Gamestop = Tulip Bulbs

The company is a niche marketer of new and used video games and associated computer accessories and collectables. Small investors - or more, properly, speculators - have driven the price up to levels beyond the dreams of avarice, or anything else that makes some kind of sense. Just today, it went from the ridiculous price of $248 per share to $347.51. Contributing to the rise is a short squeeze on market professionals - the situation in which they must buy shares to cover their short positions.

In the 3 hours since the markets closed, shares have dropped dramatically. A few minutes ago they were off 123 points, but have now rebounded to where they are off only [!] 90. I suspect the short squeeze might be over, and the amateur speculators [dumb money] like the 16-year H.S. student mentioned in the attached article are on their own.

This is speculation run amok. There is little intrinsic value to these shares, which were hovering around $4 year ago, and through much of the summer, before creeping up to about $14 in mid December.

There is only one way for this to end - with Gamestop shares back in the range of $2 to 4, where they belong. The only question is when it is going to happen. Rather soon, I suspect.

Taking Stock

I've been reporting on stock market activity on my FaceBook page every business day.  I thought yesterday's events warranted a more permanent record, so I'm copying it here.  Today is Good Friday, and the markets are closed.

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Green arrow up
DJI30 Index at the close —- 23,719.37 +285.80 (+1.22%)

The Index opened at 23691, 251 points above yesterday’s close. The high was 24009, and it was approached at 10:00, 1:00 and 1:30. Round number resistance bent, but did not break. The next move was a drop of 500 points to 23504 just before 3:00, followed by a choppy ride into the close. The last move of the day was a gyrating drop of 90 points in the last 25 minutes.

This is a clearly up day, with the hi, lo and close all higher than yesterday’s.

Today’s good news and bad news:

Good - Fed to provide $2.3 trillion to prop up the economy - just what a liquidity fueled, significantly over-valued market needs. 

Covid-19 cases reported to be slowing. We’ll see how well that holds up given, frex - Arkansas and Trump’s great desire to reopen the economy.

Bad - Horrible unemployment numbers, exceeding expectations with over 6 million new claims on top of the over 10 million from the last 2 weeks.
Teenagers spending is off 13% YoY.
Nearly 1/3 of tenants didn’t pay rent this month.

All of this is from the Yahoo Finance news items listed below the stock chart.

 Today’s lo to hi span was 505 points, the lowest since 409 on 2/20. That looked like an outlier at the time, but got swamped from the 24th on. For context, the ten day average then was 207 points. On April Fool’s Day it was 1039. Now it’s 778.

Today’s moves would have looked wildly disjoint as recently as the middle of February. But now it’s the tamest day we’ve seen in 6 weeks. Is this some sort of new complacency? This market is remarkably resilient. And I find that to be frightening.

The breaking news is that with the markets closed tomorrow for Good Friday, the SP500 had it’s best week in 46 years. The Nasdaq had it’s best week since 2008. Hmmm - what happened after that? For the DJI30, it was the best week in 2 weeks! Go figure.



While we’re at it, let’s have a look back 46 years ago to 1974. Context matters. I can’t quickly find S&P data for 1974, but DJI30 should be good enough. The index averaged 4764 in Dec.1973 and 3071 in December 1974, a 46% loss. So that big gain happened in the midst of a brutal bear market and clearly didn’t last long.

But wait - there’s more. The DJI topped at 7785 in Dec ’65 and bottomed at 2145 in July ’82 - a bone crushing 73% decline that took 17 years to play out. So the ’74 bear market was just an episode in a much longer devastating trend that nobody seems to remember today. Here's a link to the chart, and you can play around with the dates, if you’re so inclined.


Historically, most of the largest short term gains - covering a day or a week - have occurred during bear market rallies. These things treacherously offer false hope. I believe this financial exuberance is irrational and the pandemic optimism will backfire horribly. I would love to be wrong.


Stay safe out there. Or, better yet, just stay home.

NYSE Internals
A/D = 2584/422 = 6.12
A/D Vol = 3.52
New Hi/Lo = 12/2 = 6.00

Notes on the graph --

The fine green, blue and red lines indicate daily hi, close and lo values, respectively.
The heavy green line at the top is a projection of the all-time high of Feb12.
The down-slanting channel contains the drop from the all-time high.  It was violated this week, but i kept it for reference.
The horizontal channel indicates sideways motion.  It looked like it was in effect since the bottom on Mar 23. Possibly obsolete now.
The falling blue line is the 233 day EMA.

Taking Stock

My recent bold prediction did not come to pass.  The recent channel I thought looked pretty good got blown away rather quickly.  So, it's time to step back and have another look.  Here in Graph 1 is a view of the Dow industrials index over this century.

Graph 1 - Dow Industrials since 2000

I have highlighted some trend channels.  The light green lines contain the first big rise of the century.  They are projected into the present, which might or might not mean anything.  The heavy purple lines indicate the present trend channel from the recovery after the 2008 recession.  The yellow line was the top channel border until the index burst through in 2017.  This effectively doubled the width of the channel - this happens sometimes - and it is now the center line of the channel.

The red line connects two major bottoms.  Whether that has any significance is yet to be demonstrated.  This is the big picture, covering close to two decades of index movement.

This recovery is now over a decade old, which is quite rare. Further, I find it hard to believe that American industry is worth about 1.75x as much as it did 3 1/2 years ago. The bold move that occurred through 2017 looks a lot like irrational exuberance.  What reasonable explanation is there for most of that 75% rise happening in the first year of the Trump administration?  Since then, with a lot of gyrations, the index has gone essentially nowhere.

Graph 2 is a closer focus on the index during the recovery since 2008. This is just for perspective.  Can it make any kind of sense that the nominal value of the Dow 30 industrials has increased by more than a factor of 4 in the last decade?

Graph 2 - Dow industrials since 2008

Graph 3 is a look at the Dow Industrial Index during this calendar year.  The heavy green line connects the 3 tops since early 2018. The light green lines are the extended trend borders from the pre-2008 upward trend.  The yellow and red lines are as described above.  The orange lines might be the current short term decline trend channel- but it's not pretty, and I've been fooled before.

Graph 3 - Dow industrials, Jan 1 to Sept 24, 2019

My current sense is that we are now post peak.  If the index were to rise above the heavy green line, then this idea would be refuted.  The next resistance would then be at the top purple line that you can see going off the top at the left side of Graph 3.  But I think we're going down from here.  Each of the light green lines might offer some resistance.  You can see this has already been happening at several points during the year.

Should the index continue down, the next major resistance level would be yellow line - the channel center line, since I have no faith in the potential orange channel. If that is breached, the red line might come into play.  After that, it's the bottom purple line shown in Graphs 1 and 2.  This could happen somewhere between 20000 and 22000, depending on the timing and fall rate of the decline.

If that is breached, there might be support near 15500, the double bottom surrounding the beginning of 2016.  A 61.8% decline of the entire gain from the 2008 bottom would put a target low at about 14500.  A 50% decline would put the low around 17000.

This gives a broad range of potential resistance targets that land in the range of index values from CYs 2014 through 2016. For reference, that time period is shown in Graph 4.  Back then, the yellow line was a hard upper barrier, and the purple line was robust support.  When situations reverse, support and resistance lines can exchange their functions. If all of these potential support levels are breached, the entire gain from 2009 could be given back.

Graph 4 - Dow Industrials from 2014 through 2016

Of course, that is [I hope] worst case, and every bit of this is speculative. September is historically a weak months for stocks, but this year it has gained back most of the 2000 or so points lost in August.  On average, Octobers have been net positive, but the most dramatic historical declines [1929, 1988] have been in October, which is right around the corner.

Things don't happen to satisfy my expectations.  But I am quite pessimistic.  This recovery has been over-long for quite a while already, so we're way over-due for a major correction.  Trump's economic and trade policies are based on abysmal ignorance, have already done significant harm, and those buzzards will be coming home to roost some time soon. If you think the national debt level is important, it has ballooned under Trump - contrary to his campaign lies. Unsecured consumer debt is at a historically high level.  Our economy is about 70% dependent on consumer spending.  How can that continue when wages have been static for 40+ years, even when inflation is low?  This is why personal debt is high.  People have leveraged their livelihood, and are badly over-extended.  Where are future profits going to come from?  If things get tough and lay-offs occur, spending and profits will take bigger hits. This is how things spiral out of control.

Maybe there is some reason for optimism that I'm overlooking.  If so, point it out in comments.

Taking Stock

My bold prediction on FaceBook a week ago today was that within 2 to 3 weeks we'll see the DJI below 23,500, and under 22,000 in a few weeks after that. Yes, I am anticipating the worst.

As of today's closing, the DJI is down 285.16 points, ending at 26,118.09. The attached chart is the DJI daily closing values over the last few months. It includes a mid-day value, when the DJI was down about 360, instead of today's closing.  But that changes nothing.

DJI closings since May 1.  Data from Yahoo finance.

The purple lines near the top and bottom of the chart are the borders of the long-term trading channel, since the 2009 recovery.

The current short-term trend channel is indicated in orange. [Yes, there are channels within channels.] It takes a while to determine that a new channel has been established. This one began no later than the first week of July, and looks pretty sound. Of course, a trend only lasts until it doesn't.

The thin green line was the top of an old trading channel from 2002 to the crash in 2008, projected across time to the present. It converges with the top of the current orange channel on Sept. 27.  Resistance and support lines can switch identities over time, so what happens between now and then will be interesting. You can see it's already acted as a support line within the orange channel. Interestingly, the bottom of the 2002-2008 channel [not shown] converges with the red line [see below], right about now. So there could be a cluster of support lines near 2400 - 2500.

One of these is the yellow line, the midline of the very broad trading channel continuing from the 2009-on recovery. A meaningful break of that line will probably indicate that we are in serious bear market territory.

The red line is projected from the Feb 2016 and Dec 2018 bottoms. It is also a possible support line.

The bottom purple line is the lower border of a decade-long trend channel, and the most important support level. It that is breached, there will be a panic, and all hell will break loose.

What Is Free Speech?

A Va. newspaper published a KKK recruitment flyer on their front page.

Rational people were not happy about it.  I got into a back-and-forth with a right winger on FB, who does not understand what "free speech" means.

Right Winger: One of the sharp ends of "freedom of speech." We may not like what it allows but we much like it because we too are allowed.

Me: But - free speech does not guarantee anyone a forum, an audience, nor print space in the paper.

Here, the audience was provided, free of cost, as if it were a news item - on the front page, no less. Their disclaimer does nothing to change that.

This is not a free speech issue. It's a what-in-the-hell-is-the-matter-with-you? issue.

RW: I will have to disagree with your assumption that it does not provide an audience. That is if "free speech" is truly a right.

If someone controls the content of your "speech" on social media, or controls the results of the search engine to eliminate finding articles that you see as objectionable, do you think that we are protecting our right to free speech?

We don't think about the fact that there are two sides to free speech. The first is the spoken part. The second is the hearing part. 

The history of the KKK tells us a lot about hate and control and fear and the political system. It is our "duty" to do our own research about what others say (or print,) and then make an informed decision. 

If "free speech" is shut down (in any manner,) we have less ability to make an informed decision. I may not like how it is done or what is said (or printed,) but we need to protect every manner of free speech (sadly - even that which we viscerally disagree with.)

I took this on, point by point

Thank you for confirming that you have no idea what free speech means. Seriously, you do not comprehend this issue.

"I will have to disagree with your assumption that it does not provide an audience." 

Not only is this wrong, it makes no sense. Don't you think you are free to walk away and not listen?

"If someone controls the content of your "speech" on social media, or controls the results of the search engine to eliminate finding articles that you see as objectionable, do you think that we are protecting our right to free speech?"

No. But the question is irrelevant. Every publication controls what their content is. Search engines are devised by private companies who have no obligation to provide free anything. You are conflating free speech with a right to know, which is not guaranteed anywhere.

"We don't think about the fact that there are two sides to free speech. The first is the spoken part. The second is the hearing part."

That's not how it works. I can stand on the street corner shouting, "[Fill in a name] is a goose and he wants to shit on your lawn." People have every right to walk away, shaking their heads.

"The history of the KKK tells us a lot about hate and control and fear and the political system. It is our "duty" to do our own research about what others say (or print,) and then make an informed decision."

OK. Fair enough. Unfortunately, though, this statement has absolutely nothing to do with the topic we are discussing.

"If "free speech" is shut down (in any manner,) we have less ability to make an informed decision." 

You have no facts to back up this assertion. in fact, it has been demonstrated that people who get all their information from Fox News actually know less than people who don't watch any news. You are ignoring propaganda, which results in people have less ability to make an informed decision. 

"I may not like how it is done or what is said (or printed,) but we need to protect every manner of free speech (sadly - even that which we viscerally disagree with.)"

Not so. Free speech is not an absolute. Many types of speech are in fact crimes - libel, sedition, etc. Here is a catalogue of illegal speech.

Usually, this is where these conversations end.  We'll see if there is a continuation.

[Days later]

Nope.  That was the end of it.

A Superbowl Sunday Meditation On Sports Fandom.

The mere act of being a sports fan - until recent years this was the 2nd most geographically divisive topic in America, since the South is still pining over Sherman’s march to the sea.   I can scarcely doubt that had I been born anywhere near Boston, I would be [shudder] a Patriots fan.  But, thank whatever gods control these things, I hale from the otherwise benighted Midwest, specifically Toledo - that overgrown village nestled up against Ohio’s Michigan border, where the muddy Maumee slogs its torpid way into the western corner of algae-choked Lake Erie.

This is actually a great place to be a sports fan, if you’re in to divisiveness and controversy.  It’s close enough to Both Detroit and Cleveland to have fans of both city’s Major League teams: Lions vs Browns; Tigers vs Indians; Pistons vs Cavs.  And, of course, the biggest rivalry of all: Buckeyes vs Wolverines.  Then, there’s the occasional lovable odd ball who follows a Cincinnati team.  This occurs even in my own family.   I don’t recall ever meeting a fan of any Chicago team.

Still, it’s kind of easy to see what is the most powerful factor in making one a fan of some given sports team - mere geographic parochialism.

Perhaps a more interesting topic is what makes one hate a certain team.  Many people feel that if you love team A, then you must hate their biggest rival.  Frex, many Michigan fans want OSU to lose every game - simply because of the rivalry, and vice-versa.  I think that is petty.  My son-in-law - an avid Wolverine fan - wants OSU to win every preceding game, so that when the 2 teams meet in late November, everything will be on the line when the Wolverines [one would hope] triumph.  That’s the kind of camp I’m in.

So, who do I hate, and why?  There are a few reasons - hatred of a particular key player, the coach, or the owner seem to predominate.  This is often irrational, but that ends up not mattering very much.  However, there can be some more or less rational basis for it, often relating to bad behaviors.  I have hated the Fildelfia Phlyers because of their cheating ways back in the early 70’s.  It seemed as if they always scored the winning goal with a man in the crease, mugging the goalie - and getting away with it!  They were a genuinely great team, but everyone on it - even Bobby Clarke - was a damned goon. That, right there is a good, solid reason, seasoned with a heavy dollop of resentment for the hash realities of an unfair world.  Carrying it on for over 4 decades is way over the top, but there you have it.  When it comes to teams, I am a grudge holder.  But in this instance the passion has gone out of it for me - maybe through the passage of time, or the fact that they aren’t very good any more, or that my youngest grandson is a fan of theirs.   At any rate, the whining, cheating, cry-baby Crosby-Malkin edition of the Penguins is now in top spot.  Sad, because I liked them in the Lemieux years.

My next favorite hate is the Dallas Cowboys.  I have no particular animus toward any of their players - with only a couple of historical exceptions.  But their conceit of calling themselves “America’s Team” is an affront this mid-westerner refuses to tolerate.  Beyond that, it's the terminally loathsome, hyper-Republican, meddling owner Jerry Jones who inspires my everlasting enmity.  I never hated the Cowboys under coach Landry.

So, for me, it’s either blatant [and unfortunately successful] cheating, or a personal reaction to an obnoxious prominent face of the team.

What does it for you?

BIG EVIL, little evil

Quote of the day, relating to alleged kin-slayer Big Walder Frey:

Choosing the lesser evil isn’t a sad half-measure, not in a world where the greater evils are the likes of Ramsay, Gregor, Craster, Rorge…or the Others, above them all.

            -- poorquentyn

Funny, he didn't mention Euron Greyjoy.

Or Donald Trump.

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State of the Union

President Obama's final State of the Union address has received generally high marks - at least from people who think with their brains and not the nether reaches of their alimentary canals.  But there were a couple things in it that troubled me.

One was his enthusiasm for the TPP.  Undoubtedly, it has some good features.  But it's features were kept secret far too long; and it was never adequately explained to the American people.   Especially troubling is the prospect of foreign corporations being able to sue the U.S. for lost profits due to our internal decisions and rule making.  TransCanada is already using NAFTA provision to sue us for lost profits due to our refusal to let the Keystone XL pipeline go through.   Who knows how much more liability we might face under TPP, and what types of courts or tribunals might make those decisions

Do the proposed benefits of TPP outweigh the potential downsides, which might include direct challenges to U. S. sovereignty? Does TPP benefit U. S. workers, or trans-national mega-corporations? How can anyone decide these question intelligently?

The second was his moment of abject humility over his alleged failure to bridge the partisan gap with the Republicans - as if they hadn't met on the night of his first inauguration and mapped out a strategy to make him fail.  This crystalized for me as I listened to Thom Hartmann while driving home last night. Obama has spoken repeatedly about Dolores Kearns Goodwin's book 'Team of Rivals," which tells the story of the opposition members Lincoln installed in his cabinet. This seems to have influenced him since he said that a greater president, like Lincoln or FDR, would have been able to unite the differing parties.

This is not only false, it is so wrong it makes me sad.  Evidently Obama is still operating under the delusion that the Republicans will work with him to achieve anything.  They've already been blocking the appointment of new ambassadors for well over a year, have slow-walked judicial nominations for as long as they've had the majority, and now will approve no more during Obama's term in office.

When Obama spoke those words on Tuesday, I turned to my lovely wife and said, "For the thousandth time Obama extends an olive branch across the aisle, and for the thousandth time it's dashed to the ground and stomped into splinters."

Lincoln might have worked with members of the opposition, but it was an outspoken opposition sympathizer and anti-abolitionist who murdered him.

FDR, on the other hand, had no regard for bipartisanship.  In a 1936 campaign speech he famously said, "I welcome their hatred."  Then he went on about his business.




I don't know what Obama was thinking.  Maybe this is one more move in his game of 11 dimensional chess.  Certainly he is savvy and far more intelligent than the Republicans who oppose him.

But it looks to me that the time for conciliation is several years past its expiration date; and Obama needs to start educating the American people who their real enemies are.

That would make him a whole lot more like FDR.

History In a Nutshell

Update, 8/24/15:  Quote of the day, via Robert Reich on Face Book:

"In all civilized as well as barbarous countries, a few rich and intelligent men have built up nobility systems by which, under some name and by some contrivance, a few are enabled to live upon the labor of the many. These ruling classes have had many names -- kings, lords, priests, fund holders, bankers -- but all are founded on deception, and maintained by power."

-- Amos Kendall (1833)

A Brief Summary of Human History

History is the chronicle of human cruelty.   There are two over-riding and inter-related themes:  Oppression and War.

Oppression

In every place and time there has been a struggle between a small elite group possessing wealth and/or power and the rest of the population.   The elite use their advantage to dominate, oppress and exploit the labor of the majority for their own gain.  Although there have been brief, occasional, exceptional periods when the playing field might have appeared to be more or less equal; by a large margin, the elites have stayed way up on top.   The tools they use to maintain their advantage are execution, incarceration, overt brutality, brainwashing, propaganda and scapegoating minorities.  And there are always willing servitors to do the dirty work of the elite in exchange for some advantage in status or creature comforts. These advantages are large from the perspective of those who come to enjoy them, but insignificant from the perspective of the elites, who grant them with the flick of a finger. Sadists and sociopaths naturally migrate into those rolls. 

[As an aside, I’ll mention the U.S.A in the few decades following WW II as one of those exceptional times.  I can’t pin down a specific date when it ended: historical corners are never turned in such a crisp and definitive manner.  But if you peruse the tool list above, it’s clear that the exceptional period is over and the oligarchs are once again in the driver’s seat.]

War

War is armed conflict between or among differing groups. There are three types of war: conquest, civil war, and revolution.

Conquest

One group, usually a nation, state or tribe, wants something that another group has - material wealth, land, natural resources, a population to be enslaved - and engages in armed conflict in an attempt to take it away from them.  Generally, the aggressor group uses some cover to incite the population and get them ready and willing to die on the next hill.  Nationalism, racism and religion, alone or in combination are usually all that it takes.  

Civil War

One group inside a country or region wants to dominate the other group.  In general, neither group has any particular merit.  Death, rapine and mayhem ensue until one side is either destroyed or gives up.  Regionalism, clannishness, racism and religion, alone or in combination are usually all that it takes.

Revolution

This one is different.  The oppressed minority somehow manages to acquire enough man power and weaponry to challenge the ruling elite and their servitors.  Usually, by the time is’s all over, there are no good guys left.

So there you have it: all of human history in a nutshell.  Did I nail it or slam the hammer down on my thumb?

In Which Trump Proves My Fallibility

A few months back I predicted that by September Donald Trump would be the Herman Cain of the current Rethug presidential field - a quirky, mildly offensive, moderately amusing performance artist whose star quickly rises, then goes poof in the middle of the night. Well, we’re only 1/3 of the way through August and I have to admit I got this wrong. And not by a near miss, either. My prediction was the the very antithesis, the exact polar opposite of correct.

Draft dodger Trump broke St Ronnie’s 11th commandment by speaking ill of a fellow Rethug, and in the process dissed the military service and PoW status of one who in conservatard circles is considered to be a war hero. And his poll numbers went up.

Trump has made a series of blatantly stupid and gratuitously hateful statements that are either racist or misogynist. And each time his pole numbers went up.

Now, he has taken on Fox news - that bastion of right wing punditry and thought control - and Fox backed down.

Let me make this crystal clear: Trump feuded with the official propaganda arm of the Rethug party, and won!

Presumably it was H. L. Menken who said, ”"No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”

Well it wasn’t my money on the line, but I certainly failed to underestimate the intelligence - or perhaps gullibility, or maybe the amorphous bitterness and self-defeating, wrong-headed bigotry and hatred of America’s plain citizens, those simple people of the earth, the common clay of the right wing - you know: morons.

___________________

h/t to SEK, who said:

"Now that Donald Trump and Roger Ailes have reconciled after a brutal 96-hour-long estrangement in which both sides said many things they lack the moral capacity to regret, the GOP presidential hopeful was free to appear on 'Fox & Friends' this morning to complain about, among other things, ISIS’s superior Internet connections."

Notes:

Menken

Draft dodger

Morons

Religion in the Modern World

This morning I had a tiny epiphany regarding the IOKIYAR [It’s OK if you're a Republican] cliche.  Of course, this is just tribalism - that much has always been obvious.  What struck me today is the connection of Tea Party Rethuglianism to Christian religious fundamentalism.

The basic concept of Christian fundamentalism is that once you accept Jesus as your personal savior, you’re in - you’re saved, you’re going to heaven: end of story.  They way in which you live your life - your sins vis-vis your good works - becomes irrelevant.

Implicit in this concept is the notion that Jesus will inform your life in such a way that you will then live it according to the ideals that Jesus preached constantly and exemplified continuously in his own life: love one another, take care of those in need, forgive, and don’t judge.

But we all know how that works out.  

Of course, the antitheses of all of these is greed and hatred. What I see among self-righteous, self-professing Christians in the pubic sphere is boundless greed, hatred on steroids, utter contempt for those in need, and harsh - indeed merciless - judgement for those who do not meet their approval, for whatever reason.

Then what I see among the Christian community at large [with the notable exception of the current Pope and his minions - but the fundamentalists don’t believe Catholics are real Christians anyway, so that doesn’t count for much] and most notably the Christian right, is agreement with and approval for every bit of this. But since they’re saved, it’s all good.  

So here’s the connection: when you’re in the tribe, whether it be the Christian or the Rethug Tea Party variety, anything you do is OK, because - well, just because.  And, to a large extent, these two tribes are really just one.

So now you see Donald Trump making stupidly outrageous comments on a wide variety of topics, and surging in the polls.  Because he is not only a Rethug, but playing to the ignorance and prejudice of a base which is largely the religious right.

The hypocrisy - it burns.

Thoughts on Ferguson

I've been reluctant to comment on the shooting of Michael Brown because so much is not known, and so much of what has been thought to be known is either speculative or irrelevant. 

But I am now prepared to say a few things.

Whenever an atrocity is committed, two things always happen -
--  Real information is suppressed
--  The victim is demonized

We don't know - and may NEVER know - if the killing of Michael Brown was an actual atrocity.  But we see the atrocity cover-up-and-deflect scenario played out here, exactly according to script.

There's a third thing that happens, which is an amalgam of the first two - the spreading of misinformation that is either intended to be exculpatory of the person(s) committing the atrocity, or damning of the victim.

So it is with the fractured orbital bone fiction perpetrated by the right wing media and spread so far and wide in recent days.

Evidently this story originated with Gateway Pundit, probably the least reliable of all the rabid right wing propagandists on the web.  In this instance the level of deceit is astounding.  It is actual fraud.  

It was then spread by first, the Murdoch owned New York Post, followed quickly by Murdoch's Fox News, and thence like wild-fire to a wider population hungry to have their facile and too often racist biases confirmed.

This story smelled very odd to me the first time I saw it.  If the officer had a serious injury, that would have been known immediately, since he got X-rays shortly after the event.   And since the cops were eager to smear Michael Brown by releasing the completely irrelevant security video from inside the store, it's hard to believe they would have held back something that at least marginally tends to make the shooting seem more justifiable.

Then the whole thing got a whole lot stinkier when I checked out the sources.  As always, critical thinking and a slow walk to judgment are advised.

Quote of the Day

Conservatism involves a lot of “shut up, you whiners!” followed by whining.

                            ----  Rob in CT, commenting at LGM.

Deep Stupid #24 - Georgia on my Mind

The Georgia take-a-gun-anywhere law, signed by Governor Nathan Deal last Wednesday, takes affect in July.

The Atlanta Braves have a home stand against the Phillies, Marlins and Padres from the 18th through the 28th of July.

Suppose during one of those games the Braves have a man on third, and a crazed gun man in the stands shoots the opposing pitcher while he is on the rubber and makes a motion associated with his pitch, but is not able to complete the delivery because he's been shot.

Here is my question: is the pitcher charged with a balk that allows the run to score?

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The Traffic Trap

Commenter OwenKL writes a bit of poetry most days to compliment the theme of the L.A. Times Crossword Puzzle.

Today's was a typically clever example. 

But I thought of a different Christie, and came up with this.

The Traffic Trap

Chris Christie writes cover-up scenes
Of denial re: that bridge west of Queens.
Why would it be
He put the screws to Fort Lee?
Just to vent his too partisan spleens!

Oh, Look The Lying Liars -

at the Heritage Foundation have a new Chief Liar Economist.

I've seen Steven Moore on television many times.

To be polite, the man is a buffoon.

He has now left the WSJ to become Chief Economist at the Heritage foundation, well known bastion of shameless liars.

Though it's possible that Moore actually believes the anti-arithmetical nonsense he spouts - which would make him less of a liar, and Moore of an idiot.

Quote of the Day

"the thing that most fascinates me about this type of person is that he is entirely oblivious to the fact that in the world of adam smith – the world in which this clown believes he is living – you can’t get that wealthy.

free markets do not produce wealth: oligopoly produces wealth.

which is to say, cheating produces wealth (or, alternatively, behind every great fortune lies a crime).

i suspect that perkins has given this reality approximately 3 nanoseconds of thought in his life – and then dismissed it as irrelevant. he’s a maker, after all!"

-- Commenter Howard at LGM, on SF Bay area venture capitalist Tom Perkins.

What the Hell?!? Friday - Bifocal Hell Edition

Good Lord - I misread this as KENYAN economics.

Paul Krugman is wrong; Obama DOES need to discuss Keynesian economics in his State of the Union address. Here’s why.

---Beverly Mann

Read all about it, and a whole lot more at Angry Bear.

BTW, unless Beverly has a different Krugman source, I think she's misrepresenting what he said. 

“What do you want to hear in the State of the Union?” Hayes asked Paul Krugman, the New York Times economic columnist and Nobel prize winner.

“What I’d like to hear, I’m not going to hear. I’d like to hear a full-throated endorsement of more stimulus.”

He explained instead what he did not want to hear: “This whole business with the sequester, all of this is, this is not the time for any of this, and the less he says about the deficit, the better. I mean I was really gratified by the second inaugural, because he said almost nothing about the deficit. He finally broke out of that beltway obsession with the deficit. So if he talks about other things, the middle class, inequality, climate, and not about what we need to balance the budget, that’s what I’m mostly hoping for.”

 A full-throated endorsement of stimulus sounds pretty Keynesian to me, irrespective of deficits.

Still More on Christie

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Question of the Day

Is it over the top to consider bridgegate an act of domestic terrorism?