UK police say their phones likely tapped

No one is yet saying which newspaper they think hacked the cops' phones, but... Read the rest of this post...

Video: The Shining trailer (the happy version)

Another in the genre of taking snippets of a movie and making it seem the opposite of what it is. This one is really good. Read the rest of this post...

Video: Scary Mary Poppins

Funny as hell. Read the rest of this post...

Zombies generate $5.7bn for US economy (seriously)

At least the zombies are trying to pitch in and help improve a sour economy. That's more than you can say about the Republicans.

Zombies may be the walking undead, but their contribution to Main Street’s economy is very much alive. In modern times, the zombie genre has evolved from a cult following to a highly popular theme. 24/7 Wall St. estimates that the today’s zombie genre economy is worth billions of dollars.

Think way beyond zombie movie ticket sales. Think about DVD sales, video games, comic books, novels, Halloween costumes, zombie walks, merchandise, conventions and even zombie art. Add to that all of the websites, homemade movies, Facebook sites, YouTube sites and other forms of “digital” zombies, not to mention music. And if you think the financial tab has been high so far, by the end of 2012 the tab is going to be far larger....

Regardless of the reason, zombies are worth billions of dollars. The figure that we were able to piece together: $5.74 billion. In all honesty, this tab is grossly undercalculated in each category. By the time you add the money spent in total around the zombie genre, the figure is much higher.

There's much more analysis on MSNBC's site - check it out. Read the rest of this post...

Syria’s Assad says foreign intervention will "burn region"

The fall of Gadaffi seems to be making Assad nervous. According to Assad the demonstrations and the defections from his army are purely the result of 'foreign intervention'. Like Gadaffi, Assad and his Iranian backers will never understand that the opposition to their rule is lead by their own people, not 'foreign intervention'.

Not that Assad had any problem with 'foreign intervention' when he was the one behind it. Syria has meddled in Lebanon constantly and is generally believed to have been behind the murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri.

Despite Assad's fears, US intervention is currently unlikely. US intervention in Libya was driven by the UK and French governments. Both had scores to settle with Gadaffi. In the case of the UK, the murder of Yvonne Fletcher, the Lockerbie bombing and supplying the IRA with tons of semtex explosives. Bush and Blair had made their peace with Gadaffi, the primary promoter of state sponsored terrorism in return for their attack on Saddam. Neither Cameron nor Sarkozy were a party to that agreement.

The biggest risk in intervening in Libya was that the effectiveness of the NATO operation would bring calls for more. Intervening in Syria might bring down Assad, but would reinforce the regime in Iran. Attempting to intervene in Iran would be even more catastrophic than Bush's misadventure in Iraq.

Bush invaded Iraq in the hope of demonstrating the supreme power of the US. He threw the full weight of the US military against Iraq's people and ended up only demonstrating the impotence of US power. Obama let the Libyan people do the bulk of the fighting, used only a fraction of the power of the military power available and has gone a long way to re-establish US prestige. The best way to maintain the illusion is to avoid engagement in another conflict. Read the rest of this post...

CBS’ Bob Schieffer lets Herman Cain have it over ad glorifying smoking

Herman Cain ran a political ad glorifying smoking cigarettes.  It was bizarre, and more than a bit retro in its inappropriateness.   Last week, Herman Cain released an ad showing his campaign manager smoking a cigarette.  It was bizarre.  And clearly intentional.  The man spoke for a while, finished, and then all of a sudden, with the camera zoomed on his face, he takes a long drag from a cig.  Cain's excuse for glorifying smoking to children was that the guy smokes in real, and Cain's message of the ad is to "let people be people."  Oh really?  Does the man have sex?  Is that popping up in the next ad?  How about foul language, does he ever swear?  The notion that smoking is in the ad simply because the man smokes is laughable, and rather insulting from a man who claims he wants to be President.  We deserve a real answer as to why Herman Cain decided to glorifying smoking in a political ad.

CBS’s Bob Schieffer really let Cain have it on Sunday. Cain started off by claiming the ad had no subliminal pro-smoking message.

"One of the themes within this campaign is, let Herman be Herman," he told CBS' Bob Schieffer. "Mark Block is a smoker. We say, let Mark be Mark. That's all we're trying to say because we believe, let people be people."

When asked if he thought the ad was meant to be "funny," Cain said his campaign "didn't know whether it would be funny to some people or whether they were going to ignore it or whatever the case may be."

"It's not funny to me - I am a cancer survivor, like you," Schieffer said. "I had cancer that was smoking related. I don't think it serves the country well - and this is an editorial opinion here - to be showing someone smoking a cigarette. You're the frontrunner now. It seems to me as frontrunner you would have a responsibility not to take that kind of a tone in this campaign. I would suggest that perhaps as the frontrunner, you'd want to raise the level of the campaign."

Good for Schieffer. It's pretty abominable that Cain would intentionally show someone smoking a cigarette in a campaign ad, and in this case the camera was zoomed on the man's face as he smoke3d for a few seconds, then the ad finished. It was downright bizarre, and made me wonder if a tobacco company, or lobbyist, had paid for the product placement.  (You can watch Schieffer go after Cain on the video on CBS' site via the link above.)

But I guess Cain has bigger problems now. Read the rest of this post...

Is Occupy Wall Street the primary Obama never had?

"If Occupy Wall Street were a national candidate for president, it would be blowing away every other candidate on the stage, including Barack Obama and Mitt Romney."  So say the polls, as cited by Matt Stoller in a new piece in Alternet (my bolding and reparagraphing):

The poll numbers are out. If Occupy Wall Street were a national candidate for president, it would be blowing away every other candidate on the stage, including Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

Fifty-four percent of Americans agree with the protesters, versus 44 percent who think President Obama is doing a good job.

Seventy-three percent of Americans want prosecutions for Wall Street executives for the crisis.

Seventy-nine percent think the gap between rich and poor is too large.

Eighty-six percent say Wall Street and its lobbyists have too much power in Washington.

Sixty-eight percent think the rich should pay more in taxes.

Twenty-five percent of the public considers itself upset, 45 percent is concerned about the country and 25 percent is downright angry.

This discontent existed in 2008, says Stoller. So what's different? Stoller says the Occupy Movement is the difference:

What the occupiers have done, perhaps unwittingly, is force political elites to choose, at least publicly, between their funding stream and their popular legitimacy. Wall Street lobbyists are absolutely furious at Obama for embracing the protests, but protesters aren't particularly enthused to have establishment praise. Barney Frank goes to raise money from Wall Street, while lamenting how the protesters didn't vote in 2010.

Yes, I would say — and more. Like a pearl that needs a seed, the discontent noted above needs a focus for expression. Stoller doesn't say so (though his headline implies as much), but that's what's been missing since the billionaires blew a hole in the public budget. A seed; a focus.

The Tea Party movement, corrupted by its funding and its focus on tribes and race, could not be that seed, except imperfectly. A primary challenge to Obama could have been that seed — and could still be. (In fact, Matt Stoller has written as much.)

But no one bold enough — or with nothing to lose — has stepped up to that plate.

In its stead, we have this, the Occupy Movement. Like a primary candidate, it's calling out its opponents. Persistence, please. At this point, you're all the resistance we have.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Video: Girl faints from surprise marriage proposal

The video is a bit annoying with the background music, but zoom ahead to about 1:15 in the video. It's a surprise party for the girl who has no idea she's about to be proposed to.  When the proposal happens, she passes out.  It's actually a bit scary, she could have really hurt her head.  I had no idea people actually fainted from things like this.  Curious what the biological cause is. (To help keep the site loading faster, I'm linking to the video rather than embedding it.) Read the rest of this post...

Herman Cain sexual harassment update

Lots of updates since the story broke last night that Herman Cain was accused of sexual harassment, twice, while the head of the National Restaurant Association.

NBC confirms at least one of the women received a cash settlement.

Cain says he "never sexually harassed anyone."

NPR delves in to how this story could affect Cain's chances, including asking whether one of Cain's GOP primary opponents is responsible for this story coming out now.

Cain compares himself to Clarence Thomas. (It's interesting that Cain has played the black card a few times already - I'm not sure Obama ever played it during the campaign, and has tended to avoid it as president as well).

And Herman Cain's state chair in Iowa says the sexual harassment story will help Cain in Iowa.  (Because Iowans like sexual harassment?) Read the rest of this post...

Occupy Oakland planning a general strike for November 2nd

Following last week's violent police crackdown, the Occupy Oakland General Assembly passed a resolution calling for a general strike on November 2nd. You can watch a video of the Oakland General Assembly voting to pass the general strike here. While general strikes are rare and hard to enact, this one is gaining steam. The International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union has announced that they will stand in solidarity with this general strike. Occupy Oakland will march on the Port of Oakland and shut it down. Having support of the west coast longshoremen is clearly going to be helpful to the Occupy movement's efforts. Here's an excerpt from the resolution calling for the general strike:

We propose a city wide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school. Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city.

All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them.

While we are calling for a general strike, we are also calling for much more. People who organize out of their neighborhoods, schools, community organizations, affinity groups, workplaces and families are encouraged to self organize in a way that allows them to participate in shutting down the city in whatever manner they are comfortable with and capable of.

Read the rest of this post...

Where tax cuts for the 1% come from: Our pensions.

Dean Baker has a thorough debunking of the Washington Post front page story on the 'Social Security Crisis'. A sample:

The article makes great efforts to confuse readers about the status of the trust fund. It tells readers:

"The $2.6 trillion Social Security trust fund will provide little relief. The government has borrowed every cent and now must raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more heavily from outside investors to keep benefit checks flowing."

As ever, Krugman points out the bait and switch with great clarity:

What you can’t do is insist that the trust fund is meaningless, because SS is just part of the budget, then claim that some crisis arises when receipts fall short of payments, because SS is a standalone program. Yet that’s exactly what the WaPo claims.

This is how the GOP scheme was meant to work all along: First they passed tax cuts for the 1% and now when it comes time to pay for it the only thing they will allow to be put on the table is our pensions. Read the rest of this post...

Super-Committee Democrats still giving away the store

It was reported the other day that the Dems on the Super-Committee are now proposing even bigger cuts in Medicare and cut Social Security. The total cuts now stand at $3 Trillion.

Yes, we get the fact that the GOP is not going to accept any deal that includes any tax rises for the 1%. So Democrats can appear to be reasonable by making offers they know the GOP will refuse. But offering to give away the store is still a boneheaded strategy. It moves the terms of debate from 'what caused the deficit' to 'what are we going to cut to pay for it'.

Per capita, the US is one of the richest countries in the world. It should be able to easily afford the welfare and universal healthcare systems that every other major industrial power provides. The only reason that there is any deficit issue is that the 1% don't pay their fair share and the US spends as much on militarism as the rest of the planet combined.

The US does not have a 'defense' budget. There was nothing defensive about the Iraq war. There is nothing defensive about attempting global hegemony. Bush sent the country to war in Iraq because he thought the US military so strong that the invasion would be a 'cake walk'. Having a military that is too strong makes the US less safe: The US has to join in every war that comes along.

Letting the automatic cuts in the military budget kick in is probably the best chance we have for achieving a modest reduction in military spending and thus making the country safer.

The deficit was caused by tax cuts for the 1% and the invasion of Iraq. Read the rest of this post...

Herman Cain’s performance as CEO was rather dismal

John beat me to the sexual harassment story, but while I was poking into it, I discovered something rather odd about Cain's previous CEO gig, the one at Godfather's Pizza his career is based on.

According to Wikipedia, when Cain took over as CEO in 1986 the chain had revenues of $272 million which were cut to $242 million after cost cutting measures reducing the number of stores to 563. At the end of his tenure as CEO, revenues were $265 million for 540 stores. That is revenue growth of 1%/year and same store sales growth of 1.6%. He didn't even keep pace with inflation. (For more information see here.)

A CEO who starts from nothing and builds a quarter billion business is definitely a big deal other executives want to learn from. A CEO who starts and ends in the same place after a decade in the job is not.

A quarter billion dollars a year in revenue is not exactly negligible, but it isn't major league in the business world or in government. It is on the small size for a division in a Fortune 500 company. It is on the small size for a government agency budget.

Again, building a company that size from scratch is quite the achievement. Merely running the show for eight years without growth is not. During Cain's tenure managing Godfather's for Pilsbury, the chain slipped from fourth place nationally to sixth. During his tenure as CEO of the private company it slipped to eighth.

In effect Cain merely moved sideways from his position as a mid level manager at Pilsbury running the Godfather's brand to essentially the same job in a private company. The rank CEO is totally meaningless, what matters is what you are CEO of.

If someone is running for President based on their skills and experience as a CEO, shouldn't they be one of the thousand or so ex-CEOs who ran a large company successfully? Read the rest of this post...

Monday morning Sasha blogging

I've been remiss in my Sasha blogging.  The little girl is fast approaching 2 years of age, and she just keeps changing.  First, her fur.  She's apparently tired of the blonde thing and has decided to go back to being mostly apricot.  She started apricot with some nice black streaks, then went mostly white/cream, with a nice apricot patch on her back, and now the apricot is coming back like a vengeance.  She's half yorkie and half bichon, and I'd read that there was a chance her color would change over the years (yorkie mixes can do that).

Of course, they didn't warn me about the personality changes.  Some are subtle, like her increasingly affectionate manner (she now LOVES to sit between my legs when I lay down on the couch to watch TV - her first year she wouldn't be caught dead laying down anywhere near "dad").  Some are more pronounced, like our ongoing battle with leash aggression (she has a thing about warning the dobermans, and the motorcycles, to mind their distance).

But at least she's truly (knock on wood) 100% potty trained.  My sister litter box trained her at about six months, and it worked.  But she goes outside too, if we're there at the right time.  The thing is, most of my friends aren't into using the litter box if they're caring for her when I'm away.  And I was afraid she wouldn't quite know what to do.  But she's been great.  At mom's she's nearly great (but mom's dog, also half-bichon (and half maltese), has a few remaining housebreaking issues, so I think some of the lingering smells confuse Sasha).  At Joe's, however, sans litter, she's was 100% great during my recent business trip to San Francisco.

She's quite intelligent, but I haven't really figured out any tricks to teach her other than sit, shake and lay down (okay, she knows "stay", "come here" and a few others).  But the cool tricks, I'm at a loss.  The pet tricks books aren't terribly obvious.  I may try YouTube.  She's a fast learner.  Picked up each of the other tricks in a day - though she needed more time to really nail them down cleanly.  I'm open to suggestions for further tricks.

Finally, that's the ubiquitous ball that haunts me all day long.  If I heard a soft thud-thud-thud, I know that Sasha has just dropped "ball" by my feet for another of our never-ending play sessions.  The joys of working at home. Read the rest of this post...

Greedy Blighters

I woke this morning to the sound of Sir Martin Sorrell (Chairman of WPP, which owns Grey, Burson-Marsteller, Hill & Knowlton, JWT, Ogilvy Group, TNS and Young & Rubicam) explaining to a radio interviewer that the 70% rise in his earnings this year needed to be judged in the context of his "very low base pay". His base pay? £1.5 million (About $2.4 million). It's a wonder the Red Cross aren't delivering parcels to him. If you want to see whether hearing him say this kind of thing makes blood spurt from your ears too, you can listen to the embedded stream here.

Perhaps his head-swivelling insensitivity is part of an elaborate competition with Bob "the time for remorse and apology from banks is over" Diamond of Barclays to see who can appear the bigger idiot. However, the attitude appears to be widespread. At a point at which average annual pay increases are around the 2% mark (that is lower than inflation and thus a cut in real terms), directors in the 100 companies with the biggest market cap in the UK had pay increases averaging out to 43% (or, if you prefer hard numbers, they received on average £2.7 million or $4.3 million of income). They could only be more provocative if they were driving round in top hats leering at children. Read the rest of this post...

Tennessee Occupy protesters return, no arrests

Someone must have figured out that arresting protesters who couldn't be charged didn't make much sense. If anything, the ignorance of the governor and state police may have helped bring out more protesters. Thanks for the help, gov.

Occupy Wall Street protesters chanted slogans, danced to stay warm and defiantly protested into the early hours Sunday near Tennessee's Capitol building, squaring off for the third consecutive night against state authorities.

"Whose plaza? Our plaza!" about 50 demonstrators chanted early Sunday in defiance of an official curfew.

Capitol police sporadically made their rounds and a state trooper occasionally walked past the protest in the pre-dawn hours, but authorities signaled no immediate attempt to make arrests as law enforcement agents had done on the two previous nights.

Read the rest of this post...