It’s January of 1984 and the first Mac is about to be unveiled

Apple announces at the Superbowl that the first Mac is coming:



Steve Jobs unveils the first Mac:


(H/t Open Culture) Read the rest of this post...

Matthew Shepard was attacked 13 years ago tonight

I remember the attack, over at AMERICAblog Gay. Read the rest of this post...

THIS JUST IN: Senator Reid triggers "nuclear option" in Senate to end endless GOP filibusters? Or not.

UPDATE from David Waldman over at DailyKos, who tends to understand the arcane ways of the Congress. David's post is hard to summarize.  Just wade on over.

About time, if I understand this story correctly.  The Republicans instituted the permanent filibuster when Obama took office, and that was the end of that.  No more legislation, ever, on anything unless you have 60 votes in the Senate.

That's not the way it works.  It's not the way it ever works.  But the Republicans decided to implement a permanent filibuster of everything, and to forever change the way the Senate works, and essentially make the body permanently dysfunctional.

Tonight, perhaps, Senator Reid changed that.

And I love the quote about the GOPer saying "wait until they're in the minority."  Yeah, right.  When we're in the minority our guys, as usual, will be afraid to use the filibuster out of fear that it wouldn't be nice.  So big deal if it's eliminated.  For one party, it already was years ago. Read the rest of this post...

Video: Live from the paddy wagon at #OccupyWallStreet

More allegations of police brutality. Read the rest of this post...

The GOP primaries as a horse race (totally freaking cool)

Oops, I had the wrong links in here. Click them again, then scroll down and click on "start race" and watch.

Brilliant illustration of the ups and downs in the polls of the various GOP candidates over time.  It's very cool, and really does give you a sense of the overall primaries and how the candidates have fared.  Follow the link and see the real thing, you click the button and watch the horse race live, it's very cool.

Read the rest of this post...

GOP’s "jobs" plan is to bring back dwarf tossing (seriously)

Dear God. From the Palm Beach Post:

A state legislator has found yet another example of government regulation getting in the way of job creation.

So Rep. Ritch Workman, R-Melbourne, filed a bill this week to bring back "dwarf tossing," the barbaric and dangerous barroom spectacle that was imported from Australia and thrived briefly in Florida before it was outlawed in 1989.

"I'm on a quest to seek and destroy unnecessary burdens on the freedom and liberties of people," Workman said. "This is an example of Big Brother government.

"All that it does is prevent some dwarfs from getting jobs they would be happy to get," Workman said. "In this economy, or any economy, why would we want to prevent people from getting gainful employment?"

You honestly can't make this stuff up. She's entirely serious. And notice how she's using the standard Republican talking points about government regulations interfering with employment. Yes. Those mean government regulations that don't let you throw little people around like bowling balls for the fun of it. Next time maybe they can repeal the EPA and the FDA - after all, who doesn't like a little more arsenic in their drinking water, and a touch of salmonella in their hamburger. Read the rest of this post...

WH zings Boehner on do-nothing US House

Boehner:

'We're Legislating. He's Campaigning.'

WH Spokesman Carney:

Dear Mr. Speaker: you refuse to hold a vote on the Jobs Act, a mainstream bill that would boost economy & jobs now. That's legislating?

Read the rest of this post...

The French-Belgian bank Dexia poised to be first domino to fall in Europe

As Chris wrote below, European political leaders and central banking types have been frantically trying to prop up European banks, which are significantly weakened by their over-exposure to sovereign and private bubble-induced debt. None of those efforts — so far — have succeeded, and the euro has continued its slide as a result ($1.33 as I write, after bottoming out earlier in the week at $1.32).

It now looks like Dexia, a bank co-owned by the French and Belgian governments, along with private investors, will be the first domino to hit the ground.

Let's start with the NY Times. Note the assumption of a default in Greece (my emphasis):

As European officials brace for the potential of a Greek debt default, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said Wednesday that she would push for more capital to protect her nation’s banks. And European banking regulators were trying to identify the region’s most vulnerable financial institutions.

Mrs. Merkel’s comments, after meetings with the European Commission here, came amid reports that customers were withdrawing savings from the French-Belgian financial institution Dexia, which is about to receive its second rescue in three years.

Shares of the bank, which is weighed down by its exposure to Greek debt, have plunged since Greece acknowledged over the weekend that it would miss the financial goals set as a condition for its receiving its next round of European bailout money.

Merkel wants to "protect her nation's banks" as the article stated. This is not the same thing as protecting the bank's investors (shareholders and bondholders), though I'm not sure Merkel would notice the difference.

Later in the article, the writer talks about the European banking "stress tests," which Dexia passed with ease. (Sound familiar?)

It's agreed that many of Europe's banks need capital, but there's no agreement on how to proceed:

Germany, the euro zone’s wealthiest member, seems politically inclined for each nation to protect its own banks. So is the affluent Netherlands. But France, the most dominant euro economy after Germany, is cautious about the whole exercise and is likely to lean toward an approach drawing upon the resources of the euro zone’s bailout fund — an approach the I.M.F. favors.

It's easy to read Germany as the bad guy here, but even the French approach (relying on Euro-wide funding for the re-capitalization) has its flaws.

Is there enough willing money in the Eurozone to make every bank, and every banking investor, whole? If that's the goal, no wonder there's failure on the horizon.

This, therefore, looks more promising:

France, worried that pumping too much of its taxpayers’ money into a bank recapitalization could lead to a downgrade of its government debt rating — driving up the government’s own borrowing costs — has called for a new look at whether Greece’s private creditors should face higher write-downs on their Greek debt.

The French may be willing to put the wood to private Greek investors. Would they do the same to private French and German investors?

I'll close with this, from the excellent economics writer masaccio (the whole piece is worth a read):

[T]he press is fixated on whether this will affect France’s AAA rating. Remember, if France has to make good on a guarantee, it has to borrow the money in Euros, and pay interest. That is a burden on French taxpayers. French bonds are falling against German bonds already.

There are no painless solutions. The only question is who will bear the pain. The US government is dominated by a financial oligarchy, (see Thirteen Bankers, by Simon Johnson and James Kwak) so we can assume it will be taxpayers who get slashed. At least in Europe, it looks like equity investors and maybe even some bondholders will take losses.

Time will tell in Europe, sooner rather than later.

And make no mistake — if the dominoes start to fall in the Eurozone, there will be quite a bit of pressure here as well.

GP Read the rest of this post...

MA Sen. Scott Brown criticizes Elizabeth Warren’s looks

Here's the audio, via BlueMassGroup:


brown-wzlx Read the rest of this post...

Beautiful post about Steve Jobs, who passed away yesterday

I hope Adam Mordecai doesn't mind if I break my own rule and excerpt liberally from his blog post about Steve's Job's passing. It concerns how Steve Jobs and Apple have influenced our lives.

My first computer was the Macintosh 128k which I got when I was 8 years old. I drew pictures of Mr. T on it using macpaint and the mirror brush feature. I broke world records on the ski jump on Winter Olympics. I won Uninvited after lots of hard work, and I slapped around the Black Knight in Dark Castle.

The Mac IIfx got my family through basic accounting and word processing. I managed to break it on a regular basis by adding too many extra features.

The Mac LC II helped me survive high school and and almost got me to do some studying in college. You Don't Know Jack took up much of it's use.

The Powerbook G4 helped me download all my honeymoon photos, and allowed me to view my Dad singing If You Think I'm Sexy to the bagpipes at my wedding.

The original iPod got my Dad through his chemotherapy, and he was mystified that I was able to put all his favorite operas and musicals in one little device. He couldn't eat, he couldn't relax very much, but the times in which he did, he had those little white ear buds on. When he died from Pancreatic cancer, the one thing I wanted from his things more than anything was that little player. (Even though Opera is not my favorite.)

The G5 got me through the end of my 20s, and aided me in editing a video of my Father for my family to remember him by.

The Powerbook G4 kept my ideas and thoughts for me after his passing.

Three incarnations of the Macbook Pro got me into my 30s, helped me write, helped me create, helped me do my job.

My iPhone 4 has helped me document every moment of my son's life, and will be documenting my daughter as she comes into the world in 6 weeks.

I'll probably have to get the iPhone 5 in 8 months to have enough room to record and obsess over my children's every tedious move.

Steve Jobs died of the cancer that has impacted my family for generations. The reason Pancreatic Cancer is such a death sentence is that the symptoms don't really appear noticeably until you are already close to the end. I'll continue to hunt down the latest breakthroughs in Pancreatic research on every future mac I own until I know that I and my children are safe.

Read the rest of this post...

VIDEO: NYPD beat and pepper-sprayed Fox News crew last night at #OccupyWallStreet

I'm sure we'll be told by the NYPD that it was justifiable that a NY cop beat a local Fox reporter with a nightstick and then pepper-sprayed his cameraman.

This is a serious PR disaster for New York City.  It's making NYC look unsafe to the world.  And it's making America look like some third world dictatorship no better than Russia or China.  The NYPD has made a mess of things.  They've turned a small protest into a national cause.  And they're seriously ticking people off around the country and around the world.  Heckuva job, NYPD.

Read the rest of this post...

Obama speaks sympathetically of #OccupyWallStreet protesters

They're giving voice to a lot of people's frustrations, he just said at a press conference. Read the rest of this post...

Obama press conference in a few minutes

I've got MSNBC on, but sure CNN will cover it as well. Read the rest of this post...

Corporate social-media engines track #OccupyWallStreet activists

This one's a two-fer. It from a report in the online version of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

As you read (especially if you click to the whole thing), notice (1) this is marketing data being used, not some super-secret backdoor stats. And (2), the writing is a well-fertilized garden of loaded language. (Start with "the workers against the rich" — not "the people against the rich" — and keep a count.)

Here's the key bit of the article (my emphasis):

Corporations who grab marketing data from Twitter, Facebook and other social media posts are curious about who's behind the Occupy Wall Street protests and the mobilizers of spin-off demonstrations in Boston, San Francisco, and (maybe) Philadelphia.

Here's how it looks to one veteran data miner: "We've been watching it for three weeks. Over the weekend, with the arrests in New York, it's really taking off," he told me. "The volumes have increased 20X, 30X. There are millions of communications."

What's the message? "Politics this year, it's going to be the workers against the rich."

Who's behind it? Legacy socialists? College-town anarchists? Professors? The Democrats? "I don't know if the Democrats are involved. I have no evidence of that. It really looks like labor," he told me.

I've said all along that the excuse for data-mining personal information will always be the need to advertise (because, hey, who could object to ads?). But "marketing" data is always politically useful.

Here's a great instance. This data can be bought; it's even a profit source for the company that collects it. (I'm starting to think that Facebook is evil. You supply the content, and they sell it off. Thoughts?)

So what's your count of loaded language in just this segment? I find six, if you consider "professors" to be sneering. This writer must have been marinated in 50s anti-commie literature. Later on he gives us "fellow traveling". Really?

By the way, did you notice that no one thinks the Dems are involved? "Our" party is keeping its dabs well off of this one, at least until recently. Would be nice if that changes.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Romney: #OccupyWallStreet is class warfare

Oh there's been class warfare alright and the numbers are clear. It's been Romney's class who have kicked the stuffing out of the middle class and poor. While the Romney's of the world can't see the decline of the middle class, the middle class certainly can see it. That's why the majority of Americans support taxing the rich elitists like Romney.

As anti-Wall Street protests have begun to move from Wall Street to main streets in other cities, the issue has also started to bubble up in the presidential campaign.

Greeting an overflow room of voters Tuesday at a community center in The Villages, a retirement community in Florida, Mitt Romney was asked about the protests, and said that he had spoken to the people involved.

“I think it’s dangerous — this class warfare,” Mr. Romney said.

Read the rest of this post...

EU banks may need $260 billion

It's a lot of money but what's more of a concern is how often numbers like this have been too low and too optimistic. Reuters:

Europe needs between 100 billion and 200 billion euros to recapitalize its banks to win back investor confidence and should put in place a comprehensive plan across the continent, the International Monetary Fund's European Department Director Antonio Borges said on Wednesday.

We are talking about figures of between 100 and 200 billion euros, which in our view is very, very small compared to the size of the European capital markets and compared to the resources of the new, enhanced EFSF," Borges told Reuters during a visit to Brussels, referring to Europe's bailout fund.

"There has been a lot of talk about French banks, but ... the problem is very widespread," he said.

Read the rest of this post...

Thursday morning open thread

So Steve Jobs is gone, Sarah Palin is out of the race, and the NYPD is finding new and wonderful ways to cruelly and inhumanely punish the #OccupyWallStreet protesters. I'm not entirely sure what the NYPD is up to, or why, but they sure seem to be handing the protesters a PR bonanza.  Back to Steve Jobs, it's always odd mourning celebrities.  We don't know them, so why do we care more about them than other people we don't know who die every day?  To some degree it's because even though they're not part of our personal life, they are a part of our cultural life.  We grew up with them.  And now they're gone. But that's not all.  I think when celebrities die it's a bit of a wake up call as to our own mortality.  Obvious as it may seem, it's a reminder that if they can die, so can we.  Please do watch the video I posted last night of Steve Jobs' 2005 commencement speech at Stanford.  I'd never heard of it before.  It's really great.  And touches on dying, and living.  It's just really good. Read the rest of this post...

Buffet to Murdoch: I'll show my tax returns if you show yours

It's hard not to like Warren Buffet when he steps up for the fight against Murdoch. Not bad, for an anti-capitalist pinko commie, or whatever laughable label Fox is trying to on Buffet. CNNMoney:

The Journal's conservative editorial board doesn't think that's a great idea, saying that Buffett should instead "educate the public" by letting "everyone else in on his secrets of tax avoidance by releasing his tax returns."

Asked about the editorial on Tuesday at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit, Buffett said he was willing to release his tax returns, on one condition:

"I think it might be a terrific idea if they would just ask their boss, Rupert Murdoch, and he and I will meet at Fortune, and we'll both give you our tax returns and you can publish them," Buffett said.

"I'm ready tomorrow morning," he added.

Rupert may be a little busy speaking with the British police and US FBI for illegal activity but surely he can still find the time to step up to the challenge, no? Read the rest of this post...

Tutu warns South Africans may pray for their govt’s downfall after snub to Dalai Lama

Archbishop Desmond Tutu tells the African National Congress Government that they are worse than the Apartheid regime.


Archbishop Tutu had invited the Dalai Lama to deliver a lecture at the former's 80th birthday celebrations. The Dalai Lama was to be given a peace price by Mahatma Gandhi's granddaughter. He has cancelled, however, because his visa is not yet forthcoming, something the Archbishop described as a "mindblowing discourtesy". It seems some blame pressure from the Chinese. The Government blames bureaucracy.

The Archbishop delivers a firecracker of a press conference in which in addition to comparing the present regime unfavourably with the Apartheid regime, he denounces the Chinese oppression in Tibet. Follow the link for the video. Read the rest of this post...