Palin's Resignin'

by: Dark Wraith

Sarah Palin has announced that she will resign as Governor of the State of Alaska, effective July 26.

She did not explain exactly why she is resigning, although she repeated her recent complaints about her family being the butt of jokes, mentioning that her son Trig, who has Down's Syndrome, was "mocked and ridiculed by some mean-spirited adults recently."

Setting aside her newly found concerns for family members, speculation about why she intends to step down centers on the possibility that she wants to run for President in 2012, given her slightly veiled claim earlier this week that she could beat President Barack Obama in a race for the White House.

Albeit less likely, another possible reason she is resigning is that she has become aware of adverse information about her that will soon become public. Rumors persist about whether it is she or her daughter Bristol who is the biological mother of Trig, and scandals around allegations of personal intervention in legal matters involving family members caused considerable dismay even among members of her own party in the Alaska legislature. Furthermore, aids to Senator John McCain continue to let fly quite a few stories about her ignorance, her obstinacy, and her lack of self-control in spending campaign funds while she was the GOP nominee's running mate.

So, what's the real reason Palin's resignin'?

Only time will tell, but you betcha that the soon-to-be-former governor has her eye on the White House; and if the Republican Party has the common sense to slam the door on her aspirations, she could very well keep her ambition alive by other means, as I cautioned months ago in my November 2, 2008, article, "Sarah Palin, All on Her Own."

In the months ahead, if Ms. Palin does, indeed, plan to keep her burgeoning ego fed by the public limelight, she can be assured that she will have an ample and continuing supply of excuses to trot out her special, transparently disingenuous brand of manufactured outrage, if from no other source, then certainly from here, where she will get all the respect those who are pridefully ignorant, pompously hypocritical, and unintentionally ludicrous deserve.

---

The Snowball is picking up....

by: Peter of Lone Tree

Uh, make that "The Fiery Hellball of Destruction" is picking up speed as it rolls downhill.
Few days ago, I mentioned somewhere down below that 5 more banks had failed as of Friday the 26th, with DW adding that brought the total number for the year to 45.

Well, I wanted to get this posted in a hurry so I'm unsure if we just set a record for one week's worth of bank failures, but the FDIC closed 7 more this week for a grand total this year of 52.

Here's the lead sentence from the lead article at The Bank Implode-O-Meter: "The FDIC was busy this holiday weekend seizing seven banks after the close of business this fourth of July weekend. Founders Bank, Worth, IL, was the 52nd bank to be shut down by the agency in 2009 and the seventh of the night."

Also interesting is the fact that 5 of those 7 are located in Illinois. There's a buddy of mine who teaches over that way and I'll have to send him a link to this post and ask him if he could maybe be responsible for a lot of this by not learnin' them kids of his more better.

(Side note to the Wraith): I dutifully filed this under "Economics," but do you suppose we could have an additional category of EEK!onomics?

DoJ, IRS, UBS, Phil Gramm, U.S. Tax Cheaters

by: Foiled Goil

UBS, the IRS and Phil Gramm

Perrspectives, February 20, 2009:

News that the Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Swiss banking giant UBS is just the latest chapter in the curious case of Phil Gramm. Just one day after UBS agreed to pay a $780 million criminal fine and admitted to conspiring to defraud the IRS, the DOJ demanded access to 52,000 accounts as part of its broad tax evasion probe. Which is more than just a little ironic. After all, before he became a UBS vice-chairman in 2002, then Senator Phil Gramm helped lead the 1990's Republican war to gut the Internal Revenue Service. [snip]

And what started out last year as an investigation into the possible criminal activity of 20,000 wealthy Americans has now mushroomed to involve as many as 52,000 people.

For UBS, Phil Gramm has brought a reverse Midas touch. Suffering billions in losses from subprime lending and steep losses in its stock price, UBS (along with other institutions) may soon witness the end of secret Swiss banking. As for the American people, the economic devastation wrought by Phil Gramm is far from over.

U.S.: UBS must release names of suspected tax cheats

USA Today:

Swiss bank UBS "systematically and deliberately" violated U.S. law by dispatching private bankers to recruit wealthy Americans interested in evading taxes and must be forced to reveal the identities of 52,000 of those clients, the Justice Department said in a court filing Tuesday.

The filing, which comes amid several published reports that the case may be near settlement, urges U.S. District Judge Alan Gold to hold UBS accountable for conducting years of illegal business on U.S. soil — business that earned the bank more than $100 million in fees but cost the U.S. hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes.

"It is time for UBS to face the consequences that it has brought upon itself," said Justice Department tax attorney Stuart Gibson in the 55-page filing. "The United States has proven its case for enforcement." [snip]

The IRS summons seeks the identities of all U.S. taxpayers who had an "undeclared" account at UBS between 2002 and 2007. Many of these UBS clients have already voluntarily come forward to settle tax obligations with the IRS, Byrne said.

UBS previously reached a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department in which it agreed to disclose the identities of up to 300 U.S. clients and pay $780 million to the U.S. government. In that deal, UBS admitted regularly violating U.S. law through its client recruitment methods, use of sham offshore entities and filing of false paperwork.

"In sum, UBS has admitted that its bankers committed very serious crimes on U.S. soil, in ways that subjected UBS to the full jurisdiction of the IRS and the courts of the United States," Gibson said in the U.S. filing.

Righteous Wrath of an Analyst Who Got It Right

by: Dark Wraith

In comments to a post, below, here at Big Brass Blog, I was asked to address some recent analysis of the role of a certain financial institution in what has come to be called the "financial meltdown," and I herewith take an unapologetic turn at the entire mentality that has taken hold of intelligentsia as it flails about, looking for a culprit to pillory.

I have brought my writing to bear on this subject before, but I really do need to hit the point right on the head, dispensing with formalistic niceties. I am just plain weary of the "journalists," important media-approved "analysts," and mainstream politicians who spend their time looking around for this or that mendacious bad person, evil firm, or other greedy entity for the root cause of the fiasco that has befallen our financial institutions. It seems that everyone who is respectable avoids like the Plague looking at the failure of the institution in plain sight, the Federal Reserve, where an appalling, systematic, multi-year malfeasance lay at the heart of the whole disaster.

The Federal Reserve failed to control the money supply aggregate M3, and when its failure began to pulse like a flashing red beacon, the Federal Reserve had the unbelievable gall to simply stop publishing the information about the out-of-control aggregate. By not maintaining control of M3, a highly illiquid form of money, it gave banks and other financial institutions all the incentive in the world to construct derivative instruments by which that illiquid form of money could be used to generate more liquid capital.

It's like owning a house when you're cash-strapped. The house is "money," but you can't use it to buy groceries; but what you can do is use that house as collateral to borrow cash-money so you can make bets and engage in other risky behaviors that do generate cash.

It was, is, and always will be the Federal Reserve's principal duty to maintain a stable growth of the money supply, and part of the reason for this is so that distorted incentives do not arise in the financial system where market power is sufficient to both seek and discover prices for financial instruments.

To some extent, the Federal Reserve's custodial role is very similar to the job of parents in ensuring that distorted incentives do not overwhelm decision-making processes of their children. The world has all kinds of bad things to offer, and it has all kinds of ways by which those bad things can infect the thinking of rational entities who want what's best for themselves without regard to larger, longer-term consequences for either themselves or the bigger world that will have to pay the price for their errors.

Yes, of course Goldman-Sachs is a greedy entity. That's what motivates business enterprise, and no amount of shaming, "ethics" training, or preaching from the Bible is going to change either the nature of the firm or the nature of the people who comprise an enterprise. It is our public institutions (in a secular society) that have the responsibility to circumscribe our worst and to foster an environment in which our worst does not become our best choice.

The Federal Reserve failed, and it failed massively, both during the tenure of Ben Bernanke and before him during the last years of Alan Greenspan, who became a spiteful manipulator of monetary policy against Bill Clinton and then a shill for lies about the need for massive tax cuts under George W. Bush.

And now, let me go on the attack against President Barack Obama.

I have written time and time again against this man. He is, at best, a center-right authoritarian, and his judgment regarding appointments to high offices is nothing short of outrageous. He is not choosing the best; he is, instead, choosing institutional hacks and people of otherwise less-than-stellar minds and strengths. I could name his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, as one of his worst-of-the-worst choices were it not for others who rank in the same league of outlandish incompetence, mendacity, and sheer inadequacy of qualifications and prior performance; but I shall for the purposes of this brief article focus upon Timothy Geithner, whom Obama appointed — under no pressure whatsoever to do so — as the Secretary of the Treasury.

This is the Timothy Geithner who was the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the so-called "Empire Bank," which has a permanent voting seat on the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee, which decides upon and then directs the execution of monetary policy, with the principal means of carrying out that monetary policy being via what are called "open market operations" carried out by the Domestic Trading Desk at the Federal Reserve District Bank in New York.

Beyond Geithner's intimate involvement in the utterly irresponsible monetary policy regime that allowed M3 to grow out of control, because the Reserve Banks are in charge of supervising all member banks of the Federal Reserve system in their respective districts, the Empire Bank was the regulatory point where control of the banks in New York was supposed to take place, and yet New York was the virtual epicenter of the "financial meltdown." This happened when Geithner was the President of the Reserve Bank that was supposed to have had an iron fist of regulatory control over those very banks. And the claim that the Reserve Banks do not have regulatory authority over some of the financial institutions that got in trouble is sheer nonsense: after Glass-Steagall was all but thrown in the trash a decade ago, the financial sector dispensed with all pretense that there was a wall separating banking from all manner of other financial services, yet the Fed could do nothing to regulate this integrated financial services industry? Sure. Right.

Did Geithner get fired?

Did Geithner go to prison?

Did Geithner get publicly humiliated and driven into the wilderness?

No, President Barack Obama appointed him Secretary of the Treasury of the United States of America.

And finally, a brief mention of Ben Bernanke.

For allowing M3 to roar out of control, thereby allowing the creation of the vast overhang of illiquid monetary assets that were used to back ridiculously risky bets by banks, did Ben Bernanke get charged with crimes of any kind?

Was Ben Bernanke fired from his job for staggering malfeasance that will ultimately cost the American economy and its taxpayers more than $60 trillion? (You read that right: $60 trillion. Do a search using the keyword term "notional value.")

Has Ben Bernanke even been called before a grand jury?

Has President Barack Obama made any signal whatsoever that he will not tolerate this kind of stunning malfeasance in the government of which he is now the undisputed chief executive officer?

The answer to every single one of the above questions is a resounding, "No."

I am not interested in hearing about Goldman-Sachs or Bank of America or Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch or any other bad, greedy firm, not until someone tells me why it is that the greed of private enterprise is to be condemned when the incompetence of duly authorized public enforcers of proper behavior was so profound that greed in its destructive form could go as far as it did, for as long as it did, to the extraordinary detriment of the macroeconomy as it did.

Do not talk to me about how bad the kids are when no one wants to give me anything but blank looks about the trailer trash parents who were singularly, unambiguously responsible for seeing to it that their little snots didn't tear up the town.

I do apologize for being so blunt; but life is short, and no one else seems to have the guts to lay it out.

"No one could possibly have imagined..."?

I did. So did a few other analysts. We were marginalized; we were ignored; and the disaster happened.

Ignore us now, and the aftermath will be no better.

---

here's the thing...

by: astraea

a preface to the below...

capitalism assumes 2 things:

unlimited resources
unlimited growth.

as world heats up, these fairy tales implode.

so what now?

unlimited paper resources.
unlimited greed.

now how do we all opt out?

How Goldman Sachs took over Washington by engineering every major market manipulation since the Great Depression

by: astraea

(I've been away, wandering. Is this looking out for all, making laws, doing your best to be just -- a form of irreverence?

I am all too ready to steer.

Blessed be the best laid plans that go astray...)

To business.
Please go read Rolling Stone's matt taibbi article. Even better, read it in print.


and so goldman "answers" taibbi in the pages of the Murdochian (fair & balanced! We report; you decide! -- as in We decide what we report and twist it our own special way, praise the lord) rag, as noted in the nytimes:

Investment Banking »

Goldman and Rolling Stone Writer Trade Barbs

July 1, 2009, 6:47 am

(comments: click on date below.)

More Opinions Than A Newspaper

by: Debra

Looks like we left just in time. I didn't vote for Arnold and I most certainly didn't vote to recall Gray Davis because I didn't believe rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic was going to help. I did vote for Prop 13 and believe it is long past time for parts of it to be repealed. Specifically the two thirds majority for tax increases and corporations receiving the same tax break that only the elderly should have.  Fifteen people who have roofs over their head, food in their stomachs, taxpayer paid healthcare to go along with their cars, limousines and Hummers have cost the state an additional $7billion with their artificial tantrums and complete disregard for the welfare of their non-corporate constituents.

Now sit back and watch as the quality of life in California plummets: More crime and fewer law enforcement officers; more prisoners in already overflowing penitentiaries; more students crammed in dilapidated classrooms with fewer and lower-paid teachers; more kids thrown out of programs and into the streets; more layoffs and "furloughs"; more poverty without relief; more drug addicts and meth labs in "unincorporated" areas where sheriffs have been laid-off. And don't forget the crumbling infrastructure and the unkempt and unsafe state parks and young people denied the opportunity to go to college and a public health care system on the verge of collapse and a widening class divide between the richest and poorest Californians. Schwarzenegger's "legacy" will be that he tried his best to turn California into a post-apocalyptic Hellscape replicating the dystopian cinematography of one his Sci-Fi movies.

Yup, he played his best Kindergarten Cop in True Lies fashion.  Somehow they seem to get things done in Nevada.  We even have the occasional nice cop.

This just in, General Franco Michael Jackson is still dead.  I hope Lompoc gets some of the tourist dollars, they would appreciate it and people would discover a town where the air smells of flowers.  Oh, and to that paper that I no longer link to, Michael Jackson is not getting weirder in death, the coverage is.

Mine isn't worth the paper it's printed on.  And it certainly isn't worth the money it took to get it.

Kick his ass to the curb and don't look back.  There is no marriage to work on and it would be better for the kids if they saw that at least one parent had respect for themselves.  If it had been a single incident or partner maybe he could be forgiven.  But once your husband of twenty years has babbled in public about his soul mate and it isn't you, there is nothing left to save. It's time to move on with your life and find somebody who respects you.

Perhaps if the movie industry had actors instead of stars and good writing instead of explosions every five seconds and it didn't cost $10 for a ticket to a movie where the credits are almost as long as the  movie, maybe the industry wouldn't be in such trouble.

Debsweb

Aren’t we just full of ourself?

by: Father Tyme

Hillary Duff should play me in a movie, Meghan McCain says

Who decided this "person" has anything noteworthy to offer?

"I just wrote a chapter about her [Sarah Palin], so she'll definitely be in [the movie], too. But I don't know who would play her," McCain said.
The blogger and political daughter — who envisions her book like Tori Spelling's 'sTori Telling — said she wants Hillary Duff to play her in the movie version of her book:
"I want Hilary Duff to play me. I think she's really hot - hotter than me - but I'd still want her to play me," she said.

You know that little piece of food that gets stuck somewhere between your teeth? The one that brushing just doesn’t remove? You get floss or a toothpick to try to remove that irritating speck. But sometimes, just sometimes, especially with us guys (I know you gals don’t do this because it’s soooo uncouth!) there’s a certain, little bit of satisfaction in trying to wriggle it out with your tongue! I know it sounds a bit disconcerting to those reared on the Upper East Side, but when you finally work that bit of dinner’s leftover out, a feeling of completeness comes over you! Exaggeration? Perhaps!

But Sarah Palin is just like that annoying particle stuck somewhere where you can’t quite get at it right away yet you keep trying for whatever reason to play with it until it’s stops bothering you.
Why can’t we get this Kindergarten “magna cum lasta” out of our consciousness? You can’t ignore that irritant. If you do nothing, it’ll find a way to keep bothering you with its presence. You'd like it removed immediately but at the same time, there’s satisfaction in knowing that eventually, after playing with it for a while, you’ll have disposed of it.

Well, now there’s another tiny bit of partially chewed fodder sticking between another section of our teeth. And while Sarah may just be a piece of undone, semi-tough steak or a scale off a slab of passable Alaskan Salmon, this one is just the Caraway Seed from a fast food hamburger joint (certainly not the Boss's Diner!). It’s stuck there, wont go away and even though there might be satisfaction in plucking it out with your tongue, it’s hard and tasteless afterward.

The irritating seed is none other than Meghan McCain. A bit of mouth dropping thrust into our selective palate by the MSM. Just when you think you got that smidgen of insipid, Palin mediocrity out, it's replaced by another; this time as a Sesame Seed from Mikki D’s.

Why did we go for that fast food in the first place? Well, it WAS cheap! And it seemed to be available everywhere! There’s no nutritional value! There’s really nothing that satisfies for other than a very short period of time and then it can cause stomach aches, gas and even worse! Yet we go back time and again.

Really...why?

Maybe it's just for the satisfaction of knowing we're going to always get something stuck between our teeth and for whatever reason we enjoy the effort or challenge in removing that useless particle wedged in so tightly. Whatever the reason, I guess we’re stuck with doing it over and over again. At least until we go on an all liquid diet.

Anybody got a toothpick?

Senator-Elect Al Franken

by: Foiled Goil

In a unanimous decision, the Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed Al Franken as the winner of last November's election.

Minnesota court rules Democrat won US Senate seat

Reuters:

The Minnesota Supreme Court on Tuesday declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of a tight U.S. Senate race over Republican Norm Coleman, which should give Democrats the 60-seat majority they need to overcome procedural obstacles and push through their agenda.

Coleman has said in published reports he is unlikely to appeal the state court's decision to the federal courts. Under state law, the court's decision gives Franken the right to occupy the seat, which has been up for grabs since last November's election.

Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty has said he will certify the election winner based on what the state court decides.

Main points of the Supreme Court ruling

Star Tribune:

It affirmed the three-judge panel's ruling that declared Franken the winner.

It made these additional points:

•Coleman did not establish that, by requiring proof that absentee voting standards were satisfied before counting a rejected absentee ballot, the trial court changed standards that violates Coleman's due process rights.

•Coleman didn't prove that either the trial court or local election officials violated the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.

•The three-judge panel did not abuse its discretion when it excluded additional evidence.

•The panel court ruled correctly when it included in the final election tally the election day returns of a precinct in which some ballots were lost before the manual recount.

"For all of the foregoing reasons, we affirm the decision of the trial court that Al Franken received the highest number of votes legally cast and is entitled under Minn. 32 Stat. § 204C.40 ( 2008 ) [CERTIFICATES OF ELECTION] to receive the certificate of election as United States Senator from the State of Minnesota."

Franken Thanks Minnesota -- And Coleman

TPM-DC:

Sen.-elect Al Franken (D-MN) held a press conference outside his Minneapolis home, celebrating his win in the long drama that has been the Minnesota Senate race.

"Franni [his wife] and I are so thrilled that we can finally celebrate this victory, and I'm so excited to finally be able to get to work for the people of Minnesota," he said. "I received a very gracious call from Sen. Coleman a little while ago. He wished me well, I wished him well, and we agreed that it is time to finally bring this state together."

Minnesota Supreme Court decision: Coleman vs. Franken (pdf)

Two Strange Questions

by: Debra

It's been a few days since Farrah and Michael have left us and as the media frenzy continues, I have a question.  Having had the unfortunate opportunity to experience both sides of the equation, I do have an opinion, which I will share after the question.

Is it easier to lose a loved one out of the blue, without warning?  Or is it better to watch them slowly fade away, being able to say their goodbyes?

One involves shock and disbelief, the other the opportunity to prepare.  While at that wacky acupuncture school, one of my clinic shifts was at the San Diego Hospice and I had the opportunity to speak with health care professionals, families and patients.  Some were angry, some were sad and some were oblivious.  Opinions varied quite a bit on depending upon medical training, religious beliefs and cultural backgrounds. 

Some of the doctors felt that the patients should be made comfortable to the end, but usually not the end of the patient's choosing.  As if being drugged out of one's mind for the last 72 hours, emaciated and in control of very few bodily functions was a graceful way to the depart the planet.

Some families were so unwilling to say goodbye that they considered and implemented treatments that added nothing to the quality of the patient's last days, but added much to the hospital bill, the pain of their loved one and created desperately unhappy memories.

Some patients held on for dear life, one woman was still smoking twelve hours before she died of breast cancer.  Others couldn't leave until all family members were taken care of and they could die in peace.  There was one woman who had her hair done, a mani-pedi and called her family into her room. She told them that she loved them but that they needed to go home so she could get some rest and before they were out of the parking lot she had passed on to the other side.

I've watched someone pass away from cancer at home and seen the toll on the family. As the daughter (also a nurse) said after he passed, she was glad that someone had dug up old video of him when he was healthy because she didn't want her memories to be the last few week on his deathbed.

My father died July 4, 1991 at 5:35 in the morning from a massive heart attack.  He was 60.  While I was watching what passed for fireworks (really nothing more than multi-colored fog with big booms that shook the glass in the skyscrapers) in Santa Monica, he was expiring in an emergency room in Santa Barbara County.  I didn't find out for another thirteen hours and I can honestly say that those were some of the happiest hours of my life.  Not because I was having fun, but because I didn't know.  I got thirteen more hours where he was gone but he was still here.

On the other hand, I've spent the last four years of my life watching my mother disappear before my very eyes.  After the stroke her reasoning skills in regards to her safety have deteriorated at a rate that is unbelievable.  She has become incontinent, sometimes forgets how to swallow but was able to figure out that the "Miniature Killer" had used carbon monoxide by way of the fireplace and occasionally catches the sarcasm behind Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.  She thinks Bush is an idiot and that Cheney should shut up but will leave the burners on while she washes my ten inch chef's knife with her hand grasping the sharpest part of the blade.  It's frightening to walk in the door and see that.

Given my druthers, I would rather go out like my dad than wither away like my mom.  Yes, it was a shock and I miss him terribly, but at least I miss him and really do remember mainly good times.  With mom there's nothing to miss since her body is still here and every once in a while, her mind joins her but the day in, day out care is grueling and in the end, unrewarding.

Grief shouldn't rob years from the living before you're gone and it shouldn't root others to one sad and inescapable moment in time.  As Jim Morrison so aptly pointed out, no one here gets out alive.

And from the really quirky side of my brain, have you ever been watching recorded television while surfing the internet and when a commercial comes on picked up the mouse to skip the commercials?  I keep doing it and it makes me snicker every time.  I know what runs my life.

Debsweb

Has the COMMERCIAL real estate collapse officially begun?

by: Peter of Lone Tree

I ASK only because I'm unsure if Yahoo.com can be considered an MSM news source.
Lotta folks in the alternative news blogosphere been sayin', "You think housing's in bad shape!? Just wait 'til the commercial real estate collapse begins!"
Anyhow, here's the headline: America's Most Endangered Malls.
(Edited List):
Century III Mall, Pittsburgh, Pa. (Occupancy rate: 70 percent; sales per square foot: $200*)
Chambersburg Mall, Chambersburg, Pa. (62 percent; $234)
Crossroads Mall, Omaha, Neb. (68 percent; $200*)
Hickory Hollow Mall, Nashville, Tenn. (82 percent; $187)
Highland Mall, Austin, Tex. (61 percent; $150*)
Palm Beach Mall, West Palm Beach, Fla. (82 percent; $250*)
SouthPark Mall, Moline, Ill. (84 percent; $225)
Southridge Mall, Des Moines, Iowa. (84 percent; $168 )
Towne Mall, Franklin, Ohio. (49 percent; $207)
Washington Crown Center, Washington, Pa. (70 percent; $265)
* Where noted with an asterisk, figures are Green Street estimates.

Iran Council Declares Ahmadinejad As Winner

by: Foiled Goil

Iran Council confirms Ahmadinejad election victory

Reuters:

Iran's top legislative body confirmed on Monday that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won re-election in a disputed June 12 vote, saying it had dismissed complaints of irregularities by his pro-reform opponents.

The announcement by the Guardian Council came after it carried out a partial recount of votes cast in the election.

Ahmadinejad's main moderate challenger, former Prime Minister Mirhossein Mousavi, says the vote was rigged in favor of the hardline incumbent and he has repeatedly called for the whole election to be annulled. [snip]

The Guardian Council had earlier made clear it would not annul the election, describing it last week as the healthiest in Iran since the Islamic revolution three decades ago.

"The secretary of the Guardian Council, in a letter to the interior minister, announced the final decision of the Council ... and declares the approval of the accuracy of the results of ... the presidential election," state broadcaster IRIB said.

Iran's English-language Press TV television station said the recount of a random 10 percent of the votes, carried out on Monday, had shown no irregularities.

"The Guardian Council approval of the vote negates the possibility of an election re-run," Press TV said on its website.

Guardian Council Declares Vote Valid After Partial Recount

HuffPo:

"From today on, the file on the presidential election has been closed," Guardian Council spokesman Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei said on state-run Press TV.

Mousavi supporters have taken to the streets in protest after the election, outraged by official results that gave Ahmadinejad the victory by a roughly 2-1 margin. Police and the feared Basij militia have taken increasingly harsh measures against the demonstrators, prompting widespread international criticism.

The recount conducted Monday had appeared to be an attempt to cultivate the image that Iran was seriously addressing fraud claims, while giving no ground in the clampdown on opposition. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Council already had pronounced the results free of major fraud and insisted that Ahmadinejad won by a landslide. And even if errors were found in nearly every one of the votes in the recount Ahmadinejad, according to the government's count, still would have tallied more votes than Mousavi. [snip]

News of the partial recount comes as Ahmadinejad on Monday ordered an investigation of the killing of a young woman on the fringes of a protest. Widely circulated video footage of Neda Agha Soltan bleeding to death on a Tehran street sparked outrage worldwide over authorities' harsh response to demonstrations.

Ahmadinejad's Web site said Soltan was slain by "unknown agents and in a suspicious" way, convincing him that "enemies of the nation" were responsible.

The developments appear to show that Iran's leaders are concerned about international anger over the election and opposition at home that could be sustained and widespread _ but is trying to portray the country as victimized by foreign powers. [snip]

The regime has implicated protesters and even foreign intelligence agents in Soltan's death. But an Iranian doctor who said he tried to save her told the BBC last week she apparently was shot by a member of the volunteer Basij militia. Protesters spotted an armed member of the militia on a motorcycle, and stopped and disarmed him, Dr. Arash Hejazi said.

Basij commander Hossein Taeb on Monday alleged that armed impostors were posing as militia members, Iran's state-run English-language satellite channel Press TV reported.

Nico Pitney: Iran Uprising Live-Blogging — June 29, 2009

Related Big Brass Blog posts:

2003 Redux?

Whatever Happens

Updates: Neda, Iran Election

Iran at the Precipice of Now

Tables Turned

The Curtain Drawn, the Revolution Begun

Her name was Neda.

The Revolution Will Be Twittered, Blogged, YouTubed

Fiery Winds and the Streets Below

Madoff Gets 150 Years

by: Foiled Goil

Bernard Madoff Sentenced to 150 Years for Epic Swindle

Bloomberg:

Bernard Madoff told a federal judge he had no excuses before a judge sentenced him to 150 years for masterminding the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

Madoff appeared in court today before U.S. District Judge Denny Chin for the first time since his March 12 guilty plea for an epic swindle that may have reached $65 billion.

“I don’t ask for any forgiveness,” Madoff, 71, told Chin. He said he deceived his brothers, his two sons and his wife.

Madoff pleaded guilty to securities fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, investment adviser fraud, three counts of money laundering, false statements, perjury, false filings with the SEC and theft from an employee benefit plan. [snip]

Madoff pleaded guilty to securities fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, investment adviser fraud, three counts of money laundering, false statements, perjury, false filings with the SEC and theft from an employee benefit plan.

The case is U.S. v. Madoff, 09-cr-00213, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

Precious Sarah

by: Dark Wraith

Dancin' at the Zombie Zoo

by: Lisa Ranger

I am sorry to hear of Michael Jackson's too-young death. He was a great pop icon, whose music and early power and attitude left an indelible mark on the music industry (Police Focus on Medical Treatment in Jackson Death.)

But more than that, Mr. Jackson elicits a pathetic response when one thinks of the odd reclusive man he became, befriending chimps and children, ensconcing himself in his Neverland Ranch -- replete with amusement park rides and a petting zoo -- as he embarked on a quest of self-abnegation: to become a white woman, or at least, Diana Ross. But aside from the issue of wanting to eradicate his negroid features is the issue of his arrested psyche.

To me, Michael Jackson embodies the puer aeternus archetype, the perpetual child. Examples of this type of boy-man abound, yet there is little discussion of the phenomenon. While Jackson is an extreme and cartoonish example, let's discuss it in the general.

Following the 1983 publication of Dr. Dan Kiley's, The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up, the idea of perpetual boy-men as pathology has been largely relegated to the dustbin of pop psychology. (There is no mention of the phenomenon in the DSM Manual of Mental disorders [DSM-IV].) Kiley took his title from J. M. Barrie's classic 1904 play about Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up. Perhaps it is fitting that the King of Pop bring us back to the topic.

Carl Jung explained the archetype as experiencing a sort of dissatisfaction and yearning after an ever-receding dream life. A kind of Walter Mitty in limbo, for at least Mitty participated in life, albeit escaping into his reclusive flights of fancy. For the Peter Pan life is lived narcissistically, and "[t]he one thing dreaded throughout by such a type of man is to be bound to anything whatever" (Marie-Louise von Franz, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus.)

"Common symptoms of puer psychology are dreams of imprisonment and similar imagery: chains, bars, cages, entrapment, bondage. Life itself...is experienced as a prison" (Daryl Sharp, Jung Lexicon: A Primer of Terms & Concepts.)" The non-accountable, utterly self-involved male is accepted as a staple of modernity.

"Puer Aeternus is Latin for 'eternal boy', used in mythology to designate a child-god who is forever young; psychologically it refers to an older man whose emotional life has remained at an adolescent level . . . The puer typically leads a provisional life, due to the fear of being caught in a situation from which it might not be possible to escape. He covets independence and freedom, chafes at boundaries and limits, and tends to find any restriction intolerable" (Sharp).

I have known Peter Pans ranging in age from 20 to 65 and am fascinated by the apparent equanimity with which they live their isolated lifestyle. Modernity has allowed them to bring everything they need into their perimeter without undue engagement -- food, entertainment, communication, sometimes pornography. Some work, some live with family members, some are entities unto themselves.

I marvel at their seeming lack of compulsion to abide by any societal norms of fraternity and relationship. If not exactly celebrated, certainly they are well-tolerated by society, feted by the media in such programs as "Two and a Half Men."

Part of what has enabled the phenomena is womens' shifting mores. Murphy Brown ushered in the age of women raising children alone, or as part of a community which does not necessarily include the father of the child. Men are then allowed to play the field ad infinitum (or not) when they are not called upon to fulfill society's (restricting) expectations. Susan Faludi declared for the raw deal men have received post-feminism in her book, "Stiffed". This is certainly a problem for men via-a-vis women in a culture where the norms have been toppled and are being rearranged daily.

The advent of computers-as-companions via Game Boy, Play Station and Second Life have also facilitated their bowing out of society, as the Peter Pan may now escape into an ersatz world of his own making. Why men in particular fall prey to the phenomenon is a curiosity.

A sad coda to Michael Jackson's story is the question, "Why, for all of his celebrity and high-placed friends, did no one bring him to a place of some basic sanity." There will be revelations following his death, and some picture of the truth will coalesce. Too little, too late, in any event.

Back to the universal question: Do you know any Peter Pans? Are you yourself perhaps one? Whenceforth the phenomenon? Has it ever been thus? Your comments are welcome.

---