Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-friedkin/right-wing-intimidation-h_b_135015.html

One of the less savoury trends in modern American life has been the return of bullying and intimidation to the public sphere. It is quite clear to me that many Americans either never paid attention to their modern History lessons in school, or cannot read, because the lessons taught by the McCarthy era appear to have been largely forgotten. One of the main lessons that has been forgotten is that the media of the time totally failed to challenge McCarthy on any of his supposed basis for initially claiming the existence of "hundreds of Communists" in the government. He was able to pull horseshit numbers out of thin air for years, using exactitude as a tool for burnishing superficial credibility. Ironically, his downfall was only sealed when the Army blew him up in public in hearings. Up until that point just about everybody in the media and public life had been complicitly marching in various degress of lock-step with McCarthy as he abused whole areas of the legal and legislative processes to demonize, marginalize and victimize anybody who refused to kow-tow to his worldview. McCarthy should have been a compelling story to Americans of the dangers of credulity when listening to bullies, but sadly nearly every lesson of the McCarthy era seems to have already been forgotten.
In the past 8 years I have seen many of the tactics originally deployed by McCarthy and some of his fascist predecessors resurrected and used in the same way against people who asked awkward questions and who challenged leadership orthodoxy, particularly after 9/11. If I believe many of those bullying little shits, I am a traitorous and un-American piece of vermin. I also have taken note of how John McCain and Sarah Palin have been firing up supporters at rallies in the past few weeks by repeating factually inaccurate lies and slurs about their opponents, then standing by as riled-up supporters suggest wonderfully positive approaches to their opponents like "Kill him!". This sort of "take them to the edge" behaviour is also rather familiar to those of us who watched film footage of Nazi and Fascist ralies in the 1930's when (unlike many people in this country) we actually studied World History in some detail in high school. My British compatriot Oswald Mosley was adept at the same behaviour at Brownshirt rallies in the UK, as I well recall from history film viewings.
The film director William Freidkin also appears to have fallen into the sights of a bullying pressure group, as he explains in this article on Huffington Post. Just like Joseph McCarthy, who often adhered to the tabloid journalism principle that one should never let the facts get in the way of a good story, the Americans For Limited Government Foundation appears to be unable to get even basic facts about Freidkin's life or political affiliations correct, although none of that information is any of their damned business in the first place. Friedkin's take-down (supported by a jocular, but still perfectly serious lawyer's letter) is worth reading, partly for entertainment value, but also because this is indeed the right way to respond to this kind of threatening, bullying crap.

Some thoughts on current happenings in the NFL.

1. The Adam Jones Experiment looks like it is not working out for the Cowboys. Jones is once again suspended from the NFL, despite the Cowboys desperately trying to laugh off his altercation with a security employee last week. Quite clearly Jones is still failing to act like a responsible adult, and Roger Goodell has (in my opinion, correctly) stepped in and done what the Cowboys themselves seemed unable or unwilling to do.
I'm not sure that suspending Adam Jones significantly impacts the Cowboys. It may be my imagination, but Jones hasn't exactly been setting the playing field on fire. The Adam Jones of 2008 does not look like the "Pacman" Jones of 2006 vintage, who was a game-changing impact player. This Jones looks to be lacking in both fire and skill.

2. The Cowboys are suddenly upside-down with injuries. Sam Hurd is on IR, Terence Newman is recovering from surgery, Felix Jones (the talented Jones) is likely to be out 3-4 weeks with a hamstring pull, and Tony Romo is out for a month with a busted pinky finger on his throwing hand. In addition, Greg Ellis, not normally a talkative player, is suddenly making negative comments about team cohesion and motivation. Something is not right in Valley Ranch TX. The big trade for Roy Williams also looks debatable when you compare the performance of Williams to the price the Cowboys paid (including their 2009 first round pick). It is my belief that the Cowboys panicked, and overpaid for Williams.

3. The ony good thing that the Lions have done all season is to get 3 draft picks for Roy Williams. Other than that, the team is showing that the front office couldn't manage it's way out of a paper bag. They just placed Jon Kitna on IR after failing to trade him, but since he officially has a back injury, the decision to try and trade him smells fishy. This smacks of a clumsy attempt to move Kitna out of the picture while they evaluate their other two quarterbacks. The idea that any of the Lions leadership have any credibility right now is a quaint one...

4. The Patriots are suddenly an average team, and this is only partially due to the loss of Tom Brady. When you give up plays because players are standing around like topiary instead of running to the ball or tackling, which happened more than once in the loss to the Chargers, that's not a quarterback problem. It's a team cohesion and motivation problem.
The most interesting event (which was briefly shown on TV but not discussed) was the sight of the Patriots offensive co-ordinator Josh McDaniel giving Bill Belichick an earful as the Patriots walked off the field at half time. McDaniel was clearly steamed, and was yelling at Belichick, who was walking along with his head down, seemingly saying nothing. Whatever that was about, it does not portray an image of a unified coaching staff.

5. Michael who? The Atlanta Falcons seem to have a great replacement for the V Man in Matt Ryan. I watched him run the no-huddle offense on Sunday and he looked like he had been doing it for years. Ryan's success may prove that it is better to have a solid conventional quarterback under center than a flashy but inconsistent converted running back.

6. The Giants were not simply beaten by the Browns on Monday night - they were buried. They were outplayed in almost all phases of the game. More strangely, they seemed unwilling or unable to play with any urgency in the fourth quarter. After the Browns hit a 2 point conversion to go up by 3 scores, the Giants had the ball back with around 6 minutes of time left. They started off running no-huddle, but the time between snaps seemed to get longer and longer as the time ticked away, until by 3 minutes they were back huddling up between plays. Eegads! You're down by 3 scores and you are slowing down between plays...what's wrong with this picture? At the rate that the Giants were moving on the field and between plays, they could have extended the fourth quarter by 10 minutes and the Giants would still have been behind on the scoreboard. Utterly inexplicable. It was like there was no sense of urgency whatsoever. Even Tom Coughlin, who is usually one of the first coaches to start jumping up and down when things are not going well, seemed almost resigned to the inevitable. The Giants looked like they were simply going through the motions. Not the hallmark of a team that deserves another bite at the Superbowl.

7. The Kansas City Chiefs, clearly in rebuilding mode, cannot accept a trade for Tony Gonzalez...WTF? What a way to piss off and reward one of your outstanding veterans, a sure-fire hall of famer, who merely wanted to end his career in a better winning situation. Somebody in the Chiefs leadership needs to be tarred and feathered for this.

8. The Rams win...against the Redskins...who would have forecast that? Compelling proof (if any more were needed) that the team had quit on Scott Linehan. Jim Haslett has a real chance to turn the season around and cement his status as a head coach again.

9. The Seahawks look like a team in disarray. Matt Hasselbeck's mystery knee injury becomes more mysterious by the week...and with Seneca Wallace also injured, the team is being forced to use third-rated quarterback Charlie Frye, who is not setting the world on fire. However, the whole team seems to be unfocussed, giving away penalties like sweeties throughout games, and generally exuding an air of confusion.

10. Talking of mysterious injuries...somebody is not being honest about Carson Palmer's elbow. When you visit a surgeon known as a Tommy John specialist, that screams three words - ulnar, collateral and ligament. Palmer's throw distance and velocity have gone, and the Bengals defense is having to do all of the work, since the offense cannot move the ball and stay on the field. My guess is that Palmer will soon be placed on IR, with or without surgery.

11. Mike Nolan is a dead man walking in San Francisco. The 49'ers continue to disappoint, and there is a ready-for-hire head coach on the staff in Mike Martz. Nolan is in a no-win situation right now. If the team does well, Martz will get most of the credit, and if it continues to struggle, Nolan will be the fall guy.

12. If fan sentiment fired head coaches, Brad Childress would be gone as the Vikings head coach. The team is winning, but only just, and the decision to bench Tavaris Jackson after 2 weeks, while understandable, begs the question of why they even announced him as the starter to begin with. Somewhere along the line, Jackson did not inspire that much confidence if they were prepared to pull him after 2 weeks. This is either panic from the coaching staff, or rank poor decision-making to begin with.

13. The Dolphins are still succeeding with the "Wildcat" offensive formation, even after opposing teams have had the best part of a month to study it, and other teams are starting to use it also. For the first time in a long while, it seems that a common staple of high school and college football is going to enter the NFL and stay there for more than a few weeks. The success of this formation tends to suggest that the NFL is hidebound by conservative play-calling and thinking. Steve Spurrier certainly failed in his NFL career to bring the "Fun and Gun" offense in from the college game, but that may have been because he picked personnel to execute it who were marginal in terms of NFL capability. Quarterbacks like Danny Wuerffel and Scott Mitchell were not bona fide #1 quarterbacks for any NFL team.

Gregg Easterbrook has suggested on numerous occasions that many NFL coaches are more concerned with reducing the margin of defeat than actually going for a win, and I see examples every week of play-calling that seems to fit that mindset. Exhibit A - Giants in fourth quarter against Browns. Exhibit B - Brad Childress this past weekend. Asked why he had not gone for 2 after scoring, which would have required the Vikings' opponents to score a field goal just to tie the game, Childress pointed out that the overall NFL 2 point conversion rate is only 42%, meaning that in his world, the odds were against a 2 point conversion succeeding. Since he had put the journalists on the back foot by asking them if they actually knew this statistic (nobody spoke up and said that they did), no journalist asked the most obvious follow-up question: never mind the NFL conversion rate, what is the Vikings conversion rate? The decision should not have been based on league-wide numbers in the first place, It should have been a combination of (a) team capabilities (b) opponent capabilities (c) game situation. Ahead by only 1 point in a very tight game, going for 2 should have been a serious consideration. An even more interesting question would have been whether the Vikings playbook for the game even contained a 2 point conversion play. A few years ago, the Dallas Cowboys lost a close game, which turned on a seemingly inexplicable decision to take a field goal instead of scoring on fourth and short from close to the opponents goal line late in the fourth quarter. It emerged afterwards that the Cowboys playbook for the game did not even contain a play for fourth and short in the Red Zone. The Cowboys offensive co-ordinator was gone not long afterwards.

Following Sarah Palin's performance in the Vice Presidential debate, where she winked at the camera several times, a commenter at Dave Neiwert's blog Orcinus came up with a great comment:

If the press can get close enough, let's agree to accept blinking as an acceptable response to policy questions. Once for yes and twice for no.

Link: http://tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/article847365.ece

...where a retired man in poor health is serving a jail sentence for refusing to re-sod his lawn as required by his HOA. Look at the picture of his lawn and see if it looks that bad to you...

...Then his daughter drove him to jail. Grandpa had time to do.
His crime? He had disobeyed a court order that he sod the lawn at his Beacon Woods home.
His bail? Zero.
Joseph Prudente, 66, must stay in the Pasco County jail in Land O'Lakes until the required sod work is completed, under a September court order signed by Circuit Judge W. Lowell Bray.

Since the cost of re-sodding this lawn would probably not reach $1000, one is left to wonder why the HOA could not have advanced the money to allow him to do this. I am reminded of the old saying that rules are for interpretation by the wise, and slavish observance by the foolish. The story makes the HOA look like a bunch of mean-spirited bullying little shits. If they continue to allow this guy to linger in jail, they will merely convert that perception to an indelible reality.
UPDATE - Thanks to help from his neighbors, Mr. Prudente is now out of jail and back home. He still faces HOA fines and sanctions. If the HOA has any remaining vestiges of common sense, they will strike the sanctions and fines, although given their behaviour to date, the odds are that they will continue to behave like a bunch of crypto-fascist little shits...

With the Dow plunging by nearly 700 points today, and a stock price movement graph that looks like a train running off the cliff in one of those old black-and-white Western movies, I sold my remaining small stockholdings today. I'm in a (very small pile of) cash position from tomorrow onwards in the USA. I will now shift my attention to what I can do to stem the losses in my UK pension fund.
One revealing note in the Housing Bubble Blog is this insight into how some people worked a seemingly undendingly rising market in California:

“‘We called them ‘foreclosure loans’ because they were doomed to fail,’ said one agent, who didn’t want to be identified because she’s still in the industry. ‘The lender expected the borrower to lose the house and the bank would resell it for its higher appreciated value. But the market dropped and they got caught with their pants down.’”

And where there is trouble, you will find gallows humor. Here is Thomas Friedman reporting:

A commentator on CNBC caught my attention. He was being asked to give advice to viewers as to what were the best positions to be in to ride out the market storm. Without missing a beat, he answered: “Cash and fetal.”

If I lie down on the floor correctly I can currently meet both of those requirements...
My girlfriend and I took action today; we both gave notice at our respective apartment complexes. We will move in together in December (renting an affordable house, hopefully not an imminent foreclosure) and expect to save at least $1500 a month and probably closer to $2000 a month in expenses. Since we have no debt, all of that money will go into savings. Right now we are entering a period of time where Cash Is King. I have no idea how much longer I will have a job (I am in the I.T. industry, and that is not a high-security place to be right now), so it is imperative that I create some cash reserves. The current crash will result in a real recession (we were already in one, it's just that the archaic way of determining the CPI and GDP had not caught up to reality), and I do not know what this means for me in the long term. I suspect that I will have to work until I drop dead. Right now I will never be able to afford to retire. Still, as long as I have my health, I shall count my blessings.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/05/iceland.creditcrunch

This article in the Guardian explains how Iceland is being pummelled by the failure of the world credit markets, leaving the country on the brink of bankruptcy:

Iceland is on the brink of collapse. Inflation and interest rates are raging upwards. The krona, Iceland's currency, is in freefall and is rated just above those of Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan. One of the country's three independent banks has been nationalised, another is asking customers for money, and the discredited government and officials from the central bank have been huddled behind closed doors for three days with still no sign of a plan. International banks won't send any more money and supplies of foreign currency are running out.
People talk about whether a new emergency unity government is needed and if the EU would fast-track the country to membership. On Friday the queues at the banks were huge, as people moved savings into the most secure accounts. Yesterday people were buying up supplies of olive oil and pasta after a supermarket spokesman announced on Friday night that they had no means of paying the foreign currency advances needed to import more foodstuffs.

It is rather surreal to see a country like Iceland, with a recent track record of economic growth and stability, being compared to a long-term basket-case country such as Zimbabwe...here is another article about the fall of Iceland. It seems that the fall was precipitated by many of the country's leading businesses being heavily indebted and reliant on debt financing, most of which has evaporated in the worldwide credit market failure.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/03/sarah.palin.debate.feminism

From The Guardian newspaper in the UK comes this withering evisceration of Gov. Palin's performance in the VP debate (Disclaimer - I watched about 10 minutes of this "event" and, concluding that it bore as much resemblance to a debate as a chair does to a tree, I wandered off to my hotel room).
The article starts with a picture of one of Ms. Palin's winks to the camera (WTF? Was this a debate or a reality show?) and soon gets out the steel-capped boots:

Early on, she made the astonishing announcement that she had no intentions of actually answering the queries put to her. "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also," she said.
And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the subjects she was supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of scripted attack lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating references to her own pseudo-folksy authenticity.
It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely described as such is that too many American pundits don't even try to judge the truth, wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as interpreters of a mythical mass of "average Americans" who they both venerate and despise.

And this line is highly appropriate:

What kind of maverick, after all, keeps harping on what a maverick she is?

This is very true. People who are telling the truth do not generally say "I am telling the truth" - they instinctively expect to be believed. A true maverick does not give a rat's ass about how they are perceived (that's part of the pathology of being a maverick...think about it), so actually telling people constantly that you are a maverick is prima facie evidence of a deep lack of authenticity.
As the article pretty much makes clear, the real shame is not that Sarah Palin gave such a jaw-droppingly inauthentic and shallow performance - it is that a lot of people seemed to think that she did well. That is far more worrying. Clearly more store is being placed on being "cutesy" or "folksy" than any idea of substance and intellect when it comes to attaining high elective office. Which rather confirms my cynical view that the electors of the USA are indeed getting the politicians that they deserve.

Link: http://www.hayibo.com/articles/view/710

Every so often one comes across a news item that causes the mouthing of the phrase "what planet do these people live on?".
This is one such news item. Some lowlights:

The so-called 'vagina' is a myth, and women should stop trying to claim that they enjoy sex, says a group of Saudi grand viziers.

"Everybody knows that women are non-sexual creatures," said team leader Prince Abdul Abdul Abdul. "This fantasy about a female sexual organ, this subversive and frankly repulsive idea of a 'vagina', is yet another assault on our values and customs by the West."

And here's the kicker:

The team admitted that they had not questioned any actual women during the course of their research, since this would have required having a conversation with one, which is frowned upon in the Saudi scientific community.

I don't think I have seen a more blatant example of head-in-the-sand ignorance and wilful stupidity since Thabo Mbeki's attempt to sweep HIV/AIDS treatment options under a carpet labelled "Western government and drug company conspiracy".

Link: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/24/9122/09430/717/608484

Courtesy of diarist Janusdog at DailyKos is this gem of a diary entry about why the mainstream media in the USA is a shamble; unable to provide coherent reportage, research or evaluation of most issues.
Here are a couple of the gems:

I sincerely believe the problem with the media as we know it now (and I am not talking about bloggers here, even though I consider that media) is that people simply cannot write anymore. And I don't even mean that the language isn't beautiful or poetic. I mean they just cannot write. They can not put coherent thoughts together and make a coherent thesis, paper, or story. Forget putting together several century-enduring literature like Common Sense.
Many of the students I've taught have never done an outline. Worringly, they have no way of distinguishing the bad research (as in bad information) from the good. Even worse is that it appears that students have been taught that all information is important -- everyone has a valid point of view.

We cannot whine about the lack of effectiveness of the MSM when we created the problem. The entire educational system is geared towards the historically liberal, now scientifically defunct idea that self-esteem is somehow related to high achievement. Everyone is a special, unique snowflake with their special unique point of view, all worth considering. And then we wring our hands in consternation that people can't understand the difference between a scientific theory and a biblical story? That "Fair and Balanced" has become so perverted that it means "whoever makes it easy for me to write this stupid thing?"

...is an amazing example of how a supposedly free-market administration finds itself trapped into ess points ouentially nationalizing and bailing out failing corporations.
What is more amazing, as Lawyers, Guns and Money points out, is that the Bush Administration once again felt obliged to include one of its familiar "screw oversight" qualifiers to the plan:

"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

This is pretty cheeky even by current Administration standards. The right answer is for the Democrats in the House and the Senate to refuse to even answer the phone on this proposal until that paragraph is removed. Unfortunately I have no confidence that they will.