From Scholars and Rogues: welcome to America's teabagger paradise!

If I'm rotting, it's a charmed, golden atrophy. What calamitous catalyst that Turkish woman wrought on Friday is beyond my comprehension.

I was terrified: the white screen of death had been staring at me for weeks. Weeks of writing indolence—all wrapped up in the job search. Trying to be normal, respectable. And never knowing where to begin the final portion of the book: the white elephant in the room, Turkey.

Fits and starts. But many more fits than starts.

And then I heard that voice, that sound. Suddenly a torrent of words poured forth. Real inspiration. And I’m wary of inspiration, because it is the handmaid of the muse and the muse is a fickle bitch. She’s mean. Devious. Demanding. And what she gives she just as quickly takes away.

More after the jump.

It’s not the best shot in the world. But I had to have it. My father, Ahmad and I are hurling down the highway towards Meshed and the Holy Grail of all travelers in Persia: the tiled magnificence of the Gohar Shad, trying to make it there before dark. The day before was spent crossing the barren, lifeless Dasht-i-Kavir.

The great range of mountains in the photo is the Kuh-i-Nishapur. I was dying to go up into the hills and see the famed turquoise mines. Turquoise—the color of the Turks—that arresting faience adorning mosques and minarets from the Pillars of Hercules to the Straits of Malacca. Green may be the color of Islam but turquoise left an indelible, obsessive stain on me. The stain of blue in the harsh Central Asian heat and sun. Amidst the orchards of Samarkand and the opaque olive pools of Bukhar-i-Sharif and the summit of Persian architectural expression: the Sheikh Lutfollah mosque of Isfahan.

The mines, worked since antiquity, finally petered out in the late 19th century. Perhaps the turquoise mined here found its way onto the ring fingers of Chinese princesses and Roman potentates? Who is to say it is not so? In the grand sweep of time anything is possible. And it was a day pregnant with the possible.

More after the jump.

There is one thing even Krugman won't touch, that which has become the new effective third rail of American politics:

The only point Wolf doesn’t really emphasize is the extent to which the deficit hysterics are also deficit peacocks. They’re full of bombast, and eager to shoot down anything that might reduce unemployment. But when it comes to serious proposals to bring the long-run fiscal outlook under control — which means, above all, doing something about health care costs — all we get is the sound of crickets chirping.

Can you guess what it is?

Americans are beginning to sense how much college is now a game of Three Card Monte:

Most Americans believe that colleges today operate like businesses, concerned more with their bottom line than with the educational experience of students, according to a new study. And the proportion of people who hold that view has increased to 60 percent, from 52 percent in 2007.

And yet, they don't understand that lower taxes means paying for college in other ways:

To serve more students or offer higher quality education, the college presidents said, would require more money — and conversely, cuts in their budgets would inevitably translate into either a smaller number of students or diminished educational quality.

The administrators are certainly correct. And yes, college administrations are too top heavy. But if more of our tax dollars went to funding higher education and legislators were more involved in the process the entire university experience could be cheaper.

But as it is now, college is a business and the worst part of it is the student loan racket:

When Michelle Bisutti, a 41-year-old family practitioner in Columbus, Ohio, finished medical school in 2003, her student-loan debt amounted to roughly $250,000. Since then, it has ballooned to $555,000.

It is the result of her deferring loan payments while she completed her residency, default charges and relentlessly compounding interest rates. Among the charges: a single $53,870 fee for when her loan was turned over to a collection agency. . . She recently entered a rehabilitation agreement on her defaulted federal loans, which now carry an additional $31,942 collection cost. She makes monthly payments on those loans -- now $209,399 -- for $990 a month, with only $100 of it going toward her original balance. The entire balance of her federal loans will be paid off in 351 months. Dr. Bisutti will be 70 years old.

They had a word for this in the Old Testament: usury.

Ian asks the following question:

Would it be ok for the Taliban, which is at war with the US, who invaded their country, to bomb a wedding or funeral the President, a cabinet minister or other US leader was at, even if that meant many innocent civilian casualties?

But I have another question: would it be okay for a member of the Taliban to target a drone operator based out of say, Reno, Nevada? If so, why? If not, why?

More green shoots, everyone. So be sure to run out and buy a new home!

The Guardian, By Richard Adams, February 16

He wasn't a plumber and his name wasn't Joe – but he became famous for 15 minutes during the 2008 presidential elections after John McCain decided to latch on to him during the Republican campaign's death-spiral.

Still not comfortable with his inevitable fate as a future Trivial Pursuit question, Joe – real name Sam Wurzelbacher – still pops up at fringe political events. And this weekend it finally dawned upon him what presidential campaigns are all about – and what his precise role in 2008 was.

The New York Times reported the arrest of a top Taliban commander in a joint operation with Pakistan's Army. The story was published on February 15. Pakistan's Interior Minister, denied that Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was captured in a joint operation and characterized the New York Times report as "propaganda." See portions of the Times and Dawn articles below with links to the entire article. This may be much ado about nothing, since the capture was made, or a revealing insight into the manipulation of opinion in the "War on Terror." (Image)

Lucille Clifton, former Maryland poet laureate, National Book Award winner, and a true poetic conjurer, died on Saturday. She was 73. Here is one of hers:

Telling Our Stories

The fox came every evening
to my door asking for nothing.
my fear trapped me inside,
hoping to dismiss her but
she sat till morning, waiting.

At dawn we would, each of us,
rise from our haunches,
look through the glass
then walk away.

Did she gather her village around
her and sing of the hairless moon face,
the trembling snout,
the ignorant eyes?

Child, i tell you now it was not
the animal blood i was hiding from,
it was the poet in her,
the poet and the terrible stories
she could tell.

- Lucille Clifton

A second series of demonstrations and counter-demonstrations have taken place in Tehran and other cities to mark the 31st anniversary of the revolution that ousted the Pahlavis and brought in the mullahs. Some of these rallies have led to violence, mostly initiated by defenders of the Achmadinejad government. There is, regrettably, little to suggest that reformists will triumph this time either.

Reformists are again able to mobilize large demonstrations in urban areas, mostly from the middle classes and students. Recent demonstrations enjoy visible support from a number of mullahs, which is critical in at least somewhat disarming the view among pious rural dwellers that reformers are not only anti-Islamic but also linked to foreign powers that exploited Iran prior to the 1979 revolution. The reformists are urban and middle-class. In that they can concentrate their efforts in a manner to confront the government, this is a strength. But in that the country is mainly rural and poor, it’s also a liability.

My father returned from service in World War Two aboard a troopship that left the Philippines, passed through the Panama Canal, and eventually pulled into Brooklyn Navy Yard. It was a few weeks late for the boisterous crowds and tugboat horns that greeted troopships in the immediate aftermath of VJ Day, but it was home nonetheless.  Happy to have at last returned and even happier that civilian status was only days away, the guys, many of them gaunt from long service overseas, eagerly disembarked and trooped off to get some food.

As they entered the mess hall, a shift was getting off and the twenty-or-so KPs, feeling that working there had bestowed certain privileges upon them, butted in front of them in the chow line – or at least tried to.  Now, my father and his colleagues were amicable enough, but the KPs cutting in front of them were not fellow GIs.  They weren’t even Americans. They were German soldiers.

Greece is turning into a battle royal between the global financial elites and the average worker in the industrial West. This started out as a more limited struggle, pitting the finance ministers and central banks of the European Union against the Greek unions, but the fight has unexpectedly broadened with news of the surreptitious involvement of Goldman Sachs in helping Greece avoid borrowing constraints.

The picture painted in the Western financial press makes the unions the villain in this play. The unions are described as greedy, lazy, too quick to strike, and insensitive to the burdens they were imposing on the Greek economy. To cope with union threats and extortion, various Greek governments had no choice but to borrow excessively, and well beyond the European Union target range that allowed domestic budget deficits to be no higher than 3% of GDP. As of last year, Greece’s budget deficit was 12.7% of GDP.

Can I just say, in a totally, utterly random way, that I love this term, "dead cat bounce."

I remember I was a young rookie at Morgan Stanley the first time I heard the term. A perpetually hungover Brooklynite, who used to work as an arb clerk on the floor of one of the exchanges used the term. I did an immediate double-take.

"A what?" I asked.

"A dead cat pounce, Tex," he told me.

"What the hell is that?"

"If you throw a cat off a tall enough building it'll bounce at least once when it hits bottom."

"Alrighty then."

Any descriptive in your current or past industry that you like?

I know very, very little about climate science. My rationale, or reasoning, has always been, in essence, better safe than sorry. In other words, I'm very conservative--in the true sense of the word--when it comes to the environment. I've seen enough environmental degradation in my life, from poisoned and dead rivers in China, to swamps in the Russian taiga filled killed by petroleum by products, to come to the conclusion that we are doing serious harm to our planet. And that we really need to dial the pollution back. Needless to say, my evidence is anecdotal: stories about strange weather patterns in places like Vietnam and Indonesia, poor Monsoons in India, drought in tropical Mexico.

All that being said, several people who have opinions that I trust, have called the whole climate-gate situation to my attention. And the news just seems to keep getting worse. Anyone want to elaborate on it?

Looks like the bond markets are sending us a signal.

Where ever there is financial chaos, there seems to be Goldman Sachs. The evidence really is overwhelming at this point. And thus, Simon Johnson has ten questions for the EU to ask Goldman, because our regulatory authorities have been captured:

1. Which eurozone governments have worked with Goldman, and on what basis, over the past decade? All actions prior to and after the introduction of the euro need to be thoroughly reexamined.
2. What transactions has Goldman facilitated and how has that affected the reporting of European government debt? (Under the Maastricht Treaty, eurozone government debt is not supposed to exceed 60 percent of GDP.)
3. In the case of Greece, the accusation is that Goldman deliberately and in a premeditated manner conspired to hide the true degree of government debt. Is this true, and to what extent has Goldman helped other countries engage in similar transactions, e.g., countries now seeking entry to the eurozone?
4. What is the full extent of Greek and other government liabilities, if these are accounted for properly? Without this reckoning, it is impossible to design a proper level of European Union (or any other) support for weaker eurozone countries.
5. Are there non-eurozone countries that have also been aided and abetted by Goldman in this fashion? For example, are the UK and Switzerland implicated – and thus endangered?
6. Has Goldman extolled the virtues of government debt in Greece, or other countries, while at the same time helping to deceive investors on the true risks inherent in those debts? What were Goldman’s own holdings of these securities?
7. Is there evidence that Goldman has structured similar transactions for the private sector – enabling companies to conceal the level of their true indebtedness? Have securities issued by such firms also been endorsed by Goldman to the buying public?
8. Were Goldman’s US-based supervisors aware of Goldman’s activities in Greece and other eurozone countries? Did they condone activities that undermine the integrity of the European Union?
9. Where was the European Central Bank while all of this was happening? Has the ECB become dangerously enraptured with the new Wall Street and its “techniques”?
10. Did any responsible official really think that what Goldman was constructing was really some sort of productivity-enhancing financial innovation – as opposed to a sophisticated form of scam?

Any other questions?

Personally, I'm glad to see Bayh go. But, like Moley, I cannot help but to wonder what all these retirement's mean in the grand scheme of things? Any ideas?

Flowers?

A special restaurant?

A surprise gift?

Diamonds, etc.

Something normally forbidden by request?

Inquiring minds want to know?

A perfect example of mercenary values in action:

I recognize this is a bit dated, but still, it's just lovely.

From the New Statesman:

The baby boomers had everything – free education, free health care and remarkable personal liberties – but they squandered it all. Now their children are paying for it

Posted in the hopes that we'll see a nice flame war on the topic in the comments section.

Interesting set of cities make up the top ten most livable cities in the world and not a single one of them are in the United States. Canada does well, however, and so do Australia and New Zealand.

“Pornography has come a long way since the Tariff Act of 1842 was amended to prohibit military traffic in pornographic novels by a Congress fearful that Union troops might be masturbating instead of killing”. The reverse can be said of today’s army where masturbating and killing, although not executed simultaneously, are not considered to be mutually exclusive.

Part 1 can be read here
Part 11 can be read here
Part 111 can be read here
Part 1V can be read here

Continued after the jump

The Alliance for Climate Protection Action Fund's Repower America Project, run by a guy named Al Gore (and for whom I happily consult), has decided to remind both Republicans and Democrats in IN, ME, AR, and MO that they were elected by the people to do THEIR bidding, and not certain companies that think a fossil fuel future is just dandy.

Some of the names may look familiar to you (Bayh, Lincoln, Snowe, and McCaskill, perhaps?) as those wily "centrists" you've come to love. Let's see if we can't convince them to get back on board with supporting a clean energy future, one that will benefit their kids, as well as ours: