Free Yourself

The great American revolution of the 2oth century went unnoticed by many of us, because it was silent and leaderless. In 1900 about 90% of black people in America lived in the South, where they were denied citizenship. In the 1920s, for example, if you were a black motorist, you were forbidden by law, in much of the South, to pass a white motorist on the road. Over the next 50 years about half the blacks, deciding one at a time, moved out. They freed themselves.

Bloomberg the Book Burner

Have you ever wondered what Mayor Michael Bloomberg of NYC is up to? I haven't.

I mean, until now. Bloomberg's a billionaire and a five foot pile of horseshit in a wig. My guess is that he bought himself a political job to get more face time on camera.

Last week he confiscated the donated 5,000 copy library of Occupy Wall Street and had it destroyed. That makes him Bloomberg the Book Burner. He did this, he claimed, to protect the citizens of New York, which he accomplishes by assaulting those citizens with hordes of large blue men wielding batons and pepper spray against children and old ladies.

Bloomberg is a typical American mayor, funded by real estate interests. By "protecting citizens" what he means is "protecting the system run by the 1%." A few people in tents are pushing for changes in the system--so tenting must be against the law and punishable by street justice. If you tent in NYC, Billionaire Bloomberg will beat you black and blue.

Big Window

I like to amuse the Peace Project's Bob Boardman with new facts (new to me). The last time we had dinner together, about ten days ago, he spent most of the meal staring out the Big Window. I finally told him that 100,000 Jews (half Jews and quarter Jews) had fought in Hitler's army. "I didn't know that," he said, glancing at me, then resuming his stare.

A few years back Bob decided to bike in the AIDS ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles. He hadn't done much serious cycling, so the little bike club I belong to provided people for him to train with.

Anyway, Bob loves this club. Until recently he has joined us on twice-a-week excursions, where the point is to play like kids and then stop and eat something sweet. Bob fell on the trail for no apparent reason on his last ride. I suspect that he fell because he'd started to look through the Big Window. That's no way to ride a bike.

When Bob steps through the Window, everything will change. Nothing can stop that. The way I see it, we're here only once, so we should be good to each other right now. We won't get another turn. That is, more or less, my politics. Bob Boardman--no one better--has gotten his turn right.

Not Enough Jobs

We've seen the new Sonoma County pension proposal made by Supervisors Shirlee Zane and David Rabbit, and it is conventional, thoughtless and a good illustration of why the Democrats will have a hard time enlisting the 99%ers into their party. The Tea Party fled immediately into the arms of the Republicans because they were Republicans to start with and because the Tea Party wanted funding from Wall Street. Now the Democrats hope for a similar boost from the 99%ers, but they won't get it unless they figure out why the 99ers are in revolt. So far they haven't.

The county Democrats plan to reduce benefits for county employees (a Republican concept involving punishing the poor for the sins of the rich) and to increase the age of retirement (guaranteed to reduce employment slots for young people). The elected Democrats are not getting the message--they listen to corporate campaign donors, not to ordinary people.

The basic problem is that there are 7 billion people on the planet and not enough jobs to go around. The Democratic Party response is to make the lucky folks who have jobs keep them longer, shutting out newcomers. That's senseless.

We live in an age where technology ends more jobs than it creates (see RACE AGAINST THE MACHINE by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee). That is our future, except that it's going to get worse. Robots are more profitable than human workers. Our current economic system depends on everyone working to earn money so we can purchase products etc. And the system is failing because many cannot find work. An estimated 2 billion people on this planet go to bed hungry each night.

There are quick temporary fixes for the relatively rich Western World. We could cut the work week to 35 hours and have instant full employment. We could make the retirement age 55 and have full employment. But our ideology--when times get tough, America punishes the poor--forbids these answers. Our political class doesn't get it (or doesn't want to). Almost no one in power is listening. Finding humane answers is left the powerless.

Zini's

Zini's Diner in Cloverdale, next to Ace Hardware, has been rated as the best diner in Sonoma County. Susan and I finally went and ate the pan-friend chicken with real mashed potatoes ($10). It was like home if your mom was a good cook. Fine house-made apple pie. Friendly atmosphere and zero ambiance.

Rich Man's Disease

Now that the class warfare season has begun, with the Rich attacking the Poor, debaters and bloggers should be careful how we employ certain terms, one of which is "the rich man's disease." This concept, the philosopher Wittgenstein might point out, has several quite unrelated meanings or uses. It's easy to confuse or conflate them.

In one context "rich man's disease" is a reference to sexual addiction, a malady found only among the wealthy. It has never been diagnosed in the poor, who are merely lewd or sluttish.

In a second context "rich man's disease" is kleptomania, a treatable disorder. Again this emotional problem doesn't develop among the poor, who merely steal things and go to prison.

A third type of disorder--and a considerable handicap--attacks rich Christians, who are nearly all born with a reading comprehension deficit. For example, they read the Bible without comprehending key passages like "Sooner shall a camel (or rope in some translations) pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man enter heaven." To date there is no known cure for this disease and no attempt to find a cure.

In discussions with the rich, we should at all times remain polite and supportive, keeping in mind that we might be addressing someone burdened with diseases unavailable to the likes of us and someone certain to go to Hell if the Good Book has any truth in it.

Can Obama Win?

The cable and network analysts of our Presidential horse race are a waste of time, unless you find them entertaining, and I do. If you want to predict who will win the popular vote in the next election consider the following.

1. The campaigns by the Democratic and the Republican candidates will cancel one another out. Also the campaigns will be followed only by voters who are already committed. Republican and Democratic voters cancel each other out. Everyone else will find the campaigns an annoyance and pay them little attention.

2. The election will be, like all Presidential elections, a referendum by the voters on the party in power in the White House. Should that party remain in power in the White House because it's doing okay or not?

3. The criteria used by our pragmatic, uninformed, independent voters in judging the White House will be varied and subjective. The election will not be decided by one or two factors like the economy or foreign policy or who is likable.
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Most of the above comes from THE KEYS TO THE PRESIDENCY by Allan Lightman and Ken DeCell, who have worked out a list of 13 factors that enable them to predict the popular vote in Presidential contests. Their system has worked for the last 33 Presidential elections. No other predicting system comes close to that record.

Note that the 13 keys predict the popular vote and not the outcome, which has been stolen several times by Republicans (Hayes/Tilden and Bush/Gore come to mind).

This method does not use polls, because polls are, as many have learned, unverifiable and unreliable.
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The Thirteen Keys

There is no way to weight these keys and apparently no need to do so. The operating rule is that if five or fewer of the following keys are false, the incumbent party wins the popular vote. To date this method has been accurate in every case.

True or false is determined by general voter perception, not by right or left ideology.
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1. The White House incumbent party gained seats in the last House election. (False)

2. There is no serious contest for the incumbent party's nomination. (True)

3. The incumbent party candidate is the sitting President. (True)

4. There is no significant third-party candidate. (T/F)

5. The economy is not in recession. (T/F)

6. Real per-capita economic growth is positive. (T/F)

7. The incumbent has made major changes in national policy. (T/F)

8. There is no sustained social unrest. (T/F)

9. There is no major incumbent party scandal. (T/F)

10. There has been no major failure in foreign or military affairs. (T/F)

11. The administration has achieved a major success in foreign or military affairs. (T/F)

12. The incumbent candidate is charismatic or a national hero. (T/F)

13. The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. (T/F)

Veronica's Secret

Veronica's Secret, whatever it was, turned out to be the best kept secret of the 2oth Century. To this day no one has revealed the secret, but it's not because of lack of research. When I received the Veronica's Secret catalog in the mail, I studied each page closely, hoping to find clues, and so did many other scholars. Somewhere in those photographs of busty young women in their underwear lay the answer. . . .

I believe it is now clear that at least one person has figured the secret out, and that is Sarah Palin, who, each day, looks more like a Veronica's Secret model, only older and with a gigantic gong (old football term for a player's head). Palin is as welcome among male political reporters, including liberals, as a Veronica's Secret catalog. In fact, nearly all men in politics gravitate to her, except for Michele Bachmann's husband.

We'd better start counting on this new Veronica's Secret factor playing big in future American politics. By 2016 we are likely to see one of Fox News' row of indistinguishable blond ladies leading the Republican ticket (and keeping the secret, of course).

The Gaddafi Loyalists

As a leftist--a pragmatic one--I've had no problem deciding which side to support in the Arab spring. When ordinary people go into the street to overthrow a brutal dictator with tanks, I hope they succeed. I find it sad that a few people on the Left support the tyrants, but then some people are daft.

I'm not talking about pacifists. They oppose violence and war as a matter of principle, and I respect that. I'm talking about flat-out support for tyrants like Gaddafi.

Two of the leading Gaddafi loyalists are people I long admired--and I was wrong to do so. Cynthia McKinney has celebrated the vicious 40-year reign of Gaddafi in many venues in the Middle East, including Libyan television. Celebrating Gaddafi seems to have become her new profession. Hugo Chavez is on the net with a video I've watched in which he claims that the fall of Tripoli's Green square happened not in Libya but in Qatar, where it was staged with actors.

McKinney and Chavez are, of course, trapped in ideologies that make it impossible for the United States to be on the right side of an issue even by accident.