The Las Vegas showgirl of Christmas trees

It has plumes. It has feathers. It has glittery decorations. What else has plumes, feathers, and glittery decorations? Hint:

Except this tree is such overkill that it makes Vegas showgirls look sedate by comparison. Just sayin' ;).

-- Badtux the Christmas Penguin

Merry Christmas!

As usual on Christmas, here is (a very spastic) Lady Gaga!

-- Badtux the Snarky Music Penguin

No posting December 24-January 1

Taking a break... well, other than my Christmas tradition ;).

-- Badtux the Christmas Penguin

California blues

Canadian singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards, "Goodbye California", off her 2008 album Asking for Flowers. She's supposed to have an album, Voyageur, out in January. I'll try to track down some songs from it and feature them here.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Hot rock

Sonic Youth, "Incinerate", off of their 2006 album Rather Ripped. Pay attention to Steve Shelley's drums back there -- not your standard rock drums, he's every bit as innovative as the guitar players, yet Lee and Thurston got all the notice...

Sadly, Sonic Youth is no more. Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon divorced in October, and plans for an album are pretty much over too.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

'Tis the Season

Today was the winter solstice, where the day quits dying and starts rising from the dead again. I am decorating my Jeep with evergreen branches as we speak, evergreen branches (or entire trees) being a symbol of the rebirth of the year long-predating Christianity on this most holy of days, when the day quits dying and starts growing again. Well, actually they’re plastic “Christmas” wreaths zip-tied to the grill and spare tire on the rear tailgate, but same difference, right?

Oh yeah, that whole year being born thing is why the Christians decided to celebrate the birth of their Christ on the same day despite the fact that there would be no flocks in the fields of Bethlehem at this time of year (too dang cold!). Birth of sun in the new year = birth of Christ, dig? But the holiday long predates Christianity, as any Wiccan could tell you :).

-- Badtux the Holiday Penguin

Too little, too late

One of the most important jobs of a central bank in possession of a printing press is to act as a lender of last resort when there is a run on the other banks in the nation. I.e., it is literally physically impossible for a central bank to run out of money, so if a bank with typical reserve ratio of 20% suddenly has 40% of its customers show up wanting their money, it's the central bank's job to trade freshly printed cash for the long-term loans on the member bank's books, then soak the cash back up as the long-term loan gets repaid.

The Federal Reserve, to its credit, did that in the 2007 credit crisis here in the United States. The Fed accepted trash for cash to the tune of over $1.5B, or roughly 6% of the outstanding loans in the USA. But the European Central Bank did not. The Fed did an indirect bailout of some of the most important European banks by trading cash for trash, but nowhere near what would be necessary to re-float those banks -- only enough to keep U.S. insurers of those banks solvent, because the Federal Reserve's charter is to serve the USA, not Europe.

The end result in Europe is deflation, and as I've mentioned here before, deflation is the same thing as debt inflation -- that is, your debts are rising and rising and rising in value until they finally reach the point at which they cannot be repaid, a point which has arrived for far too many Europeans and even entire European countries. There's a term for what happens after that: circling the drain, as debtors default, banks collapse, cause further deflation, causing *more* debtors to default, wash, rinse, repeat, swirling down down down with less and less currency in circulation (it's disappearing under mattresses) until entire economies are reduced to barter, probably the most inefficient method of conducting business, like, evah.

So it's good that the ECB *finally* is stepping forward to do their own trash for cash to keep European banks from collapsing. On the other hand, the ECB is run by Germans, and a good percentage of the banks owed money by the countries on the verge of default are German banks, so it may be that they finally simply didn't have a choice but to do the minimum needed to keep the whole Eurozone from circling the drain into the Barterzone.

But note the *size* of this loan program: less than half the size of the Fed's loan program in 2007, despite the fact that the Eurozone's combined economies are approximately the same size as the USA's economy. Too little. And four years too late.

My suggestion to Europeans (other than the British, who avoided the Euro madness): Turnips. Seriously. When the Soviet ruble collapsed with the nation that created it, turnips were the currency of choice for much of Russia because they're durable, useful (if you have too many turnips you can ferment them to make vodka, even!), and not dependent upon a central bank to make the decision to create them. What, you say this is daft? Well, no more daft than those silly people who collect shiny-colored metal in hopes that it will have value after the Euro collapses. You can eat turnips. You can't eat gold.

-- Badtux the Snarky Economics Penguin

Coal miner's lament

The trio of women is Red Molly. They're singing "Coal Tattoo", a song by country songwriter Billy Edd Wheeler who, like yesterday's artist, Guy Clark, never managed to sell many of his own albums (1964's Memories of America is his only album that charted) but wrote one helluva lot of songs over his lifetime. The youngsters do it justice.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Quick hits

Tiny Kim apparently has the support of the security services, which has now sent a number of senior Party officials tiptoeing through the tulips. Seems Tiny Kim ain't as dim as he might have seemed from his early appearances and isn't going to be tiptoeing through the tulips himself anytime soon -- or turnips either, given the abysmal yield of North Korean agriculture over the past couple of decades.

Gratuitous video of new North Korean dictator:

In other news, Newt the Gingrinch appears to think he's running for President of North Korea, what with basically proposing to take judges who rule in ways he don't like out behind the barn and shoot'em in the head or somethin'. The sad part is that there's a large contingent of Americans who break out in giant shit-eatin' grins at the very thought, who have no problem with the notion of living under a North Korean style dictatorship, as long as it's *their* dictator.

Who are the 1% and what do they do for a living? Hint: It ain't work in the way you and I think of work.

Regulations are not a huge jobs killer. Like, duh. If there's demand for my product I don't give a shit about what regulations I have to comply with, I'm gonna hire folks to produce more product.

50% of Americans are too poor to pay Federal income taxes, but they still pay plenty of other taxes, starting with the 15% payroll tax that the 1% (who don't work for a living, they "invest" for a living and don't earn income, they earn "capital gains") don't pay.

The wealth gap, graphically. It ain't a pretty picture.

Why haven't any of these Wall Street fraudsters gone to prison yet, again? Oh wait, because they're "job creators" in some alternate universe where unicorns are pink and cotton candy grows on trees. Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Happy birthday, Guy

Most people have never heard of Guy Clark, but in the music business he is a legend. His own albums never sold, but he has built a reputation amongst musicians as a songwriter's songwriter. And now he is 70 years old.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Quick hits

71-year-old man drives 225 miles with dead wife in passenger seat beside him. He didn't know what to do without his wife to tell him what to do.

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? Apparently you just order him to go out on patrol, and he follows orders. So now John Kerry knows the answer to his question.

Over the past four years, the monetary base has been tripled. According to Austrian economists, this means we should be going Weimar, and should have been going Weimar for at least a couple of years. According to Keynesian economists, tripling the monetary base when you're in a liquidity trap will have no (zero) effect. So, uhm... who's right? (Hint: Krugman is right. Of course.)

Soldiers are having trouble feeding their families, and can't find jobs after they're mustered out of service, having a harder time than non-veterans even. America supports our troops, woot!

Yet more evidence of the shrinking middle class. Soon there will be only the filthy rich and the abjectly poor. Serfin' USA, dude!

- Badtux the Hits Penguin

Cat sauna

The bathroom is the warmest room in my house because that tile floor has an old-fashioned grout base and thus absorbs / radiates the heat that's coming out from under the vanity. Some of that heat from under the vanity also manages to waft its way upwards in the cabinet and heat up the bowl of the bathroom sink. The result: Well, you see the result here.

Especially note the decorative help that The Mighty Fang (for I know it was him, even though I didn't see him do it) lent his sauna. Every cat sauna needs shredded paper confetti to give it a festive look, right? Right?!

But that's okay, TMF is so ridiculously adorable that I can't be angry at him. Here's proof of how adorable he is:

-- Badtux the Cat-owned Penguin

Raging sea

This is Laura Marling, "All My Rage", off her new album A Creature I Don't Know. Laura is a British singer-songwriter who is part of a London scene sometimes called "nu folk". She tries for an Irish sea shanty here and manages something interesting.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Idiot of the Week, War on Christmas edition

San Jose city manager Debra Figone, who said to city council members who wanted her to send a Holiday greeting to city workers thanking them for their hard work over the past year, "don't send an image of the City Hall Christmas tree, we try not to favor one religion over another."

Uhm, say what? The evergreen tree as a symbol of the rebirth of the year at winter solstice predates Christianity by centuries. WTF is with Figone having a problem with it? None of my Jewish friends have a problem with "holiday trees", harumph! The Holiday being celebrated is winter solstice, where the days start growing longer instead of growing shorter and the rebirth of the year is celebrated. The holiday long predates Christianity and is celebrated by most major religions on the planet in one form or another. Christianity decided to celebrate the birth of Christ (according to their scriptures actually born in summer while sheep were in the fields) on this holiday (birth of year = birth of Christ, dig?) but they're a johnny-come-lately on the scene.

-- Badtux the Baffled-by-ignorance Penguin

Why banjo players are always tuning

This lament from a beginning banjo player: "I ordered the clawhammer for complete ignoramous book (apparently I am one) and this book which I thought was a beginner book and would use standard tuning starts out with 10 songs in double C tuning followed by 10 more in Sawmill tuning and then six in G tuning (four of which I already know) then on to C minor tuning cumberland Gap tuning (can't it be played in G?) and on and on. Really?"

So now you know why any bluegrass band seems to spend more time waiting for the banjo player to tune up than they spend playing and why banjo players spend half their life tuning and the other half playing out of tune ;).

-- Badtux the Tongue-in-cheek Music Penguin

Little Kim and the Jeep

I spent most of today getting my ham radio installed in my new Jeep, which involved pulling the antenna wire from the back of the Jeep to the front of the Jeep, finding a place to mount the amp unit, then getting power to it. Then I spent most of the evening rearranging my garage because doing the electrical work showed that my electrical tool/supply box was completely out of control (as in, it ended up all over my garage because I had the stuff to do the work but it was buried in this box full of *stuff*), only to come in and find that Dear Leader has died. Not to be confused with Hopey Changey.

One wonders what the new leader of North Korea is going to do. The only long term hope for North Korea is reunification with South Korea, but the South Koreans are scared to death of such a thing... it took a decade for Germany's economy to recover from the reunification with East Germany, and East Germany was in far better shape than North Korea, which is a complete and utter basket case.

-- Badtux the Busy Penguin

Dark side

Eliza Gilkyson, "Dark Side of Town", off her 2007 album Your Town Tonight.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Victory!

We won in Iraq. Which is why our last troops in Iraq sneaked out to Kuwait at 2AM without telling anybody.

So victory is celebrated nowadays by sneaking out at night, not by a big celebration and victory parade as you exit triumphantly? Gosh, things sure have changed over the last 70 years!

- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

If this is what victory looks like, what would defeat look like? Just askin!

I need to learn how to read Korean

The English translation on the bag of potstickers said "Kimchi potstickers". I assumed they were stuffed with some pickled Korean vegetables. Instead, it's a tasty mix of some sort of meat with tasty Korean vegetables. What kind of meat? I dunno, I can't read the Korean labeling!

So anyhow, that was my supper tonight -- steamed "kimchi potstickers" and tasty Korean veggies. Yum!

-- Badtux the Potstickered Penguin

Spirited Love

Noisy London indie group The Duke Spirit with "Lassoo" off their 2008 album Neptune. Oh alright, I gotta say Liela Moss is a stunner as well as being a better-than-decent singer. What can I say, I'm male.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin