Crime & Federalism

Vacation Reading

I won't be blogging for the next week, but instead will be finishing these half-finished books.

Bonfire of the Vanities:  This is an excellent book because you can impose your own meaning onto it.  Is it about race in New York?  The unfairness of the criminal system?  Or is it about the mid-life crisis of the 38-year old protagonist?  Or about the dangers of infidelity?  Or about the futility of pursuing status?  I told a friend that being around New York hedge fund people at a party made me not regret checking out of the status game.  He, in turn, recommended Bonfire.  He was right.  There's no way to win, and you will always be malcontent.  Why play a rigged game?  

I suppose the counter is that you cannot escape the status game.  Even the boojis in Middle America need a new minivan when Bob Smith rides up in his new Dodge.  Yet the status came can be escaped by not caring.  Whenever I start to get riled up about something, I stop.  I ask myself: "Why care?"  Usually there is no good reason to care.  My emotions boil due to some heating of the collective unconscious stew in my head.  (I'll probably finish Jung, too.)  Very few things are worth caring about.

And consider what we do care about.  There's a hurricane in Puerto Rico.  Everyone "cares," but do they?  Are they writing checks or actually doing anything other than "caring"?  If you're not going to do anything but play a Peeping Tom, why care at all?  

This attitude can lead to apathy and inaction.  If you stop caring about everything, then you'll have no motivation to do anything.  The best strategy is to care, just not about most things.  When an emotion is trigged, ask, "Why care?"  If you can't find a good reason to care, dismiss the emotion and continue with more important business. 

The Devil and Dr. Barnes: I read this after watching "The Art of the Steal," which is required watching in itself.  Albert Barnes was a visionary who knew it.  He brought Impressionistic art into the United States, and made it famous worldwide.  While he was spreading the Gospel of a new art, critics rejected him and his "vulgar" paintings.  He told them all to fuck off.  Because of this, he's a "bad" man.  What about the critics who, had they won, would have kept Impressionism from coming to American?  The critics are the villains, yet they were polite - even though in reality they were passive-aggressive cunts.   Thus the Great Man who brought Impressionism to America is the bad guy - possessed by the Devil.  What a joke, and yet it's an American joke.  We've gone from a nation of empire builders to go-along-get-along beta males.  The joke will be on the rest of America soon enough.

The Imperfecionists: Life in a newspaper.  It's not great, like Bonfire, but is still a very good look at human relationships - in the workplace and beyond.  

The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession:  Best understood as a collection of excellent New Yorker style essays on crime and criminals.  The introduction was a fascinating piece on the unsolved murder (or was it?) of a Sherlock Holmes fanatic.  The piece on the Aryan Brotherhood was good, too.   

Hitch-22: So far a disappointment, as Hitchens lacks reflection. His life story is interesting, but in an autobiography I expect existential musings.  It's supposed to be narcissistic, self-involved, and reflective.  Hitchens, for example, wanted to bang his mom - or at least that's how it seemed to me.  Yet he never examined his own erotic feelings for his mother.  Instead, he just kept talking about how beautiful she was and how everyone else must have wanted to bang her. 

And while he is someone who takes pride in his looks and youth, he avoided talking about his transition into middle and old age.  Surely this caused him psychological trauma.  How did he feel when he could not longer score hot chicks using his looks and charm?  Surely he has groupies even at 60, but it's not the same thing.

Incidentally, no guy has written a great piece on transitioning to middle and old age, yet every guy has sorrow in his eyes when noting his 40th and 50th birthdays.  (Once you hit 60, the happiness research shows, you are "over it," and actually look forward to birthdays again - since it means you're alive.)  Why not?  Are men too afraid to write about it, or would other men be too afraid to buy it?  

Probably the only type of man who'd write such a book is such a huge pussy that no one would find his transition from swinging dick alpha to whiny beta of interest.  A.J. Jacobs is probably the kind of person who'd write a book on transitioning to middle age.  His entire life has been one of supplication, and thus he has no transition to write of. 

With men, we have emotions, and then we get over them.  Whatever emotions we had when transitioning through life cycles are in the rear view mirror.  What's to talk about?  That was so yesterday?

Done right, it'd be a fun book.  Fortunately, I'm still too young to write it.  Time stops for no man, though, and aging is going to slam into me eventually.  It'd be useful to learn from those who have actually aged.  What would my 50-year old self say to my 30-year old self?  They will never meet, but they are interdependent.  

I've been thinking of aging as stewardship.  I'm 32, but I am eventually going to be 42.  I am thus only borrowing my body/self/soul on behalf of my 42, 52, and 62 year old selves.  The choices I make today are going to impact them - although the "them" will eventually be "I."  What would they want me to do?  How would their interest conflict with my own interests? 

Probably they'd all want to me to make some memories to nurture their old souls, and so I'm off.

See you next week.

P.S.  The poem on growing old has been written:

evening class, 20 years later

the hungry tug of too late;
webs of needles,
the same trees are here;
and grass grown on grass
but the faces now are young
and as you walk across the campus thinking
"memory is a poor excuse for the present"
the legs want to let the body fall as
old images cling to you like mollusks
and the girls now gone who once
claimed your substance
hang like broken shades
across the windows of your mind;

—at one time here
everything was mine—

now young lions claim the territory
and look out casually
over loose paws
and decide
mercifully to let this poor game crawl by. he, of course,
no match for the young lionesses,
or the Spring in the early sky.

at one time here—
once—

I enter a room and stand against a wall
and hear my name read, and
no, it is not the same:
my old professor looked like a walrus
as he spit my name out
into the spittoon of the world
and I said, HERE! while
feeling the sun run down
thru the hair of my head
like wires feeding life into life:
white rain, sea wild;

but this new one whispers my name (and it is dark);
and like a claw reaching down into some pit of me,
surrounded by walls like tombs I answer meekly,
here, and he moves on to another name.
I am older than he
and certainly not as fortunate
as the lionesses curl at his feet and purr delightedly,
and one gray old cat
twists its neck
and asks me: have you been here before?

yes, yes, yes, yes
I have
been here
before.

 

Male Disposability

The young man in this video was acting like an idiot. Then again, since when was being loud at a tennis match a crime?  And I'm sure the fine young lady in the video politely asked him to muffle his enthusiasm.  

Since when does that entitle a woman and an old man to lay hands on him? Note the crowd's reaction after the old man falls down. The young man did not assault the old man. The old man simply lost his balance.

Will criminal charges be filed against the woman and old man? To ask the question is to answer it.

Fortunately more young men are "checking out" of society. They realize that men are viewed as disposable. "Women and children first," is the national ethos - although every great civilization was built by young men.

The New York Times wrote about the "lost" 20-somethings. The article often infuriates the older generations, and yet no one is asking why someone might not have a desire to buy-in to modern society.  The 20-somethings - especially 20-something males - are not lost.  They have found their way.  Their way is simply different from older generations'.

Why work hard and contribute to a society does not treat you with good faith? That video is a metaphor for how young men are viewed. If a woman hits you, accept it. If an old man attacks you, accept it.

Sit down, shut up, work in a cube like a rat, die in wars, and pay your taxes, alimony, and child support.  Live for everyone but yourself.  It's unselfish when others demand that you sacrifice your life for them, but selfish when you seek to live for yourself.

A young man who rejects a life of servitude is not lost: He is free.  A society that rejects young men is not free: It's lost.

 

UPDATE: This reads like post theft (see Greenfield's post at Simple Justice), but I swear I wrote it yesterday. Anyhow, one of Greenfield's commenters writes:

I differ, Scott. I think our laws' absolute prohibition on physical violence has given loud mouths far too much courage. 

I totally agree that running your mouth is a smackable offense. However, as Chris Rock said, "Everyone deserves to get smacked. You just don't fucking do it." I highly doubt that "Lee" would enjoy living in a world where people like me get to decide who deserves a good smacking.  Probably I even deserve a good smack in the face.  But Lee is living in a dream world if he thinks that he would be the one to give it to me.

Yet look at the direction Lee takes his comment:

People need to understand that they are not entitled to run their mouths with complete immunity, particularly when a man is verbally barraging a woman in a public place like that.

Notice the supplication.  How dare a young man improperly address a woman.  Sorry, Lee, but that woman is white trash.  I grew up around people like her.  I work hard so that I never have to live around people like her again.  You think her baby's daddy doesn't smack her around?  You think she went home to read War and Peace, or ponder this brilliant journey called life?  

Lee's comment notes the beta male mindset.  He gives without receiving.  He is a supplicant - a slave.

A man with integrity would say: If women want to be treated with extra-special dignity, then they should be ladies.   If you want to be treated like a lady, behave like a lady.  You think that beast in the video was a lady?  

Lee is a typical white knight, willing to run to the rescue of any female in distress.  Subconsciously, it's because he think she'll reward his heroic deeds with sex.  [Barfs in mouth.]

Lee also suffers from a bad case of cultural conditioning.  He's bought into the lie that men are disposable, and thus must endure whatever indignities women impose on them.  

That is a life of slavery, and it is a life that every man must reject.

You've Made Sallie Mae Rich By Co-Signing Student Loans

Man, some things are much easier to explain using a graphic rather than words.  Here are the words, but do not miss out on this graphic.

Sallie Mae pays its executives hundreds-of-millions each year.  For doing what?  For making loans that you, the taxpayer, have co-signed.  You have assumed 100% of the risk.  All Sallie Mae executives do is serve as a middle man.  But rather than be paid government salaries for their work, their CEO makes millions.

Here is how the scam works.  Sallie Mae makes a college kid a loan.  If the kid defaults on his loan, then you-the-taxpayer reimburse Sallie Mae for its losses.  If the kid pays the loan back, Sallie Mae keeps the interest.  All of it.

Taxpayers assume 100% of the risk, and Sallie Mae keeps 100% of the profits.  Sallie Mae does nothing to earn its money. 

When Obama talks about a need for everyone to attend college, put that in context.  You are the ones co-signing those student loans.  You are the ones enriching Wall Street for doing nothing.  Feeling like a useful idiot yet?  Don't be mad at me for insulting you.  Be mad at the people who have exploited and manipulated you.  This blog is non-profit, but there is much profit in college-for-all.

When people talk about "free markets" and "Wall Street" in the same sentence, ram a boot on their necks.  I'm serious.  I am starting to become a total dick when talking to people about Wall Street.  

If you tell me that there is a free market in finance, and thus regulation is evil, then you are a fraud or an ignoramus.  In no case will I tolerate you, or remain civil.  Being nice is what led to the bailouts.  Rather than expose Todd Zywicki as a liar and fraud, we're supposed to be nice.  We're supposed to be civil.

How far has being nice gotten us?  It's time to be straight-up assholes to people who spread lies and misinformation.

Therefore, anyone who uses "free market" and "Wall Street" in the same sentence must be sneered at.  Drive them to the underground where they belong.

If you think I'm overreacting, check out this graphic.  (Click on it to enlarge.)

Fighting and Masculinity

A good post with a lot of insight, but long-winded.  I'd put it this way: Blah-blah-blah if you look like a target, people are going to shoot at you.

I was once walking down a street with a woman.  There were two guys standing in a door way, heckling people who walked by on the sidewalk.  They had comments to the people in front of us.  We walked by, and they weren't interested in saying anything.

I have many stories like this.

Indeed, living a sometimes-rough part of city, I've come to the sad realization that people who want to be victimized ("Come at me, bro") are the ones least likely to get victimized.  I would love for a group of thugs to come at me, because if it's 2-on-1, I can beat them down as badly as I'd like without fear of going to jail.  Once I make eye contact and smile, they look down at the sidewalk and do the coward's shuffle.  They know I'll throw first and fast enough that even if they have a gun, it'll be over before they can draw.  (The biggest mistake people make in a fight is not totally committing.)  And so I haven't been in a street fight in over a decade.

Meanwhile, it's the good people who fucked with.  When will you people realize that you outnumber the thugs, and come to the aid of your decent peers?

Imagine if thugs knew that if they came at a good person, the rest of you would stand together.  Imagine how society would change.  Street crime would stop existing, because street crime can only exist in a world filled with weak victims.  With large numbers, no one is weak.  Yet the irrational herd instinct prevails.  Look down along with everyone else while someone's daughter gets raped.  Just pray that someday it's not your daughter.

Indeed, people have sometimes decried my "vigilantism."  Only in a completely pussified, festering, declining society is standing up against criminals a vigilante act.  Yet people like me - rather than rapists and muggers - are the ones being driven into the underground.  Why is that?

Standing up for what's right takes courage.  People are too afraid to stand up for what's right.  They're too afraid to take back their neighborhoods and streets.  Rather than admit their cowardice, they issue moral judgments against people like me.  

I am on their side, but remind them of their own weaknesses - through doing nothing other than refusing to live life as a beta male.  I therefore, must be the enemy.  The biggest mistake a man can make is reminding other men how pathetic they are.

Why Are People Bad Friends?

Outside of romantic love, friendship is the most important aspect of a person's life.  To men, friendship is as important as erotic love - which is why a wife's first goal is separating her husband from his lifelong friends.  Yet we don't spend much time thinking about friendship.  We think about what we want from people, but that's not thinking about friendship.  That's thinking about strategy and manipulation.

Friendship is mentioned 198 times in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, but people are more likely to quote from The Prince.  If you want to understand why people are bad friends, Google this should-be-famous quotation: "For friendship is a partnership, and as a man is to himself, so is he to his friend."  No one seems to be interested in that type of thinking.  Now start Googling any of Machiavelli's quotes.

Mark Bennett, while noting a useful heuristic for friendship, asks the wrong question of friendship, namely: "Who are your friends?"  He continues:

A true friend is one who, when he finds out you are in trouble, will drop what he is doing and do what he can to help. Want to know how many genuine friends you have? Get charged with a serious crime.Who tracks you down when you’ve disappeared into the maw of the criminal justice system? Who visits you in jail, just to talk? Who puts money in your inmate trust account? Who bails you out? Who picks you up in the middle of the night when you get out? Who returns your lawyer’s calls? Who drags you to rehab? Who gives you rides to and from court? Who keeps you company when you’re there?

The better question is: "To whom am I a friend?"  It's a subtle shift in perspective, but it's an important shift to make.  Here is Aristotle:

It is found difficult, too, to rejoice and to grieve in an intimate way with many people, for it may likely happen that one has at once to be happy with one friend and to mourn with another. Presumably, then,it is well not to seek to have as many friends as possible, but as many as are enough for the purpose of living together; for it would seem actually impossible to be a great friend to many people. This is why one cannot love several people; love is ideally a sort of excess of friendship, and that canonly be felt towards one person; therefore great friendship too can only be felt towards a few people.

To be a great friend puts the action where it should be - on ourselves.  When's the last time you go out of bed at 3 in the morning to bail a friend out of jail?  Loan a friend a grand?  Or to jump start a car?  Or to listen to someone bitch about stupid shit?

Friendship requires elevating the other person - your friends.  When I have money, my friends have money.  It's really that simple.  Friendship is a sort of voluntary socialism.  Of course there will always be the occasional mooch, but one can get an STD from having sex.  Does this mean you stop having sex  - or that you start being careful?  So, too, it is with friends.

Who are you a friend to?  If you wouldn't come pick me up at 3 a.m. when my car broke down, you're not my friend.  Why waste time and energy pretending we're friends?  We're not, and that's cool, and friendship is so great that you should devote your time to someone who is actually a friend.

Many things in life are best understood in Eastern sayings.  He who doesn't worry about who his friends are, has the most rewarding friendships.  He who worries about his friends is he who has no friends.

To our Western minds, this seems contradictory.  Someone could "refute" the aphorisms by nothing that friendships must be nurtured like a garden.  Such "refutations" miss the truth.  The seeds of friendship must be planted in yourself.

When you start thinking about what you can do for other people, something contradictory happens: People start thinking about what they can do for you.  There are varies theories explaining this.  Perhaps we've been cultural conditioned to follow the reciprocity principle.  Perhaps the wrongly-attacked Law of Attraction is true: Goodness attracts goodness, and so your good deeds are rewarded by good deeds.

We are not what we say or think, but are what we do.  We become what we do.  If we do good things for people, even if we begin as sons of bitches, we change.  This change leads to the Sun Effect: We become the type of person others are draw to.

One need not prove the cause to note the effect.  The person who is a friend to others has friends.

And so if it's true that, "True friends are few and far between," there is no mystery.

Friends are hard to find because you are not a friend.

People Who Don't Need to Diet, Diet

Going out for business lunches is always a ridiculous experience.  "Why are you eating like that?" - where that refers to something other than french fries and fatty meat.  "I'm on a diet."  "You don't look like you need to be on a diet."  Well, no shit, right?  Isn't that sort of the point?

Imagine how stupid that conversation would be in any other context.

"What are you doing today?"  "Working."  "Why are you working?  You already have a job."  Completely moronic, and yet when you change the context to dieting, suddenly no one can understand why a guy who looks fit is eating lean meat and vegetables.

Dave Tate captures the moment and sentiment:

You ever go out with a bunch of people for dinner when you're dieting? Isn't that a fucked up situation?

Let's say you're at a table with seven people and everyone's ordering their food. You're at the end so you're ordering last. They're getting ribs, chicken strips, spaghetti, and whatever. No one in the group cares what they're ordering. The conversation stays the same. Then it comes to you and your first question is, "How do you prepare your chicken breasts?"

People start looking at you.

Then you order two plain chicken breasts with a side of broccoli with no butter or seasoning. The waiter writes it down and off he goes to the kitchen. Now everyone's looking at you like you're a freak.

They didn't care that your other friend was eating ribs. They didn't say shit when the guy ordered his chicken strips. So how is your meal selection any different? It blows my mind.

If you ordered something that was complete shit, no one would say anything. But because you ordered something to help you achieve a goal, it's a problem. And now for the next ten minutes you're having that stupid fucking conversation.

"It's so easy for you to lose weight," they say. "I can't do it."

And you're thinking, really? Here I am at Outback Steakhouse ordering two plain chicken breasts and broccoli – which is gonna cost me 40 bucks by the way – and it's easy? This is something I want to do? You think I want to sit here and watch you fuckers eat wings and ribs? I'm here for your company, not to give you dieting tips you're not gonna listen to.

Predicting America's Future

There is much to disagree with about this set of predictions.  It's certainly a plausible hypothesis, though:

Okay, listen up. Here's how the real estate market and the economy will unfold after 2010:

1. The housing market continues to crumble. More sob stories about fucked boomers who can't sell. The real estate industry keeps pumping out happy bullshit. The republican and dems who defend the financial industry face angry crowds. The too big to fail bankers pass more laws to rig the system. A cash economy starts bypassing the banking system. This prompts tougher laws that turn average citizen into a criminal for not feeding the financial beast. The trust of the system that has marked the last century starts to wither. Anti-government extremism grows like crazy. This causes a corrosion of society unlike anything we've ever seen before.

2. The retail economy starts to crumble. Who needs a flat screen TV or new game system when you don't have job? Malls die even more than they are doing now. Large spaces of malls and big box stores are converted into government use buildings or demolished. Look for more flea markets in others. "Shop till you drop" seems as distant in time as "Remember the Maine."

3. The garage sale/Ebay economy takes off. Boomers sell off their stuff. Want a luxury car? A boat? A fancy furniture set? They can be yours if the price is right and you have a truck to haul it off. We have to much stuff. Who really needs anything new? Because this economy is off the books, so is enforcement. Disputes once settled in small claims court are settled with baseball bats. This actually is a plus for society. Scammers and petty criminals are killed off or have their bones broken. People aren't working to keep up with the Joneses anymore. A lot of the pressures of the granite counter/SUV culture are gone. As the boomers die off, their stupidity becomes even more apparent. They become a laughable footnote in history. Thanks for the music though!

4. Gas prices drop. Jobless people don't drive. People fearful for their jobs drive smaller cars. The SUV economy dies. It's used minivans now. People are forced live in denser areas. Fringes of the suburbs start to turn into weed-covered wastelands. 

5. You have boomers who can't afford to move and Gen Yers who can't find jobs. They become roomies! You have kids living with their parents well into their 30s. Boomers forgets about those retirements to Tuscany. Fun times are had around the dinner table. Domestic violence between generations. Shut your pie-hole gramps or I'll beat you again with this HDMI cable!

6. Story after story of boomers dying due to lack of decent medical care. Can't afford your insulin or heart medicine? Tuff shit! Buh bye! Boomers who laughed at Obamacare are now all for massive government health care. Gen Xers and Yers join them. Too bad we spent the money for a public options on wars!

7. Wal-mart even takes a hit. They have to close stores in hard hit small towns, this kills small towns ever further. Whole parts of rural areas are abandoned like detroit.

8. Crime invades once rich suburbs. Crimes like drug dealing and meth production now become part of the lost middle class. Connor and Dakota are the new market for drug dealing thugs. Clueless boomer parents are suddenly dealing with drive bys and the rough end of all those "get tuff on crime" laws they voted for. Got meth in your house? It's not yours? Tuff shit! You're going to jail! Now you know what inner city blacks have been dealing with for years. Assume the position Milton!

9. The US military withers. Sorry folks! No tax money? No mean green war machine. Red states take it hardest. How's that "government off our backs" talk workin' for ya? Hypocrite republicans scramble to get their share of an ever shrinking amount of government pork.

10. The highway system starts breaking down in parts. Want to drive through the USA? You might have to go off road on to gravel roads. Some sections might become undrivable and cut off from the rest of the nation. I hope you have GPS and plenty of gas. Break down in the middle of nowhere? Meet the locals! Squeeeal like a pig!

11. Crumbling infrastructure kills large chunks of the retail economy further. Even grocery stores have trouble keep stock on the shelves. Want fresh milk? We're out! Go get your own cow. Local farms take up the slack. This actually creates jobs.

12. Colleges start to close because there is no one who believes a degree gets you anywhere anymore. Even the rich don't believe in colleges anymore. They hire private tutors. American learning goes backwards. Bluto from Animal House looks like a Rhodes scholar. At least he knew there was a Pearl Harbor and a World War II. Some kids can't even speak one language. They grunt and snarl like animals and watch TV thinking TV shows are real. 

13. Cops and local groups of armed citizens go to war with each other. Interesting times in some HOA controlled neighborhoods become their own city states.

In the end, the United States degrades into several ungovernable sections. Civilization survives, but on a much more humble level. People rebuild, but the days of hyperconsumption and globalization are over.

News v. Knowledge

During college I did something that I wish I had the will to do today - I did not follow any of the news.  Any of it.  When a classmate told me that the World Trade Center buildings had been hit, I assumed it was eco-terrorists.  When he said, "Bin Laden," I had no response.  I didn't know whom Bin Laden was.  When a girl told me I looked sort of like George W. Bush, I felt nothing.  "Who's that?"

People were shocked.  How could I not follow current events?  Yet when I asked these people about Aristotle, their brains were blank pieces of paper.

Back then I did not study the news: I studied knowledge.  There is a difference.

The "news" is simply a collection of transitory events that corporations and government want us to pay attention to.  Did you know that the Ground Zero Mosque isn't really a mosque?  It's a large community center - basically a YMCA for Muslims.  It's also several city blocks (have you been to New York?) away from Ground Zero.  Most Americans would have to drive from Ground Zero to the community center.

The truth about the Ground Zero Mosque is boring.  Who cares?  Knowing the truth would lead to a decrease in ratings.  Thus, the media must ensure that you care.  You must care today, because ads must be shown today.  You must care tomorrow, because tomorrow ads must be shown.

And so news is manufactured.  And yet even legitimate stories have the same thing in common - people.  And themes.  People don't change, only cultural issues.  Fifty years ago Negroes and whites couldn't interbreed.  Today homosexuals can't marry.  Black and gay are the same - both are different from the moral majority.  Yet a person who understands Jim Crow understands Prop. 8.

Once a person mastered knowledge, he has mastered the news.  He can predict the news.

Let's look at, for example, the Iraq War.  How did I know this would be a boondoggle?  Simple.  I understood that America is a corporatacy, as it has been since General Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against the military-industrial complex.

If you understand that Vietnam-style wars are profitable, then you can predict that the War in Iraq would be long, drawn-out, and aimless.  Why?  Because the best way to profit from a war is to continue fighting the war.

You simply need not read newspapers or listen to analysts describe the goals and objectives of the invasion.  You already know how the war will be waged.  You know the end before it begins.

Moreover, if you understand that society is run by a group of elites who conspire with each other to enrich each other, then you understand that even good-faith government action will fail.  The elite are not the most talented.  They are not, as the famous 1972 book brilliantly explains, the best and the brightest.  They are, like George W. Bush, morons who'd be bankrupt had they not been born into the right families.

The elite do not select for talent, or even for ideological agreement.  They select for power and status.

Who is Rush Limbaugh more likely to invite to his fourth wedding - a notorious-but-rich homosexual, or you?  Limbaugh paid Elton John $1 million to attend Limbaugh's wedding.

Yet people Limbaugh would have security escort from him home, believe that "Rush is right," and that Bill O'Reilly is "looking out for you."

These people are not your friends.  They do not care about you.  They govern and pontificate to enrich their friends and expand their own wallets.

That has how it has always been.

Do you really think the Civil War was about "state's rights"?  The bumble-fuck bullet catchers who could never afford slaves may have believed it.  But they were just catching bullets for the rich slave owners.  The bullet catchers were sold a lie to enrich a oligopoly.

Today's newspaper lines tomorrow's bird case.  Knowledge will last your entire life - and unlike the news, will create new and deeper associations.

If a person tuned out from the news for a month, instead reading books that have survived for over 100 years, the person would never need to watch another news program again.  The tune remain the same, even if the words change.

Perception

A pop song that has been slowed down by 800%, this is perhaps the most beautiful music I've heard. Probably this is what music in outer space sounds like.

J. BIEBZ - U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis

Because we don't move through time 800% more slowly, this is the original song:

The song is the same. The music is the same. The only difference is our temporal perception of the song. Although a computer slowed down the song, if we traveled closer to the speed of light, the first version would be how we experienced the reality of the song.

How much of what we consider "reality" is an illusion?

Adolescence Extends to 40

Scott Greenfield links to and comments on a New York Times article describing the unwillingness of young people to "grow up."

Adolescence is extending well into a person's 30s.  It's not hard to explain while: Lifespans are increasing.

Any Fantasy literature fan would tell you that elves are the most playful species because of their long life cycles.  If you're going to live to be 1,000, why "grow up" at 50?

When life expectancy was 30, 13-year olds were serious business.

There's a very good chance that people in my generation (who don't eat themselves to death) will live to be 100.

And so what we're observing isn't a nefarious cultural trend: It's simply a rational response to changing longevity.  Thirty is not middle-aged, and for some might not even be quarter-aged.  Relatively speaking, a 30-year-old still is a child.

And for another take on the issue, see here:

"They're going to have to grow up eventually!" First, I hear contempt in your voice, like you can't wait till they have to suffer. That's narcissism. Get that out of you, why should you be happy that they're going to suffer?

What is so great about adulthood that you'd wish it onto someone?

Free Will

I believe it was William James who said something like: "I do not believe that free will exists.  You will be better off living your life as it does exist."  In other words, live as if you have a choice.

Some would say that this is living in a fool's paradise, but there isn't any proof that free will does or does not exist.  Plus, anyone who believes in today's science would be wise to read old science textbooks.  Why do you think that we - unlike every other generation of our ancestors - has it all figured out?  Why the hubris?  Do you realize that every prior generation of humans believed that their science was The Answer.  And yet...

And even getting into the free will argument is amusing, because if there is no free well, then I cannot help but believe in it.  So why are you trying to persuade me that free will doesn't exist?  Well, that's because you cannot help yourself, since you don't have the will to resist trying to persuade.

We can play these games all day, which is why I've moved on to more amusing hobbies.  I brought the issue up, however, because Williams James has been vindicated:

Do philosophic views affect job performance? The authors found that possessing a belief in free will predicted better career attitudes and actual job performance. The effect of free will beliefs on job performance indicators were over and above well-established predictors such as conscientiousness, locus of control, and Protestant work ethic.

Many things are like this.  I warned a friend against the existential philosophers.  I told her, "Existentialism is poison to your soul.  They are right - that existence is futile and meaningless.  Yet once you internalize the utter futility of existence, you're going to feel much worse.  Unless you're going to kill yourself, you are going to be alive.  And therefore one should live as if life is worth living."

Or kill yourself.  Indeed, the only existential question is: Why shouldn't I kill myself?  If you're going to live, live as if...

Some would say this is the elevation of feelings over truth, but that would demonstrate a failure to understand that feelings can lead to truth.  Feel as if today mean something, and the truth will be that today means something.  Feel as if today is shitty and pointless, and that, too, will become your day's truth.

Charisma

Lately I've been buying flowers for my apartment. It adds color and aroma to the living room.

I bought a bouquet where only half of the flowers had blossomed. I added water, and left the curtain open during the afternoon. As expected, all of the flowers soon blossomed. Yet I noticed something else.

All of flowers were leaning towards the window. Even the fully blossomed ones were reaching out to the sun.

The sun, by simply being the sun, gets the flowers.

Complete Summary of the Roger Clemens Prosecution

Everything you need to know.

Department of Justice Sells Licenses to Trade with Iran

Today the United States Department of Justice issued a press release praising its work in the non-prosecution of Barclay's:

Barclays Bank PLC, a United Kingdom corporation headquartered in London, has agreed to forfeit $298 million to the United States and to the New York County District Attorney’s Office in connection with violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) ....

"Banks like Barclays will not be permitted to disregard sanctions put in place by the U.S. government," said Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division. "Not just once, but numerous times over more than a decade, Barclays stripped vital information out of payment messages that would have alerted U.S. financial institutions about the true origins of the funds.

For over ten years, Barclay's broke the law.  Thus, the total fine averages out to approximately $30 million a year.

I will give anyone here 10-to-1 odds that Barclay's earned more than $30 million in profits during each year.  Would anyone want the other side of the bet?

Money laundering his highly profitable, and thus a $30 million a year licensing fee is a bargain.  Barclay's made billions of dollars by trading with and laundering money for terrorist nations.

Although Barclay's bankers broke the law for over 10 years, no individual bankers were indicted. That's odd, when one considers how Barclay's laundered money for terrorists:

Barclays routed U.S. dollar payments through an internal Barclays account to hide the payments’ connection to OFAC-sanctioned entities and amended and reformatted the U.S dollar payment messages to remove information identifying the sanctioned entities.

Barclay's did no such thing.  People did.  Humans stripped out information, in order to earn out-sized bonuses.

A corporation is an entity that encourages commerce by limiting the liability of shareholders.  A corporation does not act.  People do.  Who personally "routed U.S. dollar payments," and "amended and reformatted the U.S dollar payment messages to remove information identifying the sanctioned entities."  It had to be a person, right?

At the settlement conference, Judge Emmett Sullivan - the same judge who took DOJ to task for its prosecutorial misconduct in the Ted Stevens prosecution - demanded answers.  How did DOJ respond?

Justice lawyer Kevin Gerrity said Barclays’ senior management was unaware of the criminal conduct at the lower level of the bank. The Justice Department, Gerrity said, conducted its own interviews and looked to hold individuals accountable. The government was unable to identify a person for prosecution, he said.

Does anyone really believe this?  Barclay's is a bank.  Banks exist to to count and keep track of money.  That is what they do.  It is almost impossible to embezzle money from within a bank, because bankers are so capable of keeping track of who had the money last.

The Barclay's settlement is a disgrace.  The Department of Justice has yet again told bankers that they may violate the law - as long as the bankers will graciously allow shareholders to pay a fine years later.

And if the banks never get caught, everyone wins - especially DOJ lawyers who move on to private practice, brining them them Barclay's as a client.

Jesse Friedman's Moral Victory is a Defeat

Ted Frank has passed along happy news for Jesse Friedman, who was wrongfully convicted of child molestation.  (Watch Capturing the Friedmans.)  There's no question that Jessee Friedman was innocent, that he was wrongfully prosecuted, and that the trial court conspired with the prosecution to convict him.

Many will will praise the appellate court's opinion.  We'll all toast the system.  We'll also ignore some important facts:

1. There is nothing preventing what happened to Jesse Friedman from happening today.
2. It's more likely that a man will be falsely convicted of child molestation.
3. The prosecutor who falsely prosecuted him will never be punished.
4. The judge who conspired with the prosecutor will never be punished.
5. Nothing will change.

The criminal justice system is demoralizing, and some would say that I should lighten up.  Enjoy the "victories" when you can.  Toast this decision.  Have a nice glass of wine.  Forget that nothing will change, and that the climate for false convictions has gotten worse.

I'd love to not sound "cynical," and yet everything I've said is true.  Read these posts about White v. McKinley.  The detective and prosecutor who framed an innocent man kept their jobs.

The system could be changed to prevent wrongful convictions.  Prosecutors, for example, could actually be held accountable for misconduct. Courts usually don't even identify unethical prosecutors by name in the judicial opinion - lest someone Googling the prosecutor learn about the misconduct.  Here is a list of honest-to-god unethical prosecutors.  None of them have received any discipline.

I'd rather be cynical than live in a fool's paradise.  The Friedman opinion changes nothing.  Until judges commit to stopping the next Friedman, there is nothing to celebrate.

There is No Social Contract

What would Goldman Sachs say?

But if the government is just another shark in the marketplace, if the government just follows the law of the jungle, shouldn’t we teach children to obey the government out of fear, and for no other reason? Unless of course, they can get away with it? That doing the right thing is for suckers and sheep, if you’re smart enough?

Is Gulf Seafood Safe to Eat?

From Washington's Blog:

The Centers of Disease Control (CDC) just announced:

For the seafood to pose a health risk, the food would have to be heavily contaminated with oil, and would therefore have a strong odor and taste of oil.

That is patently untrue.

As I pointed out in June:

Crude oil contains such powerful cancer-causing chemicals benzene, toluene,heavy metals and arsenic.

***

As Bloomberg notes:

“Oil is a complex mixture containing substances like benzene, heavy metals, arsenic, and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons -- all known to cause human health problems such as cancer, birth defects or miscarriages,” said Kenneth Olden, founding dean of New York’s CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College, who is monitoring a panel on possible delayed effects.

Corexit breaks down oil into constituent chemicals. So there could easily be toxic levels in the Gulf of compounds that don't smell anything like oil.

For example, arsenic is odorless. So fish contaminated with arsenic will not smell or taste like oil.

And crude oil contains mercury. Mercury is odorless, so fish contaminated with mercury will not smell or taste like oil.

As McClatchy notes today:

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill still poses threats to human health and seafood safety, according to a study published Monday by the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association.

***

In the short term, study co-author Gina Solomon voiced greatest concern for shrimp, oysters, crabs and other invertebrates she says are have difficulty clearing their systems of dangerous polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) similar to those found in cigarette smoke and soot. Solomon is an MD and public health expert in the department of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco.

In the longer term, she expressed worries about big fin fish such as tuna, swordfish and mackerel, saying levels of mercury from the oil might slowly increase over time by being consumed by fish lower in the food chain and becoming concentrating in the larger fish.

As time goes on, she said, doctors may be warning pregnant women and children to strictly limit the amount of such fish they eat. Some of the fish had relatively high levels of mercury even before the oil spill, she said.

Moreover, Corexit is itself toxic. Many of the ingredients of Corexit are either odorless and tasteless or have very different smells and tastes from oil. For example, Corexit contains propylene glycol, which is nearly odorless, with a faintly sweet taste. And some versions of Corexit contain 2-butoxyethanol which has afruity rather than petroleum-like smell.

Finally, Corexit interacts with crude oil to form new compounds. No one has thoroughly studied the range of new compounds which might be formed by the interaction of Corexit with crude oil, let alone what they taste or smell like.

And see this.

In addition, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco says that we can be assured that Gulf seafood is safe because only fishing areas which are free of oil are being reopened.

That is also false.

Department of Justice Decriminalizes Banking With Terrorists

Last month the United States Department of Justice decriminalized money laundering.  Today Justice [sic] announced that trading with terrorists is now legal.  As with money laundering, you must be a bank in order to receive an exception from the law:

WASHINGTON—Barclays Bank PLC has reached a $298 million agreement with U.S. and New York authorities to settle charges that it facilitated financial payments for parties and countries facing U.S. sanctions.

According to court documents filed in federal court in Washington, Barclays will forfeit $149 million pursuant to an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department and another $149 million in a separate agreement with the New York County District Attorney's Office.

According to court filings, for a roughly 11-year period until September 2006 Barclays facilitated and hid transactions for countries facing sanctions, including banks from Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma.

Mike Scarcella has more here.

Want to buy a cigar from Cuba?  Too bad, plebian.  Buying a Cuban cigar violates the Trading with the Enemy Act.  If you're a Wall Street bank, however, you may purchase Cuban cigars with money paid to you by drug dealers and terrorist nations.

The greatest threat to the American people isn't a mosque near Ground Zero.  It's a collection of banks on Wall Street.  The terrorists are carrying briefcases near Ground Zero - although you'll find collateralized debt obligations rather than dirty bombs inside.

Incidentally, the bankers didn't even bother appearing in court:

A federal judge in Washington had scheduled a hearing Monday afternoon to approve the settlement, but chose to postpone the proceedings because the Barclays representative who signed the legal agreement wasn't present in court."

He's the one who signed the pleadings and he should be here," U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said of Barclays general counsel Mark Harding.

The judge didn't immediately schedule a new hearing date, but it is likely to take place later this week.

Why did the judge even approve this settlement?  If what Justice alleges is true, then Barclay's traded with Iran.  Who inside Barclay's made the decision?  Corporations do not act on their own, but instead are controlled by people.  What bankers broke the law?

A federal judge lacks the power to order that bankers be indicted.  Judges have not just the power but also the duty to question the parties about a public court settlement.  Judge Sullivan may ask who inside Barclay's made the decision to trade with terrorist countries.

Judge Sullivan may ask why no bankers have been charged.  Weren't Muslim charities criminally indicted for banking violations?  Weren't individual Muslims held under the PATRIOT Act for doing what Barclay's bankers admitted doing?

Given that Mark Harding spit on the judge's face by not appearing in court, one hopes that Judge Sullivan takes seriously his responsibility as a judge, and asks why banks are receiving more than equal protection under the law.

Department of Justice Decriminalizes Money Laundering

There are billions to be made in laundering money for drug cartels.  No doubt many of you have asked yourselves, "How can I get into the money laundering business?"  Like me, you no doubt concluded that the risk of imprisonment was too great a risk.

You may have even heard of J. Mark Shelnutt, a criminal defense lawyer who was prosecuted for money laundering for merely accepting fees from an accused drug dealer.  Why risk it?  The Department of Justice takes money laundering seriously, and so we must not launder drug money.

Well, our friends at the United States Department of Justice are here to help.  There is indeed a way for you to make billions laundering money without ever risking a prison sentence.  The Department of Justice has decriminalized money laundering.

If you think I'm kidding or being in the least bit sarcastic, read this article:

Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.

They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.

The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue.

This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers -- including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.

The banks were warned about their role in funding the drug cartels:

"'It’s the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy,' says Martin Woods, director of Wachovia’s anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009. Woods says he quit the bank in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were funneling money through Wachovia’s branch network."

Working as the drug cartels' personal bankers was no an accident.  There was no overcriminalization problem.  No one was fooled.  Instead, bank executives knowingly laundered drug money.

The Department of Justice did not criminally prosecute any of the banks.  Instead, the Department of Justice told the banks face that there is no risk of ever being criminally prosecuted for money laundering:

"Large banks are protected from indictments by a variant of the too-big-to-fail theory. Indicting a big bank could trigger a mad dash by investors to dump shares and cause panic in financial markets, says Jack Blum, a U.S. Senate investigator for 14 years and a consultant to international banks and brokerage firms on money laundering.

The theory is like a get-out-of-jail-free card for big banks, Blum says.

'There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure,' Blum says. 'They seem to be willing to do anything that improves their bottom line, until they’re caught.'"

It is time to declare our independence from Wall Street.  They are funding the criminal organizations that are murdering innocents in Arizona.  One can believe that while the War on Drugs is immoral, drug cartels are evil.

The banks are funding the drug cartels, and the United States Department of Justice has agreed to allow it.

The government has explicitly stated that banks are above the law.  It is now up to the people to enforce the law.

Memento Mori

"We're all dying, with me it's accelerated."

Attitude: The Difference Between Prison and Jail

Telling this audience that attitude is often the difference between state prison and county jail is preaching to the choir.  Lest you have wayward clients, be sure to pass this story along:

SAN DIEGO — A San Diego judge postponed a sentencing hearing Thursday for a former mixed-martial arts championship fighter, saying his behavior inside and outside the courtroom warranted prison not probation.

Jon Koppenhaver, who legally changed his name to War Machine, pleaded guilty last month to two counts of assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury. The case stems from altercations at a Point Loma bar in February and a Pacific Beach bar in March. He also admitted he violated probation on a previous case.

War Machine, 28, was expected to be formally sentenced in accordance with a plea bargain Thursday, but Superior Court Judge David Danielsen said he was “inclined not to honor the plea agreement,” given the statements War Machine had made to the Probation Department, his assertion in court Thursday that he had not read the terms of the plea, and a series of Twitter messages posted online before he was booked into jail last month.

“This really is a state prison case,” Danielsen said.

War Machine pleaded guilty July 1 and agreed to report to county jail to begin serving a yearlong stint as a condition of probation. The judge allowed the mixed-martial artist to report to jail July 16 so he could participate in a professional fight scheduled a week earlier.

Prosecutors agreed not to ask for additional jail or prison time at the sentencing if War Machine complied with the order.

Deputy District Attorney Michael Runyon filed a document Thursday containing several expletive-laden “tweets” posted on War Machine’s Twitter page in which he apparently rails against the court system, minimizes his role in the bar fights and laments having to serve a jail term.

One of the tweets reads, in part, that it “doesn’t pay to win in a street fight ... it doesn’t even pay to defend yourself our county has gone soft. We need a civil war!”

If you can believe it, there's more here.

KGB Agent: "How To Brainwash A Nation"

In this remarkable video, a KGB agent explains how the popular media is able to brainwash an entire nation.

1. Demoralization
2. Destabolization
3. Crisis
4. Normalization

I have grown less interested in talking to people, because they are unable to comprehend the truth.  This is because people watch television.  You are what you eat, and your brain is the product of its perceptions.  Americans consume data bits from television each night.

As Yuri Bezmenov explains: "Exposure to true information does not matter anymore.  A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information.  The facts tell nothing to him - even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures."

The average American can't walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded.  How then can anyone ascend to the heights - as truth is always only to be found above us?

Truth About BP Oil Spill

Go here and start scrolling.

Wall Street and the Declaration of Independence

In light of the bailouts, we should re-read the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Does the federal government represent you?  Or Wall Street?

Republicans are going to displace Democrats.  In anticipation of this displacement, Wall Street has double-downed on the GOP.  Doesn't his mean that Wall Street will remain in power, and thus electoral forces cannot push back its power?

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Wall Street has been bailed out of every economic disaster in the past century.  How much longer must this train of abuse and usurpation be?

Like King Henry, Wall Street has:

refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

No one on Wall Street has been indicted for destroying the economy.  Goldman Sachs paid a mere civil fine (less than five days of trading profits) for manipulating the market, and bringing ruin to the American public.

Wall Street has

forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

Financial reform is a joke and a lie.  Nothing on Wall Street will change after passage of Obama's financial (non) overhaul.

Wall Street has

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

Meetings are held in secret.  Lobbyists outnumber you.  Ordinary Americans are not allowed to influence legislation, due to Wall Street's army of lobbyists.

Wall Street has

impos[ed] Taxes on us without our Consent.

Did you support the bailouts?  Did anyone you know support the bailouts?  Yet Wall Street received tax dollars despite overwhelming opposition from the American people.  Stealing your tax dollars is no different from a direct tax.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

As with other Americans, we have tried to overthrow Wall Street lawfully.  We voted for Barack Obama, who promised hope and change.  Instead, he continued George W. Bush's bailouts.  We voted for Republicans, who promised to fight against Wall Street for us.  Instead, Wall Street bought off the GOP.

Under the logic of document upon which Americans celebrate each year, the time for a Revolution is near.  Prepare yourselves, because the American people are awakening from their too-long slumber.

Links: Wall Street Edition

Main Street continues boycott of Wall Street.  Only a fool trades into the current market.  The ordinary investor can't trade on insider information, manipulate the market with high-frequency-trading robots, or front run clients.  Hopefully more bankers will lose their jobs because of the boycott.

Wall Street has begun funding the Republican party.  Wait for the media spin.  For years, Wall Street has given more to Democrats than to Republicans.  Barack Obama received more money from Goldman Sachs than he did any other company.  Yet the media portrayed the Republicans as the Party of Wall Street - while ignoring the cash Democrats took.  Now Republicans are becoming the Part of Wall Street, and so we can expect media stories putting forth this narrative.

Banks aren't loaning money.  Remember TARP?  Remember how former Goldman Sachs CEO, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, sold TARP?  TARP, he said, would improve the credit markets - i.e., increase bank lending.  Banks are not lending money.  However, bankers are earning record compensation.  Goldman Sachs will pay out record bonuses this year.  (Last year Goldman was only able to pay out near-record bonuses.)

The scariest jobs chart ever.  Well, it's not so scary if you're on Wall Street.  (See the above post.)  It's only scary if you're a normal American whose job is being outsourced, or whose business cannot get a loan because bankers decided to use their TARP funds to play the stock market instead of loaning - the exact opposite of what was promised.

P.S.  The same bankers who needed bailed in 2008 are in charge of Wall Street in 2010.  What are you going to do about?  Vote for Republicans - the party now receiving the most Wall Street cash?

The civil laws have broken down.  The social contract has been torn up.  No one in Washington represents you.

It is time to begin representing yourself.  If this means forming lynch mobs around Wall Street, then you have every moral right to do so.  One owes thieves no moral obligations.  The more interesting question is of duty: Do you have a duty to lynch a banker?

Bankers are destroying not just your way of life - but your childrens'.  Do you want your children living a Brazil-like slum?  That situation is only a generation or two away.

There are numerous countries without a middle class.  Take a look at how the bottom half lives.  Ask yourself if you owe your children something more than a life of poverty and suffering.

What needs to be done is no secret.  Unless Americans find the courage to remind themselves that the government governs only by the consent of the governed, millions will be doomed.

Politics is Sports

Nothing will change, so I do not endorse the substance of the video.  As a matter of style, it's moving.  It's exciting.  It's like an ad campaign for Monday Night Football.  That the video communicates nothing concrete is what makes it interesting.  The viewer thinks, "This is exciting!  I'm pumped."  Pumped for what?  Another sporting event, naturally, as that's all modern American elections are:

 

Why is Losing Weight so Difficult?

Sixty-thousand dollars wasn't enough to inspire two guys to lose 60 pounds.  Why not?

Food is a drug.

Once you start from the working premise that food is a drug, everything about the difficulties of weight loss makes sense.  Fat people are addicted to food.  Could you pay a heroin addict to stop using?  A cigarette smoker?

The wagerers noted in the post, above, are both economist-like people.  Economics is more-or-less useless on any important existential question, and so a bet based on economic incentives is designed to fail.

How does a drug user decide to stop using drugs?  That's an existential question.  The person makes the life decision to stop using.  Many external events often precipitate that decision, but nevertheless, a junkie decides to redefine himself.

A junkie will always tell you that they are a recovering drug user.  They have killed the old self - the user - and created a new self.  Thus, in drug discussions, use of the Phoenix Metaphor is common.  Through painful fire comes rebirth.

A fat person exists as a junkie.  Using drugs (food) is part of that junkie's existence.  Thus, the only way to lose weight is to redefine one's existence - to create a new self.

American Rage

Hewett Packard's CEO Mark Hurd was fired for stealing company funds.  He stole company funds by falsifying expense reports.

What would happen to an ordinary employee who falsified expense reports?  Think for a minute.  Might police be called?  Might he be sued?  I can think of many negative possibilities.

One thing I cannot imagine is that the employee would be paid severance.  Can you imagine that?

In Mark Hurd's case, however, a severance package he received.  How large?  Fifty million dollars.

Meanwhile, what happened to the HP employees who lost their jobs not after committing theft, but after HP CEO Mark Hurd realized he could get a larger bonus by outsourcing their jobs?  As one employee reports:

I have just been fired by HP as part of their 'workforce reduction program' through no fault or underperfomance on my part.

Guess how much I received from HP as severence? Go on... guess...

NOTHING, that's how much I got! Absolutely NOTHING except my contractual two months notice of termination - and I am expected to work during this time training the offshore cheap labour that will supposedly replace me (as if!)

This piece of slime, Mark Hurd, paid himself $42.5million in 2008 and $27million in 2009 whilst he was forcing most of his workforce to take a 5% salary cut and sacking tens of thousands of staff worldwide... all just so that he could pretend to the shareholders that he was 'boosting revenue' and thus enable him to pay himself and his fellow leeches in the upper management millions of dollars in bonuses.

I don't give a damn about his private life (though it surprises me not one jot that he is as menditious and despicable in his personal interaction as he is in his professional), but I can say that he and his 'friends' certainly raped Hewlett-Packard for all the short-term profit they could at the expense of the long-term survival of the company.

When a company's CEO steals money, he gets paid tens-of-millions.  When a hard-working employee has his job outsourced, he trains his replacement.

Is it really going to surprise you when more people decide to "go Stacks" or "Thornton"?

Is Omar S. Thornton a Black Joe Stacks?

While I was quick to decry the media's blame-the-victim framing of the Hartford Massacre, Norm Pattis presents an interesting analysis of the massacre.  While the victims didn't deserve to be murdered, Omar Thornton does represent another man so consumed by rage that he attacked what he viewed as his oppressors:

When I first learned that the shooter was black and all the victims were white I worried in a plantation-owner sort of way about copy cat crimes. I have represented many people of color in employment-related disputes. Anyone who believes, even for a moment, that the color line is not alive and well in the United States lives in a dream world. There are simmering tensions. There is black rage and white resentment. The "N" word is often spoken in hush terms.

As with Joe Stacks, no one is saying that Thornton was right.  Blacks are, however, saying that they can understand why he went postal.  Indeed, that's what people said about Joe Stacks.  "I would never do such a thing.  And it was wrong.  But...Well...The guy sorta had a point, you know?"

One man was arrested for saying that he understood Thornton's rage:

Connecticut police say they arrested a man at a management company after he mentioned the shooting rampage across the state that killed nine people and said he understood the killer's mindset.

A law student wrote on this blog, in response to my claims that there will be more violence:

I've seen no indication that Americans are at all motivated to resort to violence. Americans are way too apathetic to do anything.

That reveals an elitist's misunderstanding of humanity.  Have you ever been desperate?  I know rich people who take Prozac to distract themselves from the futility of existence.  What a joke.  Try having no money, no options, and no safety net.  Suddenly life will no longer be futile.  You will find that the point of life is right in front of you - survival.

Yet those who have never known hunger and whose lives are so comfortable that they must turn to drugs cannot understand the suffering of tens-of-millions of Americans.  Food stamp use is at a record high.  Tonight I'll listen to Pink Flyod's "Time," pondering life until I reach a quarter-life crisis - ignoring that I just ate a grass-fed rib eye.  There are Two America's - except that the bottom half of Americans are wondering if their power is going to be shut off.

Imagine you had everything taken from you.  Meanwhile, you seem record bonuses paid to the same people responsible for your job loss.  The CEO who outsourced your job is getting paid $50 million after being caught stealing company funds.

What would you do?

If this is too hard to imagine, then start talking to some normal Americans.  Your whiny, Whole Foods shopping friends aren't Real America.

Talk to the 50-year-old man whose job was outsourced, and who has been unable to find work for 99 weeks; and who hears dip shits like you claiming that unemployment shouldn't be extended, because then guys like him - who have worked every day for decades - will decide to stop working.

Omar Thornton and Joe Stacks are not alone.  Millions of American men are but a job loss away from from "going Stacks."

A few workplace massacres isn't that worrisome.  Like all tragedies, they are low-probability events.  I'm not afraid of terrorists, and I'm not concerned with a few men like Thornton and Stacks.

What happens when someone channels the rage of the millions of Americans who have been shit on?  What then?

Ethicists Aren't Ethical: Or, Why Sin is In

Eating meat is likely the most immoral thing any of us do.  Animals are sentient beings.  They feel pain.  They feel fear.  The animals we eat are tortured hourly until slaughtered.  I've never met a person who researched factory farming conditions who would argue that eating meat is moral.  Meet Your Meat.

Yet almost all of us eat meat:

[We] surveyed several hundred philosophers and non-philosophers on their opinions about various moral issues; we also asked survey respondents to describe their own behavior on those same issues. … The biggest divergences in moral opinion concerned our question about “regularly eating the meat of mammals such as beef and pork”. 60% of ethics professor respondents rated mammal-meat consumption as morally bad, compared to 45% of non-ethicist philosophers and just 19% of non-philosophers. Opinion also divided by gender and age. … Fully 81% of female philosophers born in 1960 or later said it was morally bad to regularly eat the meat of mammals. To put this degree of consensus in perspective, … only 82% of philosophers endorsed non-skeptical realism about the existence of an external world. …

38% of [young female philosophers] reported having eaten the meat of a mammal at their previous evening meal — a rate not statistically different from the 39% reported rate among respondents overall. … Similarly, despite the difference in normative view, there was no statistically detectable difference in the mean age of respondents who said they had eaten the meat of a mammal at their previous evening’s meal. … 78% of those who reported that they never eat mammal meat said eating mammal meat is bad, compared to 32% of those who reported sometimes eating meat. However, it seems that among non-vegetarians there is little if any relationship between normative ethical view and actual meat consumption. (more; HT Stefano Bertolo)

This isn't a mystery those who've read their David Hume.  Reason - or rationality - is only valuable to the extent it brings us into an emotional state.  We know eating meat is wrong.  We're still going to eat it, however, because it's delicious.

The best summary of Hume's thinking is Simon Blackburn's article, "Practical Tortoise Raising":

In 1895 Lewis Carroll wrote his famous Mind article "What the Tortoise said to Achilles". The problem he raised can succinctly be put like this: can logic make the mind move? Or, less enigmatically, how do we describe what is wrong with the tortoise's argument that, however many premises Achilles has him accept, he always has space to refrain from drawing the conclusion?

In this paper I am not so much concerned with movements of the mind, as movements of the will. But my question bears a similarity to that of the tortoise. I want to ask whether the will is under the control of fact and reason, combined. I shall try to show that there is always something else, something that is not under the control of fact and reason, which has to be given as a brute extra, if deliberation is ever to end by determining the will. This is, of course, a Humean conclusion, and the only novelty comes in the way I wish to argue for it. I believe that many philosophers think, erroneously, that Hume relies on a naive and outdated conception of facts, or on an even more naive and outdated conception of reason, in order to put passion on their throne. My tortoise defends Hume: what we do with our premises is not itself construed as acceptance of a premise.

[You will enjoy the rest....]

Meat eating is fascinating because it also illustrates the power of culture.  We condemn past societies for their slavery, racism, and sexism.  We would have been soooo different had we been alive back then.

No, we would not have been.  We'd have owned slaves - even if we believed it to be evil, but because we'd have lacked the force of will go rebel against our culture.  We'd have been guards at concentration camps.  We'd have done exactly what our cultural masters commanded us to do.

We know eating meat is wrong, but people don't judge us for eating meat.  We meat eaters are part of the the immoral majority.  As long as we outnumber those enlightened and virtuous enough to be vegetarians, meat eating will remain moral - even though we all know that it's not.

I am not a moral relativist.  Some things are moral and immoral.  I'm reluctant to march up to the moral high ground, however, because this weak I'll be grilling steaks.