update: by the way that article is a fucking goldmine of information about how pathetic congress is. like:
A third Texan, Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat, said the negotiators had “never seriously considered any alternative” to the administration’s plan, and had only barely modified what they were given. He criticized the plan for handing over sweeping new powers to an administration that he said was to blame for allowing the crisis to develop in the first place.
duh.
and:
Supporters of the bill had argued that it was necessary to avoid a collapse of the economic system, a calamity that would drag down not just Wall Street investment houses but possibly the savings and portfolios of millions of Americans. Moreover, supporters argued, a lingering crisis in America could choke off business and consumer loans to a degree that could prompt bank failures in Europe and slow down the global economy.
right, and if we don't invade iraq we'll all be speaking arabic if we aren't nuked first. fear fear fear!!
The former Treasury Department official who predicted another House vote this week said that before there could be another vote, he would expect Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat, and Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican minority leader, to approach members with seats in safe districts and tell them, in effect: “You’ve got to do this. The fate of the country hangs on your vote.”
fear fear fear!!! also, fuck you nancy and john. fuck you and whatever dirty tricks you pull out of your sleeve to stop your stupid little minions from accidentally doing the right thing for once in their pathetic lives.
so congress is all set to work together and sing kumbaya and fuck the country out of a gagillion dollars. the poor will be forced to pay this to the rich, while the government fucks laugh at everyone and pretend that they aren't laughing at everyone. same shit as iraq - make up a bunch of scary monsters that will kill everyone unless you do something that seems incredibly stupid on its claimed merits, and nobody can say shit about it cause then they're evil terrorists that hate america, a nation of poor fucking saps who richly would deserve hatred if they weren't so fucking stupid and pathetic. and so they're just sad, and they'll be paying out their asses until they die, which will be pretty soon cause none of them have healthcare coverage because the government won't provide it because they only have trillions of dollars for war and wall street, not for regular sick people. up here in canada i just sit and get angry and rant about it, and wonder when everything will fall apart.
I saw this video at Dennis Perrin's blog and figured my little sister would appreciate if I posted it here. I'm not posting this to support Nader's candidacy, though the basic critique is a message that really needs to be spread.
The United States Government is the world's most deadly and powerful terrorist organization. Keep that in mind whenever you read anything said or written by an agent of the USG.
To note an NBA story that doesn't piss me off, my boy Juan is going home.
I don't know how well Juan fits in with that team, but he's a local hero so it makes sense for the Wizards to sign a proven contributor at a modest price tag. And he can definitely put some points on the board, filling in as a starter or off the bench. With Gilbert's health a perpetual question mark, guard depth is a good thing for the Wiz, and Juan should get some opportunities to play.
I fucking well knew better than to keep following this inanely stupid story. From the first post I said I didn't want to, but I did it anyway like an idiot, to the point where yesterday I was trading emails with Mark Cuban trying to figure out how he can justify what he said. This article by Stephen A. Smith is about the dumbest thing yet. Blame the victims!!
Whether or not Howard is sensitive to whatever plights exist regarding African-Americans is not for me or anyone else to say definitively, because none of us are flies on his wall. In Howard's world, he may think he's being sensitive to black people and what plagues this community, and that may have been what he was aiming for in spewing his rhetoric.
But what Howard doesn't seem to get -- and he's joined in this by some members of the hip-hop and entertainment community, or anyone black willing to disseminate and perpetuate perspectives devoid of facts -- is the damage their moments of exasperating expression ultimately costs the very people they believe they're looking out for.
In other words, even if Howard feels oppressed, he isn't allowed to say it. Why? Because somehow saying it will hurt black people, presumably from a backlash of idiocy. And everyone is content to blame Howard for this, instead of blaming the people who do the oppressing. Why? Because our simplistic idiotic mindset is that America is good. No matter what you cannot question this. Anyone who says otherwise is bad, evil, probably a terrorist. Howard said America isn't good, so Howard is bad. This asinine mentality has infected just about everyone, at least any idiot that Walt Disney owned ESPN would hire. Anyone that implies America is racist is most certainly bad, to be silenced and denounced.
And so we have the ridiculous spectacle of condemnation of Josh Howard, a modern version of a lynching. I fucking hate every single person who participates in this bullshit, who justifies it in one way or another. These fuckers who write racist emails to Cuban telling him to "fire that nigger", Cuban who says that what Howard did was wrong, Abbott who calls it an abuse of free speech, Smith who tells Howard to shut the fuck up. I hate them all. Fuck, no, I don't hate them. I hate what they're doing and I hate the fucking system that has conditioned them to act this way, but they're victims of it too. I can't stand this shit.
Josh realizes his comments were wrong, he understands why people are upset. He knows he has made a mistake, has apologized and will work with us.
Fuck you, Cuban. There was nothing wrong with Josh's comments, and he shouldn't apologize. Its just a fucking song, and someone refusing to mindlessly respect nationalistic symbols is actually refreshing. And there are a million tragic reasons why black people especially wouldn't be swelling with American pride. But I guess the uppity negro must be silenced.
update: In an email, Cuban told me that Howard was just messing around with friends and wasn't being serious. He seemed to imply that if Howard had meant those comments to express a serious political opinion, he'd be supportive of him. Since he wasn't serious, his "mistake" was saying something highly inflammatory without thinking about it. This is the same point Abbott made to me in emails as well. I think it might be worth going back and looking at what they said and seeing if they criticized the message itself, which I think they did. Hopefully they're backtracking on that. Too tired now to think more about it, but figured I ought to make that update since I've come down pretty hard on these guys.
Alright well I still kind of don't want to get too much into this, but I can't help making a few more comments about Josh Howard. Specifically, it seems to me that this is the exact same thing as Jeremiah Wright. A black man (or woman too I assume) in America is not allowed to be angry about the abuses black people face. If such anger comes out, it must be attacked. He is running his mouth off! He's an angry black man! Denounce him!
Henry Abbott, NBA blogger for ESPN.com called Howard's comments "mishandling of his freedom of speech." He went on to explain why his comments were so bad with this gem:
And we know Josh Howard speaks his own version of the truth (which is admirable) even if the timing and general lack of coherence undermine his cause (which is not). By being a celebrity, and addressing incendiary issues of civil rights around a microphone, fair or not he risks presenting himself as an actual civil rights leader. Like the 2008 Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr. He's a really nice guy, and his heart is in the right place, but he must not let himself get confused with a civil rights leader.
Are you kidding me? Every black person with an opinion about prejudice that isn't a civil rights leader needs to shut up so they don't get confused for a civil rights leader? What the fuck kind of logic is this? And what is the lack of coherence of saying he doesn't celebrate the national anthem because he's black? That makes perfect sense to me, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Speaking the truth is only "admirable" if it is the officially-sanctioned truth that America is great and wonderful. Expressing something else is irresponsible, especially for a black man, who we all know are already prone to irresponsibilities like smoking marijuana (but, hey, grab me another beer while you're up).
The only "danger" of being mistaken for MLK that I can think of is that if dishonest asshats go on to paint everyone who criticizes the system from a black civil rights perspective as a some goofy weed-smoking jackass like that one NBA player. But the proper response to this "threat" isn't to make every celebrity with an opinion shut up. It is to address the dishonesty when it arises. Or, like Abbott, you can demand that people just shut up and not express their non-jingoistic opinion unless they have a doctoral thesis they're ready to present to back it up. That puts a gigantic burden of proof on oppressed people to prove their oppression, and gives the oppressers a free pass. (I've pointed all of this out to Abbott in a email exchange much more politely worded than this bluurg post and I hope he considers revising his statements.)
In the comments to the last post, David points out that a CNN poll says a majority of voters think Howard should be punished for expressing his opinion, and goes on to say that he should love America because he couldn't make as much money elsewhere. So I guess the uppity nigger should just shut the fuck up and be glad for the freedom that we gave to him.
Fuck you, America. Fuck you.
update: Abbott posted a link to this, which I suppose is a good start.
Josh Howard, a very good NBA player for the Dallas Mavericks, has caught some shit recently because he openly admitted to smoking weed. This is supposed to be a scandal or something. Then recently, this happened. Basically he was "caught" on tape saying something to the effect that he doesn't celebrate the national anthem because he's black, and then seemed to make a disparaging remark about Obama (not sure about that part, it might have actually been a pro-Obama comment, where his support for Obama came from anger).
I don't intend to follow this story closely or anything, but it is pretty typical of what a fucked up retarded place America is. Drinking is perfectly fine but smoking a joint is some major transgression. The realities of racism and the disadvantages black people have always faced in America are undeniable, but when a black man actually acknowledges this in front of a camera, he's "running his mouth" or something.
I've often thought that a high-profile athlete could be a great advocate for important political issues, since they have the attention and respect of so many young people. Of course they're all millionaires with endorsement deals from corporations, and they benefit hugely from the existing social structures, so it is hard to expect them to do much to meaningfully change things. Sure they'll give money to charitable causes and take field trips to Africa to see the poverty, but they never address the structural characteristics that cause the poverty. You never hear Michael Jordan speak out on political issues do you? He's making too much money from sweatshop-manufactured apparel to worry about that stuff.
So, I'd love to see Josh Howard stand up and defend his lack of patriotism. Why should a black man celebrate the national anthem? Fuck the national anthem! Fuck Obama! Say it again, Josh. Why should the government have the right to tell me what I'm not allowed to smoke? Why would I celebrate a government that does that? But, he'll be under pressure to just say the politically expedient lies and hope people forget about the rare glimmer of truth that crept out.
If 9/11/2001 changed anything, it seems to me that it was that the US Government realized it no longer had to be subtle about its atrocities.
Today you should read this from Chris Floyd, which I'll copy here in its entirety. Then you should watch the video at the end and think about it.
There is, apparently, to be no end to our falling. No bottom to the pit of moral nullity through which we keep plunging, no act of evil which we will not accept, and countenance, and even cheer.
At one time, it required great lies -- elaborate, monstrous deceits, wrapped in myths of goodness and light -- to disguise the brutal machinations of raw power. Otherwise, it was thought, the people might rise up in anger at the crimes being committed in their name, thus threatening the primacy and privilege of the elite.
But this proved to be unnecessary in the end. The foulest deeds could be done in broad daylight, in full view of the world, before the eyes of our children, without the slightest consequence for the perpetrators. The crowd would applaud, or, at worst, simply shrug and move on.
Actions and policies drawn from the horror stories of history -- things which the people had been taught to abominate from the day they were born -- were freely and openly embraced.
The Nazis launched unprovoked wars of aggression and despoiled whole nations. So do we now; who cares? The Gestapo and the KGB snatched people from the street and held them without charges in secret prisons, tortured them with brute force and with exquisitely calibrated techniques approved by the highest authorities. So do we now; who cares? The Soviets spied without qualm or restraint on their own people, no warrants needed, no evidence required, just a nod from some faceless official in the security organs. So do we now; who cares? The Nazis believed that the national leader is beyond the law, that any order he gives is rightful and just and cannot be punished, simply because he has given it. So do we now; who cares? The Soviets and the Nazis treated protests against the established order as security threats and acts of terror, and repressed them with mass arrests and police violence. So do we now; who cares?
All of these things, and many more besides, have been done and are being done by the government of the United States today, with either the full-throated approval or the meek acquiescence of the political opposition and the nation's institutions. The people too seem largely in agreement, or completely indifferent. We have just finished a primary campaign in which tens of millions of people voted for candidates who support the system described above in almost every particular -- quibbling about some of the details and tactics perhaps, but expressing absolutely no dissent from its basic premises.
The two major candidates left standing after this appalling process are as similar in policy and philosophy as it is possible to be and still maintain a semblance of "choice" in the election. Both support the continuance and expansion of the "War on Terror." Both pledge to use massive, lethal, violent force, at any time, anywhere in the world -- with no options, not even the nuclear one, taken "off the table" -- in the service of ever-nebulous and self-defined "national security" interests. Both support the warrantless surveillance of American citizens, and immunity for vast conglomerates that collaborate with the state in blatantly illegal activity. Both believe that even those who have not committed murder can be executed by the state. (And neither has said a single word about the shame of America's prison system: more than 2 million people behind bars, more than any other nation on earth, in both sheer numbers and proportionately, and rivalled historically in those numbers only by the Stalin's gulag at the height of the purges.)
Both support a continuing American military presence in Iraq, under one euphemism or another. Both mouth pieties about opposing torture and upholding the rule of law, but neither of them applied their considerable powers as senators -- or their great personal popularity -- to make the slightest move to bring the perpetrators of the White House-approved torture regime to justice. (McCain has even voted explicitly to allow the CIA to torture captives.) Both have just finished conventions at which American citizens seeking to exercise their constitutional rights of free speech and free assembly were herded by armed police into wire pens (dubbed, with sinister irony, "free speech zones"), harassed, arrested, in cases beaten, invaded, and charged with thought crime and terrorism. Both support, and are supported by, the same corporate interests whose predations and corruptions have shredded the social and civic fabric of the nation and are now leading millions into penury.
Where are the hands, as in Rilke's poem, that can hold up all this falling? There are none. And so we keep falling, down and down and still farther down.
In mid-June I sent this email to a bunch of family and friends:
"The inferno…is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." -Italo Calvino
This essay by Chris Floyd documents how Iraqi civilians in Fallujah are suffering high rates of miscarriage, birth defects ("These infants include many with heart defects, cleft lip or palate, Down's syndrome, and limb defects."), and cancer, because of the illegal use of chemical and radioactive weapons by US forces in the siege of that city in 2004. The public health crisis was certainly not helped by the illegal targeting by US forces of medical clinics and personnel for destruction or capture, or by the illegal intentional disruption of water and electricity services. These massive war crimes are never reported by the US corporate media, but they outrage the rest of the world along with the few Americans who are able to access such information through alternative sources. And they've destroyed countless lives of Iraqis.
By the standards of the Nuremberg Trials, a war of aggression is the ultimate international crime, considered to encompass the whole of all the evils it contains, like the evils mentioned above. As such, civilian and military leadership, including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, and others should be on trial for war crimes for their roles in launching this war. But in the US, the impeachment charges brought up by Dennis Kucinich are barely even acknowledged, except as subject of ridicule, even by the purported opposition party. And so criminal prosecution is unthinkable, making mockery of any concept of law or justice.
Part of my decision to move to Canada was because I wanted to morally disassociate myself from the actions of the US Government and political class. I don't know if crossing an imaginary line really achieves that or not, but my feelings of outrage and disgust aren't likely to improve even if my conscience does. And so I'll continue to "seek out what is not inferno" and share my thoughts with my family, in the fleeting hope that it will make some kind of difference somehow.
- Adam
I received barely any response. I can count on one hand the number of people who have even acknowledged that I sent it. Email is a tricky medium, and we've all seen that people have trouble replying even to messages with very clear requests or instructions. And I don't suppose many people welcome receiving unsolicited politically charged mass emails (even if they are personally composed by a family member or close friend, as opposed to a forward of unknown origin). So I don't know that I should interpret the deafening silence in response to this missive of informative despair as complete disinterest. But it is hard not to do so.
I bring this up because another Floyd essay is tempting me to repeat this exercise. I guess something about the combination of US military violence and child suffering and death makes me want to reach out and... and what? Try to make it stop? See that someone else gives a shit? Torture myself over my own guilt? Force people to confront things they'd rather ignore? I don't know. I wonder how many of the people who read the email gave more thought to why I sent it than to the overt content it contained. I suspect that any time spent on either could be measured with the second hand of a watch, and recorded with one digit. I suppose I should be envious.
No mainstream Democrat will ever allow full-fledged criminal investigations and prosecutions of Bush II officials for torture and the war crime of military aggression. You know and I know that's not going to happen. We will get, at most, some soaring rhetoric about "healing national wounds" and "coming together again" and "moving on." (With the outside possibility of a few small fry being offered up as sacrifices, to let the Dem president preen as the "restorer of the rule of law" -- and also purge the Republicans, and Bush, of the worst taint: "Hey, it was a few bad apples, and now they're gone. We've got a clean slate!")
Brian Kilmeade of Fox & Friends raised that issue with Biden on Thursday morning, asking about "a report that if you guys are elected ... you're actually going to pursue criminal charges against President Bush's administration and different people that served there."
"That's not true," Biden immediately replied. "I don't know where that report's coming from. What is true is the United States Congress is trying to preserve records on questions that relate to whether or not the law has been violated by anyone. Anybody should be doing that."
Biden emphasized that "no one's talking about President Bush. ... I've never heard anybody mention President Bush in that context." He noted that "there's been an awful lot of unsavory stuff that's gone on ... but I have no evidence of any of that. No one's talking about pursuing President Bush criminally."
Biden concluded his comments by explaining that possible misdeeds are "being looked into now, just so it never happens again in any other administration. ... The Obama-Biden administration is not going to start off saying, 'God, let's go take a look at what this --.' The American people want to know what we're going to do, not what happened."
But internet liberals will ignore this, or somehow convince themselves that Obama/Biden just had to say that for political reasons, but really in their hearts they want to prosecute, and we'll see that once they get elected. If Obama gets elected, this will also be proven wrong, but McCain is going to win now anyway so they'll forget all of this.
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden said earlier this week that he and running mate Barack Obama could pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration if they are elected in November.
Explaining his exasperated voicing of a desire to shut down his blog, Dennis Perrin writes:
This fucking election is killing my mind and stomping my soul. American political reality is as bad as I've ever seen it, and I suspect we haven't reached bottom yet. Maybe we never will. Maybe we're destined to float down the shit stream indefinitely, splashing, sinking, swallowing mouthfuls of sewage. Hard to tell. All I know is that I'm sick of the rancid taste, and would much prefer a healthier diet, or at least something with a fresh lemon scent.
I kind of feel the same way, and I'm not evening watching TV coverage (don't even have TV) or reading mainstream news. I read 2 articles in an Ohio newspaper this weekend and nearly went crazy. Everything said by politicians is full of lies, and all coverage of political events is full of lies. It is truly disgusting, and it kills my mind and stomps my soul.
In one hour my first class starts, an undergrad course that I'm TAing, Evolution and Human Behavior (here's the syllabus if you're interested). I'm taking two class as a student, Contemporary Problems in Psychology and a Statistics course, which start next week. I kind of hope that maybe I'll just tune out the entire worthless world for a semester and just focus on study and research. I doubt it will happen but it is kind of a nice idea.
The weather here has been rather cool the last few days, with highs in the low 70s and chilly evenings dipping into the low 50s or lower. It is starting to feel like fall, which still triggers back-to-school feelings for me despite it being 7 years since fall actually meant that I was starting classes. But this year I am, and I'm excited. The undergrad course I'm TAing, Evolution and Human Behavior, starts one week from tonight, and I think my classes start the week after that. I've been filling out all the forms and all that administrative bullshit while peeking ahead at some of the things I'll be reading.
I didn't believe I was done with school when I graduated in 2002, but I wouldn't have guessed at the time that my next class would be in 2008 in a psychology department in Canada. Funny how things happen, eh?
They're giddy that it might soon be their turn to order the bloodshed. They'll be doing it more efficiently than those Bush guys!
Seriously, this is what I'm supposed to support? I'm supposed to line up and cast a vote for these lunatics? This is the "lesser evil" offered to me by the system? Doesn't this kinda make you think that maybe a system where this is the best available option is hopelessly broken?
I just want to fucking scream and then puke and then weep for humanity. I don't know, maybe this is what we deserve.
Fuck you, Biden. Fuck you, BO. Fuck the Democrats. Fuck this election. Fuck the system.
I know, I know, the other guys are going to cage their protesters in 15X15 razor-wired pens and sprinkle them with flesh-eating acid, so the 20X20 razor-wired pens are clearly deserving of our support. I wonder how much I have to donate to the BO campaign to get my name as a sponsor on one of those cages?
Fast food joints are brightly-lit opium dens -- funhouse mausoleums juiced by deforestation and massive animal suffering. We'd be much better off without them, but the national addiction runs too deep, and too many lobbies stay rich from the fat. Dennis Perrin
It has been over a year since I last ate McDonald's food, or Burger King, or Wendy's. Hopefully I never will again.
Trakker at Neon Gods recently accused me of using "dishonest tactics" by saying that government is an inherently violent institution in the comments on one of his posts. He says that my comments "insinuat[ed] that this violence is the norm in this country and that we as citizens have no recourse." He goes on to say that government functions without acts of violence 99% of the time.
It may be the case that the vast majority of government action proceeds without the use of violence, but only in the trivial sense that there is no "violence" committed when you escape injury by giving your wallet to a mugger without resisting. All government action is backed by the threat of coercion. I would say this threat is an act of violence, as is the mugging where the weapon is never used. The point remains that government is an inherently violent institution because violence is the government response to not getting its way.
Watch these videos, in which passive resistance to very mundane and common government action is quickly escalated to the use of physical force.
I saw these videos at Anarchy in Your Head, which went on to post some important thoughts about them. What is the point of these videos? Of the woman's resistance?
It’s that government as we now know it is violence, through and through. The source of it’s authority is nothing more than a persistent threat of violence. A majority may consolidate power in the form of a government, but can’t ensure that it’s moral. A broad consensus, e.g. a vote, or an elaborate proclamation on a piece of paper can not create truth or morality and hence can’t create authority. Government isn’t just violent when it engages in aggressive wars. Every order it issues is backed by the threat of serious violence. Why rebel against something seemingly minor like a driver’s license to point this out? Should we pick our battles more carefully? Because it’s part of the hard truth that people aren’t ready to accept. Any order you resist, from a seizure of private land to a parking ticket, can ultimately escalate to serious violence including incarceration or even death if you continue to resist the orders or the punishments they impose on you. All punishments by government are for disobeying. The so-called little things demonstrate this particularly well. When the authority of government ultimately rests on nothing more than the threat of violence, any deviation from strict adherence cannot be tolerated or the illusion is threatened. By simply remaining passive in a seemingly small matter, Lauren causes them to show their true nature.
Trakker's criticism rings quite hollow:
Characterizing the coercion powers given to the state by the people as "violence" is dishonest. If you examine the laws that govern our law enforcement agencies you will see that the use of violence is rarely allowed and when it is, it must be justified. In fact every day we read of law enforcement agents being punished for exceeding the laws that govern their activities.
That there are rules on paper that say you can send armed men to forcibly arrest and imprison someone for smoking marijuana doesn't make that arrest any less violent, nor does it justify such acts. And a few cops getting docked a paycheck or put on administrative leave doesn't make the shootings, beatings, taserings, or any of the other less sensational daily acts any less violent. Trakker says "because this is a democracy, and many Americans believe the use of force IS the answer to many of our problems, we won't always have a government we (liberals) approve of" in the same essay where he claims that characterising the government as violent is dishonest. He appears to be arguing that if 51% of the population approves of brutal use of force, such force isn't violent.
The only one using dishonest tactics in this debate was Trakker. His arguments were incoherent, and never came close to justifying his accusations of dishonesty. Trakker is a good guy and a friend of this blog, and I think he generally thinks through what he writes. So why has he fallen short in this case? I think the last paragraph of the Anarchy in Your Head post quoted above offers an explanation.
People do not casually abandon a deeply held belief. Irrational beliefs provide comfort even while causing us to engage in irrational behavior. How do you softly tell a child that Santa doesn’t really exist and prepare her for the cold reality that a mythical character is not bringing her presents Christmas morning? How do you gently convince someone their God doesn’t exist and that they won’t be going to Heaven when they die? How do you tactfully explain that the government they’ve trusted all their lives to provide their security is actually enslaving them under threat of violence? I’m not sure there’s a soft way to convey a hard truth, a cold hard truth that rocks the foundations of deeply held lifelong beliefs.
I'm convinced our current system of government in the United States is basically sound.... It is time to set some guidelines for commenting here. NEON GODS is a blog about improving our system government, not abolishing it. I am convinced that the system of government envisioned by founding fathers, and the Constitution they wrote and the amendments added later have resulted in a safe, stable, vibrant, nation and I would like to see the same for my kids and grandkids. To this end, NEON GODS is a blog that encourages liberals to become more engaged in the government. This blog also believes that there are times when voting for a mediocre candidate to block a bad candidate makes sense. Thus, comments that advocate giving up and dropping out of politics, and comments denouncing liberals who plan to vote for Obama to prevent McCain from becoming our next President are not really welcome and will be ignored.
I've enjoyed participating in conversation on that blog and put a lot of time and effort into my comments, so it hurts to see my position mischaracterized as "giving up and dropping out of politics" and my participation swept aside based on the argument that the US is a "safe, stable, vibrant" nation. I've argued only for dropping out of (national) electoral politics, but strongly encouraged other political action. This isn't "giving up." It is recognizing a failed system, refusing to endorse it, and advocating for positive change from outside the system. America has violent crime rates dramatically higher than other first world nations, and more people in prison than any other country. Our national infrastructure is crumbling, leaving bridges and roads and water pipes in frightening shape. Our meat and produce and other foods are laced with a diverse array of contaminants. Our government refuses to address the impending disaster of climate change, in fact it actively worsens the threat. This is safe? We spend more on military the the rest of the world combined; We've launched 2 overt wars of aggression in the last several years, following decades of covert wars and terrorist campaigns throughout the world. We threaten to use nuclear weapons against Iran, we send troops to support a belligerent Georgian dictator after he initiated conflict with the nuclear-armed Russians, and both Presidental candidates want to increase the size of the military and send even more troops into Central Asia. The soldiers participating in this violent insanity are coming home with a terrifying medley of mental disorders, and many of them joining heavily armed private mercenary armies that operate with legal impunity in the US and througout the world. This is stable? Our public school system is rotting from the inside out, our citizens are driving further to work, working longer hours, sleeping and exercising less, dying younger, and going deeper into debt to pay for it all. This is vibrant?
And the idea that the state just might be the problem can't be discussed? The only worthy response to our slow-motion train wreck of a country is to keeping working within the same failed system? I hope Trakker reconsiders his views and his policy.
Leroi Moore died yesterday. He was a founding member of my favorite band, The Dave Matthews Band, and it was probably his saxophone and jazz experience that first turned me on to the group. I've seen Leroi in concert over 20 times, collected hundreds of his live shows with the band, and listened to their albums over and over. I really love the music he made, and I'm very sad that he won't be making any more. I'll have to think about some of my favorite Leroi moments and figure out a way to share audio on this blog.
Looking beyond these feelings about the tragedy of his sudden death, it will be interesting to see how the band moves forward without him. It has been years since I obsessively read everything published about them, so I won't even try to speculate how his loss will effect the personal dynamic among the other four members and their regular supporting cast. But from a musical perspective it could be an opportunity to inject some fresh creativity if they choose to bring in one or more new woodwind players. It must be pretty hard for those guys play the songs they've been performing together for almost two decades (seriously, 17 years? how did that happen?) without being able to look over and see Roi wailing from behind his sunglasses, but they actually played what must have been an intensely emotional show last night in LA, featuring the amazing Jeff Coffin from Bela Fleck and the Flecktones on sax. So I can't really imagine the band doing anything other than moving on together, trying to have fun and keep playing.
A North American power currently occupying two Asian nations (and with both current presidential candidates pledging escalation in Afghanistan) gives Russia pompous moral lectures and demands it reverse course and repent. We are the world's pedophile priest.
John McCain may be a lousy candidate and shitbag of a human being, but he's certainly a timely literary device.
Here we have a nation [the US] that has stripped its own industrial base, brutally neglected its educational system, allowed its physical infrastructure to rot, and driven its small-holding farmers from the land, dispossessing its own citizens and degrading their communities, all for the short-term profit of a moneyed elite -- and, what's more, has based its prosperity on the profligate and disproportionate use of a finite resource which it cannot produce in sufficient quantities within its own borders.
In an imporant sense, there is no such thing as 'evolutionary psychology' because there is no such thing as non-evolutionary psychology (after all, scientific psychologists cannot be 'creationists'). Evolutionary psychology is likely to be a temporary discipline, which will exist only as long as it is needed. As psychologists of all stripes come to make explicit their currently implicit hypotheses about human nature, past selection pressures and environments of evolutionary adaptiveness, evolutionary psychology will wither away as a distinct field and all psychology will be 'evolutionary' - for precisely the same reason that all biology is evolutionary. Psychology is, after all, a branch of biology.
Salmon C & Symons D (2001). Warrior lovers: erotic fiction, evolution and female sexuality. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
While I don't go so far as to predict the future, the theory here seems right to me. I usually feel a little silly when I say I'm going to study evolutionary psychology for exactly that reason - all psychology should be evolutionary. I want to study human behavior, and I expect that study to be informed by and compatible with evolutionary theory, as all study of human behavior should be.
In a somewhat related note, I'll continue using this "grad school?" tag despite "grad school." or grad school" being more appropriate now.
Bothreviews I've read of this book take swipes at evolutionary psychology that seem unfair, but the book sounds quite fascinating. I can't seem to find it in the libraries here though.
McCain told more than 2,000 voters in York, Pa., that he spoke Tuesday morning with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to make sure he knows "that the thoughts, prayers and support of the American people are with that great little nation as it struggles today" for independence.
"I told him that I know I speak for every American when I said to him, today, we are all Georgians," McCain said.
Technically I'm an American, and I'm not a Georgian, today or any other day. Furthermore I don't give my support to dictators who slaughter civilians for political gain, whether they're named Saakashvili, Bush, Clinton, or Washington. And that that list includes you, John McCain, you fucking piece of shit. You don't speak for me, and you never will, even if you manage to hack your way into office.
I'm paying very little attention to the Olympics. I haven't cared much about them since I was a child, and I'm getting more turned off to them every time. The commercialism and nationalism are pretty gross. And this year there's a variety of human rights controversies because of the authoritarianism of the Chinese host government.
I wonder if anything could make me like the Olympics even less?
What About the Black Community, Obama? On Friday, August 1st I led a contingent of the Uhuru Movement into Barack Obama’s town hall meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida to raise the question, “what about the black community, Obama?” Without the benefit of a big media budget, our organization attempted to bring the serious issues experienced by African working class people across this country into the national political debate.
These issues include the targeting of African and Latino communities with predatory “sub-prime” mortgages – a scheme that has made millions for people like Obama’s chief financial advisor Penny Pritzker, while stripping black families of billions of dollars, the greatest loss of wealth our community has suffered since being brought in chains to this country. We also challenged Obama to take a stand against the police shootings of unarmed African people, and explain why he has publicly defended the judge’s acquittal of the NYC police who murdered Sean Bell.
He has said that he cannot speak out on behalf of those who have been historically oppressed for fear of offending other people. Yet in Miami, he promised the Jewish community, which considers itself a historically oppressed community, that he supports turning all of Jerusalem over to Israeli control, despite the internationally enforced sharing of that city with the Palestinians. When Obama speaks to black audiences, he attacks us, attributing our community’s poverty, not to systemic oppression, but to bad culture and lack of work ethic.
Barack Obama has criticized African fathers for abandoning our children, although a recent study showed that black fathers stay more involved with their children after a split from the mother than white fathers. And Obama says nothing of the unjust imprisonment of 1 in 9 black men of child-bearing age, the overwhelming majority of whom are locked up on minor drug or other non-violent economic violations stemming from conditions of desperate poverty. He has failed to achieve any meaningful program of economic development for the African community. In speaking to a group of black legislators, Obama said “a good economic development plan for our community would be if we make sure folks weren’t throwing their garbage out of their cars.”
Barack Obama wants to increase military spending and praised Clinton for abolishing AFDC and welfare. He has reversed his position opposing the death penalty and speaks out against reparations. He wants to escalate the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and has threatened Venezuela and Iran with military aggression. He has upheld the FISA, supporting wire-tapping and government spying on citizens. He receives unprecedented financial backing from Wall Street. His close advisors and potential cabinet members include war criminal Richard Clarke, Tri-lateral commission founder Zbigniev Brzezinski, Madeleine ‘it’s worth the price of 1 million dead Iraqi children’ Albright, and Free Trade advocates Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee.
Some argue that we must support Obama or else we are supporting McCain. We in the Uhuru Movement don’t believe our community should restrict our political options to a choice between one white ruling class party or another. In fact, the black community’s most recent experiences in the U.S. electoral arena have resulted not only in the Republican Party’s theft of our votes, but prior to that we suffered some of the worst attacks on our community at the hands of the Democratic Party administration of William Jefferson Clinton, who put 100,000 more police on our streets to murder our people, privatized the prisons to exploit our unpaid labor, and discontinued the public subsidies for impoverished children and families that had been won by African people as a concession to our movement of the 1960s.
African people’s experiences with these last several elections and the desperate conditions facing our community have created a willingness by our people to seek independent political alternatives. In response to this crisis, the white rulers put forward Barack Obama – a pied piper taking African people back into clutches of the Democratic Party. If anyone looks seriously at the positions, programs and advisors of Barack Obama, they will see that he does not stand for any kind of real change, but for the defense of the same old status quo, with a new face. America is in an economic crisis and the white ruling class hopes to save itself by deepening the exploitation of African people in the U.S. and on the continent of Africa, where the world’s biggest reserves of oil and precious minerals lie. How better to do it than with an African face at the head of state?
Our success as a people requires that we achieve our own independent political agenda. African people’s votes should be contingent on the willingness of a candidate to support and fight for that agenda. The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement has invited Barack Obama, John McCain and Cynthia McKinney to attend our annual convention on September 27-28 in St. Petersburg, Florida to clarify their position on the question, “what about the black community?’ Based on their response, we will consider endorsement of a U.S. presidential candidate.
BF: Your book is really an antidote to the dominant Chicago school of free marketeers. What is the meaning of “free market” these days, as understood on Wall Street?
MH: It's exactly the opposite of what Adam Smith, and Ricardo and the classical economists defined as a free market. Classical economics defined a free market as one that is free of overhead charges, free of unnecessary charges of production, free of watered stock. Today a free market means that predators are free to extort any price from the public, they are free to deregulate, free to lie to consumers, free to exploit, free to load any company they want down with debt, and basically lead (us) to a world of debt peonage... So the whole concept of freedom has been turned upside down by the Chicago school and by the Bush administration.
BF: Why is today's understanding so different?
MH: Because hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to mislead people and to endow business schools and universities to stop teaching the history of economic thought, to stop teaching the classical economists, and essentially to brainwash students, so that those with a sense of realism simply drop out of the field of economics and go into some other field.
And I should also have mentioned earlier that Al Gore's running mate was Joe fucking Lieberman, who never saw a war he didn't like. But we're supposed to believe that Gore was fucking Gandhi.
"My interest is in making sure we've got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices." Thanks BO!! The US puts more carbon into the air than any other nation, 22% of the world total despite having just 5% of the world's population, but BO's interest is in making sure we have cheaper gasoline. Such bold leadership! Such vivid change!
In linking McCain to the unpopular President Bush, [BO] struck a theme from Ronald Reagan's successful 1980 campaign against President Jimmy Carter by asking a town-hall audience in St. Petersburg: "Do you think you are better off than you were four years ago or eight years ago? If you aren't better off, can you afford another four years?"
Just like in 2006 when we took over Congress! Republicans had been in charge, but you marched to the polls and voted for Democrats because you knew they'd make everything better! Remember how great things were after that? BO supporter Glenn Greenwald will remind you:
Since that overwhelming Democratic victory, this is what the Democratic-led Congress has done:
Defeated -- at the White House's insistence -- Jim Webb's bill to increase the intervals between deployments for U.S. troops;
Defeated -- at the White House's insistence -- a bill to restore habeas corpus, which had been abolished by the Military Commissions Act, enacted before the 2006 election with substantial Democratic and virtually unanimous GOP support;
Overwhelmingly approved the Senate's Kyl-Lieberman Resolution, to declare parts of the Iranian Government a "terrorist organization," an extremely belligerent resolution modeled after those which made "regime change" the official U.S. Government position towards Iraq;
Deleted from a pending bill -- at the direction of the House Democratic leadership and at the insistence of the White House -- a provision merely to require Congressional approval before the Bush administration can attack Iran;
Overwhelmingly enacted -- at the White House's insistence, and with substantial Democratic and virtually unanimous GOP support -- the "FISA Amendments Act of 2008," to vest the President with broad new warrantless eavesdropping powers and to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, all but putting an end to any chance for a real investigation and judicial adjudication of the Bush administration's illegal NSA spying program;
Stood by passively and impotently while Bush officials flagrantly ignored their Subpoenas and refused to comply with their investigations.
BO and the Democrats are fucking filthy slime, and you just can't get enough. He'll punch you in the face and you'll ask for more. When someone mentions that he just punched you in the face, you get mad... at the person who mentions it... as you crawl back to Obama and kiss his feet.
Hooray! Glorious freedom bombs dropped on different civilians! But dropped by a President who might actually know how to pronounce the name of the towns he destroys, so that makes it better!
It has been over 2 weeks since we've heard from Arthur. With his bad health, that is scary. Hope he's ok.
On Sunday I saw Romeo and Juliet for the first time. I think I read it in high school but never saw a production. It was ok. Those two sure are a couple of stupid little kids.
I got my bike a couple weeks ago, and use it for my 5.4 mile round trip daily commute. I love it. I plan to do that until it is too cold or icy, then I'll have a free bus pass when I need it. Not using a car is great.
Softball is fun. I can't believe I never bothered to play softball before.
Beerfest at the grad student pub is fun. I can't believe I never went to beerfest before.
No limit hold'em is fun. I can't believe I never played it very much before.
This structure is fun. I can't keep it up much longer.
I've been meaning to do some kitteh blurghing but I can't find my camera and I feel like any kitteh blurghing must have photographic accompaniment. So I should get around to that eventually.
Canada is sweet, yo.
I'm going to the theatre this weekend to see Romeo and Juliet, which I'm pretty sure I've never actually seen. That's probably against some rule about being a cultured white person, so I guess this is all part of the deal.
Despite being non-plused with the preview, I want to go see Dark Knight, but I don't want to pay $11 (x2 for the wife) cause that seems excessive.
Speaking of the wife, she just got a very cute haircut. Very cute. She donated most of her hair to cancer kids or something nice like that, so it is very short, but in a way that really works for her. So now the hair she sheds at German Sheppard pace will be much shorter.
I can't wait until Kira experiences the 1-2 punch of a nice compliment about her hair then comparing her to a dog. That should be fun. I ruin everything.
Charles Darwin was a nifty fellow, or so I hear.
Fresh local produce is the only way to eat. At least in the summer.
During the Gore/Bush/Nader presidential election, while the entire nation was hypnotized by the spectacle, I had a vision. I saw the Titanic churning through the waters of the North Atlantic toward an iceberg looming in the distance, while the passengers and crew concentrated on a tennis game taking place on deck.
In our election-obsessed culture, everything else going on in the world - war, hunger, official brutality, sickness, the violence of everyday life for huge numbers of people - is swept out of the way while the media covers every volley of the candidates. Thus, the superficial crowds out the meaningful, and this is very useful for those who do not want citizens to look beyond the surface of the system. Hidden by the contest of the candidates are the real issues of race, class, war, and peace, which the public is not supposed to think about.
That's the opening of a Howard Zinn essay included in his book A Power Governments Cannot Suppress. Here's the closing.
The ferocity of the contest for the presidency in recent elections conceals the agreement between both parties on fundamentals. The evidence for this statement lies in eight years of the Clinton-Gore administration, whose major legislative accomplishments - destroying welfare, imposing more punitive sentences on criminals, increasing Pentagon spending - were part of the Republican agenda.
The Demacrats and the Republicans do not dispute the continued corporate control of the economy. Neither party endorses free national healthcare, proposes extensive low-cost housing, demands a minimum income for all Americans, or supports a truly progressive income tax to diminish the huge gap between rich and poor. Both support the death penalty and growth of prisons. Both believe in a large military establishment, in land mines and nuclear weapons and the cruel use of sanctions against the people of Cuba.
Perhaps when, after the next election, the furor dies down over who really won the tennis match and we get over our anger at the referee's calls and the final, disputed score, we will finally break the hypnotic spell of the game and look around. We may then think about whether the ship is slowly going down and whether there are enough lifeboats and what we should do about all that.
This analogy is pretty fucking good. So fuck Gore and Bush and fuck the 2000 election. Fuck BO and McCain and this stupid election too. All the candidates are the same. Stop wasting your efforts on this bullshit.
As BO's supporters see their list of excuses shrinking hourly, they increasingly hide behind "but... Iraq!!" Apparently BO's expressed desire to shift a small percentage of our machinery of death to focus elsewhere is some kind of improvement, one of his impressive examples of change. That's like using your VISA to pay off your Mastercard balance, and citing the improved Mastercard situation as evidence of your financial accumen. Except instead of redistributed credit card debt, it's redistributed slaughter of innocent brown people. But... different brown people!!
Canada has deported Robin Long, a US Army deserter who fled the country rather than accept deployment to Iraq. The majority of Canadians wanted to let such soldiers stay, and Parliament passed a non-binding resolution saying they should be able to stay, but the conservative Harper government deported Long anyway.
It has been over two years since poker was my primary income source, but I've played occasionally in that time. I haven't keep nearly as good records as I used to, but I think I've lost in the low four figures. I don't like that I've been a losing player for two years, and I recognize that there are a few adjustments that I was slow to make.
I think the biggest mental adjustment is that playing a lot less means my variance over any given period of time is going to be a lot higher, and I need to adjust my expectations accordingly. Grinding out hands at a modest win rate fosters a mentality of not taking short-term swings too seriously, but when I only play a thousand hands per month, it extends the weird emotions associated with variance without the return to the grind as a release. And part of me is tempted to want to try to make something interesting happen rather than wait 5 years until I reach my mythological long run expectation. What I really ought to do is just look at every session as profitable leisure time, not as pure gambling, which means I need to derive pleasure from making good poker decisions, not from the bottom line.
A mental adjustment that I've been pretty good about making is recognizing that I'm just not as sharp as when I was putting in lots of hands. Practice matters, and rust can lead to bad decisions. Also I hardly ever read poker strategy any more, so I'm spending a lot less mental energy on improving or maintaining my poker skills (which is a good thing for my life generally, just not for my poker results). I've been playing fewer tables simultaneously, which gives me more time to think about each decision and replay hands in my head. Still there have been situations where I was too quick to add tables when I thought I was playing well and I probably should have been more conservative.
The poker world has been changing while I've been away, which just means that I can't assume that a given game is going to be the same as it was 2 or 3 years ago. I think the limit games are much harder now, even taking my rust into account. I stubbornly tried to stick with familiar limit games even once it should have been obvious that no-limit was the way to go. Lately I've been playing a lot more no-limit, and it has been fun and easier. I think switching to more no-limit also is good for facilitating the first adjustment I mentioned, because the variance is lower compared to win rates. I think the 6-max no-limit games are a lot different than they used to be, which more people increasing their aggression for the shorthanded games, whereas the same stakes full tables seem passive and easier. (That's just my impression; I have no idea if anyone would agree with those comparisons.)
As a last catch-all point, I just need to stop thinking like someone who is playing for a living. Something about sitting in this chair with Full Tilt or Poker Stars loaded up puts me into the old mindset. About a month ago I was trying to quickly clear a reload bonus, so I decided to play limit, and at higher stakes than I would have chosen if not for the bonus. I played well though, and felt very comfortable. Then towards the end of clearing the bonus I was at a table with a terrible opponent who I was crushing. I followed him to a new table when he left, and continue that pattern for a while, to a nice profit. Then suddenly he sat at much higher stakes, but I decided to follow him there too and give it a shot. I played one round and without any marginal decisions I gave back 6 times the profits I had made off the bad player. The bonus made back only a fraction of the loss. There was a time where taking a shot at a bigger game when I'm feeling good and know I can sit with position on a terrible player would have been a risk that I'd have been happy with either way. But today there was no reason to push it like that. And furthermore, there's no reason to force myself into weird situations just to chase a bonus. (I should also add that I don't know how I feel any more about chasing a player around to take his money. If I knew he was some bored rich lawyer blowing off steam I wouldn't think twice about the ethics of it, but what if it is some guy with a gambling problem? This moral ambiguity bothers me now. And no, "he's going to lose it all anyway, might as well be to me" isn't a satisfactory resolution.)
All of this analysis is really only specific to me and my situation; I'm not putting it out there as advice anyone else should follow. I don't make much money, and I don't want to gamble for entertainment. I want to play profitable poker for fun every once in a while, at stakes that are within my means and where the swings won't be worrisome. These are different circumstances and goals than I've had for the vast majority of my poker experience, and so I need to keep reminding myself of the big picture when I make game selection decisions.
Everyone who justifies their support for Democrats with the logic that they might not be great but they're better than Republicans really ought to read this kind of thing. Democrats do all the exact same things as Republicans, they just do them more discretely. Bush isn't unique for the kinds of things he's done; he's unique because he's so open about it. Obama will do all the same basic things, only he has half the country under his jedi mind shit so they'll support him to the bitter end. Good little liberals express bitter amazement that middle class people would ever be so stupid as to vote decidedly against their own interests for the Republicans, while they vote decidedly against their own interest for Democrats. Kiss the boot that stomps on your face forever. It is the American way.
The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."
He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.
Mr Bush, whose second and final term as President ends at the end of the year, then left the meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido where the leaders of the world's richest nations had been discussing new targets to cut carbon emissions.
One official who witnessed the extraordinary scene said afterwards: "Everyone was very surprised that he was making a joke about America's record on pollution."
Mr Bush also faced criticism at the summit after Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, was described in the White House press pack given to journalists as one of the "most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for government corruption and vice".
The White House apologised for what it called "sloppy work" and said an official had simply lifted the characterisation from the internet without reading it.
Concluding the three-day event, leaders from the G8 and developing countries proclaimed a "shared vision" on climate change. However, they failed to bridge differences between rich and emerging nations on curbing emissions.
If I could pick any imaginary superhero power, I think I'd choose the ability to peacefully destroy every television in the world. Liberate some minds and whatnot.
Seriously y'all, get rid of your fucking TVs. Everything is better.
