sastrugi

In A Silent Way

2010-08-29T16:33:00.000-07:00

Link to "In a Silent Way", one of Miles Davis's most ethereal, somber, and perhaps hopeful fugues from In A Silent Way (1969).

Dennis Brown "Wichita Lineman" *****Reggae version

2010-07-07T20:10:00.000-07:00

This is close to perfection.

A Brilliant Version of 'Wichita Lineman' by Willie Hutch

2010-07-04T15:02:00.001-07:00

Feel it, Nee!

Moneyed Interests And How They Derail Congress

2010-02-06T09:57:00.000-08:00

How to Get Our Democracy Back

If You Want Change, You Have to Change Congress

This article appeared in the February 22, 2010 edition of The Nation.

February 3, 2010

Yet a year into the presidency of Barack Obama, it is already clear that this administration is an opportunity missed. Not because it is too conservative. Not because it is too liberal. But because it is too conventional. Obama has given up the rhetoric of his early campaign--a campaign that promised to "challenge the broken system in Washington" and to "fundamentally change the way Washington works." Indeed, "fundamental change" is no longer even a hint.

Instead, we are now seeing the consequences of a decision made at the most vulnerable point of Obama's campaign--just when it seemed that he might really have beaten the party's presumed nominee. For at that moment, Obama handed the architecture of his new administration over to a team that thought what America needed most was another Bill Clinton. A team chosen by the brother of one of DC's most powerful lobbyists, and a White House headed by the quintessential DC politician. A team that could envision nothing more than the ordinary politics of Washington--the kind of politics Obama had called "small." A team whose imagination--politically--is tiny.

These tiny minds--brilliant though they may be in the conventional game of DC--have given up what distinguished Obama's extraordinary campaign. Not the promise of healthcare reform or global warming legislation--Hillary Clinton had embraced both of those ideas, and every other substantive proposal that Obama advanced. Instead, the passion that Obama inspired grew from the recognition that something fundamental had gone wrong in the way our government functions, and his commitment to reform it.

For Obama once spoke for the anger that has now boiled over in even the blue state Massachusetts--that our government is corrupt; that fundamental change is needed. As he told us, both parties had allowed "lobbyists and campaign contributions to rig the system." And "unless we're willing to challenge [that] broken system...nothing else is going to change." "The reason" Obama said he was "running for president [was] to challenge that system." For "if we're not willing to take up that fight, then real change--change that will make a lasting difference in the lives of ordinary Americans--will keep getting blocked by the defenders of the status quo."

This administration has not "taken up that fight." Instead, it has stepped down from the high ground the president occupied on January 20, 2009, and played a political game no different from the one George W. Bush played, or Bill Clinton before him. Obama has accepted the power of the "defenders of the status quo" and simply negotiated with them. "Audacity" fits nothing on the list of last year's activity, save the suggestion that this is the administration the candidate had promised.

Maybe this was his plan all along. It was not what he said. And by ignoring what he promised, and by doing what he attacked ("too many times, after the election is over, and the confetti is swept away, all those promises fade from memory, and the lobbyists and the special interests move in"), Obama will leave the presidency, whether in 2013 or 2017, with Washington essentially intact and the movement he inspired betrayed.

That movement needs new leadership. On the right (the tea party) and the left (MoveOn and Bold Progressives), there is an unstoppable recognition that our government has failed. But both sides need to understand the source of its failure if either or, better, both together, are to respond.

At the center of our government lies a bankrupt institution: Congress. Not financially bankrupt, at least not yet, but politically bankrupt. Bush v. Gore notwithstanding, Americans' faith in the Supreme Court remains extraordinarily high--76 percent have a fair or great deal of "trust and confidence" in the Court. Their faith in the presidency is also high--61 percent.

But consistently and increasingly over the past decade, faith in Congress has collapsed--slowly, and then all at once. Today it is at a record low. Just 45 percent of Americans have "trust and confidence" in Congress; just 25 percent approve of how Congress is handling its job. A higher percentage of Americans likely supported the British Crown at the time of the Revolution than support our Congress today.

The source of America's cynicism is not hard to find. Americans despise the inauthentic. Gregory House, of the eponymous TV medical drama, is a hero not because he is nice (he isn't) but because he is true. Tiger Woods is a disappointment not because he is evil (he isn't) but because he proved false. We may want peace and prosperity, but most would settle for simple integrity. Yet the single attribute least attributed to Congress, at least in the minds of the vast majority of Americans, is just that: integrity. And this is because most believe our Congress is a simple pretense. That rather than being, as our framers promised, an institution "dependent on the People," the institution has developed a pathological dependence on campaign cash. The US Congress has become the Fundraising Congress. And it answers--as Republican and Democratic presidents alike have discovered--not to the People, and not even to the president, but increasingly to the relatively small mix of interests that fund the key races that determine which party will be in power.

This is corruption. Not the corruption of bribes, or of any other crime known to Title 18 of the US Code. Instead, it is a corruption of the faith Americans have in this core institution of our democracy. The vast majority of Americans believe money buys results in Congress (88 percent in a recent California poll). And whether that belief is true or not, the damage is the same. The democracy is feigned. A feigned democracy breeds cynicism. Cynicism leads to disengagement. Disengagement leaves the fox guarding the henhouse.

This corruption is not hidden. On the contrary, it is in plain sight, with its practices simply more and more brazen. Consider, for example, the story Robert Kaiser tells in his fantastic book So Damn Much Money, about Senator John Stennis, who served for forty-one years until his retirement in 1989. Stennis, no choirboy himself, was asked by a colleague to host a fundraiser for military contractors while he was chair of the Armed Services Committee. "Would that be proper?" Stennis asked. "I hold life and death over those companies. I don't think it would be proper for me to take money from them."

Is such a norm even imaginable in DC today? Compare Stennis with Max Baucus, who has gladly opened his campaign chest to $3.3 million in contributions from the healthcare and insurance industries since 2005, a time when he has controlled healthcare in the Senate. Or Senators Lieberman, Bayh and Nelson, who took millions from insurance and healthcare interests and then opposed the (in their states) popular public option for healthcare. Or any number of Blue Dog Democrats in the House who did the same, including, most prominently, Alabama's Mike Ross. Or Republican John Campbell, a California landlord who in 2008 received (as ethics reports indicate) between $600,000 and $6 million in rent from used car dealers, who successfully inserted an amendment into the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act to exempt car dealers from financing rules to protect consumers. Or Democrats Melissa Bean and Walter Minnick, who took top-dollar contributions from the financial services sector and then opposed stronger oversight of financial regulations.

The list is endless; the practice open and notorious. Since the time of Rome, historians have taught that while corruption is a part of every society, the only truly dangerous corruption comes when the society has lost any sense of shame. Washington has lost its sense of shame.

As fundraising becomes the focus of Congress--as the parties force members to raise money for other members, as they reward the best fundraisers with lucrative committee assignments and leadership positions--the focus of Congressional "work" shifts. Like addicts constantly on the lookout for their next fix, members grow impatient with anything that doesn't promise the kick of a campaign contribution. The first job is meeting the fundraising target. Everything else seems cheap. Talk about policy becomes, as one Silicon Valley executive described it to me, "transactional." The perception, at least among industry staffers dealing with the Hill, is that one makes policy progress only if one can promise fundraising progress as well.

This dance has in turn changed the character of Washington. As Kaiser explains, Joe Rothstein, an aide to former Senator Mike Gravel, said there was never a "period of pristine American politics untainted by money.... Money has been part of American politics forever, on occasion--in the Gilded Age or the Harding administration, for example--much more blatantly than recently." But "in recent decades 'the scale of it has just gotten way out of hand.' The money may have come in brown paper bags in earlier eras, but the politicians needed, and took, much less of it than they take through more formal channels today."

And not surprisingly, as powerful interests from across the nation increasingly invest in purchasing public policy rather than inventing a better mousetrap, wealth, and a certain class of people, shift to Washington. According to the 2000 Census, fourteen of the hundred richest counties were in the Washington area. In 2007, nine of the richest twenty were in the area. Again, Kaiser: "In earlier generations enterprising young men came to Washington looking for power and political adventure, often with ambitions to save or reform the country or the world. In the last fourth of the twentieth century such aspirations were supplanted by another familiar American yearning: to get rich."

Rich, indeed, they are, with the godfather of the lobbyist class, Gerald Cassidy, amassing more than $100 million from his lobbying business.

Members of Congress are insulted by charges like these. They insist that money has no such effect. Perhaps, they concede, it buys access. (As former Representative Romano Mazzoli put it, "People who contribute get the ear of the member and the ear of the staff. They have the access--and access is it.") But, the cash-seekers insist, it doesn't change anyone's mind. The souls of members are not corrupted by private funding. It is simply the way Americans go about raising the money necessary to elect our government.

But there are two independent and adequate responses to this weak rationalization for the corruption of the Fundraising Congress. First: whether or not this money has corrupted anyone's soul--that is, whether it has changed any vote or led any politician to bend one way or the other--there is no doubt that it leads the vast majority of Americans to believe that money buys results in Congress. Even if it doesn't, that's what Americans believe. Even if, that is, the money doesn't corrupt the soul of a single member of Congress, it corrupts the institution--by weakening faith in it, and hence weakening the willingness of citizens to participate in their government. Why waste your time engaging politically when it is ultimately money that buys results, at least if you're not one of those few souls with vast sums of it?

"But maybe," the apologist insists, "the problem is in what Americans believe. Maybe we should work hard to convince Americans that they're wrong. It's understandable that they believe money is corrupting Washington. But it isn't. The money is benign. It supports the positions members have already taken. It is simply how those positions find voice and support. It is just the American way."

Here a second and completely damning response walks onto the field: if money really doesn't affect results in Washington, then what could possibly explain the fundamental policy failures--relative to every comparable democracy across the world, whether liberal or conservative--of our government over the past decades? The choice (made by Democrats and Republicans alike) to leave unchecked a huge and crucially vulnerable segment of our economy, which threw the economy over a cliff when it tanked (as independent analysts again and again predicted it would). Or the choice to leave unchecked the spread of greenhouse gases. Or to leave unregulated the exploding use of antibiotics in our food supply--producing deadly strains of E. coli. Or the inability of the twenty years of "small government" Republican presidents in the past twenty-nine to reduce the size of government at all. Or... you fill in the blank. From the perspective of what the People want, or even the perspective of what the political parties say they want, the Fundraising Congress is misfiring in every dimension. That is either because Congress is filled with idiots or because Congress has a dependency on something other than principle or public policy sense. In my view, Congress is not filled with idiots.

The point is simple, if extraordinarily difficult for those of us proud of our traditions to accept: this democracy no longer works. Its central player has been captured. Corrupted. Controlled by an economy of influence disconnected from the democracy. Congress has developed a dependency foreign to the framers' design. Corporate campaign spending, now liberated by the Supreme Court, will only make that dependency worse. "A dependence" not, as the Federalist Papers celebrated it, "on the People" but a dependency upon interests that have conspired to produce a world in which policy gets sold.

No one, Republican or Democratic, who doesn't currently depend upon this system should accept it. No president, Republican or Democratic, who doesn't change this system could possibly hope for any substantive reform. For small-government Republicans, the existing system will always block progress. There will be no end to extensive and complicated taxation and regulation until this system changes (for the struggle over endless and complicated taxation and regulation is just a revenue opportunity for the Fundraising Congress). For reform-focused Democrats, the existing system will always block progress. There will be no change in fundamental aspects of the existing economy, however inefficient, from healthcare to energy to food production, until this political economy is changed (for the reward from the status quo to stop reform is always irresistible to the Fundraising Congress). In a single line: there will be no change until we change Congress.

That Congress is the core of the problem with American democracy today is a point increasingly agreed upon by a wide range of the commentators. But almost universally, these commentators obscure the source of the problem.

Some see our troubles as tied to the arcane rules of the institution, particularly the Senate. Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, for example, has tied the failings of Congress to the filibuster and argues that the first step of fundamental reform has got to be to fix that. Tom Geoghegan made a related argument in these pages in August, and the argument appears again in this issue. (Of course, these pages were less eager to abolish the filibuster when the idea was floated by the Republicans in 2005, but put that aside.)

These arguments, however, miss a basic point. Filibuster rules simply set the price that interests must pay to dislodge reform. If the rules were different, the price would no doubt be higher. But a higher price wouldn't change the economy of influence. Indeed, as political scientists have long puzzled, special interests underinvest in Washington relative to the potential return. These interests could just as well afford to assure that fifty-one senators block reform as forty.

Others see the problem as tied to lobbyists--as if removing lobbyists from the mix of legislating (as if that constitutionally could be done) would be reform enough to assure that legislation was not corrupted.

But the problem in Washington is not lobbying. The problem is the role that lobbyists have come to play. As John Edwards used to say (when we used to quote what Edwards said), there's all the difference in the world between a lawyer making an argument to a jury and a lawyer handing out $100 bills to the jurors. That line is lost on the profession today. The profession would earn enormous credibility if it worked to restore it.

Finally, some believe the problem of Congress is tied to excessive partisanship. Members from an earlier era routinely point to the loss of a certain civility and common purpose. The game as played by both parties seems more about the parties than about the common good.

But it is this part of the current crisis that the dark soul in me admires most. There is a brilliance to how the current fraud is sustained. Everyone inside this game recognizes that if the public saw too clearly that the driving force in Washington is campaign cash, the public might actually do something to change that. So every issue gets reframed as if it were really a question touching some deep (or not so deep) ideological question. Drug companies fund members, for example, to stop reforms that might actually test whether "me too" drugs are worth the money they cost. But the reforms get stopped by being framed as debates about "death panels" or "denying doctor choice" rather than the simple argument of cost-effectiveness that motivates the original reform. A very effective campaign succeeds in obscuring the source of conflict over major issues of reform with the pretense that it is ideology rather than campaign cash that divides us.

Each of these causes is a symptom of a more fundamental disease. That disease is improper dependency. Remove the dependency, and these symptoms become--if not perfectly then at least much more--benign.

As someone who has known Obama vaguely for almost twenty years--he was my colleague at the University of Chicago, and I supported and contributed to every one of his campaigns--I would have bet my career that he understood this. That's what he told us again and again in his campaign, not as colorfully as Edwards, but ultimately more convincingly. That's what distinguished him from Hillary Clinton. That's what Clinton, defender of the lobbyists, didn't get. It was "fundamentally chang[ing] the way Washington works" that was the essential change that would make change believable.

So if you had told me in 2008 that Obama expected to come to power and radically remake the American economy--as his plans to enact healthcare and a response to global warming alone obviously would--without first radically changing this corrupted machinery of government, I would not have believed it. Who could believe such a change possible, given the economy of influence that defines Washington now?

Yet a year into this administration, it is impossible to believe this kind of change is anywhere on the administration's radar, at least anymore. The need to reform Congress has left Obama's rhetoric. The race to dicker with Congress in the same way Congress always deals is now the plan. Symbolic limits on lobbyists within the administration and calls for new disclosure limits for Congress are the sole tickets of "reform." (Even its revolving-door policy left a Mack truck-wide gap at its core: members of the administration can't leave the government and lobby for the industries they regulated during the term of the administration. But the day after Obama leaves office? All bets are off.) Save a vague promise in his State of the Union about overturning the Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (as if that were reform enough), there is nothing in the current framework of the White House's plans that is anything more than the strategy of a kinder and gentler, albeit certainly more articulate, George W. Bush: buying reform at whatever price the Fundraising Congress demands. No doubt Obama will try to buy more reform than Bush did. But the terms will continue to be set by a Congress driven by a dependency that betrays democracy, and at a price that is not clear we can even afford.

Healthcare reform is a perfect example. The bill the Fundraising Congress has produced is miles from the reform that Obama promised ("Any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange...including a public option," July 19, 2009). Like the stimulus package, like the bank bailouts, it is larded with gifts to the most powerful fundraising interests--including a promise to drug companies to pay retail prices for wholesale purchases and a promise to the insurance companies to leave their effectively collusive (since exempt from anti-trust limitations) and extraordinarily inefficient system of insurance intact--and provides (relative to the promises) little to the supposed intended beneficiaries of the law: the uninsured. In this, it is the perfect complement to the only significant social legislation enacted by Bush, the prescription drug benefit: a small benefit to those who can't afford drugs, a big gift to those who make drugs and an astonishingly expensive price tag for the nation.

So how did Obama get to this sorry bill? The first step, we are told, was to sit down with representatives from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to work out a deal. But why, the student of Obama's campaign might ask, were they the entities with whom to strike a deal? How many of the 69,498,516 votes received by Obama did they actually cast? "We have to change our politics," Obama said. Where is the change in this?

"People...watch," Obama told us in the campaign, "as every year, candidates offer up detailed healthcare plans with great fanfare and promise, only to see them crushed under the weight of Washington politics and drug and insurance industry lobbying once the campaign is over."

"This cannot," he said, "be one of those years."

It has been one of those years. And it will continue to be so long as presidents continue to give a free pass to the underlying corruption of our democracy: Congress.

There was a way Obama might have had this differently. It would have been risky, some might say audacious. And it would have required an imagination far beyond the conventional politics that now controls his administration.

No doubt, 2009 was going to be an extraordinarily difficult year. Our nation was a cancer patient hit by a bus on her way to begin chemotherapy. The first stages of reform thus had to be trauma care, at least to stabilize the patient until more fundamental treatment could begin.

But even then, there was an obvious way that Obama could have reserved the recognition of the need for this more fundamental reform by setting up the expectations of the nation forcefully and clearly. Building on the rhetoric at the core of his campaign, on January 20, 2009, Obama could have said:

America has spoken. It has demanded a fundamental change in how Washington works, and in the government America delivers. I commit to America to work with Congress to produce that change. But if we fail, if Congress blocks the change that America has demanded--or more precisely, if Congress allows the special interests that control it to block the change that America has demanded--then it will be time to remake Congress. Not by throwing out the Democrats, or by throwing out the Republicans. But by throwing out both, to the extent that both continue to want to work in the old way. If this Congress fails to deliver change, then we will change Congress.

Had he framed his administration in these terms, then when what has happened happened, Obama would be holding the means to bring about the obvious and critical transformation that our government requires: an end to the Fundraising Congress. The failure to deliver on the promises of the campaign would not be the failure of Obama to woo Republicans (the unwooable Victorians of our age). The failure would have been what America was already primed to believe: a failure of this corrupted institution to do its job. Once that failure was marked with a frame that Obama set, he would have been in the position to begin the extraordinarily difficult campaign to effect the real change that Congress needs.

I am not saying this would have been easy. It wouldn't have. It would have been the most important constitutional struggle since the New Deal or the Civil War. It would have involved a fundamental remaking of the way Congress works. No one should minimize how hard that would have been. But if there was a president who could have done this, it was, in my view, Obama. No politician in almost a century has had the demonstrated capacity to inspire the imagination of a nation. He had us, all of us, and could have kept us had he kept the focus high.

Nor can one exaggerate the need for precisely this reform. We can't just putter along anymore. Our government is, as Paul Krugman put it, "ominously dysfunctional" just at a time when the world desperately needs at least competence. Global warming, pandemic disease, a crashing world economy: these are not problems we can leave to a litter of distracted souls. We are at one of those rare but critical moments when a nation must remake itself, to restore its government to its high ideals and to the potential of its people. Think of the brilliance of almost any bit of the private sector--from Hollywood, to Silicon Valley, to MIT, to the arts in New York or Nashville--and imagine a government that reflected just a fraction of that excellence. We cannot afford any less anymore.

What would the reform the Congress needs be? At its core, a change that restores institutional integrity. A change that rekindles a reason for America to believe in the central institution of its democracy by removing the dependency that now defines the Fundraising Congress. Two changes would make that removal complete. Achieving just one would have made Obama the most important president in a hundred years.

That one--and first--would be to enact an idea proposed by a Republican (Teddy Roosevelt) a century ago: citizen-funded elections. America won't believe in Congress, and Congress won't deliver on reform, whether from the right or the left, until Congress is no longer dependent upon conservative-with-a-small-c interests--meaning those in the hire of the status quo, keen to protect the status quo against change. So long as the norms support a system in which members sell out for the purpose of raising funds to get re-elected, citizens will continue to believe that money buys results in Congress. So long as citizens believe that, it will.

Citizen-funded elections could come in a number of forms. The most likely is the current bill sponsored in the House by Democrat John Larson and Republican Walter Jones, in the Senate by Democrats Dick Durbin and Arlen Specter. That bill is a hybrid between traditional public funding and small-dollar donations. Under this Fair Elections Now Act (which, by the way, is just about the dumbest moniker for the statute possible, at least if the sponsors hope to avoid Supreme Court invalidation), candidates could opt in to a system that would give them, after clearing certain hurdles, substantial resources to run a campaign. Candidates would also be free to raise as much money as they want in contributions maxed at $100 per citizen.

The only certain effect of this first change would be to make it difficult to believe that money buys any results in Congress. A second change would make that belief impossible: banning any member of Congress from working in any lobbying or consulting capacity in Washington for seven years after his or her term. Part of the economy of influence that corrupts our government today is that Capitol Hill has become, as Representative Jim Cooper put it, a "farm league for K Street." But K Street will lose interest after seven years, and fewer in Congress would think of their career the way my law students think about life after law school--six to eight years making around $180,000, and then doubling or tripling that as a partner, where "partnership" for members of Congress means a comfortable position on K Street.

Before the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC, I thought these changes alone would be enough at least to get reform started. But the clear signal of the Roberts Court is that any reform designed to muck about with whatever wealth wants is constitutionally suspect. And while it would take an enormous leap to rewrite constitutional law to make the Fair Elections Now Act unconstitutional, Citizens United demonstrates that the Court is in a jumping mood. And more ominously, the market for influence that that decision will produce may well overwhelm any positive effect that Fair Elections produces.

This fact has led some, including now me, to believe that reform needs people who can walk and chew gum at the same time. Without doubt, we need to push the Fair Elections Now Act. But we also need to begin the process to change the Constitution to assure that reform can survive the Roberts Court. That constitutional change should focus on the core underlying problem: institutional independence. The economy of influence that grips Washington has destroyed Congress's independence. Congress needs the power to restore it, by both funding elections to secure independence and protecting the context within which elections occur so that the public sees that integrity.

No amendment would come from this Congress, of course. But the framers left open a path to amendment that doesn't require the approval of Congress--a convention, which must be convened if two-thirds of the states apply for it. Interestingly (politically) those applications need not agree on the purpose of the convention. Some might see the overturning of Citizens United. Others might want a balanced budget amendment. The only requirement is that two-thirds apply, and then begins the drama of an unscripted national convention to debate questions of fundamental law.

Many fear a convention, worrying that our democracy can't process constitutional innovation well. I don't share that fear, but in any case, any proposed amendment still needs thirty-eight states to ratify it. There are easily twelve solid blue states in America and twelve solid red states. No one should fear that change would be too easy.

No doubt constitutional amendments are politically impossible--just as wresting a republic from the grip of a monarchy, or abolishing slavery or segregation, or electing Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama was "politically impossible." But conventional minds are always wrong about pivot moments in a nation's history. Obama promised this was such a moment. The past year may prove that he let it slip from his hand.

For this, democracy pivots. It will either spin to restore integrity or it will spin further out of control. Whether it will is no longer a choice. Our only choice is how.

Imagine an alcoholic. He may be losing his family, his job and his liver. These are all serious problems. Indeed, they are among the worst problems anyone could face. But what we all understand about the dependency of alcoholism is that however awful these problems, the alcoholic cannot begin to solve them until he solves his first problem--alcoholism.

So too is it with our democracy. Whether on the left or the right, there is an endless list of critical problems that each side believes important. The Reagan right wants less government and a simpler tax system. The progressive left wants better healthcare and a stop to global warming. Each side views these issues as critical, either to the nation (the right) or to the globe (the left). But what both sides must come to see is that the reform of neither is possible until we solve our first problem first--the dependency of the Fundraising Congress.

This dependency will perpetually block reform of any kind, since reform is always a change in the status quo, and it is defense of the status quo that the current corruption has perfected. For again, as Obama said:

If we're not willing to take up that fight, then real change--change that will make a lasting difference in the lives of ordinary Americans--will keep getting blocked by the defenders of the status quo.

"Defenders of the status quo"--now including the souls that hijacked the movement Obama helped inspire.

About Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at Harvard Law School, is co-founder of the nonprofit Change Congress

Trades as Sources of Enduring Social Value

2010-01-28T16:59:00.000-08:00

When we think about an economy, that is, a system of exchange of goods and services and the corresponding banking and monetary system upon which it is based, we are lead in this day and age inevitably to ask "what work, what goods really have value?"In the emergence of modern industrial economies there has occurred a tremendous differentiation and proliferation of types of work and types of goods. Some of this work, some of these goods are, no doubt, without real value. What is a man? Is he a thing that thinks or is he a thing that desires, that owns and possesses? What real goods does he need? What is of enduring real value to him?

Some of today's work is obviously of dubious social value. Much of today's work is blatantly immoral, much is questionable and certainly some of it is detestable. Where lies the criterion which separates the good from the bad? An obvious question one must ask about oneself and one's work is What do I do for the group, what do I contribute? If the answer is that one does not so much contribute as taketh away, then the answer seems clear: one oughtn't to do such work. But that doesn't even begin to do justice to the complexity of this issue

But man finds himself incaged in time and place, not in cloud cuckoo worlds. There is the need of the basics in life and some extras to be sure. A man needs a trade. And here, again, the question of what kind of work comes to the fore. We are workers by nature and by design and given that fact, it seems fair to say that most good people want to work at something that is of real value that does not take away or deprive others of their own wellbeing. We want dirty hands without "dirty hands". We want to be engaged in work that is real and that matters but we don't want to be affiliated with injustice, corruption, or destruction.

One answer may be found within history. There are common needs that all societies have. There are specific, regional differences in regards to some needs. But these needs show up as perennial industries, things which have a historical presence, things which people worked at again and again over time, evolving and growing but ever-remaining a part of the economy. I am thinking here of the trades, of course, and their ever-present place in civilized (civilizing) polity.
If we think of the social complexity of the twenty-first century and the corresponding emphasis given to students nowadays to become technocrats (not that all technocracy is bad!), we must feel that another option should be presented to them, that is, to become a part of a trade. Those trades which can trace their lineage back to the medieval guilds and further, however sketchily, should stand out as viable work sources for the future on the grounds that they have always been with us and (knock on wood) always will.

Why, you may ask, is this inquiry necessary? Are you suggesting that I become a plumber or an electrician? Let me take these questions in order. First, this inquiry has become necessary because the future seems to be filled with some pretty bleak conditions and it is the fear of this writer that a generation of people are being prepared for jobs and work that may never materialize. This does not mean that our transition to the future cannot bring about a better world order, but I'd like to offer an argument for the value of trades as vehicles of economic activity against a world of increasing social disappointments. We do ourselves a favor by contemplating the values in essential work. The walrus-tusk harpoon shaft carefully carved by the Inuit hunter bears the imprint of social invention, creativity, necessity, and social value as much as any of the finely crafted hedge funds. Our focus should be on perfecting the simple goods of being. So, should you become a plumber or electrician? Well, yes, of course.

Night Ride by Frederich Engels

2010-01-28T07:22:00.001-08:00

How Obama became a 'Nigger': How I became one too

2010-01-24T12:45:00.000-08:00

At the end of the banquet days of Bush, after the gutting of the social contract, it was necessary that someone "clean up". Now, as Wendell Berry uses the term, a nigger is really just a labor-saving device. And I don't mean to use it with its racial sense here. But Barack Obama became the nigger who cleaned up after Dinner. He did it somewhat quietly, didn't wish to complain about the mess too loudly, didn't want to call in the guests and former host to account for their shitheap. No indictments, no truth comissions, just shouldering up quietly to the task of trying to fix the disaster.Just what a perfect nigger would do.

Congress also, it seems, are the niggers of corporations. I recently heard Ron Wyden (D, OR) say that for every lobbyist that visits his office he tells them, "explain to me how I might sell this back in Corvallis". That is the reasoning of a nigger. The Supreme Court in its Citizen United case, also, (with 4 exceptions) sees that it is fitting for the people of this country to be themselves niggered out of the political process by the bullhorn of Money. We are free to be the niggers we want to be.

I, too, am become a slave, niggering around in the shadows. "Head down, ass up!" is our refrain: "Assholes and elbows!" is theirs.

Bend Over

2010-01-10T00:01:00.001-08:00

A little skiing at Mt. Hood (photos courtesy of Stryder)

2010-01-09T22:33:00.000-08:00

Mt. Hood Meadows, looking westward.
Ross, Coy, and I in a warm fog...the snow was a damp powder.

Feng, in a moment of existential bliss.

The Forging of the Sampo

2009-11-07T16:25:00.000-08:00

First Day Out

2009-10-11T08:16:00.000-07:00

No fish today, but then again...who's counting? Topics discussed today: theological non-realism, epistemic justification, environmentalism, hippies, rednecks, strategies for steelhead success. The gold is in the soul.

Hippies and the Cutting of Trees

2009-10-04T13:03:00.000-07:00

The cutting of trees spawns strong moral reactions from some. Vlad, a seldom bathing semi-intellectual who is the housemate of my brother in Portland, informs us that one must "respect the tree" in order to take its life. Another barefooted character who is in the circle of the house claims of all things that "trees are more important than human beings".

In Santa Cruz, I recall a withered ancient Black Walnut that had been there since the time of Captain Davenport needing to be removed. The City Council wanted to remove it but met with great public outrage and at last agreed upon steep heading cuts back to the remaining stem. After the cuts were made, hippies ascended into the remaining branches rubbing hemp salve onto the exposed cambium.

Recently I was removing some offending branches from Mrs. Jones' tree which happened to be half in a small organic garden's lot here in Portland. As I was removing them a hippy came out of the woodwork and piped up "hey, that tree can feel that."

"Oh," I said "haven't you heard the news: trees do not have nervous systems!"

And in the pause there was no retort, but, looking down upon him from above I could see that a great thunderclap of Reason had stultified his bird's nest mind.

He bitched a little more about the tree and told me he was an "spiritualist" as though that would let him off the hook and have some currency with me.

" I continued, "Animism is dead now 2000 years. Yeah, the idea that trees have souls with feeling died with the ancient Greeks. Get with it, man. Think it through with the tools of a man appropriate to your age: let slip the last vestige of the magical view of reality that is childhood."

Later he slipped away without comment like a summer plum that had been stripped of its thin coat.

So, you see, there are all of these kind of cases of hippies complaining about the moral problems in cutting trees. And they always come back to how much feeling is there in a tree--as though the moral problem in cutting trees consists in offending the person of the tree. Again and again the problem is that you are not "respecting the tree", that you are "not honoring it", that you are "murdering" it, and so forth. But to my way of thinking all of this talk is nonsense.

And that is why I'd recommend a view of the moral value of nature that is anthropogenic but not anthropomorphic. We can certainly speak about our moral feelings about trees--that they have certain values for us, perhaps even certain moral value unto themselves from our point of view--but to say that trees are moral agents in themselves we court insanity.

A Filed Coin

2009-09-16T06:50:00.000-07:00

What value remains in a filed coin?
The silver shaved and filed
flakes and dust meticulously collected
melted into another just like it
Like it enough, anyway
to fool the eye of the merchant.
Fooled twice it seems:
once by the counterfeit,
once by the filed coin and
maybe fooled altogether again
by something too rich to speak.

A Giant Oregon Bigleaf Maple Removal

2009-09-11T22:20:00.001-07:00

Feng, MC of Ceremonies posing before the Maple
A groundsman who came with us for the day. He had a red beard and enjoyed smoking.
The maple, next to the professor's house seen in relief.
Our boss.
Climbing the poles and setting rigging, removing the canopy branch by branch.
But these were large branches indeed. Matt, working the GRCS.
The former smackdown champ himself.
End of second day, Feng admires his work.
A heartful thanks!

An Old Growth Climb in Salmon River Valley, Mt. Hood

2009-07-11T20:50:00.000-07:00

Douglas Fir, East fork Salmon River, dbh approx. 8 feet, height approx. 290 feet.

Ryan, our friend who set the line
A mid level view--say 150 feet up
Up the last pitch with the Kong.
Coy moving quickly: foot ascender, chest croll ascender, and a single ascender.
Looking towards the base.

Miller time!
Brothers in the high tree tops!

Parrhesia in leadership

2009-05-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

A certain employee, lets call him X, suggested that we take this Acer macrophyllum in one fell swoop. I disagreed and we took it in 3, so as to not risk damaging the awning on the veranda and the nearby apple tree. Later, he came to me and asked if it was alright for him to question me, the climber.

I told him that my method of leading the crew is modelled, in part, upon Greek democratic ideals. I told him that in that era there was in the council, the boule, a tradition of 'tell all speech' (parrhesia), useful for the sake of arriving at the best possible judgment. If any one on the crew wishes to propose any idea, I heartily encourage it. Then, we sift through them, and arrive at the most informed judgment.

That is a leadership model that places a premium on justice and truth.

Thoughts on Just Leadership

2009-05-09T09:18:00.000-07:00

Portland, Oregon

I have recently assumed the position of lead arborist with a tree care company in Portland. I am the foreman and I am in a position of leadership. A philosophical excursus on leadership is in order.

In the first place leadership is concerned with the care of others. Just leadership--and by that I mean leadership with genuine authority--always proceeds from the point of view of a caring relationship: the leader should be in a caring disposition towards his charges.

Secondly we may wish to distinguish just leadership from petty authoritarianism. I think it was Oliver Wendell Holmes who said power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts. Even small pieces of power can be misused, such as when a leader attempts to fulfill some personal need for power, acting out of a Napoleon complex, as it were. Just leadership, by way of contrast, rather describes the way in which a leader subdues his own needs for the sake of the group and its collectivity of individuals.

Thirdly, leadership is only as good as the rules out of which it is constructed. In my case, I insist that everyone follows the ANSI standards on tree work. This way, I--and they--are neither higher nor lower than the objective laws. The merely personal preferences of the leader are thereby constrained by common reason. By insisting that he and everyone follow these rules he gives employees a reason to trust their leader because he is just.

Fourth, a leader must show that he is neither higher nor lower than the work he is prescribing that others do. He must, at least in my particular level of authority, actually do the work that everybody does and show that he is master of their work, of all work.

Fifth, a leader must show by example, becoming a model that he wishes to cultivate in his group. To do the work well and with gusto is, though not a necessary part of justice, certainly a closely attached virtue. Leadership is done by participation in the work of the group as a model for others to follow.

more to come....

How Many Times Do You Have To Be Slapped In the Face to Know You Are Being Slapped In the Face

2009-04-27T08:51:00.000-07:00

Belligerism

2009-04-18T06:15:00.000-07:00

A man enters a bar and saddles up next to a big guy. The big guy turns to him and says, "stop staring at my girlfriend!"

The man is looking at an empty row of seats and says, "what girlfriend? There's noone there."

"Yeah, you're staring at her right now! Quit staring at my girl!" the big guy says.

"I don't know what you're talking about: there's nobody there!"

"If you don't quit looking at my girl I'm going to have to smash your face in." says the big guy.

On and on it goes. We would describe the big guy's behavior as belligerent wouldn't we?

Belligerent behavior induces conflict, it creates it out of nothing.

In the post-Bush era we can now look back with owl of minerva hindsight and see clearly the regnant political philosophy of that administration now that we are at the close of the age. That philosophy can only be described as belligerent: feigning injury in order to invade and depose the leadership of a country; the treatment of war prisoners at Guantanamo; etc. This philosophy--a philosophy which, I might add, also formed the groundwork of our foreign policy in the Bush years--is rightly described under the rubric of Belligerism. By 'Belligerism', I mean to describe a political ideology that is aggressive and acquisitive, one which is built to produce conflict; a further criterion of Belligerism is that it derive its authority from something other than the will of the public, either actual or theoretical.

The Bush regime, in its communications with the public and Congress, exhibited all or most of the following actions:

1. Assuming a posture of mutual competition and, by the by, affirming the idea of aggressive war. In other words, rewriting the theory of just war to favor pre-emption.
2. Assuming also a certain American Exceptionalism: ours is the correct moral and economic world order. The Roman Empire thought of itself as exceptionalist in a similar way.
3. Foment a distortion or lie about a foreign threat in order to generate a war.
4. In tone, demeanor, and content never accept blame.
5. Act with apparent public authority but not with actual public reason.
6. Make up your own reality; train through propaganda the listening audience in the reality of your fantasy.
7. Using normative concepts like 'Human Rights' as a figleaf for corporate-capitalist extraction of the natural resources of a region and the bubble in the military industrial complex.
8. Exempting itself from public scrutiny through an asserted "executive privilege".

These events are actions brought about by a prior reasoning. That reasoning, exhibited in the bullying tone of Bush Administration rhetoric, not to mention the still unjustified war in Iraq warrant an identification of the Bush philosophy as a paradigm instance of what I have been calling 'Belligerism'.

I should also add that Belligerism here emerges from a democratic social form, which is surprising, since one wants to think only of ruthless authoritarian regimes as belligerent, and they are. For in the case of all Belligeristic regimes, they exercise decision making authority apart from public consent. But because a belligeristic regime need not be an authoritarian one, there is often in belligeristic but democratic regimes a concerted attempt to manipulate and distort that support in the form of "free elections". The government that believes in Belligerism justifies the use of force to coerce consent and may supply it, argumentum ad baculum, to generate support through "democratic" procedures.

Suppose that we evaluate Belligerism on its philosophical merits. What then?

First criticism of it is that it is a recipe for a war without end. It provides other actors in the global public arena with a similar grounds of exclusion from law, inviting endless challenges to international peace.

Second criticism is that it fails the most basic tests of consistency, coherence, and reciprocity one would expect from a fair and trustworthy political philosophy.

Third criticism is that it lacks a self correction mechanism and operates once loose like a runaway train.

more....

Doctor's Park

2009-04-17T06:36:00.001-07:00

Whiskey Dick and Cletus ride again! Look at those two sharpies on their shoulders.

The Copper Standard

2009-04-17T06:33:00.000-07:00

From Schott's bl;og, NY Times 4/17/09.

Very interesting article describes China's stockpiling of copper with its currency. Clever fuckers, aren't they?

To Leave or to Fight?

2009-04-05T07:40:00.000-07:00

The above link is to an article in the Nation online magazine which describes the present attempt of adjunct professors to organize under a union. I believe such an attempt will most certainly fail. Because of that I have chosen to leave academia because I don't believe that it is a fight that can be won by adjuncts. There may be small victories here and there, but the overall war is a losing one. The fact is that higher education is beholden to a model that cannot serve the interests of the teachers/professors. To familiarize yourself with the concrete data, here is a link to the facts about "contingent faculty" on the American Association of University Professors website. Let me give some considerations as to why the current attempt to unionize is bound to fail.

1. There is a perennial oversupply of Phd's in any quarter of academia with the exception of certain niche disciplines like biomedical technology or nursing administration.
2. The modern university is economically built around sports, entertainment, engineering, and nursing. Most academic disciplines have nothing to offer these fields.
3. The long term demographic trends (i.e., numbers of matriculating students) will not support the current oversupply of Phd's.
4. Tuition at colleges and universities has far outstripped inflation for the last ten years. This trend cannot continue and thus, economics dictates that there will not be more money to go around.
5. Many schools lack an endowment capable of furnishing decent wages and benefits for its teaching corps. Those that do have witnessed large hits to their portfolios on account of the financial crisis.

So, unless you are rich and can afford the social battle, you really can't put up a fight against these facts. Those that do are going to be sadly disappointed.

So, to leave is itself the only honorable course.

And that is just what I've done.

Three Reasons for Renewable Energy Now

2009-04-04T08:40:00.000-07:00

The reasons for a cultural shift towards renewable energy are many and obvious. Let me give but three of these.

In the first place, there is the argument that renewable--and by that I mean non-hydrocarbon--energy will help curb greenhouse gas emissions. This argument is bolstered by the scientific facts regarding global warming (yes, global warming and not mere "climate change"). The factual aspect of this, namely, that our hydrocarbon usage is causing global warming is contested only by the lunatic fringe and not mainstream science. Second, the moral concern for future generations is again contested only by the lunatic fringe who see a silver lining in a coming apocalypse. Whatever the basis for our moral judgments, we all ought to see the value in bequeathing to future generations a planet that is capable of sustaining life in all of its diversity and a civilization worthy of human dignity.

Secondly, traditional hydrocarbon sources of energy are already in decline even as demand is is increasing worldwide. The scientific data on peak oil is robust and conspicuous. While there are hidden pockets of oil and natural gas, many if not most of these resources will dwindle in the imminent future. Industrial civilization depends on an abundance of cheap energy. If we want industrial civilization, then we need energy. Because that energy is becoming more difficult and costly to find, it follows that some alternative is a practical necessity to sustaining the project of civilization. Some will say that we should just let this industrial phase of civilization wither on the vine because it has brought too much inequality, pollution, and alienation. While that is true, it is also true that in the industrialized countries the life expectancy has been increased by about 50 years per individual and the quality of life has, in many respects, improved. On the whole, then, new forms of energy are needed to continue (at the least) the benefits of industrial civilization. The downsides of industrial society are very real as well, but I believe that they can be dealt with on their own.

Lastly, there are moral reasons for a cultural shift to renewable energy based upon an interest we have in facilitating autonomy. By this I mean that citizens have a moral and economic interest in the production and use of their own energy resources. Morally, a citizen has an interest in preventing the devastating effects of global warming while also working towards advancing the interests of the common good of industrial society. Economically, a citizen has an interest in reducing the costs of their own energy usage. By possessing technologies to produce energy in a minimally polluting fashion, citizens can take hold of this problem and contribute on an individual basis to the solution. Policy and legislation which facilitates this (such as a carbon cap and trade scheme) will greatly enhance individual control over energy production and use both now and for future generations. The alternative is that individuals are forced to utilize the existing hydrocarbon intensive energy infrastructure as it currently stands. They are forced, in other words, to cause global warming and to commit future generations to a diminished standard of living. This does and should sit uneasily with the individual conscience.

These, then, are three powerful reasons for a cultural shift to renewable energy: global warming, peak oil, and individual autonomy.

A Poor Man's Rope Guide

2009-03-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

This is a "rope guide" or retrievable false crotch. The arborists doubled 1/2" line (orange) goes up through the halyard shackle, through the ART pulley, and down to the carabiner on the arborists harness. The rope guide is constructed of two aluminum rings spliced onto 8 1/2' of arbormaster (red, white black), and a prusik of 12" dyneema girth hitched to a small aluminum ring (gold). The pulley is attached via a Petzl dogbone, and the retriever is attached via Black Diamond Dynex.
Notice how she is retrieving the line now. The little red ball measures at 9/16" + and it will pass through the pulley but get stuck in the halyard shackle.
pulling through the pulley...
and apply pressure and it pulls the pulley through the ring and the whole assembly drops to the ground. In other words, with this assembly you don't need an actual crotch, but you can just use the stem.

A Good Pair of Boots

2009-03-10T07:18:00.000-07:00

Well, actually, two pair. The ones on the left are Hoffmans that I got from Baileys--they've got a steel toe, a rubber footwell, and thinsulate liners--tits boots in Winter. The others are Wesco Jobmasters that I use in the Spring and Fall.

Beauty Bear

2009-02-28T10:04:00.001-08:00

A Wisconsin Farm in a Gainsborough Light

2009-02-26T18:25:00.000-08:00

As seen with a friend in early September, a farm in central Wisconsin.
But here in the winter season where everything is dormant and white,
I recall that there was upon the farm this shaft of Gainsborough light.

Arne Naess, Ecophilosopher, dies at 96

2009-02-03T07:14:00.000-08:00

Norwegian philosopher and founder of the deep ecology movement Arne Naess (27 January 1912 – 12 January 2009) died at age 96. Naess was trained in logical positivism and assumed the chairmanship of the philosophy department at the University of Oslo at age 27. His early retirement from the philosophy ratrace was accomplished at age 57 allowing him to devote himself to political activism and a deeper critique of industrial society and its relation to the natural world that he called 'Deep Ecology'. His own version of that philosophy--Ecosophy T--was developed from a syncretism of Spinoza, Gandhi, and his own earlier work on communication theory. Central to his philosophical view was the idea of nature having an 'intrinsic value' and therefore being worthy of moral concern and respect. Equally important was his notion of self as capable of expansion beyond the narrow ego to encompass (contingent upon spiritual maturity) the whole of nature. On only one occassion did I meet Arne. It was at UC Santa Cruz at a talk he gave on deep ecology. Afterward, as he was leaving the lecture hall I asked him what to do when persons do not share basic intuitions about the intrinsic value of nature. He was old then and with a twinkle in his eye reached down and picked a flower and smiled at me saying softly, "you must show them." Long live the spirit of Arne Naess!

Dowd on Disgorgement; Feng on Decapitation

2009-02-01T05:42:00.000-08:00

The above link is to today's NY Times editorial by Maureen Dowd in which she argues that any bank that both received federal dollars and issued bonuses to its staff ought to be forced to give the bonus money back. Amen. 18+ billion dollars in bonuses? These fuckers should be in jail right now. Thats our money lining their pockets. These are the fuckers who created the credit derivative bubble. I'd be all for jailing them for that alone, but this too? The argument that if they don't pay out these bonuses why they (the executives and staff receiving bonuses) will go elsewhere is not only wrong, its immoral: that shit just won't flush. Where else are they going to go? Higher education? Public service? The restaurant business? IT? What? These fuckers don't know the value of money. They're too close to where it is made out of thin air to understand the nature of a productive economy. No, no, I'll tell you what: bring out the guillotines and decimate their ranks, displaying prominently their heads on wrought iron pikes around Wall Street. That would send a message.

Viv's First Ski

2009-01-17T08:04:00.000-08:00

Senate Budget Chair Kent Conrad's opening statement concerning debt

2009-01-16T09:25:00.000-08:00

The link above is from a Congressional committee meeting of 1/15/09. Wow. A rosy future ahead. An even more awesome statement of the economic outlook is from the meeting on 1/08/09 C-Span broadcast (here).

The Case for a Truth Commission

2009-01-11T06:54:00.000-08:00

It is the judgment of this writer that our country stands in need of a truth commission to uncover the full extent of the legal wrongdoing of the Bush Administration. This morning's New York Times column by Frank Rich argues as much. It will be tempting to not pursue such a commission, and we should expect many in Congress to claim that this would be a "waste of Congress's time", that it would prevent Congress from doing the work of the day, and so forth. These kinds of arguments should be seen for what they are: frivolous, conspiratorial, and irresponsible. Let the sun shine upon the festering pustule that is the executive branch so that we can all say, collectively, "never again!"

Into the greedy black hole it goes

2008-12-22T04:34:00.000-08:00

Bait and Switch

2008-12-21T10:22:00.001-08:00

Breakdown or Breathrough?

2008-12-08T10:43:00.000-08:00

Were they evil or merely stupid?

2008-12-04T21:25:00.000-08:00

It is astounding to realize how this last congress acted in its bailout of Citicorp. The figures speak for themselves. Citicorp market cap (the sum total of shares x stock price was to the tune of 21 Billion Dollars (End of November, 2008 (CBS)). Then the US monies given: 345 billion US $Dollars. The deal: an "8-10% share" of stock.

Were they evil or merely stupid?

Evil if they meant to funnel public money to a select group of private capitalists in a unwarranted overvaluation of their stock, that doesn't fit with current valuations. (I take it that you will agree that prognosicating future valuations, wherein Citicorp will be worth 345 x 10 (3.45 trillion US $Dollars), the company would have to grow 1000%, which I think dear reader will agree are to be taken with uttermost skepticism.

Stupid if they meant to find a good bargain for the public's money in this filthy whore, Citicorp.

A Moment for an Economic Democracy?

2008-12-01T11:49:00.000-08:00

Consider the following quote I have culled from an article by Steve Fraser (here):

"A real democratic nationalization of the banks -- good value for our money rather than good money to add to their value -- should be part of the policy agenda up for discussion in the Obama era. As things now stand, the public supplies the loans and the investment capital, but the key decisions about how they are to be deployed remain in private hands. A democratic version of nationalizing the financial system would transfer these critical decisions to new institutions created by the Congress and designed to pursue public, not private, objectives. How to subject the flow of credit and investment capital to public control ought to be on the drawing boards if we are to look beyond the old New Deal to a new one.

Or, for instance, if we are to bail out the auto industry, which we should -- millions of jobs, businesses, communities, and what's left of once powerful and proud unions are at stake -- then why not talk about its nationalization, too? Why not create a representative body of workers, consumers, environmentalists, suppliers, and other interested parties to supervise the industry's reorganization and retooling to produce, just as the president-elect says he wants, new green means of transportation -- and not just cars?

Why not apply the same model to the rehabilitation of the nation's infrastructure; indeed, why not to the reindustrialization of the country as a whole? If, as so many commentators are now claiming, what lies ahead is the kind of massive, crippling deflation characteristic of such crises, then why not consider creating democratic mechanisms to impose an incomes policy on wages and prices that works against that deflation?"

NOW, this idea should not seem that strange to us--and yet it does. The idea that the public should have decision making authority in corporate entities including banks and auto making firms (more than just voting as consumers), is a part of the idea behind Economic Democracy. We talk a good line in this country about how free we are, how democratic we are, and all the rest of it, but when push comes to shove, off to work we go the slaves that we are unable and unwilling to question or rebel against the corporate entities which run our economy, our lives, and our government. NOW is a moment which could fold towards more democratic control over the economy. Wouldn't that be a victory for democracy?!

Two Beauties

2008-11-23T07:58:00.000-08:00

My two beauties: Vivian and Melissa.

Winner Take Nothing (except the jobs of working people)

2008-11-03T06:28:00.000-08:00

Where did I ever get the notion that ownership over a company entails having moral responsibilities, e.g. to the employees and shareholders? Capitalism is an amoral system. Must remember this. Must keep this in mind. Must remember this. Must keep this in mind. Must remember this. Must keep this in mind.

Now, here I go off to work. Do I then treat the company and its holdings morally? If it has no moral responsibility to me, how do I have any moral responsibility to it?

Ah. Morality is a one way street, emanating from me out into a world that is indifferent to me. See how that works?

The Unknown Host

2008-10-27T18:25:00.000-07:00

What’s in a name? Sometimes nothing…sometimes more. Now and again the universe produces through its random lottery a cosmic jackpot. Such is the case with the aptly named Dave Good. Good in so many respects, perhaps best at the art of the telemark, of which the skiing is but a part.

A couple of years ago Dave mounted me up some second-hand Kazama boards with a used set of Rivas that I’d bought in Berkeley: though it was all I could afford it was, nevertheless, my first telemark set up and I was keen to press them into service. “Why don’t you come with Ute and Mila and I? We’re skiing in to a friend’s cabin in the Sierra Buttes and we’ll ski out the next day.” An opportunity such as this cannot be turned down.

At the gate, I fastened crude “kicker skins” to my skis: short strips of old skins lashed down at the ends with silver duct tape. My friends had better gear than me, but gear is not what makes the man. “Gear is not what a man is, still less has, but merely uses” I told myself, “the man makes the gear.” A sound first principle and one with a much broader application as I would soon learn. It was still early in the season—late December and there hadn’t been a lot of snowfall. The road was covered with only a thin coat of quite slushy snow. We could see the pavement in places and the volcanic soil was still bare under the manzanita.

Poling and gliding, we traced the course of the closed road admiring as we went the rose-hued granite boulders through which flowed the rime-encrusted Salmon Creek and, crossing it, we began the ascent into the upper lakes. The skies greyed over and a chill wind kicked up. Dave led us to a cabin down the end of a spur. The cabin was boarded up and he tried his key but it did not work. “It’s not this one—that’s for sure,” he exclaimed, shaking his head.

We skied single file through some dense stands of lodgepole pine back to our ascending track. I knew this area fairly well and I asked Dave if he knew for sure which cabin it was. “It’s down to the right as you go up toward Sardine Lake” he said. A few isolated flakes trickled from the heavens. A cabin could be seen distantly through a cluster of aspens and we veered into the trees, howling coyote yelps as we gathered speed through the openings between the boles.

Crossing the swale of a small creek, there arose a stout lodge in a broad clearing. Well, we tried the key again and it didn’t work but “you know,” Dave said, “he probably gave me the wrong key.” In the gloaming the air temperature was dropping. We pried the plywood window shutter off the back window and lo! the window was unlocked and slid open. A lithe member of our party slipped into the dark innards.

Rounding the lodge, we unclipped our skis and walked up the steps onto the wide expanse of porch and, from inside, the front door opened. There we prepared our nests in the recesses of what turned out to be a grand summer lodge. We boiled down snow-water for tea, prepared an exquisite supper, and reclined in the yellow light of coleman lanterns humming from the tops of cloth-covered boxes.

We fashioned a teepee of kindling atop a mound of newspaper and soon had a fire roaring in the hearth. Another round of tea was prepared and we enjoyed some silence, letting our eyes follow the flames as they quickly licked split rounds of ponderosa pine, popping open pitch pockets and exploding coals. The ladies giggled in the loft as they bedded down while Dave and I enjoyed a fireside smoke.

In the orange light of the fire we breathed great blasts of purple smoke into the open-beamed room. “You know,” he said pointing the pipe stem at me and exhaling a sweet blast of smoke, “this isn’t our cabin.” In the hearth, the charred logs shifted and a small maelstrom of sparks flurried. Thinking through the implications of that statement, I was not surprised and replied, “we need not worry about that—good men need no invitation.” He laughed and a confidence-inspiring smile rippled across his face. His teeth gleamed white in the firelight.

In the flickering light I could see a bookshelf laden with stacks of old Sunset magazines and a row of books. Amidst that odd melange of Hardy Boy mysteries, Clive Cussler and Danielle Steele novels, a book of Gary Snyder’s poems caught my eye. Remarkable for their purity, these poems had long been a favorite of mine. I opened to a random page and read aloud:

The earth for a pillow

the sky for a blanket

that is true prosperity

Dave nodded his approval at that sentiment, and we both reflected upon our own prosperity. I made a few remarks about the goodness of a lean prosperity and then let it rest.

At daybreak the aroma of french roast filled the still-dark lodge. A pale light began to illuminate the window panes. About a foot of powder had fallen in the night and windblown spumes of sparkling powder lay spread across the porch. The ladies had decided to ski the lower forests while Dave and I chose to ascend into the upper bowls. Having cleaned our pots and packed our bags, we tidied the lodge, split some fresh kindling and hammered the plywood window shutter back into place—respectful to and thankful for our unknown host.

The Wink

2008-10-27T18:02:00.000-07:00

The Wink (from the archives)

Like all subtle facial gestures, the art of winking is an affectation learnt through experience. One isn’t born with the innate capacity to wink, rather, one earns the wink. We say that aging and experience are the conditions for the possibility of winking- things which can be imitated, but as with all imitations, nothing compares to the original.

To wink is, of course, the closing of one eye in order to signify something to somebody. The signified is usually an ‘implicit’ truth, veiled itself like the closed eyelid. It can imply a truth both too deep and/or too lurid for words- something better left unsaid. When I was a child, I noticed that winking was a masculine principle, reserved by aged and experienced men to convey messages of great power. I knew this because my mother would ‘blush’ and try to extricate herself from the site of the winking-act.

Winking is more than mere innuendo, though. It is a sophia, a measurement of truth actualized. It is the incarnation of wisdom seen with the Mind’s Eye. For it discloses the hidden and accomplishes what cannot be uttered without mistranslation. A wink expresses the obvious which has become forgotten: it is a call to remember that which is. Winking therefore is an acknowledgement of the two-fold nature of reality, and it bridges the gap between things as they appear, and things as they are.

In fact, true winking is a gesture of transcendence. One eye remains open, while one eye remains closed. The closed eye is the ‘winking’ eye, for it ‘twinkles’ the truth which resides alongside the realm of becoming. It intimates what is internal, and in suggesting what is internal to another, it expresses that which is shared by both. But, we may ask,”What is it that is shared by both?” We have already said that the wink is a reminding gesture, and what is shared should be in no need of reminding, right? Most surely,we may add, it reminds the other of what is not being seen, what cannot be seen just yet. It asks that one ‘turn a blind eye’ for a moment, to catch the unseen light behind the lid, to recall what is there. Still further we go and ask,”what is it that is to be recalled behind the closed lid?” For we are surely there now when we ask so fervently,”what is worth recalling behind the closed lid?”

That is just it, “What in the hell is he winking about?” There is a sense in which someone could ask this question and still not know what the wink is all about. Might the wink be something in which the winker alone has some fantasia, some solepsism in which he alone knows the images? Or might the wink itself cast doubt about the possibility of any knowledge at all?

I once knew a guy who could wink, and it was the true wink. You see, he’d been wrecked so many times that he finally could ‘see the light’. He would wink as he handed me the tumbler full of Scotch drink. “You’ll know,” he used to say,” You will know.”

An Extremely Clear Presentation by Ron Paul on the Origin and Effects of thePaper Dollar Hegemony

2008-10-26T09:25:00.001-07:00

On Having A Religious Experience In The Delafield WalMart

2008-10-14T21:49:00.000-07:00

If I'd been truly observant of these things
these signs which presage and portend such events
I'd have known by the smiles and giddy laughter
of the two habited nuns at the checkout stand

I'd have known that what went down before
why the very diagnosis itself
the sepia high stratus-cirrus cloudforms
veiling and unveiling the eye of a harvest moon
which gave me reason to seek out the
four dollar bottle at the Pharmacy
Such value cannot really be calculated

Waiting for my cure ambling the aisles
And I thought of all those fathers in time
offering small gestures to their children
tokens of love: now a pink camo onesie
now a pair of sandals beset with sequines

What tears rolled down my face
as I understood all of a sudden
the holiness of the place
in the chaff coat a kernel of wheat
and the sign and signature
of Fathers and Daughters everywhere
for you, my love, what I have
to offer, precious one

Ringing the Iron Triangle

2008-10-04T15:51:00.001-07:00

Come-n-git it boys!

Hank Paulson Works Both Sides of the Table

2008-10-04T06:52:00.001-07:00

Not One Goddamned Penny

2008-10-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

Dear Lord,

Please God see to it that the Bozos in Congress do not give wall street one goddamned penny. Let the banks fail for their gluttony and stupidity. Let the masters of the universe find other work outside of their chosen field--perhaps in financial counseling for low income people in the inner city, or perhaps they can do farm work somewhere or work as a coffee jerk. We do not need them anymore and I pray that you will find work fitting for their "journey".

Ad nominem Patrii et filii et spiritu sanctu. Let it be. Amen

The Death of Dumnorix

2008-09-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

A Scene of the death of Dumnorix, the Gallic Chieftain who would have been king, as taken from Goldsworthy's Caesar (pp. 286-7).

"In 58 bc Caesar had had good reason to be suspicious of the ambitions of this man and had kept him under observation. Recently he had heard from another Gallic aristocrat that Dumnorix had claimed at a meeting of the Aeduan council that the proconsul was planning to make him king of the Aedui. Reluctant though they were to subject themselves to the rule of a monarch, most of the the other chieftains were equally nervous of showing dissension regarding any of Caesar's acts and did not bother to check whether or not there was any truth in the claim. Only half of the Gallic cavalry would accompany Caesar to Britain, but he had already decided that Dumnorix must certainly go, since he was a man 'craving revolution'.

The chieftain tried a whole range of excuses, pleading ill health, fear of sea travel and finally a religious taboo preventing him from leaving Gaul. Caesar remained unmoved, so Dumnorix sought safety in numbers and tried to persuade other Gallic chieftains to join him in his refusal to go to Britain. He claimed that the Romans planned to kill them all once they had taken them away from their tribes and crossed to the island. Anumber of the other chieftains informed on him to the proconsul. There was ample time for plotting and gossip in the camp, as unfavorable winds delayed departure for the best part of a month.

In the end Dumnorix and his warriors slipped out of camp and fled on the very day when the weather broke and embarkation began. Caesar was taken by surprise, but immediately sent a large part of his cavalry in pursuit. He was determined not to leave until the chieftain had been dealt with, even though he was impatient to start. His men were ordered to bring him back alive if possible, but to kill him if he resisted.

Dumnorix did not lack courage and challenged his attackers by yelling out that he was a 'free man from a free people'. Although none of his warriors stood with him, he chose to fight and was cut down. It was an openly brutal demonstration of Caesar's power and the inability even of one of the Gaul's wealthiest aristocrat's to stand against him. Diviciacus is not mentioned as taking an active part in events after 57 bc, and it is possible that he was no longer alive to plead for clemency. Yet in the end Dumnorix was simply inconvenient, and Caesar was impatient and so gave the orders for the man's death."

Naomi Klein On the Shock Doctrine and the Bailout

2008-09-27T06:23:00.000-07:00

Patriot Act: Hurry up and pass this or else!
Iraq War: Hurry up and grant executive privelege or else!
700 Billion Payout to Wall Street: Hurry up and pass it or else!

Gov. Palin's Worldview (reprinted from NY Times 9/12/08)

2008-09-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

Gov. Palin’s Worldview

As we watched Sarah Palin on TV the last couple of days, we kept wondering what on earth John McCain was thinking.

If he seriously thought this first-term governor — with less than two years in office — was qualified to be president, if necessary, at such a dangerous time, it raises profound questions about his judgment. If the choice was, as we suspect, a tactical move, then it was shockingly irresponsible.

It was bad enough that Ms. Palin’s performance in the first televised interviews she has done since she joined the Republican ticket was so visibly scripted and lacking in awareness.

What made it so much worse is the strategy for which the Republicans have made Ms. Palin the frontwoman: win the White House not on ideas, but by denigrating experience, judgment and qualifications.

The idea that Americans want leaders who have none of those things — who are so blindly certain of what Ms. Palin calls “the mission” that they won’t even pause for reflection — shows a contempt for voters and raises frightening questions about how Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin plan to run this country.

One of the many bizarre moments in the questioning by ABC News’s Charles Gibson was when Ms. Palin, the governor of Alaska, excused her lack of international experience by sneering that Americans don’t want “somebody’s big fat résumé maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment where, yes, they’ve had opportunities to meet heads of state.”

We know we were all supposed to think of Joe Biden. But it sure sounded like a good description of Mr. McCain. Those decades of experience earned the Arizona senator the admiration of people in both parties. They are why he was our preferred candidate in the Republican primaries.

The interviews made clear why Americans should worry about Ms. Palin’s thin résumé and lack of experience. Consider her befuddlement when Mr. Gibson referred to President Bush’s “doctrine” and her remark about having insight into Russia because she can see it from her state.

But that is not what troubled us most about her remarks — and, remember, if they were scripted, that just means that they reflect Mr. McCain’s views all the more closely. Rather, it was the sense that thoughtfulness, knowledge and experience are handicaps for a president in a world populated by Al Qaeda terrorists, a rising China, epidemics of AIDS, poverty and fratricidal war in the developing world and deep economic distress at home.

Ms. Palin talked repeatedly about never blinking. When Mr. McCain asked her to run for vice president? “You have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission,” she said, that “you can’t blink.”

Fighting terrorism? “We must do whatever it takes, and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.”

Her answers about why she had told her church that President Bush’s failed policy in Iraq was “God’s plan” did nothing to dispel our concerns about her confusion between faith and policy. Her claim that she was quoting a completely unrelated comment by Lincoln was absurd.

This nation has suffered through eight years of an ill-prepared and unblinkingly obstinate president. One who didn’t pause to think before he started a disastrous war of choice in Iraq. One who blithely looked the other way as the Taliban and Al Qaeda regrouped in Afghanistan. One who obstinately cut taxes and undercut all efforts at regulation, unleashing today’s profound economic crisis.

In a dangerous world, Americans need a president who knows that real strength requires serious thought and preparation.

Meeting Senator Kohl

2008-09-08T06:28:00.001-07:00

Feng meets Senator Herb Kohl (D, WI) outside the Calatrava wing of the Milwaukee Art Museum

We Are Ready

2008-08-08T10:55:00.000-07:00

If it is true that pain is funny --specifically someone else's pain--then I imagine you will wince with laughter at this video of a group's performance at the opening ceremonies.

"We are Ready!"--readiness...now thats a funny word. "Readiness-to-hand" in Heidegger's sense of equipment, tools--the Aristotelian efficient cause. There are no, here there are no purposes here. This is dead land, twilight land. Here the purposes are those spelled out in advance by the chain of command. The human is, to borrow a neologism of the later Heidegger, Bestand, 'standing reserve'. To be nothing other than so much human resources. Ah the pain, the horror, the truncation of life! How do you think these workers like their little troupe's muzak pumped over the airwaves in their toilet bowl scrubber factory? To feed supply chain of endless frivolous demand, just in time?

Feng weeps for the discipline imposed upon these good people. Here they appear to be singing their tune (our tune really--"Ready, boss!") as a kind of millipede being, a true Marxian Gattungswesen each rowing abreast one another at the oarlocks, pushing the legs of the larger millipede moving through the canopy. But the disciplining whip, the whip that goes 'crack-crack-crack' on his 'back-back-back', is really nothing other western market capital availing itself of communist authoritarian control. And that is why these performers are dressed in the customer service outfits that they are in, bearing the unmistakeable impress of corporate America's desire for an ever more servile worker, while at the same time jumping around honoring the values of the party and their own luckiness to be a part of it all.

The Job Who Said No

2008-07-29T16:03:00.000-07:00

The Job I had in mind
is just like the other
ragged, broken
blistered with boils, bereft of kin
herds scattered and lost, dead
aimlessly wandering without reason
or meaning or desire

But this Job who I've been pondering
did not get to yes
but found within a resounding no
who rejected the test
and the Tester and all of the
silly pointless suffering

No, no this Job is the one who
in rejecting the Demiurge
put forth a challenge
to come forth and reveal himself
from behind the veil
and explain and justify
what "He" had done

And Job listened.
At first there was a comforting voice
the voice of a Fathers soothing his Child
But as he listened he recognized
that it was his own inner voice
Job was talking to himself somehow
He was soothing himself:
speaking to himself as though he were a Child

And so this Job did not listen to that voice.
In the black cave, the wind whirred
And he listened carefully and heard nothing.
Thats what Job heard and therefore knew:
he knew nothing at all.
There was nobody there but himself.

Sheer Drop

2008-07-14T10:20:00.000-07:00

Robert Bateman "Sheer Drop" (1980)

Its the Immigrants

2008-07-04T06:36:00.000-07:00

We were working on a very nice estate on North Lake that had received significant storm damage. A 'microburst' they say: a ten yard wide swatch, several hundred yards long; every tree the tops snapped out. There were hickories sixty feet high, snapped in half; a norway maple, several crabapples, even an oak--all, all had lost their tops in this sudden burst of wind at the epicenter of the storm. It is not a tornado.

Well, anyway, I was working at this site and this property is right next to Sensenbrenner's--yes, you heard that right, "Sensenbrenner, i.e, Congressman Sensenbrenner's' little cottage resort by the lake. And as I was chokering off loads down in the forest that leads over to the cottage I see him, or, rather, a man who from the rear is white, somewhat tall and portly, wearing a cap and dark shades and is on the property who I know to be none other than Congressman Sensenbrenner's. So there he was, or most certainly was.

But in the air--mind you, the lakes are high around these parts because of storm flooding--there is this odor in the air of a dead body or carcass somewhere nearby, possibly on Sensenbrenner's lot. And I thinks to myself perhaps Sensenbrenner has been disposing of some of his political rivals and that the world would soon discover a mass grave in his yard. I passed this along as a hypothesis on to the caretaker of the estate I was working on.

He stopped his weed whacker and pulled off his ear muffs.

"No," he said in a hush tone, "its the immigrants."

Father's Day On The Beach

2008-06-16T05:44:00.000-07:00

Vivian Marie--7 months and rolling along!
Papa and Viv --note the Edel Pils in hand
Missy, Viv, Azra, Una, Aaron and an Edel Pils

The Fathers discuss their day.

Ploughman's Lunch

2008-06-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

Edel Pils by New Glarus is made of Bavarian yeast and is an autochthonous variant of the true Bavarian style Pils known throughout the Tyrol as "Helles". This is it. Mmmm. My recommendation for June. Can't wait to make a Radler out of this one after a day of felling.

A Little Spring Skiing

2008-05-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

The Gloomy Swede, Lingbloom, led us into the upper bowl.

Feng and an egg sandwich

Relishing the victuals.

A high lake.

The ascent.

Bloody aweful jokes about Cheladas.

As high as was within our interests.

Who Will Tell The People?

2008-05-04T05:27:00.000-07:00

The following is this sunday's NY Times column by Tom Friedman. The thing I like about Friedman is not that he is always right (although here he is most certainly right), but that he is always thinking--revisiting his assumptions, revising, learning. This is evident in this article. Good on you, Tom!

Who Will Tell the People? (NY Times 5/4/08)
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: May 4, 2008

Traveling the country these past five months while writing a book, I’ve had my own opportunity to take the pulse, far from the campaign crowds. My own totally unscientific polling has left me feeling that if there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it’s this: People want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America.
They are not only tired of nation-building in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with so little to show for it. They sense something deeper — that we’re just not that strong anymore. We’re borrowing money to shore up our banks from city-states called Dubai and Singapore. Our generals regularly tell us that Iran is subverting our efforts in Iraq, but they do nothing about it because we have no leverage — as long as our forces are pinned down in Baghdad and our economy is pinned to Middle East oil.
Our president’s latest energy initiative was to go to Saudi Arabia and beg King Abdullah to give us a little relief on gasoline prices. I guess there was some justice in that. When you, the president, after 9/11, tell the country to go shopping instead of buckling down to break our addiction to oil, it ends with you, the president, shopping the world for discount gasoline.
We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: “You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years.”
That’s why Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous defense of why he did not originally send more troops to Iraq is the mantra of our times: “You go to war with the army you have.” Hey, you march into the future with the country you have — not the one that you need, not the one you want, not the best you could have.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.
How could this be? We are a great power. How could we be borrowing money from Singapore? Maybe it’s because Singapore is investing billions of dollars, from its own savings, into infrastructure and scientific research to attract the world’s best talent — including Americans.
And us? Harvard’s president, Drew Faust, just told a Senate hearing that cutbacks in government research funds were resulting in “downsized labs, layoffs of post docs, slipping morale and more conservative science that shies away from the big research questions.” Today, she added, “China, India, Singapore ... have adopted biomedical research and the building of biotechnology clusters as national goals. Suddenly, those who train in America have significant options elsewhere.”
Much nonsense has been written about how Hillary Clinton is “toughening up” Barack Obama so he’ll be tough enough to withstand Republican attacks. Sorry, we don’t need a president who is tough enough to withstand the lies of his opponents. We need a president who is tough enough to tell the truth to the American people. Any one of the candidates can answer the Red Phone at 3 a.m. in the White House bedroom. I’m voting for the one who can talk straight to the American people on national TV — at 8 p.m. — from the White House East Room.
Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.
I don’t know if Barack Obama can lead that, but the notion that the idealism he has inspired in so many young people doesn’t matter is dead wrong. “Of course, hope alone is not enough,” says Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, “but it’s not trivial. It’s not trivial to inspire people to want to get up and do something with someone else.”
It is especially not trivial now, because millions of Americans are dying to be enlisted — enlisted to fix education, enlisted to research renewable energy, enlisted to repair our infrastructure, enlisted to help others. Look at the kids lining up to join Teach for America. They want our country to matter again. They want it to be about building wealth and dignity — big profits and big purposes. When we just do one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, said Shriver, “no one can touch us.”

Not Today, Nor Tomorrow

2008-04-12T00:22:00.000-07:00

Not to give the lecture that would be good for them
nor the one that would most make sense to them
the one that would lead them inexorably onward
ploddingly, like a procession of fat legged elephants
No, not that one today but another
the one that you wanted to give to yourself
the one that barely made any sense at all
that took flight in fits and starts
soaring above the wide pavements of reality
The one that you would have thought
an ideal reader--perhaps only God alone
could interpret and understand
And, when your wings beat furiously
and you flew Icarus-like too close to the sun
the wax attachment coming undone
the ululating myrmidons will call to you
as you fall into their cold ocean below

Bright Shinings

2008-02-16T08:24:00.000-08:00

A Corner Turned

2008-02-03T10:17:00.000-08:00

M and I took our 3 month old to the Comet Cafe for Sunday breakfast this morning. This is a westside cafe for hipsters in their 20's, bespectacled in black-rimmed vintage nerd glasses, blue jeans with chained wallets, sideburns, hoodies, bowling shoes, etc. Our child carrier was bright pink and I noticed that, upon our entrance, there was some reluctance. The female gaze--usually so taken by a newborn--here recoiled backward as if to say "get it out of here!"
We were escorted to a booth by a blackrimmed artista lesbian sort in a too tight vintage AC/DC shirt with too tight brown dickies pants. The fare looked good--lots of intriguing Vegan breakfast scrambles.

We were seated just behind the counter and, saddled up to it were an array of twenty-something hipsters, again bespectacled in the vintage black nerd glasses with tousled hair sipping their espresso shots in the grip of some deep existential reverie. I noticed the waist size on some of their blue jeans: 30, 32. Jesus, I thought, I was in my twenties the last time I fit into those kind of jeans. I was 36 when I started wearing a 36 waist. So long ago...

And, as I was reading the Riverwest Currents (the westside hipster art newspaper), I lingered on an advertisement for ___Flaherty, running for Alderman 3rd District. He was next to a thirty something man (his partner) and they each had their own dog. The caption was ___Flaherty and his partner____ on the banks of the Milwaukee river. It occurred to me, all of a sudden, that I had turned a certain corner in life for I saw what a different sort of a guy ___Flaherty was, how he couldn't possibly understand my needs and interests, how I could understand people with families not voting for him because of that.

I gazed around the establishment and back again at the advertisement. I recalled all the politically correct morality drilled into me at the University: the importance and primacy of gay rights, of feminism, of minorities. And here I was in my mid thirties with my daughter and lady, white, struggling to keep our heads afloat and I thought no, no this is not right. ____Flaherty does not understand my concerns and does not share my point of view. I suddenly saw the political morality of someone in my position: family values, safe neighborhoods, good schools, the inculcation of virtue.

I had turned the corner, and, in turning, I could look back and see where I had been and also where I was going from the coign of vantage given to a traveller for but a moment as they turned down a new street.

Deliberate or Deciderate?

2008-01-20T05:54:00.000-08:00

One litmus test that is not being discussed by the pundits is a quality that I think is most important for a presidential candidate, that is, the capacity to deliberate with others over a shared enterprise, to have to reach consensus or compromise in the face of principled opposition.
For what we have seen in Bush II's person is the executive capacities of a monarch or latin American dictator: the "executive" in its unbridled capacities, deciderating for us what he thinks is good "for us" even against much principled popular opposition. And, because we have learned that this bossiness is offensive to our ideas of the principled use of executive power, we ought to look to candidates tempered by experience in Congress, and especially the Senate, for their ability to deliberate and use reasoned arguments to persuade others who hold principled positions contrary to theirs. In this way, the new President will implicitly understand that his first obligation is to subject decisions to the space of reasons and, if he is intellectually honest, will move his own position according to what emerges as the best reason--even if it should come from hostile or opposing corridors. This is nothing new to democratic politics, for it goes back to the practice of direct democracy in Athens in the fifth century b.c., wherein the rules of the Council required of citizens (councilmen) to be frank in their speech (parrhesia) in order that the best reasons would be given and the state would move accordingly upon them. What we don't want, I think, is a President holed up with his cabal of defense-contractor and oil buddies spinning us into further catastrophic wars intended to enrich the few at the expense of the citizens.

The new President, therefore, must show his bona fides in this regard. On the democratic aisle, virtually all comers have come from Congress and this is to be seen as a virtue. Clinton, Obama, Edwards--all have had Senatorial experience and this is a good thing. On the republican side, Giuliani, Romney, Huckabee have been governors of their state and have been habituated to the perquisites of executive power: their insolent, bossy tone comes through loud and clear. On the other hand, McCain, Thompson, and Paul have the requisite experience in Congress and it shows.

The question that the voter must ask himself is whether he wants an executive who reasons with them, who is open to what the public thinks is good reason, or whether he wants to be bossed around "for his own good" for the next four years?

Best Practices?

2008-01-17T08:14:00.000-08:00

The article below appeared yesterday, 1/16/07 bringing to light the fact that the White House has effectively erased its e-mails prior to October 2003. In other words, they have violated the law requiring the preservation of federal and presidential records. Contrary to what the white house aide calls 'industry best practices', there is no plausible argument that faciliating the erasure of federal and presidential records is in accordance with 'industry best practices'. Somebody's got to do some serious jail time for this one. Might as well start at the top.

Title: "White House Copied Over E-Mail Tapes"

By Pete Yost January 16, 2008 07:05 PM EST (Huffington Post)
WASHINGTON — The White House acknowledges recycling backup computer tapes of e-mail, a practice that may have wiped out many electronic messages from the early years of the Bush administration, including some pertaining to the CIA leak case.
The disclosure about recycled backup tapes came minutes before midnight Tuesday under a court-ordered deadline that forced the White House to reveal information it previously had refused to provide.
Before October 2003, the White House recycled its backup tapes "consistent with industry best practices," according to a sworn statement by a White House aide. The White House started preserving backup tapes in October 2003, which would have been shortly after the start of the probe into who outed CIA operative Valerie Plame in July of that year.
The backup tapes, which also contain electronic documents in addition to e-mail, are the last line of defense for saving electronic records.

Separately, the White House says it is still unable to address the question of how many e-mails are missing from White House servers, or whether any are missing.
The White House "does not know if any e-mails were not properly preserved in the archiving process" from 2003 to 2005, said the statement by Theresa Payton, chief information officer for the White House Office of Administration. She said the White House continues its efforts to find out and that an assessment will be completed in the "near term."
Two years ago, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald first disclosed a White House e-mail problem, which the White House says it discovered in October 2005.
"What has the White House been doing for two years?" said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, one of two groups suing the White House over the e-mail issue. "The White House still doesn't seem to have a clue."
White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that "as we have repeatedly stated, we do not know that there is actually a problem" with missing e-mail.
That drew immediate challenges from the other group suing the White House, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
CREW's lawsuit alleges that 5 million White House e-mails are missing and the group said recently that its sources now say the total is over 10 million. CREW's chief counsel, Anne Weismann, pointed to previous White House statements suggesting there was missing e-mail and to the fact that the White House is refusing to turn over numerous documents about the problem.
"Why have they retreated from their earlier acknowledgments that e-mails are, in fact, missing?" asked Weismann.
If e-mails were not saved on computer servers and copies were overwritten on backup tapes, the White House might have violated two laws requiring preservation of documents that fall into the categories of federal records or presidential records.
Experience in the private sector has shown that "backup tapes are a treasure trove for investigators and when you recycle those tapes, you are disposing of e-mails," said Michele Lange, director, legal technologies, at Kroll Ontrack of Minneapolis, Minn. Lange's firm, among other specialities, recovers lost e-mail for companies and law firms. Lange's company has no connection to the White House e-mail controversy.
Among the e-mails that could be lost are messages swapped by any White House officials involved in discussions about leaking Plame's identity.
"It appears that the White House has now destroyed the evidence of its misconduct," Weismann said.
Fratto, the White House spokesman, said that "there is no basis to say that the White House has destroyed any evidence or engaged in any misconduct."
Fratto said that despite the recycling, some tapes should contain e-mails from before October 2003.
"Of course the disaster recovery backup tapes were, at one time, recycled," said Fratto. "However, since October 2003, the Office of Administration has retained and preserved its disaster recovery tapes. The disaster recovery system is set up to regularly back up everything on the network for the Executive Office of the president at the time of each backup."
"If the backup tapes have been erased or taped over or recycled, it's hard to imagine where we will find copies of many lost e-mails," said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive.
Weismann said that the White House declaration raises more questions than it answers, specifically the likelihood that for a very significant period of time _ March 2003 to October 2003 _ the White House recycled its backup tapes.
"As a result there may be no way to recover the missing e-mails from a period in which the U.S. decided to go to war with Iraq, White House officials leaked the identity of Valerie Plame and the Justice Department started a criminal investigation of the White House," said Weismann.
The sworn statement by Payton did not say how early in the Bush administration the recycling of backup computer tapes began.

As the saying goes, "those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it"

2008-01-09T11:57:00.000-08:00

Below are three little excerpts worth considering from Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama (Knopf, 1989)

1. "The best estimates of the costs of the American alliance in both its surreptitious and openly military forms--from 1776 to 1783--come to 1.3 billion livres, exclusive of interest payments on the new debts incurred by the government as a result." (p. 62)

2. "If the causes of the French Revolution are complex, the cause of the downfall of the monarchy are not. The two phenomena are not identical, since the end of absolutism in France did not of itself entail a revolution of such transformative power as actually came to pass in France. But the end of the old regime was the necessary condition of the beginning of a new, and that was brought about, in the first instance, by a cash-flow crisis. It was the politicization of the money crisis that dictated the calling of the Estates-General." (p. 62)

3. "How grave was France's financial predicament after the American war? It had, it is true, run up an imposing debt, but one that was no worse that comparable debts incurred in fighting the other wars deemed equally essential to sustain the nation's position as a great power. Those quick to condemn the ministers of Louis XVI for their hopeless prodigality might pause to reflect that no state with imperial pretensions has, in fact, ever subordinated what it takes to be irreducible military interests to the considerations of a balanced budget. And like apologists for powerful military force in twentieth-century American and the Soviet Union, advocates of similiar "indispensable" resources in eighteenth-century France pointed to the country's vast demographic and economic reserves and a flouishing economy to sustain the burden." (pp. 63-4)

Positive Liberty in the Time of the Great Asshole Flowering

2007-12-29T06:29:00.000-08:00

Liberty is an important political concept. Political theorists typically divide liberty into two kinds, positive and negative liberty. Negative liberty entails freedom from coercion, freedoms not to be interfered with, freedom from excessive governmental regulation. This is clearly an important idea as any list of human rights--such as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man or the Declaration of Independence--asserts. But positive liberty is a more peculiar concept for it denotes the concept of freedom to act, freedom to do, freedom to be someone. But for every 'thou shalt not' there are ten thousand 'thou shalts'. Therefore, positive liberties--liberties to act and to do and be are seen as incapable of being brought under a single rubric or, if they are, are not the proper sphere for governmental action. Indeed, positive liberty is here the realm of the personal, the private, and the economic man. Liberals have typically focused on negative liberties to the exclusion of positive liberty for the reason that a concept of positive liberty is associated with a particular view of the purpose of man, of his ends and function, and his non-public work as a private citizen. With respect to the final end of man we should note that this conception--let's call it a 'comprehensive doctrine'--is the business of personal choice and of religious designation, in other words, a part of the private sphere of life and not of the public sphere of rights. On the other hand, positive liberty can refer to the economic sphere and, in this sense, the realm of economic freedom has long been understood to be the "private" realm. (Perhaps this is because the right hand of government is not supposed to know what the other hand is up to because, after all, the invisible hand is supposed to be working things out in everybody's interest. Just a thought)

But a theory of positive liberty is an important feature of a republican theory of virtue for it describes the conditions needed for citizens to actually be citizens and not mere serfs or dependents upon the state. But the public character of positive liberty shouldn't be that hard to identify. I'd like to say that positive liberty is to be understood as that active use of human capacities which assists in the furtherance of autonomy and freedom from servitude. This is not to say that a fully actualized human being is a social atom, cut off from his fellows, but rather it is to say that positive liberty is actualized in those human beings who have developed their skills and capacities so as to become contributing members of society and, in so contributing, are able to procure their own freedom from servitude. When a person has developed the capacities to become a member of a profession of some kind, they thereby have positive liberty in the requisite sense. This is because they thereby possess the active basis of political equality in the sense that they actually contribute through their labor to society, have a stake in its decisions, and really care about its structure. This is more than the passive possession of negative rights, a mere empty formal possession of "rights", for it puts the individual in a relationship of active concern for the direction of the society in the sense of a stakeholder rather than a mere ward.

If we think of our own society--American society--as one dedicated to the furtherance of the cause of freedom, then we must not merely understand that freedom in the negative sense as providing a resistance-less social playing field in which the free market can do whatever it will. Rather, we must understand that freedom entails positive liberty as well--of the valid interest of individuals in cultivating their positive freedom. This may entail governmental curtailing of the free market where it denies, as a matter of structural necessity, the widescale development of positive freedom in the citizenry. Where jobs are constantly being shed in the name of market efficiencies, one must look and see whether such job losses are a matter of choice or of necessity. The market technicians and servants of Capital have decided lately that positive liberty is not very important. Rather, they appear to have decided that real positive liberty can be substituted with apparent wealth rather than real virtue. Given the entrenchment of the consumer mentality, the expanded ability of citizen-consumers to buy goods is just as good as if they were able to provide for themselves through meaningful labor. The carefully orchestrated boom in the housing market persuaded many citizens that they were positively free. Their wealth increased and they enjoyed a higher standard of living for a time.

But we should notice that this newfound wealth is evaporating with the collapse of the subprime housing markets. And, in the total collapse of such wealth, will the citizenry have been made more or less free in the relevant sense? Arguably, the average citzen will be less free because he will have enjoyed an artificially high standard of living without cultivating the relevant virtues of postive liberty. Here wealth accrued to individuals without their actually doing anything to get that wealth and, in the mean time, turned a blind eye to the direction of the society as a whole. Rather, they played a game of 'don't ask, don't tell'--if you don't ask more of me, I won't tell on your corrupt and impossible housing scam in the offing, the deficit spending on a hopeless war in Iraq, the fact that I don't have any health care, and so on. And now--now that the great asshole flower of the Bush administration has been allowed to bloom--we are left impovershed as a society: our dollar tanking, our citizenry reeling under the weight of debts, our jobs offshored and oversea'd, our infrastructure ever more dependent upon petroleum--all of this at a time when the spectre of Peak oil is beginning to emerge.

What we need is a culture that honors work--productive, useful, socially beneficial work--and that penalizes corrupt, scamming, derivative work. But look, we might just yet witness that age come to be. The age of the sunburnt, Jeffersonian pauper is yet to arrive!

Incomprehensible Hubris

2007-12-19T11:30:00.000-08:00

As I was sitting down to my lunch today, I watched a C-Span press briefing with Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R, KY). McConnell was discussing the recent appropriation for Iraq War spending--totaling some 28 billion dollars which would last through April, 2008. He was quite happy about this and emphasized that General Petraeus's plan "is working" and that the Senate Majority should just keep pouring money into it. But he wasn't all that happy about the Democratic Majority for he then segued into discussing the underwhelming performance of the Majority over 2007. He claimed that they "just hadn't done anything". By this he meant to imply that the democrats were ineffective and therefore didn't deserve to be in power; conversely, since the Republicans are effective at getting legislation passed (or, rather, acting as gatekeepers of "passable" legislation), they deserve to be in power.

We ought to notice that indeed Mitch and the Senate Republicans have been tremendously effective in preventing the democrats from doing anything--that they have acted in an obstructionist manner so as to prevent them from doing anything. The evidence speaks for itself. Consider, for instance, the attempt on the part of the Senate majority to give Habeas Corpus rights to the detainees at Guatanamo Bay and elsewhere in our far-flung secret dungeons. Yep, wouldn't you know it, Ol' Mitch had a hand in filibustering that one. Or, for that matter, consider the entire record of minority filibusters over the whole 2007 Senate Session. Again and again, the Minority has blocked transparency reforms, ethics resolutions, clean energy resolutions, minimum wage increases, motions to get out of the Iraq War, etc., etc., etc.

So, Mitch's points about the lackluster performance of the Democrats in Congress over 2007 can be understood in this way:

What he argued was that:
1. Very little substantial legislation was passed by the Senate in 2007.
2. If the democratic majority had been effective, much substantial legislation would have been passed.
3. Therefore, the democratic majority are ineffective.

And, what he implied is:
4. The effectiveness of the Republicans is measured by how well they thwart the Democrat's legislative agenda.
5. Very little substantial legislation was passed by the Senate in 2007.
6. Therefore, the Republican majority has been effective in 2007 at thwarting the Democratic's progressive agenda.

From this:
7. It follows that the Republican Majority is effective. (6, simplification)
8. The Republican Minority is effective and the Democratic Majority is ineffective.
9. Only "effective" politicians should be in power. (implied premise)
10. Therefore, the Republicans should be in power.

But, look, some suprising results follow from this.
Suppose we add the following true statement:
11. The Democrats were voted into a Majority in the House and the Senate in 2007 because they promised to make substantial changes to the way the Republicans were running Congress: to deal with Iraq, to get clean energy passed, to raise the minimum wage, and so on (i.e., "substantial legislation").

We also know that in our system of electoral politics:
12. The public will is expressed by their voting preferences.

We can see that:
13. The Republican Minority has been effective at blocking the will of the American Public in the 2007 Congress. (by 6, 11,12)

14. To thwart the will of the Public in democratic politics is, de facto, antidemocratic. (by definition)

15. To act in a way that is antidemocratic requires good justification. (principle of public reason)

16. Conversely, to act in antidemocratic fashion without good justification is an illegitimate usurpation of power, manifestly opposed to the design of democratic, consitutional Republics.

17. The Republican filibusters of 2007 are without good justification. (self-evident if you'd look at the reasons given by the filibusterers in the 2007th Congress).

18. Therefore, the Republican Minority has acted in an antidemocratic fashion without good justification and they have thwarted the democratically elected Majority in their efforts to express the Public Will.

19. Those who act in their official, public capacities without justification against the public will ought not to be allowed to remain in office as stewards of the public will. (a standard, uncontroversial legal concept broadly obtaining in democratic societies)

20. Therefore, the Republican Minority (including esp. Mitch McConnell) ought to be removed from public office. (by 1-19, QED)

The American voter will have the opportunity to decide in 2008 yet again: well-justified democratic reason OR obstructionist, self-seeking, incomprehensible, arrogant, antidemocratic hubris.

You decide.

Nuking the Economy

2007-12-15T20:00:00.000-08:00

Article by Paul Craig Roberts (Assistant Treasury Secretary in the Reagan Administration) reporting the real extent of job losses to the economy over the last five years.

Branching Complexities

2007-12-11T10:38:00.001-08:00

Barrels of Rotting Anchovies, Jacobins, and the Guillotine

2007-12-10T20:38:00.000-08:00

The complexities and severity of the mortgage crisis are only recently coming to light. Here is a SF Chronicle article (via Stryder.com), uncovering the potential criminal liability of banks and loan officers who knowingly foisted sketchy loans upon suckas who thought they could outsmart the market and make a killing by an easy flip. The liability lies, in part, with the banks who didn't do the requisite background checks, knowingly issuing bogus loans only to repackage them in bundles and sell them off as mortgage backed securities ("Barrels of Rotting Anchovies"--thanks Jim Kunstler for the colorful term) to hedge funds and international banks. At least this is the story as I understand it.

What amazes me is the brazenness of Henry Paulson's plan to "freeze" the interest rates for 5 years--a gesture that, as with all things Bush, bear the appearance of populism but really serve the interests of the wealthy elites. Paul Krugman's NY times article of today explains this in detail, as does the Chronicle article.

When one reads about this scandal, one begins to wonder what will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Some basic statistics will confirm how bad things are getting for the average American worker. The savings rate is below zero--he's borrowing just to make ends meet. Real inflation remains completely underreported as gasoline and food prices have been removed from the books ( a Clinton era Fed manoeuver) as well as the new "chain CPI" (Bernanke era) model which allows substitutions (think the price of the caloric equivalent of Hi-C for OJ). The price of health care grows at 10 or 11% a year, year in and year out. Worker wages have barely kept up even with the underreported inflation. The dollar has been tanking relative to other currencies. Our federal budget deficit has been growing exponentially, soon to eclipse the possibility of getting out from under the mountain of debt that we have accumulated. We are bogged down in a war that the taxpayers and their children are asked to pay for directly into the hands of Blackwater USA, Halliburton, and the rest of the corrupt players in the Iraq conflict. The minimum wage has been frozen for 10 or more years and the recent move to raise it barely even keeps up with inflation. Over the last 20 years--from the time of Bush I to Bush II, the average CEO pay has grown from 107 times the average worker's wage to about 500 times the average worker's wage.

Yes, it is times like these that test men's souls. They must decide, I suppose, whether they will continue to allow themselves to be rolled over and fucked or whether they'll pull out the guillotine and start taking off heads. Oh, whether it is nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune or take up arms.... Well, these are the questions we'll need to answer, I suppose.

The End of the Line

2007-11-25T12:32:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving

2007-11-24T17:32:00.001-08:00

Vivian Marie, one month old. We are grateful for you my dear.

The Code of Handsome Lake

2007-11-18T15:37:00.000-08:00

He-yeh-yeh! The Code of Handsome Lake! Come hear, oh ye who have ears to hear! Hear the Code of Handsome Lake! He-yeh-yeh-yeh! Heh-yeh-eh-yeh!

Fall Leaves

2007-11-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

The Norway Maple outside our house dumped its leaves over the last couple of days in the cold nights. A week ago, my Dad and I had the front yard totally raked up.

Kunstler on Assumptions

2007-10-30T11:29:00.000-07:00

Reprinted from James Howard Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation

(Feng wishes again to acknowledge Mr. Kunstler for his supreme clarity, brilliance, and humor on these important matters. I still don't understand why Kunstler has not been tapped to write a regular column for the NY Times or to replace Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes.)

Assumptions October 29, 2007 by James Howard Kunstler

When historians glance back at 2007 through the haze of their coal-fired stoves, they will mark this year as the onset of the Long Emergency – or whatever they choose to call the unraveling of industrial economies and the complex systems that constituted them. And if they retain any sense of humor – which is very likely since, as wise Sam Beckett once averred, nothing is funnier than unhappiness – they will chuckle at the assumptions that drove the doings and mental operations of those in charge back then (i.e. now).

The price of oil is up 53 percent over a year ago, creeping up now toward the mid-$90-range. The news media is still AWOL on the subject. (The New York Times has nothing about it on today’s front page.) The dollar is losing a penny a week against the Euro. In essence, the American standard of living is dropping like a sash weight. So far, a stunned public is stumbling into impoverishment drunk on Britney Spears video clips. If they ever do sober up, and get to a “…hey, wait a minute…” moment when they recognize the gulf between reality and the story told by leaders in government, business, education, and the media, it is liable to be a very ugly moment in US history.

One of the stupidest assumptions made by the educated salient of adults these days is that we are guaranteed a smooth transition between the cancerous hypertrophy of our current economic environment and the harsher conditions that we are barreling toward. The university profs and the tech sector worker bees are still absolutely confident that some hypothetical “they” will “come up with” magical rescue remedies for running the Happy Motoring system without gasoline. My main message to lecture audiences these days is “…quit putting all your mental energy into propping up car dependency and turn your attention to other tasks such as walkable communities and reviving passenger rail….” Inevitably, someone will then get up and propose that the transition to all-electric cars is nearly upon us, and we should stop worrying. As I said, these are the educated denizens of the colleges. Imagine what the nascar morons believe – that the ghost of Davey Crockett will leave a jug of liquefied “dark matter” under everyone’s Christmas tree this year or next, guaranteed to keep the engines ringing until Elvis ushers in the Rapture.

The educated folks – that is, the ones subject to the grandiose story-lines of techno-triumphalism taught in the universities – are sure that we’ll either invent or organize our way out of the current predicament. A society that put men on the moon in 1969, the story goes, will ramp up another “Apollo Project” to keep things going here. One wonders, of course, what they mean by keeping things going. Even if it were hypothetically possible to keep all the cars running forever, would it be good thing to make suburban-sprawl-building the basis of our economy – because that’s the direct consequence of perpetually cheap energy. Has anyone noticed that the housing bubble and subsequent implosion is following the peak oil line exactly?

It’s a bit harder to discern what the assumptions really are among leaders in the finance sector, since so much of their activity the past ten years has veered into sheer fraud. The story line that everyone is putting out – from the Fed chairman Bernanke to the CEOs of the Big Fundz – is that American finance is a python that has swallowed a few too many pigs, but if we jigger around interest rates a little bit more, and allow some more money to be lent out cheaply, the python will eventually digest the pigs and go slithering happily on its way along the jungle trail with a burp and a fart. From this vantage, one sees a rather different story: more like a gang of human grifters sweating through their Prada suits as it becomes increasingly impossible to conceal massive losses incurred through overt reckless misbehavior. My own guess is that a lot of these boyz will be in line for criminal prosecution before too long.

The political assumptions one hears are the most astoundingly naïve and ridiculous, especially the ones that involve other countries and our relations with them. NY Times followers no doubt believe, along with Tom Friedman, that the global economy is now a permanent fixture of the human condition, and that soon it will transform itself into a colossal engine of “green” (i.e. benign) commerce. Friedman and his followers tend to forget the second law of thermodynamics when spinning their fantasies of a world that can harmlessly manufacture and market an endless number of plastic salad shooters from one side of the planet to the other without incurring any losses to the health of said planet.

My own assumptions are somewhat different. I think we’re likely to see a lot of nations scrambling for survival, initially manifesting in a contest for the world’s dwindling supply of oil (and oil-like substances). For instance, when viewing the globe, few people consider that Japan currently imports 95 percent of its fossil fuel. Japan has been a “good boy” among nations since its episode of “acting out” in the mid-20th century and has enjoyed a long industrial prosperity since then. But what happens when there is not enough oil in the world to be allocated rationally by markets among the powerful nations? Will Japan just roll over and die? Will they shutter the Toyota factories and happily turn to placid tea ceremonies. I think Japan will freak out, and it’s hard to predict exactly who will feel its wrath and how.

Similarly, Europe. Americans view Europe as a kind of theme park full of elderly café layabouts swaddled in cashmere as they enjoy demitasse cups in the outdoor cafes of their comfortable art-filled cities (some of them not long ago rebuilt from rubble). Europe has let America do its dirty work for it in the Middle East for the past decade while enjoying tanker-loads of oil coming up through the Suez Canal. Europe has only had to make a few lame gestures in defense of its oil supplies. But the North Sea oil fields, which for twenty years have hedged the leverage of OPEC, are crapping out at a very steep rate. Sooner or later Europe will freak out over oil, and geo-political flat-earthers will be shocked to see that all the nations of café layabouts can mobilize potent military forces. God knows whose side who will be on, exactly, when that happens, and where America will stand – if its own military is not so exhausted that it can even stand up.

Personally, I think the world will be growing a lot larger again, and less flat, and that eventually America will find itself isolated once again between two oceans – though incursions by desperate foreign armies in one way or another, is not out of the question as the great struggle for resource survival gets underway. In time, however, I think the current Great Nations of the world will lose their ability to project power in the ways we’ve been conditioned to think about it.

In the meantime, our own nation has become a society incapable of thinking, and the failure at all levels of rank, education, and privilege is impressive. If you listen to the people running for president – many of them overt clowns – you’d think that that all the comfortable furnishings of everyday life can continue with a few tweaks of the dials. They are cowards and it is possible that they perfectly represent a whole nation of cowards who deserve cowardly leadership. The danger, of course, is that when a non-cowardly leader finally does step forward in a desperate America, he will not shrink from pushing around a feckless people, or doing their thinking for them.

Vivian Marie Ward

2007-10-25T07:06:00.001-07:00

Viv snuggled up at home Sunday Afternoon.

Vivian Marie Ward was born 10/23/07 at 7:53 a.m. Missy and I are the proud parents of little Viv. Here she is after one of her first breast feedings. Welcome Vivian! I love you!

Bears at the Falls

2007-10-20T06:55:00.000-07:00

With the opening of the gates at Estabrook, a flood of salmon moved upstream to the Kletzsch Park falls. Here the river has a flow of 441 cfs and the holes are loaded. The same cast of characters that I see every year were here, like bears, drawn to the salmon out of an inner compulsion. This lineup is a strict pecking order and it is not only rude but impossible to step in. One must wait one's turn. The pent up fishing lusts must be slaked.

The other side of the falls. Here are interlopers--guys I didn't know-- and would just as soon throw a stone at than let them get in my way. I'm sure they felt the same about me. Their placement is all off, too. Several of these guys looked like real goons who needed a good drubbing.

Red and Blue Heron

2007-10-07T21:00:00.000-07:00

Hook: Alec Jackson Spey, Size 3

Thread: Danville 8/0 Red

Tag: Silver Mylar, Red Floss

Thorax: Purple Silk Berlin Wool, gold oval tinsel

Hackle: Dyed Navy Blue and Purple Heron or Substitute

Collar: Guinea Fowl.

Wing: Bronze Mallard, tented.

Mystic Backyard Lot, A Friend's Project

2007-10-04T22:38:00.000-07:00

View of Barn on Property, from back porch. Paley's Habitation, Mystic, CT.

The Smolt Series, Black and Pale Variations

2007-10-03T16:20:00.000-07:00

Two Views of the Black Smolt

Hook: Alec Jackson Spey, Bronze 1.5

Thread: black and Red head

Tag: Silver Mylar with Large Gold or Silver Lagurtuns

Body: Variegated Bands of Pink and Purple Chenille

Throat: Purple Hen Hackle

Eye: Epoxy Resin

Wing: Very Fine flashabou type material 'baitfish' topped by Black Russian Silver Goat

The Pale Variant: an 'egg-sucking smolt'

Hook: Size 2 Partridge Limerick Bend, Black

Tag: Silver mylar and gold lagartun oval

Body: Purple and Pink Chenille, in variegated bands

Throat: Red died Guinea Fowl

Eye, epoxied, green irises

Egg: Hot Orange Floss, with Loon hard head finished

Wing: Tented bronze mallard over silver Russian Silver Goat and a patch of that midnight blue baitfish flashabou stuff

October Spey

2007-10-03T16:16:00.000-07:00

Hook: Alec Jackson Spey, Bronze Wire Size 1.5
Thread: yes
Tag: Hot orange silk, silver mylar
Body: Purple silk, silver lagurtuns, oval large
Hackle, Heron or substitute
Throat: Guinea Fowl (I order a extra select cape and here is a feather off of it: look at that!)
Eye: Jungle Cock Nails
Wing: Bronze Mallard, Tented

The Grey Heron

2007-10-03T16:02:00.000-07:00

The Classic Scotch Pattern, The Grey Heron (side view)

profile

profile from behind, as a fish might see it

other side

other side

Hook: Alec Jackson Spey Size 1.5

Thread: Red and Black

Tag: Silver Mylar wound* tite* followed by Bright Yellow Floss

Body: Black Silk Berlin Wool wound with large oval silver largartun

Hackle: Heron or substitute

Throat: Guinea Fowl

Wing: Bronze Mallard

Brindle Bug Variant

2007-10-03T15:58:00.000-07:00

Hook, Tiemco Spey size 6
Thread: Black
Tail: Two Furnace Hackle Tips tied apart
Body: Wound Silk Berlin Wool: Black and Antique Yellow
Hackle: Jungle Cock Neck Feathers (not the nail)

Thoughts on Clarence

2007-10-01T06:29:00.000-07:00

A lengthy interview with Clarence Thomas was featured on Sunday's 60 Minutes. Steve Croft follows Clarence back to his hometown village and talks with Clarence about his hardscrabble upbringing under his mother, an oyster-shucker, and his grandfather, a fuel oil truckdriver. Against this backdrop, Judge Thomas claims to have learned the value of hard work--of not expecting handouts--and of personal responsibility. And, indeed, he appears to have learned the lesson and is a shining example of the work ethic. That being said, one wonders how it could be possible that he was selected for a position on the Supreme Court. Indeed, his Republican Masters had much to gain from selecting someone such as he. Why? His rural experience and his work ethic have effectively blinded him to institutional racism and the effects of that. Thomas was chosen, no doubt, because work was understood by him to be a simple affair: you simply put your shoulder to the wheel and grind away. Unfortunately, even my limited experience working at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx taught me that work in urban contexts is not even close to that. How you will work, who allows you to work, under what conditions will you work, how long will you work, whose ass must you kiss in order to be able to work, how high can you go in the work--all these are considerations that an urban worker must constantly navigate in order to rise. To be sure, the rural worker knows about these as well, only less so, I would say. And that is no doubt true about Clarence Thomas. This is why Clarence Thomas will have no truck with fancy urban claims of institutional racism and the like. His experience was of a simple Reaganite type: you either work or you don't (and are lazy). He does not understand the plight of his own people and what they go through even in order to procure and hold onto the miserable jobs they do. He was chosen for his ignorance, if that makes sense. He was chosen because he could be trusted to ignore the conditions of life as they effect the urban black and instead think that his rural work ethic would suffice as a solution.

2007-09-30T17:27:00.000-07:00

The Banality of Evil

2007-09-24T06:21:00.001-07:00

Recently released photographs of SS officers and nurses of Auschwitz relaxing and eating blueberries at their Solahutte, near Auschwitz.

Mirrors

2007-09-20T02:52:00.000-07:00

In the Fifth Century, a.d.,
The Fifth Patriarch of the Dhyana School
arrived at Pao Lin Monastery and told the monks
that he who understands the Essence of Mind
would be given the robe, the Dharma, and the
Sixth Patriarchate.

Shen Hsiu wrote his stanza at midnight
by the flickering butter lamp on the
wall of the South Corridor. It read:

Our body is the Bodhi-tree,
And our mind a mirror bright.
Carefully we wipe them hour by hour,
and let no dust alight.

But the Patriarch already knew that Shen Hsiu
had not known the essence of Mind.
And, we might add, that while Shen Hsiu's stanza
makes him no zen master it might
make him a very good chinaman.

But Hui Neng, the monastery's woodcutter,
was prompted to give his stanza. He spoke:

There is no Bodhi-tree,
Nor stand of a mirror bright,
Since all is void,
Where can the dust alight?

The Patriarch, upon hearing Hui Neng's stanza,
handed him the robe, the begging bowl, and the
Patriarchate.

14 centuries later, my friend
who sees things so clearly
wrote on a flap of his travel itinerary:

If there is a mirror
Or if there is no mirror
I am the mirror

To which I can only add
this possibility:

If I am the mirror
It is not my mirror
We are the mirror

These dog haiku will win us no robe,
nor begging bowl, nor patriarchate.
But to us it does not matter
and we do not mind.

Clowning Around

2007-09-19T08:38:00.000-07:00

The following excerpt is from James Howard Kunstler's "The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle", published every monday morning. Kunstler's entry of 9/17/07 "Shocked, Shocked!" follows up on the recently released book by Alan Greenspan "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World". While Kunstler may be right that Greenspan bears considerably more responsibility for the rise and fall of the housing market, noone can doubt the veracity of his observations when it comes to the cultural significance of the physiognomy of the venerable Greenspan. On this point, I quote Kunstler in full:

"In his old age, Alan Greenspan's face -- once darkly handsome in his youthful years as a jazz musician -- has taken on the strange appearance of a circus clown. Something about the way his lips have settled into a kind of thick fatuous smile, even when he is apparently not amused by anything. Is it one of God's clever little tricks to leave him looking like a clown in his valedictory years, or has his face just resolved into the perfect embodiment of leadership for a clown nation?"

I don't understand why Kunstler is not tapped to replace Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes. Observations like that are priceless--enough to make a working stiff chuckle week in and week out. If not 60 minutes, then at least the NYTimes. Somebody recognize this guy's talent!

Great Blue Heron

2007-09-18T20:44:00.000-07:00

This is my variation of the classic Scotch spey pattern, the Grey Heron. Driving to work the other day, I came across a pair of roadkill blue herons and rescued them from an unceremonious funeral on the shoulder of the freeway. I nestled the pair together on the bank of a nearby river under the moon, where the gentle flow could be heard. They were a male and a female by the looks of it, possibly mowed down by some semi-truck as they were lifting up in flight at dawn off a nearby marsh. Here is my homage to the glorious bird, great fisher bird, the Great Blue Heron.
Great Blue Heron
Hook: Alec Jackson Spey size 1.5 top, size 7 Bottom variant
Thread: Danville Red 8/0 or Blue
Tag: Silver Mylar, Wine Unifloss
Body: Silver Doctor Blue Unifloss wrapped with oval silver tinsel; can also add Navy Blue Siberian Husky fur, dubbed loose
Hackle: Great Blue Heron neck hackle
Throat: Guinea Fowl, select
Wing: Great Blue Heron primaries, lighter underside out, tent style or looser Dee style acceptable; tented bronze mallard Spey side a variation

Teaching the Impossible to the Delusional

2007-09-18T07:07:00.000-07:00

In the student reviews of my teaching I have often noticed that a certain fixed percentage find the course "boring" or "irrelevant" to their experience. These kinds of reviews usually give me low scores for motivating them and they might throw in some callous remark like "needs a new set of clothes" or "doesn't explain things so I can understand" and so forth. I used to get angry when I'd read these reviews, thinking to myself you don't deserve to say these things, you haven't the right to this view. I still think that, of course, but I see a new level of truth to these reviews and remarks. And no, no I don't recognize the validity of these remarks. Rather, I see in them all the hallmarks of delusional thinking--delusional thinking that has been drummed into these kids from day one.

It begins with the parents who are themselves deluded in important ways. First, the parents are anti-intellectual--they themselves hate learning and so they pass on the bad habits to their children. They read very little, watch TV to numb the boredom of their lives, and they generally have an authoritarian cast of mind (learnt from the work world) which they impart to their kids. For them the role of the teacher is to make up for what they lack, what they have failed to impart to their children. Their end of the bargain is simply we pay for it so you must supply it. And then they turn their kids over and expect a miracle--but, again, they don't really want a miracle because that would put them at odds with their children who would come to disrespect them for their anti-intellectualism. So the message to the kid is "yeah, go to college, but remember--its all bullshit, anyway." The bad intellectual habits that they engrain into their children are too deep and long entrenched to uproot in one semester. I have seen some remarkable changes in a few remarkable individuals, but about a third of every class bears the mark of this upbringing, a kind of recalcitrant anti-intellectualism and they cannot be shaken loose from their position. Why?

They cannot be shaken loose from their position because to be shaken loose is not like anything they've experienced before. Its not like being suddenly jolted with a good caffeine drink, nor is it like being entertained to the point of losing yourself, nor is it like a religious ceremony in which you are brought to tears. Rather, it is the somewhat disappointing and depressing awareness of the fact that you are ignorant. And, out of that awareness, can grow (if things go correctly) a sense of shame--of being ashamed of this fact. And, what can follow from this is a commitment to do what it takes to overcome one's ignorance. What these kids are expecting is to be moved rather than to move themselves. The media has a hand in this with its image of the superteacher setting young minds on fire like in Stand and Deliver or Dead Poets Society. When the reality of working for your keep dawns on them--that learning is not an hour and a half movie set in the Autumnal blazes of a northeast campus with the love affair, the inspiration, the soundtrack, etc., what a rude awakening it is. The journey must begin from a vivid sense of what one lacks.

Of course, many, many things prevent this journey from getting going. For one thing, it goes against human nature itself which tells us that we are okay as we are--that we're doing just fine. This is called the Lake Wobegon effect. Second, it requires giving up the anti-intellectualism bred into the kid by the parent. To overcome this one must also overcome one's parents--or, at least, their cast of mind. But to do so entails biting the hand that feeds and they are, after all, paying for this whole college experience. They must know the value of it or, even if they do not, the kid learns to get just as much from the college experience as is needed to reduplicate the relative success of the parent. And third, and this is the really important point I would like to make: the culture in which these children are reared--a culture which has shaped the thinking of the parents and of every "successful" individual in their lives is a culture that is a runaway train. It is a culture that valorizes consumption and accumulation of wealth to the detriment of learning and of uprooting these tendencies. This is why students regularly report that the only reason they go to college is to get a job to make more money. The rest of it is there as a kind of bad joke or painful bunch of bullshit that they have to endure until its over.

When these students open up Plato or Kant and discover that it is not Stephen R. Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Successful People what a disappointment it must be! This is why I cannot help these students and I'm quite happy when, at the beginning of the semester, many realize that my game--my teaching--is hard and painful for them and they realize they are not up for it. I gladly sign their drop course form, now, knowing why they are dropping the course more than they can understand.

Perhaps this kind of thing is what is needed to cut through the delusion: http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com/trailers-and-reviews/

Goldman Sachs raises yr-end oil price forecast to 85 usd vs 72 on supply worries

2007-09-17T22:22:00.000-07:00

via Stryder ;)

the difference

2007-09-15T13:05:00.000-07:00

I once met a man who, over a nice Italian dinner, explained to me that he had once taken a philosophy course years ago. "Philosophy is bullshit" he said, "and after I figured that out I just bullshitted on my final paper and got an A. That confirmed it for me: its all bullshit." Smiling smugly he finished his glass of wine and looked at me with the look as if to say: I've got your number.

It reminded me of the time I turned away from physics. I was a senior in high school and was prone to moodiness and depression. I became convinced that the physics course I was taking was bullshit also. I closed my mind, turned on my walkman, and dropped out of the physics course.

Years have gone by and I look back upon that moment of my turning away and I am ashamed of myself. I am ashamed that I assumed that my ignorance was superior to knowledge. I am ashamed that I turned my back on the great privelege given to me to learn, to know something of great value.

And that is the difference between He and I. Nothing more than a sense of shame.

glimpsing the ox

2007-09-08T01:22:00.001-07:00

In the Oxherder's tale--a zen story told in 10 acts--the aspirant embarks upon a journey to capture the ox. In the first scene, the aspirant is 'seeking the ox'. (Notice the waterfall)

Here we have 'Seeing the traces', the second scene. I will not dispute the fact that he 'saw the traces', but I might add that he might just as easily have 'smelt the beast'. Thats how it was for me, anyway, today in the river. I smelt them--like a salty breeze in from the ocean. I knew they were here by their bouquet--gifting the river with the aroma of sex. And with that I saw traces...mud plumes in the tea colored flow. Yes, she had been here, finning in the shallows moments before. A mad dash upon seeing my boots coming over the gravels, into the deep flows she withdrew herself.

'Glimpsing the ox'. As I waded deeper into the flow, plumbing the depths, the trace of mud lingered and disappeared. Hefting the light summer line, the reverse single spey releasing line out and across, quartering down the river. One step at a time, I walked it out. No lead, no sink tip, just 10 feet of leader at the end of the floating tip, drifting the marabou spey down and across. Walking out into the deepest part of the hole, in the fading dusk, the unmistakable dark form of the salmon holding steady in the current. For a moment I glimpsed her levitating there and then she was gone--or, rather, I retreated. Ashamed and surpised by what I'd seen. It was that obvious. The dark pool swallowed her form.

The Divine Signature

2007-09-05T14:07:00.000-07:00

If strong scientific evidence is not available, what grounds may we have for the existence of a God? The answer is not far away. The answer is not "out there", but within. Nothing more than a feeling, a trace, a signature left by the presence of the divine. This signature is there for us to contemplate in our isolation just when we were sure there was nothing more here. That love knocked Saul of Tarsus off his ass and he became at that moment the apostle Paul. What does it really mean? Did I really experience it? Shaking himself off in the dust these were thoughts that he must have contemplated and, after some reflection, put them to rest...

Pink Chum (Spade)

2007-08-31T11:27:00.000-07:00

Hook: Alec Jackson Spey, Finewire Black Size 5
Thread: Danville 6/0 pink
Tail: Hot Orange Golden Pheasant Crest
Tag: Lagurtun gold, large oval
Body: Pink Chenille
Hackle: Orange Guinea Hen (sparse)

Ward's Spectrum Shadow

2007-08-31T08:40:00.001-07:00

Hook: Alec Jackson Spey, 1.5 (Bronze)
Thread: Danville 6/0 Red
Tag: gold Mylar followed by large oval silver
Body: purple chenille, followed by purple bugger hackle
Throat: claret guinea fowl
Wing: Three layers of Norwegian Arctic Fox (Sunburst Orange, Red, Purple) topped by Black Russian Silver Goat (Serebjanka)
Eyes: Jungle Cock Nails, lacquered

What was your face before your Mother was born?

2007-08-31T00:13:00.001-07:00

There is an old zen koan an old girlfriend told me years ago: "what was your face before your mother was born?" Like all koans this one too, as I can now attest, is not solved by a declarative sentence, a true/false statement, but is felt beyond what the rational mind is immediately capable of affirming or denying. See, I've been sort of shut in recently and I got out for a bit today. The summer rains have pushed the river levels up really high and they'd dropped down to tolerable levels and I figured that maybe, on a lark, a few skamania steelhead might have made it up the Milwaukee River to the Estabrook dam. I checked it out and waded into the rich, tea-colored flow and drifted some spey flies through the foamy pools. I didn't catch a damn thing, though. But thats not important, you see, because in the dusky light blue herons flew overhead and caddisflies skittered off the surface film, I figured out that damned koan--or, rather, the koan solved itself. This suprised me, because I was not aware that I'd been working on its solution. As the orange sun was setting, the river sort of took me in as an old friend and partner, the ducks eyeing me with admiration from their eddies and rock islands. I felt clean and sharp, having shaved my beard some days ago and the old koan came up again what was your face before your mother was born? Somewhere between birth and death I got that one--I knew the answer to that question--wading in the river, fishing for a fish that was not there. Knowing the answer--or rather, feeling the truth of the question--I must have smiled. (I can't quite remember).

Feng's Steelhead Lizard

2007-08-24T07:52:00.001-07:00

Bluebelly variant

Redbelly variant

The idea for the Steelhead Lizard came to me from a demand for a fly that could consistently close the deal on the redds. I linked two 20 mm waddington shanks together and tied the trailer hook (size 2 CuttingEdge) with a loope of 18# muskellunge braided line. Each shank is palmered with large marabou plumes: Bluebelly: ((black-violet)-(carribean blue)-(fluorescent blue)); Redbelly:((black-red)-(fuschia-pink)), collared with guinea fowl and/or gadwall flank. The eyes are red dot-enamelled nickel dumbbells. The whole action is one of a jointed 'up and down' motion: the weighted eyes leading the marabou plumes downward, the tension on the line leading it upward. The double joint imitates a lizard's swimming action and the puffy marabou is compressed under water tension, yielding a very lifelike action.I'd like to add a third shank and get a real snake like effect going. Stay tuned for the Sea Serpent. This thing will get clipped by a pissed off King or Alpha Steelie, sealing its reputation as a true redd cleaner.

Ward's Sunray Shadow

2007-08-23T06:47:00.001-07:00

Mine is tied after the beautiful Atlantic Salmon pattern, the Sunray Shadow.

Hook: TMC 700, size 2 Limerick Bend

Thread: Danville 6/0 Black

Tag: Flat silver or gold Mylar, followed by silver medium Oval tinsel

Body: purple chenille, followed by purple bugger hackle

Collar: Claret guinea fowl

Underwing: Montana Flash, deep blue

Wing: Icelandic sheep, black

Eye: jungle cock nails, lacquered.

Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

2007-08-19T19:10:00.001-07:00

Today--the "20th Sunday in Ordinary Time" of the Roman Church calendar--we (M and I) attended Mass. I am aware throughout the mass of the parts of it, not as a theologian, but as one who wishes to avoid thinking too hard about the mysteries, to avoid the recognition that all these constructions of theology are of history, of past distinctions set in place for good reasons at that time. I am careful to avoid the distraction today of finding in Christ's saying "I've come to bring a sword" evidence of mischief, of intolerance. I find in it the proper reading--the reading which was no doubt meant, the reading that reveals the inner truth of love itself--love itself which divides, which is set at war against the world. In my heart I think of the young boy who is my neighbor whose mother works at Comfort Inn and whose father died when he was four. I think of this young lad on his bicycle, fatherless in this world save for the new boyfriend of the mom, the one from "Alaska". I pray for him and for his well being in the world. I pray for all those particular human beings like him whose lives are marked with loss, with tragedy. And, in praying, I am offering affirmation too that life will be good and that he will find the right path.

A friend said "How do I believe there is a God? Because when I pray I am believing". The love is now, right here, tears. The new atheists have harnessed their chariot to the demand for Evidence. They want evidence! Evidence! But evidence slides back into the past, into what is not. What is given to man is to be alive and that burden--that joyful burden--is to look forward to what is to be. I am on the verge of a transformation in this present.

Fiddling While the World Burns

2007-08-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

The article below was published in USA Today on August 18th. It is by Cal Thomas, a pundit on Fox News and a widely syndicated columnist. In this article he challenges the global warming consensus of the scientific community. I thought it was a great article to examine forensically, for it is riddled with fallacies. What a disservice to the country that this asshole should be given the mike! Take him off the air!

I have included my comments in bold
Not so hot air

By Cal ThomasThursday, August 16, 2007

In every child's life there comes a time when childhood fantasies are shattered and he or she is forced to accept reality - there is no Santa Claus or tooth fairy; parents don't always mean it when they promise to stay married until parted by death. Grown-up scientists, theologians, historians, archaeologists and others who pursue facts and objective truths are rooted in reality and constantly adjusting their conclusions, theories and hypotheses when new information comes to light. Those who ignore facts and cling to outdated information, or outright falsehoods, can quickly embrace fanaticism.

So it is with "global warming," the secular religion of our day that even has a good number of adherents among people of faith. Having decided to focus less on the eternal and whether anyone dwells there, global warming fundamentalists are pushing planet worship on us in a manner that would make a jihadist proud.

(This is an interesting tactic: to describe global warming science as a "secular religion". This is intended, no doubt, to evoke the culture wars so as to divide the 'secular humanists' from the faithful. The faithful--the intended audience of this piece--are invited here to see their faith being threatened by the secularists--the scientists on the opposite side. Here 'global warming fundamentalists' are trying to get us to worship the planet rather than God. This is a fallacy called 'poisoning the well'. But there is also a claim being made that global warming scientists are clinging to outdated data. This is a fallacy of 'distorting the facts', for the facts do not indicate that global warming scientists are clinging to outdated facts.)

There are at least two characteristics all fundamentalists share. One is the exclusion and sometimes suppression of any and all information that challenges or contradicts the belief one wishes to impose on all. The other is the use of the state in pursuit of their objectives, overriding the majority's will.

Setting up the two birds with one stone: scientists are fundamentalists who want to use the state to override the majority's will. This is a fallacy of appeal to authority--specifically appeal to the authority of the many. The idea is that the "majority" know whats true (or best) AND NOT partisan scientists who have their own fundamentalist agenda.

With global warming, some members of the scientific community - not all of whom are climatologists, who disagree among themselves - have circled the wagons, denying access and labeling illegitimate any scientist who disagrees with the "doctrines" of a recently warming planet. The big media have been complicit in this censorship or ridicule of alternative views, mostly refusing to interview anyone who does not push the global warming faith. CBS News this week broadcast a four-part series on "climate change." Newsweek magazine recently slammed global warming "deniers." That brought a counterattack in the Aug. 20 issue from Newsweek contributor Robert Samuelson, who termed the article "highly contrived" and "fundamentally misleading." In 1975, Newsweek was just as convinced - using "scientific evidence" - that a new Ice Age was upon us.

This is a widely deployed strategy by the far right: declare there is reasonable disagreement on scientific issues (the science is, so Cal Thomas maintains, controversial at best), and then declare that anybody who insists on the veracity and univocity of the science is being a fundamentalist for not integrating the controversial science. This is a fallacy of distorting the facts. While there is a range of estimates, some views are simply wrong and/or suffer from methodological errors and that is why no peer reviewed journal will publish their results. Thomas is distorting the facts here by implicitly insisting that all the written views of "scientists" are equally rigorous and deserve to be included in the overall picture and that those scientists who do not integrate these views are acting the part of religious fanatics. But this fails to take seriously the way in which the process of peer review works.

Many global warming fanatics have pointed to NASA as proof that their concerns about a warming planet are justified. They have repeatedly cited the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), whose director, James Hansen, has asserted that nine of the 10 warmest years in history have occurred since 1995, with 1998 the warmest. When NASA was confronted with evidence provided by Climate Audit, a blog run by Stephen McIntyre devoted to auditing the statistical methods and data used in historical reconstructions of past climate data, it reversed itself. Without the fanfare used to hype the global warming fanaticism it had earlier supported, NASA now says four of the top 10 years of high temperatures are from the 1930s. Several previously selected "warm" years - 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2004 - fell behind 1900.
GISS now says its previous claim that 1998 was the warmest year in American history is no longer valid. The warmest year was 1934.

By now they--the scientific consensus on global warming--have become "fanatics". Thomas thinks he has scored a winning point by showing that 1934 was the warmest year not what the political arm of NASA said it was, in the 1990's. Thomas thinks he has scored a big point here, as though disproving that one fact were enough to cast doubt on the whole global warming hypothesis. See, 1934 was a hot year! Its all good! Its happened in the past and theres nothing to worry about!This is an interesting example of fallacies of hasty generalization and of overlooking the facts. It is not a relevant defeater of the global warming hypothesis that there were occassionally very warm years over the last thousand years (anomalies). And yet, Thomas thinks he has the smoking gun here by surpassing the mountains of confirming evidence for anthropogenic global warming in favor of this one fact and then rushing to the conclusion that global warming science is a hoax!

Has any of this new information changed the minds of the global warming fundamentalists? Nope. Neither has much of it seen the light of day in the mainstream media, which continue to carry stories where seldom is heard an alternative word and the skies are polluted all day.
The New York Times ran a story in its Sunday Business section last week that said it would cost a lot of money to fight global warming. The implication being that this money should come from government (and taxpayers), along with more government regulations and control over our lives by the very people who seem to have difficulty winning wars and controlling spending.
The Earth has warmed and cooled over many centuries. One can get a sense of who is telling the truth about global warming by the company the concept keeps. Most of the disciples of global warming are liberal Democrats who never have enough of our money and believe there are never enough regulations concerning the way we lead our lives. That ought to be enough to give everyone pause, along with emerging evidence that the global warming jihadists may be more full of hot air than the climate they claim is about to burn us up.

Finally, we have the mack daddy fallacy of them all, the guilt by association fallacy: "One can get a sense of sense of who is telling the truth about global warming by the company the concept keeps...most of the disciples of global warming are liberal Democrats who never have enough of our money..."
So, just to be clear, we went from scientists who insist that their science is true (or largely true) to their comparison to religious fanatics, to actually being religious fanatics, to "disciples", to tax and spend democrats.

This piece should be seen for what it is, namely, a crude hack job by a political operative. It is a shame that such opinions are widely circulated in our society.