Thoughts About Free Will

The first exposure I had to the determinism-free will discussion was in elementary school when we attended the Calvary Baptist Church in McAllen, Texas. The argument was if God knows everything and is all-powerful, he knows ahead of time what we will do and he made us that way, so we can't really be making choices. Differently put, no one really chooses the next step in life if it has already been decided by an omnipotent, omniscient God.

As a little boy, intuitively, I thought I was making choices, but I also had a strong sense I was being tossed around by powers far greater than me.

Although Baptists tend to believe in Free Will, there has long been a Calvinist contingent among the Baptists:
"...the earliest Baptists were not Calvinists, even though they had their beginnings in a Calvinistic environment. It was a quarter of a century before Calvinist views appeared in Baptist life. Even then, for a considerable period of time there were two different groups of Baptists in England, General Baptists (non-Calvinistic) and Particular Baptists (Calvinistic). Later (1891) the two groups merged, but many congregations on both sides were suspicious of the merger and remained separate. In America, the first Baptist church (FBC of Providence, Rhode Island) had both Calvinists and non-Calvinists in its membership."

The big issue is whether God picked those who were going to hell and those going to heaven before birth.

We are long since Catholic converts, but that does not really resolve the issue, even though the Catechism now state,

"Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts."

The anti-Calvinist protestants accuse Calvin of having cribbed from the Catholic St. Augustine for a reliance on determinism. And The New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia (cited in the link) discusses the issue as far from settled. I discussed Pascal's falling out of favor with the powers of his day because of a Catholic belief in determinism.

Mostly now, people talk about biological and psychological determinism, but I think it is largely the same discussion as God's determinism.

My first exposure to this type of determinism was when I read Walden Two by B.F. Skinner when I was still in High School. I kept the intuition that I was making free choices, but I could not find an strong argument against Skinner's determinism.

In the decades since, I have seen little evidence that people have choice in life. At most, we have an illusion that we are making a choice, but that choice is determined by prior causes. Recently, I read Living Without Free Will by Derk Pereboom. He makes the case for "Hard Determinism" and "Hard Incompatibilism." That is, factors beyond our control produce all of our actions and this fact is incompatible with a belief we are praiseworthy or blameworthy for our actions.

If this is true (and Pereboom argues it as scientific fact), the implications for life and society are huge. For starters, it demonstrates our criminal justice system is based on a false premise.

Ice Will Suffice

I was recently sitting with a friend watching the river.  We were discussing how the world would end, or probably more accurately, how human beings would die out.

He urged, (correctly, I think) that it was inevitable we would blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons and the only question is when.  I suggested, that although I have a prejudice in favor of people over other species, this might leave a pleasant enough world for smaller creatures.   Chernobyl might be the pattern.  The horses and cows died and the human beings left or died. But the lynx and the eagle owl may have made a comeback after homo sapiens left their habitat.  Studies have shown plants like soy and certain rodents have evolved a tolerance for the radiation.  So the large animals may all died, but plants and smaller animals may thrive.

But I don't think we will be around long enough for the nuclear destruction.  The frogs are all dying.  Apparently a species of frog that lived with a certain fungus was shipped around the world for scientific experiments.  The fungus was fatal to other types of frogs and now all of the frogs are dying, all over the world.

There have been five mass extinctions before.  A mass extinction is defined to mean half the species on earth have died.  Now most of the scientists believe we are in mass extinction event number six.  It may have begun only in the last few decades or it may have begun 50,000 years ago.  A book called Twilight of the Mammoths by Paul S. Martin describes all the great animals in North America when human beings showed up.  These include mastodons (a type of big elephant), gomphotheres (an elephant with a mouth like a shovel), four species of mammoths (hairy elephants), ground sloths, a glyptodon (sort of a living PT Cruiser with a mace for a tail), giant armadillos, giant beavers, giant peccaries, dwarf antelopes, native camels and horses, saber-toothed and dirk-tooth cats and an American subspecies of the lion.  So maybe the frogs are almost an afterthought.

The problem, of course, if you are fond of certain human beings is that in these extinctions the big creatures tend to go, and we are a big creature.  The earliest extinction lost a number of different types of trilobites and they are all gone now.  It may be the sharks ate the rest of them.  I don't understand this web of life that includes the frogs and how they help hold the whole together, but I imagine that without the frogs to eat the bugs, the bugs will eat our food and us.  Also, it seems somewhat like the canary who dies in the cave before the miners start dying.  The frogs dying may just be a signal the hole we are digging is filling with poisonous gases.

Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus

Kindle books was giving away a Frankenstein novel for free and since I did not know if my debit card was exhausted or not, I opted to download and read it rather than various recommended best sellers.  Especially for free, it was worth the purchase.  And never before have I been more wrong about what I thought I knew about a book.

I thought I had read it before, but when I read it this time, since I did not recognize it all, maybe I never did.  I was relying on snippets of a dozen bad movies for my recollection of the book.

Did you know there is no Igor?    And Dr. Frankenstein is not an evil genius doctor at all, but a young college student who became over enthusiastic about his studies.  And the scene is set in cheery Geneva, Switzerland, not in some Eastern European castle.  And Victor Frankenstein does not flip a switch to turn on his creation, because he is still lighting up his studies with candles.  Nor were there batteries that could hold the lightning for animating the creature.  And Victor's Creation proves to be very intelligent.  He educates himself so he can persuade others about his point of view.

The book is published in 1818.  Mary Shelley had run away to Geneva with her then boyfriend, Percy Shelley, because if the creditors caught him in England, they would throw him in a debtor's prison.  They  had already scandalized society because Mary was pregnant and Percy was married to Harriet.  Harriet later conveniently drown herself so Mary and Percy could marry.  Mary became pregnant when she was 16 and Percy was 20.  If this had happened today in Texas, Percy would probably be prosecuted for Rape of a Child.

At any rate, Mary and her stepsister Claire Clairmont and Percy and Lord Byron and John William Polidori all stayed for a while at Lord Byron's house on Lake Geneva.  They were all telling ghost stories and out of that came Mary's Frankenstein.  Polidori wrote the first vampire story to be published in English.  Mary was 20 years old.

The title actually refers to the young student, Victor, and not his creation.  Victor is The Modern Prometheus.  That is, he steals fire from the gods, gives it to men and ends up being punished for eternity by having his liver eaten by an eagle, only to have it grow back and eaten again the next day.  Victor creates life out of dead material.  He has an understanding of watching the frog's leg jump and throw off a spark when it is touched with a scalpel.  By giving man this fire, he has to watch as the run away creation kills everyone he loves.

Mary grew up and hung around with the best poets and philosophers of the time, so it is not surprising she used Luigi Galvani's experiments as the basis for bring the creature to life.  Galvani thought animals were the source of the electricity.

Mary includes in her story, a false confession, a religious persecution of a muslim and the unintended consequences of the well-meaning scientist.  This all seems up to date.  Victor's creation wants a wife.  Victor won't create one because he fears the offspring will be so much superior to people, they will soon replace people. 

I suppose the genetic engineers are far enough along they could produce a creature bigger, stronger and smarter than people by tinkering with certain human genes.  Maybe this should be required reading. 

One thing I think Mary misjudged is that any creation could be so grotesque, no one would ever be able to look at it.  But Mary was just 20 and hadn't learned yet that we can get used to about anything.

OK, if not US Attorney, how about county court at law judge?

Still no word on the U.S. Attorney's office or the President's intentions along that line, so I remain unemployed. Perhaps my terms were too severe. Maybe we could put the office in Raymondville? Surely, Mr. President you do not expect me to go as far north Corpus Christi? At any rate, please do not feel rushed, my options are quite limited. One possibility, though is a race for county court at law.

The county court at law judgeship being vacated by Judge Robles and to which Judge Murray was appointed is of course in play. It appears the commissioners may have wanted a hot race, so I have to consider my obligation to help out.

The odds of me winning a race are negligible which is the only reason I would consider running. But to be fair, I better go ahead and let the voters know my requirements.

First, I'm not sure about this title, "Judge." Everybody from past and present who has ever been a city judge or a justice of the peace or U.S. Supreme Court Justice ends up being called "judge." I went to lunch recently and looked around the room and realized only the young woman serving the fideo and I could not claim to to be "Judge." Also, I would be unwilling to be called "Judge" for fear of the ultimate encounter with Someone who has the power to judge the quick and the dead.

I do call people by their titles, "Judge," "Father," "Doctor," especially when, in the pressure of the moment, I can't remember their names.

So for my title? "Your excellency," maybe. "Grand potentate?" After I saw a Robin Williams movie once, I tried to get the kids to call me, "O Captain, my Captain," but nobody would go along.

Now, how about clothes? Black robes never did much for me, except for prospect of being to wear pajamas underneath. On the other hand a powdered wig may be fun if the airconditioning is good enough.

Now to the practical part, I get stuck on the Mathew 7:1 stuff. So I really couldn't pass judgment on anyone. This means all those guys with the orange uniforms would likely get to go home. Besides, at the county court at law level, where everyone is accused of a misdemeanor, it is pretty hard to take many of those crimes seriously. Hot checks, DWI, possession of marihuana, prostitution, gambling, that sort of thing. "Go and sin no more." I've never heard a judge say that, but wouldn't it be fun to clear out a courtroom of defendants that way?

What about the civil cases? County court at law judges don't do divorces normally or injuctions, so that would save a lot of other unpleasantness. There are a fair share of car wreck cases. I believe my knowledge of insurance companies (contempt? disdain? scorn?) would make me especially "fair," in these cases.

This may not be so much a platform as a prediction of how things will go. Naturally, I would not bet on a second term or even surviving the first.

More likely, I'll make a bunch of push cards that say, "Experience, Integrity, Fairness," or "Justice for All," or "Character You Can Trust."

Who You Calling a Socialist?

Harold Meyerson is a Washington Post opinion editor.  In today's article (click on the title), he discusses all of this socialism talk.  He says the only "democratic socialists" he's encountered in DC are Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont and himself.  He says socialists don't want to nationalize industries anymore and Obama certainly isn't a socialist, but, like FDR, trying to save capitalism.  And that the capitalist system is failing on its own.

The new, uncrowned head of the opposition, Rush Limbaugh, likes to call everyone a socialist.  I wish Obama were a socialist, but it is clear to me he's not.  I have a socialist bookkeeper and and a socialist barber, but I'm not sure they're out of the closet on the issue.  So I think I can recognize a secret socialist and I just don't see it with Obama.  Rush is welcome to call and discuss this with me if he likes.

If I had to choose between Bernie Sanders to run things and Rush, I'd take Bernie.   But I don't want the government to take over the banks.  I'd like to go back to the days when branch banking was illegal and you knew your banker.  That way if he stole from you, he had to live next door or down the street and face you at the grocery store.  And if he was real bad, people could get together and tar and feather him.  But now banks are multi-headed hydra (with far more than the nine heads of the beast in Revelations) and much harder to kill.   Maybe it would be best if banks were turned into 24 hour libraries and coffee shops.  I don't want the government to take over the brokerage houses, but perhaps they could be converted into homeless shelters and public cafeterias.  I don't want the government to take over insurance companies.  I'm thinking ice cream parlors.  Anyway, you get the idea. 

 

I think if the government is to do anything, it should help poor people and not rich people, but I also think there are only rare periods in history when things work this way.  Maybe we are entering one now.  I hope so.  But in general, I think the rich will in the long run always corrupt government.

I have tried to read the doctrinal battles of various flavors of socialists and I find them as complex and impenetrable as the Sicilian defense.  

I like Big Bill Haywood, but I don't think he was really a socialist.  He was an anarchosyndicalist rather than a socialist.  He was in he Socialist Party of America for a while and campaigned for Eugene V. Debs, but Big Bill was too radical for the socialists and they tossed him out.

He was a bundle of other contradictions as well.  He was strongly anti-war, but when a Pinkerton man came to arrest Big Bill, Big Bill shot him.

I also like Big Bill's view of contracts, especially labor contracts.  He believed in industrial unions (that is, the whole industry rather than just trades, hence the Industrial Workers of the World) and not trade unions.  Trade unions tended to be racist and snotty about workers further down the pecking order from them.  Big Bill viewed most any contract for labor as a trap rather than a benefit for workers.  As soon as it becomes unfair, the workers should all be able to walk off the job.

I am not sure what Big Bill would make of today's world and Obama.  I am pretty sure he would not favor sending all of these soldiers to Afghanistan.  I doubt he would have bailed out IAG, more likely shut it down.  

Anyway, all you socialist-baiters, please be aware that socialists tend be calm, moderate people with whom you can negotiate and make contracts.  Before this particular collapse of capitalism is all over, and before the remains of the middle class is completely beat into submission, you may be wishing for more socialists.  

Who were America's best and worst presidents?

Who was the best president in my lifetime? In history?

These types of questions are asked a lot just now because Bush has shown himself to so appallingly bad and now we are teased with the possibility that Obama may be good.

So what does it take to be a good president? I've never agreed when the presidential historians make their rankings. Sort of like picking a good coach, it would seem we should have some ratings based on success. Success would seem to involve inflicting the least misery on the populace.

Two quick examples. Lincoln and FDR seem to be at the top of everybody's list, especially the historians (I've attached a link if you click on the title). I question this. Consider, would you want to live your life during the tenures of Lincoln and FDR of those of Jimmy Carter and Warren G. Harding?

If 620,000 people died in Civil War during Lincoln's tenure and 408,000 died under FDR, neither one would really be in the running. I'm not saying either caused their wars, I'm saying that the high misery index was on their watch and we can hardly give them top historical rankings, any more than we declare a losing coach the best just because he did not have good players.

Harding was only president for a couple of years, so I think FDR should be able to misery average, so his war deaths are spread over four terms. But even at that, Harding comes out pretty good (certainly better than Woodrow Wilson with WWI and 117,000 deaths on his account). So although Harding usually gets ranked as one of the worst, the only deaths to mar his service would come from the China Yangtze service that resulted in 5 deaths over a period of 20 years, and apparently none during his tenure. And he gets credit for pardoning Eugene V. Debs and releasing him from prison. This increased the happiness index for Debs and a lot of nervous socialists.

Jimmy Carter gets blamed only for 8 deaths in Iran during his tenure. And he gets credit for the Vietnam War draft dodger amnesties, this increased the happiness index for about 100,000 men who got to come home.

I don't think war deaths or pardons should be the only measures. I think the misery index should include unemployment and inflation (granted, Jimmy may get into trouble here). Percentage of the population in poverty or prison, health of the nation, numbers of work injuries, life expectancy, alcoholism, drug addiction, education are all areas that would make a good rating under a happiness/misery index.

Better historians than I am can help straighten this out, but I think it is a better system than "leadership qualities" that seem to have no concern for the numbers of countrymen who are butchered, impoverished and jailed.

Next President's Day, think of Warren and Jimmy.

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.