Whether it's the bronze bull encountered by those occupying Wall Street, the fixation with a Chris Christie presidency not to be, or the ex post facto transformation of Ronald Reagan into Kratos by middle-aged Republican Congresspersons who practically start to giggle and spontaneously pulsate just upon hearing his name, there is one thing you can expect to encounter a lot of on the right side of the political spectrum these days: Golden Calves.

Sure, that Bible thing conservatives claim to have read and revere strictly admonishes those who take to idolatry. But then again, it also doesn't wish death upon 30-year-olds because they lack health insurance or a poorly conceived bowl-cut by a former Speaker of the House who's running just about even with the hantavirus in Republican presidential polling.

As always, you can see the full set here. Probably best to start with this one and move forward.

Enjoy!

From the travel diary, October 28, 2011:

After the Security Check, Penang Airport

It was a breeze, the airport. No worrying about shoes. Just a quick, clean exit from passport control, a short security check and many, many smiles. We sit and wait for the 45 minute flight across the Straits of Malacca to Medan, Indonesia on the island of Sumatra. Our goal: orangutans.

Midair, over the Straits of Malacca

It is to be regretted that one can longer catch a ferry from Penang to Medan. One can longer taste the salt on one's lips or see the tropical clouds languishing over the gentle, gentian-blue of the Straits of Malacca. Some things are to be mourned in this hyper-fast world of ours and this is one. A man or woman cannot call him or herself truly free until they have done so.

Leaving Medan, Sumatra

The smells hideous, the traffic execrable, the air is thick with diesel fumes and cloves. Palm trees line streets chaotic with mopeds, trucks, taxis and tuk-tuks--a motorcycle with a covered side-car, the ubiquitous travel form unique to South East Asia. Buildings, new but dilapidated from thirty monsoons. Skies, mostly cloudy with a chance of Noah's floods, this monsoon has been the wettest in decades. La Nina has her effect here too.

Not a single American car, or product to be found here, all Daihatsu, Nissan, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai. A platoon of crisp-dressed soldiers disembark from their truck to subdue an impromptu proteest forming outside of town. The devout attend Friday prayers, scuttering along towards the mosque on dusty streets to the sounds of the Azan.

And then it happens, town and city disappear into a vibrant green of rolling hills, palm oil plantations and clear rivers. The vegetation clings to everything. Traffic dies down. People walk from farm and field to village, kids in tow. Dark, Melanesian skin and multi-colored dresses, skull caps and smiles. Everywhere smiles.

We pour out of our car to a roadside feast of fish, vegetables and rice. A hundred different birds chatter in the trees.

Arriving in Bukit Lawang

We pull in to the hill and river side village of Bukit Lawang. Children play in the streets. Villagers bath in the river. A gibbon hoots from the forest.

Time slows to the old ways, the ancient rhythms. We have arrived.

Comment by Michael Collins

Allow me to be perfectly candid. Rupert Murdoch is sacrificing his son's reputation and future to hold onto power for just a few months longer. News Corporation shareholders are in full revolt over the liability created by shoddy management in the UK and the absurd political positioning and mischief in the United States (among other things). Murdoch is letting son James, formerly heir to the News Corporation throne, take the hits for the phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom. Of greater significance, James is the patsy for the loss of the BSkyB acquisition (the remaining 61%, News Corp already owns 39%). This will likely cost News Corporation $40 billion in gross revenue over the next five years had the acquisition been approved. (Images: Hubert Burda Media, L, World Economic Forum)

The BSkyB acquisition was a cinch until the Guardian broke the phone hacking scandal on July 4, 2011. Within days, the three major parties agreed that the acquisition should be postponed for at least the duration of the slow-moving investigation established by Prime Minister David Cameron (a year, by the estimate of chairman, Lord Justice Levenson).

Dad and I are heading to Indonesia today, flying from Penang to Medan. We hope to be in Bukit Lawang by sunset and be able to get up and see orangutans in the morning. Only a dozen new photos this morning, which you can see here. I'll catch up with y'all tomorrow.

I think Matt Taibbi gets right to the heart of the matter at hand with this piece at Rolling Stone

Now of course there are probably people who dream of a Communist utopia, but they're going to be, um, like 1% of the population. Most people, and i figure this is why the Occupy movement holds as much support in polls as it does, just want a chance. In fact, it's hard to understand people who think things are just fine with the present economic system in the US. If what we're seeing is "pure" Capitalism, then Communism does have a pretty good argument. I've always been under the impression that Capitalism is supposed to be relatively merit based, but if you're getting free money then it has nothing to do with merit and everything to do with political influence.

I see a lot of comments and rebuttals to Occupy Wall Street that boil down to this, no doubt spurred on by the Koch brothers and their minions:

I work three jobs. I own a house. I have a family to support. I am the 53%.

My question is this: why?

Almost everything we know about wages and prices tells us that the typical household has suffered a Lost Decade for market wages. Just as important, the price of necessities -- such as health care, a college education, a house, and energy to heat your home and run your car engine -- is growing faster than our incomes. [...]

Today's photos can be here.

You can say that the teargas canister to the face might have been a mistake. Lobbing the flash-bang grenade into the crowd trying to help the guy was not. If this kind of police behavior continues, i hope we can at least refrain from acting shocked when the kids start having riots instead of peaceful protests.

Jennifer LaFleur | Washington | October 24

ProPublica - A proposed rule to the Freedom of Information Act would allow federal agencies to tell people requesting certain law-enforcement or national security documents that records don’t exist – even when they do.

Under current FOIA practice, the government may withhold information and issue what’s known as a Glomar denial that says it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records.

The new proposal – part of a lengthy rule revision by the Department of Justice – would direct government agencies to “respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist."

Dad and I arrived in Penang late last night our time, early morning your time or some such. Grueling 48 hours of travel. But we made it. Hope to have some photos up soon. Have I missed anything important?

Here is slightly less than a dozen morning, pre-sunrise photos from the streets of Penang, enjoy!

Via Ian's twitter stream comes a NY Times article on the latest drug craze among preschoolers: methamphetamine.

For God's sake, America. And you're surprised that kids grow up to get high on bath salts? They're taught that drugs are the answer to all of life's problems, and then told that some drugs are evil. Do you expect them to believe it or try more drugs?

I'm for decriminalization of all drugs, because while i don't think that most of us have a brain chemistry imbalance called ADHD, i also don't care if you want to responsibly use a maintenance dosage of methamphetamines to keep you focused and productive. Nor do i think you need a doctor's diagnosis to rationalize that behavior. I don't care if you want to shoot heroin as a hobby (all consuming hobby that it is). I do care if you steal my TV to support your habit, but then i'm upset about the stealing from me rather than what you do with the proceeds from that theft.

James Cusick and Cahal Milmo | Oct 26

The Independent - Device nicknamed 'The Hub' hidden in offices of 'News of the World'

Specialist detectives from the Metropolitan Police have discovered the existence of a secret mobile phone within News International's east London headquarters that was used in more than 1,000 incidents of illegal hacking.

The Independent has established that the phone, nicknamed "the hub", was registered to News International and located on the News of the World's news desk. Operation Weeting, the Metropolitan Police's hacking inquiry, has evidence that it was used illegally to access 1,150 numbers between 2004 and 2006.

Weeting officers regard the extensive use of the phone over two years as significant new evidence, showing that phone hacking was carried out within the paper's newsroom.

Despite detailed company logs recording every call made on the hub phone, it was left unexamined by two internal News International inquiries, which dismissed the notion that phone hacking was rife at the title.

Still think Occupy Wall Street is wrong?

When the federal income tax was first imposed in 1913, the richest 0.1 percent of households reaped 8.6 percent of the nation’s income. In 2007, as the recession began, the share going to that sliver of megarich Americans was 12.3 percent.

Those numbers suggest that the Occupy Wall Street protesters can make a compelling case when they complain that the economic scales are unfairly tilted toward the wealthy. The megarich hold more of the nation’s wealth and collect more of the overall income today than at any time since right before the Great Depression.

(Also published at What Would Jack Do?)

Here’s your problem: if you start adding up unions and progressives and liberals and people too poor to pay income tax and people who wanna tax millionaires — wow, it’s gotta be tough to love America so much, but hate almost three-quarters of the people living in it.

- Jon Stewart

If you look at what Republicans profess to value, and how little of that they ascribe to anyone but the top 1-2% of income earners in this country, you really have to wonder how they’ve managed to attain (and retain) so much power and influence. After all, it’s not as if their policies make them the party of the majority…and yet they’ve managed to convince/propagandize millions of Americans that voting against their best interests is the way to keep America strong.

The Colom government in Guatemala recently issued a formal apology to the family of Jacobo Árbenz for the coup of 1954. He was blunt. The coup was a "crime [against] the Guatemalan society committed by the CIA and Guatemalans with bad intentions." As it so happens, my current work assignment is attached to the sale of turbine/generator set to a Guatemalan company.* I decided to ask Jose, the Guatemalan representative on site how he felt about the apology.

He hadn't heard the news.

"Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions."

If the reports are true, Oakland police used rubber bullets and flash grenades in addition to the standard tear gas while breaking up protests in Oakland last night. Rumors are also out about use of the dreaded sound cannon ... hey, what's a little domestic collateral damage in the name of stability and the status quo, right?

The Truthout report with video.

Absolutely the wrong path for municipalities to take. It's like trying to fight an insurgency by shooting at everything that moves. Oh wait, never mind. This should be expected from America's militarized police forces.

Slavoj Žižek writes about them in The London Review of Books.

Liberal communists are top executives reviving the spirit of contest or, to put it the other way round, countercultural geeks who have taken over big corporations. Their dogma is a new, postmodernised version of Adam Smith’s invisible hand: the market and social responsibility are not opposites, but can be reunited for mutual benefit. As Friedman puts it, nobody has to be vile in order to do business these days; collaboration with employees, dialogue with customers, respect for the environment, transparency of deals – these are the keys to success.

Even for a guy who describes himself as a socialist-libertarian, there might be just a touch too much irony here. This isn't a moniker tacked onto these people, it's what they call themselves.

So Rick Perry has jumped on the flat tax bandwagon, no doubt influenced by his most recent endorser, Steve Forbes:

Perry will propose a 20 percent flat tax rate for income taxpayers. But taxpayers will be allowed to stay under current rates if they choose.

It wasn't enough that Herman Cain's "Nein! Nein! Nein!" plan was soundly ridiculed by everyone from the National Review to any number of economists. Perry had to double down on teh stoopid.

Perhaps someone in our government and mainstream media does read Bill Conroy's investigative entries after all.

And now, to my great surprise, articles like this: US Trained Assassin Teams Now Deployed In Drug War are rewritten and become this in a rag called the New York Times and on my front page at MSNBC.

I guess Bill should be flattered they notice.

Greetings from Bunbury, Western Australia. I am 2000 miles from my home in Canberra, and over the next few days will only be 2000 miles away from SeanPaul!

After working 7 days a week for the past 17 months it is good to be on a weeks vacation.Tomorrow I go on a tour of the local wineries, chaffeured by Mothie.

Long time agonistas will remember Mothie. I finally met her this week. The days of discussing the movement of BRTA buses around Baghdad, viewed on the webcams situated on hotel roofs are but a distant memory. But many friendships developed then have endured.

Since March 2003, when I first stumbled across SeanPauls invasion blog, I have had the pleasure of reading so many original words here. Sadly for my brain (since changing career in October 2009), I no longer spend nearly enough time here - perhaps that is the amount of time some here wish me to spend here (with apologies to JR Tolkien).

Down the road to the north, the CHOGM meeting is about to begin in Perth. CHOGM is an interesting organisation. From the tiniest nation states to the huge nation of India, overdeveloped nations and underdeveloped nations. A time for all member nations to listen to one another. Naturally, the biggest concern is the precipitous state of the Euro. Julia, our Welsh-Australian Prime Minister has stated "these are critical days".

I'll do my bit for the local economy, drowning my concerns in red wine, tomorrow.
Enough words from me, enjoy a photo-dump of Bunbury including more ubiquitous cat pictures

Here is one by Toi Derricotte:

Boy at the Paterson Falls

I am thinking of that boy who bragged about the day he threw
   a dog over and watched it struggle to stay upright all
   the way down.
I am thinking of that rotting carcass on the rocks,
and the child with such power he could call to a helpless
   thing as if he were its friend, capture it, and think of
   the cruelest punishment.
It must have answered some need, some silent screaming in a
   closet, a motherless call when night came crashing;
it must have satisfied, for he seemed joyful, proud, as if he
   had once made a great creation out of murder.
That body on the rocks, its sharp angles, slowly took the shape of
   what was underneath, bones pounded, until it lay on the bottom
   like a scraggly rug.
Nothing remains but memory—and the suffering of those who
   would walk into the soft hands of a killer for a crumb of bread.

– Toi Derricotte