the real political problem in America

update Feb 14:
Go here for the full text of the letter by the former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to Nancy Pelosi. Main points (1) Intelligence services did not anticipate a violent attack (2) the police chief's request for National Guard before the day was denied due to bad "optics". (3) the police chief's urgent request for National Guard on the day was held up for approval for 4.5 hours.

Such levels of incompetence are impossible to believe.

Ted Cruz wanted to question Nancy Pelosi about her knowledge of the above https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1360627725694869514 but Democrats decided not to continue with witnesses in the impeachment process.

update Feb 12:
Did you hear that a police officer, Brian Sicknick was bashed with a fire extinguisher during the Capitol riot and later died? It turns out that that was fake news. Nobody seems to know how he died or even when he died. Read this.

update Jan 27:
(14) Rand Paul pushing back on Democrats double standards about inciting violence: link

(13) Tulsi Gabbard (combat veteran Iraq war, Democrat, 2020 Presidential candidate, accused by Hilary Clinton of being a Russian asset):
"The mob who stormed the capitol to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country. But let us be clear, the John Brennan's, the Adam Schiff's, the oligarchs in Big Tech who are trying to undermine our consitutionaaly protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB style surveillance are also domestic enemies, and much more powerful and therefore dangerous than the mob who stormed the Capitol .... (cuts to John Brennan clip) ..." https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1354035548524957697

(12) Capitol Police chief apologizes for security failures during the assault, including a delay in calling for Guard troops.
Yogananda D. Pittman, the acting chief of police, also confirmed that the Capitol Police Board, an obscure panel made up of three voting members, had initially declined a request two days earlier for National Guard troops and then delayed for more than an hour as the violence unfolded on Jan. 6 before finally agreeing to a plea from the Capitol Police for National Guard troops
(lots more detail in the article)

update Jan 25:
(11) Scott Adams listed 7 unanswered questions about the security of the US election system (link):
1) Has there ever been a large scale election fraud that was only discovered by chance? If so, does the opportunity for a similar fraud still exist?
2) Could a hacker with 'God Access' to election systems change a national election result in a big way that would be undetectable via recount, audit or any other method?
3) Would selective recounts and audits requested by the losing side be sufficient to detect fraud that could be spread across multiple precincts so as to look nothing like a good turn out?
4) Would the combination of physical ballot recounts plus statistical sampling to make sure that some number of individual ballots were valid, detect all forms of large scale fraud?
5) On a scale of 1-100%, how secure are our state election systems in terms of any opportunities for large scale national fraud?
6) Have US elections ever been rigged in ways that election officials never contemplated until it was discovered?
7) Have election EXPERTS seen any red flags for widespread fraud in the 2020 elections?

update Jan 21:
(10) Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (MI-13) led nine of her colleagues in sending a letter to Congressional leadership, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, urging that national security powers not be expanded in light of the attack on the U.S. Capitol that occurred two weeks ago, as such measures often lead to the erosion of Americans’ civil liberties.
Press release
Full text of letter

(9) Why the Dems impeached Trump a second time: to pressure him not to pardon Assange and Snowden
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1351641747718369284
https://twitter.com/danielchaitin7/status/1351704268563075072
He believed it might swing a few Republican votes for the impeachment

update Jan 17:
(8) Video with commentary showing a highly organised group leading the break in to the Capitol building. They were not typical Trump supporters (dressed alike in black, wearing masks). Who were they? The commentator says antifa. What seems clear, from a variety of sources, is that nearly all the protesters were peaceful but there was also a highly organised, military style group of unknown origin, who came with a plan and equipment to break into the Capitol. Will we ever know who they were? They were wearing masks so harder to identify. Here is the video.

update Jan 16:
(7) Credible eyewitness account from Jan 6:
I saw provocateurs at the Capital riot on Jan 6
Summary: Police acted very strangely tear gassing a crowd who supported them; well organised provocateurs (political persuasion not known) led the attack.

This account seems to me to be consistent with Giuliani's (point (2) below)

(6) The true voice of the new elite ruling class in the USA, expressed by Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic, describing the people who went to the Capitol:

Here they were, a coalition of the willing: deadbeat dads, YouPorn enthusiasts, slow students and MMA fans. They had heard the rebel yell, packed up their Confederate flags and Trump banners and GPS-ed their way to Washington. After a few wrong turns, they had pulled up into the swamp with bellies full of beer and Sausage McMuffins, maybe a little high on Adderall, ready to get it done.

Glenn Greenwald comments on the above:

"[T]hese people know they are scorned and looked down upon...& the more you humiliate & make them feel powerless, the more you take away their ability to organize and express that rage, it's gonna find an outlet in more destructive ways."
-source

(5) Manuel Lopez Obrador, President of Mexico:
“I can tell you that at the first G20 meeting we have, I am going to make a proposal on this issue,” López Obrador said. “Yes, social media should not be used to incite violence and all that, but this cannot be used as a pretext to suspend freedom of expression.”

“How can a company act as if it was all powerful, omnipotent, as a sort of Spanish Inquisition on what is expressed?” he asked.
- Mexican president mounts campaign against social media bans

(4) Profiles of some of the people who entered the Capitol on Jan 6th. Here. Note that some of them were not Trump supporters and played the role of provocateurs, see entries 6,7, 8, 9, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23. According to the last entry (23), John Sullivan may have been partly responsible for Ashli Babbit's death (10, 11)

(3) update Jan 14:
Just listened to a great podcast from Megyn Kelly, Tech Censorship And Independent Media, with Glenn Greenwald and the CEOs of Parler and Substack (2 hrs). She begins with her own analysis, then interviews John Matze, Parler CEO, then the CEO of substack, Chris Best and finally Glenn Greenwald. I found out a lot about Parler (not setup to be a right wing feed). At the end, Glenn Greenwald gives his opinion that the current craziness is a vengeful outpouring, built up since 2016, of those forces who saw their rightful ownership of the Presidency snatched away from them. Am I asking you to listen to a podcast that goes for a whole 2 hours? Yes, if you want to understand America, the world and freedom of speech.

(1)
I'll put this up now and add detail later if necessary. Glenn Greenwald correctly and succinctly identifies the real political problem in America at the moment:

Tech monopolies -- FB, Google, Apple, Amazon -- have more concentrated wealth & power than any in history. They have used brute force 3 times in 3 months to manipulate US politics: censoring NY Post, banning Trump, destroying Parler.

And liberals are overwhelmingly supportive.
- source

(2) I went to Rudy Giuliani's site to get his take. Then found that a video he had made about the January 6 Capitol protest has been censored by YouTube so he has republished it on rumble. So, better watch that one now before it disappears totally!

I watched it. Go here. I do think Rudy's analysis is important to obtain the full picture of what is happening. I'm not saying he is right, I can't tell, but do think he is very credible.

But one irritating issue is that his analysis is punctuated by ads. It destroys the ambience. He is discussing really important issues and it is broken up by adverts.

Anyway, Rudy was at the rally and did speak. He says there was no sign at the rally proper that there would be violence. The violence was planned beforehand and separate from the rally, he say, by antifa supporters. He presents evidence in his video in support of that claim.

One final thought here: What possible justification can YouTube have for censoring this video? They are Orwell's Thought Police, no other explanation.

US elections: the Kraken?

update Jan 3: Ted Cruz and 10 other Senators will not endorse US Presidential election results (link to full statement)
Extracts:
"Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.

"And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.' That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%).
...
"Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.

"On January 6, it is incumbent on Congress to vote on whether to certify the 2020 election results. That vote is the lone constitutional power remaining to consider and force resolution of the multiple allegations of serious voter fraud.
...
Congress should immediately appoint an Electoral Commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states. Once completed, individual states would evaluate the Commission's findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed.

"Accordingly, we intend to vote on January 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given' and ‘lawfully certified' (the statutory requisite), unless and until that emergency 10-day audit is completed.

"We are not naïve. We fully expect most if not all Democrats, and perhaps more than a few Republicans, to vote otherwise. But support of election integrity should not be a partisan issue. A fair and credible audit-conducted expeditiously and completed well before January 20-would dramatically improve Americans' faith in our electoral process and would significantly enhance the legitimacy of whoever becomes our next President. We owe that to the People.
/update

We have been waiting a while (2 months) for reliable evidence to back the claim that the US election was stolen from Trump.

Providing some links here for such a claim and evaluation of that claim by Scott Adams. Adams is a Trump supporter who has spent time and energy debunking other such claims that initially looked credible.

1) Tweet from Rudy Giuliani, Jan 1, 2021 (link):

In a country with a free press, you would know:

1. The Georgia Senate Judiciary Committee issued a report demonstrating the vote was stolen from @realDonaldTrump .

2. The vote was unanimous and BIPARTISAN to audit Fulton County’s Absentee ballots.

3. And to de-certify Biden.

2) Summary of evidence (watch the 5 short videos) showing that votes were flipped from Trump to Biden by the computer system. The allegation is that the machines had a vulnerability and that Trump's votes declined and Biden's votes increased by the same amount at specific times. This should not be possible in a fair election.

update Jan 5: Data Integrity Group - Presentation to GA Senate Hearing 30 Dec 20 - Linda McLaughlin Data Analysis (14 min)

3) Scott Adams discusses the evidence here, watch from 18min 50 sec to 32 min. He points out that if this is not debunked within a day or two then it does discredit the whole US election process. If it was done in one place then obviously it could have been done in many places.

the scott adams theory of US election fraud

Bonus: Scott has an uncanny ability to make the most serious of topics wickedly funny. Regretfully, you won't find that in my summary, you will need to go to the source (links at the bottom).

1. Rasmussan polls have been more reliable, they show that 30% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans believe there was fraud
2. Lots of evidence for fraud (Here is the Evidence) but the dog (Main Stream Media) is not barking
3. Early claims of fraud were mainly there to keep the issue alive while more substantial evidence was gathered
4. 95% of fraud allegations will be weak or false (confirmation bias, if you think something is true then that is what you will see)
5. Fraud was certain but we don’t know whether it was enough to change the result
6. Fraud was targetted in the key swing states, not widespread (the MSM often claims there is no evidence of widespread fraud)
7. The motivation to cheat was sky high, since Democrats believe their own propaganda that Trump is an orange Hitler
8. The opportunity to cheat was present eg. Republican observers were kept at a distance, removed, intimidated. bullied. Scott speculates that there is evidence (in Michigan) that the bullying of Republican observers was organised.
9. When motivation to cheat is high and the opportunity is present then cheating always occurs. You don’t need proof to know that
10. The Dominion Smartmatic software Venezuela cheating story promoted earlier by Sidney Powell was a deliberate, professional disinformation scam (too perfect to be true). The whole situation is riddled with deliberate disinformation which makes it very difficult for the Trump forces to sort it out in time.
11. It is likely that the fraud was “packetised” ie. done in a sophisticated and professional manner,a variety of different ways of cheating were implemented. If some of those ways are proved, but not all, then there still may not be enough evidence that the known fraud would reverse the result
12. One of the professional packets would be to conceal Biden votes in previously apathetic black voters. The Trump black vote increased from 2016 but the Rasmussan polls predicted it would be even further up than it was
13. MSM brainwashing language (eg CNN) morphs from no proof to baseless to unsubstantiated
14. There is lots of circumstantial statistical evidence that fraud was extremely likely. See the Matt Braynard report, Voter Integrity Project: Findings and Conclusions
15. Inability to audit the vote counting machine election software (because it is proprietary) invalidates the election. If this is not fixed by 2024 then we need a Tea Party revolution, throw them in the Bay.
16. The Courts may decide to preserve the stability of the Republic rather than reverse the election result
17. If you factor the bias of big tech (twitter, facebook etc.) and the deep state against Trump before the election then it is arguable / very likely that Trump is far more popular than Biden if we had a real democracy in the USA

The outcome? By my reading Scott Adams, at present, thinks that Biden will prevail but that there will be irresistible pressure to improve the voting system for the future. He is certain there was significant targetted fraud, probably enough to reverse the election result, but it was cleverly done ("the perfect crime") and there will not be enough time to prove it before Biden is confirmed.

More recently he has said a civil war is necessary if
(a) the voting machines can't be audited
(b) the practice of trained bullies harrassing observers is not dealt with

REFERENCE
Scott Adams twitter
Scott Adams periscope

Understanding America?

It was an enormous surprise 4 years ago when Trump was elected. Another surprise was that this was predicted by Michael Moore. Btw Moore is again warning not to count our chickens before they hatch.

What then arose was a need to explain this. After a little research I thought I had discovered reasonable explanations:

1. The elephant curve, that middle America was either making no progress or going backwards economically. They were angry and voted for an angry outsider from the political establishment, Trump.
2. The Democrat candidate, Hilary, was a pathetic self serving liberal who promoted identity politics and eschewed class politics.

At the time I felt Michael Hudson was on the right track in calling for a break up of the Democratic Party. His analysis, along with the late David Graeber, identified the central problem that both Parties were and are captive to Wall Street.

Over those four years as a casual, part time observer of American politics I felt those two explanations were sufficient to explain what was going on.

Four years later, is there a need to update this analysis? I have been searching and now think I know a little more.

Russia gate, based on flimsy evidence, was a failure of the Democrats to face the main reason why they lost, namely that their candidate and policies served the elite and would not improve the situation of middle America.

BLM is a race based movement with some legitimate claims but does not clearly identify the key issue in America, namely, the dire economic situation of the growing precariat.

China. Niall Ferguson, when interviewed by Coleman Hughes, identified the main good thing that Trump has done: clearly identified China as a real and growing danger to the world

Joe Biden is in cognitive decline and his political history shows he is either a scumbag (eg. with regard to the whistle blowers Snowden and Assange) or a non entity. The Democrats could have appointed a moderate reformer like Bernie Sanders. They chose not to which indicates they have learnt nothing new of value over the past 4 years.

The Lincoln Project, Republicans who are anti Trump, do make occasional entertaining videos but are dishonest in the way they promote Biden.

Institutions such as the New York Times and Universities have by and large been taken over by the woke movement who believe such things as:

• Democrats lost last time because of Russian interference
• Russia remains an existential threat to US democracy
• Free speech has some importance but anti racism is far more important
• Only fascists, nazis, white supremists, terrorists and racists support Trump
• Assange belongs in prison because he helped Trump last time

Now the social media giants (twitter, facebook) have yielded to the pressure and are censoring their feed in support of Biden. The fearless, free press, where is it?

The culture war against a main stream media that has long stopped trying to tell the truth will have to go on whoever wins the election.

There are people in America, outside the main stream media, who make sense to me. I describe them as just informed citizens, of varying political allegiance, who have the blinkers off, are passionate about finding the truth and have growing numbers of supporters. Here are some of their names: Michael Hudson, Glen Loury, Coleman Hughes, John McWhorter, Glen Greenwald, Niall Ferguson, Matt Taibbi, Joe Rogan

The current choice, in the words of Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper, is between one bowl of shit and two bowls of shit. Coleman Hughes is supporting Joe Biden since he feels it might lead to a less deranged left wing as opposed to a more deranged left wing (if Trump wins). Take your pick.

If you think the above is on the right track and want to hear it better argued then watch this interview of Glen Greenwald by Joe Rogan:

The Hippocratic oath of activism: First educate yourself

Coleman Hughes argues that the Black Lives Matter movement is based on a half truth. True that the police treat blacks worse. Not true that they murder disproportionately more blacks than whites. The videos where the police murder whites don't go viral. The problem with the police is corruption (not being independently investigated) not disproportionate murder of black people:

YouTube link: The Same Drugs: Coleman Hughes on race, racism, police violence, and Black Lives Matter.

Ok, it's 45 minutes, but well worth it to find out what is actually happening, rather than relying on mainstream media, which likes to highlight the conflagration, looting etc.

"The Hippocratic oath of activism: First educate yourself"

Land of the Free, Home of the Poor

The extent of economic inequality is astonishing and underestimated by nearly everyone. PBS NewsHour’s Land of the Free, Home of the Poor with Paul Solman is brilliant and a must watch.

Over 90% of people interviewed underestimated the extent of wealth disparity picking the Swedish wealth profile as the one they thought represented America. Differences b/w Democrat and Republican voters were insignificant.

Reality:

• Top 20% possess 84% of the wealth 
• Second 20% possess 11% of the wealth 
• Third 20% possess 4% of the wealth 
• Fourth 20% possess 0.2% of the wealth 
• Fifth 20% possess 0.1% of the wealth 

In the last 10 years most of the change has been a dramatic increase in the wealth proportion of the top 0.1%

Warren Buffet:

Yes, there has been a class war in the United States and my class, the super rich, have won

Towards the end Richard Freeman points out that the extent of inequality in the USA matches that of China, still a mainly peasant society, and African countries.

Another reference which makes some similar points and also emphasises that across the political spectrum Americans desire a more equal society than the one they currently live in: Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time

First, respondents dramatically underestimated the current level of wealth inequality. Second, respondents constructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actual distribution. Most important from a policy perspective, we observed a surprising level of consensus: All demographic groups—even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy—desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.

superwoman crashes

I noticed when watching the Waiting for Superman movie trailer (link) that it was made by the same people who made An Inconvenient Truth. Hard hitting documentaries that oversimplify complex issues and then hit you over the head with a baseball bat.

Michelle Rhee promised to crash through and reform schools in Washington D.C. who were failing disadvantaged kids. She was given unconditional backing by Mayor Adrian Fenty.

Fenty has now lost his bid for re-election, which was widely viewed as a referendum on Rhee.

Diane Ravitch points out (Why Michelle Rhee and Adrian Fenty Lost) that Fenty was supported by white voters but lost the black vote. The media has blamed teacher unions but as Ravitch insists black voters can think for themselves.

So, the people who Rhee was going to help have turned against her. This to me is a vote against the notion that changing inequality and poverty in society can be fixed exclusively at the school level. Social class cannot be turned around in class, it's a wider social issue. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't try and good teacher do their best. But it does mean we have to face the wider social reality. Kids come to school and do not leave their baggage and damage in a blue bin at the gate. (thanks pat thomson!)

In her article Ravitch links to a Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll which shows that the Obama / Arne Duncan policies on school reform, which include elements of the Rhee approach such as sacking Principals in schools which are judged to be failing, are losing favour.

However, this article also points out (scroll down to the Bright Spots subheading) that the public still supports improving the quality of teaching and some form of merit pay. People want reform and school improvement but not excessive crash through draconian approaches that target teachers as the only problem in school achievement. I notice a quote there from Barnett Berry who has been studying the issue of how to reform disadvanted schools for years:

“There is far more interest in supporting teachers than firing them or paying them on the basis of test scores,” said Barnett Berry, the president and chief executive officer of the Hillsborough, N.C.-based Center for Teaching Quality. “It doesn’t mean the American people don’t want a results-oriented profession. They do. I think they are more tuned in with the needs of the field than some of the policymakers who are making the rules and regulations.”

Related: Staffing high needs schools (outlines Barnett Berry's ideas in more detail)

Update: Grading 'Waiting for Superman' The introductory paragraphs are spot on:

Here's what you see in Waiting for Superman, the new documentary that celebrates the charter school movement while blaming teachers unions for much of what ails American education: working- and middle-class parents desperate to get their charming, healthy, well-behaved children into successful public charter schools.

Here's what you don't see: the four out of five charters that are no better, on average, than traditional neighborhood public schools (and are sometimes much worse); charter school teachers, like those at the Green Dot schools in Los Angeles, who are unionized and like it that way; and noncharter neighborhood public schools, like PS 83 in East Harlem and the George Hall Elementary School in Mobile, Alabama, that are nationally recognized for successfully educating poor children.

You don't see teen moms, households without an adult English speaker or headed by a drug addict, or any of the millions of children who never have a chance to enter a charter school lottery (or get help with their homework or a nice breakfast) because adults simply aren't engaged in their education. These children, of course, are often the ones who are most difficult to educate, and the ones neighborhood public schools can't turn away.

You also don't learn that in the Finnish education system, much cited in the film as the best in the world, teachers are—gasp!—unionized and granted tenure, and families benefit from a cradle-to-grave social welfare system that includes universal daycare, preschool and healthcare, all of which are proven to help children achieve better results at school.

In other words, Waiting for Superman is a moving but vastly oversimplified brief on American educational inequality. Nevertheless, it has been greeted by rapturous reviews.

US economy is worse than Greece

U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know It: Laurence Kotlikoff

Laurence J. Kotlikoff is a professor of economics at Boston University

IMF annual review of US economic policy:

"The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates ... closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP"

To correct this fiscal gap would require doubling of US taxes, which is politically not yet possible

How can the fiscal gap be so enormous?

Simple. We have 78 million baby boomers who, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these entitlements will total about $4 trillion in today’s dollars. Yes, our economy will be bigger in 20 years, but not big enough to handle this size load year after year.

This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck.

Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under U.S. President Richard Nixon, coined an oft-repeated phrase: “Something that can’t go on, will stop.” True enough. Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme will stop. But it will stop too late.

And it will stop in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills...

And bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece.

roots of oppression

roots of oppression

in case you haven't seen this, it's an amazing and very comprehensive photo gallery with commentary by a Dane, Jacob Holdt, hitchhiking around USA, some years ago.

Extract from Chapter 1:

Traveling in such a deeply divided society inevitably was a violent experience:

4 times I was attacked by robbers with pistols,
2 times I managed to avoid cuts from men with knives,
2 times frightened police drew guns on me,
1 time I was surrounded by 10-15 blacks in a dark alley and almost killed.
1 time I was ambushed by the Ku Klux Klan,
several times I had bullets flying around me in shootouts,
2 times I was arrested by the FBI, and 4 times by the Secret Service.
I lived with 3 murderers and countless criminals.....
...but I have never met a bad American!

That I survived I owe to my stubborn belief in these words by Jose Marti:

You must have faith in the best in people and distrust the worst.
If not, the worst will prevail.

america in decline

Video: Kevin Phillips interview

Kevin Phillips seems to know something about the collapsing US economy:

• author of Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism
• Financial sector has been privileged over manufacturing for 25 years
• Bailouts since the 1980s
• Bad money drives out good money
• The financial sector has never been graded in any serious way
• Wealth disparity between rich and poor has never been greater
• Consumerism, reckless borrowing
• Rising Financial sector means the rise of Debt industry (mortgage, credit cards etc.)
• During Greenspan's tenure (1987-2006) the total credit market quadrupled from 11 trillion to 44 trillion
• Alan Greenspan never punctured a bubble or cracked down on exotic mortages
• Bipartisan problem: Clinton and Carter aided and abetted the favouring of the financial sector
• Only half way through the problem
• Consistent official understatement and misstatement

Seven sharks in the mix:

1. Financialisation: dependence on the financial sector
2. Huge, unprecedented buildup of debt
3. Home prices collapsing
4. Global commodity inflation
5. Fraud and deceptive government economic statistics
6. Peak oil or shortage of oil
7. Collapsing dollar

• McCain doesn't understand economics and has terrible advisers
• Obama is not specific when talking about the economy and also has terrible advisers
• The Democrats are the Party getting most of the financial money
• Unlikely that the Democrats will make the tough decisions required (they carry a lunchbox but wear a pinstripe suit)
• America is now declining just as Britain declined between 1914 and 1945 (it might take a couple of decades)
• the big donors of both parties support the financial bailouts

article by Kevin Phillips: Bubble and Bail
(thanks Doug)

a morality play

What Makes People Vote Republican? by Jonathan Haidt

Republican voters like guns and God and don't like gays and immigrants. They are narrow minded, racist and dumb. They suffer from cognitive inflexibility, they are too fond of hierarchy and fear uncertainty, change and death. Their "moral clarity" is simplistic nonsense.

This pop psychology view leads to elitist righteousness, the wearing of a halo by Democrats

Haidt explores the contrary but also complementing contributions to moral values originating from John Stuart Mill (On Liberty) and Emile Durkheim

Mill envisaged individuals as equal and free and that power was only justified to prevent harm to others. This position draws support from the partly innate moral values of
(1) protection from harm, especially violent harm (harm-care values), and,
(2) the importance of fairness, reciprocity, rights and justice (fairness-reciprocity values).

These values appeal to liberals and libertarians. Hence, liberals tend to be opposed to war, guns and support minority or oppressed group rights and often sympathise with these groups as victims (immigrants, gays, blacks, women etc.)

However, social groups have other values apart from those stressed by Mill.

Durkheim pointed to the collective interest, to social binding, the suppression of selfishness and the need to punish deviants and free riders. For him the basic social unit was the hierarchical social family rather than the free individual. Durkheim recognised the danger of anomie or normlessness. For the social good, self control is more important than self expression, duty more important than rights and group loyalty more important than the interests of minority groups.

Hence, from Durkheim, Haidt adds three new values to those above:
(3) ingroup-loyalty (historically, arising from tribalism)
(4) authority-respect (social rank and mutual obligation can be cohesive)
(5) purity-sanctity (what is regarded as degrading and what is regarded as noble)

He describes social morality as like an audio equaliser with five slider switches, for Republicans, but with only two switches for Democrats.

In the current election it makes very good sense for McCain to choose Sarah Palin as a running mate with a deep appeal (one that he lacks) to the Christian social base. The outpouring of elitist social righteousness from many Obama supporters (documented in ... twenty first century witch) illustrates that they don't get it - and hence they risk losing the unlosable election. When the main focus of your campaign becomes that your opponent is a liar and his running mate is a witch, then you are in trouble.

It's well worth reading the Haidt article in full and the rest of the discussion from The Edge contributors.

american democracy (FISA Bill)

The new FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) bill amendments have just been passed by the United States Congress

This enables electronic surveillance without approval being issued by a court (provided the government files required papers within a week) and provides retroactive immunity to telcos who have been breaking the old law at the behest of the Bush administration. According to Ellsberg this law breaking preceded 9/11 and has been revealed by leaks to the New York Times.

This represents an undermining or "gutting" of the Fourth Amendment of the American constitution which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures

Casualties:
(1) american democracy
(2) Obama, for his reversal of his previous committment to filibuster this bill
(3) it undermines credibility from the US efforts to help establish democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq

Daniel Ellsberg: You can't maintain a democracy while the State can spy on its citizens without independent approval from a judge (paraphrased)

update (11th July):
This article from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) provides more detail about the inadequate checks on wiretapping:

The FISA Amendments Act nearly eviscerates oversight of government surveillance by allowing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to review only general procedures for spying rather than individual warrants. The FISC will not be told any specifics about who will actually be wiretapped, thereby undercutting any meaningful role for the court and violating the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

The bill further trivializes court review by authorizing the government to continue a surveillance program even after the government’s general spying procedures are found insufficient or unconstitutional by the FISC. The government has the authority to wiretap through the entire appeals process, and then keep and use whatever information was gathered in the meantime.

reference:
Daniel Ellsberg on FISA (video). People of my generation remember Daniel Ellsberg for his role in leaking the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971, which "demonstrated unconstitutional behavior by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath and the violation of the oath of every one of their subordinates"
FISA Amendment Acts of 2008 (wikipedia)
Senate Joins House in Caving to White House Immunity Demands (eff site)
strangebedfellows: a unique and diverse left--right coalition which has come together to put a stop to the eradication of civil liberties in America
The FISA Protest and myBO Interesting detail here about the interactive features and dynamics of Obama's website

obama on israel

"Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided."
- Arabs Shocked by Obama Speech

I think this is the wrong call for those who recognise and understand the historical truth that Israel is occupied Palestine. My limited understanding of US politics includes the belief that the Democrats are more captive to the Zionist lobby than the Republicans.

This is not "change you can believe in" but status quo pandering to powerful special interest groups.

By contrast Bush did more clearly call for a Palestinian State than his predecessor, Clinton, although it is an exaggeration to say that Bush was the first US President to call for a Palestinian state(source1, source2)

18 surprises about New York City

My friend Barry has just returned from trip to the USA with his family (Joan, Joey, Hannah)

He has written an interesting blog, 18 surprises about New York City, and is looking for feedback particularly from those who have visited or who reside in NYC