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.

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.

Iris x pacifica "Meadow Pastel"

Pacific coast iris

Jordan Minor - The Cottonwood Tree

The Cottonwood Tree

If you read the Goldman Sachs elevator Twitter feed, or have seen the movie Inside Job, you know that a large part of our financial elite are coked up.

The biggest worry on the mind of everyone in the state is the content of 1/32th ancestry of a political candidate. Imagine. No worry about the state's budget, unemployment, tax rates, health care, infrastructure. No worry about sending their kids off to our endless war on terror. Wow, I guess I should move there - rainbows and unicorns must decorate every street.

It's really a puzzling issue, ancestry, word of mouth family stories. I wonder if I could prove that I'm partly Bohemian. I'm pretty certain that my great grandparents didn't register with their local CISPES hall. But my daughter and I can make a mean batch of kolaches. Apricot. I watched my mother make them and wrote down every step she was doing. But do you know - a lot of the recipes in the Czech cookbook I have are just your garden variety home cooking, not from the old country at all. That cookbook was for a fundraiser, so people contributed whatever they like to eat. Too typical for some people to understand I guess.

Of Obama's curious silence on JippyMo's $2 billion-and-rising gambling loss*:

We are still at the very early stages of the 2012 campaign. There’s still time for Obama to come out swinging – not only at Romney but also at the system of which Romney [and not Obama?!] is a part, and to base his campaign on policies that will make that system work for ordinary people. Let’s hope he does.

Come out swinging? BWA-HA-HA-HA!

* * *

And I've been in the Washington Zoo. --"Show Biz Kids," Countdown to Ecstasy, Steely Dan

G8 Summit. Atmospheric piece on Thurmont, MD, nearest town to Camp David, by Dan Zak. Median income: $71,400. Ends with local government applying for new refrigerators and freezers for the food bank.

London's Amazingly Explicit Surveillance State Mascot For The 2012 Olympics Has A Huge Camera Eye That 'Records Everything

Ha ha:

I do not miss the days when the cats would come and sit on our heads at 5 AM, wanting their breakfast.

 Readers?

This is a very interesting video:

DFA uses DNC's failure to fund Barret's campaign against Walker as a fund-raising hook:

Lambert -

Right-wing Gov. Scott Walker is outraising Democrat Tom Barrett 25-to-1, the Republican National Committee says it'll spend whatever it takes to keep Walker in office, and right-wing Super PACs are spending millions of dollars ahead of the June 5 recall election.

But [rather, And] the Democratic National Committee won't commit to spending any money in Wisconsin as part of the recall [And so, give your money to us!!!!].

Polls in Wisconsin are still split [No, they're not. Walker is up six] and without DNC support, our Get Out The Vote program is more important than ever [No, it isn't. The locals are more important than you].

JPMorgan's Trading Loss Is Said to Rise at Least 50%.

Read Marshall Auerback for a lucid explanation and the moral.

Obama can implement “The Droshky Plan” just as well as Nixon ever did. Here, in a delicious historical irony, William F. Buckley explains the term:

The next trick in Mr. Nixon’s bag is “The Droshky Plan” named after the sled used by Siberian peasants to cross the frozen tundra. When a droshky crammed with people comes under attack by wolves, the passengers lighten the load by throwing one of their number under the load.

Obama’s history is one of betrayal. Would he betray Dimon — despite his admiration for the man — to save his administration and, more to the point, his chance for a post-Presidential talk show or a job as a greeter for Goldman? In a heartbeat.

A week is a long time in politics. --Harold Wilson, of all people

Recovery Begins When Addiction Ends: An Open Letter to Jamie Dimon.

These azaleas were such a bright pure red I couldn't resist, even through we've done a few of these as plantidotes before.

Enjoy! Spring has moved on here in NJ. I haz a sad.

I actually saw this one on the car directly ahead of me today in the drive-thru line at a McDonald's in Naperville, IL:

So maybe we are as stupid as they think we are...ya think?

Hot diggety!

Straight white male.

One of the most irritating things about the deficit hawk/austerity literature, is that it uses the ideas of “fiscal sustainability” and “fiscal responsibility” in an ideological way, without ever really analyzing or explaining these labels. It’s almost as if the austerians know that if they clearly and directly stated what they meant by these terms, and how their meanings were actually related to the ideas of “sustainability” and “responsibility”, then flaws in their whole ideological and policy framework would be very clear to everyone else.

Of course, if you read any of the austerian literature you soon learn that they think fiscal sustainability and responsibility both relate to the impact of government spending on the federal deficit, the public debt subject to the limit, and the debt-to-GDP ratio, and to no other impacts of fiscal policy.” But the austerians never really explain why these three numbers are relevant for fiscal sustainability and responsibility. Instead, they take the relationship as obvious to all, and start evaluating fiscal policies on the basis of past and projected deficit, debt, and debt-to-GDP ratios. Invariably, regardless of the nation in which you find them, they end up advocating for lower taxes for the wealthy, less regulation for corporations, and sacrifices of Government programs and the social safety net; all this based on the ideas of fiscal sustainability and fiscal responsibility that they’ve never even explained to an incurious and uncritical media, but very bought media, or to the public.

Because of the very great importance of the fiscal sustainability/fiscal responsibility/fiscal crisis/solvency rhetoric, the first session of the Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In Counter-Conference covered the topic “What Is Fiscal Sustainability?” and the primary speaker was Professor Bill Mitchell of the University of Newcastle. Audios, videos, presentation slides, and transcripts for the presentation are available at selise’s site and a slightly different version of the transcripts is available from Corrente as well.