Jerry Reese Deposed

As late as mid-season, Jerry Reese, GM of the Giants, was a certified Football God.  In Reese We Trust was the motto of Giants fans.

Reese has joined God on the Nietschean scrap heap in the wake of the Giants' embarrassing loss to the Carolina Panthers in the last game EVER at Giants Stadium.  He looks fallible now, having created a defense that is being discussed as perhaps the worst in Giants history.  For Giants fans, that is intolerable.  We are proud of our history of defense.  To watch our team give up over 40 points FOUR times is something none of us ever thought we would do.  No, Jerry Reese now has something to prove, and he is going to receive a lot of advice on the Internet on how to do it.

Hey, I'm a Wahoo who remembers In Pete We Trust at the apogee of Pete Gillen's tenure at UVA.  We all know how that went.  There are no Gods.

So, Jerry, here is my advice on what the Giants need.  That's right, more unsolicited advice from a lay idiot.

Jerry, we need some scary linebackers.  Have you seen The Blind Side?  Yeah, you know that scene at the start where we see Joe Theismann's career end and the NFL change forever?  That was The Giants.  That IS The Giants.  Get us some scary fucking linebackers.  We have the wimpiest linebacking corps we've ever had.  We need big, fast monsters who are going to fly to the ball, blowing up anybody who gets in their way.  Linebackers who are a threat to crush the QB on a blitz, smother a back two yards behind the line of scrimmage on a sweep, and pulverize a WR on a crossing pattern.

Jerry, shame on you for entering the season with 1.5 NFL safeties.  We need two NFL starting-quality safeties.  I'm sorry about Kenny Phillips, and you get a pass for him, but we have to count on him never coming back.  Michael Johnson needs to be the third or fourth safety.

Jerry, get rid of Osi Umenyiora.  I've never liked his personality.  I think he is selfish and corrosive.  Get rid of Osi, move Canty to end, and bring in a new tackle.  Canty is not built to be a run-plugging tackle.  He's too long.  Canty and Kiwanuka can compete for Umenyiora's spot.  I'm not ready to bail on Rocky Bernard yet, but the Giants need to come to camp with at least two new bona fide starting DL candidates.  We need more push and clog from the DTs, and more plays from the DEs.  Mostly, we need the line to provide base pressure and keep the blockers off our linebackers.

Jerry, the offensive line is creaking.  I don't know why most of our line got Pro Bowl recognition, because the line as a whole was not dominant.  Eli came under a lot of pressure, and the backs didn't have a lot of wide open space.  We need a new starter.  Whether he wins a job this summer, or just forces the coaches to make a tough decision, he will improve the team.  We need one.

More than going down the units, though, the primary needs are turbulence on defense and pressure on offense.  Add a couple players on offense who will create competition in camp.  And the defense needs turnover.  It needs hunger.  It needs a flagship player in the front seven.  A disruptive force who makes opposing OCs install changes to the system when the Giants are up next on the schedule.

The Giants still have the core of a contender.  The QB is in place.  The receiving corps is there, and just needs to be kept fresh.  At least one new WR and one new TE are likely to be on next year's roster, but  not as starters.  The other units have NFL-quality components.  Three or four new players could have a decisive impact.  The changes that are needed can be made with the resources at hand.  The toughest job, of course, is finding that Disruptor.  It's also the most vital.

The coaching staff also needs some turnover.  The defensive staff needs to be blown up and redone.  The special teams need perhaps a new coach, or at least the current coach put on the hot seat.  Coughlin needs to re-evaluate, because his team was poorly coached.  Penalties, mistakes, confusion, poor decisions marked the season.

The Giants will return to the playoffs next year.  It was apparent early on that this was going to be a bad year. I said so in July, because of the injuries.  Next year should be better.  Fewer injuries, a few new players, a professional defensive coordinator, and better coaching will produce a playoff season.

O Holy Night

or Are We Living the Way We Should?

"Truly He taught us to love one another

His law is love and His gospel is peace

Chains He shall break, for the slave is our brother

And in His name all oppression shall cease."

- Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure, 1847

You've probably heard Anita Bryant sing it, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.  But not together.  Or probably not even on the same CD.  But if you're like me and make playlists on your iPod, probably on the same playlist.  It's a beautiful song, though in my mind mostly a meaningless hymn to an uncaring god.  I heard the verse above this morning while I was walking through the frozen remains of a Winter Wonderland to buy a package of shredded cheddar cheese, and at the end of it I thought, "Do we live that way?  Really?  Love and peace don't seem to be what our lives are about, and there is plenty of oppression.  If the verse is true about Christ and Christianity, then this supposed 'Christian nation' seems to be a very unChristian place."

No, Christ is no more relevant in America at this time of year than he is at Easter or any other time of year.  Christmas is about Consumption in modern America, where the unifying Creed is a nihilistic narcissism -- or is it a narcissistic nihilism?  Let's stick with the first one.  Narcissism, or extreme self-absorption, without any driving belief or purpose behind it, is the sum of the messages we are fed every day.  As Barbara Eirenreich, Matt Taibbi, and surely others point up, the most visible and vibrant "Christian congregations" in America feed those very same messages, more and more in the very same language.  I claim not to be a Christian, probably mostly because of my disgust with what passes for Christianity today.

This is not a "there was real christianity back when I grew up but it's all gone to rubbish today" rant.  No, I came to the conclusion somewhere around the age of 12 that if Jesus came back today, the Christians would be the pharisees and sadducees he railed against.  He would hang out with -- as he did then -- the whores and druggies, the working poor and the desperate.  Our American government would be the Caesar he would dismiss.  The superrich he would condemn the way he did the ... superrich of his day.  "The poor you will have with you always," he said then.  He may as well have said "the rich you will have with you always," and it would mean roughly the same thing.

No, America has been converting to this Nihilistic Narcissism since at least the mid-60s.  Does it come naturally with hegemony?  Is it the moral complacency of the man on top?

all good things come to an end

the second law of thermodynamics

for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction

actions have unintended and unforeseen consequences

matter is neither cerated nor destroyed

to do one thing is to foreclose the opportunity to do something else

These are all things that we know to be true: natural laws, if you will.  And yet, we as individuals and a society live as if none of them apply to us, as if we can get around them.  We live like children who think they are getting one by their parents.  In fact, I argue that modern society is designed to reduce all Men to the status of children.  It is a conspiracy, a Conspiracy of Everyone.  They are conspiring to control us, and we are conspiring to give up responsibility.

We've also turned away from our received wisdom.  The "old sayings" and the biblical principles and the findings of writers and thinkers from ancient times -- or any time before our own.  The "old sayings" became cliches because they were the product of generations of experience.  We don't listen to things like "neither a borrower nor a lender be," "judge not lest ye be judged," and the Seven Deadly Sins.  No, that's all old-fashioned and not applicable to The Modern World."

No, in The Modern World, our job as citizens is to Consume.  Borrow to the limit of our income stream's capacity, then beyond.  Always Procure More.  We must do so in order for the economy to constantly expand, and produce More and Greater Profits.  Take care of your credit score, it is your measure of personal value.  If you want it, go for it.  If you want to do it, just do it.  You can have it all.  Have it your way.  You can be whatever you want to be, if you just put your mind to it.  Extreme.  No limits.

I don't want to continue to live that way.  It is unsustainable.  I want to live in a way that if the system collapsed tomorrow, I would be able to survive.  What if I had to be a hunter-gatherer again?  Or with a little agriculture?  I want to use only cash and think about others and be part of a community that is concerned for each other and takes care of all.  I want to not watch TV, and keep my mind free of the messages from the narcissism culture.

"Rise up rise up

With wings like eagles

You run and don't grow weary

Take my hand

and Hold on

Hold on tightly"

It's Christmas Day.  The holiday means very little to me.  It seems to have more of a negative meaning to most people.  They approach it with a desperateness and panic that indicates fear of disapproval.  Damn, I don't want to go shopping for gifts, but everybody will get pissed if I don't get them something good.  Gotta have the most extravagant light display.  Gotta get together with family even though none of you might really want to do it.  Supposedly to celebrate something very few of us really believe in.  It's a fake holiday, a creation of charlatans and advertisers.  And there I was at 6 AM, in Walgreens, looking for something for my wife, because I knew my effort had been insufficient.  And in a few hours, I will climb into my car and drive hours to eat with my parents, which none of us really want to do.  Oh well, can't change the world in a day.

It was nice to see on the local news last night that Ukrops workers are considering unionization. I hope to see an increased spread of union activity. We need it. What are unions but like-minded people banding together to obtain their interests? It's ok when rich people do it, so why isn't it ok when working people do it?

We need fundamental changes. Those are not going to come by electing a cool new guy president then going back to our idle pursuits or life on the hamster wheel and expecting him to do it all for us. No, it's not going to take long for him to start seeing things the power elite's way when those people are the only ones he is exposed to and the only ones presenting their opinions. Fundamental change comes from the people.

Let's start rebuilding our families. Maybe the economy will force us to do what we need to do anyway, and that is recombine extended families. Atomized individuals are far easier to control from on high than are groups of people joined by powerful bonds. Why do you think the messages of the organs of social control (including every major media outlet and in particular anything you see on TV) work so hard to promote extreme individualism and an ideology of pure self-interest?

Barbara Ehrenreich is my new favorite writer. She is a wonderful social critic. Start reading all her books. I have just recently read Bright-Sided and This Land Is Their Land. I want to read several others. Nickel and Dimed was another great book. I read parts of it while browsing in Barnes & Noble a year or so ago.

Every time I sit down and watch TV, I want to try not to buy anything I see advertised or even mentioned. Everything on TV is manufactured. Every show, every ad is manufactured to manipulate the viewer. Your thoughts, ideas, feelings and viewpoint are being shaped by everything broadcast on TV, whether over the air or through cable. Every thought expressed on TV has been approved by someone with enough money to get on TV. The more we rely on TV (and movies) for our thinking, the more we permit the millionaires and billionaires to dictate our ideology. Do you think they are doing so for OUR benefit? Of course not. They do so for their own, which benefits us only so far as our interests are in line with theirs.

The Giants' season is on life support. We have to win our last three games to make the playoffs, but if we do so, our chances are good. If Dallas goes 2-1 and we go 3-0, we are in regardless of what anyone else does. Dallas has to play New Orleans and Philadelphia. I don't see them winning both of those. Of course, the Giants winning three is not much more plausible. Minnesota is at worst the second best team in the conference, and they might be playing for home field advantage. If we don't beat Washington, we don't deserve the playoffs. I don't know the third opponent. Carolina. Could go either way. Probably no playoffs with 2-1, but given the Cowboys' propensity to choke on their T-bones in December, still not out of the question.

I lost my moleskine journal. I need to find it.

The Army of the Unemployed

Turning that loathsome term against the power elite. The "army of the unemployed" is a term I picked up some time in my childhood. It is supposed to be those unemployed workers who stand as a silent threat to labor that "you can be replaced," keeping wages and employee demands low. We have a large army of the unemployed in this country, and it skews very young.

I propose forming them into an Army of the Unemployed, people who have the freedom (Joplin definition) and the time to agitate for real social change. Many of them will have the motivation. The stereotypical Unemployed Man can be the foot soldiers, and the college kids and recent college grads can be the officers. The high command will use them in nonviolent campaigns of illegal social protest. What is an illegal social protest? A perfect example would be an unpermitted parade down 14th Street, or a demonstration that gets too close to a public building members of the power elite frequent at a time when one or more of them typically enter or leave. Not to threaten them, just to make them aware of your presence, to confront them in human terms with the losers they've plundered.

UVA is a poor value for your sports entertainment dollars.  Give VCU a look.

Last night was, I believe, opening night for VCU. They played
Bethune-Cookman at the Siegel Center (Verizon Wireless got their
name in there somewhere). My lovely wife wanted to go to her
first college basketball game, so we drove over to the parking
deck and walked to the Siegel Center. It cost $7 for me, and
whatever portion of the activity fee paid for that ticket for
her. The Siegel Center holds 7500, and announced attendance was
6700. Actual attendance probably wasn't far off. The student
section was packed and spirited. It was a lively working class
student section, with lots of "You suck" and "bullshit" retorts.
The reserved seating sections mostly sat, but carried the wave
around the arena.

The only things I knew about the VCU team before last night were
that Eric Maynor got drafted and they had a brand new coach.
Sounds like rebuilding mode to me. Next Saturday they play
Oklahoma. I would very much like to go. Right now, VCU
basketball looks a whole lot more exciting than UVA hoops. The
rebuilding team on the floor took control of the game midway
through the first half with a 24-4 breakout. They cruised from
there, keeping the margin within a bucket of 30 points in either
direction for most of the second half. Final score was, I
believe, in that range. I want to see them play a top level
team, because they didn't look that solid in the halfcourt. But
Larry Sanders is a credible big man, and the freshman point guard
Joey Rodriguez looked real good. T.J. Gwynn is my new favorite
player. I don't know why. But he is.

I gather Oklahoma is still very strong? I would expect the
Sooners to beat the Rams by 15-20, but we'll see. All-in-all, I
might just enjoy following CAA basketball more than ACC. Oh, and
I learned that VCU football is still undefeated! I never knew!
But the t-shirts educated me. We could beat UVA in men's soccer,
we could beat UVA in men's basketball, we can probably beat you
guys in football too!

Go Rams!

Planks of a Platform

Below are items that I believe need to be part of a radical platform for governing the United States into the next century.  Everybody will probably think I'm crazy, but these spring from my belief that a society is judged by the condition of the great mass of its citizens, that each citizen has a responsibility to assist in providing for the needs of all, that liberty is paramount and that in the U.S. personal liberty is oppressed by the corporate/capitalist elite, not by the government.  The government is used to assist the oppression, but the government can be a powerful tool for ending corporate oppression, which the elite knows.

Planks:

"Socialist Capitalism" - A specific repudiation of the market as panacea.  The market is superb at what it does, producing the goods and services necessary for supporting a prosperous life, and generally at distributing those goods and services.  It is not suitable for taking care of "the commons", or the general welfare.  Economic efficiency is not the sole or primary virtue, and government exists to care for those other virtues, and to keep economic efficiency in line with those other virtues.  Socialist Capitalism demands that the market work for the benefit of society, that the basic needs of every productive citizen -- past, present or potential -- be met, with "basic needs" being defined by the contemporary polity.

The above demands are met primarily by subjecting limited liability entities to the control of society.  Currently, limited liability entities enable capitalists to shift much of the risk of investment onto others while appropriating all the rewards to themselves.  The confiscators are the owners in entities where they have the effective control of the entity, and the managers where ownership is so diluted as to deprive it of effective control.  Every limited liability entity doing business in the U.S. would be required to grant 10% of its ownership interest to the federal state.  Entities would be required to pay out at least a certain percentage of net revenue to the owners, with the U.S. share going into a trust fund to be used for social welfare.  Employee compensation would be limited to a certain ratio with dividends, and "executive" or "managerial" employee compensation would be limited to a certain ratio with "labor" employee compensation.  No more paying the CEO more than all the labor employees combined.

With the U.S. holding 10% of each limited liability in trust for the general population, the corporate ethic that the corporation exists solely to maximize the earnings of the shareholders can be allowed to survive, because by following that ethic corporations naturally increase their contribution to the public welfare.

Another reform that would help return corporations to their rightful place as tools of mankind rather than owners of men would be removing their status as legal "persons" with constitutional rights.  Only individual human beings should be considered "persons" with constitutional rights.  Constitutional rights are derived from our natural rights.  A corporation is not a man born with natural rights.  It is a creation of government.  It has no rights other than those granted to it by the government.

Tax Overhaul - Abolition of the income tax.

A Non-Imperialist Foreign Policy - American foreign policy since World War II has been directed toward opening all the world's markets to American dominance, subjecting the globe to American mores and cultural dominance, and obtaining military access in all regions.  This imperialist foreign policy requires a military with global offensive capabilities.  It demands a huge military-industrial complex out of all proportion with what would be needed for the defense of the United States.

Non-imperialist is not to be confused with "neo-isolationist."  The United States should participate fully in the world, but as one citizen within a self-governing community of citizens, not as a "policeman" or enforcer.  No longer would the United States enforce the power to subject foreign citizens within their own lands to American criminal jurisdiction.

Fundamental Military Reform - The Founding Fathers were opposed to a standing army for good reason.  A standing army is not needed for the defense of the United States.  It is a tool of oppression and a toy of empire.  The U.S. Army would be demobilized, with only training cadres maintained for training and mobilization of the National Guard.  The Navy and Air Force would continue to be independent commands with standing forces, but would be prohibited from having ground forces other than for the defense of their bases.  The Navy would be a two-ocean force, and the carrier fleets would be unnecessary.

Universal National Service - Every individual of 18 would be drafted into national service.  All receive basic military training and are slotted to a unit for two years.  During those two years, they would maintain military training, while providing public service such as maintenance and cleaning, road-building, etc.  A primary function of the National Service would be infrastructure maintenance and development.  After two years, volunteers could stay in the National Guard as at present.

More later...

America needs a new political party.  Notice I did not say "a third" or "another."  Face it, the USA is a two-party (alternating one-party?) system and that's the way it will be.  But that doesn't mean any two particular parties always have to be there.  It wasn't always Democrats and Republicans, you know.  Parties die and are born.

The Republican Party is dead.  What we need is a new party to take its place.  Not on the right.  A new party to the left of the Democrats, to push them where they belong, on the reactionary side of the spectrum.  They're all one party anyway, the Corporate Party.  They agree on all the basics, and argue passionately over details.  We need a party that:

Opposes empire
prioritizes personal liberties
brings corporations and other ngo's into check
fights for redistribution of wealth to the working classes, without resorting to confiscatory mechanisms that are contrary to personal liberty

and more.  The start of Game Six looms ever larger over this blog.  I am predicting that the Yankees close it out in 6.  Pettitte can get the game to the last three innings, and the Yankee bullpen will beat the Phillies bullpen.  Teixeira will have one of the game's most crucial hits, and will make at least one run-saving HOLY SHIT! defensive play.  Ryan Howard will hit a solo home run to tie the game in the sixth inning and chase Pettitte.  Mariano Rivera pitches the last two innings and brings the winning run to the plate at least once.  Just to make it interesting.

Enough Is Enough

There is no action on marijuana legalization taking place in Virginia.  While New Jersey and other states have had medical marijuana legislation in the news recently, and California, Alaska and others are having votes on outright legalization, big news in Virginia is some delegate from Gloucester introducing legislation to expunge marijuana convictions from people's records, in certain limited circumstances.  BIG NEWS!  Wow!  This is some BIG FUCKING NEWS!

Virginia is not completely shut out of the news in regard to drug policy reform, however.  Senator Jim Webb is working on a review of federal penal laws in relation to the prison issue.  As Webb says, in 1980 the federal government imprisoned 40,000 people.  Today it imprisons over 500,000 -- mostly for nonviolent drug offenses.  I hope Jim Webb is not the only U.S. Senator who believes those numbers are alarming, and are willing to, as Webb advises, "put [marijuana legalization] on the table."

In fact, Webb's office and that Gloucester delegate I scorned earlier provide real resources for anyone who would want to begin a marijuana legalization legislative campaign in Virginia.  The article I read named a couple other Virginia legislators who displayed at least a minimally positive attitude toward the general idea of maybe approving the expungement legislation.  They might constitute secondary resources.  What we need in Virginia is a legislative strategy that consists of legislative language and lobbying to get the language in front of the legislature where necessary, and the people where possible.  We need specific legislation to support with a specific campaign.  It needs to operate on the local and state level.

If we can make marijuana legal in Virginia, that would put Virginia in the forefront of the brewing state challenge to federal drug policy.  We have an administration in Washington that has signalled it will RESPECT STATES RIGHTS by ordering the federales not to go after distributors legal under state medical marijuana laws.  If state legislation legalized marijuana in Virginia and legally prevented state and local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with federal anti-drug operations, that would make it harder for the Feds to fight marijuana in Virginia, and make it safer for Virginia's citizens.  If the Obama Administration extended its order to Virginia, that would effectively end the Oppression of Marijuana Users in Virginia.

IT CAN BE DONE!  I am going to begin work on a pamphlet of WHAT IS TO BE DONE: Common Sense for the Inhabitants of Virginia.  I will produce this pamphlet this week and hopefully present the plan to the VCU chapter of SSDP.  They will provide the core of the corps.  I noticed on Facebook they have links with other SSDP chapters in Virginia.  They provide the statewide foot soldiers, or hopefully the sergeants, who will motivate their stoner friends to perform simple, one-shot tasks that will register a number somewhere relevant.

A hell of a lot of Virginians believe that the Legalization of Marijuana is Good Public Policy.  It is time that we all stand up and say so.  The vast majority will only do so if there is a concrete proposal to support, and if they feel secure enough to voice their opinion without fear of consequences they are not prepared to face.  I believe that there are enough of us now to provide safety in numbers.  All that is missing is the proposal, and the recruitment effort will have a decent chance of success.  All we need to do is get a certain percentage to register its support for legalization legislation, then keep raising that percentage until it passes.  Even if we get only 29% of the population on record in support of a TRUE, non-watered-down legalization bill, that is a substantial minority, and it commands respect.  It provides legitimacy, and makes it easier for more people to come forward.  Next round you get 37% in support.  It gets a little easier, and demographics are in your favor.  Next round, which is only three years into the campaign, you get 44%.  Now you're starting to look unstoppable.  The press picks it up, and the other side is solidly on the defensive.  IT WILL PASS.  I say this:

If those of us who believe in legalization mount such a campaign, it will not fail.

We are a nation of lawless people.  We have all these laws, but we have little law in our own hearts.  The fewer men with law in their hearts, the more laws society will impose.  The less we govern ourselves, the more we will be governed.

Smart people know this.

Some people really want to rule other people.  They want it more than they want anything else.

Good Evening, and Welcome Back

This blog has not been updated in more than two weeks, largely because of my despondency over the lack of readers.  This lack of readers is no surprise, as I have taken exactly zero measures to gain readers.  The despondency is not due to a feeling of rejection, but rather to a feeling of futility.  What is the point in writing if nobody is going to read?  If I write and nobody reads, have I truly written?  I have not participated in a conversation.  The point in writing is that I love to write, and that I will at some point soon begin to solicit readers, and when I do, they will have plenty to read.

Lately, I have read two pieces of Matt Taibbi's work in Rolling Stone, and I have fallen in love with his journalism.  Today I discovered his blog from the Huffington Post.  This guy is the real deal, and I agree one hundred percent with so much of what he says.  I am going to become a follower.  His most recent substantive post is one anyone with an interest in government of the people, by the people and for the people -- rather than for the rich and corporations -- needs to read.  Let's take a look at how Obama has done, and we will see that "change" and "hope" were just campaign slogans for him.

Let's face it, Wall Street bought Obama in November.  Michael Moore shows it, lists the millions Obama received from the different wall street firms.  And from medical industry companies.  I already linked Taibbi's Rolling Stone piece that demonstrates Obama's sellout on health care.  He also has continued the multi-trillion dollar redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the upper class we call the "bailout."  Taibbi documents it all.  And in this blog post, he gets to the heart of why Obama is a failure for those who want real change, and why the ordinary American needs a new leader:

"[W]e have problems whose solutions involve taking on powerful interests, political challenges that will necessarily involve prolonged and hard-fought conflicts, but what we have in the Democratic Party is an organization dedicated to avoiding such conflicts and resolving issues in the manner of a corporate board, in closed meetings with the chief cardholders where things get hashed out to the satisfaction of everyone present."

In short, Obama is not a fighter.  He is a consensus-builder.  That is generally good.  But when you have wildly disparate interests, and those interests are directly in conflict, and the people on one side have vastly greater bargaining power than the people on the other, if you are going to try to enact "change" that involves redistributing some of the rewards of the more powerful people to the other side, you need a fighter.  We  need someone who is willing to FIGHT.  As I saw mentioned on AlterNet, Obama has good values, but does he have "principles"?  In other words, will he stand and fight for anything?  That is an open question.  He sure won't fight for economic justice for ordinary people, or for quality health care for all.

In future blog posts, I will begin laying out what I believe should be the platform of a revolutionary party.  I've been giving this a lot of thought.  We want a society in which everyone is guaranteed the opportunity of social mobility from anywhere to at least the mid-middle class.  To be solidly middle class.  We want a society where everyone who works a full-time job can be a middle class citizen.  There should be the opportunity to a few to go much farther.  But everyone should be able to be "middle class."  In order to have that kind of society, there need to be a lot of changes in how we govern ourselves (for I hold the citizenry responsible for the government it has, as all governments exist on the consent of the governed).

"Ask not if this change will be good for me.  Ask if this change will be good for the general welfare."

Notice that the filthy rich's haul peaked right before the Crash of '29, and was at its lowest from the 50s to the 70s, when America was number one, had the best economy, and had great standards of living overall.  When Reagan took over, the rich got their revenge, and they have been consolidating their hold on the rewards of society ever since.  Now, when their haul gets back up to its late 20s peak, there is another crash -- again engineered by their shenanigans.

Maybe this graph shows in visual form that what is good for the rich is not necessarily good for society?  That a more equitable division of the rewards of economic activity is far superior.

The rich fight for what is ours.  Obama talks "change" and they go into a frenzy, whipping up the rabble against him.  He's not even walking the walk.  He's a false prophet of change.  It just shows how scared they are of someone dedicated to fighting for the lower classes, who can unite those lower classes behind him to fight for their interests.  May that person come.  May he come.

Comfort and Belief

In times of distress, we turn to the comforts of our childhood.  A huge piece of my childhood was my rearing in the Catholic Church.  I grew up in the New York City metropolitan area (Fairfield, CT), where Catholicism often means big old churches.  Pipe organs and stained glass windows, vaulted ceilings and pillars, huge altars and the Stations of the Cross.  The rhythms and cadences of Sunday mass were imprinted in my soul through almost a thousand iterations.

When my wife and I lived in Chicago, the stone walls and pealing bells of the church a block away drew me in.  I was fascinated by the building.  I loved to photograph it, walk by it, stand near it, look at it from the roof of our apartment building on cold, snowy nights.  I began to attend morning mass now and then just to sit inside it and feel that sense of calm.  The rhythms and cadences of the mass seeped in and activated the imprints in my soul.  It brought comfort.

It was an urban church, progressive, interested in social justice.  I could tell most of the people there were poor.  Latino immigrants and old holdovers in the neighborhood from another era.  I wanted to be a part of it.  Sitting there in my leather jacket and jeans, my battered black fedora sitting next to me, I wanted to be a part of it.

My neighborhood in Richmond has a big, old church in it.  St. Benedicts.  The parish offers a great elementary school (where I hope my daughter will attend her middle school years) that feeds a Catholic girls school (St. Gertrude's, where I hope my daughter will attend high school) and a military academy (Benedictine) for boys. It's not quite my church from Chicago, but it is a photogenic old building complete with stained glass windows, vaulted ceilings, arches and pillars.  It has the organ.  The rhythms and cadences of 7:15 Sunday mass are the same.

It's a city church, but its soul is more suburban.  Most of the people were middle class.  Its idea of social justice was to print an open letter from the Catholic Medical Association opposing health care reform.  Well, it claimed to want some reform, but it opposed any government involvement and seemed to want a reform that involved talk in generalities while leaving it to the insurance and medical industries to provide care to all.  I didn't want to be part of it.

I went there seeking solace.  My soul is in distress.  My wife and I are in grave financial straits, and the future presents as fearful.  We're neither of us terribly optimistic about the economy or the political system.  We've had some serious health issues that are adding to the pile of debt we carry.   Walking and biking past St. Benedicts, I've felt the draw of the Big Old Church.  Seeking that solace, I went in.

It was calming.  I stood when you stand, I sat when you sit, and I kneeled when you kneel.  As in Chicago, I did not speak or sing, nor did I share peace with anyone around me or partake of the sacrament.  Were I to attend confession I would be entitled to take eucharest still.  But I choose not to.  I choose not to take eucharest for the same reason I choose not to open my mouth -- I believe none of it.

I listen to the mass and I could recite nearly all of it from deep memory.  It hasn't changed in 40 years.  That comforts me.  I listen, and I think, "I don't believe any of this."  I don't.  It makes me ask myself, "What do I believe?"  I've settled such questions for decades now by claiming to be an agnostic and not concerning myself with the unanswerables.  I don't care how the universe began, or how life began, or how man came to be.  I don't worry about what comes after death (although I confess to being scared of it).  But maybe some of these questions do matter.

In the last few days, I've come to decide that I do believe in god.  I'm not sure I would define its nature, but I think I have to believe in god.  My reasoning comes down to a few things:

I absolutely believe in the existence of spirit, of the soul.  The soul is what gives a living being life.  It's what binds energy to matter and creates a living being.  When life ends, you can run all the electrical current you want through a body and all it does is fry the atoms.  It is no big step, then to conclude that there is a source or creator of that spirit, or that all spirit is in fact one entity and that one spirit entity is god.  This also, as an aside, leads me to accept the possibility of the concept of soul mates.

The universe is a lawful place.  The physical world operates according to laws.  Where did those laws come from?  Random chance?  Generally, when there are laws, someone made them.  Someone programs the computers.  Perhaps our universe is a child's toy.  God is the person who programmed it.

Finally, the world and living creatures are incredibly beautiful, and incredibly ingenious.  A human body, an ecosystem, these are ingenious systems.  It's hard to believe they developed randomly.  Now, biblical creationism and its current descendant are bunk.  For all I know, big bang and evolution explain how the place was created.  I don't think we'll ever know, and I say "good."

I also believe in Christ.  Now, I don't even know if any such person ever lived, and I certainly don't believe the story cobbled together by the churches over the last couple thousand years from about 40 pages of the bible.  That story is about as believable as the story of creation.  It's a myth created to justify the existence and power of the church structures.  What I do believe, though, is that the key to heaven on earth is found in the teachings of those gospels, supplemented by the gnostic gospels.  As a system of first principles for guidance of individual and social life, the gospel teachings are far superior to the Madison Avenue Creed that Americans live by, and it is the replacement of the gospel code by the Madison Avenue Creed that is causing the disintegration of American society.

It is my belief in the gospels that leads me to hate Christians.  I don't think more than 1 in a thousand has any clue what is really in the gospels.  I think if they read and reflected they would realize that everything they believe to be Christianity is really something else.  There are so many things that the churches do and teach, so many beliefs and principles that modern American "Christians" live by that are antithetical to the teachings of the gospels.  I intuited as a young boy that if Jesus Christ were to return today, he would treat the Christians the way he treated the Jews.  The Pharisees and Sadducees and all those other guys, they would relate to the Priests and Ministers and Televangelists of our day.  Those synagogue congregations that cast him out and spit on him, those would be today's Christian congregations.  He would hang out with the SAME people he hung out with then: the prostitutes and druggies, the losers and the simple people.  He would sneer at the PRZHIM license plate on the Escalade, and spit on the suede Guccis of the old socialite spooning out soup on Thanksgiving.

And yet I can sit in a stone cathedral and feel god.  I can in my deepest thoughts go back to the gospels for guidance.  I think issues through and draw conclusions, and then I see how those conclusions are in a gospel passage I remember from my youth, but I never thought of it that way then.  I think back to my college years, and the conversations I had through pen and ink with that odd guy from the Ethiopean Zion Coptic Church, and I find myself once again drawn to many of the ideas he shared.

These issues will be further pursued through this blog.  We need a moral change if we are going to avert disaster.  I firmly believe that all the reforms and revolutions and laws and PR campaigns and greenings and whatnot in the world are not going to change anything as long as we live by the principles we do.  The primary engine driving us to perdition is the Madison Avenue Creed, and as long as we accept that Creed and live by its principles, we will continue on that road.  We've become a society that lives by the motto, "I've got mine; fuck off."  We are atomized and alienated, viewing everyone else not as a human being with a soul like our own, but rather as a paper cutout of one Group or another.  This is by design.  All the easier to control and manipulate us.  There has to be something better.

Capitalism: A Love Story

For the last week plus, I've been dealing with pneumonia.  I was probably coming down with it as early as Wednesday the 23rd, but it was Sunday that I began to feel truly awful.  On Monday, I went to the ER and was diagnosed with bacterial pneumonia.  I was prescribed antibiotics, given an IV of antibiotics and fluids, and sent home.  Now at the end of the week, I am recovering.  I still have a way to go to regain my strength, but the antibiotics are working.  Another American health care system success story!  The story will be complete in a few years when my bankruptcy disposes of the bill.

Saw Michael Moore's latest movie.  It's pretty good, pretty powerful.  It ends with a bit of intellectual mess, offering up "democracy" as the alternative to "capitalism," but I think Michael realized that it just would not work in America even for him to get tied to advocating "socialism."  Not that those are the only two alternatives possible, but they do seem to be the limits of our imagination today.  Either we leave the corporations, banks and elites free to do what they want ("Capitalism", which is Good), or we go the way of "Socialism."  And "socialism" is bad!  It equals goosestepping Bolsheviks presided over by the grinning face of Stalin.

Of course, I have seen some argue that what we have today is not really "capitalism" at all, but more properly termed "Corporatism."  I can see a lot of merit to that argument.  After all, if "capitalism" is "private ownership of the means of production," and "socialism" is "state ownership of the means of production," then a system where corporations own the means of production should be called "corporatism."  It is only by honoring the legal fiction that "corporations are people too" that we can pretend this is a capitalist system.

The statistics and facts in Moore's book are accurate.  He's right: the finance capitalists have looted the economy, and the political system has actively assisted them.  Then it turned around and handed them $700 billion to bail out the institutions they used in their crimes.  Meanwhile, ordinary people have been subjected to "true capitalism."  The capitalists have run for their government handouts.  Ironic.  His ideas for solution are a bit anemic.  Populist resistance such as the occasional sit-in strike or "squat in your own house" won't truly change anything.  Worker-owned enterprises would, of course, and that is an issue worth exploring at the corporate level.  Can some form of true worker-ownership be imposed on the corporate form?

Corporations have to be subjected to the control and benefit of society.  That is the true long-term solution to the mess.  While people have a right to property, they have no inherent right to corporations as we know them.  They have no right to limited liability.  Limited liability is a creature of statute, so the government has every right to change it as the government sees fit.  Limited liability was created to serve a public purpose.  By imposing controls on the corporate form -- or any other limited liability form of entity -- the government can effect real changes.  This is one of my core ideas.

The movie was inspiring, though.  I found myself moved in places.  I found myself wanting to get out and do something.  I want to be part of creating the revolutionary movement.  It's going to need ideas guys and wordsmiths, people willing to get out and make speeches, argue in council.  I'll do those things.  Maybe we need a new party.  You know how Americans -- especially young ones -- love a party!

"The legal system, the regulators practices, traditions, common sense, playing for a longer time horizon of defined sucess (if you eat the sheep too fast its kinda short sighted) a sense of social justice and a different sense of patriotism were barriers that protected the sheep in the past.

The oligarchs are now too short sighted, rewards are misaligned and the regulatory system as unprepared as it was in the 1870-1910 period. Whats more the sheep used to be well versed and better educated about the wolves intent....now they are too fat and too lazy and too easily co opted. imho."

Got this off a NY Giants fan message board.  Bill2 expressed the nutshell of the current problem vs. past eras.  The current crisis is just part of a bigger dilemma.

"Obama ain't takin' 'way my employer-supplied health insurance!"

Anybody opposing health care reform because he likes his employer-supplied plan and feels reform is a threat to it might want to read and digest this blog.  Employer-supplied health care has been disappearing from the economy for years, slowly and gradually.  The fact is, that if you take out public employees of one kind or another, significantly less than half of all employees get their health insurance from their employers.  And those who do, that insurance has been getting more expensive and less comprehensive every year.  Employers are passing on more costs, and purchasing inferior plans.  This trend will continue regardless of the outcome of reform (well, except for a single-payer system, but then who would care?  We'd all have health care anyway).

Have a good read.

And you know another thing?  The majority of doctors, and their primary national association (the AMA, ever heard of it?) SUPPORT single-payer.

Medicare for all.

Doctors want it.

Patients want it.

It will never pass Congress.

Because the insurance lobby has the most money.

Hmmmmmm.

Correction

I do need to make one correction from last night's post.  Where I said "corporation" I should have said "limited liability entity."  Any entity that is a limited liability entity created by law should have to issue 10% of its equity stake to the government.

Also, such entities should not have constitutional rights.  End the legal fiction of a corporation being a "person."  Treat them as what they are: tools of wealth creation.  Not persons.

An Introduction to the Need for Socialism, And One Proposal

When I was in college back in the late 80s, I wrote a paper on the coming robotics revolution and its potential social impact.  My conclusion was that the revolution would require changes in how our society distributes the rewards of production.  Robotics enthusiasts and classical capitalist economists all enthused that robotics would bring productivity boosts like prior technological revolutions in the means of production.  But my contention was that unlike those earlier technological revolutions, the robotics revolution (and the high-tech information revolution along with it) would not just make workers more productive, it would replace workers.  What would those workers do instead?

We are seeing these results.  Peter Huber over at Forbes (it was the only decent choice in the waiting room of the ER when Kylie was seen there) wrote a little piece recently that whimsically illustrates the phenomenon.  He talks about all the things his new domestic robots do, and how these robots have caused a drastic reduction in the utilization of human housekeeping labor.  First, robots replaced factory workers.  Instead of having a few thousand workers manning machines to kick out a car, four guys sitting in a control room oversee a factory full of robots.  Now robots are moving into our homes, like in the Jetsons.  What are the workers to do instead?

But at the end of his piece, he hits the nub.  "Washington's choice now is between a jobless recovery and no U.S. recovery at all."  Now, this jobless recovery is fine for Peter Huber.  He is writing for corporate hotshots and rich guys.  What do they fucking care if the recovery produces no new jobs?  Good for them!  If economic activity goes up, and wages can stay where they were at the depth of the recession, their profits go even higher, and they get richer.  So yeah, a jobless recovery is fine for the Peter Hubers of the world -- just as the jobless boom was.  That's the secret: the US economy was not creating jobs during the boom, either.

The answer is always glib: education and retraining.  OK, but there are millions of people who are simply not able to learn what it takes to perform high tech jobs.  There are brain people and muscle people.  In every preceding age of human history, society needed muscle people every bit as much as it needed brain people.  But in the new age, that is no longer the case.  The muscle jobs are being replaced.  What are the muscle people to do?  Heck, even police and army robots are being developed!

I keep asking this question, and nobody gives me an answer.

I now turn to corporations.  The corporate form was a great invention for producing wealth.  By externalizing the risks of capital ventures, the corporation allows guys with money to invest that money with little fear of ruin.  The consequences of their risks are not borne  by their personal assets, they are borne by the people who did business willingly or unwillingly with the corporation.  In the beginning, corporations were required to return some benefit to society, because the lawmakers recognized what they were doing.  Down the years, however, the requirements on corporations have gradually been shed, to the point now where they are able to move their offices and capital around the globe in such a way as to not have to return even taxes to the society.  And an army of talking heads has produced an ideology that society has bought into that says a corporation's ONLY duty is to maximize the income of its shareholders.

Do we see how robotics and corporations interact with each other?  What is the inevitable result?  It is what we are seeing: an ever-increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth and income.  Fewer and fewer people own more and more of the wealth, and monopolize more and more of the income.  Women entering the labor force (drove down wages) and easy credit masked the effects for thirty years.  Household income remained pretty much the same, but now two people were producing that income instead of one.  Borrowing allowed people to continue to increase consumption even though wages were stagnating.

All that crashed down on a lot of people.  But now the recovery is here.  But it is widely recognized as a "jobless recovery."  And nobody in policy-making positions seems to care.  Those who own corporations will see their incomes and wealth recover.  Those who relied on a paycheck will not.  They are still fucked.  Those who can turn to an intellectual pursuit, or something needed by rich people, will be able to regain an income.  Probably most of them will see a lower income than they had before.  But people who have to rely on their muscles because they either did not or could not get a (real) higher education are well and truly fucked.  The Roomba has seen to that.

So what do we do?  I'm not really sure, but I have one idea, and it involves socialism.  Let's call it partial socialism.  Every corporation that does business in America is required to issue the US government 10% of its stock.  Every class.  Every type.  Voting and non-voting.  In that way, corporations will benefit society by benefiting their shareholders.  They can maintain their "maximize return to the shareholders" ethic and thereby serve society.  The US government is then required by law to put its dividend payments into a social welfare fund.  I prefer that every U.S. citizen get a dividend payment every year.  Pro rata, divvy them up and send every CITIZEN a check.  Those who are under 18, their checks go into trust.  Adults can do whatever they damn well please with their checks.

So that's my big socialist idea.

News Sources

It used to be well-accepted that to gain good understanding of a subject -- any subject -- you need to consult multiple sources.  Even moreso in political matters where point-of-view is so important.  Yet, all of our news comes from pretty much one source.  The corporate media, which is pretty much a mouthpiece of the corporate elite.

We the people need alternate sources of news and commentary.  I've already linked AlterNet.org and believe it to be an important source for us.  Now I have found another source I will be consulting regularly:  IPS.

Check it out.  It gives an avowed Southern Hemisphere perspective on international news.  It is supported by a number of governments and international organizations, with the notable exception of the United States.

AlterNet.org

I stumbled across this site the other day, and it has become my main source for news.  It is openly progressive, even revolutionary.  But that is called for today.  The mainstream media will not cover what matters to us.  It is obsessed with right wing nutjobs and telling us that the recession is over and the recovery is underway.

AlterNet.org

Read it.

This Is Not Capitalism

The next time someone tells you how capitalism is the best system and our system is capitalism, that capitalism won the great dogma fight, or some right wing wingnut tells you the market will solve everything, think of this:

In capitalism as envisioned by its leading lights, including Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall, you need a moral foundation in order for free markets to work. And when a company fails, it fails. It doesn't get bailed out using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. What we have right now is Corporatism. It's welfare for the rich. It's the government picking winners and losers. It's Wall Street having their taxpayer-funded cake and eating it too. It's socialized gains and privatized losses.

That's from the linked article off AlterNet.  I am going to see Michael Moore's new movie.  I have not been tempted by his earlier ones, but this one might hit it.  I just feel like we are approaching a crisis stage, where ordinary people have to rise up once and for all before the elites take away our ability to do so with the ultimate coercive technologies they are developing.

It just boggles my mind that so many people who call themselves Christians can so passionately fight for a system that is so antithetical to the core message of Christ, and reject so thoroughly ideas that descend directly from his central teachings.  It shows the power of indoctrination.  I mean, why is everyone ok with 1% of the population controlling 95% of the wealth?  Why are we ok with that 1% raking in over half the national income?  It's obscene.  You know, many of the rich lost half or more of their fortunes in the recent Crash -- and they still have millions or billions.  You lose half your wealth (the value of your home), you're fucked.  Well and truly fucked.  What did you have to do with the Crash?  Very little.  How much did you gain from the boom of the last fifteen years?  Before the Crash, were you much wealthier than you were before the boom?  I don't know.

All I know is Wall Street and the huge corporations get a trillion dollar bailout and you and I get a dictat to purchase health insurance -- as if we wouldn't if we could afford it!

I will never again -- EVER -- trust or vote for a politician from one of the two parties.  EVER.  Both parties and every candidate from them who can get on the ballot are controlled by the corporate elite.  I was a fool to believe Obama would be any different.  But his personal ambition came to dominate his beliefs.  He's just another neocon at heart.

Conservative Radicals

From Alternet:

BILL MOYERS: There's long been a fundamental contradiction at the heart of this coalition that we call "conservative." I mean, you had the Edmund Burke kind of conservatism that yearns for a sacred, ordered society, bound by tradition, that protects both rich and poor, against what one of my friends calls the "Libertarian, robber baron, capitalist, cowboy America." I mean, that marriage was doomed to fail, right?




SAM TANENHAUS: It was. First of all, this is absolutely right, in the terms of a classical conservatism. And here is the figure I emphasize in my book is Benjamin Disraeli. What he feared-- the revolution of his time, this is the French Revolution that concerned Edmund Burke-- half a century later what concerned Disraeli and other conservatives was the Industrial Revolution. That Dickens wrote his novels about-- that children, the very poor becoming virtual slaves in work houses, that the search for money, for capital, for capital accumulation, seemed to drown out all other values. That's what modern conservatism is partly anchored in. So, how do we get this contradiction?



BILL MOYERS: Why isn't it standing up against turbo-capitalism?



SAM TANENHAUS: Well, one reason is that America very early on in its history reached a kind of pact, in the Jacksonian era, between the government on the one hand and private capital on the other. That the government would actually subsidize capitalism in America. That's what the Right doesn't often acknowledge. A lot of what we think of as the unleashed, unfettered market is, in fact, a government supported market. Some will remember the famous debate between Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman, and Dick Cheney said that his company, Halliburton, had made millions of dollars without any help from the government. It all came from the government! They were defense contracts! So, what's happened is the American ethos, which is a different thing from our political order-- that's the rugged individualism, the cowboy, the frontiersman, the robber baron, the great explorer, the conqueror of the continent. For that aspect of our myth, the market has been the engine of it. So, what brought them together, is what we've seen in the right is what I call a politics of organized cultural enmity.

Dallas Cowboys Stadium and Go-Go Lounge

The new $1.2 billion Dallas Cowboys Stadium actually features raised platforms for dancers.  They are elevated above the crowd like "cage dancers" at a go-go lounge.  Check out the link.

A Star Is Born?

OK, everybody needs to know that I am a lifelong Giants fan.  It's not so much an entertainment choice as it is a terminal disease.  A genetic disease, like the kind you see telethons for.  You get it from your parent and you cannot shake it.  It controls your life, limits your choices, and without a proper mental attitude, it will stunt and distort your life into torturous shapes.

Last night, the Giants played the Cowboys in the first game in the new Dallas stadium.  Amazingly, the Giants won.  I had the Cowboys winning by two TDs because I did not think the Giants would be able to handle the Dallas passing game, and thought the Giants would not be able to score touchdowns.  Well, the Giants won because Dallas QB Tony Homo really sucked and Eli Manning played very well.  And because a Giants WR stepped up.

Meet Mario Manningham, new Giants WR star!  Manningham is a great story for the Giants.  He was a great receiver for the University of Michigan for three years.  He was a human highlights reel, making big play after big play.  He scored a ton of touchdowns, made scads of big catches, and showed great RAC (that would be Run After Catch for you non-football fans) ability.  He was one of the most productive and explosive WRs in U of M history.  They've had a lot of them.

However, Mario also had a taste for the ganja at U of M and did not exactly make the best decisions in his life.  He tested positive for pot just before the NFL draft, and scored a 6 on the Wonderlic test, which is some kinda IQ test given to NFL prospects.  So, he looks pretty much like a dumbass.  Because of the pot thing, he fell to the third round of the draft, where the Giants picked him up.  Based on talent and college productivity, it was a great pick for the Gmen.  A steal!  Given the pot history and Wonderlic score, it had to be considered a gamble.  Would he be smart enough to learn the playbook and be able to make the on-the-fly route adjustments required to be a successful WR in the Giants' system?  Would he have the work ethic and wisdom to be a successful pro?  Or was this kid a knucklehead?

As a rookie last year, the kid did nothing.  Not to worry.  Rookies rarely contribute as WRs for the Giants or in the NFL.  There is a lot to learn.  NFL defenses are so much more talented and complex than college that it can be overwhelming for a rookie WR.  But this summer, he started to make noise.  It became clear: Mario would be in the regular rotation. 

Nobody knew what the Giants really had at WR coming into this season.  The best WR in team history (Plaxico Burress) and the most productive WR in team history (Amani Toomer) were gone.  The guys coming back had either proven nothing or been role players.  Certainly, Steve Smith was a good third WR for them and a big part of their success his first two seasons.  But could he do the same as a starter?  Giants fans knew there was a lot of potential, but we all know how often potential fails to become production.  We all loved Smith.  Domenik Hixon had shown a lot.  Manningham had the great college career behind him.  And the two rookie draft picks (Hakeem Nicks and Ramses Barden) looked extremely promising.  In the preseason, Smith, Nicks and Manningham all showed flashes.

Manningham had a good game against the Redskins.  Three catches for 58 yards and a touchdown.  The TD was vintage Manningham.  He caught a slip screen, made a tackler miss, and ran in for the score.  It was a good start for him and the Giants WR corps.  Smith was good, and Nicks was good, although Nicks got hurt and will miss a couple games.

But last night, Mario and the Giants stepped onto the big stage.  National television.  The first game in the Dallas Cowboys' new billion dollar stadium.  Millions watching on TV and 105,000 in the stands.  Giants-Cowboys.  Everything.  And Mario became Super Mario!  He was brilliant, glittering, dazzling.  He caught 10 passes, including another slip screen, a deep bomb, cuts across the middle, a TD showing great concentration after letting the ball bounce off his hands.  "Manning to Manningham!  Touchdown!"  It is destined to be a cliche. 

Manningham wasn't the only WR to have a monster game for the Giants.  Smith also caught 10 balls.  He also had a big TD catch, as well as his trademark third down magic.  The third year man from USC and the second year man from Michigan put on their own personal Rose Bowl.

Manningham and Smith show a drafting philosophy in action.  Nicks and Ramses Barden continue that philosophy: players who were super productive in college.  Smith, Manningham and Nicks were all super productive at big time programs.  All three sparkled in bowl games.  All three excel at catching the ball.  They are not track stars; they are Receivers.  Barden was also super productive, but at a small school.  He is an example of a variation of the philosophy: players who dominated at a lower level of competition.  Kevin Boss is another example of that variation.  Boss and Barden both dominated on the small school level, and both have exceptional size.  So far the philosophy appears to be working.  There have been no more Sinorice Moss boondoggles.

I'm concerned about things from the game.  The inability to score in the red zone in two straight games now is worrying.  The Cowboys shredding the defense for 250 yards on the ground is scary.  The injuries bode poorly.  But the play of the WR corps has been very encouraging.  I cannot wait to see Nicks get back.  I think he is going to be a star, as is Manningham.  We all knew the young guys had a lot of talent, and that they had produced at a high level in college.  Now they are showing that they can do it in the NFL.  The Giants could have an embarrassment of riches at wide receiver.  The season should be a fun ride.

Manning to Manningham!  Touchdown!

Oh, and on the subject of going deep to score.....

Health and Caring

Health care is a huge issue today.  I'm just about done with addressing the political issue, because the die has been cast and what I predicted back in June is about to happen.  No, my interest in health issues is personal.  Health and women.  Kylie has been sick for two weeks now.  She's been to student health twice and the ER once.  She finally was prescribed anti-biotics at the ER.  She has bronchitis and ear infections.  She does not seem to be getting better.  I am out of ideas as to what to do.  I don't understand why she's not getting any better.  It is screwing our life.  She hasn't had any exercise for two weeks.  We have to freaking drive everywhere.  She is missing classes, lacking energy for school work, and just had to give up her shifts at work this weekend.  There's a loss of $100 we cannot afford.  It's also a black cloud pressing down on her mood -- understandably.  It's just one more thing to deal with.

Finances.  The car payment is coming due in 10 days and we still haven't paid last month's.  The electric bill just arrived and we still haven't paid last month's.  We paid the August bill a week or so ago, just before the cutoff notice expired.  And the state is paying me for my legal work in droplets of money too small to matter.  I need thousands, and they are sending me a couple hundred here and there.  We are in danger of losing everything.  It has been this way since late July.  We ran out of money around July 15 and have been slowly going under ever since.  I thought it would be better now.  "It will be better in September," I said.  Well, $900 of my August work got continued to October and could not be billed.  So that's money not coming this month.  And all my August billings were in the second half of the month.  The state is not paying me two weeks out like they were earlier in the year.  No, it's at least a month out.  That means pretty much nothing has come in over the last two weeks.

At least Kylie got financial aid.  School is paid for.

At least I know that I have work for 2010.  I already have 10 duty days for Richmond and 7 or 8 for Chesterfield.  I will get four or so for New Kent/Charles City when they do theirs.  I have an income for 2010.  Just not enough.  And the frigging economy is even hurting referees.  Fewer teams are signing up for soccer tournaments, which means fewer games to ref.  Because there are no jobs for teenagers, high school and college students are signing up in droves to be referees.  And because nobody has money, fewer referees are quitting.  So there are more of us competing for fewer games.

Just my luck.  I graduate law school during the worst employment market for law school graduates in 40 years.  It rebounds a few years later, but too late for me.  I enter teaching school to switch careers just as the wave of people switching into teaching happens because we all have been hearing about the teacher shortage for years.  Teacher glut -- especially high school social studies, which is all I can get certified for.  So everywhere I apply for work, the principal has a thick file of applications, many from experienced teachers.  Now that I am a referee, the economy goes bust and the normal acute referee shortage turns into a referee glut.

All of this is placing great strain on us, and on our relationship.  We are both weighed down by the financial issues.  She feels like crap.  I am worried about her.  She is scared of failing in school.  I am weary from constantly having to be supportive.  And then there's my daughter.

My ex-wife is apparently dying.  Not officially "dying" as in told she has a terminal illness and has only so much time to live, but physically falling apart and on lots of medication.  Let's just say she's blowing up the actuarial tables for her health insurance group.  She had a brain tumor on her pituitary gland for two or three years.  It spread into her nasal cavity.  It was making her blind.  She was almost completely blind, and was driving my daughter around, and never told me until the surgery was imminent.  The surgery removed the golf ball pressing down on the gland, but they have to use chemo or radiation on the nasal strands.  Apparently, while her eyesight is back, her health is failing all over the place.  She's very sick and very scared, and the brain tumor will probably come back.  From my research, most do, especially when they were big or aggressive.

Next year my daughter goes to middle school.  My son goes into the Army in December, although I have my suspicions that he is going to back out of that.  If he goes to the Army, who will take care of his mother?  Who will take care of his sister under her auspices so that her father can't get her?  I suspect that a combination of the need to take care of his mother combined with his native fears and laziness will cause him to drop out of TCC and sabotage the Army enlistment.  And his mother will let him.  Kylie and I think my daughter should live with us next year.  And that prospect scares Kylie shitless.  I understand.  A step-mother at 21, being the acting mommy for an adolescent while her mother withers away.  Scares me.

So yeah, life is a chore right now.  Those are only some of the stressors we are under.  Probably the biggest, but I'm sure there are a couple big ones not coming to mind at the moment.  That's all right -- I don't need to think about all of them at the same time.

I have a book idea I think has merit.  I am going to try to follow through on this one.  It contains an old idea.  It will be an epic (do I write anything else?).  It will be set 25 years in the future.  It will have three strands: in one strand a huge female celebrity (her celebrity is huge, not she) and a regular guy fall in love.  This strand will explore social-cultural issues such as narcissism, gender issues, personal success and failure, loneliness and attachment, depression and happiness.  In the second strand, a group of friends form a political movement that turns into a popular revolution.  It is an electoral revolution with mass movement, violence and chaos occurs, and these four friends wind up running the executive branch and putting their program into action.  In the third strand, a young mystic ignites a new religious movement through his earnest re-examinations.  All of this is narrated by a 110-year-old man who brings a historical perspective to the story.  The narrator will tie together parts of the story told through different "media."  I want to combine a sweet romance with an exploration of cultural, social and political issues, inside of a philosophical quest.  And I want it done in three years.

Refereeing today, then driving my daughter home.  Nice four hour drive for me.  Kylie would probably come, but I want her to stay home and rest.

Check out the slideshow.  It's all our work.

I'm Back

My flirtation with that hussy over at WordPress is over.  The limitations of WP are worse than the limitations of this place.  Google has created a new editor, and maybe it works better than the old one.  If so, it handles my biggest problem with Blogger.  I have been able to tweak my appearance quite a bit today, and I like that.  I like the way it looks.  Hopefully, I can now be stable here.

For the posts I made on WordPress, follow this link:

Wandering Muse on WordPress

Some of them are worth reading.  At least I think they are.

July 5 Musings

Note: This blog is likely to be moved. I am unimpressed with the Blogger editor after having used it a few times. I'm not sure. I am considering just using a regular web host and designing my own site. This is definitely a long-term project as it is my vehicle for changing careers gradually.

The turmoil in Iran continues, and it continues to be fascinating to a student of transformative political change (that's just a fancy euphemism for "revolution"). The Iranian regime appears to be going out of its way to prove its illegitimacy and undermine the confidence of the educated segments of its population (one who reads me for a while will come to know that I have a real contempt for uneducated polities). The regime is now full-on calling the election protest movement a foreign campaign. Mousavi is being accused of being a foreign agent or "fifth columnist." He is being accused directly of treason.

Republicans and neocons here in the US will say that the regime's attempts to blame the West show how Obama's policy was wrong, but I contend that the reverse is true. By staying out of it as long as he did, President Obama made the Iranian regime look even more ridiculous. Everybody with a brain who paid any attention can plainly see that the US did not "interfere." This is the part where we hold up our hands and look around, saying, "See? See? I didn't say anything and they still accuse me. Now who will you believe?" Once again, Obama has placed the US on the rhetorical/ideological high ground and forced adversaries to show themselves. The end result of the election turmoil and US response is going to be greater international support for the inevitable conflict with Iran, and a decrease in Iranian unity.

The Iranian elite is fragmented. News reports give indications of elements of the clergy and governing elite that oppose the virtual coup that has taken place. What the ruling elements have done is stripped off the mask. They have shown themselves for the tyrannical thugs that they are. Many ordinary Iranians have seen for the first time what their government is truly like (and not as different from our own as most Americans would like to believe). The "peace" that now appears to be the norm in Tehran is a result of brute force, not consent. Everybody knows it. Khamenei is revealed for what he is: a religious Stalin.

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I will soon begin to write a lot more about Russia. In the long term, I aim to craft myself as a Russia expert and write on US-Russian relations. I do have a background there, although not in any resume way. In college, I crafted an unofficial minor in Russian studies. I took courses in Russian literature, Soviet society, Russian history, and Soviet government and politics. I predicted the fall of the Soviet Union when Gorbachev rose to power, based on the principle that nothing is more perilous for a bad government than attempting to reform itself.

Obama leaves for Russia today. It should be an interesting trip. The Russians appear to be of two minds with regard to the US. In one hemisphere, they want to cooperate with us and be friendly. In the other, they want to return to the great power rivalry. In future entries, or in a more scholarly paper, I will argue that what appears to us as either posturing or Russian paranoia in their responses to the missile shield and NATO expansion is in reality quite understandable from the Russian point of view, and that American policy toward Russia can achieve true breakthroughs when it fully comprehends the Russian point of view. For today, however, let me just say that while I hope Obama stands firm on the missile shield (I am a staunch believer in aggressively pursuing any kind of defensive option), flexibility on NATO expansion would be beneficial.

My intended study of Russia and metamorphosis as a Russia Expert will be assisted by my new bride's studies. In August, she will begin her undergraduate studies at Virginia Commonwealth University here in Richmond. VCU is a great school, by the way. My wife will be taking elementary Russian in the fall. She intends to graduate VCU with an international studies degree and fluent in Russian and Arabic. Her ability to read Russian-language writings and converse with Russians (and eavesdrop when they think nobody understands their language) will be priceless for me. I am hoping that my new career will be complementary to hers and allow us to leverage each other's efforts. We'll see how it works out for us.

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Yesterday should have seen an entry. I apologize. How can I let July 4 go by without some comment on Jefferson? It is his day more than anyone else's. I've seen a couple books about him recently that I want to read. Another visit to Barnes & Noble is in order. :) I love going to Barnes & Noble despite it being a huge corporation. I also love it because my bride (hereinafter, "Loveofmylife") may soon have a job there. Anyway, more on Jefferson when I get those book titles.

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US Soccer had a good day yesterday. Following up on the Confederations Cup triumph, a very young US team squashed Grenada in the Gold Cup opener. The result is not noteworthy for the result so much as it is for the roster that achieved it. This is a young, internationally inexperienced roster of backups and future prospects. It is the type of roster that has frequently struggled to put away inferior opponents. Will the US win the Cup? We'll see. Advancement from the group should be a given. Mexico looms in the other group, but the Little Bitches (my name for the Mexican national team, which I will explain in a future blog) sent a team similar to ours, young and second string. The first teams won't face each other until August 12 in Azteca. That's when we will see if the US team can gulp in enough actual air to extend its dominance over the Little Bitches.

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Loveofmylife has gone gaga over Lady Gaga of late, and I must admit I can see why. Random remark.

Wandering off now.....

Iran: Losing by Winning

It appears that the power structure has successfully put down the election dissent and destroyed the opposition. They have won the battle with brutal and unflinching repression, but have they lost the war? As averred in an earlier blog, successful repression often just drives dissent underground and undermines public respect and affection for the law. When the dissent was driven by a core population group and involved enduring issues, the successful repression frequently strengthens opposition in the long run. Will that turn out to be the case in Iran?

Take this tidbit from an International Herald Tribure article about Iran and the collapse of dissent:

Like many others who spoke, Mahtab said she was depressed by what she had
seen since the election. She said that she was not a political person and had
not even voted June 12, but that the repression on the streets was “beyond
belief.”

“I am disgusted, and wish I could leave this country,” she said.

She said she had seen a paramilitary officer outside the shop hit a
middle-aged woman in the head so hard that blood streamed down the woman’s
forehead. When Mahtab and her colleagues tried to leave the shop to go
home, she said, the forces began clubbing them while shouting the names of
Shiite saints. “They do this under the name of religion,” she said. “Which
religion allows this?”

Daily life has also been affected. Although people are still going to
work, some parents have been reluctant to take their children to day care,
fearing that unrest on the streets would prevent them from picking up their
children. University exams have been postponed and many families have traded
parties for small get-togethers, where the election is a constant topic of
conversation.

“People are depressed, and they feel they have been lied to, robbed of
their rights and now are being insulted,” said Nassim, a 56-year-old
hairdresser. “It is not just a lie; it’s a huge one. And it doesn’t end.”

Mahtab and Nassim must be American agents or sympathizers, if the Iranian government is to be believed. No, they are ordinary Iranians who were not involved in demonstrations or even sympathetic to the opposition, but they are shocked and dismayed by what they witnessed their government do to people they know are ordinary Iranians. The government believes it can discredit the dissent by blaming it on "outside agitators", that tired old refrain, but do you think it will fool Mahtab and Nassim?

The next time dissent breaks out in Iran, a whole lot of Mahtabs and Nassims will be more likely to support the dissent, either tacitly or actively. It may not look like it now, but the Islamic Republic's legitimacy within Iran has been damaged more by its victory in battle than by the issues that sparked the protest.

Big Night on the Big Stage

Man of the Match, Landon Donovan

Landon Donovan has been the most visible American soccer player for a decade, and he's still only 27 years old. Often lauded, more often maligned, the California Golden Boy of US Soccer is the leading scorer in USMNT history, and was the best player on the pitch in the biggest win ever by the Americans. It gives him the chance to cap perhaps his best international tournament ever by leading the USA to the championship over the Brazil/South Africa winner.

I've never agreed with the Landon-bashing. It probably started when he decided he didn't want to stay at Bayern Leverkusen and forced a loan back to MLS and the San Jose Earthquakes. I always respected his reasoning. He wasn't getting to play, and he wanted to be back in California. His girlfriend was connected there and he wanted to be with her. So he went back to California. True, it wasn't the best move for his soccer development, but it was the best move for his life, according to his priorities. A lot of American soccer fans acted as if he had personally affronted them by choosing to prioritize other things over his soccer development. Those people were out of line.

Landon was outstanding against Spain. I thought he was the best player on the pitch that night. He played his normal role of main offensive generator, but he was also central to the defense. He played a complete game. He has been the star of this tournament even though he is not scoring goals in numbers. Because of his leadership and the play of the team as a whole, the USA has a chance to win a FIFA tournament for the first time.

This tournament appears to be where the US national team finally found the proper role for Landon. Playing out on the wing he can use his speed and fitness, his ball skills and aggressiveness. He can make his off-the-ball runs that he does better than anyone else in a US uniform. He runs at defenders. He gets into space and creates for others. It works for us.

Brazil is the next challenge. The Brazilians will probably roll us, but clearly the US has a chance. Losing Michael Bradley on a bullshit red card hurts, but Benny Feilhaber and Jose Torres are capable players. Feilhaber will probably get the nod so Donovan can stay on the flank. If the back four can be as solid as it was against Spain, and Donovan and the other attackers work together as well as they did vs Spain, clearly the US can win.

If the US does defeat Brazil, Landon Donovan will probably be Man of the Match.

The Recovery Without Recovery

The Great Recession is old news by this point. The housing crash, the financial crisis, the Gas Shock of 2008, the great economic crisis of the twenty-first century has rocked all of us. But there is good news, they say. Economists point to a rebound in the stock markets and an increase in consumer spending in the last couple of months and tell us that the recession may have bottomed out and the recovery begun.

Only one problem with this recovery: it's not producing any new jobs, and unemployment is expected to keep going UP even as the "recovery" gets underway. It's not until well into the "recovery" that unemployment is expected to start going down, and not for FIVE YEARS until unemployment is expected to be back down to its pre-recession levels.

What this means is that the winners of the recent boom are going to be the winners of the recovery as well. Those whose participation in the boom was purchased with borrowed money are going to lose, and those who lost their jobs after borrowing into the boom are going to be catastrophic losers. These losers are now probably going to be forced by law to purchase health insurance they can't afford and that won't provide coverage, while health care costs continue to spiral upward. My reading of the "health care reform" process does not leave me feeling good. The protected interests are going to stay protected, and what comes out is just going to put more controls, more burdens, more restrictions on the lower classes.

The Washington Post article buries the most worrisome issues in the bottom third. I will bring them forward now:

Since the recession took hold in December 2007, the U.S. economy has lost
5.7 million jobs, a rapid decline that caught administration and other
economists off guard. In recent months, the velocity of job losses has slowed
substantially, which, combined with a rising stock market and increases in
consumer spending, has offered hope that a recovery is beginning to take hold.

But employers still cut 345,000 jobs last month, while the nation's growing
working-age population requires the job market to expand by 125,000 to 150,000 a
month just to keep the unemployment rate stable.

The dynamics of the modern economy further dim the employment picture. Job
growth was weak for years after the past two recessions, in 1991 and 2001.
Employers have grown increasingly slow to rehire workers, and steady advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with fewer workers.

While the recession has touched workers across the spectrum, "many of the
job losses are in manufacturing and construction, affecting less-educated workers and immigrants," Zandi said. "It is going to be hard for them to find their way back into the workforce quickly."

Meanwhile, the current recession has been characterized by the
implosion of the housing market and the near collapse of the financial sector
and automobile industry. Despite huge federal interventions, many of the jobs in those industries are gone for good.

The bolded sections carry the salient messages. The "recovery" will result in the owners of the means of production reaping increased profits, with existing workers working harder than before the recession, and fewer new jobs created. Meanwhile, the bailouts of the financial and automobile industries will allow the managers and owners to get back on their feet and go on to profit in the future, but the workers who lost their jobs are out of luck. I remain unconvinced that the bailouts were necessary or in the public interest. More corporate welfare.

But the two crucial questions that I have been asking for a long time without ever receiving an answer are hinted at in the above section. They become more urgent, but with no more indication that anyone is interested in an answer. These questions are:

1) In an age where technology allows for businesses to produce, distribute and administer their products with a minimum of workers and reap huge profits, allowing fewer and fewer people to control more and more of the wealth, how are we to provide for the needs of the majority? It is my contention that in the last 15 years, debt has masked this shift.

2) With the economy shedding all the well-paid muscle occupations, what are those who are unsuited for brain occupations supposed to do? Huge numbers of people do not have and never will have the education and/or mental capabilities required to succeed in technology occupations. In the past, the economy presented occupations for these people that would allow them a decent standard of living. In the new economy, those occupations are disappearing. What are these people to do? A lot of them are going to divide their time between jail and the streets/flophouses, because a lot of them have child support obligations based on what they used to be making, and courts are notoriously unsympathetic to obligors who lose their jobs.

Nobody seems to care about those two issues. But the future is going to look like all those dystopic movies (Bladerunner, Judge Dredd, etc) if good answers are not found. Life in America is very expensive, and fewer and fewer people can afford it.

The mess left to us by the Reagan-Bush-Clinton power structure is either going to make Barack Obama the most unpopular president, or the most revered president, in a very long time. He's either going to take the blame for the crashing down of consequences, or take the credit for great leadership steering us through to the new prosperity. May it be the latter.