Peaceful Freedom

The Shanty By A Stream

2011-11-13T10:44:00.003-06:00

Shanty By A Stream

There's a shanty by a stream
And a house upon a hill,
And the shanty has a dream
That the house never will.

It's to rise and to rise
Above the flood and drought,
But the house don't know how,
'Cause that's where it started out.

So the shanty has to struggle
And to figure out the rules,
'Cause the house long forgot them,
And the house is full of fools.

And the shanty will be rising
As the house starts to tilt
And to tumble toward the river
'Neath the shanty on the hill.

DM(S) - - 2005

The Saturn-Uranus Conjunction Breeds Radicals

2011-10-22T22:59:00.004-05:00

Is there any connection between the demonstrators of the sixties and the "Occupy" demonstrators of today? One subtle connection seems to be that both groups were born during a rare aspect between planets in the solar system. An astrological connection it is.

When Saturn, the planet of discipline and focus passes in front of Uranus, the planet of invention and spontaneity, rebels appear to be born. Many of those who were 19 in 1961 were born on or near the dates when this "conjunction" between Saturn and Uranus occurred. Many of those who are 24 today were born when the conjunction happened again in 1988. Today's young demonstrators seem more mature than the 1961 activists, and a common complaint among them is that they've finished college with a load of debt only to discover that there are no jobs.

The planet Saturn goes around the Sun every 28 years. Every now and then it passes over the slower-moving planet Uranus, about once every 44 years. As viewed from Earth, one of these events happened on May 3rd, 1942. There may be people still living whose lives began about then, and I would like to meet them. Nineteen years later in 1961 and onward through the early sixties, some of us got arrested for our beliefs, we did.

In 1988, Saturn as viewed from Earth, passed over Uranus three times - going forward, in reverse, and going forward again. This zigzag along Saturn's orbit is thanks to parallax caused by Earth's own orbit around the Sun. If an outer planet is holding fairly still, Earth's yearly motion can make the planet appear from Earth to shift back and forth against the background behind it. In this case, the background was the even slower planet Uranus.

People born in 1988 on February 12 at 7:48 PM Eastern Standard Time (in Britain, that's 00:48 GMT on 2/13) will have Saturn precisely conjunct Uranus. The sun will be in Aquarius and the Saturn-Uranus conjunction will be at 29 degrees and 55 minutes of Sagittarius, right on the Sagittarius-Scorpio cusp. The effect of the conjunction will precede February 12th for several months. The effect will continue after the conjunction for several months as well.

People born in 1988 on June 26th at 12:26 PM EST will have Saturn precisely conjunct Uranus. The sun will be in Cancer and the conjunction will be at 28 degrees 47 minutes of Sagittarius.

People born in 1988 on October 18th at 8:14 AM EST will have Saturn precisely conjunct Uranus. The sun will be in Libra this time and the conjunction will be at 27 degrees 49 minutes of Sagittarius.

The effects of the conjunction can last for weeks or months. Some even speak of years.

Midway between each conjunction comes an opposition - every 22 years, Saturn and Uranus are on opposite sides of the sky as viewed from Earth. Astrologer Courtney Roberts tells in a YouTube video how this affects the earth. She sees the effects of the opposition beginning in 2008, the year President Obama was elected. A similar upsetting happened in 1968, when a strong movement had developed that was against the Vietnam War, and it led President Johnson to decide not to run for a second term.

And this year, dictatorships have turned into democracies in three countries on the south shore of the Mediterranean: Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Syria may be next on the list.

Old habitual ways yield to the new when Saturn and Uranus are in opposition. Revolutionaries appear to be born when they are conjunct.

The Chicago Occupation

2011-10-13T07:00:00.004-05:00

Downtown, I walked from a class over toward the "Occupy Chicago" protest yesterday, arriving first at a demonstration at the Bank of America just after the B of A had been gifted with a large amount of garbage removed from foreclosed houses. Apparently these turn into crack houses. B of A needs to keep foreclosed property from destroying the neighborhoods.

Protestors were standing and chanting. A fellow from a peace group from the suburbs was handing out leaflets. He was sort of talking Quakerism and I found myself talking class warfare.

A block south on LaSalle, I passed a bank which had a new wooden sign: "The Private Bank". This looked like a movie prop, but it is for real.

The intersection of LaSalle and Jackson is the center of the "Occupy Chicago" protest. People there were chanting "Banks got bailed out, we got sold out." A few demonstrators were chatting casually with the cops. A man came by passing out a small note about a meeting in the suburbs for planning a demonstration about the NATO and G8 meetings here next spring. Keeping time with the chant, a man was pounding a baseball bat on a drum made from half of a plastic 55 gallon drum. The racial mix was perfectly Chicago. Lots of people were just standing, not talking, so I didn't force anything. Witnessing.

When the feet gave out, I walked away. Passed what would appear to be a mortgage banker, two inches taller than me and fifty pounds heavier. Was wordless at the time, but now I wish I had shouted at his back as he walked away, "Diminishing returns!"

The Mortgage Bankers Association number is 202 557-2700. They are destroying neighborhoods.

- - - - In the news... - - - -

The lawyer for one of the four women in NYC who were spritzed inappropriately with pepper spray has just called on the District Attorney to arrest senior officer Anthony Bologna (aka "Tony Baloney") for assault. He was photographed spritzing - caught in the act. Per the NY Post... Huffington Post... More background from the International Business Times.

A photo of the provocateur who led the break-in at the National Air and Space Museum was quickly identified by commentors at the Democratic Underground website, which has the best detail about Occupation projects. This chap is history. Caught in the act.

The "Occupy" movement is totally peaceful and considers policemen to be within the 99% who need to see change by the top 1%. Spitting in the eye of a cop is totally out of order. Guys like this get turned in. Risky misbehavior!

Those Who Will Never Buy Houses Again

2011-10-12T20:42:00.009-05:00

Every foreclosure turns a homeowner back into a renter. How many of these people will never again attempt to buy a house?

In many states, recovery of an overpriced house by the bank does not satisfy the home loan. The difference between what the bank gets from reselling the property and the outstanding balance on the loan can be up to the borrower to repay. Even after having been evicted from their home, they often must pay this money, and all the while, interest is accumulating. (However, in Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Texas and Utah, homeowners may be able to "walk away" successfully.)

Needless to say, these former homeowners who still must pay off their lender will be forever lost to the housing market. How dare they ever buy again?

Anywhere from 25% to 47% of the mortgages in Chicago are already "underwater". The owners owe more than the houses are worth. Even if times get better and they pay off their current mortgages, will these owners be likely to buy again? After having been trapped once, they will probably be wary of becoming ever again so trapped.

Eviction of illegal aliens leaves empty houses. Empty houses bring down neighboring home values and help drive their mortgages underwater. Foreclosures also produce empty houses, also bring down home values and help drive mortgages underwater. Each neighbor's foreclosure can reduce the value of your own home by $10,000, estimates a Wall Street Journal article.

The government uses the number of new home sales (which fell again last month) as a metric to measure our economic health. With owners rapidly turning into renters, the number of potential new home buyers may dwindle down to where this metric is meaningless.

The National Mortgage Bankers Association is now meeting in Chicago. Is there anything you would like to say to them?

Their number is 202-557-2700.

A Circular Hiring Squad

2011-09-01T19:05:00.005-05:00

Every morning before the American stock markets open, I look in Yahoo Finance at the set of charts in the upper left hand corner of the page to see what has happened overnight in the Asian and European markets. These can often give a hint about what kind of day may be ahead in the American markets.

If the Asian markets are up by 1 percent and the European markets are up by 2 percent, a very good day may be ahead. A good day to sell, for a contrarian. If the foreign markets are dreary and drearier, then the American markets may open below their previous closes and perhaps also head down all day. A good day to buy.

Just as Americans watch the Asian and European markets, so Asians may watch the European and American markets to inform them about their day. European traders may likewise watch the prior American market close and then the Asian close to see a hint of what may be coming for them.

It's like three cats chasing each other around a tree. Each keeps the next one going. If one tires, that allows the cat behind him to slow down and rest a little, and the cat behind him as well. If one speeds up, the cat ahead will also speed up, and then the cat ahead of him.

This forward propagation of ups and downs provides a sense of momentum, a sense of mass. There is inertia in the stock market. Yet it's really just good news - or bad news - going around in a circle.

If every trader were a contrarian, buying on the downs and selling into the highs, would this inertia disappear?

Surfing the Volatiles

2011-08-25T09:26:00.003-05:00

The stock market is slowly heading down a bit today, tucking it in before the weekend. The fall of Tripoli ensures Libya's oil will once again supply Europe, and the oil stocks I'm following are down. That means cheaper gas, cheaper feedstocks, and a growing economy all may be here soon.

In audio, when you turn the volume up too high, the waveforms become clipped at the top and bottom, flattened out against the limits of the channel that conveys them. In volatile stocks as compared to blue chips, there may be a similar effect to making sound waves clip. Volatiles will rise until there's no enthusiasm to lift them further, then hold until the blue chips start to fall. On a blue chip (Dow) downward trend, volatiles will fall even faster, as the short sellers drive the adventurists out and shares are sold to meet margin calls. As the bottom nears, volatiles will fall only as fast as blue chips. They have lost their volatility, and reflect the general market.

There is not so much change at the bottom. Stock prices are nearer to book value. Changes are small and random - there is no signal - all one sees is noise.

Then an upward tick in the Dow is doubled in the volatiles. But a downward tick in the Dow is only equaled in the volatiles. The volatiles are edging upwards once again.

Proxy Power

2011-08-03T07:38:00.007-05:00

This morning, I have been researching Saul Alinsky's idea about using proxy power to elect members to corporate boards of directors.

When a person holds shares in a company, as through an IRA or an ordinary brokerage account, they get to vote on candidates to the board of directors. An e-mail arrives with a voting code. If they just delete this, the board of directors elects the board of directors. But suppose they were to forward it. Suppose they were to assign their favorite organization as their proxy?

The greatest difficulty in using proxy power is in gathering the votes. These are widely distributed. But suppose that every time I get an email proxy from Scottrade - and at this time of year, for each stock in my IRA, they are arriving in the e-mail - suppose I could forward it to "AARProxy" or some such? That would be no trouble.

AARP Proxy needs only to sort incoming emails by company name, then to read the voting codes in the emails into a database. They would also need to examine candidates for the corporate boards they are interested in and to vote when the time comes.

That is to say, modern data processing and communications can easily conquer the mountain of trivial paperwork that would have been involved even ten or twenty years ago. Many, many retired people hold IRAs and have email. As their annual meeting notices come in, for them to forward instead of deleting the emails would not be a problem.

It would, in fact, give AARP a chance to send a "thank you" note to everyone who sends them a proxy, thereby building their base of support.

Even people who just plain hold stock could forward their proxies. Suppose even ordinary guys with brokerage accounts - I'm reminded of a cabbie who was investing in techno-bubble stocks in 2002 - suppose these guys were to forward their proxy emails to AARProxy without deleting them? Or to "ProgressiveProxies", "EarthProxies", "LGBTQ Proxies", "Rand Paul Proxies", "PreacherJesseProxies", "PowerlessAndPoorProxies", "ILoveNYProxies", "TaxiProxies", "HikerProxies", "BikerProxies", et al, ad infinitum?

Proxy collectors would be solicited by candidates for the boards.

The automatic turnover of unused voting rights to the currently elected boards would end.

Does this seem far-fetched?

Whoever writes a proxy-aggregater program that people can download for free will liberate the world.

Parsing Leviticus

2011-07-29T10:58:00.035-05:00

Much is made by those Christians who happen to be ultra-conservative of the command in Leviticus that a man should not lay with another man as with a woman.

While conservatives are often faulted for taking their bible too literally, in this case they don't take it literally enough. Let's look at the whole sentence:

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."
(KJV Lev 18:22)

Many generalize this statement into the belief that men should not have any sexual experiences with other men. It doesn't say that.

Leviticus did not say that man shouldn't lie with man. He says that man shouldn't lie with man "as with womankind". The phrase "to lie with" rather apparently does mean to have a sexual experience. And "as with womankind" is a particular kind of sexual experience.

He next says that for man to lie down with an animal is also verboten. "As with womankind" doesn't enter the picture here. He could have been equally general one verse earlier in speaking about man's laying with mankind. But he wasn't.

If he had wanted to disavow all homosexuality, Leviticus could have saved ink and said "Thou shalt not lie with mankind." Period. But he qualifies the rule. He limits it - "as with womankind" is the particular way in which laying with mankind is forbidden.

What could "as with womankind" mean? Was Leviticus perhaps speaking of insertion? If a man lies with another man and has a sexual experience and no insertions take place, is Leviticus' command violated?

Were the Greeks, whose homosexuality included a lot of "intercrural" sex - insertion between the thighs - condemned for this by Leviticus? This was a class of sex known to the times. Did Leviticus use the phrase "as with womankind" to exempt intercrural sex?

For that matter, does "to lie with" include sex standing up?

There is no reference in Leviticus to females having sex with other females. Once again, his injunction fails to be universal.

Leviticus was a cleanliness freak. God - as spoken to Moses and reported word for word by Leviticus - God is a cleanliness freak. In Chapter 18, He warned people to stay clean, and told them how. In Chapter 20, God speaks through Moses through Leviticus once again and commands that the community kill those who ignored His warnings back in Chapter 18.

Now, one can't catch AIDS through the fingertips. One can't, unless one has sore gums, catch AIDS through the mouth. One can catch AIDS through insertion.

AIDS was, as far as we know, not present in Leviticus' time. But there were other diseases. So the injunction against insertion into the most sensitive flesh of others who are human makes a lot of sense. They may be passing diseases around.

Yet since the male sexual cycle can call for release two or three times daily when young if one is not to spot the bedclothes, the space created by allowing male-male non-insertive sexual relationships may have been used to stabilize their urges until young males were ready to become family men. This appears to have happened in other cultures, and it may well have been quietly present among the early Jews.

Curiously, in the long list of relatives at the beginning of chapter 18 whom one should not attempt to disrobe, the brother is not included. The sister, yes...

"The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at home, or born abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover. " (KJV Lev 18:9)

Even the sister. But not the brother. No mention of the brother.

Leviticus says in 18:6:

"None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the LORD."

He then details exactly what he means by 'near of kin', taking 12 verses. Even thy sister's nakedness thou shalt not uncover. But not your brother. "Even" suggests a boundary.

Not the brother. So brotherly male-male nudity at least is tolerable. In poor families today, children of the same gender are bathed together. It saves water. But this injunction is not about visual contact. It is about uncovering another.

This omission adds to the "not as with womankind" exemption. It is ok to uncover a brother and lie with him if it's not as with womankind. Says Leviticus.

Cousins are also ok, even the girls - they are not on the 'near of kin' list. And there is a whole world of same-sex people waiting beyond who are also not on the 'near of kin' list. It is ok to uncover them and lie with them if it's not like with a woman.

This was a pre-condom era. Sadly, the potential cleanliness of sex with a condom was not a part of Leviticus' discussion. Who knows what he would have permitted his people, if Leviticus had had access to condoms.

Later, in Chapter 20, Leviticus loses his temper and instructs his people that those who violate the laws in Chapter 18 must be killed. In this modern day, Christian conservatives may feel some lingering sense of responsibility to at least dump on, if not kill, those souls who violate the Levitical laws, at least the laws which these same Christians have not themselves broken.

Leviticus has become the enforcer.

What a gift to mankind. God has far greater gifts than Leviticus.

And even Leviticus allows males to lie with males so long as they do not lie 'as with womankind'.

religion

2011-07-28T07:12:00.005-05:00

Everyone has a personal religion. It is the life of the spirit.

When people group together, personal religions interact and organize around the commonalities of interest into shared religions.

Eventually shared religions become a substitute for spiritual life. They become a place to pay penance or to make appeals to that which is already all ways within us always, that for which our personal spiritual life is its own expression.

When one is in a shared religion, there is always a tension between the group belief and the personal belief. There is always a compromise. Other people's dances are never quite our own.

Eliminate The Middleman

2011-07-20T08:03:00.004-05:00

Value is created when a sharp tool touches raw material. When a newly washed shirt is ironed. When a brain is led to think in ways it never thought before.

Rather than being value-creators, many people seek gain in life by edging themselves into the delivery system. Buying cigarettes by the pack and selling them one at a time. Offering credit cards for a fee so people can buy today's goods with tomorrow's money.

Making money by facilitating commerce can bring wonderful wealth - but it's a shaky wealth, vulnerable to those who find shorter paths between buyer and seller. eBay, the popular auction house, survives. It links buyer and seller and does nothing more.

An artist could sell through a gallery. The gallery displays the art, sends out mailings, brings in customers. The gallery enables the art to be sold. For a big piece of the action. Or the artist could sell her art on eBay and spend most of her time painting, rather than dealing with marketers.

The most economic transaction is the one that follows the shortest path, eliminating all unnecessary middlemen. The most effective economy is the one with the fewest middlemen.

A Whole Self

2011-07-19T08:00:00.009-05:00

Every city is like a total universe, for it contains that which is being born, that which is living out its life, and that which is dying. It contains the dead, the unborn, and that overall uniting force that impels intent and design and endless redesign.

Is the mind not such a city? When it looks at what is possible, does it not see room for hope? When the mind looks at what is, does it not see life going on, see birth, continuance, and death, the whole meta-system? When it looks at the intersection between these two worlds, the possible and the ongoing, can it see how to do? If it has intention.

Is the world such a city? What is mankind's intention? What is organic life's intention?

Can a man redesign himself? Can life redesign the world?

TV Goes Around The Bend

2011-07-14T23:42:00.005-05:00

My TV sits, waiting for the repairman from the cable company. It has been this way for months. I have yet to call him. I am suddenly now getting everything I used to get on TV at no extra cost over the internet.

John Stewart : http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Stephen Colbert : http://www.colbertnation.com/

Keith Olbermann : http://current.com/shows/countdown/

Rachel Maddow : http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/

Home and Garden Channel : http://www.hgtv.com/

At the moment I am writing this, I am watching Stephen Colbert's "Colbert Report". It is in segments, but each segment leads into the next. I will be watching whole show.

There are no commercials. It is continuous. The image is smaller than regular TV, but it is free. Click to make the image full-screen. Still a little fuzzy, but livable.

Each show is archived, so you can watch it when you like. You can browse older shows. If the Earth doesn't collide with humanity, perhaps Colbert's art will survive intact for generations.

Cable TV doesn't do this. This is a new paradigm.

A new paradigm is devouring the old paradigm. Making change. Much of the content that cable stations now broadcast over cable they also broadcast over the Internet, making it globally accessible. As more and more people use the internet, the older method of delivery may slowly fall away.

Just link to the web site of the program you would like to watch. Google and ye shall find.

The quantitative incremental improvement (40% yearly) of computing power has turned television, a thing of the moment, into a new type of entity with a third, temporal, dimension. It still is what it always was, but it can also be anything it ever has been.

Continuous quantitative change has generated qualitative change. Just as, in the political world, continuous reform has created revolution.

Moore's Law marches on.

Starfish

2011-06-03T20:03:00.017-05:00

Obama's new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin E. Dempsey, has three books on his reading list. One of them is titled,

“The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations,” by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom.

Some organizations are like spiders. A single mind is behind it all. Without its head, a spider type of organization is a goner. Police have for years attempted to break up demonstrations by arresting the lead organizers, 'decapitating' the leadership. Hierarchical organizations are vulnerable to decapitation.

Other organizations are like starfish. Cut off a leg and the leg itself generates a new starfish. Every part of the starfish contains the information needed to make a new starfish. Every part contains the whole. If a 'starfish' organization is doing something you don't like, it may be kind of difficult to stamp it out. Every fragment can become a new contender.

General Dempsey has worked with the book's authors to develop military strategies to overcome 'starfish' groups like al-Qaeda by creating starfish-type groups within the military's hierarchic 'spider' structure. A few years ago, the military advertised for recruits by inviting every soldier to be "An Army of One". Now it appears they are associating 'armies of one' into 'starfish' type organizations. They are experimenting with leaderless organization.

Where will it all lead?

A lot of existing organizations are 'starfish' waiting to happen. A PTA can turn activist at the drop of a hat. Even the AARP - American Association of Retired Persons - is evolving from working as a lobby into direct activism.

In a world where people now organize by using Facebook over cellphones, for one to start a new 'starfish' organization takes almost no work at all. Templates for organizations are all around. Want to propagate your own starfish? Just publish your template.

A leaderless organization named "Anonymous" just announced that it has hacked into Iranian government computer systems and copied 10,000 dispatches from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Will this material appear on WikiLeaks? On on one of the other half-dozen leak-release sites that have sprung up since WikiLeaks began grabbing the headlines? Almost certainly one or another.

The market for leaks is distributed. The supply sources for leaks are distributed. The routes from supply to market are more and more distributed.

The need to protest is also distributed ever more evenly. Every living thing is a starfish waiting to spawn. Unstoppable power.

Can The Fearful Battle Bullying?

2011-05-18T07:24:00.001-05:00

The war on bullying is a war everyone can join, even bullies. I like to think so.

A dear friend of many years had a thorn in his paw. After trying to help him remove it again and again, year after year, I realized that the thorn that was hurting him was actually growing from his paw. He was his own thorn.

Some people are living lives trapped in a terrible state of fear, allowing themselves all means of survival, including bullying, to manage their fear. So, how is the world to get the fearful to battle bullying?

Will Fracking The Marcellus Shale Frack Washington DC?

2011-05-17T21:49:00.006-05:00

A large shale deposit called the Marcellus Shale covers all of West Virginia, the western 4/5 of Pennsylvania, and most of the southern half of New York. It contains natural gas, embedded in the rock. Energy companies are filling deep holes with explosives and chemicals and "fracking" the shale - breaking it up - so that the natural gas can accumulate and be captured and sold.

New York City is worried about toxic chemicals from fracking appearing in its water supply. Perhaps Washingtonians should be worried, too.

Once long ago as I was driving out highway 80 from New York to Chicago, I stopped for a break at, I think, the town of Clearfield in mid Pennsylvania. I was told as I sipped my coffee that there is a massive spring in the town whose water comes from the Susquehannock forest to the north and is sent through a long aqueduct to the Baltimore-Washington Area, into the "Washington Aqueduct" system. Does this mean that fracking in PA could poison the water in DC?

Can one ask the powers that be how much of Washington's drinking water comes from Pennsylvania? Does it come from areas where the energy companies plan to frack?

Obama Nails Osama

2011-05-02T14:42:00.002-05:00

The man whose spasms of violence teased the United States into entering an endless war which allowed oil companies to pump massive amounts of oil out of occupied Iraq, a man demonized by the press, who taunted America again and again as our interest in the war faded, has been shot to death.

Can the troops come home, now?

420 Day

2011-04-20T07:49:00.002-05:00

Time for the annual review of the marijuana freedom movement.

California lost, this year, as voters by a narrow margin turned down a proposition that would have legalized even casual use. The marijuana growing industry is a major, if untaxed, player, and pressure from the northern counties that depend on illicit marijuana sales for income appears to have squelched total marijuana freedom in that state for now.

Today we learn that Canada may be totally legalizing marijuana on July 10th.

Is total legalization a new meme? Aspirin is more toxic - you can kill yourself by downing a bottle or two. Not so with weed. You can't find your lighter after smoking a joint or two. No one has died, and other than sore throats from smoking too much, there appears to be no significant damage caused by the drug. It is not a gateway drug. It is not addictive.

Imagine - a drug without side effects. So, absent the negatives, absent the hysteria, universal marijuana availability could be a boon to the tax base.

Total legalization. The new goal. Yay!

And, it helps cure cancers. It may also prevent them.

Riders In The Storm

2011-04-10T22:22:00.002-05:00

Thanks to a commenter on the Rachel Maddow blog, here is a list of the riders that the Republicans have attached to the continuing resolution budget bill:

"Prohibits funding for the Wetlands Reserve Program.

Prohibits funding for the Conservation Stewardship Program.

Prohibits funding for the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act.

Prohibits funding for the Weatherization Assistance Program or the State Energy Program.

Prohibits funding for various environmental projects in California.

Prohibits funding for a climate change czar in the White House.

Prohibits funding for EPA efforts to regulate greenhouse gases.

Prohibits funding for the EPA to change a rule regulating water.

Prohibits funds for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Prohibits funds for the EPA to implement regulations to designate coal ash residue as hazardous waste.

Prohibits funding for the IRS to implement health care reform.

Prohibits funds for a White House Director of Health Care reform.

Prohibits the District of Columbia from using its own, non-federal funds to pay for abortions beyond the very limited circumstances in which federal funds are currently available (in circumstances of rape or incest and to save the life of a pregnant woman).

Prohibits funding for needle-exchange programs.

Prohibits funding for sections of the Public Health Service Act.

Prohibits funds to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., or any of its affiliates.

Prohibits funds to pay any employee, officer or contractor to implement the provisions of the health care reform law.

Strips funding for any provision of the health care reform law.

Prohibits funding for the US Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation, UN Population Fund, or for foreign NGOs that use their own non-U.S. funds to provide abortion services."

Tax Cuts Raise Dividends - Sales Make Jobs

2011-04-01T23:03:00.006-05:00

Cuts in corporate taxes pump up dividends. The benefits fall through to the bottom line first. Then profits go up, dividends go up, and stock prices rise. Tax cuts don't make jobs.

Jobs are made when orders come it. Sales makes jobs. And for sales to happen, the customers need to be 'open to buy'. Money must be present in the economy.

If I sell ten thousand swivets, I take the order to the bank, get a loan, hire, fill the order, and then lay off my people until the next order comes in. Tax cuts don't sell swivets, except in the very general sense that money coming from the government feeds the economy. Salesmen sell swivets. Sales create the need for employees. Sales create jobs.

Worse, the act of boosting stock prices by giving tax cuts cannot be a way of life. There can't be tax cuts year after year. Not unless we want to see government subsidizing all of capitalism. Right now, General Electric pays no federal taxes and in fact gets a large tax rebate. The IRS pays GE money at tax time.

Your taxes are paying GE to be a Successful American Company. This makes it a hobby business. Your hobby business.

Tax cuts can help a business retire debt. Help a business rent a larger space. Help a business do research and development. Help a business raise its dividend. But it is sales that bring in orders for product.

Orders for product create jobs.

Perpetual World Revolution Begins

2011-03-17T21:44:00.002-05:00

An ongoing and probably perpetual global revolution by the world against its tyrants has begun.

Tonight the United Nations Security Council voted to let UN member nations intercede militarily on the Libyan peoples' behalf in the Libyan civil war, a war in which Libyan President Khaddafi has been militarily attacking the people of his own nation just for opposing him. The only restriction is that foreign nations place no boots on the ground.

Many UN member nations are ruled by tyrants. But peaceful protests must be allowed. Peaceful protests that are met with force can now be met with counterforce.

This is not the same as the UN sending UN Security Forces into the country. This is, however, the UN formally making war against one's own people indefensible.

Bravo.

Daddy Was A Union Man

2011-03-13T09:37:00.004-05:00

Wisconsin is having a Woodstock. A gathering of the tribes. It expects to overthrow and expel those who promised jobs and are instead destroying labor unions.

Back in the old days, farmers organized the Grange to fight the rail monopolies which paid them a small part of what their produce brought in the cities. Denial of product brought the prices around.

Daddy was a farmer, but a machinist at heart. Late in life he worked as a steel scraper at Baker Brothers in Toledo. Union, I believe. I remember hearing talk of strikes.

Lots of people's daddies and mommies and grandparents and great-grandparents were able to do what they did because the union made them strong.

This writer himself was once a painters union apprentice and later in the transit workers union.

Solidarity forever.

For the union makes us strong.

Torture In America Today

2011-03-11T12:03:00.007-06:00

Forced nudity is torture. For a jailor to order a prisoner to strip and then to deprive them of their clothes for hours, to embarrass them by forcing them to stand naked outside their cell at parade rest, is torture.

This is especially heinous when it is done to a prisoner awaiting trial, unconvicted and unsentenced. Pre-trial punishment is not an American tradition.

This torture is being done daily to Bradley Manning, a prisoner awaiting trial at Quantico. This treatment is supposedly part of his suicide prevention program.

Manning is being forced to sleep naked every night, in view of a video monitor and of a guard directly outside his cell. Guys get erections in their sleep. It is only a matter of time before pictures will surface, and America will discover its own Abu Ghraib scandal.

Manning has been awakened every five minutes during the night for months to ensure that he isn't harming himself. This is also a part of his "suicide watch". Military psychiatrists keep ruling, though, that he is nowhere near suicide. But his jailors keep trying...

So he is forced to strip before bedtime. His clothes are returned after morning review. He sleeps naked under a camera.

What if he goes to trial? His best defense may soon be that he simply doesn't remember anything. Given the hard time that he is now serving pre-trial before he has even been proven guilty, any testimony he gives at trial will be tainted and suspect.

In the meantime, his jailors are practically ensuring a debacle when the inevitable photos of a nude, aroused, Manning surface in the press.

- - - a further note - - -

The New York Times of 3/12/11, the day after this posting, reports on

"...Philip J. Crowley, the top State Department spokesman, about Private Manning’s treatment. In a talk at M.I.T., Mr. Crowley called the treatment “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid,” and he said he did not understand Defense Department officials’ reasons for imposing it, according to people present. Mr. Crowley later said he was expressing his personal views."

Asked about Crowley's remarks at a press conference President Obama then said,

" “With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference. “They assure me that they are.”

“I can’t go into details about some of their concerns,” he added, “but some of this has to do with Private Manning’s safety as well.” He appeared to be referring to fears that Private Manning might harm himself, though the private, his friends and his lawyer have all denied that he is suicidal. "

The full story is at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/us/12manning.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23

The fact that Obama let himself be told pablum is irrelevent. He knows he's got a problem there, and he's apparently preparing to have been terribly deceived. Bradley Manning's enforced nakedness is happening because Bradley gently teased his guards about the silliness of his protocols. According to a letter from Bradley just now released by Bradley's lawyer.

His enforced nakedness is also happening because at night Bradley sleeps under a light and a camera. A camera that records to tape.

The question remains open of who decided that it was a bright idea to film Bradley Manning's weiner. And how soon we will see the closeups - jewels blocked out, of course - at the supermarket on the cover of the National Enquirer?

Total Shock

2011-03-10T08:25:00.004-06:00

Wisconsinites woke up this morning to discover that their state assembly had just abolished their government unions. This writer woke up to discover that yesterday afternoon the House technology subcommittee voted to give the telephone and cable companies absolute, unrestricted power over the Internet. They plan to take away regulation of the Internet from the FCC.

Here's the Op Ed News article:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/House-Runs-Amok-on-FCC-by-the-web-110309-277.html

Also, both houses of the Michigan legislature have just passed legislation that would let the governor declare any town or city broken and appoint a state monitor to run the town, firing the elected officials. Ohio has just rammed through union-busting legislation by replacing members on two committees who voted against it. Koch brothers money, supporting "Big Government Republicanism" (a new Rachel Maddow phrase) is trying to kill the last major American unions. These unions are the largest donors to the Democratic Party.

This is "shock doctrine" politics. Naomi Klein wrote a book of this title to describe how we have been shocked into war, shocked into giving banks back the money that others had stolen.

And now we have been given the story that teachers and policemen are overpaid, and they are being shocked out of their unions. Lies are told and no one counters them. Then evil is done. This can't last long. As Michael Moore says, "Wisconsin isn't broke". It's all fraud and sham, and it's bound to collapse.

Every shock is wakening. A slap in the face doesn't destroy unions, it wakens them. The unions make us strong, and the Koch brothers may have reignited the union movement. The "shock doctrine" may be about to meet the "rock doctrine".

If this develops as it probably will, then Obama's re-election is assured. He will not face serious opposition in the primaries. This means that cross-over Democratic primary voters whose vote isn't needed may then be the ones who choose which Republican candidate will oppose him. A moderate Republican who could never possibly win the presidency would be an ideal candidate. Somebody sufficiently fettered by his past that his future chances are limited.

As a former lobbyist, Barbour may be the closest fit. He sits on a big pile of money, as leader of one of the three main Repub organizations. He could re-define Republicanism away from the radical. Word has it that he's working on his talking points.

I read that Obama may be coming to Jackson in May during the Freedom Rider reunion. That could coincide with Barbour's elevation to national stature.

Last December 10th, just as Mercury went retrograde, appearing from Earth to move backwards in space as it does three times yearly, Senator Bernie Sanders brought Senate progress on the tax bill to a halt with an eight and a half hour filibuster. The following 20 days while Mercury was retrograde were the Senate's most productive days of the year as legislation that had been on hold moved quickly into law.

This year, from March 30th until April 23rd, Mercury goes retrograde once again. It is slowing now. Recall petitions are in motion. Unions are wakening. Facebook is spreading the flames. These forces may seriously converge at the end of this month. Maybe good will come of it.

Return of the unions may mean return of a living wage.

Do Government Regulations Create Jobs?

2011-03-07T18:34:00.002-06:00

One did for me.

In the fall of 2001, I was working as a mainframe dbms contract programmer for a major brokerage house client in Weehawken, New Jersey. You 'had a friend' there, if you remember their ads. They are long gone, absorbed into a Swiss bank.

Shortly after 9/11/2001, the government issued a new regulation. Every brokerage house needed to provide the government every week with a list of new clients, showing their names and their Social Security numbers or other ID numbers. The government was "worried about large-scale money laundering". So another programmer set up a retrieval that spanned several systems. It created a file every week.

I kept an eye on his program as it ran every week, and then I ran a program that copied this file to tape and saw that the tape got sent out to an outside vendor. Two programmers got work from this, as well as the vendor. I did need to repair his system once a year because it didn't delete his intermediate files and ran out of space. But other than that, overseeing compliance with this government regulation was trivial and earned me about a half hour's billing every week.

Industry-wide, that regulation must have created hundreds of jobs.

Many government regulations require inspections, reporting, changes and adjustments, special equipment or programs, corporate oversight, and all of these take human time to complete.

Government regulations create jobs.

Egypt Unchained

2011-02-17T17:43:00.009-06:00

In the last month, the government of Egypt has fallen to demonstrators who simply refused to leave the Cairo city square. Organizing by using a cluster of social networks, the protesters have undone an oligarchy. Peer-to-peer networking has flattened a hierarchical pyramid.

Peer-to-peer networking is innately egalitarian. Anyone can call anyone on the telephone. The telephone network is a peer-to-peer network. Similarly, anyone can ask to become anyone's Facebook 'friend' and can then be kept informed automatically by email or xms phone messaging to which city square the friends and friends of friends will all be going to for lunch and picketing. Anyone can merely bookmark a Facebook page and look at it periodically to keep track of developments. Everyone in this peer-to-peer network has their own transmitter and receiver.

Peer-to-peer networking is 'many-to-many'. Anyone can be a node. All nodes are the same.

A 'network' is a bunch of connected nodes. Almost everyone is connected to many networks. People are nodes in networks of all sorts - family, church, school, work, even hobbyist networks. Ideas learned in the family are acted out at school and at work. Information moves from one network to another over nodes that are members of both networks.

A peer-to-peer network is the most general form of network, many-to-many. Any node can connect to any other node. Suppose a peer-to-peer network is overlaid with rules limiting activity between certain nodes? Suppose a set of nodes in a telephone network, which is many-to-many, are used as a phone tree? A phone tree is one-to-many. It is hierarchical.

Hierarchies are 'one-to-many' networks. One node connects to a set of subordinate nodes, these each connect to their own set of subordinate nodes, and so on. In a phone tree, one person passes a message to five, they pass it to another five, they pass it on, etc.

A phone tree is overlaid on a 'peer-to-peer' network, which makes it easy to repair. Loss of a node in a phone tree could mean the loss of a branch, but any other node can replace it, since all nodes are the same. Peer-to-peer networks can tend to be self-healing.

Like a phone tree, an oligarchy is also a hierarchy, in this case a political hierarchy which distributes power from the top in exchange for money and support from nodes below. Loss is harder to heal in an oligarchy. Nodes are not identical. Finding replacements for critical higher-ups may not be easy. The loss of a node may mean the loss of that node's whole branch.

Taking down an oligarchy may require only the recruitment of its critical higher-ups. Hosni Mubarek's departure from Egypt, for example, was expedited by the departure of his cabinet members.

Somebody put up a FaceBook page to honor a martyr. Anybody could have put up a FaceBook page to honor this martyr. Every martyr deserves a FaceBook page. This page was waiting to happen, and it became an organizing point. People who 'friended' this page could see who else 'friended' it and could 'friend' them as well. They could also visit the pages of their new friend's friends and 'friend' those people they find interesting. The availability of the generic network template - peer-to-peer - lets social aggregates form.

A salt which is dissolved in water until the water can hold no more can sometimes be made to precipitate out of solution if the container is given a little shock. The salt will pile up in crystals at the bottom of the container.

When a people have suffered as much from a government as they can tolerate, a little shock can lead them to connect and to find common ground. Today they coalesce over FaceBook and XMS. Armies are more or less helpless. Libya's army is attacking its own citizens, but the world has cut it off financially, so this may not last for long. The Information Age is devouring the Military Industrial Complex.

If a people can, themselves, peacefully throw off a military dictator, what use are soldiers?

What use is war?

Can Mindfulness Meditation Cure Neo-Con Panic Syndrome?

2011-01-23T08:54:00.001-06:00

Two discoveries from the world of science this week combine wonderfully well to address the problem of overpolarization that troubles American politics.

First, the discovery that the brains of conservatives, viewed on an MRI, have measurable differences from the brains of liberals. Their amygdalas are larger. Wikipedia explains, "The amygdala processes reactions to violations concerning personal space." They have personal space violation issues.

Secondly, the discovery that mindfulness meditation reduces the size of the amygdala. In eight weeks. (Thank you Boing-Boing for the link.)

Mindfulness meditation is kind of like sitting with God as you let yourself become still.

A mindfulness teacher can be found.

Your local Quaker meeting will know more about this. These days they're called the Society of Friends. They worship by sitting in silence and many of them are very liberal.

Several Moore's Law Corollaries

2011-01-17T23:51:00.001-06:00

Computing bang for the buck doubles every two years. It has done so at least since 1968. It will continue to do so, experts say. Gordon Moore first noticed this fixed rate of growth in that year, and the principle has become known as "Moore's Law", not because it is logically proven but because, like gravity, we notice it.

Doubling every two years, computing bang for the buck increases at a yearly rate of about 41 percent.

Why 41%? 141% x 141% = 198.8%, a doubling. That's because 141% = 1.41414141, the square root of 2. This is exaggerated precision. It could be 39%. Call it 40 percent.

There are implications. Today's new laptop will be half the price in two years. A heavy investment in any media, whether it's 45 rpm vinyl records or Zip(tm) drive disks from the 1990's, can become obsolete in a decade or less. The implications can have implications.

Corollary 1: The information available over the internet doubles about every two years.

Six years ago I was first able to see an aerial view of the plot of land my great great grandpa Myron farmed around 1872. Today I am able to find cheap houses on Realtor.com and drive by them late at night using Google Street View. Last night in Kalamazoo I think it was, Street View offered a 3d option. I clicked it and a red-blue 3d screen came up. Google apparently has just now doubled the camera lenses in the cameras they use to capture street views. Or I was staying up too late.

What you can see is doubling every two years. This is apparent from experience.

Corollary 2: Visibility doubles, including personal visibility, every two years.

The seer is also the seen. Google your own name. How many references to your grandma are on the internet? The price of seeing the world is that the world sees you. Your visibility doubles. Comb your hair.

Corollary 3: Transparency doubles every two years.

Computers are both data storage devices and communications devices. Their ability to compare the present with the past and to communicate the difference doubles every two years. Contradictions are ever clearer.

A politician who tells the local crowd one thing and the national crowd something else is quickly shown false. You can see through him.

Politicians who change course see their past preachings shown on TV, cross-cut with their current ones. Unless the story of their conversion is made clear, their past is continually held up to illuminate their present. Their past shines through their present.

Transparency doubles.

Corollary 4: The true surrounds the false twice as effectively every year.

Public lies fail. Proven wrong by ever more visible data, they become an embarrassment to the liar, because they don't go away. Newscasters who make things up become targets for comedians, and a single silly lie is shown and joked about again and again.

Video clips about old hokeyed stories like "The Willie Horton Story" that brought down Michael Dukakis become like labels from shown over and over again. The James O'Keefe fake Acorn video is becoming similarly iconic. Anything fake becomes an island surrounded by the true.

Corollary 5: Dimensionality of the view increases.

The dimensions of measure are usually considered to be height, width and depth. And then there's weight. That's a fourth dimension of measure. To a database programmer, every field in a record is a dimension of measure. It is a dimension along which he can sort a set of records.

If you want to find all the blue 1946 Plymouths in Saginaw, Michigan, you sort the set of Michigan license plate records by year, automobile make within each year, color within make within year, and by town within all the rest, and you scroll down the screen until you see the cars. If the data fields have been indexed, then you just throw the indexes against each other and out pops your final set.

The increase that is the doubling of stored data is spread over increases to the number of records, the number of fields on a record, the length of the fields, and the number of fields that are newly indexed to simplify searches. The doubling itself is spread over many dimensions of measure. The number of fields in records increases - dimensionality increases - but it probably does not double.

Corollary 6: Refinement of presentation increases.

There's the mechanical layer. Silicon. Then there is the logical layer. Then successively more abstract layers. Nuance evolves, in a computer. As the junction count doubles.

The tool reaches to fit the hand. The presentation converges ever better on the mind that sees it.

Corollary 7: Boundaries blur.

Telephones are becoming televisions. Cars are computers, little R2D2s that guide you and tell you when they need an oil change. Skype telephony is free and global. Global ethics are trumping local tyranny. (Slowly, though, and there is much to be done.)

News of horrors, of genocides and torture, reach global eyes and ears 40 percent better every year. As the past is more and more uncovered, the world owns the knowledge of all its parts.

Corollary 8: The granularity of the viewable is ever finer.

This is true for high-definition television, true also for data driven views of the world.

The granularity of indexing is ever finer. This brings the shape of the world as we know it ever better into view. Every grain of sand can have an address.

Corollary 9: Searchable Information Becomes The Teacher.

Search engines compete to provide ever better indexed linking to all that is known. The world's knowledge about what is known makes the Googles, Yahoos, and other search engines natural educators. Everyone with a computer is in school again.

Corollary 10: A THING is born.

A growing common culture loves cultural diversity. Growing access to all cultures by all cultures ensures that the best of each will survive. The oneness of man is becoming self-apparent.

We are it.

Modern man lives inside - our unity lives inside - the digital exoskeleton. If silicon chips were to disappear, our interests would become local once again.

Corollary 11: The digital technology that unites us defends its wholeness.

This proof is left to the reader.

Take The Profit Out Of Prisons

2011-01-17T23:22:00.000-06:00

Prisons for profit are lobbying Congress for new business. America now has five times as many prisoners per capita as other countries. Taxpayer dollars are being wasted on oversentencing. We can get by more cheaply. And more justly.

The idea of taking the profit out of imprisonment should be popular with a wide part of the electorate. It could be a good horse for a candidate to ride in the upcoming election. Both left and right could find reasons for supporting it.

So - Take The Profit Out Of Prisons.

Successful businesses need to return a slightly larger profit every year. If the business is a government contractor, success requires working ever-larger contracts, or making the current contracts ever-larger. Perhaps jobbing out the work of government to business has caused the tax increases and rise in the 'size' of government that conservatives rant about? So one would think, if one thought.

Would government have grown to such a monster if its service providers didn't need to show a bigger profit every year?

A Job-Creating Gun Insurance Bill

2011-01-17T22:44:00.002-06:00

Cars can kill. To be on the road, a car has to be licensed, inspected, and insured. Guns can kill. They should also be insured.

Suppose every gun owner were required to have gun insurance?

Suppose insurers had to pay out whenever any firearm in the country injured or killed someone other than the owner?

This is the simplest, most rational, idea for curing firearm misuse that I have found. It would create a new kind of insurance for a presently uninsured market, helping to manage risk by giving it a cost. It could mean many new jobs for Connecticut insurers, and new income for any agent who sells gun insurance. Just as the AARP sells Medigap insurance, the National Rifle Association might find it to its benefit to see that its own members are covered.

Not every state would want the law. Some might want to license and insure handguns, but not rifles or shotguns. These states could get victim coverage for handgun violence but not for hunting mishaps.

Receiving payouts for victims could be a carrot that would make a state want to take part in the program. A federal law could require states to license and insure their guns, else lose participation in the payout program.

Possibly some politician in Connecticut, where America's biggest insurers tend to hang their hats, could invite their donors to contemplate the cash flow they could bring in by insuring America's overarmed populace? Here's a market, all you capitalists!

We can change the ground the problem stands on. Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and a lot of other politicians in Connecticut know the insurance honchos. They know people. Here's a new market for the insurance companies. Does anyone know Barney or Chris?

For some, this may seem like using evil to fight evil, but if we can turn evil against itself, then it nulls itself out. The cost of insurance - and the more stable society that insurance produces - would lead more and more people to let go of their guns, and the gun insurance market would create its own dwindling.

I suspect that every governor would want to have a program like this for their state. Nobody would want to live in an "uncompensated victims" state.

Is There a Chauvinistic Personality Disorder? CPD?

2011-01-17T21:59:00.000-06:00

Almost anyone is better than some people. Almost anyone is better at communicating happiness than some people are in this world. Almost anyone is smarter in ways than some people. Anyone can mow their lawn better than their neighbors. For a lot of people the little differences matter. Their self-image needs continual re-inflation. Something continually deflates it. Maybe it never was whole. There's a worry hiding up in their belfry.

For others, self-image is no worry. They are who they are, and that's that. But for these worriers, making sure that the world agrees with all the ways that they are better than other people becomes a life's work. What ails them?

Could it be that getting D's on their report cards all through their school years affected their development somehow?

Children develop at different rates. Teaching them in groups - and grading each student's results vis-a-vis the group - ensures that some students will always do poorly. For twelve of the first eighteen years of their lives, most children are made to be afraid of doing poorly.

People who aren't too bright, who have grown up being graded at the bottom of the curve, may tend to spend their adult lives downgrading others. Racially, sexually, tribally, nationally, whatever.

Chauvinism is a belief that something about you makes you better than others.

Racism is racial chauvinism.

Sexism is sexual chauvinism. ("Male chauvinism" is one of the several sexual chauvinisms. In fact, the word 'chauvinism' alone is often used to refer to male chauvinism.) Sexual chauvinism includes gender chauvinism, lifestyle chauvinism, and genital/mammary size chauvinism.

Ageists often feel that their own age is the best age of all. They always did. Young ageists look down on the old and the old look down on the young. Are these people age chauvinists? There is certainly age discrimination. A result of age chauvinism, one would guess. In a culture that worships youthfulness.

Tribal chauvinism. This can include religious chauvinism, when a religion is particular to a tribe. Religious tribalism drives Mideast politics. Do tribes look down on other tribes? Oh, yes. Not everyone is the Chosen of God, if you're a tribal chauvinist.

National chauvinism is hyper-patriotism. Nation-worship. Competitive nation-worship. He who flies the biggest flag on his lawn is the most patriotic, therefore the best among neighbors. National chauvinism is one of the more common chauvinisms.

Religious chauvinism. The one true way is one's own. As ever it will be, for one and for all. Religions deflate because they forget that they are only pointers to the real. They are not the real. But for some people, their religion must be worshiped. Pump it up!

Moral chauvinism. Those who know what is right also know who you are, and they'll tell God. Who speaks to them regularly.

Class chauvinism. Proud to be an Okie from Muskogee. Proud to be off the grid and under the bridge. Proud to be 'old money' rather than 'new', proud of the royalty in one's family tree. Proud.

Intellectual chauvinism. There is intelligence. Then there is intellectualism, the worship of intellectuality. This is also known as 'liberalism' by the hoi polloi. Brains worshiping brainhood.

All of these are chauvinisms. How many people have more than one? A majority, it seems. The people who don't have any chauvinisms at all are the ones I would like to get to know, but they are rare.

When a person exhibits one kind of chauvinism, is that usually the only one they express? Or does machoism follow on racism, and racism follow on religious defamation? Do some people have a chauvinistic response stored away for just about any situation?

Is chauvinism itself then not a social disease, a disorder?

Chauvinistic Personality Disorder. CPD.

Archie Bunker disease.

There are causes. And there are cures.

Train Back On Tracks

2011-01-15T11:03:00.000-06:00

When I saw Glen Beck weeping on his show and saying "Thank you, Mr. President!" after his previously having called Barack Obama both a fascist and a communist, there came a sense that some things have now changed.

The psychopath who emptied 31 bullets into a crowd in Tucson last week was not particularly right-wing nor left-wing, although he does appear to have absorbed several demented ideas from those on the extreme right who love to be panicked. He had asked his congressman, Gabrielle Giffords, a Zen koan - "How can there be government when words make no sense?" She could find no sense in his words, and he was insulted.

This could happen to anyone. Suddenly conservatives who once espoused weaponry and called for killing their opponents if they did not beat them in the elections backpedaled furiously. Sarah Palin's map of the US showing gunsights lined up on the congressional districts where she wanted to defeat an incumbent suddenly became a map of "surveyor's markings". Congressmen denied what they had been.

Then, at a stunning gathering to memorialize the lives that had been taken, Barack Obama refocused the national attention on the victims, on those who just happened to be there when the gunman exploded. When a madman kills, all the damage is collateral damage.

Calling for an end to demonizing and vindictiveness, Obama targeted the source of America's illusory anger. Calling for a straight-forward exchange of ideas, he provided a role for the unhappy, a route toward a world of common understandings. Calling for an end to artificial divisions and made-up conflicts, he pointed America toward a unitive future.

Perhaps Fox News, Glen Beck's employer, had learned that Wikileaks now has "insurance" files on owner Rupert Murdoch. Perhaps the call for a unitive process simply pulled the rug out from under Beck and the oxygen out of his studio. Perhaps hearing Attorney General Holder reading from the New Testament's second letter of Paul to the Corinthians led Beck to realize that we are all God's disciples, even if we do not announce it to the world.

Perhaps America's differences have become now surrounded by America's unity.

Perhaps they always were.

On MSNBC news last night, on the very liberal Keith Olbermann show, who should appear as guest but an arch-conservative, a very logical arch-conservative, the National Journal's Reihan Salam, who managed to differ without demonizing.

Global Hero, Local Criminal, Exposes War Crimes

2010-12-28T04:14:00.001-06:00

Here below is a comment about Bradley Manning. I took it in its entirety from the comment stream of a posting on the Democratic Underground blog, here.

To the United States, of course, Bradley Manning is an anathema. He disclosed 250,000 diplomatic cables. He represents the loss of secrecy that is inevitable in this digital age where a person can fit a gigabyte under a fingernail. The message of his existence is that the Emperor wears no clothes. So we are trying to kill him. He is not being brought to trial. His obvious defense is that his responsibility is to the Constitution first, his commanding officers second. His trial would expose our perfidy. So he is getting the "slow torture" method that over a couple of years turned Jose Padilla into a vegetable, unable to stand trial.

There is a market for scuttlebutt. The world loves scandal. By invading Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States, exemplar of the finest ideals known to man, has gone rogue. We have done what Hitler did. Are we going to get away with it?

The world is round. There are many messengers. There are many Bradley Mannings.

PFC Bradley Manning, American Patriot:

Edited on Sun Dec-26-10 01:13 PM by Better Believe It

December 22, 2010

Why Manning was Within His Rights to Give Secrets to Wikileaks
PFC Bradley Manning, Patriot
By SHERWOOD ROSS

Under ordinary circumstances, the release of information labeled "secret" violates U.S. law, as intelligence specialist Manning undoubtedly knew. But if the U.S. is an aggressor state, as Germany was when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, doesn't that change everything? America under President George W. Bush attacked two small nations that posed no threat to it. Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan told BBC the US-led invasion of Iraq was "illegal." He said it contravened the UN Charter as the attack lacked Security Council approval. MIT Professor Noam Chomsky in his book "Imperial Ambitions," (Metropolitan), called the U.S. invasion of Iraq as "open an act of aggression as there has been in modern history, a major war crime."

By ratifying the UN Charter the U.S. agreed to refrain "from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state..." And international law authority Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois, Champaign, called the invasion of Afghanistan "an illegal armed aggression that has created a humanitarian catastrophe" for its 22 millions. (Destroying World Order, Clarity Press.)

And as these invasions are criminal, why shouldn't pertinent information about them not be brought to light? Whenever has it been wrong to expose a criminal enterprise? Public-spirited citizens go to the police and FBI every day to report crimes. "Under international law," says Boyle, professor of that subject, "citizens have a basic human right to resist the commission of international crimes by their own government, especially aggression..."

And this is what PFC Manning did. He resisted aggression by informing Americans of how their government breaks laws. The Associated Press reports Manning told an associate, "I want people to see the truth...because without information you cannot make informed decisions as a public." America's Founders believed that, too, and made a free press a cornerstone of the new nation. Ann Medlock, Founder of the Giraffe Heroes Project, says, "In a perfect world, institutions would listen to their staffers when they point out errors, lapses of ethics, and outright chicanery within the organization. Then those holding power would correct those flaws. But...that hasn't been the reality. Again and again authorities just blast away at the truthsayers rather than addressing the problems."

Read the full article at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/ross12222010.html

The writer didn't cover in his article another vital fact in defense of Pfc. Manning releasing government documents, and that is the improper classification of government documents. Most government classifications have absolutely nothing to do with protecting the United States from terrorists or other real "enemies" determined to do us harm.

The government routinely classifies millions of documents every year, not because they reveal vital secrets that threaten our security if they are published, but because those documents expose illegal government activities, lies and gross incompetence. These big government "national security secrets" must not see the light of day, so they remain hidden from the people under the false claim of "national security" .... The economic and political security of government officials that is.

And many of these "highly sensitive" documents are being rubber stamped "secret" or "confidential" in clear violation of the Freedom of Information Act!

So Pfc. Manning has done absolutely nothing that in any way threatens you or me.

The idea that he has somehow hurt us and that he is engaged in espionage or some other terrible criminal activity damaging to this nation and its general population is total bull shit.

All progressives should understand that by now!

Pfc.Manning is an American hero.

He's not a spy.

He's not a terrorist.

He's not trying to overthrow the government violently nor any other way for that matter.

He's just a courageous American whistle blower, a soldier trying to get out the truth about government policies to the people.

And for that the government will try to punish him for the rest of his life, as a warning to other potential whistle blowers.

If anything, Manning deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom for especially meritorious contribution to the national interests of the people of the United States, not solitary confinement!

BBI

Licky Weeks

2010-12-25T23:04:00.001-06:00

On the tenth of December, the planet Mercury appeared to begin moving backward as seen from the Earth. It does this three times a year in most years, each retrograde period being about three weeks long. During these periods, craziness declines. Obamas get elected. General McChrystals get demoted. Lame duck Congresses turn effective.

Several weeks before the retrograde, President Obama kludged together a bill that contained a couple of things that Republicans really wanted and a couple of things that Democrats really wanted and sent it to Congress for enactment. The Republicans would get tax cuts for the rich extended two years. The Dems would get another year of unemployment compensation for the poor. This bill set up election year 2012 as a time when serious concerns may come to the fore. If unemployment compensation runs out of funds at the end of 2011, then allowing the full expiration of the tax cuts at the end of 2012 will become a reasonable goal.

It was a middle ground, but like an island in an ocean. Neither party wanted to have anything to do with Obama's compromise. Then Mercury Retrograde struck.

On the day the period began, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders spent eight and a half hours filibustering against tax cuts for the rich. Senate business ground to a halt. Following that, the Senate re-grouped and passed bill after bill, including the tax cut bill, making this the most productive Congress since the '60s. The Republican consensus against voting for all good things Democratic was broken, with Senator after Republican Senator joining the Democrats in passing good new laws.

During the same weeks, a stunningly heroic script has been playing itself out over the incarceration of Julian Assange, a founder of WikiLeaks. According to Assange, through back-channels that flowed into back-channels, Wikileaks obtained a massive pile of State Department internal messages. After carefully vetting the find, they have been slowly releasing these messages to a press that waits like puppies for another biscuit.

There is always more to be shown, much more, so if anything really bad were to happen to Assange or to others on his team, an avalanche of message releases is probable. But something bad has happened -a Swedish prosecutor filed an international arrest warrant, and Assange was arrested and jailed in Britain on charges of being over-assertive during sex in Sweden some time ago. His arrest was immediately suspect.

Now released under house arrest, Assange is free to explain to the press his hobby, and the need for it to be the hobby of every citizen around the world. And Sweden is free to explain its sudden interest in protecting people from over-assertive sex, and whether it will now apply this new standard generally.

And the world learns...

Meanwhile, the probable leaker of the State Department documents, a file clerk named Bradley Manning, strangely sits in long-term solitary confinement in violation of international rules which call such use of extended solitary "torture", and in violation of U.S. laws that requires individuals to be held without punishment until a trial proves their guilt.

Meanwhile, attention is focusing more and more on Bradley Manning. May prayers be with him.

If he is the leaker, he joins a long list of heroes - Deep Throat, who fed the leaks to Woodward and Bernstein that brought down Nixon. Daniel Ellsburg, who published the Pentagon Papers that showed we had been losing, not winning, the war in Vietnam. It's an American tradition.

We tortured. We need to deal with it, and slow-torturing Bradley Manning is not the way.

For-Profit Prisons Lobby DC

2010-12-18T09:17:00.002-06:00

Been reading up on prisoner issues...

The U.S. has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prisoner population.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/23prison.html

We should have 5% of the world's prisoner population. We have 25%. Five times as many as is needed.

Can someone ask why?

I have a sense that the "law and order" crowd of the Reagan era saw punishment as reformative and set some things in motion that grew and grew until they are monsters today.

A person should be able to ask, "What is the cost to the taxpayer of all this incarceration?" Conservatives should be concerned about the taxes they are paying to keep people in prison. But maybe they made imprisonment pay for itself?

Does income from prison farms and prison industries make the cost of imprisonment irrelevant? Being able to lock up people without increasing taxes would be quite a nifty prospect for conservatives, but it forgets the moral imperative that we give extra care for the least of those among us.

And now we have for-profit prisons. Do they have prison industries? What legal envelope allows a for-profit prison? How are they expected to keep increasing their profits? Any company worth investing in needs to keep increasing its profits so its stock will go up. How do we keep the profit motive from driving the prison industry into driving us into prison?

Jesse Ventura, former wrestler and former governor, just released a video on FEMA internment camps. Munchies for the militia crowd. There may be general interest, this coming election, in prisoner issues.

For-profit prisons lobby for their industry in Washington. If for-profit prisons are profiting from prison industries... a monster is upon us.

How Wealth Is Shared

2010-11-15T09:25:00.007-06:00

Two postings ago, this writer observed that wealth is created when you receive something more valuable to you than what you have given for it.

In a simple model of the world's economic system, the post details the creation of wealth:

"Suppose Harriet the hairdresser pays Joe the plumber $50 to unclog the drain on her shampoo sink. Then Joe pays Mike the mechanic $50 to rotate his tires and bleed his brakes. Mike pays Brenda's Room and Board $50 for his room and board. Brenda pays Glenda the geek $50 to polish her web page. And Glenda gets her hair done over at Harriet's, who does a really good job and only charges $50.

Each is wealthier by $50. $250 for the group. No one has more money than they had before, yet each is wealthier. Each has created value for another."

Each is also poorer by the time and energy they spent helping someone. Each is richer by the difference between what they expend and what they receive.

For a person to be able create this wealth for another requires at least one $50 bill, or the transaction cannot occur.

But if there is only one $50 bill, then Glenda can't get her hair done until Brenda needs her web page polished. Brenda can't get her web page polished until Mike pays up on his room and board, and this waits until Joe needs Mike to rotate his tires, which waits until Harriet needs to get her drain unclogged. Each step has a predecessor that needs to be completed.

If there are two $50 bills in circulation, wealth creation can happen twice as fast. There will be half the delays. If on the other hand there are suddenly no bills, things will come to a halt until barter is redeveloped.

If every participant has a $50 bill, then anyone can get taken care of whenever they have a need. Every market can be filled. Need can be filled asynchronously, without any wait. Except that those who have spent their $50 bill then need to wait until their services are needed before they can spend again.

If the five-member marketplace has more than five $50 bills, then casual spending can move the extra money around, creating more wealth while allowing every member to keep a $50 reserve in case they need immediate service.

Adding more $50 bills could further increase casual spending, but people would also save them. Beyond a certain point, each additional $50 bill in the pool would generate less and less new wealth monthly.

The other day at the small grocery store down the street, I was given in change a "Where's George?" dollar. If you check the 'Where's George' site, you can see where it's been and tell where you spent it. I remarked on this, and the clerk explained that one of their customers apparently stamps "Where's George" on his dollars and pays with them. But the dollars come in again and again from other customers.

The 'Where's George' dollars lubricate the economy of the neighborhood.

Bush Confesses Torturing

2010-11-12T22:15:00.005-06:00

In a recent book, "Decision Points", former president George W. Bush stated that he did, in fact, order waterboarding. Waterboarding has been considered torture for generations. Bush's lawyers told him it was legal, he says.

Bush's bold confession has both the ACLU and Amnesty International calling for an investigation.

Meanwhile, in Britain, according to BBC News UK:

"Iraqi civilians systematically abused, court hears

More than 220 Iraqi civilians were subjected to "systemic abuse", including torture, by British soldiers and interrogators in Iraq, the High Court was told on Friday.

The allegations concern the period 2003 to 2008."

Victims of torture seek redress. A trial is underway.

Meanwhile, over at WikiLeaks, evidence is undergoing discovery:

"At 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports ('The Iraq War Logs'), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a 'SIGACT' or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.
The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 'friendly' (coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) of these are civilian deaths.That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period. For comparison, the 'Afghan War Diaries', previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivalent population size."

Clouds are gathering.

Moore's Law for Republicans

2010-10-26T14:38:00.002-05:00

This is the year that Republicans were confounded by their recorded history as it was presented to them in video after video, commercial after commercial. They do not understand the information age.

They do not understand that an agent for change is underway that doubles in power every two years. The ability to personally compare a politician's present statements with their past statements will be an iPhone app in years to come. They don't understand this at all.

Time after time, they are led into photo-ops for tomorrow's campaigns against them, denying their vote on laws they had once espoused. They have blocked judicial appointments, clogging the system. They hope to defund agencies. Their agenda is no secret. They preach it to tomorrow's cameras.

They do not understand Moore's Law. Gordon Moore of Intel back around 1968 noticed that transistors were getting about twice as small, twice as cheap and twice as fast every two years, and wrote a paper about it. Transistors have continued to do this for decades, and his observation has become considered to be a law.

It's the corollaries that get you in the heels.

If computing bang for the buck doubles every two years, then so does visibility.

If visibility doubles every two years, then so does transparency.

How do you anticipate transparency.

Where Wealth Is Made

2010-10-07T06:39:00.006-05:00

Walking through a thrift store the other day, my friend Bob latched on to a piece of glossy brass pipe, a converted gas-light lamp fixture that someone had taken down from a ceiling.

"See those rings?", he said, pointing to two circles of brass that had once held the glass shades. "I have to pay $5 just for one of these. Here, for $5 I'm getting the rings and the fixture. And I have a place for it."

He paid $5 and walked out of the store a wealthier man.

The world is round and money moves through a finite universe. Suppose we shrink the world down to five people.

Suppose Harriet the hairdresser pays Joe the plumber $50 to unclog the drain on her shampoo sink. Then Joe pays Mike the mechanic $50 to rotate his tires and bleed his brakes. Mike pays Brenda's Room and Board $50 for his room and board. Brenda pays Glenda the geek $50 to polish her web page. And Glenda gets her hair done over at Harriet's, who does a really good job and only charges $50.

Each is wealthier by $50. $250 for the group. No one has more money than they had before, yet each is wealthier. Each has created value for another.

By having a special skill none of the others had, each could give less and get more.

The more special the skill, the less time it takes to give.

Wealth collects vertically when money moves laterally.

Did God Invent Science?

2010-10-02T09:22:00.004-05:00

Science is the art of discovering reproducible results. Can you reduce a phenomenon to a formula and make it happen again? Everyone seems to be doing this all the time.

Each living thing is a reproducible result. Others worked the formula, and out we all came. God uses science. In fact, we are reproducible reproducible results.

Let No Woman Live In Fear

2010-09-23T09:17:00.002-05:00

No woman should need to live in fear simply because she is a woman.

But in certain cultures, in certain religions, women are minimized, women are trivialized. Women are tainted and damned. Stoned when they break free.

If equal rights for all are to come to these places, then their women must be free.

Their women must be freed. They must be helped to free themselves.

No woman should ever live in fear because she is a woman.

Can this be policy, Mr. President?

Problems Clearly Stated

2010-08-16T21:02:00.010-05:00

"A problem clearly stated is half solved!" crowed my father, many times, as he analyzed yet another problem to death. Pull the props and crutches out of an issue, and the failings became apparent. The more he knew about a problem, the better a solution he could design.

Google and Wikipedia have been providing what I need to know to solve about 70% of the problems I have brought to them this year. Not so, last year. More data than ever before is out there every time I look.

Politicians who offer solutions to the electorate's problems need to know the data before they speak. Right-wing pols seem to have limited access to data. Perhaps if they had the same data the government has, they would come to the same conclusions about solutions. It would at least be harder for them to propose pre-packaged ideas that are already known not to work.

Proposals that are realistic will look increasingly better as more data becomes available over time.

Proposals that are spun from cow dung will look increasingly doubtful.

Ideas that look only slightly foolish today - like birtherism, the faith in a belief that President Obama was not born in the USA - will look absolutely idiotic ten years from now.

More data. More clarity.

Does available data double every two years, like computing power? Probably.

The Magic Color Test

2010-07-28T08:50:00.007-05:00

Are you color-blind?

Someone named Sharon writes, in response to an article on race relations history in the Albany, Georgia local paper,

"Just imagine McCain/Palin as black and Obama/Biden as white. Headline: Obama wins all 50 states!"

Imagine.

I imagine Congressman Charles Rangel white - and he resembles Howard Dean. John Boehner, whitened, looks like Eric Kantor. (Oh, wait... uh...) Suddenly... this gets easier as I go on... suddenly I can see Sarah Palin as a black person. Gee, that was easy!

I must practice this on the bus.

It gets easier and easier...

It's funny, the bus driver looks like he really should be teaching college...

It's color-blinding!

Visibility Watch

2010-07-05T09:48:00.011-05:00

Watching the government trying to hide information has become quite a game.

Just like the Republican hierarchy, much of the government does not realize the implications of the digital revolution, which is a steamroller that continues unimpeded. Every two years, the "bang for the buck" in computing doubles. You get twice as much computer. One must consider the implications.

People can store more data. They can send it around more easily. They can bring it home from work more easily, and take it with them to their next job. If they are leaving the military to go into journalism, this may require a 32 gigabyte flash drive. Smaller than their thumb.

People can audit data more easily. They can make sure that the "sum of the totals" of columns matches the "total of the sums" of rows in a spreadsheet or in anything that can be represented in a spreadsheet. They can check a spreadsheet twice as large today as they did two years ago.

People now do similar proof tests on politicians' claims. It is ever easier to cross-check their claims against the record. Claims of military service no longer go unexamined, as they did in the Bush election of 2000. Are the claims backed up by external records?

Republicans in particular seem unaware that what they said yesterday to a reporter walking down the street will live forever. If they say today that the moon is made of green cheese and they say blue cheese tomorrow, they will need to explain the change in their thinking.

There are still people in the government who imagine that they can throw a cloak of darkness over things they don't want seen - but cloaks of darkness are seen!

A wonderful example of this was the greying-out on google/yahoo maps several years ago of Cheney's residence in Washington. 'Here's where!" the greying announced.

So it is that British Petroleum, distantly an arm of the British government, has blocked news coverage of much of the Gulf oil spill, constantly putting out soothing news of their own making, trying to look like a lollipop in a dentist's office. This has involved hiring local police officers to prowl in uniform and in official police cars - but on their own time, responsible to BP - to keep people from the beaches.

BP's grasp on the power structure now extends to the federal government as well.

Here, from Democratic Underground, is a video of newsman Anderson Cooper explaining the Coast Guard's new rules that will make it a felony for anyone to get close enough to take pictures of the problems.

Says Billy Nungesser, the president of Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana, "This is crazy... ...anyone that wants to come down to Plaquemines Parish, we'll take you right up to show you the birds. I don't give a care about their rule."

The South is rising again to fight the North, which has been taken over by the British.

Civil disobedience, Mr. President. How do you plan to deal with it?

The whole world is watching. What could BP be trying to hide?

Is the oil skimming just a band-aid on what is a mortal wound to the Gulf? Have they decided that it is better to kill the Gulf with detergent than to let the oil ride a storm surge up into the wetlands and kill the coast? Are they trying to keep the damage rate a secret so their stock doesn't collapse and force them into bankruptcy?

What's the big secret? No sense hiding it. We're just around the corner, you know.

So Little

2010-06-19T23:24:00.000-05:00

It would have taken so little for things to have been done right.

A Solemn Prayer

2010-06-16T22:35:00.007-05:00

Last night, President Obama ended his oval-office speech to the nation on the Gulf oil leak crisis with a prayer that combined the model for Christian redemption with the model for social action for the common good:

"Each year, at the beginning of shrimping season, the region’s fishermen take part in a tradition that was brought to America long ago by fishing immigrants from Europe. It’s called “The Blessing of the Fleet,” and today it’s a celebration where clergy from different religions gather to say a prayer for the safety and success of the men and women who will soon head out to sea -– some for weeks at a time.

The ceremony goes on in good times and in bad. It took place after Katrina, and it took place a few weeks ago –- at the beginning of the most difficult season these fishermen have ever faced.

And still, they came and they prayed. For as a priest and former fisherman once said of the tradition, “The blessing is not that God has promised to remove all obstacles and dangers. The blessing is that He is with us always,” a blessing that’s granted “even in the midst of the storm.”

The oil spill is not the last crisis America will face. This nation has known hard times before and we will surely know them again. What sees us through -– what has always seen us through –- is our strength, our resilience, and our unyielding faith that something better awaits us if we summon the courage to reach for it.

Tonight, we pray for that courage. We pray for the people of the Gulf. And we pray that a hand may guide us through the storm towards a brighter day. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America."

"Something better awaits if we can summon the courage to reach for it."

"We pray that a hand may guide us through the storm."

Heaven awaits us, if we can reach beyond our earthly scope. A larger force can guide us if we ask it. We decide.

Today, President Obama brought home for the American people a $20 billion payment yielded by British Petroleum. It will start an independent fund that can help pay for the damages and loss of income. A first installment, some say.

He decided.

$4300 A Barrel Will Recover The Oil

2010-06-11T13:58:00.003-05:00

Can we pay fishermen $4300 for every barrel of oil they bring in? BP's fine will cover the cost. The oil is proof of the pudding. We hand it off to BP. $4300 equips the fishermen with respirators.

They will clean near the shore first.

BP may find themselves paying for leakage from all the other wells, but that will force them to bring leakage issues to the fore with Halliburton, who should have been sealing the wells.

Could A Sleeve Hold The Oil?

2010-06-11T07:31:00.006-05:00

(This expands on an earlier post)

Imagine a back-yard swimming pool of strong, flexible mylar plastic, 100 feet across, a mile deep, and upside down over the oil leak.

What is the worst that can happen?

Weighted down at the edges, touching the bottom, it could hold the oil. It could hold 40 million cubic feet of oil until BP finds ships to off-load it. That's 310 million gallons, almost 6 million barrels of oil. Once the sleeve gets full, slip another one in place. The oil would not be under pressure, just contained.

Touching the bottom, the sleeve would limit submarine access to the wellhead. But that would last only until the relief wells succeed. Then the wellhead could be repaired.

If submarines still must tinker with the wellhead, if the present pipe that is pulling a fraction of the oil up into tankers must stay in place, then why not make a 1000 foot wide skirt that can float a hundred feet above the ocean floor and capture oil as it rises from the work site below?

Open wide at the bottom, this "range hood" above the robot submarines could funnel escaping oil upward into a containment sleeve.

Could BP tankers ship the oil away fast enough if it all came directly to the surface?

What is the worst that could happen?

Spike The Leak

2010-06-06T10:26:00.003-05:00

British Petroleum has now succeeded in sawing off the broken riser pipe from its spouting oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. The polluting oil exits directly upwards.

Suppose a 50 foot long spike were now lowered into the well?

- - - -
(6-8-10) Well, it appears that spiking the central leak would just force the oil out secondary leaks lower down.

ALL that can be done is to accept all the oil that comes, and to accept it in a way that keeps it non-destructive. For example, a long shroud or sleeve could cover the wellhead and receive the oil, moving it to the surface while keeping it in a defined space. At the surface it could easily be dealt with.

A shroud would, however, block access to the wellhead. The shroud that captures the oil would prevent the submarine from playing with the wellhead.

BP appears to be trying to rebuild the well. Return things to normal. The damage to the environment hasn't hit home yet as a drilling cost they will have to pay.

Perhaps relocating the flow to the surface until the relief wells take hold should be their highest priority.

Would A Mile-Long Condom Hold The Flow?

2010-06-01T20:12:00.002-05:00

How hard would it be to make a mylar condom ten feet in diameter and a mile long and to drop the bottom end over the oil leak?

Could we at least relocate the leak to the surface?

Weighted at the bottom, held open by spring wire, the tube could contain the flow, and if it is enlarged at the top, it could also collect the flow as a holding tank.

The flow does not need to randomly disperse into the ocean.

If the tube were twenty feet across, it could hold quite a bit of flow.

What the cost?

Can You Change?

2010-05-21T06:51:00.001-05:00

Can you change faster than the world is changing?

Then you can change the world.

How To Stop The Oil Leak

2010-05-15T07:26:00.005-05:00

The oil leak in the gulf consists of two problems. Solve them sequentially.

First, the pipe is broken. Second, the oil is coming through at such a velocity that it makes repair impossible. Repairers must stop or slow the flow of oil before fixing the pipe. The mass of fast-moving oil in the pipe is like a freight train that blows away any attempt to obstruct it directly.

Could the flow be progressively slowed until it is stopped or at least reaches a level of tolerable seepage?

Suppose a fifty foot square of galvanized chain link fencing, heavily weighted at the edges, were laid down over the leak? It would diffuse the flow. It would add just a little back pressure, slowing the flow perhaps a couple of percent.

Suppose three or four more more layers of chain link went down. Would it slow the leak ten percent?

Remember chicken wire? The holes in chicken wire are slightly smaller than chain link. Suppose a mesh of chicken wire under a layer of chain link went down? And then another couple of these. Would it slow the flow 25%?

Remember half-inch wire mesh? Window screen?

Once the flow is slowed to a trickle, the well-head can be fixed at leisure.

It would be like using a 10-pound trout line to catch a 20 pound trout. You tire him out first, then reel him in and lift him up in a net.

When Companies Snap

2010-05-05T07:27:00.013-05:00

McAfee, a major seller of anti-virus software, recently stepped all over some customers' toes. Overnight, the company had installed an upgrade in their clients' computers. But they had failed to test it properly. They did not test using a full suite of target operating systems. One version of Windows failed, a commercial version. Many companies began the day with their networks down.

This writer has had a recent personal experience of McAfee suddenly billing for renewal on a system long out of service. VISA reversed the charge.

McAfee's testing department is possibly underfunded. Understaffed. This may lose the company some customers, but it perhaps saves some pennies overall.

It's an efficiency. Capitalism seeks efficiencies. Discovering a new efficiency edges the bottom line forward. Profit increases. The stock price rises.

The quality control department is not a profit center.

There may be a "right natural ratio" between money spent on development and money spent on testing new development. When testing funds are cut to bloat the bottom line, the income and then the budget of the whole company shrink to re-establish that right natural ratio.

Shrink is quickening into snap. McAfee's profits are down 30% for the quarter.

Microsoft itself has now called an end to the predator-prey virus game. It is providing free anti-virus software. A Windows user needs merely to go to Microsoft Updates and download their free Microsoft Security Essentials. It auto-updates with new virus information, just like the others. And MS has a well-funded testing staff.

(The reader may want to uninstall virus software you are not using. Even though it is no longer receiving updates, it may still be running, testing for the viruses it knows about, even as a newer replacement also tests. Your computer will run much faster with it uninstalled. One anti-virus is enough. This writer has also successfully used Clam-Win, a free groupware product.)

So another company has snapped. A good Irish one, too. Alas.

British Petroleum snapped a week ago.

A mile-deep well in the Gulf of Mexico, incompetently protected, failed to close automatically when its pumping platform blew up. The flow cannot be stopped for weeks or months. The slick already will coat northern Gulf Coast shores, destroying the fishing industry. It may reach the eastern seaboard, possibly even Europe.

British Petroleum will pay the cost of the cleanup. The U.S. government is doing the clean-up. Before it is over, British Petroleum may be called American Petroleum.

Capitalism is a wonderful environment at the beginning of a company's product life cycle. It allows borrowing money based on future expectations for sales and profit. There is a market to be met, new customers to add.

But for corporations that have maximized their growth, increasing their efficiency is the only way to get the stock price to rise. So they cut costs. They bring in hatchet-men to fire the dead wood. They save pennies every way they can. And then the next year they do it again. Until they snap.

And the whole world shrinks. The world shrinks for everyone.

So is investing in the testing system the key to future health and growth? Funding government-run quality control? Funding a better FDA, a better industrial safety system? Universal quality control?

Or should the perennial need for increased efficiency force corporations to skate ever nearer and nearer to the edge of the ice on safety?

Why should a company whose product life cycle has peaked be allowed to let efficiency decide that safety be damned? Should the world shrink?

Quality control is not a profit center. Except for the world.

April 20, 2010

2010-04-20T17:43:00.009-05:00

Another national marijuana day has come and gone. It gets better every year.

Washington DC this year is decriminalizing medical marijuana. If weed can treat grief from loss, can treat depression, anger, hysteria, fears of bugaboos or treat periodic loss of contact with reality, then it may be a purifying force. At worst, depressed people under medication may suddenly have all sorts of happy people wanting to come by to help cheer them up. Spiritual suffering caused by mental addictions will be relieved by a growing appreciation of the greater whole.

That is to say, the commons is the cure for those who would joust at windmills, but that's a post for another day.

Californians will vote this November on whether to legalize weed, totally legalize it. Let the sale of it be taxed, like wine and beer. California needs the money.

Other states need the money, too. Many are in dire straits. If California's marijuana tax produces a healthy revenue stream, then other states might consider doing the same. Especially adjacent states, whose citizens will undoubtedly send local money over the state line - send it out of state - to make legal buys.

If California legalizes marijuana, then research will happen. The true nature of the weed will be known. The government of these United States has suppressed research for decades. An open field beckons. Surely, the drug companies will fund research at California universities, hoping to be first to codify its essence.

Has anyone died from marijuana? If not, something special may be happening. Soon, we will know what it is.

Predictive logic once led many people to think that since smoke from any burning vegetation is bad because it includes bad chemicals, then marijuana smoke is also bad because it is from burning vegetation. So why hasn't anyone died from marijuana smoke? Why hasn't anyone destroyed their lungs?

Could it be protecting them? Soon we will know. Perhaps it "walks back" cells into being stem cells, allowing adaptive growth. It rejuvenates. Better than Viagra.

If shown harmless - as personal experience, if not science, has proven for many people - then the illegality of the drug will be in question. Its illegality appears to be arbitrary. Marijuana illegality is an instance of the government making something illegal for the sake of showing that it can do whatever it wants, logic be damned.

If government can make marijuana illegal - then it can make anything illegal. It can be arbitrary.

The marijuana law instantiates government's right to be arbitrary. To the point that the John Roberts Supreme Court has recently ruled that people who grow the weed for personal use inside their own homes are liable under federal laws because the Commerce clause in the Constitution lets federal government regulate the commerce between states. Growing it in your home reduces your participation in the - illegal - commerce that happens between states. Ergo, it affects interstate commerce.

Why growing marijuana should affect interstate commerce and growing radishes should not, I would love to discover. I have grown radishes. I did not eat the imports from Mexico. I took my dollars out of the system, both interstate commerce and international commerce. It was a global act, growing my radishes. And my tomatoes. So therefore, the United Nations has a right to inspect my back yard?

Hello, John Roberts Supreme Court...?

As California shifts the tax burden to marijuana and prepares to welcome many tourists traveling in motor-homes pulling trailers, the federal government will have a lot of unwinding to do. Hello, reality.

I would invest in California motor-home parks and service shops. Time-shares. Tourist lodges.

Where would you rather vacation?

Full Of It

2010-04-14T17:50:00.001-05:00

We are all full of ourselves, although sometimes it is very quiet. A still pond awaiting a rock.

How can we be empty?

Beware the Peccadilloes

2010-04-12T21:17:00.010-05:00

Both the Catholic Church and the Republican Party suddenly are being devoured by their peccadilloes.

Newly visible in this dawning age of full and perfect knowledge, small peccadillos mate and form larger peccadilloes. Peccadilloes love publicity. The more they get, the larger they grow. The larger they grow, the more they get. So long as peccadilloes continue to get publicity, they can stay alive and grow for a long time.

For some holy fathers, fiddling with children, which was once a mere peccadillo, is now turning out to have been a violation of the law, both God's and man's. Oh, dear. So they cope by calling these reports of their abuse "gossip", attempting to demonize the complainers.

Nonny, nonny.

For the Republican Party, recent peccadilloes include using donor dollars to pay for visits by their young turks to a pricey pseudo-lesbian bondage nightclub. One of those very arty places. Then the Florida Republican Party discovered that 1.3 million dollars of charges to the American Express card of a staffer have been reimbursed. Strange, slushy charges.

Republican donors may think, "Am I just feeding a peccadillo?" and send their money instead to Glen Beck's favorite gold hedge fund or to the Veterans of the Spanish-American War. Good Catholics perhaps will give directly to worthy causes, not funneling their gifts through the Church.

Donor dollars dwindle for those beset by peccadilloes.

Let Priests Marry Priests

2010-03-30T21:59:00.009-05:00

Why not let priests in the Catholic Church marry other priests? Priests do so in many other churches. The Pope's problems with priests turning into child molesters will be solved. Or, Pope aside, at least the Church will be saved. Give the priests a sexual outlet, for God's sake.

Simple, stu. Case closed.

- - - - - - -

Well, not quite. I suggested this idea today to a Catholic friend, and he reminded me that part of the problem is that pedophiles - not quite the same as we homosexuals - also find their way into the Church so they can victimize little kids. So it's not just a matter of priests who didn't fit into the world and so joined the priesthood forgetting their vows when they can't hold their juices any longer and getting turned on to the altar boys. It also appears to involve Sunday Schools and child choirs.

Much of what has been common in the Church appears to be unraveling in the every brighter light of legal discovery in the digital age. Stories - and the stories of the wounded, and their spiritual lives thereafter - remain to be told. The Church's institutionalized homophobia may well turn out not to be a product of the gay people in the clergy but of the pedophiles.

Clergy to clergy sex is one thing. Bedrock of the church. Clergy to parishioner sex quite another, under any circumstances. Within a parishioner relationship, predatory sex is quite another. It is sex as power, slow rape. Predation within society is a disease.

Gay sex is normal sex. It is a normal form of sex. It has been observed in over 460 different animal species. It is not usual, but it is normal. It co-exists. Swans and also penguins - far different from our own species - form long-term gay bonds. It is normal.

I do think that letting priests have normal sexual outlets through gay marriage would establish in the Church an inner culture that would recognize and regulate the physical needs of the male horsies these erstwhile holies ride. Let's face it, the culture is there already. Many priests are already gay, many are bonded. Let's marry them.

Each Christian - and many of us Hindu Buddhists - walks a path with Jesus. It is his own, but two can walk as one.

Government For The People

2010-03-22T09:03:00.002-05:00

Fingers are uncrossing all over America. The health care bill has passed.

Bought Senators contorted it almost beyond belief, beyond support, but it passed.

"Government by the people" now enables "government for the people".

What else can we pass?

Ghosts Cannot Think

2010-03-13T10:53:00.005-06:00

Ghosts propel Republicans these days. The ghost of Ronald Reagan, that great increaser of the national debt, whispers "Tax cuts! Tax cuts!" They've heard those words before. They echo them. It feels good.

"No government is good government!" shouts the man who arms his neighbors against marauders.

When Republicans ran the government, they had the facts on hand but they could ignore them as they chose and then contrive fantasy worlds out of what remained. Now, without access to those streams of real information, they have only the echoes of the past to rely on. Mottoes and creeds.

What the past gives them does not help them analyse the present. Ronald Reagan said very little about climate change - it wasn't so noticeable back then. So for modern conservatives, it doesn't exist. They deny its existence. They can't think about it because their ghosts provide no words to say.

Echoes are not real thoughts.

Make Your Own Fake Video, Like O'Keefe

2010-02-28T22:27:00.011-06:00

The software costs only $100. It comes from Corel.

Here is their online tutorial showing how to super-impose video of a person, say a girl-friend dressed as a prostitute, over a background video of something else, say the front desk of a public service organization you hope to destroy. In the tutorial, we see a lady appearing to fondle a large balloon as it deflates. This is probably the original inspiration for Mr. O'Keefe.

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Content/1245942827605

Getting a girl-friend and getting her to dress as a prostitute is the hardest part. Especially if she changes her mind afterwards, as did James O'Keefe's girlfriend, Hannah Giles. A few weeks after O'Keefe was arrested for a bumbling attempt to gather background video in a senator's office in a federal office building, she is singing like a bird, telling the world that the whole Acorn expose was a fake, with hokeyed-up video. A cut-and-paste job.

Everyone believes her but the New York Times. "Prove it!" they say. They are reluctant to admit that they have been faked out. Seduced by the truthiness of a story. Pwned.

Is perhaps the Corel video tutorial above not proof enough that anyone with $100 can impugn a good organization with faked video? The technology is trivial, the confession is in hand.

The New York Times stands on its story, explains BradBlog at Democratic Underground. Acorn was a baddie, O'Keefe for real, says the NYT. They don't have the $100 Corel video software. They don't know about these things.

Our Death Rains Down

2010-02-23T07:57:00.004-06:00

Death we give. Blindly, then expect ourselves to live.

(McClatchy) "Coalition forces realized their mistake when they arrived at the scene and found the bodies of women and children.
The police chief said that most of the civilians were Hazara, an ethnic minority in Afghanistan that traditionally has little sympathy for Taliban insurgents, who are predominantly Pashtun."

"NATO officials said that coalition forces targeted the vehicles because they thought they were filled with Taliban reinforcements preparing to attack NATO and Afghan forces a few miles away."

"The vehicles that were hit Sunday were traveling through a Taliban-controlled area, said Saeed Zahir Zia, a local police chief who visited the site of the attack. Zia said the dead included a 3-year-old boy and 9-year-old-girl."

It's our war zone, but it's their country.

This comes after our forces bombed on February 14th a home in Marjah in which civilians were huddled, unable to escape the violence around them.

Our violence. Something we're really good at.

What can we expect will happen now?

Can we move our war zone to some place where there are no people?

Shelby's Stand

2010-02-06T06:47:00.010-06:00

Senator Shelby of Alabama has just put on hold all outstanding Executive Branch nominations until the Senate gives him two big pork-barrel earmarks for his state. Getting his own, he is, as are these two big donors to his campaigns.

Republicans have the ability to filibuster any bill. In a minority, they lately threaten to filibuster every bill. Some bills, like the final health reform bill, will never please them.

A Senator can put a nomination on hold to ensure that questions about the nominee are resolved before granting them the job. By upping the ante and blocking all nominations, Shelby blocks government itself until he gets his way. Usually, government doesn't like that approach.

Senator Shelby's use of the rules to coerce the Senate for personal gain may force the changing of Senate rules. By raising the stakes, he risks losing his game.

Those who want to get things done without perpetual fear of filibuster are already pressuring for the Senate to open under new rules. Shelby makes this more likely.

O'Keefe's Dilemma

2010-01-31T17:36:00.038-06:00

A certain Mr. James O'Keefe the III sits today on the horns of a dilemma. Either way he moves, he gets pricked.

He was nabbed last week with two accomplices dressed in fake phone company outfits, messing with the phones in the Hale Boggs Federal Office Building, in the offices of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu.

His team had gotten so far as to see the bottom of the receptionist's phone. This would have given them its line number and possibly a phone closet distribution box tag identifying the circuit the phone was on. They next asked for entry to the phone closet. That's when their plan fell apart. Asked for credentials, they said that their phone company IDs had been "left in the truck." The three were arrested.

O'Keefe, the leader of the band, had been taking videos with his cell-phone. One of the fake repairmen had a video camera in his hard hat. A fourth conspirator was discovered in a car with a 'listening device', according to the affidavit supporting their arrests.

From the little that is known from the affidavit, several interesting scenarios are possible.

The most benign horn of the dilemma - but most embarrassing scenario for the far right - would be that O'Keefe and company were just capturing background footage for a fake sting video, similar to their Planned Parenthood and Acorn videos.

In both the Planned Parenthood video and the Acorn videos, O'Keefe appears to have used heavy editing and green-screen overlays to delude the viewer.

To make a green-screen overlay, you just record your foreground subject in front of a single-color screen. In the computer, you then click on that single-color background and specify that tint as 'transparent'. Voila, you have an overlay. There are probably little artifacts in these videos of spots where the actress' clothes match for a moment the 'transparent' tint and the background shows through. 'ANDing' the images of the office pre-actress and with actress present should illuminate these artifacts.

To make this defense, O'Keefe will need to show how he has done it before. He will need to show the backgrounds and overlays for his past videos. One would think. That would prove his innocence. But it would end his career. 31 Republican Congressmen sponsored a resolution commending his fake Acorn sting. Suppose they take it back?

If O'Keefe chooses not to use this 'fake news sting' defense, then the listening device in the car suggests a bug was about to be placed. Perhaps the listening device itself was the bug, waiting for a safe route to its destination. If O'Keefe fails to expose himself as a faker, then he gets jailed as a spy or saboteur. Pricked either way. His balloon or his booty.

On Australian Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel, Sean Hannity has just interviewed Mr. O'Keefe. The lead perpetrator insisted that his crew was there simply to investigate reports that Senator Landrieu's phone system was broken.

Her phone system had been jammed by a call-in campaign, not broken. The public complaint had been that it was jammed. Not that it was broken.

On Hannity, O'Keefe was sticking by his script. Ergo, he had a script. Ergo, he was there to take some video. But the listening device? Was it there to later capture audio for reprocessing? The listening device has the words "for later" somehow written in its own script.

O'Keefe did mention in a speech a few days earlier that people would soon be hearing about his next exploit. Being public about being up to something suggests no fear of law enforcement issues. Of course, having the son of a U.S. Attorney on your team of invaders, as O'Keefe did, could give a certain sense of fearlessness. But that he should be so public - promising a release date - suggests that he had his process in hand. He was sure that he would have a story.

If not to make faked-up videos to embarrass a Senator, then what else could this crew have been up to, but disrupting or bugging her phone line? That they asked to get into the phone cabinet sort of condemns them. On federal property, presenting themselves falsely as phone men, asking for access to critical systems?

Either way, these boys are facing time. Time for entry under false pretenses. Maybe time for attempted vandalism. Maybe even time for attempted espionage. Short time or long time. James O'Keefe led his followers into a life of crime.

If he keeps upping the ante, he could someday become the ultra-right's Mumia Abu-Jamal. "Free James!!!", they will shout. As he sits on death row.

Mr. O'Keefe, why does your dilemma have horns? Does this reflect on a choice in your life made long ago, perhaps not even by you? Does this seem to have been the best choice for a happy life? Life does await you, one way or the other, happy or un. Would you rather a different choice had been made? What would it have been?

Time gives a person a chance to leave one life and enter another. To go back and begin again from where the good path got fouled up with anger which you didn't dare express. Where a parent maybe stepped on your turtle because they had told you to keep it off the just-cleaned floor. Go there. Time will let you do this.

Time will not be your enemy so much as your friend. Time spent away from the matrix of vain discontent of those who lack job skills to match their intelligence will do you good. Time spent among those who lack the intelligence to fulfill their job skills will be a sea-change. Perhaps you will find common ground and a broader life course.

Over time.

"Cite Your Sources"

2010-01-31T06:43:00.011-06:00

Rational discussion. It's fallen to that.

Here is a comment from a McClatchy article on a change in military policy -

"viking51 wrote on 01/30/2010 05:57:27 AM:

Fiftycent,

Nonsense. Cite your Clinton budget numbers and cite where all the 100s of billions of defense dollars were diverted to social programs.

Your conclusion is not fact based but ideology based. If you can't (or won't) cite your sources demonstaraing your assertion, we know your full of BS."

First, note that Mr. viking51 doesn't spell-check. Nor does he remember from high school that there is a difference between "your" and "you're". He speaks for a section of America that lives in verbal land. And he wants factual facts.

Secondly, notice how generic his second paragraph is, how easy to cut and paste. In fact, his whole comment could become a template, good for use wherever bad ideas are sold.

Cite your sources. What is your evidence?

The Activist Moderates Are Coming

2010-01-30T06:46:00.044-06:00

Obama drops truth bomb, world is stunned...

One usually thinks of moderation as a form of denial, as for example when one denies oneself that extra sugar cube in the morning coffee.

But yesterday, at a retreat with House Republicans, President Obama modeled a new kind of moderation, activist moderation. He spoke a bit, then had a question-and-answer session. All this was televised nationally. The Q and A session was so stunning that MSNBC promptly dropped their evening news shows to do a long special on it, which they then repeated. Question by question, something not recently seen on TV had unfolded before their eyes.

Continental classroom. Ask Mr. President!

Proving for professional doubters that he can think on his feet without a teleprompter, fielding all questions with warm grace, Obama showed what a deliberative discussion can be. The teacher was ready for their questions. He proved that he listens. He came prepped, as a good teacher should be. He was at the top of his form.

Presented with contrived falsities, he broke them to the core, politely, with all due respect. When facts were omitted to prove a point, he had the facts that contradicted it.

He pointed out again and again how Republicans who assert conspiracy theories box themselves into a null space that separates them from their constituents. One-upmanship in regressive policy leads out onto a plank over water. As the ship sways. In the sun. He basically invited them to come in off the plank.

He pointed to Republican roots in the current health care bill, both in ideas that came from them in the days of the Clinton health care bill and in ideas taken from their current proposals. Obama showed the group that their claim that their ideas were excluded from the process was false.

He welcomed them into collegial discussion. In doing so, he constructed a space where this can continually happen. Because next month, it will likely be the Progressives' turn and then the Republicans' turn again. Dare they hide?

This is very helpful for Republicans. Having been in control for so long, many of them have forgotten how to advise. Here they were advising. Their advice was heard and considered, their questions were answered. Their television exposure was vast, if occasionally embarrassing. They were real for a moment. In the light.

President Obama was born in the day when the civil rights struggle was called the "Integration Movement". He is an integrator. He has just constructed integrative space. Well-lighted integrative space.

While he may be passive as a progressive and so need activist progressives to put wind in his sails, as a moderate he is an activist. A super-wonk moderate activist. A teacher waiting for a class.

A new era has begun, a cycle of rational humanism, reality over rhetoric, and data over delusion. Light of a new day.

Let the sunshine in.

Republicans Are Encircled

2010-01-28T08:13:00.009-06:00

Last night during the President's 'State Of The Union' speech, as the Republicans programatically sat on their hands like good Stepford Senators, President Obama used them like a comedian uses a straight man or a prop.

He told his audience how his administration had fulfilled a goal of cutting taxes. Getting applause from everyone but the block of non-participants sitting in prayer on the left side of the aisle, he pointed to them and observed, per HuffPo's Sam Stein, "I thought I'd get at least some applause on that one!" to the delight of the majority of those present.

Republicans did not applaud the cutting of taxes.

When the President spoke of the Roberts Supreme Court's recent decision to let global money buy American elections, the members of this conservative court sat silent and unmoving in the front row, but for Samuel Alito. As Sam Stein recounts, he appears to have mumbled "Not true!". We'll see. There were no blushes, but all eyes were on them.

President Obama mentioned that at the beginning of the year 2000 there was a surplus in the treasury. When he arrived in office 8 years later, there was a massive deficit, the economy was a wreck, and America was trapped in two wars, no hero in the world anymore.

"It was this way when I walked in the door!" he said, pausing for a long moment of reflection.

Republicans were caught between their commitment to non-applause and the fact of the previous administration's failings. There they sat, like chastened boys, waiting for the whip.

In Britain, the notion that our war on Iraq was and is a crime is gaining a serious foothold, as commissions report that they were fooled by false intelligence we sent them. George Bush's war is en route to becoming a Republican albatross that will hang on Republican necks for years. Here in America, while Obama has kindly held back the floodgates of indictments, grand juries quietly work onward. Leaks happen. Freedom of Information requests open files.

Being Republican is becoming harder to explain. Independents have options that Republicans do not.

When Republicans departing their party can explain to the home crowd why they left, then it will fall apart.

Obama Needs Progressives Actively Pushing

2010-01-24T17:16:00.004-06:00

Obama needs active progressives to drive him into doing good. He's not going to go out on a limb and be progressive all by himself.

Is he a passive-progressive?

Int'l Corps Shall Rule, Says The Roberts Supreme Court

2010-01-21T22:45:00.012-06:00

International corporations are people, too, the Supreme Court has just said, and they should be allowed to buy and sell American politicians just as easily as any rich individual can.

Judge Roberts and the conservatives who rule the Court say that corporations should be free to buy ads touting a candidate. Free to dump lies on a candidate they don't like. Imagine if we could do that in China! China can now do it here.

He was probably thinking of American-owned corporations. But even American-owned corporations are traded globally, have foreign offices and have foreign interests. Not all of those interests coincide with the interests of the United States.

Globally traded corporations are now free to sponsor recall drives of American politicians they don't like, or who don't cater to their wishes. Or to impeach the Supreme Court.

Congress and the White House will probably quickly correct this. Foreign ownership of U.S. corporations must disqualify them from political games. Foreign partnerships are likewise a problem. Could Fiat stage a fiat?

And what about non-profit corporations, where there is no 'ownership' as such? Non-profits are not 'owned', only managed. Their assets go to other non-profits when they die.

Does it also now becomes true that foreign non-profit corporations - charities, environmental groups, political groups - are able to support American candidates? Will the Labor Party of Britain send care packages to its favorite American candidates? It is not foreign-owned, only foreign-managed.

Will any foreign power be able to buy elections in America, so long as it wears a corporate non-profit face and opens an American office?

Will the campaign to impeach Chief Justice John Roberts be global?

Mommy And Daddy Will Always Be Fighting

2010-01-20T17:50:00.011-06:00

Mommy and daddy will always fight when their names are The Democratic Party and The Republican Party.

Like myself and so many friends who long for the days before their parents divorced - the days when mommy and daddy were together - and who hope to reconstruct this communion from which they were born, President Obama has an unnatural wish to see reconciliation between systemic opposites.

Every question has three sides - your side, my side and the right side. So said my father, in the days after the divorce. In Congress, the right side always turns out the be the side with the most votes. Every decision is an up-or-down vote. Yes or no. However many political parties we ever have, when the vote comes, some will vote 'yes' and some will vote 'no'.

It is in the design of the system. Mommy - the nurturing, caring political party - will always be fighting daddy - the defending warrior who brings home the bacon, sometimes somebody else's bacon. In a guns-versus-butter world, there will always be a guns party and there will always be a butter party.

President Obama is looking for compromise, hoping to achieve buttery guns and gunnish butter.

Mommy and daddy will always be fighting.

Can We Air-drop Bread To Haiti?

2010-01-15T20:32:00.003-06:00

Haitians are starving, in their third day without food or water. Their sea-port is unusable, and their airport has only one runway.

No runways are needed for bread dropped from the air.

The only bottleneck is that a drop has to happen in controlled airspace. Otherwise, flights can come from anywhere with loaves of day-old bread that Americans would otherwise throw away. Tons, one would hope. It can fall like rain if we choose. If bread falls everywhere, the starving people who are everywhere can find it. No lines.

Bread needs no baking, no firewood.

If it falls on you, it won't hurt you. It will help you.

'Move Your Money' - 'Walk Away' - Big Banks Face A Double Play

2010-01-08T19:35:00.033-06:00

Big banks - the banks that were recently rescued as 'too big to die' - may be seeing increasing losses on two fronts soon.

First front - 'Move Your Money'. People are closing their accounts.

Many concerned depositors are moving their checking, savings and credit accounts from big banks over to local community banks and credit unions. It's a small act of rebellion, but something any angered depositor can do. Easy to promote, it's become a national movement.

Community banks reinvest one's deposited dollars in one's community. Big banks don't. By reinvesting in community, community banks help stabilize and even increase property values and the tax base. Big banks won't. Community banks remember your face.

Want city government to hold your city together? Want to stabilize the tax base? Put your money in community banks.

Second front - 'Walk Away'. People are walking away from their mortgages.

Mortgage under water? "Walk away," says the Sunday New York Times in the link above.

For those whose houses are worth far less than their mortgage debt, more and more people are simply giving up ever having credit again and walking away. It's the smart thing to do. Those who walk away can rent a similar house more cheaply. Let the bank take back the old house.

But the banks can't sell all the houses they are getting back. From Sacramento, California, to Providence, Rhode Island, the listings on Realtor.com show houses that are going for what the cash market will bear. Get a mortgage on a $40,000 house? Not likely.

There are 50 homes for sale at $40,000 and under in Sacramento. Hello, cash? 220 homes in St Louis, Mo, for $20,000 or less. $15,000 for a Delray Beach, Florida, condo.

As owners walk away from their mortgages, banks can fail.

If they fail, will these banks be worth rescuing again? Or will they now be too small to rescue?

If we keep shrinking them down, do we still have to rescue them?

Washington DC Gets The High

2010-01-06T07:07:00.017-06:00

As the year drew to a close, President Obama signed into law a spending bill that among its 5000 earmarks allows the distribution of medical marijuana in Washington DC. Washington residents voted in such a law way back in 1998 with a 69 percent majority, but Congress blocked it then.

Medical marijuana is now legal in 14 states. It restores appetites for people undergoing chemotherapy. It alleviates pain. It unwinds depression. More recently there are indications that it may even cure or inhibit cancers.

But the latest good news about marijuana is that it appears to be anti-aging. It supports the body's own endo-cannabinoid system, which manages inflammation. Unmoderated inflammation destroys cells. That's aging.

Marijuana also appears to help the body make new cells faster. That feeling of youth you got from a toke way back when may have had something real to it.

'Helps chemotherapy patients survive...' - - 'Eh?'

'May cure cancer...' - - 'Oh really?'

'Eliminates wrinkles... - - - 'OhMyG!!! Where can I get some?'

Washington needs you, oh marijuana. They are all very wrinkled. Almost all of them.

And many are depressed and angry from suffering loss. Marijuana helps a person get beyond loss, too. End their depression. Forget their anger. Play a bigger game.

War Crimes Never Die

2010-01-02T09:49:00.021-06:00

How convenient. There is no statute of limitations for war crimes.

Any western soldier who brutally killed civilians in the course of our 8-year wars in Afghanistan and Iraq against those groups who blew up our biggest skyscraper on 9/11/2001 - any soldier who went beyond the pale - hangs now on a fence. As do his officers. Ever more immobile, ever more exposed.

Remember Blackwater/Xe, the private security force which provides "feet on the ground" for CIA operations, now that the CIA themselves have become mostly interrogators and analysts?

Blackwater personnel have just been freed by the United States judiciary from any criminal responsibility for killing 17 civilians. Back in September, 2007 in Nisoor Square, Baghdad, a Blackwater van got slowed in traffic and their shotguns decided that they needed to blow their way out. Big kerfluffle, we promised we'd see to it. Seems like some Bush era left-overs in the Justice Department botched the case. Can't happen again, now can it?

Free for the moment. But time is not on their side. The information age - doubling their visibility every two years - is not on their side. Identities are added to databases and tracked. Not American databases. The world becomes a cage. Leftovers get tossed when they begin to smell. The world catches up. Will we Americans respect foreign courts? Or will they need to publish rewards for the live capture of our errant idiots?

If American courts do not punish American malefactors, then the world takes over the job. Just as Nazi prison guards were hunted down one by one and brought to justice, so shall the trigger-happy gonzos at Blackwater even more quickly meet their karma in foreign courts. There is no place to hide from karma in a silicon world.

If America is not mature enough to clean itself, then the world will wipe the stains away.

It's a self-cleaning operation. The world has learned to clean itself.

Big Balls Won't Fly

2009-12-30T22:32:00.003-06:00

On a flight arriving in Detroit Metropolitan, a would-be terrorist burned his leg and singed his balls as the explosives he was carrying in his underpants burst into flame instead of exploding as he had intended.

Had they exploded, castration would have been the least of his problems. Now, though, one must wonder at the consequences. Somewhere there is a Mustafa The Bomb-Maker, whose defective merchandise let this hero be near-castrated instead of immolated. Will the angry customer ever return? Will Mustafa ever sell another bomb? Will he be required to test them first? Mustafa, there is someone at the door...

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, hundreds of thousands of the rich and famous and even just moderately so-so will be submitting to very detailed scans of their bodies at airports to see if they are hiding anything in the wrinkles. On men, these scans can count to three.

And, if you have big balls, forget it. You will be need to be felt up.

Biggest Political Disappointment Of 2009

2009-12-29T22:41:00.001-06:00

Yeah.

Me, too.

Will 22 Million E-mails Fit A Flash Drive?

2009-12-18T08:56:00.015-06:00

The 22 million White House e-mails from March 2003 to October 2005 that somehow got mislaid during the Bush Administration got 'found' again in January - just before he left office. Found hiding in tape vaults in warehouses in caves, most likely. And now the courts have said that they must be read and archived. According to the Associated Press,

"The government now can find and search 22 million more e-mails than it could in late 2005 and the settlement means that the Obama administration will restore 94 calendar days of e-mail from backup tape, said Kristen Lejnieks, an attorney representing the National Security Archive."

How big are these emails? What is their average size? Would they fit a jump drive?

A full page of typed paper of 50 lines at 80 characters each contains 4000 characters. This page of text will fit in 4 kilobytes of storage space. This is not saved as an image, but as a text file in the ASCII format. An ASCII file is readable in Microsoft's WordPad and is searchable in ordinary databases.

Suppose these emails are three pages long, on the average, including headers. An average message then requires 12 kilobytes of storage space.

22,000,000 messages would require 264,000,000,000 bytes of space - 264 gigabytes. All the emails would fit very nicely on a portable 32o gig drive. These drives cost $59.95 today and are so small they will soon be off the market. Sold only for use as delivery media.

Would you pay $149.95 for the inside scoop on the Bush boogie-man years? How about the Library Edition with indexes? Would you like the plain cloth outer-box cover or prefer the Corinthian Leather? Sign with my pen or yours? Yes, you can keep it, oh sure. We give them as souvenirs.

Of course, only 94 days will be released at first. 3 months out of 32, roughly. Ten percent. And that will be cut in half by messages removed due to security issues. So only five percent of the 264 gigabyes will be released within the next few years.

That's 13 gigabytes. Fits on a 16 gig flash drive. It will walk out the door.

The portability. The market. Would you like the Corinthian Leather flash drive?

We will give them as souvenirs.

When New Frontiers Become The Village Commons

2009-12-17T07:08:00.008-06:00

Ayn Rand capitalism works best on a flat earth. There it can grow larger forever. Boundaries can always be expanding on such a terrain. There is always another hill to cross, always more nature to conquer. A galaxy far away would work well, too.

On a round earth, in limited space, expansion runs into itself. When expansion in the global marketplace is geographic, for example, the final unsold market may be a small island chain in an ocean far away, perhaps a place like the Seychelles. Lovely but distant, and oh, so enticing. The final market. No one else left to sell to.

So it is that new products blossom onto the marketplace as specialty products, then become commodities. Not much profit in commodities. Banks, the final salt mine, try to create new thrilling products out of the one thing they sell - credit - and introduce so much fluff and fakery that they bring the system down. Anything they do to recapture their youth works against them.

Large companies run government. We live in a capitalist society. Senators are openly bought, and they blithely ignore the public shame. The military professionals and the defense industry have sold the country on a war that drains it even today. The insurance industry - which moves paper around, pooling risk and selling thrilling new insurance products - celebrates that it has killed, it thinks now, a health care bill that would have ensured that all Americans have health care.

Whatever of wealth is left in America, whatever has not been grabbed, is up for grabs. As the pile of wealth grows smaller, the grabbing gets more fierce.

In villages in early America, cattle were kept on a shared commons surrounded by houses. Whoever could breed the most cattle got the lion's share of the grass that grew in the commons and crowded other householders out of their share. A limited supply of grass could not provide for a village containing expansionists. Milk cows, perhaps, herds, no. Limited supply requires limited participation. The Law Of The Commons.

The earth being round, supplies are limited.

So what's a poor aging business to do? When your stocks behave like your bonds, how can you spin a profit? When your market is saturated with product and the customers haven't been given raises in years, what can you do?

When the pool of customers hasn't been given raises in years, when you send their jobs overseas, golly, what can you do? When you fight to deny them health care so more can be driven into bankruptcy, what can you do?

How can capitalism survive a round earth?

Can There Be A War On Piracy?

2009-12-14T18:41:00.007-06:00

Terrorism and piracy are two of a kind. Berserkers with brains use violence and fear of violence to acquire power and wealth.

Bullying and extortion are in about the same class. All are assaults on freedom. All are piracy.

Is this not the enemy? Piracy of the dollar, of our health, of unschooled children's futures, piracy of votes? Piracy of the air we breathe? Is there any enemy who is not a pirate?

Is there any war other than the war on piracy?

Ugandan "Kill-The-Gays" Bill Nears Passing

2009-12-10T12:26:00.006-06:00

Uganda is about to enact a "kill the gays" bill. They expect to be able to extradite gay - or "suspected gay" Ugandans from foreign countries...such as our own. We shelter people who leave their homelands under fire.

Could someone correct them on this oversight before they pass the bill?

Their intent may be that if they can't extradite escaped gays back for death or imprisonment, then they would have cause to withdraw from global extradition agreements. Without extradition, they could then perhaps become a final refuge for the evil of the world and their wealth. One wonders at their motive.

Their attack on gays may be a back-door way of getting out of their extradition responsibilities.

Maybe Ugandans could confirm that for an Ugandan emigre in other countries, suspicion of gayness is not cause to have them extradited, as they now specify in the bill that it should be?

Do they plan to re-negotiate extradition agreements?

We are all gay Ugandans.

- - -

Update: Large church minister Rick Warren, whose Ugandan influence helped propagate the hate that led to this bill, has called it Un-Christian, and has asked the Ugandans not to pass the bill. Others in The Family, founders of the C-Street House clique in Washington who made Uganda a special project for their ministry, are also now asking that the killing not be done.

Imprisonment, yeah, that's Christian. But killing... gee, that smacks of Rwanda.

We are all gay Ugandans.

Cellphones For Afghanistan

2009-12-05T07:49:00.003-06:00

The world throws away enough cellphones every month to provide one for every adult in Afghanistan. If people were to throw them a little farther, so that they landed in that distant place, how would Afghan politics change?

Could we leave sooner?

Of course, Afghans already have some phones. The cell towers are a target for the Taliban - except that the gunmen on the ground and the Taliban middle management like to use their cell phones. They are conflicted. Writes Strategy Page:

"In Afghanistan, the Taliban leadership has recognized the phone network vulnerability, and the addictive nature of cell phones. So the Taliban have tried to stop cell phone companies from moving in with their cell towers, and attractive (to Taliban gunmen and middle management) cell phone service. In this, the Taliban have largely failed, and the cell phone addiction of their fighters has caused no end of problems when the U.S. hacks the cell networks."

So more cell phones would enable the resolution of political differences.

Suppose we air-dropped old cell phones to people who didn't have any towers? Would they want towers?

Suppose we paid for free minutes?

It may not be the addictiveness of cell phones that bothers the Taliban. The fact that the message of their presence gets around could be more a problem. Staying hidden matters.

When every victim can squeal to the world, how can an aggressor survive?

A Terrain Fit For Warlords

2009-12-02T08:01:00.004-06:00

Afghanistan, where American troops will be staying for a while - at least until our fiery warlikeness is tamed - is mountainous. Very mountainous.

It is easy to think of it as mountain tops, but the Afghan people live in the valleys. Mountain tops are sprinkled, valleys connect. How the valleys connect determines how the people connect.

Do connections tend to follow a tree-like pattern?

Does the terrain itself limit the kind of government that can happen?

How does control, which depends on boundaries, traverse a tree-like pattern? There is always an uncontrollable outer edge.

What can government be?

The Lieberman Toggle

2009-11-23T07:29:00.008-06:00

Senator Joe Lieberman is nominally a Democrat. In name only.

As noted by driftglass at Crooks and Liars,

"he

Lost the Democratic primary in Connecticut to an actual Democrat.
Formed his own Lieberman Uber Alles Party (Motto: A Smarmy Of One)
Ran against the candidate of the Democratic Party and,
With massive assistance from a cartel of banks, insurance companies, credit card companies and Republicans who now collectively own his quisling ass, managed to win back his former Senate seat.
He also endorsed the Republican candidate for President in 2008 and campaigned for (Mc)same, and was welcomed and applauded as a member of the family at The Grand Ol' Party convention of insane freaks."

Yet... Lieberman is Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. In 2008 after the election, he almost lost the chairmanship. He was recently warned by Senator Harkin that if he votes on the Healthcare bill as a representative of the Connecticut insurance companies his chairmanship would be in jeopardy again.

If Lieberman loses his chair, then his many security-related constituencies lose power. If he votes for health care and keeps his chair, then his state loses business.

Will his security-related constituencies perhaps have a word with his local people?

Lieberman is, after all, just the button they push. And right now, the push-button is a toggle switch.

He could, of course, ask the people of Connecticut what they'd like him to do. That would reduce his dependence on any of these backers. Who presently have his tail firmly in their grip.

Can We Have A Freddie VISA?

2009-11-22T07:58:00.005-06:00

If one spends a penny less each month than one has earned, one becomes happy.

If one spends a penny more each month than one has earned, one becomes cursed. One owes. Charles Dickens wrote books about this principle.

Today, if a person can manage to live on quite a bit less and spend only 2/3 of their income, and can set the rest aside in an online brokerage account, then in five or ten years one can live on the income from the money invested. Invest the money in companies that relieve suffering, and one will have it made in days to come. This writer, for example, has chosen SPWRA and ISRG and bought Ford when Detroit was grounding out.

We have seen that market collapse is only another buying opportunity. The cheaper that stocks become, the more government moves in to make Capitalism work right, borrowing deeply as we have even now from Communist China to tilt our leaking bucket aright. So buying at market bottoms is a pretty safe bet. Be Superman coming to the rescue when the Dow is down and your favorite stock has fallen.

For those who can save a penny, easy access to the stock market fulfills the Socialist principle that the working class should own the means of production. Now we do. We just don't manage these companies yet.

We spend less than we earn. We gain power. We will manage soon.

The banks of the world have their claws in the flesh of those who cannot save, who spend more than they earn.

They monthly suck the blood of the mindless with a needlessly high interest rate. There is a public need for cheap rescue credit. We loan money to these banks for almost nothing. Can there be a Freddie VISA to rescue credit card users from their own learning experience?

Perhaps it could be combined with a group brokerage account? Give people the sharable experience of investing in their future.

Computing Power Grows Times 10 Every 7 Years

2009-11-21T19:13:00.018-06:00

Many people now know that you can get twice as much computing power for the same dollar two years from now as you can today. You can get twice as big a hard drive. Twice as fast a CPU. Every two years. Gordon Moore of Intel noticed this back around 1965. It's been roughly true ever since.

Moore counted the number of transistors that technology could put on a chip. Every 18 months to two years the number doubled.

Transistors on chips became smaller and smaller. Smaller, they were faster. Smaller, they were cheaper. Strangely, for a lot of non-chip computer resources - hard drives, blank CD disks, monitor screens - the price has also gone down at a similar rate.

If power doubles every two years, how many years does it take for computers to become ten times more capable?

In two years, capability doubles. At four years, capability doubles again to four times the starting level. At six years it doubles to eight times. At eight years, capability doubles to sixteen times the original value.

Ten times larger is nearer to eight times than to sixteen, nearer to six years than to eight years. It would be safe to say that within seven years or less, computing power becomes ten times more powerful.

Data becomes ten times more accessible. Ten times as visible. Moves ten times faster.

A career in auditing should have a guaranteed future.

Bail Out The Employers

2009-11-13T11:56:00.006-06:00

Suppose Federal bail-out money went to companies according to their employee count? The more employees it has, the more access to aid a company could receive.

Tie every corporation's survival prospects to its hiring level. Use employee count, not payroll size.

Set a new metric and they will fill it.

National Governments, Global Corporations

2009-10-26T07:53:00.007-05:00

Someone I know invested part of his IRA in a Mexican transportation stock. I've resisted the temptation to invest my own in Chinese and Russian stocks - and glad I did, since the Russian ones have certainly taken a loss. I wonder how much stock of American companies is foreign-owned? Shares in our companies are certainly traded on exchanges around the world.

When our government props up an "American" corporation, who really owns it? Who owns the companies we rescue? We obviously cannot rescue just the American-owned shares. Are we not then rescuing the shares of investors around the world?

When ownership is global, what can be the national interest in rescuing a company? There is one answer I can see.

Jobs.

The global interest may be profits. The national interest is jobs.

Is Wealth Enough?

2009-10-19T07:48:00.002-05:00

Twenty percent of the U.S. population has acquired 84% of the wealth. The other 80% of the population owns only 16% of the wealth. One fifth of the population owns more than four fifths of the wealth.

Capitalism has succeeded.

Now what?

The Health Care End Game

2009-10-16T09:35:00.005-05:00

Sooner or later...

Opt-in public health care. Pay ten percent of your gross income. Have all expenses paid until end-of-life. Accept palliative care in hospice at end of life. Buy end-of-life insurance ahead of time if more is desired.

Let those who want to spend their fortunes squeezing a last painful month out of life do so. Let the rest of us see that each other are cared for.

If unions can provide a better plan, then they will. If insurance companies can provide a better plan, then they will.

Painted Into A Corner

2009-10-15T08:13:00.017-05:00

Between the devil and the deep, mankind is.

Helplessly breeding, competing with nature even as she feeds us, destroying jobs for profit points when economies depend on consumers, blindly man heads for a fall.

Mankind has painted itself into a corner. There it shall live.

We didn't want nuclear waste, so we burned carbon and got a poisoned sea.

We wanted new voters, new parishioners, new customers. We bred like flies.

We must stop breeding. Must nurture consumer quality instead of consumer quantity. Go electric.

We must let population dwindle to fit the electric power supply available.

We must wait for the paint to dry. We must restore the garden.

Then we can walk away. Out of the corner.

Can we let population dwindle?

Should An End-Of-Life Decision Lower One's Health Care Cost?

2009-10-13T23:35:00.017-05:00

I will be signing soon a Living Will and also a Healthcare Power of Attorney. This is so that someone close to me will be able to tell the doctor to pull the plug when all is lost. Doctors love to go on and on and run up the bill.

Suppose I were to get a discount in my monthly insurance bills for doing this?

Suppose those people who do want to have an extended service plan at the end of life were to prepay that expense - using their own insurance plan, with appropriately higher rates?

Having seen one friend die in home hospice, I will welcome it. I can recommend it. Have a friend see you off. The hospice caregivers visit almost every day. It's a cheap way to die. It should be cheap to pay for, too.

Would a reward to those of us who choose hospice make health care cheaper?

Does The World Need More New Employers?

2009-10-09T08:26:00.003-05:00

Jobs are scarce. Businesses are closing or consolidating. The number of employers is dropping like a stone. But we count jobs, not employers.

Last month, another 159,000 jobs were lost in the United States alone. How many of these were due to employer loss? From which there is no return?

Could new jobs be created by creating new employers?

Suppose "How To Start And Run A Business" became a required course for high school graduation?

How many bright new businesses would be hiring?

Obama's "To-Do" List Wins Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-09T07:39:00.002-05:00

Stay humble, brother.

We love you.

Have We Already Won In Afghanistan?

2009-10-08T07:23:00.028-05:00

Only 100 or so Al Qaida members remain in Afghanistan. They are in hiding.

America has defeated Al Qaida in Afghanistan to the point that no one is left to sign a surrender document.

We cannot leave without a surrender document.

So we stick around to fight all the people who want us to leave.

This includes the Taliban, who think that strict enforcement of religious law will set society straight. If Afghan society were perhaps a little less stressed by our warring presence, their perception of a need for religious government would probably decline.

Our presence - drunken, naked, carousing embassy guards and all - is no gift to Democracy, only to the power of those we befriend.

We had hoped to leave them with a functioning democracy. But our protege, their president Hamid Karzai, already likely for re-election, decided to stuff the ballot boxes just to be sure.

This appears to be a part of the world where love of power exceeds love of Democracy.

Can we fight them into loving Democracy? Or is Democracy rather a garden to be watered?

Forget nation-building. How can we nurture Democracy?

Perhaps we can set an example. Now that Al Qaida is gone, can we hold a vote and Democratically decide that we have won?

That would give us the document we need.

Define A Winnable War, Mr. President

2009-09-21T07:25:00.017-05:00

What is the definition of a winnable war?

We use instant-response forces for continuous duty tasks. That kind of usage can destroy those forces. That's not win-ability. We have tanks that can go like heck for 35 miles - before breaking down.

Durability competes with effectiveness in war. Durable equipment is heavy and moves slowly. Speed wins battles. Instant response machinery wears out and need to be replaced again and again. Instant response people wear out, too.

War against a people in their own land inevitably becomes a long and slow war of attrition against the invader. Any invader win is temporary. Continued hostility is inevitably waged by a conquered people. It can be efficient over time.

America fought the Koreans to a draw on their own land. We fought the Vietnamese to less than a draw on their own land. Americans have not particularly "won" Iraq or Afghanistan. On their own land.

Durability and effectiveness are at odds. Conquered people endure until the invader becomes ineffective. A conquered people becomes more durable than a war machine.

But since we have a military, we must go to war and we must stay at war. Replaceable technology demands it. It's an economic imperative.

Can we discover a solution for war that is both durable and effective? One, perhaps, where our effectiveness depends on the endurability of the people we hope to help?

Define a winnable war, Mr. President.

Can There Be A Transparency Czar?

2009-09-12T07:26:00.003-05:00

One of President Obama's major campaign promises was for transparency in government. Today a host of 9-12'ers are assembling in Washington, misinformed, full of conspiracy theories, unable to distinguish news from reality. To them, government is opaque.

Suppose they could simply ask the government any question they wanted? And get a response?

Can a government office explain our government to ordinary people?

Can we have a transparency czar?

Would a transparency czar undo the conspiracy propagandists?

Could the government open a "gov.gov" website? That an easy name to remember. It could answer popular questions.

Brains... They Need Brains...

2009-09-11T23:18:00.018-05:00

Back in the time of Bush, a flow of White House talking points provided spoutable phrases and useful mottoes for conservative pundits and politicians. They must now begin to think. Lately, they have sounded like the lonely teen at a high school dance who doesn't know the right words to say, full of angst, but lacking in verbal acuity.

And maybe a little drunk.

So it was that brute emotional force led a possibly inebriated South Carolina Congressman to shout "you lie!" to the President during his speech to Congress last night. He was instantly told to apologize by his peers and did immediately apologize to the President for his lack of decorum. But he didn't apologize for being wrong.

He said that the new health care bill would give illegal immigrants free health care. Not true, said the President. (Google 'title 3200, section 246' and see for yourself.)

Being wrong is not a problem for Republicans today. They espouse the silliest notions, provably in error, but exciting none the less. Death panels. Kenyan birth certificates (two now, both faked). Medicare = socialism = fascism. They entice followers by describing their imaginings. This can only work for so long. But what else have they?

No script. No currency. They are not where it's happening. No power. Although they still reap a harvest of corporate donations, it will come in useful for lawyer fees very soon. While Obama and Eric Holder temporize and run out the clock on investigating the Bush staffers who led us into torture, the Hague sits and waits. The Hague appears to impose no statute of limitations on torturers.

And the Republican party continues to shed its moderates. It will be, tomorrow, 9/12/09, embracing its many chaotic radical wings: the secessionists, the racists, the conspiracy theorists, the Murdock press and their followers. And the Limbaugh ditto-heads. As they march on Washington. In buses provided by the health-care industry. These people have words to say. Not very sensible ones, but ones full of the kind of emotion that can make a congressman call his President a liar without first checking the facts.

Of course, the Republicans are dreading the death of their party. It will come with all the slowness in the world. Conservatives still hold the Supreme Court, and any indictment can be appealed to the Court, which may decide that the President does, in fact, have unlimited power. So yes, Obama and Holder are temporizing. Let the Hague deal with it.

The Republicans who remain are like the investors who failed to get out of GM before their stock became totally dead. They trade a penny stock and hope for rain.

A renaissance may come when Republicans embrace entrepreneurialism as an alternative to the ideals of capitalism and global corporatism. There are lots of entrepreneurs these days. Thousands more every week.

Until then, they are zombies. They need brains.

Fight Ideas, Not People

2009-09-08T07:49:00.010-05:00

Reading this morning of war and the victims of war, I wonder if perhaps we are fighting ideas by killing people, and perhaps this is all wrong.

We fight with the army we have. Rumsfeld's problem. We have an army that sets things straight by killing people.

We kill people who have gotten the idea that we're up to no good over there and that we should be made to leave. We kill people who, in a vacuum of power, take it for themselves and use it in ungodly ways. We kill people who are fed by militias. We kill people who syphon gas from tankers captured by militias. Steal our tankers? Hell, we'll blow up the tankers in their faces!

The Blackwater contractors are themselves on a Christian jihad and clear traffic from the road ahead with machine gun bullets, killing people. The Wackenhut guards at our Afghanistan embassy drink alcohol out of each other's butts, making our very presence there obscene.

Who are we trying to impress? And with what? The bright and shining new president we gave them now stuffs ballot boxes.

Our ability to destroy someone else's world and to deface their culture means that we should be tolerated?

Ideas contend.

The Patriotists

2009-09-06T11:49:00.009-05:00

Those who espouse patriotism.

Some of us feel patriotism a little, now and then, like when our country does something we're especially proud about.

But some marry patriotism. They need the rush continuously.

Are they addicts?

Must, for them, the national 'self' always be at war with some 'other'? It certainly keeps life thrilling for a person to imagine all that might happen. The possibilities are endless.

Just how likely some things are to happen, though - that's another story entirely.

Schools Make Obama's Speech Contraband

2009-09-05T08:00:00.018-05:00

President Obama will be giving a speech soon to the nation's schoolchildren. He is expected to speak about the importance of working hard and staying in school.

However, a number of public schools around the nation, fearing "socialist" mind-warping, have made his speech contraband. They will not let the kids see the speech. Elsewhere, individual parents will also be making the speech contraband, keeping their kids home that day.

Frightened parents apparently assume that none of their children will then hear this speech.

Except... the speech will almost certainly be available on YouTube and on WhiteHouse.gov. It will be viewable to anyone with an internet connection. Downloaded podcasts of it will be everywhere. The printed text will be in newspapers.

Will kids who were protected from this "socialist" speech carefully scan the text, trying to figure out the naughty parts? What were their parents trying to hide?

Don't parents know anything?

Or wait! Could this be, in fact, a scurrilous secret plan to get kids to want to work hard and to stay in school?

If this speech is forbidden, then more kids will listen carefully. It will reach all ears. If students discover that hard work is a no-no, many more may choose to do just that.

Clever, Tom Sawyer.

Speak Simply, Mr. President

2009-09-03T23:07:00.009-05:00

Dear Mr. President,

Can you say "Public Choice" instead of "Public Option"?

Can you say "Medicare For All" instead of "Single Payer System"?

Can you sell?

We are poor, dumb, beaten and drained. Can you use words we know? Can you speak of real things and of relations between real things, instead of spouting fancy abstract ideas? Can you say in simplest terms just what you want for us?

We the simplest may then perhaps begin to trust you.

With best regards,

Daniel

P.S. Making fun of the poor demented lady who didn't want government programs telling her what to do but who wanted her Medicare kept intact - that was awfully witty. It bought a laugh from the crowd you were speaking to. But see what the poor idiots of the land heard. They heard you making fun of a grandma's contradictions. From a wise and witty place. Speaking to her like a bible salesman or a college professor. Got any better voices?

Lord knows, we've all got enough of our own contradictions. We could make fun of you, too, President O'Maybe.

Please give us nouns. Not adjectives. Nouns. We want nouns.

P.P.S. Short sentences say the most. We know you have an attention span. Trust us. We know.

Roll On And Vanish

2009-08-27T16:42:00.005-05:00

As we all do, as we all will, so Senator Edward Kennedy passed in his turn yesterday from this world to the next.

In the endlessness of time, one would think that every effort must come undone, every stone laid must turn to dust. In our lives we leave little trace of our ever having been here.

The Greeks in their Golden Age discovered Democracy, and although the Golden Age lasted only 200 years, their new form of government defined an ideal - government of the people, by the people, and for the people - that guides us to this day.

So did, in his decades in the Senate, Edward Kennedy also, in bill after bill, work to make our democracy a government of, by and for the people. His legacy is a government that we the people own.

He lived to see the dawn of our new era, the fruit of his efforts, where a citizenry combined itself by technology into a force that beat money and power at the polls. A people has taken its country back.

Thank you, Senator Kennedy. May God know you well.