Don’t  touch me there.

The rusting hulks of Soviet tanks massed in their graveyard outside of Kabul since the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan after a long (9-year), bitter and pointless war are slowly being sold off as scrap metal to the Chinese.

Now, American tanks are whistling past the Soviet tank graveyard.

The Chinese have already re-cycled the metal columns from the World Trade Center towers and sold it back to us as affordable consumer goods.  Now they are re-purposing the Soviet tanks.  What happens when their raw materials supply chain from the imperial scrap heaps breaks?  We can’t let that happen to our creditors.  Our Abrams M1 tanks weigh 72 tons each.  Fifteen tanks represent a thousand tons of steel once they hit the scrap heap in Helmand Province.  That’s an imposing signal of our commitment to Chinese demand for scrap metal.

Col. John King remarked, “The M1 tank is a formidable machine, it’s a formidable message. It signifies commitment, that we’re committed.”

Besides, if the Soviets could have a pointless nine-year war in Afghanistan prior to their collapse, why can’t we?  

If Obama is going to govern as well as prosper politically, he has to pivot back toward the center.

I flatly reject the idea that Tea Partiers are crazy.

I find it stunning that the conversation [questioning the tea party] has taken this turn.

I don’t think [Obama’s] problem is he hasn’t put enough people in jail.

Fuck the business community? That’s what you [Matt Taibbi] said?

I’m putting my money on Jeb Bush.

Read it for yourselves.

David Gergen could not find his ass with the help of the groping TSA.

Looks like bmaz and Ian Welsh were correct.

Tomorrow Congress is going to legalize the banks’ criminal activity by destroying property law in America.

Are you shitting me?

Is this the Twilight Zone?

The time for rational debate is over.

update: The bill was defeated, primarily along party lines.  The party line vote suggests that interpretations of H.R. 3808unc as a “procedural vote to check the President’s unconstitutional use of the pocket veto by Congress in general, including Nancy Pelosi,” was probably entirely incorrect, and it never really made sense to me to begin with, given how much power Congress has gladly abdicated already.

Anyway, chalk one, just one, up for the Democrats.  

This rare voice of sanity can see the Necker cube in both ways, without undue or muddled effort.  Flip, flop.  Disambiguate one way, then the other.  Sure, there is resistance in switching between perspectives by the mind, but once you know the trick, just how hard is switching between multi-stable points of view?  Less hard than people proclaim.  In fact, if you can’t disambiguate perception in several directions, then something is unusual about you, because most people can more easily pop their cubes this way or that than they will likely admit.

I am rarely gob-smacked in a good way.  This woman kicks ass.  And yeah, “Daphne” rocked the whole outfit.  I had hoped that (somehow) my Scooby-Doo cartoon-watching days would not leave me utterly mentally deficient.

My nephew, at eight years of age, watches Scoob and Shag, just like I did, in 1969, and I’m not commenting on the value of that media franchise, but Jiminy effing crickets, time flies, and it’s hard enough finding oneself without the undue pressure of expecting the cube to pop this way or that.

As Harry Frankfurt duly noted (pdf), “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.”  Obama’s awkward relationship with the truth consists, in part, of bluffing, bullshitting, and lying his way deeper into our economic morass.

Paul Craig Roberts:

If we cannot trust what the government tells us about weapons of mass destruction, terrorist events, and the reasons for its wars and bailouts, can we trust the government’s statement last Friday that the US economy gained 151,000 payroll jobs during October?

Apparently not. After examining the government’s report, statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reported that the jobs were “phantom jobs” created by “concurrent seasonal factor adjustments.” In other words, the 151,000 jobs cannot be found in the unadjusted underlying data. The jobs were the product of seasonal adjustments concocted by the BLS.

As usual, the financial press did no investigation and simply reported the number handed to the media by the government.

David Broder suggests that killing millions of innocent people may hitch our wagon out of our economic morass brought on by pure “made-in-America” fraud, yet he’s not really suggesting “economic stimulus by murder” to pull our asses out of the fire of our own making, though it would be politically expedient, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.  

I am not suggesting, of course, that the president incite a war to get reelected. But the nation will rally around Obama because Iran is the greatest threat to the world in the young century. If he can confront this threat and contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he will have made the world safer and may be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history.

Bipartisan, war-mongering lying for political gain is the “highest broderism” of them all.

If Broder’s deranged fantasies about killing Iranians for political and monetary gain prevailed, forensics would have to use DNA fingerprinting to identify his demented remains, because there won’t be any dentition left, save for the dust and fragments pounded imponderably deep into his large colon.

I know people are overly-fond of inciting violence these days, but let me go on the record as viewing such grisly scenarios on a “tit-for-tat” basis.  I’d view “going to war with Iran” as “going to war with me,” not because I’m Iranian (I’m not), but because the very idea of unilateral and lawless US hegemony is the constant, bordering menace that violates my sense of self and safety.  

So far, we have failed to prosecute anyone for blatant war crimes (not to mention economic fraud).  Don’t count on me to stand by and countenance further war crimes to bail our asses out of economic self-destruction.  

Somebody take a Milwaukee drill to my skull (1/2″ bit), cut off my limbs with a reciprocating saw, stick high-voltage electrodes into my pain-detecting sensory thalamus, then brutally macerate the remains with a back-hoe, because I cant take this.

Dailykos should be reprimanded.  Better yet, censured by Congress.  What the fucking fuck are people smoking in Washington?  I’ve never had an acid trip without the acid.  That shit is flying saucer.

Along related and similar lines, driftglass kicks ass, but let me finish his thought:

Obama is a fucking Reaganite asshole, too!

Without the quips.

Many of us puzzle over why Obama is such a…disappointment.

Some lay it entirely on his character, or lack thereof:

To tell you the truth, though, I’m still not convinced that Obama actually wants anything, at least not in a political sense. He seems to me an utter blank. He’s a self-propelling election device that exists solely to get itself elected. It continues to amaze me that so many people somehow thought this empty suit was a savior. Even his campaign message was just a recycled leftover from one of Axelrod’s earlier clients.

Possible, but I still have a hard time believing Obama is that emotionally bleached.  Others attribute his apparent paralysis to systemic issues, which rings truer, to me:

My own guess is that he’s been informed that the system is so fragile that if he dares to disturb even one teensy-weensy part of it — for instance, by throwing some executives from Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, et cetera, into federal prison — that said system will fly to pieces in a fortnight. So Obama’s main task for a year and a half has been to desperately apply baling wire and duct tape to the banking system while telling fibs to the public about a wished-for recovery to a prior state. Unfortunately that prior state is the ecstasy of a self-swindle in the moments before it unravels… the sublime feeling of having gotten something wonderful for nothing. We’re beyond that now and nothing on the age-old shelf of nostrums, spells, prayers, and miracle-cures will avail to bring that moment back, though the public does not know this.

The latter view makes much more sense if one can wrap one’s head around the Big Picture reality, which is all too slowly dawning upon us all.

Nicole Foss, aka “Stoneleigh,” former editor of The Oil Drum, and current co-editor of The Automatic Earth, talks about “The Biggest Big Picture,” of politics, finance, and carrying capacity.  She dishes on deflation, oil, debt servitude, socioeconomic complexity, and collapse…Pow!  Right in the kisser!

The radio format is probably not the easiest introduction to these ideas, as she hits the ground running and alights on many dense topics as if swirling in the pantomime, but it’s worth a listen (If the extemporaneity is overwhelming, She and Ilargi have primers on most topics at their blog.)

Update:The transcript is now here.

In 2004, I saw the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 for the first time on an internet video.  The building had not been hit by a plane, had insignificant damage from falling debris from the other two big towers that fell, and had spotty fires burning asymmetrically across a handful of its 47 or so floors.  Out of nowhere, it suddenly dropped its four-square topmost corners symmetrically and descended rapidly to the ground as if the entire supporting matrix of steel I-beams had not just weakened according to local areas of damage, but had vanished entirely and instantaneously:

Although I knew instantly — by my own cognitive recognition hardware — exactly what I was watching from seeing many similar demonstrations before, I watched the video again another 25 times, or so, out of sheer incredulity at the implications (eliciting the subsequent autonomic re-shuffling upon first viewing), before sitting back in my chair and conceding, “Holy shit!  That is a fucking duck!

Ramadan:

Ramadan… is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. It is the Islamic month of fasting, in which participating Muslims refrain from eating, drinking and sexual relations from dawn until sunset.[1]  Ramadan is a time of reflecting , believing and worshiping God. Muslims are expected to put more effort into following the teachings of Islam and to avoid obscene and irreligious sights and sounds. Purity of both thoughts and actions is important. The act of fasting is said to redirect the heart away from worldly activities, its purpose being to cleanse the inner soul and free it from harm. It also teaches Muslims to practice self-discipline, self-control,[8] sacrifice, and empathy for those who are less fortunate; thus encouraging actions of generosity and charity

Fasting is intended to teach Muslims about patience, humility, and spirituality. It is a time for Muslims to fast for the sake of God … and to offer more prayer than usual. During Ramadan, Muslims ask forgiveness for past sins, pray for guidance and help in refraining from everyday evils, and try to purify themselves through self-restraint and good deeds.