How come nobody comments anymore? There’s at least 70 of you reading daily via RSS and another ~150 hitting the front page on some kind of regular basis. Makes me wonder if I should even bother with a redesign for WordPress 1.3.

So where’s the love… does this shit need more cowbell or something?

I got mine early:

If love and peace doesn’t fill your heart, 50,000 volts should do the trick.

Bill Moyers is retiring from television journalism, thus ensuring that the term television journalism will become the most unfunny oxymoron ever. Slated to air December 17th, Moyers’s final show is an expos?© of the television media itself:

“We have an ideological press that’s interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that’s interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don’t have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people.”

Let me spell that out in incendiary terms that should soften the blow with good-natured humor: The media is lazy, some of them are lazy and get their direction from partisan hacks with political agendas (the majority of the conservative media and quite a few of the liberal media), the rest of the time they are lazy sensationalists who feed us mind-wasting visual garbage as filler between commercial breaks (Scott Peterson trial anyone?).

What they are not doing, is journalism that tells the truth. Basically, it’s been tranformed into the art of taking a video camera to where the news happened or where something might just happen, and asking a bunch of idiots what their opinion is or spouting about what might just happen based on the opinion of those same idiots. And people wonder why The Daily Show is so popular, at least TDS is smart enough to use a green screen, skip the cost of travel, and be the idiots themselves. When the news itself is satire, all anyone has to do is hold up a mirror.

I realize Moyers is considered a liberal himself, but I’ve yet to see it play a determining factor in his journalism, which says a lot about his objectivity. He goes on to say that “you do not get rewarded for telling the hard truths about America in a profit-seeking environment.” I respectfully disagree with this, and I think there is a large demand for it and it could be very profitable, but I don’t think it’s as profitable as dredging the bottom.

Of course, with the current political climate, it’s almost entertaining to see the debate slowly move away from issues (tough reporting) into a show where the guests are reduced to yelling “fuck you, dirty liberal,” “no, fuck you, stupid neo-con.”

Okay, what the hell, Pentagon slackers? We pay your ass $10B a year to build a Missile Defense Shield that we really don’t need, and you can’t even test it because there’s uh… cloud cover? Well, that’s what the Associated Press said you said in Pentagon Scrubs Missile-Defense Flight Test:

The first flight test in nearly two years of a planned U.S. missile-defense shield has been scrapped two days in a row this week because of bad weather, the Pentagon said on Friday. [...] The first attempt to conduct the test this week was scrubbed by clouds over Kodiak.

Forget the fact that it was 19 asshats with boxcutters who crashed airplanes into buildings in the most deadly attack on America. No, they’re worried about nuclear missiles again and building counter-missile missiles. Seriously, that shit is so 1980s, except at least in the 80s it had the badass name of Star Wars and we were gonna knock them out with frickin’ lasers [insert image of Ronald Reagan holding pinkie to corner of mouth]. Nowadays we get the lame-ass name “Missile Defense Shield”, except at least a real shield works in the rain.

Tell ya what, Pentagon hacks, you build me a missile that can fly up to a hijacked airplane, attach itself to the underbelly, and deploy robot ninjas to take out the hijackers on board, and maybe then we can start talking about a $10B/yr budget for your wet dream defense systems. Until then, hows about we stop wasting tax money on Cold War defense systems and give some pay increases to the troops or something.

I’m interested in the recent punditry on the Democratic Party’s future for one reason: Libertarians and libertarians have a lot to learn, and in some way are mirroring the upheaval that is occuring.

Reason’s Hit & Run pointed out an interesting discussion going on at Blogging of the President which — if you replace democrat with libertarian — is an interesting strategy debate:

Most importantly everything in young dem land is so massively top-down. Nobody in the field can make a decision without the OK from DC and nobody in DC cares about anything except about what is going on in DC. What ends up happening is that young progressive organizers, people who care desperately about consensus and small d democracy, do not want to have any part of the dem hierarchy. They end up starting their own small local organization, or join lefty college activists organizations and end up burning out and falling out of politics. We are not going to get to a progressive majority until we stop squandering our talent.

Interestingly, the debate on the future of the LP is also being spurred on by small l libertarians.

UPDATE: Almost forgot the MoveOn.org rumblings: “For years, the party has been led by elite Washington insiders who are closer to corporate lobbyists than they are to the Democratic base,” said the e-mail from MoveOn PAC’s Eli Pariser. “But we can’t afford four more years of leadership by a consulting class of professional election losers.” That’s systemic with a capital L, too.

Jon Stewart was on Larry King Live again. I figured that out because I got a bunch of search engine hits for the last time he was on the show. Hopefully people are smart enough to look at the date of the post and not download that old clip, because they will be confused when they talk about John Kerry’s chances at winning the election and will think they are time-travelling or something.

Anyways, I missed the show, because Larry King wears suspenders and I have a suspenders phobia. Actually, that was a lie, I don’t watch the news at all: I am omniscient so I don’t need a television to tell me what’s going on in our fair and balanced world. CNN has a transcript of the interview, and there’s a couple good parts:

KING: What’s your take on red state, blue state?

STEWART: I think it’s a fabulous way — you know, I never thought there would be a way to reduce the nuance differences between people in this country to something easier than Republican, Democrat, or liberal, conservative. They’ve actually literally found a way to reduced it to just primary colors.

KING: You’re either red or blue.

STEWART: You’re red or blue.

Don’t even worry about it. Don’t try and think about what may be the difference be between us. It really does feel like an unreal scenario.

And by the way, as a blue stater, with a red stater, let’s face facts, Massachusetts, you know, we were burning witches before they even thought about banning interracial dating. So if you want to talk about who’s the original red staters, I think it’s us. Northeast was all Puritans. We were the guys.

[...]
SNIPPING OUT KING
No, I think that ultimately there is — I will say that that there’s an authenticity problem that George Bush, I think, has probably conquered. There is a strange thing in our electoral process where candidates, when they run for office, decide they have to be regular dudes. They have to be us. There’s this sort of general “I’m just like you. I’m a regular Joe.”

Really, you watch 10 hours of TV a day, because I would think you’d want to work. I don’t understand why they don’t say “I’m better than you,” that’s why I should be president. Because, if you’re just like me, why am I voting for you? I should be president.

They all run to this — it’s this weird sense of “I’m going to put on that red and black jacket check jacket and I’m going to go down to a factory and have a cup of coffee and a doughnut with a dude and show him that I’m an idiot.” You know, I don’t understand. And I think that was — there was an attempt on his part to dumb himself down in a way that was disingenuous, it seemed.

Stewart breaks it down succinctly, as always, except for the part where he autographed his book after applying an ink roller to his asscheeks. That was a little out there. If anyone tivo-ed the interview or knows where it can be found, drop me a line.

Here’s another classic example of the two-faced approach Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld takes towards the military: enlistee asks for better vehicle armor, Rummie responds by playing tiny violin.

The Associated Press has the lowdown on the exchange that took place during an open forum — Rumsfeld: Airing concerns was healthy:

Army Spc. Thomas Wilson had asked Rumsfeld, ?ÄúWhy do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles??Äù Shouts of approval and applause arose from other soldiers who had assembled in an aircraft hangar to see Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.

?ÄúWe do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north,?Äù Wilson, 31, of Nashville, Tenn., concluded after asking again.

?ÄúYou go to war with the Army you have,?Äù Rumsfeld replied, ?Äúnot the Army you might want or wish to have.?Äù

I was going to launch into why exactly this is so completely moronic, but Slate beat me to it with their editorial in Rumsfeld vs. the American Soldier:

[H]is answer was wrong. If you’re attacked by surprise, you go to war with the army you have. But if you’ve planned the war a year in advance and you initiate the attack, you have the opportunity–and obligation–to equip your soldiers with what they’ll need. Yes, some soldiers will get killed no matter the precautions, but the idea is to heighten their odds–or at least not diminish them–as they’re thrust into battle.

So here stands the secretary of defense, long and widely despised by officers for rejecting their advice before the war and now openly criticized by the grunts for failing to give them proper cover as the war rages on all around them.

Well said.

I know it seems like I’m flogging a mule here, but the number of respected economists just keeps growing. I’ll limit to just one source of bad news and give some valid reasons for specifying Christmas (this month) for when the who ball of wax will unceremoniously melt.

The Economist joined the fray with it’s article — The disappearing dollar:

The dollar is not what it used to be. Over the past three years it has fallen by 35% against the euro and by 24% against the yen. But its latest slide is merely a symptom of a worse malaise: the global financial system is under great strain. America has habits that are inappropriate, to say the least, for the guardian of the world’s main reserve currency: rampant government borrowing, furious consumer spending and a current-account deficit big enough to have bankrupted any other country some time ago. This makes a dollar devaluation inevitable, not least because it becomes a seemingly attractive option for the leaders of a heavily indebted America. Policymakers now seem to be talking the dollar down. Yet this is a dangerous game. Why would anybody want to invest in a currency that will almost certainly depreciate?

[...]
A fall in the dollar sufficient to close the current-account deficit might destroy its safe-haven status. If the dollar falls by another 30%, as some predict, it would amount to the biggest default in history: not a conventional default on debt service, but default by stealth, wiping trillions off the value of foreigners’ dollar assets.

Now, that doesn’t paint a very good picture. But what leads me to believe anything like that could remotely happen in such a short time period? Well, simple: year-end stock sell-offs and tax-bunching. The week before Christmas is when most brokers will sell-off poor or stagnating stocks so that their customers can get the tax benefits that come with a capital loss. These are supposed to lessen the hit on the taxes they’ll owe on capital gains – stocks sold for a profit.

Normally, this money then goes into money-market accounts for individuals (fund managers will normally reinvest since they are not concerned with tax ramifications, causing what’s known as the “Santa Claus Rally” the week after Christmas), but with interest rates so low, and domestic bonds underperforming, the obvious choice for brokers is foreign bonds this year. Thus, the brokers unwittingly add to the dollar’s fall by raising foreign currency values. Multiply that by a few hundred billion dollars and you have a cascading system where panic could set in right as they are about to go on their holiday vacations. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this stuff out.

The Sunday Herald is reporting that according to a “strategic communications” report from the Defense Science Board of the Pentagon, we have lost the war for the hearts and minds in Iraq:

On “the war of ideas or the struggle for hearts and minds”, the report says, “American efforts have not only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended”.

However, the report (PDF) is detailed in why we are losing this battle, and it’s the same reasons libertarians have been adamant in rebuking from the beginning: we’re supporting bad governments and the result is coming home to roost. Again and again the report specifically notes that it’s not our freedom the majority of Muslims hate, it’s because we’re supporting dictatorships and tyrannical regimes in the Middle East:

If there is one overarching goal they share, it is the overthrow of what Islamists call the ?Äúapostate?Äù regimes: the tyrannies of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan, and the Gulf states. They are the main target of the broader Islamist movement, as well as the actual fighter groups. The United States finds itself in the strategically awkward – and potentially dangerous – situation of being the longstanding prop and alliance partner of these authoritarian regimes. Without the U.S. these regimes could not survive. Thus the U.S. has strongly taken sides in a desperate struggle that is both broadly cast for all Muslims and country-specific.

[...]
Dissemination of information to ?Äúhuddled masses yearning to be free.?Äù Today we reflexively compare Muslim ?Äúmasses?Äù to those oppressed under Soviet rule. This is a strategic mistake. There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell among Muslim societies – except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends.

[...]
Today, however, the perception of intimate U.S. support of tyrannies in the Muslim World is perhaps the critical vulnerability in American strategy. It strongly undercuts our message, while strongly promoting that of the enemy.

[...]
The U.S. has always operated from the proposition that in the ?Äúwar of ideas?Äù and the competition of ideologies, one form of governance and society functions best when the bright light of free-flowing information is pulsing – among free and democratic societies – while another – the tyrannical and fascistic – functions with difficulty, if at all, under those circumstances. Yet the paradox today is that our enemy is thriving in an environment of free and open information flows.

[...]
Muslims do not ?Äúhate our freedom,?Äù but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.

[...]
In Saudi Arabia, a large majority believes that the U.S. seeks to ?Äúweaken?Äù and ?Äúdominate?Äù Islam itself – in other words, Americans have become the enemy. It is noteworthy that opinion is hardest over against America in precisely those places ruled by what Muslims call ?Äúapostates?Äù and tyrants – the tyrants we support. This should give us pause.

In this context, it’s very simple to see why many Muslims see Osama bin Laden as the good guy. We’re arming this bastard and shooting ourselves in the foot at the same time by continuing our support for repressive regimes, when instead we should either commit to a hands off, defensive stance in regards to the Middle East, or quit being hypocritical in how we determine good and bad allies there. The status quo is going to cause more Muslims to rally behind radical Islam and terrorist tactics as the only answer to our foreign policy.

This is of course premature, but every time I see a news item from Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) it makes me happy that there’s still some sanity left in Congress. That’s why I think that even though he lost in 1988 when he ran on the Libertarian ticket (yet earned ~32,000 more votes than Michael Badnarik did in 2004), he would be an ideal candidate for the 2008 nomination and for president.

I know, it’s probably deluded and he probably doesn’t have ambitions for presidency any more, but the pool for viable national Libertarian candidates is so shallow that it doesn’t hurt to throw his name out there.

As for my Vice Presidential pick? That’s easy too. Another Southern Republican: former congressman Bob Barr. He’ll have a handicap with die-hard Democrats, with that whole impeaching of Bill Clinton albatross hanging around his neck, but I don’t think it’s anything that can’t be explained in simple terms: “blowjob, fuggedaboutit; lying and abuse of office, impeachment… biatch.” Of course, I think he would suffer greatly if he was the front-runner because of this, but as the veep pick this would gain a lot of anti-Clintonite Republican votes.

Hell, they’re both on the list of 100 to Watch, so it’s not that big of a stretch. Both have also signed the Republican Liberty Caucus liberty pact, which is a group that tries to work within the Republican party to steer it towards libertarian ideals (sadly the RLC isn’t always the best metric, as witnessed in 1998 when they awarded nutjob John Ashcroft their top Senate accolades ).

Whoever the pick is, they’ll need a campaign staff that knows what works and what doesn’t (PDF 300K).

I was screwing around with Photoshop and came up with this little ditty. It’s 1280 x 854 because that’s the size of my Powerbook screen, so PC users will have to either stretch it or center it on a dark background:

Click for full size (yes, that’s an airplane . . . surreal eh?)

UPDATE: Here’s a 1280×1024 version. It’s got a funky border, so if you don’t dig that, use the other.

Russmo (the only libertarian cartoonist I know of) has an awesome cartoon (via The Statrix):

This is probably one of the most apt representations of the current brand of Republicanism I’ve seen. But it got me thinking about how best to parody the Democrat/Republican mess we’re in, so I came up with this description (I can’t draw) for a libertarian political cartoon that chastizes both parties in one fell swoop:

3/4 angle of airplane from the outside viewing into the cockpit. The view inside reveals an elephant in the pilot seat with his hands over his eyes wearing a hat that reads “pilot,” a one donkey in the co-pilot seat with a hat that reads “co-pilot,” and another donkey behind him with a hat that reads “U.N.” covering the co-pilot’s eyes. In front of the plane (below it) is a dark, jagged mountain that has the following items: social security, medicare, budget deficits, war, nanny state, and bigger government. Behind the plane, in fluffy clouds that are lighter than the rest of the image read the following items: limited government, free trade, balanced budgets, economic prosperity.

Dunno, just an idea I’d like to see. If anyone has some drawing skills, I’ll post it here.

Russian president Vladimir Putin issued a scathing rebuke to America’s foreign policy, saying that “even when dictatorship is beautifully gift-wrapped in pseudo-democratic phraseology, it has never been capable of resolving systemic problems. On the contrary, it can only make them worse.”

You know, if the only rebuttal to this is along the lines of it takes one to know one, then we got problems folks.

I wonder how it must have felt to be a 1930s German: intensly nationalistic, certain of their moral superiority in controlling lesser nations’ futures, and willing to ignore any disparaging remarks that conflicted with their limited world-view. Sounds familiar. Conservative apologists can make all the excuses they want for these hijackers of the conservative Republican ideology, but the fact is, our government is going bad, and I mean both parties. I don’t blame them for feeling squeezed, we’re being crushed between fascism and socialism and there’s very little we can do about it short of violent revolt.

But you know, there’s got to be a silver lining here. After all, it’s not like we’re to the point that we’re forcing ethnic populations to wear identifying insignia on their clothes or work in forced labor camps. I mean, we would never consider that.

No, we’re A #1, just so long as the masses keep focusing on one trivial domestic “emergency” or another that keep conventiently cropping up at home. Keep watching those reality TV shows and sensationalism court trials, nothing odd is going on outside of the bubble.

Back in 1984, Union Carbide had a nasty chemical accident in Bhopal, India. The executives quickly cut and ran and the area has been a black eye for the company for years. When Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide a few years ago, it inherited their mess, and apparently their ethics as well.

Now, imagine Dow appearing on BBC to announce they had suddenly had a change of heart on the twentieth anniversary of the accident and were going to liquidate Union Carbide and set up a $12B reparation fund for the 120,000 inhabitants of Bhopal for deaths and medical costs associated with the accident.

Sound like fantasy? Well, that’s what millions of BBC viewers were led to believe this Friday the 3rd when a faux Dow representative appeared on News24 to claim full responsibility for the catastrophe and promised to make ammends, going so far as to lay out a rather compelling plan to repay the Bhopal denizens by liquidating it’s Union Carbide assets and promising to turn a leaf and become a better corporation.

The whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by a group called The Yes Men. You can view the interview online.

The markets responded by tanking Dow’s stock, and real Dow quickly called BBC and angrily denied everything, threatening that they may sue the BBC over the hoax. I guess stockholders don’t really give a shit if the company they invest in harms people, just so long as it doesn’t adversely effect their profits.

This is almost absurd. AP uncovered more POW photos, this time taken by Navy SEALs, showing what appears to be abuse (unconfirmed, but one prisoner is spouting blood like a fountain). But seriously, the reason I picked the photo above is because, fuck, didn’t our guys learn anything from Abu Ghraib?

The similarity to Lyndie England’s thumbs up smiling pose are almost comically parallel. I almost wonder if the DoD handed out a pamphlet that said: “Do not take photos of prisoners of war, but if you must, make sure it’s a good one and extend a thumbs up for the maximum trophy shot effect.”

Anyways, bOINGbOING has more details, including the fact that AP found the pictures by just Googling for them. How fucked up is that? You can skip straight to the pictures if you want, there’s quite a few of them (via MemoryBlog).

Remember when Michael Badnarik (Libertarian Party) and David Cobb (Green Party) were arrested in St. Louis while trying to serve the CPD (Commission on Presidential Debates)? Unless you were getting your news from the few select news sources that covered it, chances are you had no idea it happened.

Well, there’s an auction on eBay now with a whole bunch of stuff, including autographed photos from the arrest, and the original police bracelet. Also included are some rare pre-nomination campaign buttons, a rare pre-nomination bumper sticker and a signed copy of Badnarik’s manuscript for his acclaimed book “Good to be King.”

I first approached Michael and Jon Airheart (his personal assistant) in Austin last month and asked them if they still had the bracelet. They answer was yes, and I quickly told them they should sell it on eBay. I was pretty ripped at the time and it was prior to my lambasting of LP Communications Director, George Getz (that’s a whole other story). Anyways, Jon was very interested and we made plans to get an auction going. I think Mike thought eBay was some shoppy thing in San Francisco (he’s learning, but behind the curve on a lot of Internet stuff).

Well, after about a month of Jon working on everything (plus collecting a lot of other stuff that is really impressive), it’s on eBay. I’m getting a small percentage of the final auction price for doing the Internet promotion for this, but I think this is an incredibly huge deal in and of itself, and I just like being part of stuff like this.

UPDATE: After some searching, I found out that Badnarik and Cobb don’t have the title of being the first presidential candidates arrested while campaigning. That honor belongs to Communist William Z. Foster, who was arrested in Los Angeles in 1932 on suspicion of criminal syndicalism. They back story on Foster is very interesting and though he’s a devout communist, this startling paragraph (from 1932) seemed eerily familiar in contrast with our current political climate:

Socialism, he intimated, has been captured bodily by industrial leaders, now advancing theories half-socialist, half-fascist. Democracy is being attacked from without by communism, while its own leaders bore from within, seeking to undermine its walls and capture the citadel in the name of fascism.

Well, this is what the main street downtown looks like. I’ll snap a pic of Pike’s Peak if I can get some other work out of the way before the sun starts setting here.

UPDATE: nice blurry sunset, no second chances :(

I’ll be flying out tomorrow morning, so I should be able to scan the news and have some posts up tomorrow. It’s too frickin cold here, I don’t know how people can live in snowy climates for five months out of the year.

Check out Binary Bonsai if you haven’t already:

Michael Heilemann’s latest redesign is pure elegance, as always. I’ve been inspired by many of his designs, and the Kubrick template is certainly worth checking out. Mostly, it’s cool to see a designer do some really cool shit with WordPress and push it to the limits. Once WP 1.3 is final, I’m going to be upgrading and redesigning this site, and you can bet I’ll be using a whole lotta Kubrick in there somehow. But that’s a few months down the road.

Anyways, his redesign rocks. From the Hammer of Truth, we raise a glass to Binary Bonsai.

—

As an offtopic aside, I want to let everyone know I’ll be on a road trip until Thursday night. My dad has something seriously screwed up with his back and has to go back to Colorado imminently because the Veteran’s Administration here in Atlanta won’t do squat except give him pain killers (they aren’t working). Because he drove his RV from out there and can’t drive now because of the pain he’s in, I’m taking him back (he’s in good hands once he gets there). Funny enough, I get to find out if I’m on any TSA [no-fly] lists and look forward to the grueling strip-search I’m sure I’ll get since I’ll be flying back out one-way with carry-on only.

I’ll post if I can (pictures too, who knows) since he’s learning the way of the techie and has country-wide wireless Internet. Mostly I’ll be trying to keep up with work in the few hours we’re stopped and will be hoping to hell that we don’t get nailed with bad weather (snow = no driving).

Note: this article contains dead links, the url is still in the hover/alt text. Keep the web working, curate content well!

Don’t call it a prediction, that’s one thing I want to say right away. If anything, a prediction is guess, speculation on what could happen based on anything from historical analysis to religious prophecy. I don’t traffic in any of those, instead I’m about to tell you what is already happening. If the recent bad news continues at the current pace, by Christmas we should start seeing numerous countries fleeing the dollar and OPEC reversing it’s decision and selling oil in euros, which will lead to a complete collapse and skyrocketting inflation.

The dollar is currently getting slam-dunked internationally, and the US economy is now visibly cracking at the foundation. The cause of this is very simple: the national debt and our government’s inability to curb printing and spending of new money in the face of record-breaking debt. I touched on this in an earlier entry — Hoping for a Government Collapse — but my hope at the time was that we’d see a gradual collapse of the dollar which would head off depression-style inflation. Not to be a chicken little here, but now, the outlook is pretty grim.

I’ve been watching the news wires recently for specifics on how quickly this could take place, and from all corners I am seeing reports that the world is tired of bailing water for the US while our government keeps racking up new debts. Below is a compendium of quotes from articles on the subject:

“So far, the dollar’s slide to nine-year lows doesn’t reflect panic. But some analysts say a run on the dollar is possible.”
Worldwide effects of sinking dollar – Nov 22, 2004 – Christian Science Monitor

[Morgan Stanley chief economist Stephen Roach] sees a 30 percent chance of a slump soon and a 60 percent chance that “we’ll muddle through for a while and delay the eventual [economic] armageddon.”

The chance we’ll get through OK: one in 10. Maybe.
Economic `Armageddon’ predicted – Nov 23, 2004 – Boston Herald

“The dollar is friendless and in danger of freefall,” said Neil Mackinnon, chief economist at ECU Group.
Dollar plumbs new lows on talk of central bank selling – Nov 24, 2004 – AFP

“The cause is clear,” [German Chancellor Gerhard Schr??der] added. “It can be found in the double deficit in the U.S. — the deficit in the federal budget and the current account.”
Why The Dollar Is Giving Way – Dec 6, 2004 Ed. – BusinessWeek

“There is an emerging consensus that banks around the world are moving to expand their reserves of euros at the expense of dollars,” said Ashraf Laidi, chief currency analyst at MG Financial Group in New York.
Dollar slides to a record low – Nov 27, 2004 – San Francisco Chronicle

“What we’re seeing now is far more than just speculation. These are real fundamental shifts in portfolio allocations from official and private entities, and that could continue and see the dollar selling accelerate,” said Derek Halpenny, a currency strategist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd. in London.
Bond Yields Rise, Dollar Dips on News of Selling in China – Nov 27, 2004 – Los Angeles Times

“The real risk is that the sharper and the quicker the dollar falls, that these investors pull out pretty quickly from U.S. markets,” said Mitul Kotecha, global head of currency research in London at Calyon, the investment banking unit of Credit Agricole SA.
Dollar Declines for Seventh Week Against Euro, Sets Record Low – Nov 27, 2004 – Bloomberg

The things to watch this week are gold prices and foreign banks selling dollars. We’ve already hit 16-year gold highs at $445/oz, and it’s steaming forward with little to hold it back. If you look at the index compared to other currencies though, there’s little change, so the economic meaning of this is that gold is remaining stable while the dollar falls against all other currencies.

A lot of economic reports are going to be released this week, and they’re going to mean diddly squat. The real fear here is that at the current rate of foreign banks dumping US debt and dollars, we’re heading towards an economic meltdown right at the peak of the holiday season. The immediate response from the Federal Reserve will be to drastically increase interest rates, which will send shockwaves through the real estate sector as mortgage rates go up. Anyone not already with a fixed-interest mortgage better go ahead and refinance while they have the chance.

As for inflation, you can expect that to be more gradual for domestic goods and pronounced in early 2005 as imports begin to get more expensive. You may hear good news in saying that exports will now go up, but don’t believe that shit either. Exports are expected to be lackluster since there’s a new sanction on US exports thanks to the stupidity of Senator Robert Byrd in passing a law that imposed duties on imports and giving a cut to US manufacturers led the WTO to impose export sanctions on our goods.

Overall, this is looking to be a very bad holiday season, though I doubt there will be the same frenzy here as in other nations to dump the dollar. Gold speculation could shoot through the roof and go upwards of $600/oz and higher if the whole thing continues to unravel as fast as it currently is, but remember: the price of gold is stable with other currencies. A rule of thumb for investors has always been to have 10% in precious metals (not futures trading, but physical currency).

I’m not giving anyone advice here, but the writing is on the wall. We’re in for a depression, whether we like it or not. I’m just curious to see how things unravel, this is not going to be pretty.

UPDATE: Just to clarify, I’m not entirely bullish on gold and there’s good reason to have reservations about it. It has been a horrible long term investment as we are just now hitting 16-year levels and is only useful to shield against inflation (duh, that’s why all the managers only suggest a small percentage). Other options are buying foreign currencies and bonds, making a profit by becoming part of the “problem”. Of course that means you blame the problem on investors who are trying to protect their wealth, not Congress, who can’t get a grip on it’s spending. I’m betting on foreign bonds doing quite well as savvy investors flee the sinking ship while they still have a chance. Of course, I’m not a financial advisor, so don’t do anything without consulting one to determine your level of risk.

AngryFinger found this gem of a comic from 1961 that decries the evils of communism under the auspices of religion. Unfortunately, our current political climate fits a lot of the characteristics this comic denounces, making a lot of the propaganda quite ironic. Here’s a few of my favorites, out of context, but not really:

The series was part of a Christian comic book: “Treasure Chest was a monthly comic book published by the Catholic Guild from 1946 to 1972. Each issue featured several different stories intended to inspire citizenship, morality, and patriotism. In the 1961, volume 17 number 2 issue, the story ‘This Godless Communism‘ began.”

It’s funny to consider that a lot of our own government’s actions are so eerily similar to the tactics, if not the ideology, of Russian communism and German naziism.

From Turn Your Back on Bush:

On January 20th, 2005, we’re calling for a new kind of action. The Bush administration has been successful at keeping protesters away from major events in the last few years by closing off areas around events and using questionable legal strategies to outlaw public dissent. We can use these obstacles to develop new tactics. On Inauguration day, we don’t need banners, we don’t need signs, we just need people.

We’re calling on people to attend inauguration as they are: members of the public. Once through security and at the procession, at a given signal, we’ll all turn our backs on Bush. A simple, clear and coherent message.

This is a clever way of protesting Bush directly, and considering the fact that 90% of Washington, DC voted for Kerry, this might actually have some impact in the media if enough people actually participate. Even a meager 20% of parade route attendants turned away from the motorcade as it passed would create some substantial buzz. I’m curious how dyed-in-the-wool Republicans will respond to this public snubbing and try to denigrate the participants, it’s certainly an interesting discussion that will erupt from this.

UPDATE: The White House has not responded, saying “the president welcomes all people to express their freedoms. The president and this administration have been diligently working behind the backs of the electorate for the past four years, it’s refreshing to see them embrace that.”

UPDATE 2: Republican Congresscritters were considering asking that we keep our back turned to them as well, but demurred since they are already conducting most business in back-rooms out of sight of pesky “constituents” and “oversight”.

Or . . . “How to spread the goodwill message of Thanksgiving to Iraq.” But what better way to celebrate the kindness of the American indian towards the pilgrims than to reenact their subsequent slaughter and theft of land, but with Abrams tanks and Apache helicopters. I’m fucking psyched. As the prophet Muhammad Malcolm X had fortold: “I didn’t land on Plymouth Rock . . . Operation Plymouth Rock landed on Musayyib.”

Just so you know, this ridiculous military code name is completely true. From Reuters — More ‘Surgical’ U.S. Raids Go on South of Baghdad:

Operation Plymouth Rock, named in reference to Thursday’s U.S. Thanksgiving celebration of the first British settlers, involves 5,000 U.S. troops, Iraqi police commandos and several hundred British soldiers from the Black Watch regiment.

To keep the cranberry and drumstick references flowing, here’s a more in-depth article from none other than (gobble gobble) Turkey’s newspaper, Kavkaz Center — Clashes continue:

Targeting an area dubbed as one of the ?Äúno-go?Äù zones in Iraq and ?Äúdeath triangle?Äù for US-led occupation troops, the US-led offensive ?ÄúOperation Plymouth Rock?Äù, is targeting cities of Latifiyah, Mahmudiyah, Yusufiyah, Iskandariyah, Haswah and Musayyib, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Lo and behold, I found an elephant… so here’s an updated version of the post below this one:

I was thinking about merging the animals them in the back and change the date to “since 1972,” but I think the joke would be ruined . . . RUINED! So I didn’t.

UPDATE: Hubris has more spoofs along the anti-Democrat vein.