• The Pizza Guy’s down to 13 minutes.
• The Secessionist, drunk?
• Here comes the GOP vote suppression.
• Krugman, on weaponized Keynesians.
• What’s your number?

Failed Shopping Center Tycoon by proxy and international cab-driver whisperer Tom Friedman has officially attempted to join the 99%.

Charlie Daniels Band – Legend Of Wooley Swamp

It was a perfect example of the aspirational 53% who want so badly to be 1% that they’ll defend the Oligarchs against the truth chanted by their own natural allies. These people, represented on the street yesterday by Raging Man, cannot see their own natural affinity with the 99%. And so they scream and holler their allegiance to the 1%, thinking that they’ll be admitted to the club if they defend “their” team in the street.

When, actually — to the Oligarchs — they are all just street rabble yelling at one another, to be ignored and belittled and crushed beneath their boots when necessary. All of them cogs in The Owners’ machine, some more aware of their role as indebted serfs than others.

Of all the things I love about the General Assembly, I may love the human mic most of all. When the crowd hears “Mic check, mic check,” silence happens. It allows a single voice to be heard by amplification, a few words at a time. The speaker learns to be succinct (usually), and the crowd takes in, in a physical way, the thoughts of individuals in the crowd. The process of communication is slowed and made more deliberate. It can be a bit crazy, but with facilitation and after being taught how to use hand signals as appropriate, it allows everyone to have an opportunity to speak and be heard. I think it is a big contributor to the opportunity to develop consensus.

I agree with Zandar on this one. “Unless one of the ways B of A is planning to have customers avoid the fee is ‘are you a customer?’ then the damage is already done.” Like Netflix before them, BofA screwed with their ordinary customers, not the ones meticulously tracking how they’re illegally foreclosing on people or how they get free money shoveled at them by the Federal Reserve. They alienated everyone who has one of their debit cards.

One hundred ten policemen, count ‘em, most outfitted in riot-gear-lite, batons at the ready, lined up along downtown Denver’s Broadway, facing the dozen tents that OccupyDenver had erected during the afternoon of 29 October. A dozen tents, a couple of hundred unarmed protesters, and Deidre and me. She is armed with a camera and me, with a notebook and pen.

Occupy Anchorage is real. I was depressed after attending the last one I went to. I left this one singing from Nabucco.

Empire of Death is a comprehensive examination of the history of the Ossuaries and Charnel Houses in the European tradition. The bone houses, used for storage and decorative effects, present the living with the opportunity to confront or commune with death and the dead. Author, Art Historian and Photographer Paul Koudounaris’ central consideration in Empire of Death is the changing relations between the living and the dead as evinced in the treatment of bones and human bodies in these forms of monumental architecture.

Koudounaris’ meticulous research is shown in both vivid and remarkably sumptuous photography.

I’ve ignored the past few breathless reports about an imminent settlement by state Attorneys General and the big banks over foreclosure fraud, because we’ve been hearing the same talk about a settlement for over a year now, and because several states have already dropped out of the talks. But that doesn’t mean a bad settlement with the remaining states may not be inked, one that would indemnify the banks from state-level prosecution for a series of crimes at practically all stages of the mortgage process, in exchange for a relative pittance.