This is the TED Talk that has caught so much attention. The Sapling Foundation, owner of “TED” (technology, entertainment, design) initially declined to air it, and demand had to grow on its own. Finally there was enough whining and complaining that TED was forced to air it. It’s making the rounds now.

In it, Nick Hanauer says some plainly true things that are a stark contrast to the spirit of the times. He makes lots of money, but doesn’t imagine himself a “job creator.” That function, he says, is the product of a feedback loop, with middle class consumers buying products acting as the real job creators. So low taxes for the wealthy has no influence on the number of jobs available to fill. (Quite the opposite, actually.)

That point is so basic that it takes whole university economics departments to obfuscate it beyond recognition. Sadly, that is the function of economics as we know it – not to discover truth, but to hide it.

On to serious stuff now.

In my athletic days (slow-pitch softball, like bowling, is considered an athletic activity by some), I was called upon late in a game to be the catcher (something to do with my not catching balls in the outfield). Our center fielder had a cannon for an arm, and ran down a ball in the gap and got it back to me at the plate quickly. That took the other team by surprise, and there I stood at home plate, ball in glove and two runners having crossed third base. I tagged each of them, one of the most unusual double plays ever in the annals of the game. The second runner, probably out of embarrassment, tried to run me over, Pete Rose fashion. But as I discovered on further examination, I had held onto the ball. (He was called out for running into me, not allowed in slow-pitch, but he was out anyway.)

That event came to memory as I watched a baseball game last night – something far more unlikely happened. Cincinnati’s Mike Leake, Zach Cozart and Drew Stubbs hit back-to-back-to-back home runs, unusual. But the really amazing thing was that one fan in the center field bleachers caught two of them.

Imagine that there were 23,000 fans in the ball park. The odds of any one of them catching an errant ball are, say 20 in 23,000, or 1/1,150. The odds of the same person catching two would then be 1/1,322,500.

What a night for 20-year old Caleb Lloyd! He was invited up to the broadcast booth during and down to the locker room after the game, and even standing among all those millionaires, wanted no money for Leake’s home run ball (it was his first major league home run).

I have long since dismissed any serious consequences or fallout from the JFK assassination. The poor schmuck was a victim of circumstances, and would probably had continued to lead a charmed life had he not been popped that day. The one person who mostly caused his demise knew that he had done so, and from afar it appears that he went through a consciousness-altering experience with the death – enormous guilt, a new perspective on the world, and a death wish. That was Bobby. Though we’ll never know, it could be that his anti-war stance was genuine.

Normally in American politics, false leaders appear on the scene to collect discontent and misdirect it to a futile end. In 1968, that appears to have been Eugene McCarthy’s role. There was no need for a another false leader, so that Bobby’s anti-war stance could well have been real. There was also the matter of his determination to solve the mystery of his brother’s death. These two things made him unqualified to be president.
Continue reading “New witness steps forth in the RFK murder” →

From today’s paper:

The Denver Post is your trusted source of information and will run corrections of all stories that contain information that is not factual or is substantially inaccurate.

In a news story in Saturday’s edition we reported that there is no US military presence in Yemen. However, the correct spelling of the international airport in the capital city of Sana’a, where marines and equipment have not landed, is “El Rahaba” and not “El Rahabai”. The Post apologizes for this error.

Page two of Monday’s Financial Times had the following stories: Spotlight on Greek left after poll surge; Sinn Fein’s anti-austerity stances strikes chord with young Irish; and Hollande must cope with split inside EU over path to reform.

All of these stories are about elections in European countries, where public opinion can and does translate into public policy (it does not here), and the reaction to “austerity” programs, or the idea that public programs for public benefit are the public’s business do not exist at the whim of bankers.

Here’s a snippet from the Hollande article:

What gets less attention was Mr. Hollande’s revealing admission that he did not share [President of the European Central Bank Mario] Draghi’s vision, endorsed by Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, that … growth … should be structured on structural reforms, such as increasing labour market flexibility.*

Mr. Hollande was not coy about this. “Can we really believe that liberalism**, privatisations and deregulation, which led us into the financial crisis we are in, well help us get out of the crisis?

Indeed. Mr. Hollande, please come to America, write about us as de Tocqueville did, give us the insight he did. We really need some French wisdom on this side of the pond.
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* “labor market flexibility” is code for hire and fire at will, no job security.
**”liberalism”, over there, is equivalent to what we might refer to as “neoliberalism” here, or the Greenspan-Bernancke-Clinton school of deregulation and low taxation of concentrated wealth.

I witnessed yesterday two of the most high-profile jellyfish politicians of our era, President Obama and Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, finally take a stand on equal rights for gays. This can only mean one thing: The battle is over. Soon, maybe within five years, gays will have equally protected constitutional rights in all fifty states, including North Carolina.

One pundit yesterday – Thom Hartmann? – said that the TV show Will and Grace had perhaps saved more teen agers than any other force in our country. The highest suicide rate in our land is among gay teen agers. Watching a popular medium like TV, seeing openly gay people accepted and treated with respect, gave many the courage just to get through high school, get away from the bigots, maybe move to a bigger city, and live their lives.

Please note – after the battle was waged, after the walls were falling, only then did Hickenlooper and Obama weigh in. This gives weight to the argument that popular movements, even of minorities, is the strongest determinant of future public policy. This explains FDR an LBJ. They did what they did because they felt pressure, perhaps even acting on their own impulses knowing that they had power behind them.

Joe Biden appeared on Meet the Press yesterday and made a big splash by endorsing gay marriage. This is the sort of thing that drives me buggy about American journalism – a scripted performance by an elected official on a program known to act as a handmaiden to power. These days it is David Gregory playing the part of Tim Russert.

This is politics, of course. There is no disagreement within the administration about gay marriage. More likely they, like most power centers in the country, are disinterested. It’s a wedge issue, and important in politics, and not beyond.

Secondly, the Vice President tackles this issue because it is too hot for the president to handle. Call him Spiro Biden if it helps to understand the matter.

Third, Obama has been indifferent to gay marriage during his presidency, or better said, disinterested. But campaign time is approaching, and his campaign team is busy assembling his voting blocs. He’s gone after youth on TV and in a popular magazine, and now the LBGT community via Biden.
Continue reading “Politics 201” →

I have encountered the following attitude on numerous occasions: If we elect not to participate in the American electoral system when that system offers us no meaningful choice, we are engaged in “nihilism.”

Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. (Encycopedia of Philosophy, Internet Branch)

I suggest that if we do not participate in the system as it is structured for us, that we are asking for a positive alternative to meaninglessness. We will have, in November, two men who mirror each other on virtually all policies (except perhaps abortion). Choosing “none of the above” is an informed choice. Voting for either is the opposite.

President Obama sneaked into Afghanistan last night, in Bush-like manner, to sign a “post-war” agreement with Hamid Karzai. “Post-war” is beyond 2014. Since the US knew in 2001, when it first attacked Afghanistan, that the conflict would still be going on ten years later, it’s easy to see why they can rely on 2014 as a get-out date.

Karzai is in a tough spot. As the sovereign leader of Afghanistan, he has to take the offer. Otherwise he’ll be killed.

Obama said nothing about the mission. We’ve never had it spelled out for us. At first it was to get Osama bin Laden, but Osama refused to cooperate, kicking the bucket in late 2001. After that, the enemy became the Taliban, and the ally the “Northern Alliance,” a group of terrorists that we trained and funded during the Soviet occupation. If you were to ask any American who the “Taliban” are, you’d get a wide-eyed shrug. We don’t’ know. We just know they are evil.

As with “Al Qaeda,” a group of ragtags without any real power or popularity, Taliban is amorphous – they are whoever we happen to be attacking. The thousands of civilians killed in the process, well, they just had bad days. It is said that Al Qaeda pulled off 9/11, but it’s really hard to imagine that a small group of ragtags could pull off a sophisticated operation. But 2/3 of the public believes that, and are still pissed, and so in the mind of the public, Taliban=Al Qaeda=Saddam=Qaddafi=Chavez . They all have one thing in common: They have faces, and as we learned to hate their faces, we learned to hate the people we were killing.

Propaganda 101: Put a face on the enemy, so that the public can focus its hatred.
Continue reading “Obama to Karzai: Peace with honor” →

Chen Guangcheng, a Chinese dissident, escaped custody and now resides in the US embassy. This creates international tension, as the US and China are deeply involved in economic co-dependency, and at the same time must have some window dressing regarding human rights.

Perhaps the US, in a gesture of goodwill, could offer an exchange of political prisoner Bradley Manning for Chen.