I think this is a single blossom Peony. The blooms are dinner plate sized, and just float in the wind, very beautiful. Here's a pic of a partially opened flower:

Abigail Field:

President Obama’s reelection campaign hinges on a big lie. Obama claims that Romney represents the 1% and Obama represents everybody else. But the key part of that claim is a lie: Yes, Romney represents the 1%, but so does Obama. His policy choices on housing and banking make that clear.

 Ding!

Hugh:

If good people will support the lesser evil, what incentive is there for the lesser evil to remain lesser?

Er, none?

Ha ha. It's OK to sell your identity and your friends to the data miners -- since most people who use FaceBorg are more trusting than warranted -- but I don't think it's going to be OK to sell your friends to the advertisers. "Bill and Caitlin's Wedding: Brought to You By Megalith Corporation, your friends in [Your Home Town]!"

As Facebook's stock continues its slump, now trading even lower than yesterday's low, the Internet [Huh?] has reached a consensus on why the IPO of the year isn't performing: Advertising. It's how Facebook makes its dollars. And, it has made a lot of dollars this way. But it's not clear Facebook's very good at it, or will get good enough at it to justify a $38 per share price.

FB's ads suck. They're clearly just cheap-ass scams funded by clickthroughs. I have never purchased anything from a FB ad, and I've only clicked through on the ads that were so uniquely horrible I just had to go see. So, "a lot of money" in absolute terms, but I doubt very much a lot of money when measured by its user base.

So, what can FB do to increase ad revenue? Or, more to the point, what can it do to make its investors think it will? Hey, here's an idea:

Because I'm so overwhelmed lately (in a good way, as I hope people will shortly be able to see) I did something really, really dumb:

I left my straw bales outside uncovered, and it rained. And now they're a bit moldy.

Stoller has a great post on some of the realities:

Most activists and political operatives are under a delusion about American politics, which goes as follows. Politicians will do *anything* to get reelected, and they will pander, beg, borrow, lie, cheat and steal, just to stay in office. It’s all about their job.

Why, man, they did make love to this employment. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2

There are a few of these around here in Central NJ, so this is probably a well known landscaping shrub and I just am in the dark about what it is. But I have really fallen for it -- the little buds are just like closed parasols.

Update, h/t NWLuna [Thanks!!]:

White Mountain Laurel
Kalmia latifolia

[I am going with the latifolia due to the leaf color and shape.] And it is not a common landscape shrub because it is difficult and costly to root or graft, and seeds don't grow true. It's an evergreen in the blueberry family, part shade to sun, and Luna is right, every part of it is toxic... including, honey that bees make from it. So that may well be why it isn't found around much.

More here.

They're herpes.

I have a right-wing, Christian, libertarian friend (military background) who has land out in the woods; we share a common interest in gardening and sustainability, and local food sovereigntly. So I cruised past his FB page today, and his reactions to Chicago were two-fold:

Chaos is defined not so much by its disorder as by the infinite speed with which every form taking shape in it vanishes. - Gilles DeLeuze and Felix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?

NATO summit. Obama: "And the Chicago police -- Chicago's finest did a great job under, you know, some significant pressure and a lot of scrutiny." "My Kind of Town": image (via). "'Get the old lady to the back!' someone yells (:40). 'She wants to be in the front!' comes the reply." What we need! "I am returning my medal today because I want to live by my conscience, rather than be a prisoner of it." And what we need, too.

Our famously free press propagates the CPD's crowd estimate: 2,000. Pictures say that's low. (Interestingly, CPD estimate derived from surveillance cameras. If the estimate -- incredible as this may seem -- is actually honest, that means camera coverage is lousy.) OccupyChicago: 3,000- 5,000. The Guardian cites the density-based Jacobs multiplier, then splits the difference between CPD and organizers: 3,500 - 6000. The Guardian's first commenter was there, and does the multiplication: 7,600 - 13,800.

Montreal. Photos: "Tuitiion [sic] fee protests - May 21." If "tuition fee protests" is the frame, that's a loser. However, Gazoo columnist Peggy Curran uses "red square" movement, which is much fuller of win, red squares being a wearable, non-mask article of clothing, a color (as in "color revolution"), and a useful symbolic geometry. It also has an unmistakable (if virtual) Occupy connotation, since Occupations tend to take place in city squares. Squares are also fractal. "When Arcade Fire [Yo! Professor!] backed Mick Jagger for three songs on SNL..., those red patches the band were wearing weren't fashion statements, but very pointed acts of protest." (Gotta say I prefer this icon to a 60s-style clenched fist -- even if Otpor did use it.) "Yesterday's unrest reached a climax with a blaze of [half-a-dozen] plastic traffic cones and construction materials lit Saturday during a melee on a busy downtown street." Teh stupid, so but and Timothy McVeigh (or, for that matter, clinic violence) we're not talking here. Today: Students march peacefully in holiday protest. Holiday? Probably no police over-time, so there weren't any agent provocateurs to set traffic cones on fire or demolish the pavement. Remember: Always check their shoes!

1300 arrests over the life of the red square movement so far (United States: 7,223 for Occupy).

I'm just one of the tourists: "We didn’t actually know what was going on really at the start because...we didn’t actually understand the banners and stuff.”

Iris

Rumor has it there are a few iris lovers here. So this one is for you guys!

(Via)

(Via)

The Toronto G20 Riot Fraud: Undercover Police engaged in Purposeful Provocation

Montebello 2007 Riot Prevented - Identical Boots Exposed Undercover Police Provocateurs

At the ‘Security and Prosperity Partnership’ meeting protests at Montebello Quebec on August 20, 2007, a Quebec union leader caught and outed three masked undercover Quebec Provincial Police operatives dressed as ‘black bloc’ protestors about to start a riot by throwing rocks at the security police. See the following videos documenting this event.

Stop SPP Protest - Union Leader stops provocateurs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow

Evidence -- Police provoke Violence at SPP protest

For a Corrente mapping project I'm -- touch wood -- coming down the homestretch on, I'd really like map icons that represent political actions; for example, Dan's meeting with local officials might be represented by a gavel, a march by a sign or people marching, etc., for many forms of (non-violent) action. For example, we have Green Map Icons for bike trails and farmers markets and so forth, but I'm looking for icons in the (non-violent) political sphere. Readers?

The article is just another 1% rip-off scheme, but Here's Zeke's key graf:

Either in the lame duck Congressional session after the election or in 2013, there will surely be debate about a deal to address taxes and the deficit.

Probably a trial balloon from Rahm.

I got elected, Sweetscent, but the drats knocked me right out of office in a no-confidence recall thing they cooked up. Having to do with the Pact of Peace. They were right, of course; I shouldn't have gotten involved in it. But who wants to make a deal with four-armed shiny bugs who can't even talk, who have to go around carrying a translation box like an indoor potty?' --Philip K. Dick, Now Wait for Last Year

These links are lighter than usual. Sorry! Tomorrow I'll do much more extensive work on both Chicago and Montreal. For now, it's quite late....

Occupy Montreal: "The camera loves you, baby!" Good, detailed, vivid blog of today's march. Not getting a clear picture of what the march is achieving other than, well, occupying the streets. (Not "unfiltered" because the reporter's sensibility is clear, but better than the official Gazette story.) Oakland: Portraits from the Occupation. Representatives of the Oakland Police Department, and the police union, declined our invitations to participate, as did the editors of Adbusters magazine.

NATO summit Bobbleheads translate MTP: "GREGORY: wow look at these crazy violent NATO protestors! Audience: ooh white people." The summit actually opened: "The global leaders met over a large round table" (around, surely). Bernard Harcourt: "Welcome, Nato, to Chicago's police state". And a hearty thank you to President Obama, his BFF, Rahm Emmanuel, and D operatives and enablers everywhere for making it all possible! RNN video of march (DCBlogger). "In the age of camera phones, the message is that protesters are watching police too." Miscellaneous Chicago NATO Links (Bob).

John Dizard in the FT:

Last Tuesday, as I had suggested it would, the Greek government paid €435m to the holders of a maturing floating rate, English law, bond issue. The bondholders, among whom were heirs of the American Dart plastic coffee cup fortune, had chosen to be “holdouts”, refusing to tender into Greece’s exchange offer. I hear much of the speculator-holdout position was bought at between 60 and 70 cents on the euro. So they did well, though at that fairly high entry level, the position required nerves of iron. But then the Darts have good lawyers.

I looked up the Dart Company and the Dart Foundation -- no Nazis or even neo-liberals that I can find, though of course as manufacturers of plastic cups they're an integral part of the petro-state. Nothing in Muckety on the Darts. That said....

Lily (maybe)

I'm pretty sure this is a lily, but that color! I don't even know how to describe it. How about blushing peach or something along those lines?

Anyway, if someone recognizes this little beauty, please tell us more. It's such a lovely flower, it deserves to be more well known. ****************************************

YouTube:

Real News Network: NATO Summit Kicked Off with Massive Demonstrations

Police Brutally Beat Nato Protesters,Blood on Protester's Face Raw Video May 20,2012

Nowhere To Go But Out

Occupy Chicago Receives Training In Non-violent Direct Action from Lisa Fithian

Mirabile dictu:

Two of the things [Jill Stein] will be talking about while she is here are her party's "Green New Deal" and the need to stop being spooked by the results of the 2000 vote in Florida, when Ralph Nader was seen as drawing enough votes from Al Gore to deny Gore a clearcut win in that state -- and an Electoral College win in the national race.

On "ZOMG!!!!! Nader!!!!!:

"At the end of the day it is important to point out that this silencing of the public interest, the disappearing of our voices, has not been an effective strategy," said Stein, who earlier this month earned enough delegates to assure her nomination (the second-place candidate is Roseanne Barr). "The politics of fear has brought us everything we were afraid of."

Nice frame. On policy:

Just as “big” as Chicago, I would say (strategically, too)*. Here’s the Gazette’s live blog.

[Dan is being wicked modest here, since he’s involved in the pushback against fracking (as are a lot of people scattered across the country, if you read the D - x and counting series, which covers them as an import way that citizens exercise their rights (and duties)). Dan’s effort is also connected to the series we ran on non-violence. And Corrente has been [lambert blushes modestly] ahead of the game in the fracking effort, ever since PA_lady published her series back in 2010. —lambert]

On Tuesday a group of Shalersville residents attended a meeting of its trustees to voice their objections to fracking. Video of all the statements can be seen at the Shalersville No Fracking web site. There was a three minute speaking limit so the clips are short. (If you cannot watch video where you are, this is a rough transcript of my own remarks.) Here is just one of them, and note how the resident talks about her opposition to fracking from both a technical and visceral perspective. There are logistical, technological and environmental reasons to not want a fracking operation in your town, but there are emotional ones too:

Comment on this series:

Although the presidential contest IMNSHO is so infested with fixers, billionaires, and kabuki merchants of all stripes to be worse than useless in itself, it is nonetheless fascinating (to me, at least) for two reasons:

(1) The human aspects, running as they do the complete spectrum from hilarious and complete intellectual and moral corruption to craven and equally hilarious and delusional self-kettling, at least among legacy party operatives; and more importantly

(2) the rhizomic aspects, where the vigorous if inchoate activity at the local, state, and "shed"* level contrasts so greatly with the enervation and decadence at the center, where people of all sorts and conditions are thinking and saying and doing (even if I do vehemently disagree with some of what's thought and said and done).

In discourse terms, the horse race reminds of an artificial reef: Bulk industrial waste like dead automobiles or worn-out tires dumped into the ocean -- ha ha, I knew if I googled "artificial reef tax write-off" I'd find a hit -- to create ecological niches for fish and aquatic plants. And the niches are, in fact, created! So, while the horse race is dead, dead, dead in itself, its rotting corpse offers up an energy gradient for many interesting and novel inter-related life forms.

* "Shed" as in watershed, airshed, viewshed, etc. One of the big issues here is the mismatch between jurisdictional and ecological boundaries or gradients. At some point, people who oppose the transformation of this country by its elite into a second-world petro-state will encounter this dichotomy, probably when facing issues of standing. It's not clear to me, for example, that the concept of groundwater and the concept of private property are commensurate. So what then?

* * *

At the stroke of midnight in Washington, a drooling red-eyed beast with the legs of a man and a head of a giant hyena crawls out of its bedroom window in the South Wing of the White House and leaps fifty feet down to the lawn…pauses briefly to strangle the Chow watchdog, then races off into the darkness… --Hunter Thompson

Occupy. 400 detained at Frankfurt Occupy protest. Montreal outlaws masks, scarfs, hoods during public demonstrations "without a valid excuse." Quebec National Assembly passes Bill 78, compared to War Measures Act. Section 16: Police to be told eight hours in advance of any demonstration of more than 10 people (possibly now 25). Gatineau Chamber of Commerce announces upcoming "assembly of more than 10 people," asks police how many officers will be present so enough hors d'oeuvres may be prepared. Summer vacation brought forward at universities. A helpful guide to knowing if you're in a riot. A more jaundiced view.