A Mind is a Terrible Thing

The first half of that is "The avalanche has begun…." — as spoken by Ambassador Kosh in the Babylon 5 episode, "Believers."

I’m not sure people understand just how serious this economic thing is — and how global.  (AP story excerpted below.)

Stock markets plunge worldwide (AP via Rawstory)
AP News Jan 21, 2008 19:05 EST

Stocks fell sharply worldwide Monday following declines on Wall Street last week amid investor pessimism over the U.S. government’s stimulus plan to prevent a recession. U.S. markets were closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but the downbeat mood from last week’s market declines there circled through Europe, Asia and the Americas.

On Monday, Britain’s benchmark FTSE-100 slumped 5.5 percent to 5,578.20, France’s CAC-40 Index tumbled 6.8 percent to 4,744.15, and Germany’s blue-chip DAX 30 plunged 7.2 percent to 6,790.19. In Asia, India’s benchmark stock index tumbled 7.4 percent, while Hong Kong’s blue-chip Hang Seng index plummeted 5.5 percent to 23,818.86, its biggest percentage drop since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

In Canada, the S&P/TSX composite index on the Toronto Stock Exchange fell 4.8 percent. Brazilian stocks plunged 6.6 percent on the main index of Sao Paulo’s Bovespa exchange, and Argentina’s benchmark Merval index fell 6.3 percent to close under 1,900 for the first time since August 2006.

Just last Wednesday, the Hang Seng index sank 5.4 percent. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index slid 3.9 percent to close at 13,325.94 points, its lowest close in more than two years. China’s Shanghai Composite index plunged 5.1 percent, partly on worries about mainland Chinese banks’ exposure to risky U.S. mortgage investments.

Another metaphoric analogy would be of the chickens coming home to roost.  This is what we get with (1) a Bush/Cheney and GOP-led majority running up the biggest deficits in US history, (2) a war that’s not only cost half a trillion dollars so far but has also helped to more than double oil prices through regional instability, (3) corporate officers rewarded massively for fraud and failure, and (4) an unregulated and under-supervised financial system that literally pretended money into temporary existence (i.e., the mortgage funds and predictably resulting real estate bubble).

As with the healthcare industry, during the last generation, the ‘rich and powerful’ openly moved from a symbiosis on the world’s economic systems to lethal parasitism.

Bush’s last day – The Carpetbagger Report
You may have noticed, on bumpers or t-shirts, the “1.20.09” slogan. It denotes, of course, Inauguration Day for Bush’s successor.

Reminding the occasional passer-by here that I consider myself a progressive liberal pacifist… for me, this day can’t come soon enough.

There are times when I simply want to scream, when I hear terms like ‘liberty’ and ‘peace’ being so abused by those who would see most of us not really have them.  Or when they justify things that have been adjudged ‘torture’ as centuries in hundreds of courts of law — by saying "we don’t torture, so whatever we do isn’t that."

Ah, language.  My lover, my whore…  A bit of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, by way of a YouTube I first saw posted by Chris in Paris over at Americablog.  It’s well worth the time, and laugh out loud funny.  It’s all about Language!

Well friends, while the political commentary can be fun, especially with the current crop of presidential candidates (think fish, barrel, and a double-aught shotgun), I know that some of my Imaginary Readers like to hear more about life in this part of the world.  And particularly, what it’s like for a middle-aged American at an ashram in rural south India, from the perspective of someone who’s been living here most of the time for the last year and a half.

For those who may be new: An ashram is a spiritual retreat center, usually consisting of one or more temples, some places to stay while there, and teachers.  Some ashrams are very ascetic in their situations, and I’ve heard tell of ashrams where there’s little more than a bare cubicle, a mat on the floor, and simple, spare meals.  Also, in some ashrams, they’re run by students of a long-departed spiritual master (like Yogananda, for example, and the usual term isn’t departed or died, but rather "taken yoga samadhi" or more commonly "dropped the body").  Others, the spiritual master might be there, but he’ll not interact with students or visitors very often.

The Penukonda is a very different place, with a very different spiritual master, Sri Kaleshwar — who is very much still here in the world.  For an idea of what the ashram looks like, what Swami is all about — and also to get official information about it — I do recommend going to the main website, http://www.kaleshwar.org.  What you might read here on my blog is just my own personal subjective impressions and opinions.  More after the jump.
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Dan Froomkin – Waxman Ain’t Buying – washingtonpost.com
White House spokesman Tony Fratto: "I think to the best of what all the analysis we’ve been able to do, we have absolutely no reason to believe that any emails are missing; there’s no evidence of that. There’s no — we tried to reconstruct some of the work that went into a chart that was entered into court records and could not replicate that or could not authenticate the correctness of the data in that chart. And from everything that we can tell, our analysis of our backup systems, we have no reason to believe that any email at all are missing."

Translation: "They were deleted, all back-ups destroyed, and any evidence that such actions took place or were ordered was also eliminated — hence ‘no evidence’.  We’re sure the cover-up is 100% successful and impenetrable to investigation."

Shorter Fratto:  "The emails are not missing. We just don’t know where they are."

I, too, did some weird things in college, but would’ve had to be stoned out of my mind to do something this crazy…

Via Raw Story:

Huckabee: ‘We used to fry squirrels in a popcorn popper’
Huckabee spoke to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough from Columbia, SC, saying enthusiastically, "South Carolina’s a great place for me. I mean, I know how to eat grits and speak the language. We even know how to talk about eating fried squirrel and stuff like that, so we’re on the same wavelength." "Mika, I bet you never did this," Huckabee went on, addressing Mika Brzezinski. "When I was in college, we used to take a popcorn popper, because that was the only thing they would let us use in the dorm, and we would fry squirrels in a popcorn popper in the dorm room."

Um, yeah, right… Because after the Doritos run out and the munchies are still bitin’ hard, and the only edible thing around is that little squirrel…

Oh, sorry, I didn’t read that quote closely enough.  This wasn’t a one-time thing: Seems fried squirrel was A REGULAR DINNER ENTREE FOR THIS DUDE AND HIS BUDS!

At least he made himself stop at the grits and fried squirrels though.  I guess maybe Huck drew the line at barbecuing road-kill possums on a Dodge V8 Hemi engine block — because that would’ve been way the hell too hick.

Then again, maybe the habitual squirrel frying explains this other family-related thing.

Update:  Something I just thought of.  No hotplate for these rambunctious SC college buddies — No siree, that’s agin’ the rules!  But a squirrel gun?  Shore, no problem!  (Not to mention gutting, skinning, and prepping the li’l varmint…) 

Funny, but at my college (CMU) it was the other way around: Lots of my friends used hotplates, but having a firearm in the dorm would get you expelled.

I just upgraded the user registration system in this here WordPress-coded site, so it requires folks to type in one of those funny distorted alphanumeric sequences and to confirm registration within a week of signing up.  The login screen looks a bit spiffier than before, too.

This won’t affect anyone who’s already got an account here.  But this’ll keep me from having to clear out half a dozen or so of the bogus accounts each week from spam bots in Russia (9 out of 10 come from there, is the experience on this site).

Additional, 18 Jan:  Previously, I’d had the moderation controls set pretty strict, such that even a single embedded URL would trigger a comment hold until I personally approved it.  Given I think the new user registration thing should help prevent spam, I’ve increased the count to 3 for now.

2007 Results Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2007

Gerald began — but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them "permanently" meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash — to pee.
– Jim Gleeson Madison, WI

Oh, it’s so very bad, but it hurts so good.  It’s worth a read at the link above there, if you really want some cringe-worthy fun.  There’s lots more.

(The usual trivia:  The contest is named after Bulwer Lytton, who opened his 1830 novel, "Paul Clifford," with the immortal words, "It was a dark and stormy night.")

A Bush Boost? GOP Banks on It – Washington Whispers (usnews.com) He’s a poll cellar-dweller whom even GOP presidential candidates sneer at, but George W. Bush and some congressional backers see happy days for the prez this year. His fans have dubbed it his "legacy year," when they hope to lock in his achievements on the domestic front. Among the items Bush’s GOP congressional allies want to work on this month: continuing his tax cuts and extending the controversial No Child Left Behind Act. As for the war, they say, the news has been good, and Bushies believe that their guy will eventually get credit for opening the war on terrorism. But more immediately, they are predicting a remarkable poll shift to about 45 percent favorable by the time he leaves office next year.

I can predict rainbow-colored unicorns and flight-enabled pigs will also shoot out of my behind right around then, too, and have just about as much chance of being right…

45 percent?  Whatever they’re smoking, I want some of dat.

My predictions, pre-Iowa:

A Mind is a Terrible Thing » Becca’s Primary Predictions
New Hampshire: I think Obama will win here, too, as he has the momentum, and again Clinton and Edwards will be close, but with Hillary ahead. By now, Biden will drop out, as will Dodd and Thompson. No idea when Kucinich will throw in the towel again, save that’ll be so late in the process people will ask, "He was still running?" Romney will win in NH, as the voters there find Mitt’s faux ‘corporate conservatism with a slathering of newly donned social conservatism’ to be less offensive than Huckabee’s over-the-top "I’m God’s Candidate" fundamentalist whackjob egoism. McCain will do surprisingly well, and Rudy "I am 9/11" Giuliani so bad that talk of his dropping out will commence.

Clearly, I am at no risk of being tapped as a pundit.  No, strike that — I’d say i was probably more accurate than the blowhards like Tweety et. al, who were all saying that Clinton was done for.

The analyses are that Obama’s support essentially solidified, whereas Clinton pulled most of the previously undecideds in NH.

On the GOP side, I was closer to the actual outcome.  Pretty much was sure Huckabee wouldn’t do well there, and that Romney would be better known for the faux conservative he’s playing on TV these days.  Didn’t quite think that McCain would pull it out though.  All the others are "also rans" at this point, and even Guiliani has to be thinking about a face-saving exit strategy.  I’m sure it’ll involve much invocation of 9/11.

As for SC and beyond, I’d written:

South Carolina: Huckabee, in a walk, because the GOP voters there can’t stand New Englander Yankees and aren’t fooled at all by Mitt’s fake new social conservatism. I’d add that Romney’s Mormon faith will become a tangible liability throughout the Southern states. They also haven’t forgotten McCain’s ‘illegitimate black child’ (thanks to Karl Rove’s slime machine in 2000). Here though I think we’ll find out whether or not McCain appeals sufficiently anyway for the non-whackjob fraction of the Republican party to come out to vote. Ron Paul will win lots and lots of votes (esp. from those who think his racist and anti-immigrant comments are a plus) — and continue to be ignored by the press. As for the Dems, I think we find out here whether or not Clinton flamed out early as "the shoo-in lock candidate". Reason I say this? Because once upon a time, the talk was all about how Dean was inevitable… until he wasn’t. Hillary’s campaign machine is exactly that — a relentless machine — but the excitement and momentum seem to be shifting to Obama. As for Edwards? An unexpectedly poor showing in his own back yard will result in a campaign that limps along just long enough for him to be considered the VP pick again. Giuliani will probably hang on, despite dismal results — but I think he’ll drop after the Feb 2nd round of primaries. His humongous ego demands no less.

Okay, revised predictions:  I think the race really has turned into Clinton vs Obama on the Dem side.  I’ll be honest, too, and admit that I’ve no idea which will win.  Edwards, I like his policies than Clinton’s or Obama’s, but I really don’t think he has the money to continue the national campaign.  I’m figuring he’ll drop out after Super Tuesday (early Feb).

GOP?  The problem there is the Social Conservatives want Huckabee — and don’t want to vote for McCain or Romney, because they’re both too moderate (which is only "rather conservative" in GOP-speak, and these folks demand "radically, totally conservative").  The corporatist-capitalists want Romney, but hate Huckabee (too theocratic and liberal-spendy) and McCain (gonna start more wars and ruin the economy even worse).  And the neocons think McCain’s the cuddliest guy ever — and can’t stand Romney or Huckabee (no foreign policy experience, and both too squishy on being quick with the big stick).  It’s literally a three way ideological fracture, and again, it’s hard to figure out which of those three will come out on top.  Some may say that because those three are flawed that somehow guys like Mayor 9/11 or Grampa Golfcart will win by default, but that’s just plain silly.  Actual support equals enthusiasm, momentum, and money — and none of the other GOP candidates has that, save possibly for Ron Paul.  Trouble there is that his support is enthusiastic, but relatively shallow.  Most folks don’t know that Paul is a staunch libertarian — and one who’s expressed decidedly homophobic and racist ideologies in his self-published newsletter.

Anyway, I think we have an actual horse-race here.  On the Dem side, there are two very popular candidates, and some equally strong contenders.  On the GOP side, there’s a three way ideology war and there’s no telling who will come out on top.

In closing, I wanted to mention here one thing you won’t see ANY of the political pundits and wonks on TV doing: Admitting I was wrong about the outcomes.  And admitting I really don’t know how the voters will break in the weeks to come.