On this last day of the year I'm featuring Luc Besson's film The Fifth Element. The first video features the evil Zorg (Gary Oldman) talking about "creative destruction." We're bound to see some destruction in 2012, but I don't think we're going to be able to call it creative. After that we've got the Diva song (another version) and Eric Serra's Little Light Of Love. We'll finish up with the end theme from the movie Wall-E, Peter Gabriel's Down To Earth.
That's mostly what we'll be doing in 2012—coming down to Earth. You find out far more about people when times are tough than you do when times are good. This is one of those times.
It's New Years Eve and traffic on DOTE will be light today, so I'll do my first Saturday oil report of 2012 next week on January 7th — Dave
It's the end of 2011, so let's take care of some unfinished business.
I am a Baby Boomer. That is not a badge I wear with pride. For 40 years now I've watched the dildos and douchebags I grew up with and looked up to—can you say William Jefferson Clinton?—make a fine mess of things. (The worst offenders were older than I was in the 1960s; they were born in the 1940s.) And now those same self-absorbed, narcissistic fools are getting ready to retire. A little over half of them don't have any significant savings for retirement, having spent everything during the 40-year Consumption Party. That situation did not improve much after Housing Bubble collapsed.
The generation that gave rise to Hula-Hoops, Woodstock and Jimi Hendrix is reaching America's traditional retirement age this year woefully unprepared. As the oldest of the boomers turn 65, they face a retirement that is unlikely to go as smoothly as their parents' did.
A poll released Wednesday found that a whopping 25 percent of people ages 46 to 64 say they have no retirement savings — and 26 percent have no personal savings.
The 401(k) generation is beginning to retire, and it isn't a pretty sight.
The retirement savings plans that many baby boomers thought would see them through old age are falling short in many cases.
The median household headed by a person aged 60 to 62 with a 401(k) account has less than one-quarter of what is needed in that account to maintain its standard of living in retirement, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve and analyzed by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College for the Wall Street Journal. Even counting Social Security and any pensions or other savings, most 401(k) participants appear to have insufficient savings. Data from other sources also show big gaps between savings and what people need, and the financial crisis has made things worse.
This analysis uses estimates of 401(k) balances from the end of 2010 and of salaries from 2009. It assumes people need 85% of their working income after they retire in order to maintain their standard of living, a common yardstick.
Facing shortfalls, many people are postponing retirement, moving to cheaper housing, buying less-expensive food, cutting back on travel, taking bigger risks with their investments and making other sacrifices they never imagined.
Not a pretty sight! These hippies were going to be the Generation That Changed The World. Well, they changed it all right. Sure did! The world is considerably worse in 2011 than it was when I was a teenager in the 1960s. And now these free-love, go-with-the-flow, kick-the-can-down-the-road, mantra-chanting, dope-smoking knuckleheads can't retire because they have no savings.
Congratu-fucking-lations!
It is in that spirit that I give you The Byrds singing the uplifting Mr. Tambourine Man in 1965.
Hey Mister Tambourine Man, play a song for me I'm not sleepy and there ain't no place I'm goin' to
That's right — there ain't no place you're going to.
And then, in the True Spirit of My Generation, I give you William Shatner's version.
As we enter the final weekend of 2011, it seems appropriate to look at some data which sums up our position. Believe it or not, this was a pretty good year. Count your lucky stars. There was a small oil price shock, but not a really big one. According to the official data, we did not have a recession. We didn't have another financial crisis. This has been called muddling through.
Nonetheless, there is no reason to feel good about our prospects, as the next six graphs demonstrate.
Click to enlarge. From Doug Short's The Divergence Between Gasoline And Oil Prices Can't Last For Long. The "official" CPI, which is almost certainly understated, is on the left. Look at the items circled in red. Energy costs have increased 114%, medical care has gone up 58%, and college tuitions have risen 112%. By various measurements, like median household income, incomes for all but the top-tier earners have declined since 2000.
From Gregor MacDonald's Under the Surface of Non-OPEC Supply. You can see that oil production outside of OPEC is flat. Gregor says "In 2002 Non-OPEC oil production contributed 60.75% of the world’s total oil supply... So far in 2011, Non-OPEC oil production now accounts for 57.12% of global supply, with nearly 1/4 of that now coming from Russia... Technology, competition, and access to capital ... have not been able to overcome the limits of geology. Global giants such as Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil have essentially abandoned the effort to meaningfully expand their oil reserves. Instead, they are now shifting course in favor of a strong, natural gas emphasis."
From Zillow's U.S. Homes Expected to Lose Nearly $700 Billion in Value in 2011. "Homes in the United States are expected to lose more than $681 billion in value during 2011... While homeowners suffered through another year of steep losses, the good news is that homes are losing value at a substantially slower pace as the market works its way towards the bottom ... Compared to last year when we saw sharp declines following the expiration of the homebuyer tax credits, this year we saw some organic improvement in home values, in terms of a slowed depreciation rate, which resulted in a smaller total value loss for the year. Zillow’s analysis shows less value was lost in the latter half of the year due to increased stabilization of home values." Now look at the next graph.
Click to enlarge. From Barry Ritholtz's Case Shiller 100 Year Chart (2011 Update). Do you see that dotted red line? If home values revert to their historical level (since the early 1950s), we can expect home prices to follow that red line. In so far as the value of one's home is the largest factor by far in household net worth, we can expect large wealth declines over the next several years.
Click to enlarge. Household debt levels as of 2011Q3 from Calculated Risk as presented in my post Household Debt Mountain Grows, Nobody Cares. Total debt, including the revised student loan balance, is now $11.66 trillion. Total student loan debt probably surpassed 1 trillion dollars this year. Total household debt is not as high as it was in 2008, but student loan debt is growing by leaps and bounds. See college tuition inflation in the 1st graph above.
If there was any good news, I would report it. For example, some have been encouraged by the recent downward trend in jobless claims. We'll see if that continues. I am waiting to see what happens when holiday workers are fired in January and February. All such short-term trends must be seen in historical context. Here's the 6th and final graph.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Ohio hasn't been an oil powerhouse for nearly 100 years.
But thanks to controversial new drilling technology, the state that once produced a third of the nation's crude and was the birthplace of John D. Rockefeller's mighty Standard Oil could once again be a significant source of domestic supply.
... the new production, which is coming from a layer of previously untapped shale rock deep beneath the state, relies on hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.
If given the proper development, Ohio could be producing 200,000 barrels of crude a day by 2020.
That's not going to rival Texas' current output of 1.4 million barrels a day and is just a small part of the nation's overall crude output of 5.6 million barrels per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
But based on current production rates it would be enough to make Ohio the sixth-largest oil producing state in the country and put it ahead of such heavyweights as Louisiana and Wyoming.
Hargreaves goes on to focus on the environmental issues surrounding fracking, but I was more interested in this 200,000 barrels of crude, which standardly abbreviates crude oil, we are supposed to get by 2020. And what was this previously untapped shale rock lying deep beneath the state?
Your intrepid reporter did a little research. That deep shale layer turns out to be the Utica Shale. We get the crucial details from geology.com.
What is the Utica Shale?
The Utica Shale is a rock unit located a few thousand feet below the Marcellus Shale. It also has the potential to become an enormous natural gas resource. The Utica Shale is thicker than the Marcellus, it is more geographically extensive and it has already proven its ability to support commercial production.
It is impossible to say at this time how large the Utica Shale resource might be because it has not been thoroughly evaluated and little public information is available about its organic content, the thickness of organic-rich intervals and how it will respond to horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. However, the results of early testing indicate that the Utica Shale will be a very significant resource.
That's Ohio on the far left right next to Pennsylvania.
Hang on! Wait a minute! Didn't geology.com just say the Utica has the potential to become an enormous natural gas resource? Where's the beef crude oil? The next thing you know Newt Gingrich or some other sociopath will start prattling on about how we can achieve energy independence in the United States, so we better nip this story in the bud.
Utica Shale in Eastern Ohio
During 2011 most of the drilling activity in the Utica shale was occurring in eastern Ohio. This geographic area attracted interest for a variety of reasons which include: 1) the Utica Shale is only a few to several thousand feet below the surface; 2) lease prices had not yet been driven up to competitive levels; and, 3) early wells drilled into the Utica Shale were yielding significant amounts of natural gas liquids - which can significantly increase the value of a well. During 2011 natural gas companies spent billions of dollars acquiring Utica Shale acreage in eastern Ohio.
And then, curiously, there's this sentence in the next paragraph.
The Utica Shale is proving to be rich in oil and natural gas liquids.
That is the only reference to "oil" in the entire article. Its inclusion seems entirely gratuitous.
My experience with journalists reporting on oil is that precious few of them know what they're talking about. The word "oil" can mean just about anything to them—natural gas liquids, ethanol, biodiesel, palm oil, canola oil, Diet Coke®, Gatorade®—you name it. So here's a simple rule to follow when you read about so-called "oil" in Eastern Ohio or God Knows where else.
Crude oil liquids are not the same as natural gas liquids.
Propane and butane are natural gas liquids. These liquids are used predominantly as inputs for the petrochemicals industry. Crude oil is refined to make diesel, gasoline and other products.
Definition — Components of natural gas that are liquid at surface in field facilities or in gas-processing plants. Natural gas liquids can be classified according to their vapor pressures as low (condensate), intermediate (natural gasoline) and high (liquefied petroleum gas) vapor pressure.
Natural gas liquids include propane, butane, pentane, hexane and heptane, but not methane and ethane, since these hydrocarbons need refrigeration to be liquefied. The term is commonly abbreviated as NGL.
I'm not going to turn up my nose at butane or natural gasoline, which are used for gasoline blending at refineries, and of course propane can be used for home heating. However, these liquids are not as energy dense as crude oil, and our transportation system doesn't depend on them.
As if all this weren't bad enough, there's another land rush in Eastern Ohio as companies vie to snap up the drilling rights! The Wall Street Journal reported on the situation in Utica Shale Energizes Deal Frenzy in Ohio (September 27, 2011).
While the 170,000-square-mile Utica Shale sprawls beneath parts of eight states and Canada, energy companies and analysts believe the richest reserves of oil and valuable natural-gas liquids, such as propane and butane, lie in eastern Ohio.
There's that word "oil" again. Sigh.
In recent weeks the buzz around the area has intensified. Large producers' moves into the area are becoming public. This month has seen big acquisitions. And stock analysts are recommending shares of small companies with Ohio acreage.
Last week, Exxon Mobil Corp. confirmed it is snapping up drilling rights in the Utica Shale. Exxon won't say how much land it has locked up or where the property lies. But the move caught Wall Street analysts' attention.
And Chesapeake Energy Corp., the country's second-largest natural-gas producer, after Exxon, is shopping a stake in its 1.25 million eastern Ohio acres that analysts say could set a new price baseline. Chesapeake Chief Executive Aubrey McClendon has said it may have a joint venture signed as early as next month.
Deeply buried energy-bearing rocks, shales in recent years have touched off acquisition frenzies as pioneering firms cash in on their discoveries and sell out to, or partner with, larger firms with the cash to extract oil and natural gas.
It's another frenzy! So now we've got the same nonsense going on in the Utica play we saw in the Marcellus play. Life's too short to get into that subject today, but I'll tell you this—if America was truly bursting at the seams with "energy bearing rocks," you wouldn't see an acquisition frenzy in the Utica shale of Eastern Ohio, which is likely to be a moderately sized natural gas play.
So if you hear Newt Gingrich or some other politician tell you Eastern Ohio is going to lead us out of the Energy Darkness within which we currently reside, you'll know better. And remember, 200,000 barrels of whatever it turns out to be (oil equivalent) is merely a drop in the proverbial bucket.
It's time to make our 2012 predictions. I've never claimed to have a Crystal Ball. We've got too many contemporary Nostradami as it is. I'm a trend watcher. But to make this a little more fun, I will make some specific predictions this year.
I could go out on a limb here and predict various collapses and crises, but I might be wildly off the mark. Being wrong would put a serious dent into my well-earned reputation for infallibility, so that's not a good way to go
After that I made some "predictions" which can not fail regardless of what year it is.
There will be not be a redistribution of the wealth in 2011—unless, of course, you regard the rich getting richer and everybody else getting poorer as a redistribution.
There will not be a sudden blossoming of environmental consciousness in which America takes the lead in halting the steady deterioration of the oceans, the warming of the climate, and the mass die-off of animal and plant species all over the world. Scientific knowledge will continue to be conflated with misunderstood Mayan prophecies.
Those on Wall Street will not suddenly realize that avaricious acquisition of everything is not the sole purpose of Life On Earth.
Our elected representatives in Congress will not put themselves on trial, find themselves guilty of wanton corruption, gross negligence, meanness of spirit, mind-boggling stupidity, and all-around depravity, and then go on to amend all the rules of our political system to reinstate a Democracy, or failing that, a Republic.
I also said—
There will not be a people's revolution in the United States.
I'm not sure whether #Occupy Wall Street qualifies as a people's revolution or not. The French Revolution it was not. There are still far more people in the Apple iCrap cargo cult than there are protesters. What do you think? Was I wrong?
So let's be more specific this year, putting at risk my well-earned reputation for infallibility. Here we go.
This is an election year, so our collective misery and delusion will increase exponentially in 2012. By the time this charade is over, suicide will look like a viable option. (Don't do it.) I believe Hopey-Changey will retain the Imperial Mantle in November. He will scare the crap out of people, especially seniors—they vote—and soon-to-be-retiring Boomers, by asserting over and over again that the Republicans want to take away their Social Security and Medicare. (Which they do.) This strategy will work, despite the fact that the economy will be in the toilet. (There will be a "new" recession.) On the negative side for Hopey-Changey, disaffected youth will not turn out as they did in 2008 because of a glaring deficiency of Hope and Change. It doesn't matter who gets the nomination on the Republican side. (It will be Willard Romney.) If Ron Paul runs as a libertarian alternative, Obama will win in a landslide.
There will be a global financial crisis of some sort next year. Don't ask me how it will happen or how deep it will be. And don't ask me when it will happen, because I just don't know the specifics. Nobody does. How could they? This is chaos theory, folks. So, how can I make this prediction? Because there's way too much risk built into the global finance system, which is more interconnected and fragile than it's ever been before. And of course there's Europe, a powderkeg whose very long fuse has already been lit. (The monetary union based on the Euro, in its current form, will not last the year.) Derivatives trading worldwide is largely unregulated. We've never seen gambling on this scale before. The over-leveraged global banking system is a giant casino whose real currency is debt. The humans have introduced far more risk into the system than they can manage. Ipso facto, global finance will blow up, if not in 2012, then in 2013.
China is going down the tubes in 2012. Yeah, I know, people have been predicting this implosion forever, but their real estate bubble has turned the corner—they're on the deflationary downslope of the curve—and their export model doesn't work anymore. It will take China at least a decade to switch to a more consumption-oriented economy. If you're trying to build a middle class, you can't skip that step, as China has done up to now. There are several Fundamental Errors in China's growth model. The people are starting to protest, and that revolt will get more serious as economic circumstances deteriorate. Housing bubbles go only one way—to the poorhouse. It's time for China to pay the piper.
A gamma-ray burst from the collision of two neutron stars—the lethal radiation is on its way—will fry all life on one side of the planet (the lucky side) on October 23, 2012 at 3:31 PM Eastern Standard Time. The lethal burst will last 22 seconds.
Just kidding!
Contemporary popular "music" will get worse, if that's possible. Crap is what you get when corporations produce music by formula to appeal to ignorant, docile "consumers" living in a dissociative trance those very same corporations labored mightily to create. Just how wide is the gap between Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Jay-Z, Kanye West and Justin Bieber on the one hand, and John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, The Temptations, Bob Dylan and John Lennon on the other? I don't know, how far is it to Alpha Centauri? My thanks to the great musicians working today (e.g. Diana Krall, Brad Mehldau, Robert Glasper). There's still an audience for their music—in Tokyo.
After the aforementioned global financial crisis, gold will cost you well over $2000 an ounce. The S&P 500 will tumble. Crude oil prices will decline when demand falls off a cliff.
There will be even more extreme weather eventsin 2012 than there were in 2011. Toss in a few ecological catastrophes as well. Gross Domestic Product will grow as a result as we repair the damage. Who said anthropogenic climate change is bad for us?
In 2012 more people will come to grips with the startling fact that the Federal Reserve is largest holder of U.S. Treasury debt. It will occur to some of them that a government issuing trillions of dollars of debt which is then bought up by its central bank may be in big trouble. So far, few people (apparently including Bloomberg) seem to care. In fact, demand for our paper IOUs is said to be insatiable. That's why people like Paul Krugman say we can print more IOUs to stimulate the economy and pay for future retirement benefits like Medicare and Social Security, which is a lot like jolting a dead parrot which has been nailed to its perch with four thousand volts of electricity to see if it will twitch.
And last, but certainly not least—
Nothing of fundamental importance will change on Planet Stupid. Our Ultimate Fate remains the same. Pardon me for quoting myself.
We are in the process of destroying a great many things which are real — air, soil, water, energy, resources, other species, our health — for the sake of something that exists chiefly in our imagination: money.
Next year we can laugh at my predictions, all except for that last one.
This is the time of year when various talking heads make their predictions for 2012. Looking back, we can safely say that 2011 sucked, even in official measurements. Although nobody else seemed to notice, Rick Davis of the Consumer Metrics Institute wrote to say that the BEA lowered their estimate of 3rd quarter GDP again.
In their third estimate of the third quarter 2011 GDP, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) revised the headline growth number downward once again to an annualized growth rate of 1.81%. This revision represents a drop in the reported growth rate of well over a half percent (-0.65%) from the BEA's original reading of the third quarter, now moving the latest growth rate closer to the second quarter's anemic 1.34% growth rate than the misleadingly optimistic numbers provided to us just two months ago.
... the public's per-capita disposable income was still reported to be shrinking (at an annualized -1.9% rate), which does not bode well for the real economy moving forward.
This revision to the prior month's report does not reflect actual changes in the economy, but rather another month's improvement in the BEA's understanding of what was happening in the prior quarter. But such revisions continue to tell us much about the timeliness of the BEA's data collection processes, and the quality of the data that we can expect from their earliest reports.
As the BEA's understanding of what was happening in the previous quarter grows, the annualized rate of GDP growth shrinks. Disposable income continues to fall, which does not bode well for the real economy moving forward.
For the optimist, none of this matters. A rosy view of the future is built into the very fabric of his being. It is always extremely annoying to be around such people—they are completely out of touch with reality, although excessive optimism is not diagnosed as a mental illness—but imagine the consequences if such a person is your financial advisor! The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task interviewed a member of this dangerous sub-species in Political Gridlock Is Bullish for Markets: David Kotok (video below).
David Kotok, chairman and chief investing officer of Cumberland Advisors, continues to see the glass as half full.
Back in August, Kotok told Aaron Task and Henry Blodget that the market sell-off could be attributed to political concerns, not market fundamentals. As investors sprinted for the exits, Kotok reiterated his view that the S&P 500 index would close the year at 1,450, arguing that stocks were in fact attractive and an extraordinary buying opportunity.
With less than two weeks until the end of the year, Kotok remains resolute in his market prediction, noting markets have retested - but not broken - their Aug.3 low. He's tweaked his S&P year-end target to 1,350 ("give or take 50 points" he says) and maintains that markets will have an "upward bias" in the early part of 2012. If Kotok is correct, stocks will rally almost 11 percent from current levels in the final eight trading days of 2011.
The S&P stands at 1268.61 at this moment. Only three and half days left! Here's Kotok on the economy—
... the U.S. economy didn't double-dip into recession [in 2011] and it's not gonna double-dip into recession, and it even looks like it's getting a little stronger. Slowly, steadily, but gaining strength. So that's a positive outlook for 2012.
That is indeed a "positive outlook," Mr. Kotok. That's precisely what it is, and that's all it is. Whether this outlook is even peripherally related to Reality is another question.
I never give out advice (financial or otherwise) on DOTE. Today I will break my usual rule. For those few readers who have money to invest, and must choose a financial advisor, never choose a glass-half-full optimist like David Kotok. Avoid Cumberland Advisors like the plague.
The role of delusional optimistism in the boom & bust cycle of the last 15 years has been woefully underestimated. Strictly rational views of our economy would have told us we were deep trouble years ago. There were such people prior to 2007, so-called "pessimists" who saw the bubble in house prices, the very low (if not negative) savings rate, the huge rise in debt levels (as a percent of GDP) and other worrisome indicators.
These realists were ignored or laughed at. But the worm has turned. Who's laughing now? Deal with Reality or it will deal with you.
So if you're looking for a financial advisor, you know what not to do. Caveat emptor!
Have you heard of Stratfor? They provide "strategic intelligence" on global business, economic, security and geopolitical affairs. In short, they are a security think-tank catering to powerful Imperial interests. If you visit Stratfor's website today, this is what you'll see—
If you had gone there right after Anonymous hacked them, you would have seen this—
On a server running some variant of the UNIX operating system, the command rm -rf recursively removes every file on the system relative to the position from which it is issued regardless of file permissions. If you are logged in as "root" (the superuser) and you issue this command at the top of the file system (at slash "/"), every file on the system is removed—your data disks have been wiped clean. That's what happened (with regard to Anonymous targets) to Stratfor, apparently after Anonymous stole Stratfor's proprietary database. Further messages at Hacker News reveal that they also wiped out Stratfor's mail server and its backups too.
// SO SAD WE RM'D YOUR MAIL SERVER AND ALL BACKUPS, FRANK
"Frank" is Stratfor's IT manager Frank Ginac.
When I saw the zerohedge story, I was reminded that I had just received an e-mail containing John Mauldin's latest Outside The Box newsletter featuring an insipid excerpt from Stratfor CEO George Friedman's latest book The Unintended Empire. Here's Mauldin pimping for Friedman and some twaddle from George himself (highlighted in blue).
A new year is almost upon us, so now seems like a perfect time to step back from the (many) crises at hand and take stock of the big picture. According to my friend & fellow thinker George Friedman, the big picture of the next 10 years is this: America will dominate, and the American president will have to figure out how to act as global emperor without admitting that's what he is.
George's newest book, The Next Decade, comes out in paperback in January; and he's graciously agreed to let me send you the first chapter, which backs up the bold statements above. We don't always agree, but I have to give George credit. He's an expert at constructing an argument.
If the first chapter whets your appetite, you can get a free copy of the book when you subscribe to STRATFOR, a geopolitical intelligence company founded and led by George. It is the publication to read if you're interested in foreign affairs. Plus, OTB readers can get a hefty discount.
The American president is the most important political leader in the world. The reason is simple: he governs a nation whose economic and military policies shape the lives of people in every country on every continent. The president can and does order invasions, embargos, and sanctions. The economic policies he shapes will resonate in billions of lives, perhaps over many generations. During the next decade, who the president is and what he (or she) chooses to do will often affect the lives of non-Americans more than the decisions of their own governments...
The American president's unique status and influence are not derived from conquest, design, or divine ordination but ipso facto are the result of the United States being the only global military power in the world.
The U.S. economy is also more than three times the size of the next largest sovereign economy. These realities give the United States power that is disproportionate to its population, to its size, or, for that matter, to what many might consider just or prudent. But the United States didn't intend to become an empire. This unintentional arrangement was a consequence of events, few of them under American control.
Certainly there was talk of empire before this. Between Manifest Destiny and the Spanish American War, the nineteenth century was filled with visions of empire that were remarkably modest compared to what has emerged. The empire I am talking about has little to do with those earlier thoughts. Indeed, my argument is that the latest version emerged without planning or intention...
George goes on to expound upon how America should fulfill its incidental Imperial calling.
In my DOTE essay Thinking Outside The Box, I used Mauldin and Friedman's mindless, self-serving nonsense to illustrate what inside the box thinking looks like. You can see that George's big theme is America as an unintended empire. Unintended? You know, as in we didn't mean to do it! It all just happened! Sorry about the assassinations, the globalized economic exploitation, the screwing of American workers, the bullying militarism, the financial predators, abu Ghraib, the outright theft, those genocides in the early days, the wars & massacres and the predator drones—those were merely unfortunate accidents!
I've got some news for John Mauldin and his "friend and fellow thinker" George Friedman: consciousness is like a set of Russian matryoshka (nested) dolls. Like most people, John and George are not remotely aware that a much larger view of the human world envelopes their own view. They both live in a teensy-weensy mental box within which they defend the status quo, apologize for the Empire and feather their own nests.
Outside Mauldin and Friedman's self-serving midget box, outside their severely constrained thinking, there's a bigger box. And outside this second box, there's yet another box. And outside that box, that's where I live, looking in at them. (As did the late George Carlin.) Mauldin quaintly refers to his views as "the big picture." There is a Big Picture, but like so many others, Mauldin is inside it, a small, almost invisible figure at the bottom left of the frame.
Terminal cluelessness and complicit immorality are not crimes—sometimes I think they ought to be—but unqualified support for the Empire and its evil machinations is viewed as a crime by many, including the hackers at Anonymous, who just announced that they have already donated a million dollars to charitable causes from the booty they stole from Stratfor.
I do not condone hacking—period. I myself was hacked when I owned and maintained some UNIX servers running my own software. I felt like I had been violated because I had been.
On the other hand, that was purely malicious hacking—I had built a search engine for kids and some other related things. That wasn't strategic, politically-motivated hacking. I wasn't selling security advice to the Air Force like Stratfor does. I have mixed feelings about all this. I'm sure you're aware that "good" hacking can turn into evil hacking in a heartbeat. Who will guard the guardians? Or the hacktivists? Power corrupts. Abolute power corrupts absolutely—Lord Acton.
Here's what Anonymous told Stratfor when they hacked them—
Many people will feel a huge wave of relief tomorrow when the oppressive Christmas holiday has passed. Only 15 hours to go here on the East Coast (EST). Wherever you are, you'll make it, don't sweat it, don't kill yourself, hang in there! If you're working and you have tomorrow off, all the better.
In keeping with the holiday's religious roots, I wish my readers well today and in the coming year, knowing full well that many of us are going to have an even harder time in 2012 than we did in 2011.
Even if Jesus is not your personal savior, we can wish perhaps that this Great Country of Ours can get through the day without starting a war, predator-droning some South Asians, locking up a few alleged terrorists without due process and then throwing away the key, letting some would-be Wall Street felons off the hook, or passing yet another insanely complicated "law" containing more tax breaks—they're right there on pages 1,736 and 1,737—for the rich.
I'm hoping those who do the happy stuff on my too-short list above have Christmas day off. Maybe these people should take every day off to make the world a safer place. Wouldn't that be great?
But sadly, that will not happen—this is clearly way, way too much to hope for on this day of days. People who perpetrate this kind of crap are always busy, busy, busy.
So screw it, let's play some videos. Merry F*%#ing Christmas!
It is Christmas Eve and thus a perfect day to feature jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi (1928-1976). Those wonderful tunes used in Peanuts TV specials in the 1960s are forever associated with the holiday. Vince's music had a lyrical touch which few people can duplicate.
On another subject, I'm having some trouble getting into the Holiday Spirit. This has been a very rough year for me and my family. I'm sure it wasn't the best year for many of you either. Good music cheers me up. Always has. But it won't bring back my 20-year-old nephew, who was killed while riding his bicycle back in February. (He was in a brain-dead coma for months thereafter.)
Although Guaraldi is famous for those Peanuts soundtracks, those songs are actually a small part of his entire body of work. Today I've split the difference. Here's the playlist.
Star Song — live on television, with Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete
Cast Your Fate To The Wind — outside the Peanuts soundtracks, Vince's best known tune
Skating — jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut's longer version of Vince's Peanuts song
Today we have a video interview with Ronald Wright, author of What Is America? and A Short History Of Progress. Being Canadian, Wright has no illusions about American exceptionalism. Here's the introduction.
America — the world's only superpower, but how did it get there?
In a provocative new book, Ronald Wright contends that right from its start as a frontier society, America has used militarism and religious extremism to expand and prosper.
The video is rather long (27:20) but doesn't disappoint. Wright stumbles a bit at the end as he talks about our hopes for the new Obama administration, saying that America is ripe for the sort of transformation we saw under Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s. (The video was uploaded in March, 2009.)
