Mornin’, pups

Good Morning, SouthernDragon
That Lion’s Roar is hauntingly beautiful.
And, despite the “screw that” about debate analysis, I hope it’s okay to post this link to Jimmy Fallon’s take.
It’s pretty funny, if anyone wants a chuckle.

That influential group of bankers and insurers is going to be ignored. The only solution to austerity is spending, the only way to spend is to borrow or tax.

The 1% want neither of those and they’ve picked or converted Europe’s leaders.

However, the protests are getting large enough that the 1% had better start worrying about guillotines.

Boxturtle (Thought experiment: If the 1% were to suddenly vanish how would that effect the economy?)

I’m always surprised by the use of guillotines as a symbol. We say we’re non-violent yet use a symbol of extreme violence. Interesting.

Yet it IS the overriding image of the French revolution, when the French conquered their aristocracy. We must somehow conquer ours.

But i can’t come up with a single historical symbol relating to that idea that isn’t violent. If I could, I’d switch. The closest I can come is the Guy Fawkes mask in V, but that fellow DID blow up parliament.

Boxturtle (Here’s a daisy for your gunbarrel, maybe?)

The executions stopped when Madame Du Barry screamed all the way from the tumbril until the blade fell. Until then people went to their deaths in silence. People were horrified by the spectacle. The executions stopped shortly thereafter.

Morning SD,

The practical story of the day set a bit of urgency to my finishing a few outside chores, Fargo ND weather.

But, it doesn’t take much to be more important than the Wednesday nite carnival side show. I always thought a better debate format would be the three participants sitting around a kitchen table with chips, salsa and a couple Octoberfest varietal six-packs of specialty beers.

if Rmoney gets the chance to ax Big Bird will he use a guillotine, just because he can?

lost power in my Fargo neighborhood, but the guys up north in Karlstad are getting hit worse…fire, storm, bring on the locusts and pestilence. welcome to global warming….

Good morning SD and all the pups,

Beautiful Indian summer up here. The kids in the elementary school across the street have all lined up class by class and have started to file in. Parents standing outside the fence watching their ‘fistons’ start the day. Amazing how they are always running before class and during recess. Looks for all the world like a Breughel painting. I never tire of it.

We had an interesting occasion last evening. We were walking toward our favorite restaurant when we passed a Tapas bar that we had always wanted to go to, but could never get in. We walked in and asked for a table, and after some discussion we got one in the rear. Had a couple of drinks and ordered our plates. About 45 minutes into the meal I noticed something odd. The place was by that time (8:00) full, but there were no men. Just young women. It wasn’t a lesbian place. It was like it had come to be specialized in ‘ladies’ night out.’ Made me think of the economist’s notion of a ‘separating equilibrium.’ I don’t know if this happens in the States. The food was great and reasonably priced. We’ll return.

Actually, the guillotine was invented (before the Revolution) as a means of making public execution more humanitarian. Prior to that time, ordinary persons convicted of a capital crime were hung, and if the crime was particularly heinous, quartered (you do not want to know what that entails. This is a family blog). The guillotine was swift and final.

Which is why we keep capital punishment behind closed doors. From reading contemporary documents (Curse you, Prof Arbagi!), it reads as though the main concern of the locals was the smell of rotting blood. But hanging was rejected as “too English”.

Boxturtle (Televised executions might be the best way to end the death penalty)

The Secret Government has experimented on US citizens and even used military personnel as guinea pigs and cannon fodder. A compound of zinc cadmium sulfide was deliberately sprayed as a test of “radioactive and biological” dispersion in numerous cities, secretly. One of the targets was a poor St. Louis area.

Cadmium is toxic by itself. The company US Radium, made this gas and may have added a radioactive fluorescent compound.

Soldiers and sailors were, not enemy soldiers and sailors, were deliberately exposed to poison gas and radioactive substances and even A-bomb tests. Every government hates its citizens, but few governments dose their citizens with radioactivity.

Zinc cadmium sulfide was but one of many toxic substances to which unwitting troops and civilians were exposed during Cold War chemical and biological weapons experiments.

During Project SHAD, the crews of more than a dozen Navy warships were exposed to sarin (the nerve gas that killed 12 people in the 1995 Tokyo subway gas attack), VX nerve gas (which the Pentagon calls “one of the most toxic substances ever synthesized) and serratia marcescnes, which can cause serious infections including pneumonia.

The Army also released a massive cloud of Serratia marcescnes over the San Francisco Bay Area in 1950, resulting in an outbreak of illnesses in which one person died.

I’m happy that it is tracking north of me and over Lake Superior. Yes the types of storms that are coming through seem much more dangerous and fierce.

We will not have a Revolution until we suffer overwhelming military defeat like Germany. The government is too strong, and the people too sheepish for Revolution to occur. The more likely scenario in the event of social collapse is military dictatorship. In the short run this would not be good for the PTB, but in time they would learn how to game the system, like they have gamed ours.

Thanks, SD, getting off to take blankies to pups, of that four legged variety;
http://www.arfhouse.com/

Things are rough for taking care of people’s cast off pets.

Talk more tomorrow, have a good dayl

Good for you, Ruth. Thanks for helping the puppies.

7.8% Good for Obama

Good morning, all, and thank you, SD, for the daily feast of reason and humanity, in a world gone quite mad in pursuit, not of happiness, but of mere money and fast-passing power.

The French may have “conquered” the aristocracy, BoxTurtle, but they failed utterly to grasp the fundamentally exploitative nature of the relationship which they had WITH those aristocrats under feudalism, thereby allowing the “new” economic “model”, capitalism, to blithely, and happily, continue that exploitation …

We run the very same risk.

And frankly, until we come to grips with the exploitative “relationship”, existing in capitalism, the “paradigms” of money (the “classes” of the rich and the poor) and power (the “classes” of those who have “it” and those who do not) cannot be effectively challenged or changed … as Richard Wolff will compellingly tell you and SD has sought, for quite some considerable time, to make plain and understandable.

If anything is to be “cut”, with an intent of meaningful change and long-term success, then it must be the exploitation of those who actually create “wealth” and thereby provide society with the resources necessary to life …

Let the violence of our imagery be replaced with an effective means of changing consciousness about exploitation, which exploitation most everyone feels, and then seek to encourage that potential consciousness to understandings of connection to nature, to life, to ourselves and each other. That understanding, at its heart, is as old as our species itself, we have merely forgotten it and gotten ourselves “removed” from it in the pursuit of cunningly contrived chimeras and utter nonsense.

DW

arfhouse is COOL! Way bigger than anything around here for dogs.

Boxturtle (Currently trying to integrate a 20lb pug into a household with 70 & 80 Lb Huskys and a 130lb Great Pyrenees)

Mike Flannigan weighs in on the debate in Sound Minus the Fury.

This is all Obama needs. But YMMV

Mornin’ everyone. Back up to follow links and read comments.

Morning Joke twisting in the wind. LOL

The Bureau of Labour Statistics wouldn’t mess with the numbers, now would they? LOL

I don’t know… what would Rush say? LOL

Conspiracy theories will abound. Economists predicted a level of new jobs of about 114,000 (right on the money) and 8.1%. We got 114,000 and 7.8%.

Wingers’ heads are exploding.

Jack Welch blaming “these Chicago guys.”

mornin’ pups.

i figure there’s supposed to be a video at the top of the page where i have just a black rectangle. i went to youtube to see what would happen there and instead of videos appearing, i just get a black rectangle.

i’m on a mac. did i delete something or change a setting inadvertantly? if anyone can help, please advise. i’ll make muffins.

Abolish BLS!!!

One thing not many are understanding is that what was encouraging the equity stripping that was supporting consumer spending during the bubble years was in large part the expectation, the belief, that eventually, ‘trckle-down economics would lead to rising wages.

Ronald Reagan, the ‘Great Communicator’ told us this over and over.

We were lead to believe that things were getting better, the economy was booming, so we’ll be able to pay back the loans on our homes when our wages catch up.

Coupled with the implicit promise that home prices would only go up, the expectation that the ‘New Economy’ touted by Greenspan would eventually lead to higher wages was clearly part of the picture.

People were not just acting irresponsibly, they were believing a myth deliberately woven to mislead.

Anyone notice this from Obama in the debate?

And the magnitude of the tax cuts that you’re talking about, Governor, would end up resulting in severe hardship for people, but more importantly, would not help us grow.

More importantly? Yeah, let’s just shrug off that “severe hardship for people.”

A really cold dude.

You just keep that snow up there, y’hear me?

I was dismayed to learn when I watched the “extended” debate on DN that there is a secret agreement between the candidates and the debate commission that restricts the debates to only those conducted by the debate commission and excludes other candidates. This despite requests from state governors to host debates, and the desire for inclusion of other candidates.

I realize we don’t necessarily want a gaggle of “candidates” to debate — it probably would be unworkable — but if a candidate like Jill Stein or Rocky Anderson is on the ballot in several states, he/she should be part of the big televised debates. But the two major parties keep them out.

I am a diehard Mac user, and it plays perfectly for me. What browser are you using? That shouldn’t matter, though, but if you have a second one (like Firefox or Chrome) you might try using that.

A really cold dude.

that’s my impression.

Good morning firedogs. Thanks for the post and host SD.

An ant just crawled out of the housing around my laptop screen and onto the screen. Weird.

Prolly looking for a sticky bun.

One less bug in your machine.

Boxturtle (well, SOMEBODY had to say it)

thanks for the suggestion. everything’s working fine on firefox. then i closed safari and opened it again and, just like magic, all’s well on safari too.

what kind of muffins would make your heart and your belly happy?

On the ‘it would be irresponsible not to speculate’ front, I saw a post this morning over at the Orange Satan commenting on how rigid and unhappy Michelle looked at the debates the other night, before the debate. Obama’s performance was that of a man in shock.

I blame the diner.

(The ant is no longer with us. I smashed him)

Off to swim in the great capitalist cesspool.

US KIA Afghanistan: 2,132

Afghan, Iraki, Yemeni and Pakistani casualties: estimates vary to over 2M

US MBS 2012: 34,472 and counting

No war but class war

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things

Namaste

Never. Give. Up.

You’ve earned this!

And …?

Good morning everyone.

Thank you for the post SouthernDragon.

jbade had the FDL post last night.

Good morning.

The high water temps in the Big Pond, NW of you, should deflect that snow for a month or so yet.

Morning.
27 myths in 38 minutes / Mitt
And the ball of 1% pocket lint lets it all slide.
Seems like my choice is this rock or that rock. Both rocks.

thankoo,thankoo, I’ll be here all week!

Boxturtle (Don’t forget to tip your server!)

When the big ponds don’t freeze over it just snows and snows and snows some more. Not good.

Would you like some Box Elder bugs to go along with that ant?
Thousands of them here in N. Illinois, so much so it was a topic on local news last night.

Agree, and no ice = increased evaporation has contributed to present near record low water levels.

Morning spudt.

Off to the cool outdoors, thanks SD.

I had to look that up. Didn’t know what they were.

News folks have any idea what the bugs are doing in N. Illinois?

I will take a blueberry muffin, but since I’ve had breakfast I will save it for lunch!

I was almost certain it was a browser problem. There have been some of those with YouTube and Safari. I personally almost never use Safari because I have AdBlock Plus installed in Firefox and it eliminates most website ads.

Is your wrist healed up now?

I didn’t notice that, but the extended debate on DN didn’t include anything but the two candidates, followed by Stein and Anderson. No crowd shots, no chattering pundits.

Obama said it was their anniversary. Maybe they had a fight or something. Or maybe she was just tense about the debate.

We’re really proud of you…Thanks;)

Uh huh. But then we get lake effect snow!

They are supposed to come from Box Elder trees which thrive here.
The bugs are harmless, just a nuisance. You go out a door and they are there. You go to the garage door and get smothered in them.
The exterminators as part of the story are kept busy right now and only one had time to be interviewed.
I use dish soap in a spray bottle to keep the area around key doors clear.
The bugs hate it and cannot fly and eventually leave that area.

I would love to find out what the tiny black bugs are that are hovering in the air under the trees in some places. On my bike ride yesterday, at one point my yellow shirt was covered with them, front and back, and I’m sure they were in my hair too. YUK. Harmless, don’t bite, prolly less than 1/16 inch, but not pleasant to ride through.

Kris,
How was the brisket the other night you are becoming quite a cook and I learned a lot in the discussion that followed about types of grills, sauces, etc.
Have a great time at the birthday party for the little one tomorrow.
7 yrs. old. Enjoy, they grow so fast. Our daughters are 40,37, and 35 and i can honestly say, I do not know where the years went.

i went back into the post to correct some of the punctuation on #59 and got the message “A database error has occured”, so I am going to have to leave it alone.

blueberry muffins just out of the oven. there’s plenty for everyone. just help yourselves and clean up the crumbs. you don’t want ants crawling out of your screen housings.

Just got a call from a friend who needs some help. Gotta go.
Have a great weekend everyone.

greenwarrior, those muffins sound great!

the bone has healed! getting back some range of motion in the wrist and fingers has been slow and frustrating. it feels like i have steel bands growing in my hands. i’ve been going to physical therapy and have 2 different splints, each to wear 3 times a day for a 1/2 hour, one to extend the wrist and one to extend the fingers. the wrist one looks (and feels) like a medieval torture device, but they are helping me make some progress.

Some of the best snow available anywhere. ;-)

OK, out for sure now, coffee is gone. A good weekend for all.

Well after the medieval torture that was your cast for those months, the splints should be a picnic. (I realize they won’t be.) I don’t know how old you are, but I think as we age everything takes longer to heal and we just have to be patient and follow the doc’s advice.

i’m just about to 70. and, yes, compared to the cast, they’re adorable.

Breaking from WI. Russ Feingold’s place holder. Nuff said

From One WI Now.

New website is just launched.

gw @ #66: LOL!

very pleased to hear bone has healed, cast off and recovery underway.

(((greenwarrior)))

Oh, how about a lady knitting?

Try using Hexadecimal-if it’s good enough for computers, it is good enough for us-to count that age. Why, 70 is 46(H).

You probably won’t see this…but we are just about the same age. I will be 70 in January (on Inauguration Day).