Category Archives: public enemy

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JD Vance (and the polar society)

I don’t think many people (Democrats, and a million other American moochers who don’t vote, don’t’ give a fuck) really know who JD Vance is. I don’t really know either, except that I read his book, Hillbilly Elegy, and saw the movie – and really like them both.

Also know:

Investing

In 2017, Vance joined the investment firm Revolution LLC.[63] It was founded by Steve Case, who also cofounded AOL.[63] Vance was tasked with expanding the “Rise of the Rest” initiative, which focuses on growing investments in underserved regions outside Silicon Valley and New York City.[63]

So, in the world of sound-byte knowledge, I am a genius! A know-it-all, because no one wants to know-it-at-all, right?

Now I have also been to Appalachia many times, and not as a sight-seer. I’ve hung out with them hillbillies, drank, and played music. I know ones who died, and many who will die from inhaling heroin, for example. Last year I attended Healing Appalachia, and got my Narcon certification. Talked to a hundred junkies, all of them despised by the elites of our country, ’cause of the way the talk and jes’ lie around all day (sarcasm – it’s hard to spot these days).

Here’s my point: there is no doubt who will vote for JD Vance – lots of poor busted people from the hills, who finally see a guy that could understand him. Will there be the same amount of poor, working class people from Scranton NJ voting for Joe Biden (well, moot point now – but not totally). Will the poor working class people of Scranton ever going to vote for Joe Biden? Did Joe Biden write a book called “Scranton Elegy”, to honor “his people?”

But here’s the other side of the coin: JD Vance is a millionaire now, who went to Yale. He’s got a bit of Southern accent, but, he ain’t going back to Appalachia any time soon. And, while he may take their votes, greedily (why Trump chose him, of course), those people aren’t paying for the campaign, vis-a-vis paying for the Presidency. So is JD Vance disingenuous? I think (my opinion) that he can’t be completely disingenuous. Watch the movie.

The Presidency is indeed paid for. If you think that’s conspiracy theory, you are very, very confused about the fundamentals of American politics, or, you think that Mickey Mouse is not an actor inside a costume at Disney World, or you think that Disney Corporation is all about kids. These are not cynical conspiracies – this is America.

The question you need to ask yourself is: are the Democrats or the Republicans going to change America, to loosen the stranglehold of corporate greed?

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Why we don’t want to mimic bee society

Since I was a youth, I have heard philosophers, “tree-huggers”, and the like, extol the virtues of a bee colony, as a model for human society. Here. for your review, is the basic social organization of the typical bee colony:

Queens

Queens are the only members of a colony able to lay fertilized eggs. An egg-laying queen is important in establishing a strong honey bee colony, and is capable of producing up to 2,000 eggs within a single day. Queens mate early in life and store up millions of sperm within their bodies. While they are capable of living up to five years, they only often only live two to three years producing eggs.

Workers

Worker honey bees are the largest population within a colony. Worker bees are entirely female, but they are unable to produce fertilized eggs. If there is no queen they do sometimes lay unfertilized eggs, which become male drones. Worker bees use their barbed stingers to defend the colony, but after attacking, the barbs attach to the victim’s skin, tearing the stinging bee’s abdomen, resulting in death.

Workers are essential members of honey bee colonies. They forage for pollen and nectar, tend to queens and drones, feed larvae, ventilate the hive, defend the nest and perform other tasks to preserve the survival of the colony. The average life span of worker bees is approximately six weeks.

Drones

Drones, or male honey bees, have only one task: to fertilize new queens. Drones mate outdoors usually in midair and die soon after mating. Some honey bee colonies will eject surviving drones during fall when food for the colony becomes limited.

Swarms

Honey bee swarming is a natural part of a developing their colony. Honey bees swarm as a result of overcrowding within a hive. To create a swarm, an old honey bee queen leaves the hive with about half of the hive’s worker bees, while a new queen remains in the old hive with the rest of the workers. In the wild, honey bees swarm most in late spring and early summer, at humid times of the day. While swarming is part of the healthy life cycle of every honey bee colony, beekeepers often attempt to reduce the incidence of swarming in domesticated bees.

A honey bee swarm may contain hundreds or thousands of worker bees and a single queen. Swarming honey bees fly temporarily, and then cluster on shrubs and tree branches. The clusters rest there for several hours to a few days, depending on weather conditions and the amount of time needed to search for a new nesting site. When a scout honey bee locates a good location for the new colony, the cluster immediately flies to the new site. https://www.orkin.com/pests/stinging-pests/bees/honey-bees/honey-bee-colony

NOTE: I have seen Google’s AI alters the name “drones” to “unmanned aerial vehicle”:

Unmanned aerial vehicleAn unmanned aerial vehicle, commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. Wikipedia

The bee colony/human society thing is an allegory.

noun

noun: allegory; plural noun: allegories

  1. a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.”Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory of the spiritual journey”

Our US society has, unfortunately, lost, or never gained, the understanding or usage of literary/philosophical tools, like allegory and metaphor. So, I see the need to review such structures when I write about them – otherwise, Amerikuns will fight and stab each others’ eyes out!

An allegory is not a metaphor – I not saying “bee colonies are similar to human colonies.” An allegory is much more a passive, i.e. left to the reader, tool: I describe the bee colony, and you, the reader, make inferences or comparisons, in your own minds and hearts. I do reserve the right to make metaphors, however, like…

Queens are clearly the rai·son d’ê·tre of the colony – not at all the “leader”; rather, the source of purpose for all the other members. If our society has a “queen”, it could be argued that the President of the United States fills this role. The President, currently, is in no way a “leader”. The President doesn’t really do anything, except serve as an icon for debate. Like the Queen, the President has only a short term – 5 years for the Queen/ 4 years for the President. The Queen is a gluttonous “feeder”. The dangerous aspect of the Queen is that she produces the eggs – the germinal members of the future society.

Workers are only female. They protect the hive, and do all the work. This could remind us of other females in nature – fiercely protective of the “nest”. At some point in US society, women/mothers worked at home – worked themselves to death, were responsible for guarding the children, “ventilating the hive”, etc.

Can’t help the comparison of drones to US males – again, not a generalization here: this cannot be applied to all American men, or American Males. But for the bees, their only purpose is to fertilize eggs. Very tempted to make that into a generalization, but leaving it up to you. Note that they do not fertilize the (female) workers – they only fertilize the Queen, which tempts me again to make the comparison that American males only serve to fertilize the Führer – serve the fertilize the ideals, but not the progenitors of the race. The other sad thing is that “Some honey bee colonies will eject surviving drones during fall when food for the colony becomes limited.” This reminds me more of our corporations nowadays – the employees (not necessarily only women, clearly): when the profit margin gets squeezed, you just eject them. What the little article I am citing does not mention is that it is the female workers who do the “ejection” – by stinging the drones when the try to enter the hive.

The last bit – that of the swam – is painfully reminiscent of most human societies I see in this era – whenever a culture “feels” cramped, they swarm out. The major difference is, in bee swarming, they seek out uninhabited locations, which they gain without conflict. Since the human population is essentially over-populous, there is nowhere to go without extant populations, or, because of the avarice which seems inherent in humans (although it is, IMO, learned from the Queen), human swarms focus on inhabited locations – urban sprawl, gentrification – these all are swarms.

For your consideration: are we comparable, allegorically, to bee society? Do we want to be?

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Watergate, and the -gates that were opened

From Wikipedia:

The Watergate scandal resulted in 69 indictments and 48 convictions, involving several high-ranking officials from the Nixon administration.[12] The term “Watergate” has since become synonymous with various clandestine and illicit activities conducted by Nixon’s aides, including the bugging of political opponents’ offices, unauthorized investigations, and the misuse of government agencies for political purposes.[13] The addition of “-gate” to a term has since been used to denote public scandals,[14][15][16] particularly in politics.

I was alive then. Every night the news (because there was only really one news back then, on three different stations) was about fekkin Watergate. As a nation, the United States was partially destroyed by Watergate – the revelation that political officials engaged in unscrupulous behavior was apparently never heard of prior to this.

Really? I mean, there had been unpricipled politicians before that, right? For some reason – maybe it was the 60s – I had a mistrust of any/all politicians. I think my parents did not.

But I have to say now – what was the big deal? The Republicans spied on the Democrats before an election? Wow. That’s kind of boring, isn’t it? But isn’t this just dirty politics between political parties – which are not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, lest we forget. I mean, was the President impeached for his role in the illicit collection of data from the opposing party? That’s imeachable?

Just trying to put things in perspective.

Let’s consider “the misuse of government agencies for political purposes.”. Hilary Clinton’s campaign launched something called “Russiagate”, which led to a lenghty investigation of the President, but was later completely refurted, and Clinton was fined a whole $175,000 for perptrating an unfounded investigation – against a standing President. I know some of you are behind, but this is the truth. Pick your source. Here’s the WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-russia-collusion-hillary-clinton-2016-e341cd7d

I’d like to suggest that the Republicans and the Democrats have been at this for decades. By “this” I mean dragging the whole country, and the government, into generally childish squabbles, which are entirely politically motivated. Now the problem these days is that Trump said the words “politically motivated”, making thie phrase an instant disclaimer for ANY investigation that might actually be politically motivated.

Lookey here – in an election year, Children, everything is politically motivated. Do you need someone to tell you that? It’s always been about winning, and there have been the same two contestants, who behave in exaclty the same way – like liars, cheats, and babies. Or do you want this to be a conspiracy theory, too? Or is it just common sense.

The trouble is never with the investigation itself – the problem is with the freedoms that every American has to give up, unwittingly, which is party of the “freedoms grab” that is a fringe benefit of any of these political squabbles.

Back to Watergate (and Wikipedia):

Subsequent investigations and revelations during trials prompted the U.S. House of Representatives to grant the House Judiciary Committee expanded investigative authority.[3][4]

Think this through – the House Judiciary Committee, which belongs to you and me, is involved in an investigation of Republicans spying on Democrats, to gain an election advantage. But because at the time they could not get those famous Nixon tapes, they changed the law, so that they could get those tapes. Now, that law never went away. It’s still there, even though Nixon is long gone.

What about bimbos? We know that Trump is now accused of felonies, associated with the hush money for a porn star. Boy do we know it. Now maybe you didn’t know that, even though the actual trial featured a lot of sex talk, bribing a bimbo is not a felony. Instead, it was a legal technicality – do you like those as much as I do? – about the reporting of a hush money payment as a campaign expense, during the election campaign. It was couched in an improper reporting case. Because bimbos in the White House is not so new – let’s think about my hero JFK, and your hero, William Jefferson Cllinton, for two.

During Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential election campaign, Flowers came forward to say that she had had a 12-year extramarital relationship with Clinton, and that he had assisted her in securing a job as an administrative assistant with the Arkansas Appeal Tribunal. – Wiki

Again, is this impeachable? Well, he was a governor then, and he traded her a job for a job. Anyway, he got off. – because he didn’t pay her off his campaign books – of something. It was definitely politically motivated – no concidence that the investigation, and her coming out, happened during the election cycle.

I’m just stirring the pot here – the one that called the kettle black. I don’t care about inter-Party chacanery – until it starts to strip away my rights, allows me to be surveilled, etc. But it does piss me off to have to listen to people say that all this is not politically motivated. Just a personal gripe, I won’t go to the Supreme Court (or the Playground Teacher) to get my point proven.

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Retirement, and other Western Myths

My dad retired when he was 62 – took early retirement, because he could. This was in the late 70’s, when my dad could go to the local car dealer, and buy, not one, but two new Toyotas – a Corolla and a Celica – with money he had saved, working as an elementary school Principal, in a small town in Iowa. That’s right – no auto financing was needed, because inflation – considered “rampant” at the time – was nascient, compared with its blood-sucking dominance today. His retirement package was 67% of his final salary, for 10 years following.

By the mid 2000’s (I’m guessing), the reality of a company-sponsored, extended retirement, was gone. Now, as with most myths, this one has taken a long time to be erradicated from the public conscience, mostly because the myth is ardently perpetrated by the headless “financial system”, with its attendant media arm. To what end, we can only guess, but it would make sense that it is tied directly to the profits invesment firms make on the corporate IRAs, which essnentially replaced the pension that my father had (and even I had, until the mid 2000’s). As you may know – although, again, many “believers” never cued into this – you put money into the company IRA, and it can be matched by the company. But where does it go? Into stocks – all of it. It’s not a savings account – it’s an investor/trading account. Your retirement dollars get whisked away into stocks, which perform well, or not. As a lot of people found out (surprise!), much of their IRA just disappeared in 2008! I know people who “called their company” to find out what the hell happened. Well, what happened was, your retirement account blew away with the winds of a market economy (yet another myth buster – that “supply side economics” they taught you in school, was gone from reality, long before they took it out of your textbook – along with the heroism of Christopher Columbus).

I don’t pretend to be an economist – as a rule, they have a pretty poor track record, anyway. But I do know that inflation hit 13% in 1980. To me, this is when the middle class (myth 3 in this post), left, and was replaced by the Debtor Class, or TCFKAM (making a joke at Prince’s expense). By this point, or soon after, every house had a mortgage and every car had consumer financing. Of course, people still thought that as middle class citizens, they should still buy several cars and sevreral houses. They just lost sight of the fact that all these things are now 10 times as expensive as they were 10 years before.

When you talk to a financial advisor today, their first quesiton is always “how much do you want per month, when you retire?” What a funny question – of course, I want like $10 million a month! But they ask this only to lead you into a discussion of how that corporate IRA is going to be the answer. But the solution they offer is for you to contribute the max amount to the IRA fund – dovetails nicely with the Wall Street profit motive I mentioned above.

In the end, you don’t have enough money to be building the kind of retirement fund you would need, AND deal with the wild inflation. So, you end the conversation with some kind of compensation – you’ll do your best to contribute more, and wait until you are 70 to retire.

But the truth is that, when you are 70, you will retire with about 1/3 of your monthly income, assuming that’s even relevant in 10 years – and that includes Social Security, assuming that’s even relevant in 10 years.

Just open your eyes. Don’t listen to NPR, or your corporate financial advisor. Look around. How many elderly people do you see working at Walmart, WinDixie, etc. (just not Whole Foods – far too elitist to hire smelly old people). I have small jobs done by people in their 70s, I get groceries delivered by people in their 70s – the middle class is gone, and so is the working class.

There’s always the conflict with the “official narrative” that keeps using the inflation rate, which is heavily adjusted, rather than the cost of living, which is hidden, to judge the economy. The official narrative wants you to keep working, until you’re sick, and then when you’re sick, you can support the medical complex until you’re dead.

So, your retirement is going to be spent in the grocery business, greeting and helping people, along with millions of new immigrants to the US (which I welcome whole-heartedly). I just want to show the connecting thread in the economy: the “class system” that is preached, is really now obsolete. There is the Market Class, at the top (until the Wall Street “casino” busts), and the Service Class, which are minimum wage (indentured slave wage, by any other name), and the Debtor Class, which lives in blissful debt, counting themselves among the well-to-do, when in fact, they are a hair away from the Service Class, where they will end up eventually.

It’s all good. You didn’t want to retire anyway! You might want to consider a career change early though, since your corporate job is going to be taken away from you when you are too old and cost too much. If you cram your Library Science MA into the last two years of your job, you will end up with a decent salary, augmented by your meager retirement and Social Security, and live within your means (finally!), at peace, and in touch with real people.

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Keystone Pipeline is NOT a case of Trump vs. Obama

The Wall Street Journal headline for today is:

President Donald Trump took steps Tuesday to revive two controversial oil pipeline projects that had been rejected by the Obama administration, moves that likely represent the leading edge of a sweeping overhaul of his predecessor’s environmental agenda. http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-set-to-take-action-on-keystone-dakota-pipelines-1485270333

This is another case of the media taking the opportunity, on a dull, unwitting readership, to create a false dilemma. In the spirit of Noam, I have complied by “clippings”, to let the story tell itself.  Here are the main things I discovered:

  1. The Keystone Pipeline already exists – it begins in Steele City, Nebraska.  This bill concerns the “extension” to the pipeline.
  2. The “rejection” of the Keystone Pipeline was in no way part of Obama’s environmental agenda.
  3. Obama approved a portion of the Keystone Pipeline.
  4. The Obama Administration approved other pipelines, namely the Trans-Pecos and Comanche Trail pipelines.

The point is accuracy in reporting. Obama was categorically NOT opposed to the Keystone Pipeline, in principal.  In fact, he supported it. He “rejected” the Keystone Extension project.  But even this rejection must be qualified.  Read on.

In March 2012, Obama endorsed the building of the southern segment (Gulf Coast Extension or Phase III) that begins in Cushing, Oklahoma. The President said in Cushing, Oklahoma, on March 22, “Today, I’m directing my administration to cut through the red tape, break through the bureaucratic hurdles, and make this project a priority, to go ahead and get it done.” (“Remarks of the President” (Press release). The White House. 2012-03-22. Retrieved 2013-03-04.)

This is from the New York Times, 2012

RIPLEY, Okla. — President Obama stood in a red-dirt field before acres of stacked pipeline pieces on Thursday to illustrate his support for expedited construction of the southern leg of the Keystone XLoil pipeline. But his public declaration for the project pleased neither the industry and its Republican allies nor environmentalists.

That was clear hours later when several people interrupted his next speech, shouting “Stop the pipeline!” at Ohio State University, where Mr. Obama emphasized clean-fuel alternatives in his “all of the above” energy agenda. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/us/politics/in-oklahoma-obama-declares-pipeline-support.html)

I remember being surprised by this; but I also recall Obama’s logic, in an interview I heard.  He said that we are already transporting the oil – so the question is not whether we should or should not transport the oil. The problem is that we use the oil,regardless. His point was that alternatives, including truck or rail,would have a greater impact on the environment. This made sense to me. However, it also reveals the true issue, which, as usual, points to the true, hidden criminal: the American People: don’t demand the oil, and you won’t have this controversy.

Here is the history of the Obama Administration’s “rejection” (taken from Wikipedia: http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-set-to-take-action-on-keystone-dakota-pipelines-1485270333)

  1. On November 30, 2011, a group of Republican senators introduced legislation aimed at forcing the Obama administration to make a decision within 60 days.[51] In December 2011, Congress passed a bill giving the Obama Administration a 60-day deadline to make a decision on the application to build the Keystone XL Pipeline.[47][52] In January 2012, Obama rejected the application stating that the deadline for the decision had “prevented a full assessment of the pipeline’s impact”.
  2. In March 2012, Obama endorsed the building of the southern segment (Gulf Coast Extension or Phase III) that begins in Cushing, Oklahoma. The President said in Cushing, Oklahoma, on March 22, “Today, I’m directing my administration to cut through the red tape, break through the bureaucratic hurdles, and make this project a priority, to go ahead and get it done.”[55]
  3. In its supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) released in March 2013, the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs described changes to the original proposals including the shortening of the pipeline to 875 miles (1,408 km); its avoidance of “crossing the NDEQ-identified Sandhills Region” and “reduction of the length of pipeline crossing the Northern High Plains Aquifer system, which includes the Ogallala formation”; and stated “there would be no significant impacts to most resources along the proposed Project route.”[2]   Note: this is the Obama State Department (i.e, a part of the Obama Administration).
  4. On January 22, 2014 the Gulf Coast Extension (phase III) – approved by President Obama – was opened.[12]
  5. On April 18, 2014, the Obama administration announced that the review of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline has been extended indefinitely, pending the result of a legal challenge to a Nebraska pipeline siting law that could change the route.
  6. A bill approving the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline was passed by the Senate (62–36) on January 29, 2015,[64] and by the House (270–152) on February 11, 2015.[65] President Obama vetoed the bill on February 24, 2015, arguing that the decision of approval should rest with the Executive Branch.[66]
  7. On 6 November 2015, the project of Keystone XL was rejected by the Obama administration after more than six years of review and initial approval by the Obama State Department.

It should be clear that the Obama administration was never against the Keystone Pipeline; nor did they have some environmental agenda, which was always used to defy the extension proposal.  It’s just not evident from any statement or actions on the port of Obama.  Note his reasons for veto above:

  • the deadline for the initial bill would preclude adequate research (the Obama State Department later did the research, and gave the green light).
  • the decision should rest with the Executive Branch (not the US Congress, duly elected by the People). Heard that before.

It was all summed up in Obama’s final words on the issue:

In his speech announcing the rejection of the pipeline on November 6, 2015, President Obama lamented the symbolic importance Keystone XL had taken on, stating, “for years, the Keystone pipeline has occupied what I, frankly, consider an overinflated role in our political discourse. It became a symbol too often used as a campaign cudgel by both parties rather than a serious policy matter. And all of this obscured the fact that this pipeline would neither be a silver bullet for the economy, as was promised by some, nor the express lane to climate disaster proclaimed by others.”[76]

 

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HRC did not lose to Trump because of Russian “hacking”

I think NPR really came through on this piece of journalism:

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/12/12/505272992/the-russian-hacking-kerfuffle-what-we-do-and-dont-know

They probably stand alone among the media, who have profligated (I made that word up!) a pretty tenuous notion that it was Russian “hacking” – and nothing else! – that cost Hilary Clinton the Presidency and put Donald Trump there.

Here is the simple logic which deflates such a notion:

  1. Hilary Clinton didn’t really lose the election, unequivocally. Another blazing news item is the discrepancy between the Popular Vote and the Electoral Vote. The Russian “hacking” argument says, essentially, that Hilary’s character was so defamed by these alleged Russian media artifacts, that she lost a significant part of her constituency? First, that doesn’t match the Popular results.  So, that refines the claim to say that the Russian meddling somehow influenced the Electoral College? How exactly? It would have to be shown, in a mathematical way, that enough votes shifted, from one or more States, from Democrat to Republican, so that the majority went to Repulbican, hence the Electoral College voted Republican. It would require a mathematical explanation, ultimately.  But, does it even really sound reasonable, in the first place?
  2. The argument is unequivocal – it purports to rule out every other possible cause for her loss – right?  Aren’t we saying “Hilary Clinton lost the Presidency because of Russian hacking?” There is never any “and….failure to win Bernie’s constituency; failure to appeal to the Midwest laborer vote, etc.” No. The argument as presented is that if there had been no interference, Hilary Clinton would be the 45th President – no contest.
  3. The most strikingly ridiculous part of all of this is that we are comparing some media items which defame Hilary in some way, to the mountain of media artifacts that defamed Trump throughout his campaign, and we are saying that Hilary’s defamation came out worse? Trump’s ludicrous Tweets alone should have cost him the Presidency, if this is really the argument.  He demonstrated bigotry, racism, sexism, philandering, ridiculous tax records – I mean, what did the Russians put out there that trumps all of the public embarrassment that Trump embodies? The NPR article says. That’s it? I mean, the DNC emails were mean-spirited, indeed, as were the “jokes” about Benghazi.  But ties to powerful bankers?  How does that lessen Hilary, in comparison to Trump?
    1. The messages revealed the gritty inner workings of the party elite and showed its preference for Hillary Clinton over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sanders supporters were outraged; the embarrassment prompted the resignation of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
    2. Later, WikiLeaks released emails from Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, which depicted her and the campaign’s ties to powerful bankers, internal jokes about the Benghazi investigation and other such exchanges.
    3. Parallel stories about the FBI’s investigation into the private email server that Clinton used at the State Department

That’s it? I mean, the DNC emails were mean-spirited, indeed, as were the “jokes” about Benghazi.  But ties to powerful bankers?  How does that lessen Hilary, in relationship to, of all people, Donald Trump?

NPR does not mention the “fake news” campaign, which is also regularly described as “hacking” (in a pretty non-technical sense, publishing fake news cannot be considered “hacking”, since anyone, including my mother, can do it. The Washington Post, famous for uncovering the Watergate scandal, did the most thorough investigation (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html?utm_term=.abba7b86a8b9). This is their conclusion:

Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.

So, it’s just spreading right-wing point of view across social media?  This is supposed to have lost – I mean actually functionally lost – the Presidency for Hilary Clinton? The WP goes on to say

There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders.

Note that the rhetoric switches from the Democrats, to democracy, and from Hilary Clinton, to its leaders. The Democratic Party is hardly equivocal to Democracy, and Hilary does not represent the leaders of Democracy.  But back to the point – the point was that Russian “hacking” lost Hilary the Presidency.  The point was NOT that Russian “hacking” ruined our Democracy (it’s a Republic, by the way; abandoned Democracy when the popluation exceeded, say, 100).

Take this into account, from the NPR article

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said in September that the Republican National Committee also was hacked during the campaign.

Well, well.  So the Russian “hacking” damaged Hilary significantly – or the DNC, anyway – but had what, the opposite effect on the RNC?

The bottom line is this: the Russian “hacking” argument needs to be expanded beyond the facebook bytes and Tweets: what is the actual position? The only real question is this:

  • if the Russians took votes away from Hilary, where did those votes go? One can’t imagine that these were closet Republicans, just waiting for unsubstantiated claims against Hilary, for them to “swing” all the way to the Right? Right? It seems more likely that the 1,000,000 Bernie supporters, who deserved to be the most offended by the “hacked” emails (the emails weren’t actually “hacked” – that is, they were not altered: what the DNC Chair said about Bernie was the (her) truth), might have chosen not to vote at all.  But one can hardly imagine that they voted for Trump.
  • who was swayed by this dys-information?  Who read those Tweets, and acted on them?  Staunch Hilary supporters?  Reading what, the Breitbart Twitter feed?  Word: the staunch Hilary supporters don’t even really know what these media artifacts even say – at least they didn’t until after the election.  Democrats read Democrat social media, and believe it all; Republicans read Republican media, and nothing else. So,
  • Who, exactly, did the Russian influence?

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Standardized Childhood Assessments: I Fear for our Children’s Emotional Safety

My father dedicated his life to education.  He dedicated his life to children.  He defended children against an ever-growing Orwellian machine that classified and branded children, and its only goal and end. I wish he were alive to help me.

In this article, Selecting an Appropriate Infant-Toddler Assessment, from Kaplan, the criteria they use are particularly instructive:

  • Screening and assessment materials should be developmentally appropriate and created specifically for the age group in your care.
  • Assessment should utilize a variety of tools and processes, including children’s representative work (artwork, stories they write, etc.), observation records, and progress summaries.
  • Assessment should be inclusive and recognize diversity in children’s backgrounds, learning styles, and rates of learning.
  • Assessment tools should support children’s development and learning; assessment should not make them feel bad about themselves. A focus on what a child can do independently and with assistance is the best marker of his or her growth and development.
  • Assessment should rely on procedures that occur during real activities and classroom experiences instead of putting the focus specifically on skills testing.
  • Regular and periodic assessment should occur in a wide variety of circumstances with information about children’s growth, development, and learning being systematically collected and recorded.
  • Teachers should be the primary assessor, but assessment should also promote parent involvement and encourage children to participate in self-evaluation.
  • Assessment should encourage parent-teacher collaboration with information about children’s growth, development, and performance being shared regularly by both parties.

I won’t deal with each one, but you should read each one carefully, and think about any experiences you have had that either support or deviate from these.

The first  point is: Assessment should utilize a variety of tools and processes – it should not be limited to a short interview, or really any assessment kit (I will list those later). Clearly, an on-the-spot test, in any subject, for any purpose, will NOT be reflective of the actual state of the person taking the test. This is often referred to as the observer effect, although this, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle are misused in the context of psychology.  The correct notion is the Observer-expectancy effect.  This should be well-known by anyone who is assessing your child.  If your assessor is not aware of it, and is not able to cite its origin, then you should not trust their qualification.

 

Second, Assessment should be inclusive and recognize diversity.  This should not be dumbed down to only refer to cultural/ethnic  differences.  Often overlooked are the learning styles and rates of learning.  By and large, the childhood assessments I have seen are completely devoid of Howard Gardner’s Theories of Multiple Intelligences .  And that’s not OK. You certainly would laugh at someone assessed a visually-challenged child with flashcards, right?

Probably the most important for me is: Assessment tools should support children’s development and learning; assessment should not make them feel bad about themselves.  Standardized assessments are the antithesis of this!  They e-value-ate individual children on the basis of social and cultural norms, in alleged cognitive skill areas.  Nothing could be further from support.  It’s just evaluation.  And mostly, de-valuation.  Regardless whether someone tells the child “how they did”, the know – from a very young age – that they are being evaluated.  Further, subtle changes – or sometimes drastic changes – in the behaviors of parents and teachers after an assessment will be picked up by the children!  Do not think you are above this!  If you were raised in America, you have been damaged by the cult of performance.  We are NOT put on this earth to produce or to entertain!

Assessment should rely on procedures that occur during real activities and classroom experiences.  Ok.  Pretty obvious that an interview or testing situation does NOT meet this criterion, and should be invalidated.

Teachers should be the primary assessor, but assessment should also promote parent involvement.  Nothing here about a third-party evaluator.  Nothing at all.  Rest-assured, there ARE plenty of “professionals” who hire out for this.  Mercenaries who play on the insecurity of both teachers and children in their ability to assess the children they interact with every single day!  Preposterous!  Enable yourself!  Be the solution!

Once you have digested this, you could begin to look at the assessment instruments that are available – and COMPARE!  Here again from Kaplan is a handy chart. Look carefully, because it is NOT the case that having check-marks across the graph is the best!  Indeed, give the above discussion, only three of the tools listed do not use standardized (normative) comparisons. Particularly, a discussion of E-LAP and LAP-D used in rehabilitation could possibly change the way you think . This study uses Functional Independence Measure for Children (WeeFIM). E-LAP  (or E-LAP3) is neither standardized nor normative, whereas LAP-D and the WeeFIM are normalized.  The point here is, it’s not easy! But these tests can provide some insight in cognitive disorder, which could supplement (only!) teacher and parent awareness.

I particularly like the series Reaching Potentials.  There are two volumes, and you can get the PDF online right now and begin reading!  Here is the

Description:

Designed to assist early childhood professionals in applying the guidelines for appropriate curriculum content and assessment developed by NAEYC and NAECS/SDE, Volume 1 addresses reaching developmental potentials for all children—including those with varying language and cultural backgrounds and children with disabilities—and reaching the potentials of teachers and administrators.

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I’m sorry but the revolution you have dialed is no longer in service

this is a shout out to my new friends in the Traveler scene – you’re standing still, doing nothing.  and I need you, we all need you, to stop sucking air. we all need you to do that which needs to be done now. let me explain.

dressing in hippie rags, jamming the d chord, living on the street, has all been done.  it cannot be done again, at least not in the same context it was done by the hippies in the 60’s, or, the way Woodie Guthrie did it, or , the context that was applied to any of the countless movements from the past, in the United States, which contained the element of social diaspora.

what I mean by “done” is this: the Hegelian Dialectic.  It goes, thesis, antithesis, synthesis.  In terms of the 60’s, the restless youth met the status quo as thesis and antithesis.  Then, they merged. Yes, that’s the secret – there was no winner, and no one came out unscathed.  And what the synthesis is, in your face, right now, is yoga gentrification in Washington DC, it’s Whole Foods, that does indeed brings you vegan butter any day of weeks, but also ass rapes you and the People of America on the way out the door, with dense ties to markets share and Wall Street.  Do you see?  It was a synthesis, which means the hippies did not disappear.  It was not a failed experiment that you all need to do again – because it cannot be done again.

If you listen Gil Scott Heron today, you are wasting time.  Because if the Black Panthers marched onto the steps of the White House today with guns, it would be STUPID, right?  Because the President of the United States is Black, and so is his entire family!  Likewise, we don’t listen to James Brown sing about a “Funky President”. Not exactly for the same reason as Gil Scott Heron, but for the same reason as Whole Foods.  Obama is neither the thesis, nor the antithesis: he is a synthesis. That’s right: he’s not just Black; he’s White too.  That’s how it turned out.  The hard thing to see is that, once the Dialectic has run, you can’t run it again because your rally want Nihilism or something.

So back to you guys.  The revolution that is available now is not on the streets of Portland.  Instead, it is on the streets of Mumbai.  Actually, it is in the business colleges of Mumbai.  yes, the revolution that you could take part in is way out there – not in here.  It is in the World, not Haight-Asbury. And here’s the cool thing: it DOES take your traveler skill. What you need to do, instead of drop out and turn in, is to get your IBMA at an Indian University, (because their language of study is English and they are  concurrent, not latent).  Weird, right?  Wow, that’s not as cool as having dreads and listening to Marley. But look, all this  will require that you be able to smoke the chillum before class, and then ride your twin cycle through the streets of Mumbai, whiffing the vanilla smell of brown heroin. And then you need to visualize the Real World, which is this cyberspace concept that rules the minds of all people, but they are unaware.  Do you see this, the new On the Road?  The new Baba Ram Das?  It is so much higher, faster, farther.  Get on it!

Because what you are doing is not hypothesis versus thesis: it’s the past versus the future, and that is actually not a real “battle”, right?  Because no matter what you’ve read, the past ceases to exist immediately. The present is inconceivable, only feel-able.  And so what really exists is a future continuum. There is no such thing as living in the past. Revolution means full circle. YOU ARE STANDING STILL.

Yes.  We don’t need for you to re-enact the 60’s, to relearn how to bop, to deepen your consciousness with acid. Really, it’s kind of like watching Star Wars again.

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Hitler, alias Schickelgruber

”From the beginning of 1877, 12 years before Adolf was born, his father called himself Hitler, and his son was never known by any other name until his opponents dug up this long-forgotten village scandal and tried, without justification, to label him with his grandmother’s name of Schicklgruber.” – Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock

This is my goto list on books about Hitler:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/17/top10s.hitler.thirdreich

I saw this movie recently called Youth.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3312830/

It was about Age, naturally. What kind of movie do you make about youth? Seriously. Youth is that life-segment in Western Civ where we weave the stories that define us.  Age is the realization that they were just stories. Optional reading.

This movie had that heinous tendency of weak writers/directors to equate gratuitous shock with boldness in art. Among those heinous moments was when we finally discover the secret role that Paul Dano’s character has been preparing, by observing the old people in some Swiss sanitarium.  It’s Hitler as an old man! And he certainly did milk the shock value of the revelation as much as he could.

What he didn’t realize is that Hitler, the mention of Hitler, alone, is just not that shocking.  Now, the idea of Hitler as an old man is modestly interesting – the idea gave me about two minutes of new thought. But then…pfffft…

The deal is, what we can now see in retrospect, is that Hitler was actually NOT the demon mastermind of the extermination of 6 million Jews and the harbinger of WWII.  He was a little squirt from Linz, Austria, who had been rejected (by Jewish academics) at the Kunstakademie in Vienna. He was a short guy.  His mom didn’t love him.  His dad didn’t love him.  Does this really require that much intellectual effort?

What, in fact,  is frightening and bizarre and horrific is the rise to dominance of the Third Reich, and what is most terrifying about it is that it was NOT dopey Hitler’s doing, but the confluence of all the hatred and greed of human society, at its weakest moral point, supported by Western corporations, and carried on the shoulders of normal people.

There’s a BBC series that I follow, called Foyle’s War.  In Season 9, Episode 2, they deal with the substantial support of Hitler’s Third Reich in it’s early years, by Western industrialists. General Motors, Ford, IT&T, Standard Oil…all contributed directly to the Third Reich’s enablement. Here is a short list:

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-147191

But the list is much longer, and the details, as they are unearthed in this century, remind me of a worldwide organization, something like ISIS, except with unparalleled business and policy expertise backing it. And, it is key to note that each of these material supporters was also a major stockholder.

I’m not trying to forgive or forget Hitler.  I’m just hinting at the likelihood that he was more like a ghoulish George W. Bush – an oaf, that appealed to an ocean of peasants.  But backed by a seamless, invisible multi-national machine, largely US and British. I mean, it is not realistic, when you trace Hitler’s rise to power, that he did so with a band of SS thugs, and his charisma, alone.  Right?

The lesson is this: a bunch of rag-tag jihadists are not capable of funding and managing an efficient worldwide terror organization. Take it as a given that the bulk of the mechanical, financial, and technical infrastructure is taken care of behind the scenes by, yes, the very nations that the terror organization seems to be against! It defies simple reason, which is why the cloaking mechanism has been so effective, all the times this strategy has been employed. Add to this the fact that many of the key public players in the conflict are, themselves, unaware of the intricacies of how their holy war is being funded, and sharing this ignorance with the key public players on the Western front, and you have this bonus smoke screen of clumsy attempts to actually fight – when there’s no one to fight against! We are all in the same Roman arena, slaves pitted against one another, unaware that our immediate opponent in the ring is actually our brother.

 

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Buzzfeed vs. Buzzkill – Another Round missed the point in Hilary interview

I’ve been listening to a new (6-month-old) Buzzfeed podcast, called Another Round.  I like it, because it reminds me of my cousin Grant’s podcast, where they sit around and drink, and record the podcast.  I love that idea, and I love how it represents the unwieldy power of the podcast.

Hilary Clinton appeared on Another Round, just before the debate.  NPR’s “The Takeaway” interviewed the Another Round hosts, Tracy Clayton and Heben Nigatu

http://www.thetakeaway.org/story/real-hillary-clinton/

The funny thing about The Takeaway – or not funny; just regular, given the show’s name – is that the show gives you the bullet points. In one particular instance, the Takeaway guy, John Hockenberry, played a clip of the women “nailing” Hilary for evasion of a question. They asked her what she planned to do, if elected President, about the gross inequities that Blacks are subjected to in the prison system.  Clinton replied that most prisons were subject to State and Local law, and not Federal – to which Hockenberry and the Another Round hosts cried out EVADING THE QUESTION!

Now, please listen to the actual podcast, and listen to Clinton’s response in full.

https://soundcloud.com/anotherroundwithhebenandtracy/28-hillary-clinton-for-pos

Did you listen to it?  You see, the problem is the collective ADHD of our culture.  No one takes the time to listen.  Neither did the hosts.  They are from a sound-byte/tweet generation, and to listen to a rather long response, carefully, with the intention of understanding, is not something they were trained to do.

In fact what Clinton said was VERY important, and very educational, especially for these “young radicals”, who cry out for change, and are incensed that somebody doesn’t do something when the yell! Clinton said that the President of the United States has not power over State law.  Wow.  You have to study how this government was designed, which these women haven’t just yet, to see that we are really in a bind – if the States don’t want something, the President can’t make them!

I think Heben is the one who is the active Twitter tweeter.  She says she tweets suggestions to Obama all the time with suggestions.  I may sound condescending here, and maybe I am.  Or maybe I am old and in the way.  But I think she would want to know that she comes across as very naiive and very uniformed.  Whether she is, or whether I am, I will leave to her to figure out.  But here it is: the President is not a King, and there’s is a lot of deeper meaning in that.

Hilary said that while the President can push for Federal laws that radically change incarceration and law enforcement directives at a Federal level, this can only be used an an example for State to follow, if they choose.  So what she was trying to teach these young women is to point your barrels in the right direction!  Don’t interview the President, and demand change. Interview the the Governor of Alabama, for God’s sake!  Interview the Sheriff of Cobb County in Georgia.  Because you will probably discover some racist motherfuckers in that nest, and THEY are making and upholding the laws you hate.

The hosts were very focused as well on Hilary’s meeting with the Black Lives Matter crew:

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/8/19/watch_full_video_of_hillary_clintons

They were again very desperately trying to make her into the enemy of all Black reform.  And let me take the opportunity to state right here that I have NO LOVE for Hilary Clinton, and that deep down inside, they are completely right: she is a white woman’s white woman, and the fact that she protested in the 60’s and was inspired by Dr King is, well, you know, a little bit of Centrist bullshit.  So there.

But this does not give permission to these podcasters and new age Black Panthers to make the argument about the Clintons.  Because to do so has but one effect: nothing will change.  That’s right: if you muck around in angry protest, the Machine will just roll over you.

The Round hosts asked Hilary to take responsibility for the legislation that came about in the wake of the Rodney King mini war in LA in the early 90’s.  That’s it – she wanted to know if her and Bill were going to confess to their “fucked up” legislation, that has resulted in all these young Black men being incarcerated. Wow.  Don’t even know where to begin.

First of all, Hilary was the Wife of the President at that time.  She had nothing to do with any Federal laws that were passed.  Second, that business in LA was a war. Sorry.  It may have had everything to do with horrible injustice to Black men like Rodney, but the result was a fucking war on civilization.  And everybody, including Reverend Al Sharpton, called for the country to stop the violence.

But let’s say that Heben and Tracy are completely right: that the Clintons and all the other White people in government in the 90’s are responsible for the current state of cops killing Blacks.  How on earth does their confession have any effect on the HERE and the NOW?

The deal is this: start a revolution.  But then keep it going.  Hilary kept trying to get them to hear this, but the missed it.  How many new revolutions are started these days, by a round of passion, only to just fizzle out within a few years?  Lots.  Most of them. If Black Lives Matter is going to succeed, and it had fucking better succeed!, then they have to figure this one thing out: they are up against the Big Machine, and they are not going to topple it with tweets.  This will take intelligent, and sustained effort, for years and years to come, beyond the slogans and the popularity of dreads. Dr. King worked steadily for years and years and years, carefully eroding the walls of Big Government.  That’s how it happened.  The Black Panthers walked up the steps of the White House one day with sawed off shotguns.  Test question: which of these two acts, or both, have created any change in the state of engrained racism in the law of the United State?