On another note - here are a few photos of the Anti-War / OWS rally that is taking place outside my office as we speak.  I'm not the greatest photographer, and it would have been better if I was on a balcony taking pictures of the crowd, but there are some interesting signs over there. There are a few hundred people over there - Veterans for Peace, union groups, immigrant groups, etc.

"Rev. Shuttlesworth died yesterday at Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham."

Photos from the march.

David Dayen:

For perhaps the first time, President Barack Obama was forced to explain why there have been no prosecutions of Wall Street executives for their fraudulent actions during the run-up to the financial crisis. Asked by Jake Tapper to explain this behavior, Obama basically suggested that most of the actions on Wall Street weren't illegal but just immoral, and that his Administration worked to re-regulate the financial sector with the Dodd-Frank reform legislation.

"Banks are in the business of making money, and they find loopholes," the President said. Apparently forging and fabricating documents to prove ownership of homes that are subsequently stolen from borrowers is now a loophole.

Many of the practices on Wall Street "weren't necessarily against the law but they had a huge destructive impact," said the President. The work of Bill Black, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and a host of other official studies, analyses, and even court cases cut against that. Just the other day, a new whistleblower lawsuit against banks for setting illegal fees against military personnel wasn't joined by the Justice Department.

It all makes sense now - thanks Barack!

And now, for some icing on that cake:

Obama also added this, approximately: "I expended a lot of political capital to keep the banks afloat, and I have the scars to prove it. And I still think it was the right thing to do, because otherwise our economy would have been worse off." This is the President taking ownership of TARP, which did not pass under his Presidency but which he whipped as a candidate for President in 2008. He took ownership of the extraordinary financial support given to banks as they teetered on the verge of collapse. And this is a central grievance of the protesters on Wall Street and across the country.

Good news.  Now I can finally -- after many years -- un-Mute the sound during the opening of the broadcast.

Never understood how anyone could like a rather unmemorable and unstirring song that's being shouted rather than song by some overweight, full-of-hisself redneck wearing shades.

Below is the text, I haven't found the clip through the backdoor means yet (You Tube is blocked in China, as is Facebook, but there are ways around that.) Someone march for me, okay, and let the 1% have it for me!

Jackson

Citizens of the United States:
This is a message from Anonymous.

This is a message to the 99%.

This is a message to what is becoming the American Autumn.

This is a message to the whispers of the revolution beginning to stir in every major American city and in the heart of every afflicted member of the youth.

It is becoming obvious that due to certain technical difficulties the revolution will not be televised. It will not be broadcasted.

This is quite all right, media, you serpents of the elite for we will go under you.  We will go around you.  We will go over you and we will go beyond you.  You no longer control the floodgates.

The era of the internet has arrived and it will consume you.

This movement will be downloaded.  It will be streamed.  It will be circulated and it will spread like a wildfire, without direction, unpredictable, vast and devastating.

Look around you, America. The leaves are beginning to sour. Cracks are appearing in them. They are falling from the branches, dead and rotting.

So are our politicians.

So are our banks.

So is our media and so is our society.

This country has never seen  a movement from our generation.  They have never seen a movement from the children of the internet.  

They haven't the slightest clue what we are capable of, we masters of information, we conductors of thought.

The tipping point has arrived.

We have reached critical mass.

This is the point of no return.

Carry this movement through the winter.

Carry this movement through the bitter cold and into spring.

Shake off your morning dew, youth, for you are many, they are few.  

Washington:

We have no bombs.

We have no weapons.

We have no threats.

But behold the power of the quill and ink.

Members of the military:

You took an oath to defend this country from enemies both foreign and domestic.  

Walk with us. Among us as one of us.

Unions:

You have a score to settle.

Walk with us. Among us as one of us.

Artists:

Move the movement. Stoke the flames.  

We are all the 99%.

We are all Anonymous.

We are all legion.

We will never forget.

We will not forgive.

I had kefir yesterday for breakfast, and today as well. I must remember to order the sweetened version, because the plain kefir is too strong for me, and the taste cannot be ameliorated by simply adding sugar. The sweetened version is quite pleasant, and seems to have a bit of rice in it as well.

I went shopping again yesterday. This trip was also to the Khan Shatyr; I suspect this is because new faculty are always taken there, and there was a Japanese math professor with us.
I bought a cheap new razor at "Shulpak", the electronics store. This place has more employees than any store I have ever entered---it seems that there is at least one employee per section of an aisle. Actually purchasing something requires the services of at least 3 employees.
The air here is quite dry, and I wanted to buy a humidifier for my bedroom. The lowest priced option was a fancy digital machine which cost 36,000 tenge, or about $250. I can stand dry sinuses, for that price.

Lunch yesterday was interesting. I was with my chair, my dean, the dean of students and a couple other professors. A lot was said about politics and employment in the US. I just want to mention one interesting thread. Many of these people have industry experience, and were complaining of how hard it is to fire incompetent people, even in industry, and even in right-to-work states.
One guy told of the following incident at Bristol-Meyer.  A research Ph.D decides to tidy up the lab in another area (not hers). She throws about 100 petri dishes which were lying out.
Point 1: these were special dishes, made with gold, and cost $50,000 each.
Point 2: She destroyed 6 months of research of another team.
She was NOT fired.
My thinking is that the concerns these people have about industrial and academic hiring and firing are really pretty far from the experiences of the vast majority of working Americans, yet obviously can have some legitimacy for certain sectors.
I didn't think of this at the time, but I should have asked about, say, Japanese and German industrial workers, their contracts and unions, etc.

Lots more going on. The recital last night was jazz and improv, and fun, but I don't feel that I can say anything perceptive about the music. I was mildly entertained, and certainly enjoyed the chance  to experience my first Astana night life.
Speaking of which, I just learned that a black leather jacket is de rigeur for night life.
I will look into that, but  probably won't buy until my first paycheck, which will be on Nov. 10.

You can give free money to the banks, or you could give free money to everyone else assuming some of that money would be deposited in banks and/or used to pay down debt owed to those banks. You could also, say, just add $10,000 to all the bank accounts, giving the banks more reserves and many people more cash.

The point is, if you're handing out free money to save the banks you can do it in a way that saves the rest of us, too.

I did some research and turns out it's been legal in the US since 2007.  My local liquor store carries about 10 brands, with maybe 7 being authentic (made w/ grand wormwood).

It packs a punch, around 140 proof and tastes like black liquorish.  Mostly you get drunk, but there something behind it, real light, beyond the alcohol, real mellow.

There is even a distillery in Philadelphia that makes what others consider a pretty respectable absinthe.  See Here

Amid complaints that nearly half of tax filers in the U.S. won't pay federal income taxes this year, this has been lost: Those making $75,000-$100,000 a year are the fastest-growing share of people who don't pay federal income taxes.

Not working poor people -- but those who are firmly middle class.

They still make up less than 1% of the total number of income tax filers who pay no tax at all, but their overall number has exploded, from fewer than 5,000 not paying taxes in 1996 to nearly 500,000 in 2009, the most recent year of available data.

The lowest-income Americans -- those who make less than $25,000 a year -- account for the largest number of those not paying any federal income tax: 76% as of 2009. But that share has been decreasing for years. Meanwhile, the percentage of nontaxable returns has been growing for people with higher incomes. As of 2009, more than 20,000 filers making more than $200,000 a year -- 1,470 of whom had adjusted gross income of more than $1 million -- owed no income tax, a Free Press analysis showed.

"Several union leaders complained that their own protests over the past two years had received little attention, though they had put far more people on the streets than Occupy Wall Street has. A labor rally in Washington last October drew more than 100,000 people, with little news media coverage.
Behind the scenes in recent days, union leaders have debated how to respond to Occupy Wall Street. In internal discussions, some voiced worries that if labor were perceived as trying to co-opt the movement, it might alienate the protesters and touch off a backlash.

Others said they were wary of being embarrassed by the far-left activists in the group who have repeatedly denounced the United States government."

Link

I think OWS is a net positive, but even the hard left establishment is struggling to get their heads around it.