born live love die

Here’s the headline:

Fed’s rate-cutting days may be over - for now

And why?

After a year of aggressively slashing interest rates, Federal Reserve policymakers signaled that their rate-cutting days may soon be over — for now.

As expected, the Fed’s Open Market Committee served up just a quarter-point cut Wednesday, leaving the benchmark for overnight loans between banks at just 2 percent — down from 5.25 percent when the rate slashing began last summer.

The overnight rate is at 2 fucking per cent?  Here’s some news for that headline writer: they can’t cut it below 0%.  So the idea that they are stopping - for now - is insane.  They have stopped because there is no where farther to go.

Some Fed watchers say we may see one more cut before the Fed pauses to see if its easy-money policy …

“Easy money policy”?  They are getting to the point where they can’t give the shit away.  This isn’t an easy money policy.  This is a “will someone please save us from ourselves” policy.

This is what you get with a ‘C’ student from Yale.

A link on Yahoo caught my eye this morning. Here’s a grab of the screen.

See the third link down? “Despite recent losses, Obama campaign sticks to plan”. Recent losses? Really? I thought that the loss in Pennsylvania was the first in a while.

• March 4: Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont
  • Obama won in Vermont; he got more delegates in Texas
  • Clinton won Ohio and Rhode Island
  • Delegate count: Clinton 188, Obama 182
• March 9: Wyoming
  • Obama won
• March 11: Mississippi
  • Obama won
• April 22: Pennsylvania
  • Clinton won by 9% of popular vote; got 9 more delegates

Before March 4, there was an unbroken string of primary wins for Obama. Pennsylvania made it one in row for Clinton.

It’s not just the MSM that makes stuff up to generate conflict where there isn’t any.

The link goes to an article cribbed from Politico. The article is rife with spanning assumptions about the race and results.

The first line:

After Sen. Barack Obama’s third major primary loss and endless media coverage dedicated to dissecting the apparent weaknesses of his candidacy, one of the most striking elements of his campaign this week was what’s missing: any hint of internal upheaval.

The assumption present in this sentence is that somehow “major” primaries are what matters. “Major” is meant to modify primary, but in using it there, it also spans to modify loss. This then validates the “endless media coverage”. Let’s look at those major primary losses. I think the author is referring to losses in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. From those “major losses”, the Clinton campaign gathered a total of 13 more delegates. This is from a total of more than 4000 in play.

There is something else at play here: the election calendar. The author seems to assume that this contest is something like a sporting event where the next event that happens is somehow derived from the previous events, e.g., the pitcher has a pitch count limit and is getting tired or the quarterback banged his hand on someone’s helmet on the last play.

The order of the primary elections was well established and while the ability to win primary elections can contribute to the amount of money one can raise, the author’s premise would fall apart with a different election calendar. The polls in the states listed did not move much since Edwards dropped out of the race. Actually, Obama was able to move the contest from +20% for Clinton to +9% for Clinton. The assertion that the author is pushing is that somehow Obama should have been able to push that to a victory. Whaaaa?

The author assumes that the the first clause is true axiomatically and plunges on with a dissectively comparative analysis. Obama does this, Clinton does that. Bush did this, Kerry did that. Then comes the wrap up:

Less than 24 hours after Pennsylvania voters dealt Obama a sound defeat, Gibbs dismissed any suggestion that a fresh wave of critical analysis would take a toll on the campaign.

I object to the use of the word “sound”. As has been previously noted, Obama moved the margin of loss from -20% to -9%. In Pennsylvania, Obama was going against the support of Gov. Rendell, who was supporting Clinton. As noted by Kos, mayors count.

That’s why Philly mayor Nutter and Gov. Rendell (an old-school machine politician) were able to limit Obama’s gains in the Philly metro area to Clinton’s big benefit. In fact, Clinton had at least 100 mayors working for her in the Keystone State.

Also noted by Kos, Obama made great strides in the central portion of the state. There were voters in Pennsylvania who would vote for Clinton no matter what. To attempt to prove by assertion that Obama should have somehow won them over also defies credulity.

I don’t know if the author, Carrie Budoff Brown, has a need to fill column inches, but this is shoddy(*) writing.

*Shoddy in the initial sense of the word, where wool scraps were combined with some fresh wool to make blankets and uniforms for Union soldiers in the Civil War.  The resultant fabric would fall apart very quickly.

Colbert is the greatest.  At 5.40 in this clip, he slips in the greatest of digs.

The last third is usually backwash.

OMFG.

It turns out that there is more than religious mystics in Qom.  There are mystics of a more carnal variety.

In the 1970s, Bostonians looking for a proverbial good time went to the “Combat Zone” and New Yorkers flocked to 42^nd Street; in contemporary Iran, the holy city of Qom is known (unofficially) as a place of “both pilgrimage and pleasure.” There, prostitutes wearing veils and even chadors mill about temples or sit together in public courtyards where men can inspect them. Sometimes a male go-between offers “introductions,” at which point the prostitutes pull aside their headgear so the potential client can get a glimpse, but the whole process is fairly subtle.

Where do they come from?  Who uses them?

Qom may have become a prostitution hot spot due to the abundance of shrines. Young female runaways with no shelter come to the city knowing they can take refuge at holy sites by sleeping in rooms intended for pilgrims. They have no way of making a living, so after awhile they get involved with the sex trade. The city’s young theological students and transient tourists form the main clientele.

But isn’t it against the law?

The penalties for prostitution are severe—ranging from whipping to execution. But there’s a loophole in Islamic law called sigheh, or temporary marriage. According to Shiite interpretation, a man and a woman may enter an impermanent partnership with a preset expiration date. There’s no legally required minimum duration (a day, a week, anything goes) and no need for official witnesses—unless the woman is a virgin, in which case she needs the consent of her legal guardian. An Iranian who’s wary of arrest can simply escort a prostitute to a registry, obtain a temporary contract from a Muslim cleric, and then legally satisfy his sexual needs.

Sigheh.  I wonder if it would work here?  Would women want it as a way of getting rid of a man that doesn’t work out?

When I was a young man, I fancied myself an actor. I worked in a community theater, had some small parts, one large one, and enjoyed the work, the camaraderie. While building sets, painting flats and hanging lights, the topic of conversation would often turn to past performances and experiences. A staple of those sessions were tales of the ‘missed cue’. Sometimes, one actor would get lost in elliptical or repetitive dialog, say the wrong line and then a cue would get missed. Or, one actor would repeat a cue in hopes that the missed cue would get picked up and the performance could continue. There were also countless stories about cues that were inappropriately repeated by someone trying to reset the performance and get it back on track.

During the post-primary coverage last night, one of Anderson Cooper’s panelist repeated a cue that is getting missed. Anderson Cooper asked the panelist if Senator Obama needed to address the ‘bitter issue and Rev. Wright’. The panelist answered in suitably grave tones to the affirmative and expounded on it. It was such a blatantly missed cue and the political actor in question is deaf to it.

The nature of television dictates that drama, not exposition, be pursued. The medium of motion pictures, moving images, tends toward drama. Text and still pictures are great mediums for exposition. There is time to study, to see the composition of them. The thing that is pertinent to motion pictures is the motion. Conflict is the heart of drama. Motion implies conflict; drama implies narrative. News shows on television are not trying to do exposition, they are trying to do narrative. They often use the expression “story lines” (borrowed from sports coverage) as a way to clue the audience in to the script they are following. Television pushes a narrative thread as a way to retain viewers; viewers mean ratings; ratings mean advertising revenue.

Television will supply and manufacture narrative when there is none apparent. To get manufactured narrative, they must manufacture drama and conflict. The missed cue of Anderson Cooper is one example of such a manufactured conflict. There is nothing new to be learned from Senator Obama’s use of the word ‘bitter’. There is nothing much new that can be learned from the episode of Rev. Wright, except perhaps the fuller story that the Rev. Wright was inspired by President Kennedy’s famous exhortation to leave college and join the Marines. He returned to college following his term of service. Facts take a back seat to narrative and drama; conflict always drives the bus. But absent true narrative, the news business will manufacture one.

The cue is being missed by Senator Clinton. This endless rehash of pass manufactured conflict is not a cue to continue, it is a cue to leave. She is missing her blocking cue to exit this political stage. There is a role for her still to play, but standing down stage center in the spot light is not it.

60% of the world’s art comes from China.  Most of it is reproductions of major works.

Dafen is a village surrounded by the thriving metropolis of Shenzhen, and the origin of most of the world’s reproduction oil paintings. In the popular imagination Dafen’s artists produce anonymous works for unknown customers, operating no differently than a faceless factory churning out counterfeits, replicas and nothing close to what would be considered art.

REGIONAL productively collaborated with the otherwise commoditized community in Dafen by asking selected individuals, some for the first time, to imagine themselves in their professional medium. The final works show the technical, creative, and professional facets of the artists identities subsumed by the styles and relationships they maintain with specific famous artists.

Here’s an example:

“Dog whistle politics” are political messages that are intended for one special interest group and are meant to not be understood by the rest of the polity. Obama whistles out:

I didn’t get it at first because I’m not the one the whistle is going out to.  The demographic is younger and hipper than me:

2000 frames per second.

Say no more.

I pointed out the shafts of sunlight over Lake Washington to JMan.  We were heading west in Kirkland, and I saw the sunlight overlaying Seattle on the west side of the lake.

“It looks like an open doorway to heaven.”

–JMan, 8

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

A new study reports that divorce and unwed mothers cost the economy more than $112 billion each year.

Really?

Who supported and paid for the study?

The study was conducted by Georgia State University economist Ben Scafidi. His work was sponsored by four groups who consider themselves part of a nationwide “marriage movement” — the New York-based Institute for American Values, the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, Families Northwest of Redmond, Wash., and the Georgia Family Council, an ally of the conservative ministry Focus on the Family.

Right. Gotcha.

I think the Republican party is deeply conflicted about divorce. On the one hand, the social conservatives don’t like it, on the other hand, the fiscal conservatives can’t help but see the stimulus that having each family in two households gives to the economy.

Think about it: two households and all the stuff that each one needs, two (at least) cars, double purchases for clothes and personal items.  Divorce can double our domestic growth and I’m sure that economists are clued in on that.