The New US Attorney

I don't think we have a new appointment for US for the Southern District. I heard some names floated and had heard that DA Armando Villalobos wants the job.

I doubt Armando would really be happy in the job and if he reconsiders and no one else wants the job (which I can understand)we may be short on candidates. So, I am considering stepping up to the plate.

This is not as completely far-fetched as my friends may think. It is true I've never been a prosecutor for philosophical, even religious, reasons, and that I don't believe in punishment as a goal of the criminal justice system. But my naysaying friends should consider three facts: 1. I could use the salary. 2. I was an early Obama supporter (after it became clear Kucinich would not get on the ballot). 3. I am an old buddy of Congressman Doggett (though I will deny this if it should ever become a campaign issue against him, like with that Chicago college teacher) and Doggett apparently is collecting the names for the selection process.

However, I must throw my hat in the ring with certain reservations. First, the office has to be moved to downtown Brownsville. I suffer from motion sickness when I go north of Ruben Torres Blvd. I think it has to do with the speed at which the earth spins at different latitudes.
Also, I don't think I could get anyone to loan me the money to buy a house in Houston and my credit's not good enough to rent. Although I like the concept of a homeless US Attorney and the empathy that may produce for the poor immigrant being prosecuted, I don't see how I could meet the federal court dress code of "dressing with dignity" while sleeping in a dumpster. Also, Kathy would probably complain.

Second, there are certain types of prosecutions that I can't do and I would have to take the appointment with the understanding we would dump these types of cases. Basically, these are the prosecutions that I believe come out of class warfare of the rich against the poor, North against South, and all those other nasty splits in society. I think immigration prosecutions are immoral, so those would have to go. That, of course, would put an end to immigrant transporting cases.

I think the war on drugs is really a war on poor people, so I would dump those prosecutions as well. If the drug trade goes so will the gun trade, for the most part.

That pretty well limits the prosecutions to Mexican shark fishermen and bad xerox copies of $20.00 bills. As worrisome as those crimes are to the Republic, I think we can probably squeak by with just me and a good secretary. This should save a lot of money.

Of course, I don't have the energy to mount a campaign on my own without risk of cutting into the afternoon naps, but if you think this is a good plan, I await the groundswell.

Happy Birthday Mr. Darwin

Today is 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. No doubt the national holiday will be called before the day is over.

I read the Autobiography and the Voyage of the Beagle many years ago and I have "read at" Origin, Descent and Expression of Emotions of Man and Animals. This last, the Expression of Emotions, I think is still important even with all the recent research.

Darwin wrote before the discovery of genes. Although he was a contemporary of Gregor Mendel, Mendel's work was lost until the 20th Century (Mendel was an abbot and his successor burned his papers). Somehow, even before genes and long before the human genome project, he managed to get it right.

What a great century the 19th Century was! Except for the United States and the Civil War, it was one of the more peaceful centuries. Inflation was low. And it produced Darwin, Freud and Marx. Of these three, I think Darwin has best survived modern discoveries, but it is quite an impressive collection.

To me the towering genius of the last thousand years is Tolstoy and he came out of the 19th Century, but Tolstoy was not writing science, so he was less likely become obsolete than Darwin.

I love the Darwin-Wallace story. I suspect I would like Wallace more than Darwin; not as stuffy, I'd guess. And more mod est on the struggle for scientific recognition. More likely to go native. More socialistic.

But I also like a detail guy and Darwin was sure one for details. And all these years later, even if the subject is vegetable mold, he is a delight to read.

When Austin was in High School at St. Joseph's, he was hoping to get a rise out of the Brothers by putting one of those Darwin Fishes on his car. I told him, "Fine, but read the Autobiography first, so if someone asks you about it, you won't be stump ignorant." I think it had a civilizing affect on the boy. If reading Darwin will temper male adolescence, what other cures might be in store.

Happy birthday, Charles Darwin and here's to the next 200 years.

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.