Election tropes

Only because of victory, the election now seems good to me. Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food. (metaphor) 

The Republican ticket had begun to sound like two skeletons copulating on a corrugated tin roof. (simile)  

And especially to Bush, I say Take thy face hence. (synedoche)  

With Bush bombing Iraq and Afghanistan and the suits on Wall Street walking off with everyone's 401K's the results of the election were a no-brainer. (metonymy).  

Is Mr. Bush a Christian? Christians believe in the prophets, peace be upon them. Bush believes in profits and how to get a piece of them. HIs policies are sound, nothing but sound. (antanaclasis).

When Bush spoke to us he raised neither his voice nor our hopes. He should have fixed the problems, not the blame. Now we hold our breath and the door for his exit. (syllepsis).  

I've been Republicaned all I can stand this election year. The whole country has been punked by this administration. And thus, until the change of administration, the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. (anthimeria).

How did we win? The big man upstairs must have heard our prayers. This socialism attack on Obama was misplaced. Just as was once said to Dan Quayle, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy," we can say to Barack Obama, "Senator, you're no Eugene Debs." Would that he were. (periphrasis).

These last months of a Bush administration may be brutal.  He forgets:  Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people. (prosopesis)

There did not seem to be brains enough in the oval office, so to speak, to bait a fishhook with. After the market fell and unemployment climbed, people moved slowly. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of our own neighborhoods.  (hyperbole).

Bush has left the nation somewhat worse for wear.  During his administration, I saw Lady Liberty flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her physical appearance.  (litotes)

What could the Republicans have been thinking?  Have we not eyes? have we not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? (rhetorical question).

And so they brought us more wars. And our young people learned proud privileges as were learned by a young man of an earlier generation: "By Spring, if God was good, all the proud privileges of trench lice, mustard gas, spattered brains, punctured lungs, ripped guts, asphyxiation, mud and gangrene might be his." (irony)

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far. My days have crackled and gone up in smoke. (onomatopoeia)

O miserable abundance. O beggarly riches. (oxymoron)

They led the people by following the mob. They lied to tell their truth. (paradox)

Election schemes

Readers true, friends: (apposition). 

Finally the election is over--a fair field full of fury. (alliteration).

The Republicans now suffer, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us. (anadiplosis).

And now for some fairness in society:  I say, don't hold back. Strike as I would. Have struck those tyrants! Strike deep as my curse!  Strike! and but once (anaphora).

How the last eight years have seemed to me:  The helmsman steered; the ship moved on; yet never a breeze up blew. (anastrophe).

All those who are merciful with the cruel will come to be cruel to the merciful. (antimetabole).

Response to paliniacs: Not that I loved Caesar less', but that I loved Rome more. (antithesis).

Now they seek That solitude which suits abstruser musings. (assonance).

We must... hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. (asyndeton, chiamus)

May we find all of this Republicanism ...Lost, vaded, broken, dead within an hour. (climax- the noun, not the verb).

Republicans leaving DC: What is Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba? (epanalepsis).

Where affections bear rule, there reason is subdued, honesty is subdued, good will is subdued, and all things else that withstand evil, for ever are subdued. (epistrophe).

To the rovians and paliniacs: Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end. (hyperbaton).

And the louder they talked of their honor, the faster we counted our spoons. (isocolon).

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative. (parallelism).

I’ve had to resist and to attack sometimes – that’s only one way of resisting – without counting the exact cost, according to the demands of such sort of life as I had blundered into. (parenthesis)

By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming idiotic oneself. (polyptoton)

I spent several days and nights in early November with an ailing pig and I feel driven to account for this stretch of time more particularly since the pig died at last, and I lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round and none left to do the accounting. (polysendeton).

American Death Penalty-Part 1

            Once upon a time, even before the United States was a country, we had a death penalty.  To some extent it existed in the northern colonies to punish religious heretics and witches and the like, but for the most part it was in the southern colonies to help enforce slavery.  Many things related to slavery were capital crimes including helping slaves escape and inciting slaves to run away.  Even to this day, the slave states are where we find most of the executions.

            The English Bill of Rights in 1691 had prohibited cruel and unusual punishment and then the Eighth Amendment was adopted in 1791 saying about the same thing.  This was not meant to end the death penalty though, but only torture before causing death.  Also, although states had their own prohibitions against cruel or unusual punishment, this part of the Eighth Amendment did not originally apply to the states.  The Supreme Court in In Re Kemmler  in 1889 rejected an argument that the 8^th Amendment applied to the New York when this state started electrocuting people to kill them.

            Finally, in the case of Robinson v. California in 1962 the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment was applied to the states, but this was not a death penalty case, but prohibited imprisoning Mr. Robinson just because he was a drug addict and had needle tracks in his arms.  But we get ahead of the story.

            The historical link between slavery and the death penalty held sway as the northern states moved into a period of reforming the death penalty before the civil war.  The southern states saw a need to discipline a captive workforce and had no similar reform movement.  The racist purpose for capital punishment was  openly discussed.    This situation became a national embarrassment when the racism in using the death penalty became an international incident when the Scottsboro Boys were sentenced to death.  When the seven young black men accused of rape were given the death penalty, essentially without lawyers and with little evidence, the nature of the American death penalty was given an international stage.  The Supreme Court in 1932 decided the case of Powell v. Alabama.  There were many glaring problems with the sentence, but the court found a way to correct the embarrassment of this one case without greatly impacting the system of using the threat of death to control an oppressed caste.  The Court did not say a capital defendant should always have a lawyer, but that in a capital case where the defendant is unable to employ counsel and is incapable of adequately making his own defense because of ignorance, feeble-mindedness, illiteracy or the like, he should get a lawyer.   

Grief

I have dream conversations with the dead.  This afternoon as I slept, it was with Joe, now dead for eight years.  It was as real as if he had been sitting across the table from me, dominoes in play.  

Sometimes the conversations go back more than thirty years to my father, drinking Seagrams Seven disguised in a carton of milk.  

The dreams are always pleasant and exciting while I sleep and then unsettling when I wake up; they wake me up.

"For man also knoweth not his time; as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in a snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them."

Joe talking to me with an accent and grammar, now nearly extinct, that was once on both sides of Red River, with an understanding of a hard scrabble life I never had to experience.  

The grief by a mother who had lost a son as described by the preacher:  "But her hope drew a veil before her sorrow, and though her grief was great enough to swallow her up, yet her love was greater and did swallow up her grief."

And as the doctor, the cracked archangel, says, "...the long habit of living indisposith us for dying.

How many dead?

How many Iraqis have been killed in the invasion? This is apparently not easily answered. President Bush said 30,000 in December of 2005. As large as this number is when tallying deaths, it was wildly inconsistent with a Lancet medical journal article of October 2006 that estimated 655,000 deaths as a result of war, with 601,000 of these from violence in war. This estimate was based on a study conducted by Johns Hopkins University.

After President Bush gave his 30,000 estimate Scott McClellan said on his behalf there was no official tally and Bush had gotten his number from the media. The Lancet article is a peer reviewed article using the type of national, cross-sectional cohort study of death used to find out how many people die from TB or malaria.

A group called Iraqi Body Count keeps a running tally that estimates today 88,373 to 96,466. Iraq Body Count uses reports from morgues and hospitals to produce their numbers. Lancet medical journal discusses the problem of relying on reports. When a whole family is killed there are often no reports made and some areas have stopped issuing death certificates at all.

The World Health Organization recently issued an estimate of 151,000.

However many the number may be, all guesses seem to concur that most of the deaths are civilians and many are children. Lancet estimates include children under 14, women and people over 65 years of age. One measure of percentage of deaths who are civilians can be based on the reports of Iraqi military deaths-between 4900 and 6375 according to WHO.

These numbers do not include the American deaths, some 3,915 according to WHO, or the 174 British forces killed.

Lancet stated, "In Iraq, as with other conflicts, civilians bear the consequences of warfare. In the Vietnam war, 3 million civilians died; in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, conflict has been responsible for 3.8 million deaths; and an estimated 200,000 of a total population of 800,000 died in conflict in East Timor. Recent estimates are that 200,000 people have died in Darfur over the past 31 months. We estimate that almost 655,000 people--2.5% of the population in the study area--have died in Iraq. Althou such death rates might be common in times of war, the combination of a long duration and tens of millions of people affected has made this the deadliest international conflict of the 21st Century."

A group called Just Foreign Policy posts a running extrapolation from the Lancet study that states the number of deaths at 1,273,378 as of today.

At some point an ocean of blood takes us beyond the ability to imagine. If the estimates of the number of deaths based on a Lancet study are correct, the death toll would have spilled some 6,500,000 quarts of blood. It only takes 600,000 quarts to fill an olympic size pool. Think of a thousand olympic pools filled with blood, and then it all begins to overflow and run out onto the ground. Irrigating what? What grows from this?

Democrats and the Invisible Hand

Wealth … is like a snake; it will twist around the hand and bite unless one
knows how to use it properly. – Clement of Alexandria, “The Instructor,” 3.6.34

What if Obama is elected and the Democrats win the House and a super majority of 60 in the Senate to prevent filibuster? What might the government look like then?

The odds makers only give one chance in four for a 60 seat working majority, so we are not likely to face this prospect. If it happened, would the Democrats take the opportunity and make major changes in government?

Jimmy Carter had a 60 vote majority to work with and did little with it. Clinton never had the majority, but he was determined to disappoint in any case.

Still, I will do my small part. I'll vote for Obama although the electoral college pretty well assures it is a futile vote in Texas. I'll vote for Noriega. I'll vote for Solomon. But I know we need something bigger.

What I want from the Democrats is an escape from the profit-motive, the afan de lucre, that I believe wrecks human relations and corrupts society.

American politics suffers the grip of the invisible hand about the throat. I've several times tried to wade through Wealth of Nations and I still regard Adam Smith warmly. I do believe the Butcher, the Baker and the Brewer provide benefit to one another by acting out of self interest, but, profit, as a religion, has done a great disservice to Adam Smith. Adam Smith would be shocked by the misuse of his work today, just like Jesus would be shocked by what passes for Christianity.

I do not acknowledge that greed is the best glue to bind society.

"Don't you believe in profit?" Or, "what's wrong with making a profit?" is now the universal conversation stopper. When the war profiteer or the storm price gouger or (most recently) the CEO who has just shut down his company with a golden parachute gets caught, he says pompously, "You do believe in profit, don't you?"

My answer is "No." Profit is nothing more than unjustly withheld wages. Or over-charged clients. Or cheated vendors.

How might we escape this invisible hand? I don't think we can change human nature. But I do believe we can recognize greed for what it is. It is not a virtue; it is a sin.

Texas 45 Oklahoma 35

When I called today to see if Randall had offed himself, he told me the Texas-Oklahoma game was on.  This coincided nicely with my desire for a meal, so I walked over to the Palm Lounge.

First, the restaurant critique.  Two cheeseburgers, french fried and the jalapeno peppers are pound for pound or dollar for dollar the best meal I have found (about $10).  Ceviche at the Mariscos de las Almas Perdidas in Matamoros runs a close second, but for this review, I am not including international cuisine.  Two cheeseburgers is about half a cheeseburger too many, but one cheeseburger is too few, so I recommend getting two and then stopping at the Walgreens for the Value Size Calcium Rich Antacid Tablets Ultra Strength, Assorted Fruit for dessert.  The Coca-Cola in the can rated on color, nose and palate was undistinguished.  The abdang somewhat harsh.  However, I do not judge the cheeseburger by the Coke and next time I'll drink water or smuggle in a glass of milk.

Now to the game.  When Randall told me he was not going to commit suicide, but rather finish the game, I decided to watch the end of the game.  This was my second since 1969, but then Texas was No. 1 (after Slippery Rock, as I recall) and now was No. 5.  Oklahoma was No. 1.  I do not know the names of any of the players, but no credentials were required for admission into the Palm Lounge.

I called my Primo Jerry to see if he wanted to go, but he was not home, so I guessed I could catch him there anyway.  As you age and your friends all die, you impose on relatives more and more, even distant relatives.  Jerry was not home or so said whoever answered his phone.

Palm Lounge was full of fans, many wearing orange T-shirts and Longhorn caps, so I decided to root for my alma mater.  I recognized an old acquaintance across the bar, but did not approach him, because so few people from years past recognized me in this aged, grey, bald, fat incarnation.

I arrived in time to whoop and holler as Texas pulled ahead and then scored again.    

Bailout

The problem with the Bailout Issue is that so few of us have the tools to understand the issue. I consulted Brownsville's resident Marxist economist and although he generally opposed the principles of the bill, he would not render an opinion because he lacked the information. And he has a PhD or some such degree in economics from a school in France, where, he tells me, all the economics teachers are Marxists. But if he lacks the information to give me advice, how can I come to a conclusion?

I have not read the three page version, much less the 450 page version, nor am likely to do so. Nevertheless, I'm going to take a position against it. The only candidate I can find who opposes the bill who I can vote for is Noriega, but I would have voted for him anyway. Cornyn, Hutchinson, McCain and Obama all voted for the bill.

Solomon Ortiz first voted against the Bailout and then voted for it. Four who voted against the Bailout in the final version were Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, Lloyd Doggett and Russ Feingold.

On this issue, I trust Kucinich, Sanders, Doggett and Feingold more than I do McCain, Obama, Clinton, Cornyn and Ortiz.

I have been receiving e-mails telling me the Bailout is Marxist and socialist. However, all my socialist blogs and magazines are against it. Acorn and Jesse Jackson are against it. My question is, if it is socialism, why is the only socialist in Congress, Sanders, against it? Why is the Socialist Worker against it? Why are all the crypto-socialists against it?

So I join the Republican Congressmen and Uncle Tiger in opposing the Bailout bill. It's too late now, of course, we have lost. But this issue will raise it's head again.

I am as afraid of depression, soup kitchens and bread lines as anyone. The problem is, on this issue, I don't trust our party leaders, Democrat or Republican.

Will President Obama End the War?

I just heard Obama on a 60 Minutes interview avow that his first executive action would be to call together the Joint Chiefs of Staff and develop a plan to end the war in Iraq. He used plenty of qualifiers like "safely" to describe how the war would be ended. I hope he means to end the war and the qualifiers don't stretch the war out another four or eight years.

I plan to vote for Obama if I'm still above ground in November. The first reason I voted for him in the primary election was that I thought he was the candidate most likely to end the war, at least after it was clear Dennis Kucinich would not be on the ballot.

But I think we must be clear that voting is not a substitute for anti-war organizing, argument, protest or war resistance. There is profit in war and, therefore, almost never can there be a political solution. Public opposition to war can bring a Republican war to an end. Without opposition, the Democrats may well wage war without end. The structural incentives for war are too tempting for any party in power to resist.

If popular opinion really mattered in policy to end war, the 2006 elections should have made a difference, but they didn't.

This is the first time in two years I have thought the Democrats might win the 2008 election. I have dreading, but predicting, a McCain victory since last summer when he was still in the tank in the polls. I thought he would beat Hillary in November. The main factor I misjudged was Obama's internet fund raising. I thought by now a Republican propaganda machine would have dumped a half a billion dollars smearing anyone who had the misfortune to get the Democratic nomination. If Obama ends October spending more money than McCain the smearing is neutralized, or at least equalized. The other factor appears to be the timing of the collapse of capitalism for this September. I am not sure that is what is happening, but whatever is going on, it can't be good for Republicans. Even with McCain now making noises like Paul Sweeney, it seems incredible that anyone would believe him.

Back to Obama and the war. With a McCain presidency the need for an anti-war movement was clear (if the war is ever to end). With an Obama presidency, we should know by the end of January if the war will end. If not, the anti-war community should not give him a break because he is a Democrat.

Ed Talks Money Management

For only the sixth time in its history, the Dow Jones lost more than 500 points today, dropping about 3% of its value. This is small potatoes compared to Black Monday in which it lost 22% of its value in 1987. Some of the other big drops were related to political fears such as the outbreak of War in Europe in 1914 and the 9-11 attack in 2001.

I called the children and assured them that we had lost not one penny in the crash, so I see no great change in the ability to pay tuition. We didn't lose anything on Black Monday in 1987, either. In fact, we haven't had any stocks since the kids were young in the early eighties.

I was born with stock. My grandmother used to say, "There are shanty town Irish and silk stocking Irish, but we're stock and bond Irish." She also used to tell me the first investment was in education, because when the market crashed, no one could take away the education.

I got rid of the stock I had inherited (and the very little I bought on my own) because I was suing corporations. I did not want any issue that I had a conflict of interest by keeping stock in companies I may want to sue. Beyond that, an incipient ill-informed Marxism made it harder and harder for me to own that stock.

I was a naive quite conservative Texas Democrat when I showed up in Chile in 1972. ITT's involvement in undermining and eventually murdering Salvador Allende was a story that unfolded both while I was there and then over the years. It was not the sort of thing to give you a warm and cuddly feeling about the corporations, and this was before I heard of the likely Heinrich Himmler connection to ITT. The more I saw of corporations, the more absolutely evil they looked to me. Union Carbide and the Bhopal disaster pretty well sealed it in 1984.

Besides, I've always managed to spend about 110% of my income, no matter how high or low it is. It is helpful to be morally opposed to investing in stock when you can't make yourself save money anyway.

The kids are well-educated, though. So today I am gratified that I have not taken the foolish course of investing for retirement or our old age. Nothing ventured, nothing lost.

Sarah Palin--We've Done Worse

I  like this Sarah Palin choice.  Of course, I won't vote for her.  After all, she has confessed publicly to being a Republican.  But that aside, she rests well with me.

All those things McCain says about himself like "maverick" and "independent" that were probably true about him long, long ago, before he married into all that money and then got caught up in the Keating Five mess, may still be true about Palin.

First, is experience really necessary for the presidency or any other position of power?   I think choosing Congressmen based on who last won a multimillion dollar lottery in the district would be a good idea.  I think judges should be chosen randomly, a big drawing, say on the courthouse steps with ping ping balls, among the lawyers qualified to serve.  One big national drawing, with many, many ping pong balls, to choose the president based on all eligible voters would work for me.

Sarah Palin is about as close to a randomly selected candidate as we could get without throwing 250 million ping pong balls in a giant hamster cage.  She far more represents our demographics that the traditional rich, white, male, Yale, Skull and Bones vs. rich, white, male, Yale, Skull and Bones that was inflicted upon us in 2004.

She is a woman.  This is good.  The six years, six colleges including a junior college is endearing to me as well.  I like the basketball playing, the moose hunting, the beauty pageants and the marihuana sampling.  I like this messy bundle of kids of all ages and the Eskimo husband.  I also like that she drove everybody nuts when she got elected Governor.  I feel like I could be related to her or maybe she was the type of girl who could have had a thing with Uncle Tiger when he was a football star in high school.  

I see her as a wild, loose cannon who is too new and too little connected to be controlled.  I saw Huckabee much the same way.  If she can become president quickly rather than waiting until the lobbyists have an opportunity to give her some "experience," she could prove to be a surprising treat and a nightmare for the oligarchy.

I know she presents herself as an anti-environmentalist and a war-monger, but we seem to get those characteristics no matter who we elect.  

There are the only a couple of things that give me pause:

1.  I fear she doesn't believe in dinosaurs.  There are ways to reconcile dinosaurs with creationism and she may have decided upon one, but so far I cannot find it on the internet.   This should be her first major policy statement.  I would like a president who believes in dinosaurs.

2.  I still haven't heard if she has read Shakespeare and the Bible.  I understand that you can get a degree in journalism and miss these things.  Also, I don't mean reading the Bible in that "verse for a day" sort of way that you get at Sunday School.  I would like to think she has struggled with people like Lot, Onan and sick, crazy old David.  If she has not, rather than wasting a bunch of time with Joe Lieberman being "briefed," I urge she head out to the tundra with the Collected Works and that big Bible on the coffee table.

We could do, and usually have done, worse.

The Bundlers and Predicting Presidential Elections

Last summer when McCain's star had fallen, I had a feeling he would still win the presidency based on articles I was reading about his campaign support.   Early in Bush's second term, I began to read McCain had lined up the "Bush Bundlers."   The three best sources I have found for following the money are The Economist, The Financial Times, both conservative London newspapers filled with ads for expensive wristwatches and the International Socialist Review (no wristwatch ads at all).  The ISR quotes the Economist and the Financial Times often.   All three magazines seem to focus on the same information and believe the same subjects to be important.  I don't know why this amuses me so much, but it does.

At any rate, last summer, because these three sources assumed the race would be between McCain and Clinton and that McCain would ultimately win, I accepted this view.  And I have discovered the more I ignore issues, personalities, polls and the like and just watch the money, the better are my predictions.  Of course issues, personalities and polls can influence how much money a candidate receives, but the flurry of daily excitement about who has photos in drag and who has used cocaine and whose teenager is pregnant may impact polls, but money straightens all of that out.

I don't think McCain won the primaries because of his extraordinary personal story.  He had this same extraordinary story when he ran in the primaries against George W. (whose personal story is like Prince Hal's, but without the heroic ending) and it did him little good then.

Also, it is not nearly as important how much money you have as how much you know you will get.  That is why, when McCain was broke last summer, if he really had lined up the bush bundlers, we knew he would pull through.

So how did we go wrong on Clinton and why is Obama still alive even after the traditional August mauling designed by Lee Atwater?  My feeling is that bundlers are less of the picture this time around.   

For now, the bundler contributions to Obama and McCain are about even-- $75 million for McCain and $63 million for Obama.  Obama though has raised a total of $390 million to McCain's $175 million.   This Obama tally is a huge number.  Bush spent $367 million in 2004. The difference is Obama has received half of his money in contributions of $200 or less and McCain has received only 25%.  And Obama has twice as many small contributors, 187,000 to McCain's 94,000.

I suspect McCain will get a big contribution boost in these last two months before the election.  I still think McCain will be able to spend more in 2008 than Bush did in 2004.  Also, "independent groups" will muddy the waters and the RNC had about $70 million to spend at the beginning of July.  Some of the more disgusting campaign contributors will time the money for the last month so it does less damage to their candidate by being disclosed after the election.  Look for a couple of hundred million being spent to remind us that Obama is part Negro (not in those words, of course, but the message will be clear) in the next two months.

In Praise of Idleness

If I were around to advise myself when I was young I would have urged myself to relax, take a little more time, don't work so hard.  I would have encouraged my young self to finish college later, start law school later, travel more, study languages for a while.  I would have tried to get myself to drive less expensive vehicles (if any at all) and definitely not buy any houses.

I would try to send myself to St. John's College in Santa Fe where my son went instead of rushing through UT.  I would tell myself to go to Thurgood Marshall Law School where my daughter goes, instead of UT Law.

I would try to keep myself from running for any office (I ran twice) and not get involved in anyone else's campaign.  I would tell myself to avoid politics.

There are also a number of clients and lawsuits I would advise against.   Life is too short.

Of course, I probably would not have listened.  All of that ambition came from somewhere and I lacked the wisdom to let it go.  Not that it has come to much.  That is the trick, of course.  Dr. Faustus and many of us sell to this devil and then what we get in return is a bag of tricks.

Why has my life been so plagued with work ethic?  From where springs this foolish notion that work and achievement should have value?

Does anyone talk about Max Weber any more?  Once we could safely blame the work ethic on Protestantism.  Also, we talked about cold weather, warm weather differences.  The Puritans who went to the Caribbean were said to be soon happily munching tropical fruits in leisure while their New England cousins worked hard to prepare for the winter.  We talked about the ant and the grasshopper.  Why in the world did I ever want to be an ant?  Or for that matter someone who lived where there are winters?  Or even a Protestant?

Now there is a modern proponent of Idleness.  Tom Hodgkinson has a magazine, blog and book.  The blog is called The Idler.  http://idler.co.uk/

My I especially recommend the quotes he has posted in the left hand corner of each page.

Siesta

Thank goodness I got my nap in today. I haven't always managed to get a daily nap, but those periods of overly ambitious co-counsel or judges are part of the wastelands of my life, looking back. The productive periods, the joyful periods, the sane periods have all included the afternoon nap.

My Grandpa Casebier climbed down from his tractor and took a nap every day. Grandma Casebier called him lazy for the sixty-plus years he did so.

In the early 80's, I tried a workers' compensation case in front of an elderly judge who broke each day at noon. Now it is true the "two day trial" lasted a week, but I still think the quality of justice was higher than usual. My opposing counsel was not rested; he complained all week and drove an hour back to his office to work the rest of the day. I took a nap and a swim and read over the work for the next day. I recommend this approach to the judiciary; most of the rest of the week after a two day trial is needed for recovery anyway.

I love nap stories. When George McGovern called LBJ to ask Johnson for advice in his campaign for the presidency after McGovern won the democratic nomination, Johnson told him to take nap in his pajama's every day.

I was discussing naps with Dan Boyd today. (We once were young enough we talked about girls, then politics, then law and now naps-are these the passages in life?). Dan relates John Kenneth Galbraith nap stories. Galbraith who died at 97 took daily naps, even during busy periods such as when he was John Kennedy' ambassador to India. President Lyndon Johnson called Galbraith during a nap and Galbreath's housekeeper refused to interrupt his nap.

So do naps help you live longer? I don't know, but I like this quote:

The recent study following nearly 24,000 people for on average 6 years found that those who regularly took midday naps were nearly 40% less likely to die from heart disease than non-nappers. Researchers suggested siestas might protect the heart by reducing stress hormones levels. They found "people who took at least three naps per week lasting 30 minutes or longer had a 37% reduced risk of death from heart disease than their non-napping counterparts. Those subjects who occasionally took short naps lasting less than half an hour had a 12% lower risk than people who never napped... The results suggest that taking naps might be
just as important to protecting the heart as other measures, he says, including eating right and taking cholesterol-lowering drugs... http://ajpendo.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/292/1/E253

My friend Paul, the Lebanese Arabic Scholar, regularly slips away for his naps. He seems to me one of the saner guys in either courthouse.

Apparently there is some contrary evidence. Retirees who sleep a lot during the day don't seem to do very well.

But over all, nappers appear to be more productive, healthier, happier and longer lived than non-nappers. Of course there is a difference between causation and correlation. It may be that people who are productive and happy, give themselves a break and take a nap. It may be that those who work in the meat packing plants and field labor and other hazardous jobs don't get a chance to nap.

What is the downside to spending all that time napping? I hear plenty of anecdotes about super-achievers who slept three hours a night for a lifetime and used every waking hour to do things like cure cancer, write the great American novel or win the Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe so.

My sense, though, is that no normal lifespan is really long enough to accomplish much. Certainly, not without extraordinary skills (I may have some, but they have not yet surfaced in the first 57 years). So, barring the tyranny of man or circumstance, I'll be napping every day at about 3 pm.

State Subsidized Usury and the End of the Republic

Although many things may batter this poor former Republic, I think usury may deliver the fatal blow.    Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson who swung through the revolving door from Goldman Sachs now proposes a $300 billion promise to save Fannie Mae stock prices by having the government buy up the stock.  This drops decades of right wing propaganda that markets make wiser decisions than governments right down the toilet, but likely few will notice.  

William Greider advocates solutions in the most recent issue of The Nation.  One is:  "Nationalize Fannie Mae and other government-supported enterprises instead of coddling them. Restore them to their original status as nonprofit federal agencies that provide a valuable service to housing and other markets.  Make the investors eat their losses.  Buy the shares at 2 cents on the dollar.  Without a federal guarantee, these firms are doomed anyway."

Another I like is:  "Re-enact the federal law against usury.... Maybe in the deepening crisis, Washington will begin to grasp that money is also a moral issue."

Money is a moral issue.  Probably the most important.  

Anyone who has ever sat down at a poker table knows that the guy with the biggest bankroll can dominate the game.  That is why tournaments set the amount to buy into the game.  That is why the kitchen table player does not want to accidentally wander into a game where everyone else has a fat bankroll.  The kitchen table player may know the exact odds of drawing to the flush in a given hand and be the most skilled player in the room, but if everyone else has a lot more money, he likely won't last long enough to show he's better.

Every poor guy trying to get a house or a car or groceries until the next check is completely at the mercy of the lender with the big bankroll.  Especially when, as now, that lender can also buy up enough influence to be able to take the poor guys' taxes to replenish his bankroll if the lender makes a mess of things.

Over time, the people with money who will lend it out for interest will eventually get everyone else's money.  Societies must build in a correction.  Moral societies must prohibit lending for interest and have periodic forgiveness of debts.  

On this cycle of government sponsored extortion and usury leading to debt slavery and wage slavery, we have only begun to see how bad things can get.  People have maxed out the credit cards and are upside down on houses and cars.  People have borrowed all there is to borrow on the next pay check.  It will get ugly.

Can there every really be a Chigurh?

Are there any Anton Chigurh's in real life?  Anton Chigurh, the villain in No Country for Old Men, is now and newly one of my favorite villains ever.  

My first is still Alex from Clockwork Orange:  Ho, ho, ho! Well, if it isn't fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in poison! How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou! 

Isn't Burgess' invented argot great?  I especially liked the (I believe more realistic) novel version of Clockwork Orange in which Alex and his three droogs just get too old and tired for the foolishness.

So, Alex is still my favorite, but Chigurh is high on the list.  Up there with Hannibal. 

And of course I liked the movie, No Country for Old Men.  So these musings are not criticism.  This is the type of movie of which I will watch ten minute snippets for a long time during sessions of mind-numbing channel surfing.

But can Chigurh really live outside of the movies or is he more like Superman and Batman and Shrek?  That is,  possible, perhaps, but highly unlikely.

I have never run into anyone remotely like Chigurh.  The murderers I have known have been more sad than frightening.

I have raised this question many times since seeing the movie.  There is a certain type of response in which the answerer will nod sagely and with a certain sympathy and contempt for my naivete assure me that human evil has no bounds and Chigurhs are all around us.  

I doubt it though.  The people who I have asked who likely would have encountered such as Chigurh don't see him as likely to grow in real life.  Old criminal lawyers, forensic psychiatrists and priests would perhaps be the best ones to ask.  Among that group, from my limited polling, no one has met Chigurh.

There are serial killers in real life who have killed more than Chigurh.  But the nature of Chigurh is what makes him frightening.  He is not grabbing prostitutes and skulking away, but can be (albeit uncontrollable) a weapon.

My hunch is the reason Chigurh seems impossible to me is that serial killer types (Bundy, Gacy, Lucas) are always so damaged otherwise, that it seems unlikely they would function at the level of a Chigurh, attacking a drug lord power structure and winning.

One theory that I like that makes Chigurh believable is that he is the invention of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell.  Sheriff Bell creates Chigurh to sweep the trash out of his county:

Bell on the nature of Chigurh:

El Paso Sheriff: He's just a goddamn homicidal lunatic, Ed Tom. 
Ed Tom Bell: I'm not sure he's a lunatic. 
El Paso Sheriff: Yea well what would you call him? 
Ed Tom Bell: Well, sometimes I think he's pretty much a ghost.

Free Will and Determinism

I have been chewing on the idea of "free will" since I had a conversation with Mark Bennett last month. An abridged version of Mark's argument is presented in one of his blog postings: http://bennettandbennett.com/blog/2008/07/congratulations.html#comments

Mark raised the issue of Free Will and my initial response was to agree with him that there is none. Of course, as is my wont, pondering the question, I have waivered back and forth a dozen times. I can't decide if I have the power to decide if I have free will. Oh well.

I first resolved this issue in my mind in high school. I read Skinner's Walden Two and was persuaded that we become what we are because of heredity and environment.

I think I have been especially tolerant of other's foibles as a result of this view, but I am open to the possibility that I wanted to set the bar low for forgiveness for my own foibles. In this case, the philosophy would have followed the personal need, which of course would say less about the truth of the philosophy than the nature of the believer.

Other beliefs I have held, though at some times to me the pellucid truth at other times seem only a convenient justification for my shortcomings. I have often doubted the existence of hell, but was this because I could not face the prospects of finding myself there? I have long had socialistic tendencies, but has this arisen because of a suspicion that I have no knack for making money?

Anyway, determinism (at least by heredity and environment) has had its appeal for me. It helped me love people I was supposed to love although they were severely damaged human beings. It let me off the hook on my own damage.

My problem with determinism of the heredity and environment type is it appears to have lot in common with determinism of the Calvanistic, God has chosen us but not you people, type.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church endorses free will:

1704 The human person participates in the light and power of the divine Spirit. By his reason, he is capable of understanding the order of things established by the Creator. By free will, he is capable of directing himself toward his true good. He finds his perfection "in seeking and loving what is true and good."7

But the teaching of the Church seem to be more complex than this. As I recall my muddled reading of Augustine, he rejected free will. And I have previously written about Pascal's dispute with the Jesuits in which Pascal defends something very much like determinism.

Lord, why have you not blessed me with the environment and heredity to give me a better mind to figure this out? Or even prearranged environment and heredity would keep my friends who understand this better than I do alive and healthy and nearby, so they can explain it to me?

Mark Bennett says,

I’d like to congratulate the lawyers who prosecute, and the judges who sentence them, for the “choices” that they’ve made that put them at the top and my clients at the bottom. . . . and, for that matter, anyone else who is smugly self-righteous about his lot in life.

Generally, he views the determinists as tolerant and the free will crowd as intolerant. I'm not sure this is true. Even winning the argument that heredity and environment has put us where we are, what is to keep the winners in society from fighting to hold that position?

Wireless Brownsville

St. Cloud, Florida has provided a free wireless network to anyone in the city limits. http://www.stcloud.org/documents/Cyber%20Spot/Cyber%20Spot%20FAQ_1.pdf

This is a 15 square mile grid and cost $3 million to set up. Brownsville is more than 80 square miles so, the project would not be as simple.

Many big cities like San Francisco and Philadelphia had similar wireless plans, but the projects have run into trouble when the service provider EarthLink reneged on the deal.

Some areas such as NYC have aimed more at providing wireless parks and public buildings.

I don't know whether any of this is feasible for Brownsville, but it would seem the potential would be great.

Providing greater access to computers would be nice also. What would it cost to give a laptop to every 6th grader? I recall Newt Gingrich had a similar plan, so this is not just my personal weirdness. (Though it may be a shared weirdness--sort of a Folie a Deux for politicos.)

I have heard about the $100 laptop plan for poor areas. We should qualify. Even without that computers have gotten less and less expensive. I am typing this on a $300 computer called ASUS eee. It is cheap because it dodges Microsoft by using the Linux operating system (which I prefer).

I think of the flowering that Brownsville kids had when JJ Guajardo and others decided to teach them chess. All of a sudden, Russell Elementary kids being raised without the benefits of Suburbans, summer camps and math clinics were on a level with the top students in the most expensive schools in the country.

Hillary for VP

I was at my son's wedding reception in St. Louis this weekend when a rumor swept the hall that Hillary had been chosen as Vice President nominee by Obama. I think Randall (the one whose life, I argue, has not been a failure) got a call from his wife and started the rumor. I told several people myself. Later we all ran to the TV and the internet to confirm the story, but no one else seems to have heard of it.

Dr. K thought Obama would pick Caroline Kennedy or a Republican Chuck Hagel so he was surprised. I thought ultimately Obama would pick Hillary so I felt vindicated. But now it appears my gloating was premature. However, I still think she should be chosen.

I am not a big fan of Hillary's and did not vote for her in the primary, but I think she would be a good choice for several reasons. First, it would be the democratic thing to do. She did after all get the second most votes. The Constitution originally gave the Vice Presidency to the second place winner, regardless of party, so this is not exactly a new concept. Second, she appears to have a base of support different from Obama's. I don't know why this is, really, but if it is so, it would be ticket balancing. I assume Obama will carry New York without Hillary, but I do know my wife, mother and sister all supported Obama and they would be happier with her on the ticket. Third, my wife, sister and mother all supported Hillary and I don't want to have to hear about it if Obama picks someone else and loses.

In the primaries, just 1.3 million Texans voted Republican compared to almost 2.9 million who voted Democrat. The Nation magazine has an article this week that makes the argument that Texas could turn blue. The enthusiasm shown by Hillary supporters, especially on issues like health insurance and mortgage relief, at the county convention make me think a Texas upset might be possible.

Downtown Brownsville Without Cars

As I drove down Elizabeth Street this morning, I passed a man, about my age, driving his motorized wheel chair in the other direction.  He was holding a red and white umbrella to shelter him from a light rain.

Motorized wheelchairs are common in front of our house as well.  I assume many originate from the high rise nursing home I see through the cane out my window behind the computer screen.  Most are decorated with flags and bumper stickers.

Also, the HEB carts are common and I now from time to time add the adult tricycle to the mix.  We have always had a lot of people walking in groups or alone.  Cars seem to be increasingly rare as gas prices soar.  I can still afford to drive, but I don't think most of my neighbors really can.  Liability insurance costs have long since priced many Brownsville drivers out of the range of driving legally.  Now $4.00 a gallon gas is finishing this group off as well.  If it hits $6.00 by the end of the year as has been predicted I bet people start selling their cars.

Why not, City Fathers, just make this the way of life in downtown Brownsville.  I propose taking a rectangle from Fronton to Tyler, East 14th to Palm and closing it to private automobiles and most trucks.  If we are really bold, we can extend it to include UT Brownsville as well.

I suppose there would need to be a way for freight to be moved in and out so the merchants could get the ropa usada, Chinese knickknacks and  sacks of pinto beans in and out, but we can still make the whole area safe for motorized wheelchairs, HEB carts, walkers and bicyclers.  It works in other cities.

We would need some public transportation, of course.  Buses or trams or a train or a horse or mule drawn carriage or gondolas, to get to the edge of the rectangle.  Parking would need to be available somewhere outside the triangle.

Maybe certain merchants and craftsmen would get a boost.  The complaint about shopping in downtown Brownsville is there is no place to park.  Without cars, the streets that are too crowded for the cars would be abundantly adequate for the pedestrians and bicyclists.

Maybe it could be like a San Antonio Riverwalk, just not as stretched out.  My favorite European city has always been Venice.  I just now realize why:  no cars.  

Kennedy v. Louisiana: I Agree 2 -- More Thoughts

Justice Alito argues in his dissent that there is not a national consensus to prohibit child rape that could be reflected in the "evolving standards of decency."  He's probably right about that.  As he notes, the language in the Coker decision thirty years ago prohibiting the death penalty for rape of an adult woman was broad enough to allow most state legislatures to assume that a murder was required for death.  That was pretty well my assumption and I assumed the Texas legislature was doing its usual meaningless posturing when the death penalty was extended to the death penalty for child rapes.

I think judges are more reluctant than the communities "standards of decency" to impose the death penalty in rape.  The confidence level that a crime has been committed in a murder tends to be higher in a murder than with a rape.  With a murder there is usually a body and a murder weapon.  It is of course possible to confuse a murder with an accident or a suicide and it is possible to get mixed up about who did it.  With a rape, there are the issues of consent and even whether there has been a sexual act.   

So if rape can be worse than murder (and it can) why not forge ahead and kill rapists?  Well, its the Scottsboro Boys.  It was 1931 and the Chattanooga to Memphis freight train was filled with young hoboes, white and black, male and female.  There was an altercation that involved the white teenagers being tossed off the train.  They complained to the stationmaster who wired ahead and a posse Paint Rock, Alabama stopped the train.  They unloaded all the blacks they can find, tied them up, threw them on a flatbed truck and hauled them to the jail in Scottsboro, Alabama.

They were brutalized legally and in the jail system.  They were given the death penalty without lawyers.  The racism was undisguised.  The case became a international scandal and new law was made trying to find a way to keep Alabama from lynching the young men.

Most likely from the examining doctor's testimony a rape was never committed.  The girls had been seized by the posse in Alabama and were under pressure to cooperate.  The doctor found sperm, but it was not motile and too old to be from the train ride.

As I remember the history I read years ago, had it not been for the American Communist Party the teenagers would most certainly have been hanged.  The NAACP was a afraid of the case because of the issue of rape.  Other normally activist groups were similarly passive.

A black on white rape was easy to allege, hard to deny and could serve as a great tool to control an under-class.  I think this is part of the reticence today to apply the death penalty to race cases.

However, I understand the reluctance of Mr. BB and others to rely on "evolving standards of decency."  I have written before here about the risk that evolution can give a bigger or a smaller product at the end of the process.  Little horses have evolved into big horses, but big armadillos have evolved into little armadillos.  Our sense of dignity historically allowed genocide against different Indian peoples and could well evolve into mass murder and internment camps again.

The confidence placed in the written word is misplaced though.  How much is the Article I, the Texas Bill of Rights honored?  Was has become of being secure in a persons, etc?  Where are those 4th, 5th, and 8th Amendments when we need them?

Original intent is very logical, but are we willing to swallow the pill that comes with it.  Our evolving sense of dignity has rejected both banishment and punishment by hard labor.  Do we want these back?

The founders' sense of decency allowed slavery and prohibited women the vote.  Are we ready to return to those wise days?

And as Mr. WC notes, homosexual acts could bring the death penalty.  In fact one Joseph Ross was executed for "buggery" by the state of Pennsylvania in 1785.  That's not all, though.

 Blasphemy and idolatry were capital crimes in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.  Adultery was capital in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York.  Sodomy and bestiality were capital throughout the northern colonies, even for the animals involved.

Other capital crimes included robbery, burglary, arson, manslaughter, rape, highway robbery, maiming, burglary, arson, witchcraft, counterfeiting, squatting on Indian land, prison-breaking, piracy, perjury, embezzling tobacco, fraudulently delivering tobacco, forging inspectors' stamps for tobacco, smuggling tobacco, stealing hogs, receiving a stolen horse and concealing property to defraud creditors and burning timber intended for house frames.  

There were special capital statutes applicable only to blacks.  These included burning or destroying any grain, commodities, or manufactured goods, enticing other slaves to run away or "bruising" whites.  Virginia feared attempts at poisoning and made it an offense for blacks to prepare or administer medicine.

I hope an execution for most of these offenses would offend the sense of decency for most of us.  The colonial and state legislatures, though, gathered a majority to allow an execution for all of these laws.

Can't we acknowledge the sense of decency has and should change?  Or should go round up a black pharmacist and kill him to avoid the threat of poisoning?

Kennedy v. Louisiana: I agree.

Kennedy v. Louisiana.  This is the case that told Louisiana they could not execute a man convicted of child rape.  I have finally, and somewhat belatedly, waded through the 65 page decision and am no ready to toss my two cents on the scale.  I would have voted with the majority and prohibited the execution, but I may have given my own concurring decision.  Not that my opinion matters much, but since I get to give it for free, why not?

Let me first, though, describe my friend who while waiting for the bar results and impoverished, worked in a chicken factory in  East Texas.  I never saw the place, but she described it as thousands of chickens in all stages of hunger, drugging, narrow confinement and slaughter.  It was twenty years later and she would not eat a chicken.

I will confess that I view every new Supreme Court decision through images of thirty plus years of watching the hunger, drugging, narrow confinement and slaughter of human beings.  Not only do I lack the desire to eat them, I just don't see much point in their confinement and slaughter anymore.

So why not kill child rapists?  I don't dispute the proposition that rape can be a more depraved crime than  murder.  Rape can destroy a life just as effectively as a bullet in the brain.  Most of the sexual predators I have represented were childhood victims of rape.  It is much like those horror movies in which, once bitten by the vampire, you become one.  

Moreover, a lot of murders are not particularly depraved.  Anecdotally, at least, they make the best trustees.  The murderess who is chosen to be the nanny to the warden's children is part of prison lore.  My dear old dad requested a parolee as a care-taker and, believing the lore, asked for a murderer.  I ended up putting him in a nursing home instead, but the sentiment was there.

A lot of crimes are more depraved than murder.  Bhopal for instance.  AT&T in Chile.  IBM in Nazi Germany.  Asbestos companies.  The Pinto gas tank.  The War in Iraq.  

So, for me, the proportionality argument does fall flat.  But I have other and I think better arguments why the decision was correct.  More later.

Lynchings, Poverty and Executions

I'm only recently back from my annual pilgrimage to Gerry Spence's Thunderhead Ranch near Dubois, Wyoming.  Sara and I went for the capital punishment seminar.  Sara is returning as an intern for the Trial Lawyer College this summer.

I have attended since 2001.  The top defenders in death penalty cases come from around the country to work on their cases.  

A week of death is not exactly a cheery prospect, but the weather is cool, the surroundings are peaceful.  Because there is no internet or cell phone access, we have an enforced isolation that allows reflection.

This is a very unselfish group of lawyers.  Lawyers in other fields often hide their secrets of success.  Professional jealousy and the competition for clients may result in protecting what little is known to make sure some other lawyer doesn't get the case.  Capital punishment defense lawyers do not do this.  No one ever knows if the next case is the one that will result in the type of melancholy that ends a career.

So skills and ideas are shared freely, making it an easy field to enter.  And of course poverty and crime are a growth industry.

One interesting discussion is the relationship between slavery and the death penalty.  States with a legacy of slavery are far more likely to have the death penalty.  To the extent the lynchings were used to enforce slavery and then Jim Crow laws, those areas continue with the death penalty.  A map provided to me by my scholarly friend, Phillip Cowen, darkens the counties that had lynchings; Phillip argues there is a correlation between the lynchings in past and legal executions today.  Cameron County is of the darkest color.

Why would either be necessary?  I think they are rational.  If you want to terrorize an underclass to keep them from challenging people in power, lynchings and legal executions are a tool in the arsenal.    Because Cameron County has an extreme divide between rich and poor, we would expect many death sentences.  And we get them.

Tricycling Brownsville

So Jeff now daily rides his bicycle to the federal courthouse and parks under the awning while he presides for the Brownsville division over the defense of the huddled masses yearning to breath free. Anyway, with the usual dollop of mimetic desire, I too wanted to ride a bicycle to the courthouse.

Kathy, though, insisted that I could not walk without falling so the risk of a bicycle was too great for the meager amount of life insurance I had purchased. Because I suspected I was unable to qualify for more life insurance, we compromised on the adult tricycle. As it happens, Jeff had purchased the tricycle for his suegro who it seems is even more feeble than I am and he had only been able to ride it once.

Kathy and I headed for the island in Sara's truck, fighting all the way. My daughters thought it was fine if I rode a tricycle, but only if I wore a disguise, so no one would recognize me as their father--Groucho nose, glasses and mustache.

On the way back, somewhere along the way, the flag, you know, orange on a tall fiberglass pole, blew away.

Back on the ground in Brownsville, I raised the seat and tightened things up. Kathy insisted I ride around in the parking lot behind the house some before I ventured out. I also dug up an old bicycle cable with a lock on in that belongs to some long since stolen bicycle. I did fine in the parking lot so I ventured out into the larger world, humming the tune from Indiana Jones.

The first problem is car driving in downtown Brownsville is a blood sport and there are extra points for bicyclists. There was no way I could go on the busy streets. The next problem is that tricycles are wider than bicycles and it takes some calculation to make sure I didn't get stuck on a curb.

I soon discovered 8th Street, low traffic and a nice parking area halfway between the state and federal courthouses: a light pole perfect for locking up an adult tricycle. There wasn't a lot of other traffic.

This particular adult tricycle has a basket of a perfect size for my old beat-up leather briefcase.

However, there is the problem of sunburning the top of my bald pate. My usual straw fedora won't stay on with the blazing speed of an adult tricycle. I dug a gimme cap out of the closet that says "Relax" on the front and it seems to work.

The neighborhood kids are also out on their bikes and when I drive by they come out and join me for a couple of blocks. A half a dozen kids on bikes, one pulling another in a sort of bike trailer filled with yet another kid, cruising the wrong way down 8th street. It may appear to be an odd gathering, but outside of inmates, it has become the larger part of my contact with the world.

Jeff tells me this is a good green thing to do, but then he is much more hopeful about life. I just keep thinking how much money I could save if I could raise enough money to be able to afford to sell the car.

Pascal's First Three Provincial Letters

"Go West Young Man," is the phrase Horace Greeley famously stole from another editorial. "Read Pascal, Old Man" is what my kid suggests. So I have been trying.

I dutifully hopped on the adult tricycle loaned to me by Jeff (the retired syphilis hunter) and peddled over to the Brownsville Public Library. There, the only Pascal available was volume 30 out of the Great Books publication. So I check it out and I also picked up both volumes of the Syntopicon for browsing.

For the last several days, I have been reading The Provincial Letters.  It seemed reasonable to start at the beginning of the book, because I don't know enough about the writings to skip to the good parts.  Also, the last third is filled with science and math and equations that I will probably never be able to read.  Unfortunately several days of reading and re-reading has taken me only through the first three letters.

Austin sneers at the reading of interpretations, histories, biographies, etc. from the classic writers, but with hard guys, I tend to read around them a while before I can get up the courage to actually read the book. Sometimes I only read around them and never get to the book.

In the case of Pascal, except for the two page "Biographical Note" at the beginning of the Volume 30, I haven't read anything.  Usually, trying to get ready to read something this intimidating, I would first read a biography of Pascal, then I would read a history of 17th Century France, then I would read a history of mathematicians and then I would pick up a "the Best of" type of collection that has summaries and explanations surrounding snippets of original work.  The down side to this approach is that I may never actually read anything by the author I am reading about so I don't get a chance to see if I agree with any of the critiques.  For instance, I once read a good biography of James Joyce.  I still have both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake knocking around in the house, unread.

For what very little it may be worth, this is what I have gleaned from the first three Provincial Letters:  Pascal was attracted to a form of French Catholicism called Jansenism.  A theologian for the Jansenists named M. Arnauld was "brought before the Sorbonne" which seems to mean was tried in a court that decided correct theology.  The Sorbonne must have been large because 71 doctors tried to defend him and "on the other side" eighty secular doctors and some forty mendicant friars condemned him.

Pascal came to the rescue with these Provincial letters.  The orthodox view was promoted by the Jesuits and this was that every person had "sufficient grace" given to him by God to obey the divine commandments.  The Jansenists said, maybe so, every person has sufficient grace, but not every person was given by God the "efficacious grace," so they couldn't actually obey the divine commandments by putting this sufficient grace into action.

The Jesuits accused the Jansenists of believing like Protestants and in particular, Calvinists, that God had given this efficacious grace only to a chosen few.  Then there were fence straddlers who agreed with the Jansenists, but wanted to stay on the right side of the argument politically who said, "Sufficient grace is given to all, but not every one has the type of grace that will suffice."

Pascal notes that the choices given are being censured as a Jansenist, being a heretic or being a blockhead and offending against reason.

Pascal has one of his characters argue that silence is the safest position.  If you cannot remain silent, the next safest position is being a blockhead.

I'm sure there is a moral to this story, a punch-line to this joke, a crisis to be weathered, a lesson to be learned.  If I get to the end and figure it out, I'll let you know.  

Doocing

People seem to be willing to post almost anything on the internet, about themselves, about their friends, about their enemies, about their employers.  I have been amazed.  I don't know how to get on facebook, but I have seen it when the kids do and have been surprised at what all the youngsters will brag about--sexual escapades, employment hi-jinks, drug use.

I don't doubt these things have been topics among friends and acquaintances into pre-history, but now they are permanent and available to all.  In junior high school, we would quake because what we did was on our "permanent record."  Now it really is.  And if it seems cute enough at age 16, like a little tattoo of a pussy cat, say, at age 40 and beyond it becomes grotesque.  Now that aging tattoo is stretched  across continents and hardened into scarred pieces of old flesh.  It is like having that old shoplifting mug shot etched on your sagging jowls.

I suppose we may finally learn some tolerance with everyone's past being dragged around like a dead prehensile tail, but it is not (to my eyes) a pretty sight.

This is all new to me and requires teaching some new tricks to an old dog.   For a long time I resisted putting a "." in the middle of a sentence.  I've given up, of course, on that now.  I still don't know what various signals mean or how to use them.  LOL :-) :-( :-o, etc.  But I do now know "blog" is short for "web log" and I know the meaning of "doocing."

"Doocing" is:  

dooced adjective /dust/  having lost your job because of something you have put in an Internet weblog

dooce verb [T] (usually passive) /dus/
doocing noun [U/C] /dus/

The word came from a blog by Heather B. Armstrong, still in existence, dooce.com

 Ms. Armstrong coined the term by misspelling the word "doood," a term that must mean something to someone, but not me.  She was working as a blog designer, wrote about her employer and got fired.  She seems to have taken her fame on to bigger and better things based on the references to book signing parties on her blog, but her ultimate advice is as follows:

“I started this website in February 2001. A year later I was fired from my job for 

this website because I had written stories that included people in my workplace. 

My advice to you is BE YE NOT SO STUPID. Never write about work on the 

internet unless your boss knows and sanctions the fact that YOU ARE WRITING 

ABOUT WORK ON THE INTERNET.” 

Since Armstrong, there have been many notorious cases of people being dooced.  Ellen Simonetti was fired from Delta airlines for some hardly racy photographs of herself in an flight attendant uniform in an airplane.  Mark Jen was fired from Google for posting comparative pay benefits between Google and Microsoft.  Jessica Cutler was a staff assistant from an Ohio Senator who was posting anonymously, but was outed and then fired after she described her ventures into prostitution to augment her meager staff pay.

At this stage there is very little protection for employees of private employers who are not careful and offend their bosses.  The larger issues of defamation and disclosure of trade secrets are also being tested by the law.  I am interested in the legal developments related to blogging and plan to do a few posts along these lines.

Pigsmeat Spence and the return of Food Riots

Do you ever wake up in the morning thinking of Pigsmeat Spence.  Yes, this happened to me again this morning, so I thought it must be time to unburden myself.

Pigsmeat was about five feet tall.  He was born in 1750 and died in  1814.  He was one of nineteen children and spent a lot of time in jail.  He once got in a fight with a political opponent and was beat up with a quarterstaff.  (This is the English hardwood fighting stick Little John used in the Robin Hood story.)  He married, but his wife, preacher and publisher all died before Pigsmeat reached the age of 45, so he lived the last part of his life alone.  He was usually penniless.  He made some money teaching and selling tracts about politics and coining money.  He had a son who helped him some in his businesses and married a young pretty servant girl as his second wife, but she deserted him.

I have a warm spot for Pigsmeat: he could see the problems, but couldn't really figure out a good way to fix them, so he came up with a series of plans that confused his followers.  He was responding to the enclosures that were forcing people off the land and causing starvation.  He was thought to favor the nationalization of land, but he didn't trust the government believing the rich would use political power to take advantage of such a system.  He also advocated land owned by parishes for the benefit of people in the parish.  Critics complain his various plans were inconsistent and half-baked.  I see him, then, as a searcher after truth who says what he believes and then when he figures out it won't work says something else.

Pigsmeat's real name was Thomas.  He got the apodo of Pigsmeat after his publication, "Pig's Meat or Lessons for the Swinish Multitude."  Numismatists still value the tokens he minted to celebrate his magazine.

He took the name in response to an Edmund Burke quotation in response to the French Revolution, "Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude." 

The aristocracy was afraid the French and their revolutionary ideas were on the way.  Pigsmeat was especially peaved that the a local Duke hoarded the bounty of the land when people were hungry.  He says this:

What must I say to the French if they come? If they jeeringly ask me what I am fighting for? Must I tell them, "for my country"? My dear country in which I dare not pluck a nut? Would they not laugh at me? If the French came I would throw down my musket, saying: "Let such as the Duke of Portland, who claims the country, fight for it."

No wonder he kept getting in trouble.

Now why has Pigsmeat been bubbling up in my dreams?  The food riots, probably.  Pigsmeat Spence was formed by food riots.  His favorite preacher, addressed them in sermons.  (Where are these kinds of preachers now that we need them?)

Food riots in Malhalla, Egypt.  Food riots in Haiti where there has been a sharp increase in the sale of "dirt cookies," (cookies of mud with salt and shortening).  Also in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Maurtania, Senegal and Bangladesh.  Three  billion people survive on less than $2 per day.  In 2007 the price of grain rose by 42 percent and dairy products by 80 percent.  In the last twelve months alone what prices have increased by 130 percent, and rice by 74 percent.

In the United States food inflation is the highest in decades.  An unprecedented 28 million Americans are expected to receive food stamps to survive this year.

Today's Washington Post in an article by Colum Lynch says, "The United Nations is already struggling to avert a famine in Somalia and is feeding more than 2.7 million. 'What is of major concern is the thought that the entire emergency food system may not be able to cope,' according to an internal U.N. paper."