Bad American

I’m starting a new feature for all the goons out there who wax rhapsodic about capitalism. The “dumb capitalism” feature will highlight the sheer idiocy of American business, highlighting examples of how ‘competition’ in the marketplace and greed combine to destroy all good things that our economic system touches. As I always say, everything American capitalism touches, it eventually turns to shit - from automobiles to newspapers to baseball cards.

Today’s first example - Satellite Radio (Fortune).

In the beginning - the market saw satellite radio and said it was a good thing. It certainly seemed that way, but let’s remember that satellite radio grew out of an enormous disgust with what ‘free market American capitalism’ had done to terrestrial radio - simply destroyed it.

From tight 200 song playlists to endless blocks of annoying commercials (when I was in radio I used to joke “and here comes ten in row - ten commercials!!) featuring screaming car salesmen and other assorted hucksters, to the only talk radio being fascist talk radio, many people had gotten tired of the absolute shit offered up on commercial radio and I was one of them.

But could two satellite radio providers offer decent programming and exist in the same environment?

Of course, in our system which trends everything toward monopoly, the answer was no.

Good old competition among idiots took over highlighted by Sirius’s suicide inducing payment of Howard Stern:

The $500 million deal that Sirius struck with Stern in 2004 is a good example of the bidding war that eventually forced Sirius and XM in each other’s arms.

Stern was already in talks to go to XM when Sirius swept in with its ridiculously large bid. Sirius - the smaller of the two satellite broadcasters with less than a million subscribers - saw Stern as the marquee name that would more than double its audience, and lure advertisers. XM, with 2 million subscribers, had reached the same conclusion, which is why Sirius had to pay big to land Stern.

Similar battles played about for other top draws. Sirius, for instance, is paying the National Football League $220 million for an exclusive seven-year deal and Nascar $107.5 million for a five-year contract. XM is shelling out $650 million for its exclusive 11-year Major League Baseball pact.

In all, total programming costs, the biggest single expense for the two companies, came to $475.4 million last year, or 23% of total revenue.

Was it worth it to get Stern? Absolutely not, of course not.

Neither was it worth what both companies paid for all of that sports programming.

But hey, these are Harvard MBA geniuses running the show, right? Of course they know better.

They thought. Heh, I always love that. They thought people would just flock to Sirius for Stern, already a one trick pony whose time has come and gone. Rather than develop new and exciting talent, Sirius execs believed that, like the pied piper, they would lure subscriptions and ad revenue by waving around Howard Stern.

It was suicide from the beginning and now, with both services merging their massive debts together to form - a bigger company with massive debt and cash flow problems.

With the economy in a tailspin, if Sirius-XM wants to hasten their slide into bankruptcy, they could go ahead and raise the subscription prices. That oughta do it.

I’d hate to drop them, but I would.

From the Fortune article:

Satellite radio subscriber growth is flat, the likely victim of a slowing U.S. economy and waning interest in the once-novel medium. Meanwhile cash is running dry. Last month, citing heavy debt costs, a tightening credit market and sluggish car sales, Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Wienkes slashed his stock price targets for the two companies, raising the prospects that there may be a financial black hole ahead for the combined company.

If so, analysts expect Sirius-XM to take a hard look at programming costs, either by waiting until existing contracts expire or using the onset of a financial crisis to force everyone to the bargaining table sooner. The combined company’s market dominance, analysts say, will give it the necessary leverage to cut programming costs by as much as 30%.

It really doesn’t matter what Stern will and will not go for. The stock he owns has probably (or certainly will) tank in price and with what he’s already guaranteed under his contract, he could quit now and never have to work another day in his life or several lifetimes.

As for sports, with most of what is offered on TV put out for free, the market for people in transit catching the game or race was too minuscule to make the millions spent worth the effort. I could have told them that, but I don’t have a Harvard MBA so who would listen to me?

And I’m sure the NFL will cut it’s asking price for rights in half, say, so Sirius-XM can survive. Right.

The business model of both companies SHOULD have been bedrock core - the music. It was the reason the vast majority of people went to commercial radio - not to hear NASCAR or the Browns in their car - but to hear a great selection of music uninterrupted by commercials. And they were willing to pay for it.

Part of the other problem that Sirius has, in my opinion, is they started acting like terrestrial radio. I can’t say how many subscribers they lost but they have annoyed me with their own versions of revolving playlists on pretty much every music channel. What people who paid for the service wanted was VARIETY NOT to hear the same Sinatra song played every 12-24 hours on the Siriusly Sinatra channel or the same Van Halen song played every 12-24 hours for a month or so on the Classic Rewind channel.

Even with commercial hits there are SO MANY thousands of songs to choose from that I do not understand the notion of satellite radio having to group them in playlists. Are we that stupid as a people that we must be fed our music in digestible blocks AND pay for it?

Good Goddess, I even hear the same music being repeated day after day, week after week on Sirius Pops.

If this keeps up, satellite radio will die and deservedly so, from it’s own stupidity, based on the way we conduct business in the good old US of A.

The New York Times reports that the San Francisco Chronicle is losing $1 million every week.

Imagine that.

How long can this hemorrhaging in print media go on?

Recently an old co-worker from The Cleveland Press came into my bookstore (who now works for the PD) and we renewed an old acquaintance and talked about the shitty state of the business.

She agreed with me that print seemed to be on its deathbed and said the PD hadn’t hired anyone in. . . quite awhile. Not that she needed to fear that I was buttonholing her for a job - far from it. If offered a staff reporter job at the PD next to a GS-5 paper shuffler job with the Feds the choice would be ridiculously easy and surprising noting my personal history.

In any case, she seemed genuinely worried about the state of the business and articles like this one, talking about the plummeting ad revenue across the board.

What I found interesting was this:

Since the fall, when Media General, the owner of a major newspaper chain in the South, set its 2008 budget, “We have pulled our thinking down twice with respect to revenue,” said Marshall N. Morton, the chief executive.

Over the next few years, he predicted, “There’s got to be some assimilation,” with some major American newspapers going out of business or merging. At the corporate level, he said, “I would guess that rather than bankruptcies, you’d see combinations.”

Remember the Widget (the World Journal Tribune)? I remember the guy whose job it was to evict people from their Flint, Michigan apartments in the movie Roger and Me. He said when a poor man meets a poor woman and makes a house together, well, two poor people don’t make it together any better than one.

I can’t imagine that combining newspapers that are both hemorrhaging ad revenue is going to create a situation any financially better together than they were apart. Many of the newspapers that have folded in recent years, take The Cincinnati Post for instance, had joint operating agreements with the ‘competing’ morning daily and it wasn’t nearly enough to save them in the end.

This former co-worker said the biggest problem was that the future of news may be online but that traditional newspapers can’t make enough money online. Well, who does?

My biggest problem which I told her, as a newsie, was opening newspaper’s pages up to unattributed commentary which is cheapening public discourse. She agreed and said the matter was being discussed at the PD. I remain unconvinced that the PD will do the right thing. They’re not alone. I sense such desperation among print management that they’d try guest editorial page editors as a gimmick.

Imagine that - win a drawing and you get to choose the day’s columnists for the page and write your own lead editorial. Hey, can’t do any worse than Kevin O’Brien and might do appreciably better.

Or maybe revisit Wide Open Blog.

Nahhh.

My point to her is and remains that fossilized newspaper management has no one but themselves to blame for most of their financial difficulties. If it isn’t hamfisted and embarrassing attempts at appearing ‘relevant’ or ‘hip,’ it’s a slavish editorial obedience to Corporate America. Why should people be exposed to the same Corporate bullshit in print that they get bombarded with on radio and television? And when the average Clevelander (or working class suburbanite) opens up the PD, they see news and ‘lifestyle features’ more relevant to people in Pepper Pike.

The PD doesn’t lead like the Press used to. It’s merely a corporate status quo broadsheet that the vast majority of people read for entertainment tips, sports stories, comics or classifieds.

The PD offered me weekends for two months for $14 so I took it. I can still bulldoze the Sunday PD in about 30 minutes or less. That’s how much interesting reading I find in the Sunday PD. Even though I really can’t stand the New York Times that much either, I can usually kill a full hour with the Times National Sunday edition.

I see no hope for corporate print but they’re digging their own grave. They just won’t admit it. Ever.

“It’s going a lot worse than anybody predicted, and if we have double-digit ad declines for two years, some newspapers will be in real financial jeopardy,” said Edward Atorino, an analyst at the Benchmark Company. Even with less severe losses, “You’re going to see structural changes: papers could drop a day or two per week, they could outsource printing.”

And that will only speed their demise. Think of it in the same way that charging $15 for the first bag carried on the airplane is hastening the demise of the American airline industry. And more people need airline travel a lot more than they need the morning rag.

And will enough people read online only newspapers to make them any more financially feasible than print editions? They sure as hell won’t pay for them online so put that out of your capitalistic minds.

Seems like an insoluble problem.

From the “he said it” department today - James Kunstler’s Monday column:

All this reality content is beginning to penetrate the collective consciousness in the US, but the result is mostly panic or paralyzed disbelief rather than any set of intelligent responses. For example, I got a call from one of Katie Couric’s producers at CBS news on Friday. Somehow, they had noticed that oil prices were becoming a problem in America. They called me for a comment. The scary part was they were clearly treating the issue as a “lifestyle” story. Did I think more suburbanites would move downtown? And would that be a good thing…? They have no fucking clue how broadly and deeply these dynamics will affect the life of this nation, or even our ability to remain a nation. Also, by the way, this demonstrates how the nightly network news has become the equivalent of the old “women’s pages” of the daily newspapers.

Ouch! Yet. . . I heartily agree.

By the way, make sure you catch Kunstler every Monday.

This quote:

In a recent broadcast Bill O’Reilly called War Inc., the new film starring John Cusack, Marissa Tomei and Hillary Duff, “propaganda”.

brought Brother Bill Cusack to HuffPo to comment on the audacity of a propagandist calling the kettle black. The conclusion he reaches:

The crucial facts are all represented in War Inc.’s satire, Mr. O’Reilly; they’re just presented in a way that reveals a side of reality not commonly seen in other media outlets, most especially yours. The fact that War Inc. does not shine a flattering light on some of the real world results of neo-con ideology does not make it propaganda. It makes it opinionated if not entirely objective. And personal. That’s allowed.

The purpose of the film is not to fully articulate all points of view, which it cannot possibly do, but to frame neo-con ideology in light of the Iraq war. That in and of itself is a whole lot to cram into a feature length film, perhaps too much. Yet, despite its limitations, War Inc. is far more ideologically inclusive and far reaching than anything presented by Fox News, which sees the world and everyone in it as either loving or hating America, or roughly through the eyes of an especially dull child.

Bill O’Reilly is free to be proud of the mess in Iraq and see in it proof of America’s unfailing nobility, just as others see grievous but correctable mistakes. Dissenting opinion, however, is not propaganda, and some times, all personal bias aside, as in the case of War Inc., it’s richly satisfying.

Dissenting opinion is not propaganda. Well.

Actually, we could construct another definition, one in which movies act as propaganda ONLY if they are produced or in some way materially aided by governments or corporations.

John Cusack himself weighs in here on Alternet.

And yet, after viewing War Inc., I would have to say that it is no disgrace to view the film as propaganda - in fact, it’s damn good propaganda.

It suffers, however, sometimes as a film, which provides enough cover for mainstream critics to pan the film, lest they’re credentials as loyal Americans be questioned.

Let’s dispense with the major problem with the film straightaway - Hillary Duff. Yes, her accent is awful and yes, her scenes in the movie drag the picture down and kill the pacing. I understand, however, which many critics do not, why her character was in the movie - she represents the decadence of Western (or American) culture in the Middle East (and her character is exploited in this regard). That’s a hell of a big burden for any actor to carry and Moore does the best she can. But she’s the fundamental flaw in the film for not being as big as the part. Perhaps as she matures as an actor, some day she will.

But beating up on Duff and some of the other technical aspects in the film and plot miss the gigantic pluses of this film.

Again, don’t expect mainstream critics to be fair to War, Inc. They know who signs their paychecks and what the neighbors might think of them. I have no such qualms.

Where this film succeeds admirably is it’s almost surrealistic portrayal of the madness of attempting to turn a Middle Eastern country into a ‘democracy’ by gunpoint. This reviewer compared it favorable to Brazil, which I would agree with.

And John Cusack does an admiral job of lacing the mountain of lies that go into propping up such an obscenity. Sometimes it’s funny, other times it’s wince inducing - which is what John Cusack and co-writers Mark Leyner and Jeremy Pikser obviously wanted.

All the horror, all the bullshit lies, all the death, hate and profit are portrayed here in blindingly accurate satire; a comedic carnival of horrors with no shortage of barkers vying for your attention.

John Cusack plays corporate hit man Brand Hauser with a good deal of the elan that went into his hit man portrayal in Grosse Pointe Blank. He’s hired by the former Vice President of the US (Dan Aykroyd who gives orders while taking a shit - not kidding) to kill a oil magnate (Lyubomir Neikov as Omar Sharif) who is constructing a oil pipeline in the mythical (?) state of Turaqistan. The pipleline will cut out the usual players, in this case, America’s favorite (and best connected) war and pillage outsourcer Tamerlane, who has been given the contract for forcing ‘democracy’ in Turaqistan.

Yes, you can think ‘Halliburton’ all you want - Cusack won’t care.

Hauser’s cover is organizer of a trade show that will auction off Turaqistan’s assets to the highest capitalist bidders (where have we heard that before?). While doing that he has to supervise the wedding of an international pop star (Duff as Yonica Babyyeah and no, I’m not making these names up) to the spoiled brat son of the local puppet ruler - their names require a little knowledge of pig latin to get the joke.

Sister Joan Cusack chews the carpet quite nicely as his aide. I wish she could have been given a little more to do in the movie, however.

It gets pretty complex to say the least. You’ve gotta pay attention to literally every minute of this movie.

What I found most interesting are Cusack’s take on capitalistic exploitation of the situation in the Middle East. The tanks that Tamerlane uses to subjugate the people (one poster has an man smiling with the slogan: “we are building happiness”) are festooned with advertisements including, not ironically The Financial Times.

Watch - some day it will happen.

And then the “viceroy” of Turaqistan (Ben Kingsley in a wonderfully evil role) speaks to Hauser from behind a screen that shows the faces of famous American ‘heroes’ and right wing political figures morphing into one another. It’s disturbing and illuminating at the same time.

Some critics have complained the symbolism and politics are heavy handed but I disagree. For the average audience, one needs to be blunt at times to get the message across and in this case, the surrealism of the imagery goes a long way toward driving home Cusack’s ideas on many levels.

Despite the hammering this film is taking from the mainstream establishment critics and it’s quite limited release in the land of the free, expect that many decades from now, if we’re still alive and allowed to watch films like “War, Inc.” that this movie will be heralded as a gem of a political movie and dissected in political science classes.

When I claim, as I have in other posts, that right-wingers (neo-fascists) are champing at the bit to ’settle accounts’ with ‘lib’ruls’ I’m not indulging in fantasy. In the following audio clip, talk show host Michael Reagan asks that people sending videos to soldiers in Iraq, and one person in particular, be killed. Listen:

The story behind the audio from Infowars

Now imagine if a LIBERAL talk show host (all eight of them) said that some right winger in the public eye should be “taken out and shot.”

I post these as a warning to all progressives, protesters and other free-thinking people in this county: be forewarned. If there is another ‘coalescing event’ in the near future, there will be people out there, people you may even know, who may be coming for you. I’m not kidding.

This ad is generating a lot of debate as to it’s effectiveness on HuffPo.

Me? I like it.

There’s just one thing I would change. At the end when she says:

And so, John McCain, when you say you would stay in Iraq for 100 years, were you counting on Alex? Because if you were, you can’t have him.”

I would like to see her raise a rifle with her free hand.

THAT would send the appropriate message and that’s how I feel about letting them at my 19-year-old. And I worked for Army Recruiting as a civilian and know all the tricks.

But when you’re lying to right wing Americans you can get away with it. They’ll believe anything.

Media Matters

On the June 17 edition of his CNN Headline News program, Glenn Beck falsely claimed that “drilling in ANWR alone would yield 100 million barrels a day.” In fact, according to Energy Department researchers, if the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is opened for drilling for oil in 2008, the estimated peak production would yield, at most, 1.45 million barrels a day in 2028.

According to the Energy Information Administration’s May 2008 Analysis of Crude Oil Production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:

In all three ANWR resource cases, ANWR crude oil production begins in 2018 and grows during most of the projection period before production begins to decline. In the mean oil resource case, ANWR oil production peaks at 780,000 barrels per day in 2027. The low- resource-case production peaks at 510,000 barrels per day in 2028, while the high- resource-case production peaks at 1,450,000 barrels per day in 2028. Cumulative oil production resulting from the opening of ANWR from 2018 through 2030 amounts to 2.6 billion barrels in the mean resource case, 1.9 billion barrels in the low resource case, and 4.3 billion barrels in the high resource case.

From the June 17 edition of CNN Headline News’ Glenn Beck:

BECK: Like I told you yesterday, gas is up 35 percent. Electricity is up 30 percent. Natural gas, which most Americans use to heat their home, will hit a record high next month, up 43 percent from last year. Oh, boy. What happens when we hit November and December?

Even with all of that, domestic drilling is still stalled by Congress. It’s like these people don’t even — they don’t even live on the same planet. And this is really too bad, since drilling in ANWR alone would yield 100 million barrels a day.

OK kiddies let’s do the math about how ANWR will save us.

Currently, the United States uses 20.6 million barrels of oil every day.

Which comes out to about 7,519,000,000 barrels of oil every year. That’s 7.5 billion barrels. And the total best case scenario from ANWR gets us 4.3 billion barrels TOTAL and then it’s ALL GONE.

So.

That means ALL of the oil in ANWR in the best case scenario can meet ALL of our oil needs in the USA for approximately 7 1/2 MONTHS. That’s all folks. And that doesn’t take into account how our consumption might continue to increase by the time that oil comes online. It may only give us the equivalent of 4 months of US consumption.

Now think of what we get for that oil. The quite possible destruction of ANWR.

So go ahead idiot Americans and let the oil companies take their last orgy of profits by drilling ANWR, drilling off shore - go ahead DRILL THE WHOLE DAMN COUNTRY and you STILL won’t get enough oil to make this country “energy self-sufficient.” EVER.

But that’s OK. Flail about in our usual fashion. Beats changing our “non-negotiable lifestyle.” Beats conservation, collective action and serious investment in alternative forms of energy, public transportation, etc. etc.

In the end, we’ll get exactly what we deserve. History and science have a way of making sure of that.

In the meantime just listen to lying jackasses like Glenn Beck. America is full of them.

Saint Timothy of Buffalo?

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) — The Holy See, speaking on the authority of Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, announced that it was investigating deceased American news commentator Tim Russert for beautification.

That move would put Russert on the fast track toward sainthood. Russert, 58, died of a massive heart attack Friday, preparing for his Sunday NBC television show Meet the Press.

Angelo Bunarotti, spokesperson for the Vatican, said that Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of the Washington Archdiocese had already begun the first step toward sainthood, the investigation.

In the investigation, a postulator, in this case, colleague Chris Matthews, also a Roman Catholic, acts as an advocate for the candidate and will examine the candidate’s life, his writings, teachings, acts of holiness, heroic acts and any other virtues that would indicate that the person being proposed for sainthood is truly worthy of such a declaration.

Matthews said he felt honored to serve in the role of the postulator for his colleague and friend.

“There is no doubt from anyone who knew him that (Russert) embodied the best qualities of a Catholic layman and his work on earth certainly can be held to have elevated the status of all mankind,” Matthews said. “But Tim went above and beyond the mere mortal in his work and life and you can see that being  acknowledged in the outpouring of grief on his death.”

Matthews said he had never seen so many touching tributes to a newsman upon his death as those being given to Russert.

“It’s amazing,” Matthews said. “It seems like every five minutes there’s another memorial on television. (Edward R.) Murrow never got that kind of recognition when he died and I doubt (Walter) Cronkite will either.

“But that’s the difference between mere journalism and the elevation of the human condition that Tim is being honored for,” Matthews said.

Bunarotti said Pope Benedict regards Russert as a perfect modern candidate for beatification and is waving the customary five year waiting period after a person’s death for consideration.

“We we’re particularly impressed by the almost mystical quality that was attributed to Russert’s work on American television,” Bunarotti said. “Testaments are pouring in from all over the United States that only Russert made the connection between the political and the sacred understandable for most Americans.

“He achieved a certain transcendence in that respect,” Bunarotti said. “It may be considered to be miraculous.”

Russert will need to have a miracle certified by the church for beatification, the next step to a possible canonization and eventual sainthood.

Timothy Joseph “Big Russ” Russert, Tim Russert’s father and subject of his bestselling book, said Tuesday that the family was deeply honored for Tim’s sake by the actions of the church.

“He’s already been canonized in the media, now the church will make it official,” the senior Russert said.

From Kurt Nimmo’s column on Infowars and the video is courtesy of Minnesota Change.

Once again, they’re hosting the so-called National Conference for Media Reform in Minnesota, or did, this last weekend.

I went to the first such conference in 2005 in St. Louis.

I knew after that was over that it wasn’t worth going to another one.

I told the story about how I was fired from WJBC in Bloomington, Illinois in  2003 and got a very sympathetic ear. I was celebrated for the hit I took. One of the founders of Air America radio actually took my card and said he’d get back to me. Hannah Sussman of Prometheus Radio also seemed very enthusiastic in getting me involved in the low power radio project.

I also signed my name and e-mail to several working groups to continue the work of the conference after it was over.

Went I got back home I e-mailed all of the people I had talked to at the conference.

And then a funny thing happened.

Nothing.

Nada.

Zip.

I never, ever heard back from ANY of them. Ever.

I have had a lot of time to think about why. I think the video and Nimmo’s story back up what I’ve been thinking for some time.

There are those of us who take logic to it’s rational conclusion. And by doing that, we go off the ‘good progressive reservation.’

That’s the one in which what you say and do are bankrolled by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations.

Like Amy Goodman.

Yes, we expect this sort of ‘who me Bilderberger?’ reaction from Rather. But we must also sadly conclude that Amy Goodman is bought and paid for as well. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Look at Goodman and her ‘handler’ and how they react to the question. That is very telling.

All of these ‘progressive’ people who make it to the big chairs - Air America, Pacifica, Sirius Left, have parameters that they are aware of and from which they may never stray. If you want to know what parameters there are, study what the Rockefeller and Ford foundations have been funding for the last 20 years.

When the truth is so dangerous, it’s getting harder to know whom to trust, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, I know better to waste precious gas money on the circle jerk of the National Conference for Media Reform.

Bet you didn’t know that. Nothing to see here, just move along.

Paul Joseph Watson in Infowars

Ben Bernanke, Condoleezza Rice, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton amongst a host of other global power brokers have all convened in Chantilly Virginia to secretly discuss the future of the world - yet not one mainstream U.S. corporate media outlet has uttered a single word about the 2008 Bilderberg conference.

snip

A Google News search on “Bilderberg,” which is now in its third day, returns 47 results, all of which consist of reprints from this website and a smattering of other alternative media reports, in addition to a few snippets out of the Netherlands and Turkey.

Compare that to a Google News search about “G8″ and you’ll get over 4,000 results a month before Bilderberg’s sister conference has even begun.

Even if you accept the ludicrous claim of the debunkers - that Bilderberg is a mere “talking shop” that contributes nothing towards actual policy - do you still not think it odd that not one mainstream U.S. press outlet has even mentioned it in passing?

Alex Jones has some fun with the true ‘elite‘

If no one else in the mainstream media care then why should I?

Well I have always made the point that these are very busy people of wealth and power. They simply do not take time out of their busy schedules to jet off to the Bohemian Grove and enjoy each other’s company without some serious reason to do so.

And they also do not have the kind of security that rings the grove just because they want to have a fun bonfire.

If you do any other reading on Bilderberg (and Alex Jones’s material is a good place to start), you’ll see that there’s a good deal of weird symbolism and imagery that goes on inside the grove. Read about it and make up your own minds. My reading tells me that there is something sinister going on there and the complete press blackout only adds to the speculation.

Yes the media is in bed with what goes on there as well. In fact, some of the biggest names in the corporate media have attended Bilderberg.

Now what do I think is the result of these meetings?

Imagine a place where people like this could network in complete secrecy without fear of anything they say being reported in the press. Is it an agenda setter for whatever new world order schemes are out there? No more so than any Trilateralist or G-8 meeting. There is a recreational function of the grove but it is a major venue for information sharing and plan setting.

If it were anything else, why all the security and secrecy. If it quacks like a duck. . .