Open thread Dec. 27, 2022
Open thread Dec. 23, 2022, Angry Bear, angry bear blog
Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.
Open thread Dec. 23, 2022, Angry Bear, angry bear blog
Fifty years has not lessened the relevance of this song one bit.
Okay, but leaves open just how relevant it was 50 years ago. But I do like that it at least seems to acknowledge a soul that proceeds on past physical death.
Eric377,
Granted with respect to the relevance open end. It was and still is quite relevant to me. In 1968 there was Martin and Bobby, 1969 Uncle Sam wanted me three months after I was first wed, 1970 brought me home from the RSVN to get divorced by my cheating wife, discharged six months later to chants of “baby killer”, joined up with my old hippie radical friends this time giving in to the high life, remarried for a year 74-75 until she left for a rich guy, depressed by the combined weight then I spiraled more through drugs than clinical depression for which I had greater natural immunity than to pot, alcohol, and LSD. Three tragic romances later interspersed amongst years of over the top partying bachelor life and I made it to my third shot at marital bliss whom I began dating in the summer of ’99. We wed in 2005 after each burying their own father. Then she died suddenly and unexpectedly on October 27, 2022 at 6PM of a heart attack.
So, I guess that individual results may vary.
OTOH, with regards to a soul that lives on, then that leaves open exactly WTF a soul really is. However, the figurative soul of my third wife lives on in me now. A more literal usage of soul cannot stand up to the burden of proof either in confirmation or denial, so virtually by definition must be an open issue only transcended by belief since there is neither context nor evidence to be applied.
Your experiences seem to be very rich. Often hard, but rich. Hoping when you reach the undiscovered country (not soon, of course) that your soul will have taken from them what it finds useful.
E377,
Dunno about next world or soul, but in this world each stage has taught me something of use. RSVN taught me the value of life and the permanence of death, cheating wives taught me to be more careful about whom I chose to spend my life with, dead hope taught me to not count too much on any elites, wild women taught me how to have fun, and my late wife restored an element of sentiment to my jaded character.
I’ve always love the finely crafted lyrics. The melody is based on Bach’s setting of “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” from his St. Matthew Passion, itself a re-setting of the song “Mein G’mut ist mir verwirret” by Has Leo Hassler.
J.,
thx. me2.
Further evidence that lying on your resume that actually on your resume can help you with getting elected, particularly if you are in the GOP. And it may not even be illegal.
George Santos Admits to Lying About College and Work History
NY Times – Dec 26
The congressman-elect confirmed The New York Times’s findings that he had not graduated from college or worked at two major Wall Street firms, as he had claimed.
… Mr. Santos, a New York Republican who was elected in November to represent parts of northern Long Island and northeast Queens, confirmed some of the key findings of a New York Times investigation into his background, but sought to minimize the misrepresentations.
“My sins here are embellishing my résumé,” Mr. Santos told The New York Post in one of several interviews he gave on Monday.
Mr. Santos admitted to lying about graduating from college and making misleading claims that he worked for Citigroup or Goldman Sachs. He once said he had a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties; on Monday, he admitted he was not a landlord. ..,
… The admissions by Mr. Santos added a new wrinkle to one of the more astonishing examples of an incoming congressman falsifying key biographical elements of his background — with Mr. Santos maintaining the falsehoods through two consecutive bids for Congress, the first of which he lost.
Mr. Santos acknowledged that a string of financial difficulties had left him owing thousands to landlords and creditors. But he failed to fully explain in the interviews how his fortunes reversed so significantly that, by 2022, he was able to lend $700,000 to his congressional campaign. …
(A question should arise: will his fellow GOP Representatives vote to accept his election and seat him in Congress?)
@Fred,
IOKIYAR
That’s good to know.
(George Santos can get away with this. George Soros could not.)
IOKIYAR and IACIYAD
NY Times – Paul Krugman – Oct 2007
For years, progressives have responded to news of GOP scandals unpunished, abuses of power unchecked, and outrageous remarks ignored by the media with the acronym IOKIYAR – It’s OK if you’re a Republican.
But I think we need a complementary acronym: IACIYAD – it’s a crime if you’re a Democrat. …
George Santos Faces Federal and Local Investigations
NY Times – Dec 28
Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether Representative-elect George Santos committed any crimes involving his finances and lies about his background on the campaign trail.
The federal investigation, which is being run by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, is focused at least in part on his financial dealings, according to a person familiar with the matter. The investigation was said to be in its early stages.
In a separate inquiry, the Nassau County, N.Y., district attorney’s office said it was looking into the “numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated with Congressman-elect Santos” during his successful 2022 campaign to represent parts of Long Island and Queens. …
(It’s pretty clear the GOP will seat him regardless, when the time comes.)
Sad Tales …
NY Times – David Brooks – Dec 28
… In a sense Santos is a sad, farcical version of where Donald Trump has taken the Republican Party — into the land of unreality, the continent of lies. Trump’s takeover of the G.O.P. was not primarily an ideological takeover, it was a psychological and moral one. I don’t feel sorry for Trump the way I do for Santos, because Trump is so cruel. But he did introduce, on a much larger scale, the same pathetic note into our national psychology.
In his book, “The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump,” the eminent personality psychologist Dan McAdams argues that Trump could continually lie to himself because he had no actual sense of himself. There was no real person, inner life or autobiographical narrative to betray. McAdams quotes people who had been close to Trump who reported that being with him wasn’t like being with a conventional person; it was like being with an entity who was playing the role of Donald Trump. And that role had no sense of continuity. He was fully immersed in whatever dominance battle he was fighting at that moment.
McAdams calls Trump an “episodic man,” who experiences life as a series of disjointed moments, not as a coherent narrative flow of consciousness. “He does not look to what may lie ahead, at least not very far ahead,” McAdams writes. “Trump is not introspective, retrospective or prospective. There is no depth; there is no past; there is no future.”
The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning
(at used book stores everywhere)
(McAdams has written extensively on Trump.)
The Mind of Donald Trump
The Atlantic – June 2016
my latest reiteration of the weekly EIA oil data is here:
US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
i also added a comment:
for most of this year, our refinery oil consumption has exceeded our apparent supply of oil from all sources by an average of around a million barrels per day, resulting in a large “unaccounted for oil” entry on the US petroleum balance sheet, as i explain in my second paragraph here…while i allude to that problem with the data cynically, it suggests either that the EIA has suddenly lost the ability to keep track of our oil supplies, or that something else is going on…
It sure did. The Index is down about 22% on the year.
The Year the Long Stock Market Rally Ended
NY Times – Dec 30
Jan. 3, the first day of market trading in 2022, looked like just another day in a stock rally that began when Barack Obama was still president. The S&P 500 hit a record high. …
That Monday, it turned out, was actually the end of a market that for over a decade had gone mostly in one direction, with the S&P 500 rising more than 600 percent since March 2009.
Just two days later, the Federal Reserve released the minutes from its previous meeting — a typically routine event on Wall Street — revealing that policymakers at the central bank were so worried about inflation that they thought they might need to accelerate how fast they raised interest rates.
Investors took it badly, causing the S&P 500 to tumble 1.9 percent and sparking a stock sell-off that set the stage for the rest of the year.
The past 12 months have marked a generational shift for financial markets as the Fed, racing to contain the worst inflation in decades, repeatedly jacked up interest rates. …
(As of yesterday, the NASDAQ was down about 33%, the S&P was down 16% and the Dow was only down 4% for the year.)