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.

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there’s doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

I was all of eleven years old in 1961 as I lay on my bed listening to a GE radio and first heard this song. It certainly got my attention, as when I saw it quoted in a book I’m reading that moment came right back to me. The writer, Malvina Reynolds, as I learned today, has roots in the anti-war movement of World War I (her parents were activists) and was married to a labor organizer. Could it be that even at age eleven I was in harmony with dissidents?*
Continue reading “American education: Ticky tacky little boxes” →

My middle daughter graduated high school in 2000, and we went through all of the mindless graduation rigmarole, including a breakfast where the class valedictorian spoke. Such events are showcases, and also serve to remind the parents of ordinary kids that their kids are ordinary.

But this talk we heard, by a young lady, was deplorable. It was a Catholic school, I should add, but for ten minutes this kid did nothing but regurgitate her lessons and speak Christian mush. She presented not one original thought. She reflected back on her teachers so well that she got straight A’s.

My daughter, an ordinary student, later caught fire, getting a good liberal arts background in college. With that in place, she then got career training and now works for a ‘respected’ corporation in Portland doing respectable work in exchange for a respectable salary. I have told her that her job will pay her bills, but her English degree, which did nothing more than to teach her how to think and to broaden her horizons, will make her life full and rich.

Had she absorbed everything that Billings Central Catholic High School was teaching, she might now, like the class valedictorian, be boring. She’s anything but.

We went car shopping for our daughter over the weekend. She and our son-in-law (married to a different daughter) came along, as he’s very smart about cars and a good negotiator to boot. I am neither of those things, but having me there created a bit of a quandary for the sales people. They did not know who exactly they were trying to screw.

But they’re very good at it. It’s not like they don’t know all the angles. We made a bottom line offer at one dealership, cash on the line, take it or leave it. They said “No.” I was under the impression that if they know that you are going to walk, they will come down. Not so. They let you walk.

At another place we found a very nice car, a Legacy with low miles in good condition. We looked at it, expressed some interest, and then came back later in the day. Son-in-law and daughter drove it, liked it, and we proceeded to negotiate. The initial asking price was $14,700, and we came back with $13,000. The salesman, let’s call him Dick, did the old routine where he wrote it down on a piece of paper, had my daughter sign it, and then left the room.
Continue reading “Things to do in Denver when you’re dense” →

From Dave Budge:

For example, if the Fed and the Treasury had not offered a doctrine of too-big-to-fail since the late 1970s financial institutions would, in part, not engage in risky behavior that results in private gains/public losses. That’s not to say that certain other aspects of the finance sector don’t deserve strict regulation (although I’m not in the mood to debate what those are right now) but certain “self-policing” has all the incentive necessary to protect the public from wide-spread abuse.

I guess we’ll have to wait until he’s in a better mood for clarification, but his counting system apparently goes like this: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2010… *
________________

On a less snarky note, one might ask why people are not swayed by physical evidence? We nearly imploded in 2007-09, and even Greenspan admitted to being surprised that markets actors would act in a self-destructive manner. I don’t know where he’s at now, but he did have a lucid interval.

Some time last year I tuned in to C-SPAN to hear what was meant to be a debate between Ralph Nader and Ted Turner and some other guy, only Turner did not know that it was to be a debate. Ralph had more or less trapped him into coming on false pretenses, but Turner is resilient and smart. I roughly quote Turner, who told Nader right off that he had tried kicking the system, and all he got was a broken toe. He asked Ralph what he had accomplished in his presidential runs besides a broken foot?

That was it for me. I knew that Turner was right. The two men are similar and different – in the face of futility, Turner moved on to other pursuits, while Nader keeps kicking, kicking, kicking.
Continue reading “Counting, Budge style” →

“Guess what?” [Democratic strategist Hillary] Rosen said. “[Mitt Romney’s] wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing.”

WASHINGTON — President Obama disappointed and vexed gay supporters on Wednesday with his decision, conveyed to activists by a senior adviser, not to sign an executive order banning discrimination by employers with federal contracts.

Mealy explanations are currently in formulation stage