The FBI saved us from a terrorist attack that was planned by … the FBI. Nice work, fellas!

Here’s what happened, as I understand it: Mohamed Osman Mohamud was hanging out with bad people, having communications with unsavory sorts. His Dad, a westernized Muslim, was deeply concerned, and approached the FBI with this information, asking for their help in setting the kid straight.

The FBI instead enticed the kid into a sting operation, one that will probably not stand if he gets his day in court. (That’s why people in power do not like habeas corpus. They’d rather just put people away without trial.) Mohamud has pleaded innocent.

Anything else? Probably. The FBI seems anxious to produce a thwarted terror incident – all these months and years without one makes for a poor scare campaign. So manufacturing one seems a nice solution to that problem.

But what about the kid? Why is he pissed at the U.S.? It beats me why all of these “terrorists” happen to come from countries where the U.S. happens to have troops on the ground and where our bloody covert ops are being carried out.

My scholarly reading over the Thanksgiving weekend included Parade Magazine, that annoying little tabloid that newspapers use as a device to get you to sort through the Sunday advertising supplements. The inside page this week offered the following quote by Tina Fey:

The beauty of self-doubt is that you vacillate between extreme egomania and feeling like ‘I’m a fraud,’ … You just try to ride the egomania and then slide through the impostor syndrome. I’ve realized that almost everyone is a fraud, so I don’t feel that bad about it.

Now that is refreshing. Fame is a net that catches but a few fish out of a large school. There are far more talented people who are not famous than those we know about. With the advent of electronic self-publishing, we now have access to a wider assortment of better books that those now only published because the authors are famous. But they won’t sell unless the authors get lucky.

The worst part of fame and fortune is the “fortune” part, where people who inherit money learn to value themselves as worthy of the inheritance. I experienced this first-hand with a family in Montana comprised of hacks and nuthatches, each imagining him/herself exceptional, each carrying a load of sycophants on board, myself among them. Thank God for past tense.

Here’s something funny, as long as I am rambling: Bob Woodward’s book, off to the left here, is the only one in his long line that I have ever read. It was enough. It was crap. Woodward is running on fumes, and makes his living now sucking up to the very people he supposedly toppled from power years before. (Ask yourself why a famously tight-lipped cabal of schemers would allow anyone inside to observe their dealings.)

Bob Woodward, fraud. (And if he sucks up to power now, was he also doing so then? Just wondering.)

Another, pictured to to the right: Steve Forbes is the champion of the “free enterprise” system that has rewarded him for being the son of a man who made fortune by sucking up to power. That would be his dad Malcolm, the biker to the right. But honestly, Forbes Magazine under Malcolm was interesting. The guy on the left is also interesting, full of spirit and probably cognizant of the fleeting nature of fame. The guy on the right is boring and full of himself, who has accomplished exactly nothing of note in his life, and who would be nothing without that Dad.

Speaking of which … the downward procession of ability as seen below … each man a little less talented than the one to his right, climaxing with #43.

George W. Bush is a complete idiot. It’s interesting to see his idiotic book, Decision Points, being torn apart by reviewers who would have praised it if he were still in power. Speaking of sucking up.

Odd thing about the Bush family – even going back to Prescott, there just doesn’t seem to be much talent there, but they are always around. Nixon backers wanted H.W. to be Nixon’s running mate, but he chose Spiro Agnew as “assassination insurance.” People urged Nixon to appoint H.W. as vice president when Agnew was taken down, but he chose the near-dead Gerald R. Ford instead. “W.” is every bit as talented as Prince Charles, but somehow was elevated to the post of president. That’s neither luck nor talent, but rather that name “Bush,” a royal family.

Which brings me to my powerful conclusion: Luck has a lot to do with success and fame, and money helps the progeny. Sarah Palin is lucky and famous and extremely untalented, and the offspring are going to drive us crazy for years. Remember Pete Rose …. Jr.? Jacob Dylan? Emilio Estevez? Dean [Paul] Martin? Sean [Ono] Lennon? Would we even know those names if they were left to their own talent to succeed?

I have no problem with success or talent. I have no problem with luck. I think my only problem is with offspring and hangers-on.

Thus endeth the ramble.

I have been following politics for many years, and enthusiasm has ebbed and flowed. After 2008 I felt like Charlie Brown. I allowed myself to buy into the whole Ad Age Marketer of the Year. That is my fault, and not that of Obama and the Democrats. I should have known better.

Bertrand Russell talked about the advantages of democracy* – from his high perch. He said that it is a given that ordinary people are unqualified to make judgments on large matters. The only real advantage of such a system is that we change rulers on a regular basis. Further, the basis for choosing a new ruler is not that he or she has a royal lineage or a large fortune. Now and then ordinary people with exceptional gifts come to power.

Politicians are second-rate people. It can be no other way. They are drawn to power. The best leaders are those who do not want power, who by definition don’t seek office. Great leaders in history, such as the Roman General Cincinnatus or our own George Washington (and apparently, if he is honest, Nelson Mandela of South Africa) are people who only took power involuntarily, and then as quickly gave it up.

It appears to me that there are several important differences between what we call our “right” and “left” (we have no such thing, but let’s pretend). At the ground level on the right, there is base stupidity. Listen to their icons, their Sarah’s, Michelle’s, Rand’s and Santorum’s – these are not ordinary people. They are fanatics, and they are very stupid.

On the “left” we have timidity – when confronted with stupidity and fanaticism, they want to be fair. This is their major defect – they think that they must share the stage with fanatics and treat them as serious people, engaging them, negotiating and compromising with them.

That’s baseline politics, and will not change. The fanatics will take control, make a huge mess of things, and then we’ll let the timid ones back in and we’ll settle down again. (Given that they are all second-rate, money will always have disproportionate influence on them. Our best hope is to turn them out on a regular basis, hoping that we accidentally benefit during the time that they are being compromised. Our best senator, for example, would be one who served one six-year term and who was then permanently pastured on a government pension.)

But there is something more going on now in this country, in my view. We are in danger of loss of our republican form of government than ever before. There’s no ebb and flow. We had eight years on fanaticism, and when we settled down again in 2008, we got the same fanatics in different costumes. We did not change leaders. They punked us.

Maybe this too shall pass – I don’t know the future. But here is the danger: In a democracy we can vote fanatics out. In a totalitarian state we cannot. By their very nature, right wing fanatics want to keep and hold power, not for a few years, but for generations. Karl Rove called it the “permanent Republican majority.” I’m wondering now if his vision included compliant Democrats as a wing of the Republican Party.

We changed parties in 2008, but not leaders or philosophy. I don’t see a way of bringing about meaningful change in the future due to the fact that we are limited to two parties, and now more than ever before, both are the same people and philosophy.
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*I use the terms “democratic” and “republican” government interchangeably. In the modern sense, there is little distinction or difference.

Prediction is a fool’s game, as we don’t know the real intentions of those who won the elections. But it is safe to say that they money behind them has more sway than the shallow appeals to popular issues they indulge in while campaigning. So when it comes to fighting for issues of importance, we are in for more of the same – strong Republicans and weak Democrats. It’s toxic.

When Democrats took control of the House and Senate in 2006, George Bush simply vetoed anything he did not like. He was strong. Barack Obama will not do that. (He is indeed weak, but that’s not his real issue.) When Democrats had a large majority from 2008 forward, Republicans merely filibustered everything in sight, and Democrats allowed it to happen. Going forward, Democrats will not use the filibuster.

The natural impression to draw from this is that one party is strong but an obstacle to progress, while the other is weak and unable to get its act together. But if each party has a role to fill in service of wealth, then it is the Democrats who are strongest, as they thwart popular will at every juncture where there is a chance for real progress. This is what they did to us, 2008 forward. They took our great opportunity, and rubbed our face in it. Democrats had as massive a victory as American electoral politics allows, and nothing changed.

The conclusions drawn from that are that we have to redouble our efforts now to elect good Democrats. But that is wrong, in my view. Think of the two parties as parts of a large sausage grinder – no matter the input, the output is the same. The Democratic Party can only serve us if they are swept out of office and replaced en masse by populists and progressives. Incremental additions to the progressive minority are mere distraction. And such a massive change in leadership cannot happen in a climate where the public is uneducated and distracted, financing is done in secret, money buys advertising, and advertising buys elections.

In our money-centric two-party system, elections and voting are the least functional outlets for reform.

The only answer, as always, is on-the-ground organizing, outside the two parties and around issues. Health care was an organizing opportunity in 2008, but instead we ran it through the Democrats, and it became sausage.

But there is no other answer. It has to happen outside the parties. Daunting as that is, it is the only reason FDR is seen as a reformer, while Nixon and Ford are perceived as contradictions – conservatives who signed into law progressive legislation. FDR was backed by massive popular movements, and Nixon and Ford were confronted with them. Power came from below.

Organizing is power. Electoral politics is a distraction.

There is no other answer, friends. In the last two years Democrats could easily have handed us many victories, but allowed Republicans to block them. This is because too many Democrats are merely closet Republicans, including Max Baucus, Harry Reid, Michael Bennet … and Barack Obama. And you cannot tell who is who at election time, as they lie. Elections are a crap shoot and we’re in a casino. The house usually wins.

Enough of electoral politics! It’s fun, but useless.

I am skeptical of government pronouncements regarding things that they want us to fear, and unlike most, do not distinguish between Republican fear-mongering and Democratic fear-mongering. So I listened to Obama’s announcement of how they found a bomb in Dubai* and how it was headed for a synagogue, and I gave it the same credibility that such a pronouncement from George W. Bush would have merited. It’s probably a lie.

But assume that people working in counter-terrorism (their name for their work) are honest, as most surely are. Does that mean that the underlying event was real?

Not necessarily. Such incidents are easily generated, and can be real or fake, or better yet, manufactured. (Even shoe and underpants bombs can be manufactured events.) All is possible, but this is the U.S., so the event is automatically treated as real and credible. Shame on you, people! Shame on you!

The timing here is suspicious we well, the Friday before a national election. Bush did this on a regular basis.

Anyway, it was like an out-of-body experience for me as I listened to the news and Obama’s words on this matter. I was concentrating, and so not aware of myself, but standing before a mirror doing my morning stuff, looked at the mirror and saw myself smiling.

And then I laughed out loud. New president, different party, same old shit. Nothing has changed.

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*Worth noting here that the Obama Administration has given hints that it wants to attack Yemen, supposedly the source of the bombs found in Dubai. Is this casus belli?

Lizard put up this video in the comments over at 4&20. I long ago quit doing this, realizing that people just don’t have or won’t take the time to invest such affairs. But Hedges is so good that I’m doing it anyway. Give it a watch, report back.

One advantage of moving is time to think. I spent the week carting household goods onto a U Haul on one end, and off on the other.

My last serious blog encounter prior to the move was with Dave Budge, and it resonated. The man was arrogant enough to say

…I’m working on a long post, Mark, that you’re going to have to research to argue against.

As I learned afterward, he wasn’t asking me to critique it. He merely wanted to play teacher-student. His post, The Pulse of my Bleeding Heart: Part I (Part II never appeared), was devoid of one important thing: research.

I approached it with some anticipation, however, as I regarded him as a scholarly man. I put it off until a Saturday morning when I would have time to read it. And then I got through it, and did some writing. In retrospect, the real conclusions I draw form his post go deeper than what I wrote that day.

I am surprised. He’s not all that smart. He’s not all that thoughtful. His long post was mostly a citation of others with whom he agreed, patting himself on the back for taking the trouble to quote people with whom he otherwise disagrees, but with whom is was in agreement with on the subject at hand: sweatshops. He doesn’t like them, but thinks them necessary. They are the price that (other) people pay for prosperity. He offered no empirical data – only an affirmation that others had done so.

He’s wrong, of course. Sweatshops are not part of development. They are part of a system of repression. They don’t lead to development. Development leads away from them. The arguments he put forward were almost identical to those put forth by southern plantation owners to justify slavery.

Sweatshops, like the stockyards of Upton Sinclair’s “Jungle,” are merely investors grabbing at opportunity. Budge looks backward and sees sweatshops in the distant past for countries that have developed well, and imputes cause and effect. It is not only wrong and backward, but servile. Such conclusions benefits oligarchy. He may not be well-paid in the terms of our bought priesthood, but he is bought nonetheless. He literally self-indoctrinates for benefit of the wealthy sector.

But there’s more to his flawed thinking than mere false narrative. There is massive, overwhelming, blatant and obscene confirmation bias. Budge went so far as to say that Japan and Korea developed because of sweatshops. All he had to do, all anyone has to do, is look a little deeper. What do Japan and Korea have in common? As with China, they were never colonized. That confirms my bias – that countries that were colonized by Europe and the U.S. in past centuries, like India and those in Latin America, suffer from retarded development. There may have been sweatshops in Japan and Korea, might still be, and it means nothing more than investors still pursue opportunity as it presents itself.

Sweatshops are just a tool for extracting wealth, a form of oppression, slave labor by many for the benefit of a few, and justified by the bought priesthood.

I didn’t set out here to write about sweatshops again. My reason in sitting down this morning was the wonderment I felt this week that the man with whom I have argued so much, and for whom I had grudging admiration, turned out to be so shallow. In the end, he reminds me of Rob Natelson, rigorously affirming what he knows to be true, ignorant of all that contradicts it, and calling the outcome “scholarship.”

Well, we are no longer residents of Boulder, Colorado – the “most self-satisfied community in the country” (Denver Post). We have been moving all week, and are now officially residents of Jefferson County, Colorado. Our mailing address will say “Morrison,” but that little community is ten miles away. The closest town is Aspen Park (not to be confused with Aspen, where movies stars ski). We are living now in a mountain home, or as my wife likes to say, our “tree house.” At night we look down on the lights of Denver.

Boulder was awfully nice – very lively, lots of brew pubs and coffee houses, a college town with a very liberal atmosphere. There are lots of PhD’s there, along with entrepreneurs and authors, scientists and green companies. It suited me fine, but in the end we decided that we wanted to be off the hot prairie and up in the mountains. (Not to mention that housing costs are astronomical there.)

I’ve been following the news and blogs and stuff, and nothing has changed. I’ve got to remember that if things change, it is only to get worse. There have always been crazies about, ever since the discovery of the New World. Europe routinely sent their sent their malcontents and religious cults this way. But these days, with the Tea Parties and people like Beck and Palin and O’Donnell held in high esteem, it seems as though Ladybug is right: We are circling the drain. These people are not just politically extreme. They are very stupid. And yet, stupidity automatically garners 30% in the polls.

But I suppose people have always said that. Maybe the only difference now is that I am sixty, and noticing the craziness more.

But I’ll carry on. I’ve been doing this for four years now, and enjoy it as much as in the beginning. And my arch-nemeses, the Democratic Party, has never offered such a large target as it does now. Obama has gone all Clinton* on us, and the usual suspects are digging deep into their imaginations for reasons to continue to believe.

What a country! What lunacy! The Green Party candidate for governor of California, Laura Wells was arrested! for trying to legally enter a debate at Dominican University. Ralph Nader was arrested in 2000 for trying to merely sit in the audience for a presidential debate. He, like Ms. Wells is a citizen and had a ticket.

This is our one-party-with-two-right-wings system at work. The reason why they don’t want other parties in the debates is because their presence highlights how little difference there is between them.

Circling the drain, indeed.
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*Remembering Bill Clinton: Another post, some time. But could a Republican do more harm to this country than did Bubba? But he is more popular now than Obama.

Time now to get way from trivial concerns and write about something really important – coffee.

Some time in my younger years I had a really good cuppa joe. I think now it must have been on a trip to New York City in the 1976. Back in Montana after that, I was always on the lookout – I tried everything that came along, including the more expensive “premium” blends put out by Folgers and the others, and the flavored coffees that masked the bland product underneath. I sent away for Gevalia Kaffe from Sweden. It was all, as my brother liked to call it, “shit water,” or gas station blend.

I experimented with better ways to make coffee, including “French presses”, or “French toilets”, as I think of them. When the first Mr. Coffee came out, I ran out to buy one, thinking that the drip method was all that was missing from Montana coffee. It was still shit water. When backpacking, coffee was a always a necessity in the morning, and always a disappointment. (Folgers once offered coffee in tea bags. Horrible!)

Some time in the early 90’s, a coffee shop opened in downtown Billings called “Todd’s Plantation.” The entire downtown area would smell like roasted coffee, and the people would say that “Todd’s burning the beans again.” He roasted his own, and used “Arabica” beans, which meant nothing to me. (Folgers and Millstone and others are “robusta” beans – more caffeine, less flavor.) His coffee was dark and rich, but very bitter, something I find to be true of most gourmet coffee shops to this day. Todd’s closed eventually, but other shops began to open, and twenty years after that cup I had in Manhattan, premium coffee entered the Montana market.

But most of the new gourmet coffee sold at shops and kiosks was just hype, a new version of shit water at three or four times the price. My daughters worked for a coffee shop in west Billings that was eventually taken over by Esther and became “Esther’s Espresso.” I began to buy coffee by the pound from her, trying all the blends, and not liking them much except for the Italian roast. So I stuck on that.

We went on a trip to visit kids who didn’t drink coffee, and bought a bag of Starbucks Italian roast to make our own while we were there. Unlike Esther’s Italian, Starbucks was darker and more bitter, but not bad. We brought half a bag home with us from that trip, and then one morning I mixed Esther’s and Starbucks Italian, took a cup to my wife, and she came out and said “That is really good coffee.”

And it was. The search had ended. We live in Colorado now, and Esther ships us beans which we store frozen, a no-no. I make five cups in the morning using five tablespoons of Esther’s Italian and two of Starbucks. We’ve been doing this for years.

Esther’s Espresso is located at 1927 Grand Avenue in Billings. It’s just a little hole in the wall. Esther is a great gal, always fun to talk to. She has two walls of bins of various beans. Do some experimenting if you are a coffee lover – she will surely have something that fits your taste buds.

Two items occupy the vast expanse of my empty head this morning. I am wading through Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, The Black Swan, and setting aside his massive ego, he is enjoyable and insightful. I particularly like the following, in which he comments on the ability to have regular income without sucking up to people. His company, First Boston, went belly-up, but he was left with what he called the equivalent of a fellowship.

This is sometimes called “f*** you money,” which, in spite of its coarseness, means that it allows you to act like a Victorian gentleman, free from slavery. It’s a psychological buffer: the capital is not so large as to make you spoiled-rich, but large enough to give you the freedom to choose a new occupation without excessive consideration of the financial rewards. It shields you from prostituting your mind and frees you from outside authority – any outside authority. … While not substantial by some standards, literally cured me of all financial ambition – it made me ashamed whenever I diverted time away from study for the pursuit of material wealth. Note that the designation f*** you corresponds to the exhilarating ability to that compact phrase before hanging up the phone.

I offer a corollary to his words: The number of times anonymous people say f*** you on the blogs corresponds exactly one-to-one with the inability to use those words in real life without serious consequences.

Here’s another tidbit: The Denver Post today reports on the most recent poll in our senatorial race: Ken Buck (R) 48%, Michael Bennet (D), 43%, Other, 8%, and undecided (1%). Bennet is toast, which is OK, as any man who has shat upon his base as much as Bennet has shat upon his deserves defeat. Send him back to investment banking, from whence he came!

The Post, in its entire long article citing “political observers” (?), ordinary street people and other polls – never once tells us who these “Others” are, even though they are determining the outcome of the election!

it’s as if, in 1992, the presidential election ended as follows: Clinton (43%), Bush (38%), Other (19%). Ross Perot gave us minority president Bill Clinton, and unnamed and anonymous “others” in Colorado will give us minority Senator Ken Buck.

My vote? “Other.” It is my vote, and I choose to spend it wisely.