as the economy is concerned).

In short: We have jack shit going on inflation-wise in our economy, and the deficit is not going to be a problem as long as we're in deflation because we can just print it away because, like, uhm, folks. There's this new technology called the PRINTING PRESS, y'know?! And when inflation *does* rear its ugly head, it's likely to be as a result of increased economic activity, at which point a) the Federal Reserve can put a hold on bank reserves to keep them from flowing back into the economy, until b) they can un-print the money (via selling off the Treasuries and corporate bonds they bought) needed to keep inflation from getting out of control, while c) taxes are raised to pay down the deficit and therefore unprint sufficient money to keep shit from getting out of hand. This is all fucking *textbook*, people, lessons learned from the original Great Depression. The fact that there are ideologues who refuse to acknowledge the data we gathered from the Great Depression and the models we built from that data... fuck them. They got their heads stuck so far up their fucking asses it's a wonder they ain't talking out of their navels. I don't agree on the Obama administration's priorities in many cases, but running up a deficit during deflation ain't one of my problems with them.

-- Badtux the Monetary Penguin

Let them eat cake

That appears to be the new Republican Party motto.

Hint to Republicans: People do *not* voluntarily starve to death. Just ask Marie Antoinette. Oh wait....

- Badtux the Snarky Penguin"

New Blues

porterdavis (name of the band, yes, all one word, all lowercase), playing "Can't be Satisfied" off of their self-titled album.

The blues ain't dead, it's just takin' a detour down Austin-way.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

1990's grunge

This is "Heroin Girl", off of Everclear's album Sparkle and Fade.

Everclear rode in on the coat-tails of Nirvana, but with much better lyrics. Art Alexakis mined his awful childhood and early adulthood for inspiration for a couple of brilliant albums in the mid 1990s, Sparkle and Fade and So Much for the Afterglow. The last "real" Everclear album was their brilliant Slow Motion Daydream which was a very '00s album made after 9/11 about the American Dream and the nightmare it was becoming, including Art's ode to John Ashcroft and the cult of 24 ("Blackjack"), his skewering of American sexual mores ("Volvo Driving Soccer Mom"), the tendency of Americans to see everything in black and white with no shades of grey ("How to Win Friends and Influence People"), etc. After that, creatively and financially exhausted, the band broke up. Art went through some hard times, joined the Scientology cult, and now seems much happier. He has a new band he calls "Everclear" that makes awful music. I'm glad Art is happier, but the new music sucks... something I've noticed about a lot of miserable artists who join Scientology, they get happier, but their work turns to crap.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

The cross of gold

I notice that the nutcases advocating a return to the gold standard as the solution to all our problems are still rattling their antiquated 19th century chains. But that doesn't change reality. The biggest problem with gold-backed money is that it does not address the root cause of the inflationary/deflationary pressures inherent in the business cycle: fractional reserve lending. During the era of gold-backed money in the United States, we saw repeated inflation-deflation cycles that served to strip wealth from average Americans and transfer it to a group of oligarchs as debts taken out in cheaper inflated dollars could not be repaid in more expensive deflated dollars and thus the oligarchs took ownership of the real assets which secured the debts. The inflation-deflation cycles are inherent in the business cycle as banks expand lending during up times (thereby reducing their fractional reserves and thus inflating the money supply via the fractional reserve multiplier effect) and step back on lending in order to build up their reserves to cover losses during down times (therefore increasing their fractional reserves and thus deflating the money supply via the fractional reserve money multiplier). In short, a gold-based money supply in any economy that has fractional reserve lending is a recipe for transferring the wealth of the masses to a few oligarchs. Only a fiat money supply where money is printed during down cycles to prevent deflation, and where money is taken out of the money supply during up cycles, can prevent this inflation-deflation boomerang cycle if you wish to preserve fractional reserve lending as a part of your economy.

So fractional reserve lending is a fraud, you say? Uhm, no. Fractional reserve lending is where you loan your money to a bank for them to loan onwards. Still, it should be banned because of its inflationary/deflationary effects, you say? The problem then is that businesses no longer are able to leverage current economic activity in order to produce future economic activity, because you are greatly reducing the amount of money available to lend in an economy if you ban fractional reserve lending. Capitalism simply works better, responds to consumer demand more nimbly, if you can pay for the assets needed to satisfy consumer demands using the future income created by those assets, rather than requiring current cash sufficient to buy those assets. Any economy without fractional reserve lending is uncompetitive in the world marketplace and swiftly devolves to third world status. Just look at most of the Islamic world, where fractional reserve lending was largely banned as ursury for many, many centuries.

The end result is that for you to have a modern economy, a fiat money which can be inflated and deflated in inverse to the business cycle is necessary. The gold standard was a primary reason for why the Great Depression resulted in such a collapse of business activity between 1930-1933 -- the gold standard prevented the Federal Reserve from simply printing the fiat money needed in order to fill in the hole of all the money that disappeared due to the stock market crash and resulting contraction of the money supply, causing deflation, which caused people to default on their debts, which caused banks to collapse, which caused deflation, wash, rinse, repeat until most of the country devolved to a barter economy, which is incredibly inefficient at fostering business activity. A modern economy simply has too many intermediaries for barter to be an adequate method for handling the incredible series of trades needed in order to produce even the simple computer you're reading this tome on, that's the whole reason the Communist system collapsed, because it turns out that training an economy with tokens (currency) via the mechanism of the market simply works better. But this only works if the tokens have a reasonably constant value, slightly declining in value every year in order to keep them available for use rather than hiding under a mattress (where they foster no economic activity but, rather, simply serve as lumpy bed stuffing). Gold simply doesn't serve that purpose well if you have fractional reserve lending, thus why it's not used as the primary token of trade in any modern economy today -- NOT because of some secret conspiracy by Jewish bankers yada yada yada, but, rather, simply because it DOESN'T WORK.

- Badtux the Economics Penguin

Killing handcuffed children

But I'm sure they were all terrorists, and besides, they were brown, so it's not really a war crime.

U S A! U S A! U S A! We're #1! At least, when it comes to killing brown people, woot!

-- Badtux the Snarkily Disgusted Penguin

So famous

Okay, not. Who is Corrina Repp and why have we never heard of her? She has the tunes, she has the voice, she has the looks, she's been making music for ten years now, so WTF?

-- Badtux the Baffled Penguin

We can all be free

Happy New Year. Or maybe not.

Which is the title of the song, "Maybe Not", by Cat Power (Chan Marshall), off of the album You Are Free. She doesn't seem to think so, BTW -- not even in your mind. Dripping with 90's cynicism in conflict with faded idealism. A perfect song to usher in the new year, even though I've posted it before here.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin