Fish for Friday

When I read Walter Isaacson's book on Steve Jobs, the quote below struck me as a credo. It was written by Jobs as text for an ad in the "Think Different" campaign that never ran (his agency at the time didn't like it). I've attached the rough video that Jobs had made to demonstrate how it should look.

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

    I still find it provocative, and the choice of images interesting. [personal communication]

Is anyone else pondering the reality that falling off the "fiscal cliff" is about the only way the rich people who donated so heavily to Republican causes can recoup their investment? If projections are correct, going off the cliff will crash the stock market and the economy and give those will plenty of cash in the bank (i.e., rich Republican backers) the opportunity to scoop up greatly devalued assets at bargain-basement prices—just like they did in the George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush crashes. Maybe the plan with those huge investments wasn't to put a moderate Republican in the White House, but to make sure enough far-right Republicans stayed in the House and Senate to force our economy over the cliff. [personal communication; see also "Morality at the fiscal cliff: A fairer way to tax," by Bob Geary, for IndyWeek.com, November 14; excerpt:]

Bob Geary

Poor Vikram Pandit. In mid-October, while we were fixated on the elections, the board of directors at banking giant Citigroup asked Pandit to resign as CEO, leaving him destitute except for the $6.7 million "incentive award" he was due for helping the corporation make half as much money in the third quarter of 2012 as it did in the second.
    Pandit's total take for the five years he headed Citi will be $261 million....
    This was around the same time the federal government, as part of the Wall Street bailout, handed Citigroup $45 billion in cash—that's with a "b"—and $306 billion in guarantees for its bad loans and unsound investments....
    Since corporate crime isn't a real crime, the best we can do right now is raise the tax rates....

California dreaming: "The Land of Milk and Honey Once More," by Robert Scheer, in Truthdig, November 14. [personal communication; excerpt:]

What’s the matter with California? It is a question once asked about Kansas when that state came to be viewed as a harbinger of a more conservative America. But now the trend is quite opposite, the right wing is in retreat and the Golden State is the progressive bellwether....

We need to remember the "five clear reasons why the life expectancy argument [mounted against Social Security] is nonsensical, counterproductive, and based on a pack of lies." The reasons are given in “The Giant Lie Trotted Out by Fiscal Conservatives Trying to Shred Social Security,” by Lynn Stuart Parramore, on Alternet, November 19. [personal communication; excerpt:]

The most popular red herring Social Security hustlers have unleashed into the waters of public discourse has grown into such a massive whale of a lie that liberals frequently subscribe to it. The idea goes like this: We need to somehow “fix” Social Security because people are living longer—“fix” in this context being code for “cut.” Two groups stand to benefit in the short-term from such a scheme: the greedy rich, who do not want to pay their share in taxes, and financiers, who want to move towards privatizing retirement accounts so they can collect fees. As for the masses of hard-working people who have rightfully earned their retirement, the only “fix” is the fix they will be in if already modest benefits are further reduced.
    Here are five clear reasons why the life expectancy argument is nonsensical, counterproductive and based on a pack of lies....

Slavoj Žižek

Ground-floor thinking can give Obama lift-off. His reforms have already touched a nerve at the core of the US ideological edifice:

...How to explain the panic and fury they triggered in the Republican camp? They touched a nerve at the core of America's ideological edifice: freedom of choice.
    Obama's healthcare reforms effectively deliver a large part of the population from the dubious "freedom" to worry about who will cover their illnesses. Being able to take basic healthcare for granted, to count on it like one counts on water or electricity without worrying about choosing the supplier, means people simply gain more time and energy to dedicate their lives to other things. The lesson to be learned is that freedom of choice only functions if a complex network of legal, educational, ethical, economic and other conditions is present as the invisible background to the exercise of our freedom....
    In Europe, the ground floor of a building is counted as zero, so the floor above it is the first floor, while in the US, the first floor is on street level. This trivial difference indicates a profound ideological gap: Europeans are aware that, before counting starts—before decisions or choices are made—there has to be a ground of tradition, a zero level that is always already given and, as such, cannot be counted. While the US, a land with no proper historical tradition, presumes that one can begin directly with self-legislated freedom—the past is erased. What the US has to learn to take into account is the foundation of the "freedom to choose."
    Obama is often accused of dividing the American people instead of bringing them together to find bipartisan solutions—but what if this is what is good about him? In situations of crisis, a division is urgently needed between those who want to drag on within old parameters and those who are aware of necessary change....[–"Why Obama is more than Bush with a human face," by Slavoj Žižek, The Guardian, November 13; personal communication]

Meg Whitman reportedly spent $144 million of her own money and $33 million from others as she lost the election for governor of California to Democrat Jerry Brown. The outcome of what was originally thought to be a can't miss candidacy prompted one Republican official to observe "The Republican brand in this state is death."
    So what could Whitman possibly do to top that debacle? Well, it seems Hewlett-Packard Co., of which Whitman is CEO, may have been duped into overpaying for the English company Autonomy by some $5 billion! Whitman is alleging the company "cooked the books" in duping HP.
    Fortunately Whitman was not able to dupe the voters of California, who are apparently more savvy in their voting than Whitman is in running her business—or her political campaigns.
    Relevant links: "Meg Whitman Campaign Spending: Meg Lost, But Payday Was Sweet For Many" and "HP claims fraud prompted $5B overpayment for co." [personal communication]

This is so funny: [personal communication; click graphic below to enlarge]

Limerick of the Week:

Now Friday's not the only day that's black;
Big-ticket selling started at the back
    End of Thursday,
    —Call it Purseday?—
Shoppers surged in when the doors showed a crack.