Sanity

Finally, some reasonableness amidst this insane political period and the current economic downturn.

High Finance, Laid Low

"It is often wrongly said that the present problems originated in the mindless financial deregulation begun in the 1980s, as if everything would be fine if the old financial system had remained. Actually, the old system -- dominated by banks and savings and loans -- collapsed. Many S&Ls failed when high inflation raised interest rates on their short-term deposits above the levels on their long-term mortgages. Banks suffered huge losses on energy, commercial real estate and developing-country loans. Securitization and other new forms of financing filled the void left by weak banks and S&Ls.

So modern finance has a split personality. Greed, shortsightedness and herd behavior compromise its usefulness. But regulation cannot cure this dilemma, because regulators can't anticipate all the problems and hazards, either. The best protection against human fallibility is to insist that major financial institutions have ample capital to absorb unexpected losses. Paulson's recommended reforms barely dwelled on that; Congress should."

Everything Samuelson says here, is sound, I think, though I think people like Samuelson and the surrounding democratic discussion and democratic and financial institutions would be better off insisting on financial institutions having ample capital than Congress passing a law to make it so. A more reasonable investing philosophy less subject to greed and quick profit turnover would better prevent such problems and make them all more money, I think, with Warren Buffet's success during this period being the best example of that point, but that can hardly be legislated. Congress could pass a law. And reasonable institutions would likely comply, more because it is a good idea than because Congress said it. And such a requirement could only apply to institutions which have large amounts of capital, of course. Everyone else will just need to learn to invest more wisely and with a more reasonable idea of returns to be seeking and the tendency of the market to leave people trying to get rich quick getting poorer much more reliably.

The truth is that there just isn't anything that can be done to prevent greed and the unsound investing it produces. It's as futile to legislate it away as it is to legislate away gluttony, vanity, sloth, lust, envy, or wrath (though actual violence - not metaphorical versions, either, for all those looking for an angle on that argument - associated with any of these must be dealt with). All such sins are endemic and timeless feature of humanity as much as any of the virtues that humanity rightly values and celebrates.

The best financial wisdom teaches these values in the context of finance. If you doubt that, I highly recommend Benjamin Graham's Intelligent Investor. There is a reason that Warren Buffet has made all that money. And this question has everything to do with that. The market, and the people who make it up, really do and will reward virtue, in the long run, often after periods like this where their greed and other vices get the best of them.

Economic and all sanity is found in taking all that wisdom seriously and being honest about the places where we do not. What liberal values and liberal economies offer us is a much stronger and open opportunity to be honest about that wisdom and about where we fall short. Illiberalism and our propensity to use force to get our way has always undermined the probability and capacity for us to get honest with ourselves and one another about our mistakes and shorcomings, because it makes people more afraid to be honest, even with themselves, about those failings.

Progress is found in our recognition of this fact of life, our propensity to engage in the hubris that we have somehow escaped its reach and our tendency to fall short in our pursuit of virtue.

Virtue is found in our honesty about our propensity to fall short. Even financial executives. All of us. And in the wisdom to let us learn from the lessons rather than giving in to the temptation of illiberal and repressive practices, policies, and impulses that compound our problems - by shutting down that freedom and the honesty and responsibility that come with them - rather than curing them.

Finally we seem to be edging toward sanity.

A sign of progress

Iran Report Redux

"Gen. Petraeus and Mr. Crocker have gotten more confident about calling the surge a success, and rightly so. 'It's worth it,' said the general. 'We have seen a significant degradation of al-Qaeda's presence and its abilities," said the ambassador. 'Al-Qaeda is our mortal and strategic enemy. So to the extent that al-Qaeda's capacities have been lessened in Iraq -- and they have been significantly lessened -- I do believe that makes America safer.'

What hasn't much changed is the partisan debate over Iraq, which as Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) lamented, remains resistant even to established facts. Republicans tended to follow Sen. John McCain yesterday in arguing that 'success is within reach" and that American goals can be achieved "perhaps sooner than many imagine.' Democrats, including presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mr. Obama, remain locked within the "this war is lost" prism the party adopted a year ago. Yesterday Ms. Clinton, Mr. Obama and others chose to focus on the costs of the war -- whether Iraq was spending too little of its own money, and whether U.S. resources would be better dedicated to Afghanistan. Those are fair questions, but they are far different from Ms. Clinton's argument last September that accepting that the surge had made progress 'would require a willing suspension of disbelief.'

What also hasn't changed is the sobering but firm bottom line the two envoys offer --one that neither party wants to hear. While "progress is real," as Mr. Crocker put it, it is also 'fragile' and 'reversible,' as Gen. Petraeus said. That's why Gen. Petraeus is recommending -- correctly, in our view -- that troop withdrawals be suspended after the five surge brigades are withdrawn and that further reductions be based on conditions in Iraq.

Contrary to Mr. McCain's suggestion, success will require a prolonged commitment, and even then it will not be guaranteed. But the general and the ambassador both argued that such a commitment is justified. Even with all the travails of the past five years, 'Iraqis, Americans and the world ultimately will judge us far more on the basis of what will happen than what has happened,' said Mr. Crocker. And an early or unconditional withdrawal would, as he noted, invite disaster "with devastating consequences for the region and the world."

The Post does a better job, generally, in my estimation, of sifting out better arguments. I think they have done so, here.

I think the best argument is that whatever policy is adopted must be done with the consultation of the Iraqis who will be, ultimately, responsible for security in their own country after American troops eventually leave and with the American troops who are responsible for security, in the meantime. I have very little confidence, at all, at this point, that American politicians, of any stripe, understand the security challenges we face better than troops on the ground. And I have even less confidence in the self-righteous activists that pressure and leverage them on issues that they have generally thought very little about relative to the challenges we face. The pressure and leveraging has clearly distorted the debate and discussion, by any objective standard.

What is needed is for us to face up to that, to be honest about it, and to proceed to a more honest, engaged, bipartisan conversation moderated by a sober recognition that there are many, many lives on the line, for this question. That is the virtue of moderation. It is about those who are wise enough to recognize that humility is one of the most serious virtues in a world full of strong opinions and that there are things more important in the world than their opinions. Moderation and independent wisdom is about sorting through those priorities and opinions to come to something more reasonable and thoughtful unclouded by our strong and often wrong-headed and foolish passions. Catholics and Protestants in 17th century England were driven by such passions, remember. And to most 21st century liberal democratic citizens, their wars and political battles look like so much needlessly tragic foolishness. And so it is with us. And so it will be till the end of the time. The Greeks warned us of this tendency. Hubris, they cautioned us, is the universal sin, the timeless mistake of humanity.

We're all sinners. Now we just need to move on to a more reasonable discussion of this war based on a thoughtful and practical concern about what policies might offer us the best way to a more democratic and secure future for Iraq, for America, and for the world.

Engaging those soldiers and security officials on the ground as well as their representatives in the Iraqi government might be a good start. Pressuring, leveraging, and bulling them has clearly backfired. Perhaps honest engagement might be a more effective and honest route.

That is what our deepest liberal values would have us believe, anyway. Perhaps we should give them a shot.

Gotta say it was a good day

The kids listened and engaged. They were pretty respectful, overall. I even had a couple of classes that felt like real classes, with intellectual curiosity, and everything. It was the biggest sign of hope in this work that I've experienced, yet.

I have considerable confidence in my thinking about issues of teaching and learning, power and manipulation, at this point. Much more confidence than I have in either of the major political parties, that's for goddamned sure, and many of their ideological surrogates, as well.

It's nice, while watching the world go to shit, to watch what has seemed like an otherwise impossible task to me and my colleagues to be coming to fruition: kids who did not give two shits about school or education are starting to care.

And all of us are learning a lot in the process.

Imagine that.

Is anyone else tired of failure?

Is anyone else tired of the failure of our Iran policy?

Iran starts installing new nuclear centrifuges

5 years since this conflict first heated up. All evidence, despite the protestations of the NIE, point in the direction of accelerated nuclear ambitions rather than decelerated ambitions.

Many conservatives, including the President, threaten attack on Iran. It would never be authorized, of course, because we are just not that stupid and they could never get the votes. But it was always about the bluff, anyway. You bluff long enough, by the way, noone listens to you, anymore. That's why bluffing is bad policy.

This is how a nation premised on a governing philosophy of force behaves, by the way:

"State television was repeatedly playing patriotic music while children at schools around the country chanted the familiar mantra of "nuclear energy is our natural right."

Gotta be proud of that. Congratulations to all of those who have taken that noble route.

"The United States has never ruled out military action to bring Tehran to heel, and Iran's arch enemy Israel has expressed alarm about the nuclear drive, especially after Ahmadinejad predicted the Jewish state is doomed to disappear.

Underlining the tensions, Israel's National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer warned on Monday that Israel would respond to any Iranian attack by destroying the 'Iranian nation.'"

Gee. All this progress just makes me want to pee myself. So much progress, these days. It's amazing how things just keep getting better and better, isn't it? Yay for progress.

And isn't this interesting.

Look at how Iran deals with those who seek to moderate and find a resolution to all of this provocation and confrontation.

"In a warning to Ahmadinejad's domestic rivals, the semi-official Fars news agency reported that Iran had handed former nuclear negotiator Hossein Moussavian a two-year suspended jail sentence for "harming national security."

Moussavian was a leading nuclear negotiator in the moderate team that made a deal with EU countries to temporarily suspend enrichment during the presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami until 2005."

With force. How the fuck about that. Not too harsh though. I mean, they could have chopped off the heads of that guy's children. Thank goodness they weren't too strict, huh? You got to hand it to the power-hungry. They got a big bag of tricks, don't they?

Damn. The progress is just overwhelming isn't it? Whew. Sometimes when I sit back and think about all the progress from all of this use and threat of the use of force, I just can't contain my enthusiasm and hope for the future. It's all just too progressive for me, I suppose. Thank goodness there are plenty of smarter folks to explain all this progress to me and how much it is really for my own good.

It's amazing, isn't it? In Iran, when people and governments engage in such behavior, we call it illiberalism. We call it backwards. We call it undemocratic.

And when Americans or Westerners do it, we call it progress.

Do you ever wonder why people have such a hard time taking our example or leadership seriously? Me neither.

And what I love about this whole mess, right down to my very soul, is that I am quite confident that at the end of all of this business, when the dust has finally cleared, and these matters with Iran, Iraq, and the world are finally resolved, that Democrats and Republicans, alike, will sit down in a moment of honor and integrity and take responsibility for everything that has gone so swimmingly.

You gotta hand it to the powerful. When they fuck up, they are fucking brilliant about finding the courage to face up to their failures.

And that, dear children, is why they are so goddamn smart and have all that power and influence, and why you and I are so dumb that we could not possibly imagine anything else but to be forced to do their bidding.

It's all so honorable, it almost makes you cry, doesn't it?

This, ladies and gentleman, is what our Founding Fathers fought for. This is what democracy is all about. The right to force, pressure, manipulate, bully, leverage, piss on, fuck with, and otherwise be an asshat to your neighbor in the name of any cause you're feeling friendly to in the moment.

God Bless America.

Torture, hubris, and our humanity

If proven true in a war crimes trial, some of the torture charges the Bush Administration is being accused of are fairly damning.

This discussion puts those charges into perspective.

The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb reads 1984 as a playbook

Andrew Sullivan may be right about a war crimes trial.

We can only hope that the most damning of these accusations are not true.

If they are, the Bush Administration, the American government, and anyone ultimately responsible for these most serious actions will need to account for them.

I am inclined to give American servicemen and women leeway around this issue, to account for hypersensitive political reactions to treatment of prisoners that does not amount to torture. But many of these claims are too serious to pooh-pooh away.

This is a serious discussion for America to be having, right now.

National fuckin' champions, baby!

Two teams, one title: Kansas WINS

The sweetest victories are the ones your work fuckin' ass off for.



Nice job, boys.

A real debate

An interesting read from Henry Kissinger.

The Three Revolutions

"...The quest for a single, all-inclusive remedy is chimerical. In a world in which the sole superpower is a proponent of the prerogatives of the traditional nation-state, where Europe is stuck in halfway status, where the Middle East does not fit the nation-state model and faces a religiously motivated revolution, and where the nations of South and East Asia still practice the balance of power, what is the nature of the international order that can accommodate these different perspectives? What should be the role of Russia, which is affirming a notion of sovereignty comparable to America's and a strategic concept of the balance of power similar to Asia's? Are existing international organizations adequate for this purpose? What goals can America realistically set for itself and the world community? Is the internal transformation of major countries an attainable goal? What objectives must be sought in concert, and what are the extreme circumstances that would justify unilateral action?

This is the kind of debate we need, not focus-group-driven slogans designed to grab headlines."

I don't know if I agree with his analysis completely (I'd have to do a more thorough critique at another time), but I like that he's thinking.

And that last line is undoubtedly true. We need a real debate and not the bullshit we've been settling for.

The hubris and responsibilities of power

This is why I read the Washington Post.

George Will delivers in a serious way in his commentary on the crisis in finance and the economy, the issue on which he delivers best.

McCain's Minimalism

Jim Hoagland also emphasizes his strength in global politics, recognizing well the humbling that American power is facing right now.

No Cushion Against Hubris

I'm not sure David Ignatius' suggestion of "blowing up the CIA" is a good one. But the rest of his analysis is solid, I think. And it is refreshing to read a liberal defend the effort by the Bush Administration to insulate telecommunications companies from lawsuits over their role in domestic spying, recognizing that they acted in good faith, even if Americans are angry with the Administration's investigative activities.

Repairing America's Spy Shop

And Eric Reeves, professor at Smith College, has an excellent guest column highlighting the need for security efforts to protect humanitarian aid supplies during the rainy season in Darfur. As American and European leaders can find it in themselves to trust and work with one another on the crisis and genocide in Sudan, a workable intervention for security and to end the killing, as much as to sustain aid efforts, needs to be engaged.

Genocide by Attrition in Sudan

This is why I consult the Post everyday. Diversity of outlook and ideas is our strength in America and liberal democracies, not our weakness. And the Post has the most diversified set of quality columnists that I have found in any daily newspaper, nevertheless an American daily.

The larger theme is becoming clear: the hubris of power, and how it undermines the responsibilities of both those in power and those who are not, during this period, is slowly being recognized for what it is. It's a sign of hope. And it is in that recognition where real progress lies.

Freedom

I was having a conversation about freedom, last night, with a friend of mine and her dad. And I think I made the argument about as plain as possibly could.

The truth is that we have had freedom, free will, since the beginning of humanity. There's plenty of power and control that has figured into that, too, and, when properly understood, it becomes clear that it is all that power and control that has forever fucked up humanity and made people more likely to do all of the most awful and tragic things in our history. Nazism, Communism, The Holocaust, Imperialism, the Crusades, the oppression that has undermined humanity for most of its history.

All of that power and repression has been driven, fundamentally, by a fear of that freedom, that free will.

But the truth is that it has never left us. We have always had it. We have always had all of the freedom that the world has had to offer. To do good. To do bad. All of it.

And since the beginning of humanity, with all of that freedom, and all of the risks that it has always carried, we have always done much good and much bad.

But freedom has always carried with it responsibility. And it is that responsibility that more real freedom better and has always better facilitated that has made us decent people, improved our lot, and produced real progress in our lives.

It clearly always has. More liberal societies, for all of their many, many faults, have clearly been more responsible in looking out for humanity and correcting for its mistakes than any other society in our history. And illiberalism has forever been the mistake most in need of correction. And so it is today.

Freedom offers us the clearest path to responsibility for every problem that humanity faces. Especially the problem of when and how frequently, and more to the point, how infrequently, force is used when it is needed. Liberal democratic societies will correct for this mistake, just as they have corrected for every other mistake that liberal democratic societies have corrected for. Because that is what it means to be liberal democratic. It means to correct our own mistakes and get ourselves on the better path towards real progress.

I better head down to Massachusetts Street, here. It sounds like KU beat North Carolina. And there is a whole lot of freedom and debauchery likely to take place downtown, tonight, for everyone celebrating.

I love this fuckin' country.

Into the Wild

I finally saw Into the Wild. If you haven't seen it, it's Sean Penn's labor of love. It's quite the love's labor, too. I definitely recommend it.

I won't tell you how I came to see it. I've actually been wanting to see it since I saw it in the video store.

But yesterday I happened on a recommendation for it by an old friend. She was right. It's a nice reminder of the stuff that really matters in life.

She read it as a reflection on how little material things mean in life. It's definitely that. But it's more than that. It's a story about freedom. And to what lengths some of us will got to get it.

I hope that something better comes along

"A skunk was badgered. The results were strong."

That's fuckin' hilarious. I've watched the Muppet Movie fuckin' 600 times and I never noticed how fuckin' piss-my-fuckin'-pants funny that fuckin' line is.

It's my favorite scene in the movie. It's why I bought the Muppet Movie, actually.

Did you know that I spent about 6 months in grad school seriously exploring puppeteering I fuckin' love Jim Henson and that fuckin' movie so much?

If you haven't seen the Muppet Movie in a while and your wondering what is worth emulating in this world fucked up by self-centered, power, money, status and sex-obsessed adults, check it out, when you get a chance. It's the gold standard of children's entertainment, as far as I'm concerned.



Rowlf: Eh, broken heart, right?

Kermit: Does it show?

Rowlf. Listen. When you've been tickling the ivories as long as I have, you've seen a broken heart for every drop of rain. A shattered dream for every fallen star.

Kermit: Exactly. She just walked out on me.

Rowlf: Yeah, typical. That's why I live alone.

Kermit: You do, huh?

Rowlf: You bet. I finish work, go home, read a book, have a couple of beers, take myself for a walk and go to bed.

Kermit: Nice and simple.

Rowlf: Stay away from women. That's my motto.

Kermit: But I can't.

Rowlf: Neither can I. That's my problem.

Classic.

The Dream

Memphis marchers honor legacy of MLK

If you have not been the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, I highly recommed making some time to go. Brandi and I visited on our way back from Washington, D.C., in 1997, when I drove with her back to Wichita. Housed at the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King was assassinated, it was a really moving memorial to Dr. King.

In a world consumed with an obsession with power, emnity, and division, Dr. King's legacy is not a bad one for us to reflect on, today.

I'm sure that partisans will try to coopt that legacy for their own purposes. It's true that Dr. King was more of a liberal, in a contemporary sense. But his legacy belongs to all of America and all the world, independent of any of the divisive ways that we look at the world or treat one another.

It does seem to me that it would be healthier for all of us if we took more time to think about life, in these terms. But that always seems to get in the way of who is going to be elected and when, to finally rid us of all our anxieties in the world. And we wouldn't want to get in the way of that.

Dr. King's dream was that people would be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. And if he were alive, today, perhaps he might say that people should just be judged by the content of their character, by how much good they do in this world. Maybe we have come far enough that our common dreams are bigger than our pettier divisions. Maybe not. But they need to come that far.

Thanks to Dr. Martin Luther King for articulating that dream to make so much clearer just how far we have to go.

A turn for the bizarre

I just listened to this insane story, on the way in, on NPR, Boeing protesting with the Government Accountability Office over an Air Force decision to hire competing manufacturer Northrop Grumman and its European partner EADS to build refueling planes.

This political period has taken a turn for the bizarre.

Americans are the whiniest, most self-centered, entitled people on earth, I think.

Whatever happened to competing on your merits?

Isn't that what this country is all about?

Except when it doesn't go our way. In which case, what we are about is getting our way.

Can you imagine why the rest of the world does not trust our good intentions?

All I know is that you cannot compete with manipulation for long. Soon enough, people see through you. And they start paying attention to your real merits or liabilities.

And I have to say that I am quite embarrassed by my country and many of my fellow countrymen, right now. I'm embarrassed by a world where people think that this is just part of the game. I'm embarrassed by a politics where this is so much of the game, that people stop being able to distinguish between what is honest and what is bullshit.

But mostly I'm just embarrassed for people who behave in such ways and call it good.

How sad that all Americans and all people do not have more self-respect than that.

I have to say that this is the first time in my life when I've felt like my country was on a prolonged and serious bad path. Most Americans agree, apparently, according to a new poll.

Unfortunately, the things they propose to improve life in America are often and generally the very things that undermine real progress.

"Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they would support raising taxes on households making more than $250,000 to pay for tax cuts or government programs for people making less than that amount. Only 38 percent called it a bad idea. Both Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidates, have made proposals along these lines.

More broadly, 43 percent of those surveyed said they would prefer a larger government that provided more services, which is tied for the highest such number since The Times and CBS News began asking the question in 1991. But an identical 43 percent said they wanted a smaller government that provided fewer services.

And although both Clinton and Obama have blamed trade with other countries for some of the economy's problems, Americans say they continue to favor trade — if not quite as strongly as in the past. Fifty-eight percent called it good for the economy; 32 percent called it bad, up from 17 percent in 1996.

At the same time, 68 percent said they favored trade restrictions to protect domestic industries, instead of allowing unrestrained trade. In early 1996, 55 percent favored such restrictions."

This is a period when Americans have decided that manipulation rather than our most serious liberal values are what should guide our thinking and our efforts. And it is just hard for me to recognize my country, often, these days.

We have taken a seriously bad path. The question is whether we can find the courage to own up on that one.

All I know is that I have no interest in pretending that things have gotten better for our efforts. Or that I have more reason to be proud of my country, today.

I want to be proud of my country and its efforts, again. But we have to earn it.

And that is one value that I hope we have not completely lost sight of.

Booyakashaw

Holy shit this is so fuckin' funny.

Ali G clownin' the political classes.

First, James Baker...



Then Noam Chomsky...



And check out how classy Brent Scowcroft handles this interview...



Big up, Ali G. Keep it up. They need it.

OK, no more fuckin' self-pity

I've been really fuckin' bummed, lately.

The toughest part of my job is always having to deal with so much fuckin' bullshit about how thinking doesn't matter, how education doesn't matter, how these kids will never amount to anything, how it's all doomed, how there is a million explanations, labels, diagnoses, and whatever other fuckin' bullshit for why they don't fuckin' like school and why they don't want to either do their fuckin' work or be decent human beings in the meantime.

It wears on me, like a fuckin' emotional albatross from hell.

And these last 2 weeks, it has depressed the shit out of me. Because giving into that bullshit means giving up a commitment I have had since I was in grad school to prove to these kids, these families, these teachers, and to the fuckin' world that these kids are not retards, forgive my french. That these kids are not beyond the pale of intelligence and decency. That these kids can learn, they can be smart, if they so choose, or at least smarter than they were yesterday, that they can take on more serious intellectual challenges, if they so choose, and that, generally, the problem of intelligence and stupidity in the world is not one of heritable differences or biological destiny. It is a matter of deciding that you're going to do the fuckin' work to ante up and make your contribution.

And, lately, it is not just too many academics and teachers who seemed to have given up on these kids. It is the kids who have generally given up on themselves that was the real fuckin' problem.

And I was left with a quandry.

If intelligence and developing it really is a matter of choice and doing the work, if people don't want to do the work and you really can't force them to if they don't want to - if you doubt that, I would highly suggest that you visit my school and my kids will teach you a thing or two - why would I spend all my time and energy doing something that even the kids don't want for themselves?

But the truth I think I saw today was is that, in addition to the kids kicking and screaming and trying to avoid the work that they don't like doing and which gets harder the more they avoid doing it, a lot of my kids are scared that they can't do it. And they are so used to swimming in this bullshit that they begin to confuse it with something more honest.

And the much bigger truth, of course, is that, like most kids, my kids often don't really want to be in school. Most adults don't like to be at work. It's just something they have to do. And, like most people, my kids just want to be able to direct their own lives, and they get tired of being made to do a lot of things they don't want to do. I can't say it's without their input, because I ask for their input, all the time. But they really just don't like doing things they don't like to do, like most people, really. They're just much shittier about it, unfortunately for me.

And I decided, today, feeling myself wallow a little in some self-pity about the whole situation, and thinking about how weak I think Michael Barone, of the U.S. News and World Report, is for acting all tough when the truth is that he is constantly wallowing in self-pity about how the scholarly world has not recognized his brilliance, that there will be no more self-pity for me.

I will prove myself as a teacher, as a scholar, as a writer, as an investor, and as whatever the fuck I put my energies into, or I will not. And that is the one and final fuckin' bottom line on that one. And there will be no fuckin' self-pity in my life. Not a shred. Either I do the job or not. And that is all there fuckin' is to it.

I've got an IEP to finish. And I've got lessons I need to jazz up and make more fun and interesting and light-hearted for the kids. And I have a world of intellect and education that I need to make available even to the shittiest behaving kids. Because that's my fuckin' job. And I don't give two shits what excuses I might have about that job or not, anymore.

Time for me to get to work.

I had a feeling

Robert Mugabe is not going without a fight.

Zimbabwe Police Raid Opposition Offices

"Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga said Mugabe was ready for a run-off.

'President Mugabe is going to fight. He is not going anywhere. He has not lost,' Matonga said on British Broadcasting Corp. 'We are going to go hard and fight and get the majority required.'"

Sound like anyone you know? Ms. Clinton emulates the best, doesn't she.

You have to read this whole story to believe it. It's not just America where people are constantly rigging the contest for their own benefit. All I can say is thank God for a free media and a free marketplace of ideas.

Power for its own sake. It is the most dangerous idea in the history of humanity.

And it is a history that is hopefully taking a step forward in Zimbabwe.

Michael Barone showing off his brains

I only have a couple of seconds, right now. But I do have one or two things to say about the pitifully self-pitying wannabe intellectual Michael Barone.

Michael wrote this pathetic pro-Andrew Jackson - you mean the same Andrew Jackson who slaughtered all those Native Americans and embarrassed himself in the White House, so much so that the Founding Fathers could hardly believe that such an ignorant asshole could ever take up residence there? That's the one - anti-Obama/pro-Clinton/pro-McCain piece in this week's U.S. News and World Report, the bastion of thoughtful argumentation, that stinks of all of the bullshit, self-deceiving, self-pitying "I'm tough, therefore I don't really need to be as smart," whining that has come to characterize Michael Barone's writing.

In Terms of Geography, Obama Appeals to Academics and Clinton Appeals to Jacksonians

Michael Barone's writing always stinks to high heaven of both self-pity that intellectuals don't recognize the giant intellect that he does not have and of partisan deception. And this piece is no different. He pretends to be a moderate. Really he is a conservative. He pretends that he is trying to be even-handed. Really his pieces are always pretedermined in their outlook almost without exception. He pretends that he is an academic. But his anti-intellectual bias is borne out in almost every piece he does where he talks about academics. And he pretends that he has more to offer intellectually, because he paid all that money to go to Harvard and Yale, when really he just very little original to say.

Michael carries this enromous chip on his shoulder in almost everything I have read from him. I almost want to feel sorry for him if he wasn't such a dick.

"I really am smarter than all those people who are smarter than me. I really am one of the great intellects of my time. Come on guys. Give me my due. I am really am smarter."

OK, Michael. We heard your whine. We hear it every fuckin' time you write any two words. It's never really all that hot. Hard America, Soft America is one long argument for why all those soft academics just really don't understand the world like Michael Barone. It's the most pathetic form of self-glorification I have ever seen or read.

Michael thinks if he holes himself up in his own little intellectual cocoon then he will not have to deal with all the disagreement that he encounters, especially that of those who are smarter than he is. Hence his obsession with tough in lieu of smart. Because there's got to be some reason that all those smart people don't like my arguments.

It couldn't just possibly be because they're weak.

It's the saddest and most pathetic spectacle in the known media world. A grown man who can't engage honestly those who disagree with him, pretending that it is because he is so tough, when really it is because he and his arguments are so fuckin' weak.

Grow a fuckin' spine, Michael. Engage all those smart people. Who knows? You might just learn something.

But if you don't, Michael, when they don't like your arguments, it's not because you're conservative. So are Milton Friedman, E.O. Wilson, David Gergen, Francis Fukuyama, Fredrick Kagan, John Keegan, and a million other really brilliant conservative thinkers. And it's not because you're tough. Tough minds engage the debates, like grown ups. It's only weak minds that try to whine their way out of the discussion.

It's because you're not all that brilliant.

And you'd be better off trying to get smarter.

Buck up, little soldier. Tough guys know when to engage a fair debate. Self-pity and weasling your way out of the discussion is for the weak. I know you're stronger than that. So cut it the fuck out. Because you're wasting your goddamn time with these weak-ass arguments and trying to pass them off as deeper and more thoughtful than they are.

And if you don't, so sorry that people don't like your arguments.

Maybe it's because they aren't all that strong.

Eye of the Tiger

23/6 reminds Hillary Clinton that Rocky lost.

I will remind Ms. Clinton that Rocky was not a washed up "inevitable" insider.

But you got to give it to them. They are desperate, aren't they?

Being happy

I need another job. It's got to be independent. I don't think I could ever be happy with anything else.

I think I just decided to give up my dream. And I don't think I care anymore. Because I think my dignity is more important.

That's not true. Well, the dignity part is. I'm not giving up my dream. I'm just taking a very different path, at this point, I think.

And no matter what, that path, for now on, involves me taking what I think more seriously than what the fuckin' crowd thinks.

War of the Roses

Ruth Marcus has recently been winning back my confidence after a stint that is hopefully winding down as the Washington Post's resident scold.

And she has a good suggestion for the two Democratic nominees, and really all politicians.

Too soon to stop this movie

"The other day, Obama compared the primary season to a movie that's gone on for too long. Like Clinton, I don't mind a good epic.

This one, though, reminds me of "The War of the Roses," the Kathleen Turner-Michael Douglas movie about a couple who build a beautiful house but manage to destroy it -- and themselves -- in the course of an ugly divorce. This would cast Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean in the Danny DeVito role as the divorce lawyer powerless to stop the carnage.

Maybe both candidates should rent the DVD. Dean, too. They need the break -- and they might learn something."

I agree that the contest should go on. But a night with the War of the Roses might end the bloodletting, which serves no purpose other at all except to reinforce our most destructive tendencies.

War of the Roses is a pretty good parable for all politics, with all of its self-destructive, ugly, and tragic tendencies and consequences.

Perhaps everyone in American and international politics should take a moment to watch that film and have a long hard think about the romanticism of force and aggression to resolve difficult problems.

Chinese Democracy Now!

This is likely the absolutely dumbest post I have ever made.

But I have to say that I am all in favor of this campaign.

Chinese Democracy When?

Dr. Pepper is launching a campaign for Axl Rose to finally release his 17 years in-the-making album, Chinese Democracy. They are saying that if Axl finally puts out the long overdue album, they will give every American, "except estranged guitarists Slash and Buckethead," a free can of Dr. Pepper.

When was the last time you heard a new release from a Guns and Roses album?

I, for one, say, far too long.

Release the goddamn album, already, Axl.

America is counting on you.

Force as a governing philosophy in a democracy - a case study

This is what governance by force looks like in a democracy.

A threat of turmoil in Turkey

What d'ya think about them apples?

All I can say is, another day in paradise.

Hope for democracy?

Wow. This would outstanding if this holds true. And if Mugabe will honor the results or if the opposition will challenge his efforts to resist them.

Zimbabwe opposition claims a big victory

It's amazing to me how much liberal democratic values take flower even as illiberal forces are on the move.

Which values will prevail, ultimately, regardless of the outcome of this election? I'll let you think on that one.

American international policy in the 21st century

The Economist does a nice review of the problems in American foreign policy with the next Presidency.

After Bush

Many of the polarized political problems the Economist cites would settle out with a more honest, engaged, and thoughtful public political discussion. I have ideas about international security policy that attempts to transcend these schims to make empirical, thoughtful policy analysis and formulation independent of ideology, while drawing upon strengths in liberal and conservative ideology and within the best of liberal democratic thought.

But is interesting how the multilateral nature of most issues we face mean policy options that cannot be dominated by any one player and even options that multiple players will find very difficult to dominate in tandem. We have been learning that the hard way during this period. We have much learning to go, I'm quite confident.

The problems that liberal democracies and illiberal and undemocratic nations of the world face will involve, as always, greater commitments to our strongest liberal democratic values - especially our commitment to honest, engaged, thoughtful, open-minded and open-hearted discussion - not weaker substitutes. We have been settling for poorer substitutes these last 7-8 years. And they have had consequences. And we are responsible for those consequences, whether anyone has the courage to take responsibility for those consequences or not.

May we learn those lessons sooner rather than later.

Ending the war

I have to say that I still find this a more persuasive case for what will occur in case of a pullout.

How Not the End the War

But what really matters is not what I think, but what those Iraqi and American troops and governing officials think, since they are both closer to the action and more likely to have an idea of what the Iraqi military is ready to handle on their own or not. That is whom we should be talking with and listening to, which is why I largely agree with Max Boot's assesssment, here.

It is amazing, I must say, watching the course of this war, how the oldest democracy in the world ignores more genuine liberal democratic principles in the name of liberal democracy. All of us. Illiberalism serves to abate our fears. And it is now and always an illusion. And this war should demonstrate that fact better than any other political fact we face, right now.

If we could only be honest with ourselves about that fact.

Just as aside

I just wanted to say that though I was disappointed with the limited vision of Samantha Power in that Colbert interview, I want someone with that kind of passion for doing good in the world and with that kind of honesty in her words and her feelings on my side in a policy discussion.

I just want her to think bigger than the circumstances, at hand. And not get lost in politics like it means more than it does.

Solving problems like the genocide in Sudan and the mess in Iraq mean an awful lot.

And I, for one, would want Samantha Power right by my side while we worked on it.

What we need is an open, no-holds-barred discussion

Perhaps Brzezinski is right. It is possible that a pullout, with coordination with those responsible for security, might work.

I don't know, is the truth.

What we need is a free, open, no-holds-barred discussion, especially with the American and Iraq troops responsible for security and the Iraqi political leaders responsible for political resolution of outstanding issues, about what should be done.

When you look at that Iraqi situation - the civil war and its relationship to the issues of power in the Iraq parliament - the problem of power and its distorting, and intentionally manipulative consequence, on resolution of important issues becomes all the more crystal clear. Radicals and terrorists and despots of all stripes have figured out that they can use and manipulate the disagreements of otherwise good faith citizens of liberal democracies and illiberal nations and cultures, alike, and newly democratized countries, like Iraq, to try to accomplish self-centered or self-righteous political ends that, generally, undermine more decent aims for the people of those nations or cultures, and for all of us.

They fuck everything up and make it really difficult, often intentionally, to find more decent resolutions that they believe undermine their power and the self-righteous aims that feed their power.

Everyone should have their two cents. Though I will say that I, for one, will not be taking everyone's input as seriously as those who I trust, more, are on the up and up about looking out for the welfare of the Iraqis and the American soldiers trying to protect them, right now.

This is what we should have for all policy questions, if we weren't such fuckin' ninnies. But it is definitely what we need with something as serious and high stakes as this question of what to do with this situation.

All I know is that I'm tired of liberal democracies and liberal peoples acting like liberal values only matter in some fantasy world that only matters in the land of make believe because we're too fuckin' pussy to take those values seriously in this world. Surely we can do better than this.

But that's what we need.

Power

The more I think about it, the more I am completely convinced that the most serious problems we face in the 21st century are around the question of power. How is distorts, manipulates, undermines, and fucks up otherwise legitimate and decent efforts.

On so many questions - war and peace, international security, law and order, criminal and civil justice, the economy, wealth equity, universal health insurance, education, psychology and individual and general mental health, language, communication, and honest discussion, race and gender issues, sexuality, even medical issues and the sciences - power undermines honest thought, discussion, and debate and honest resolution of long-standing issues.

It's not just that power corrupts. It confuses us. All of us. It makes everything hazy. And we all have to pretend like it's all so much clearer or that we understand it all more than any of us actually really do. It creates all sorts of tragedy with many of left with so many questions about whether such tragedy is really worthwhile, largely because it does so before a more open and honest and decent discussion can sort such matters out, which is exactly what ends up more genuinely sorting those matters out, over time, only after much distortion and confusion created by resorting to power to try to resolve the same problems.

It creates an environment of fear that is generally far worse than the original vices or problems it is meant to resolve. It is bad for everyone and their mental health as well as substantively making it more difficult, often to sort out and resolve problems. It makes bad choices and routes all the more tempting. It causes all kinds of tragedies and then doubles up to make it very difficult for those responsible for those tragedies to apologize or take responsibility.

It distorts our lives with fear and ugliness that then reifies itself as the reason for our need for it.

Power fucks us up in very serious ways, is the truth. And then it pretends that it is the fucked up nature of a world that it often creates is all the more reason we need it. It is like an abusive husband rationalizing his relationship with us. And we are gullible wives to its rationalizations.

And it is never satisfied until is has trapped all of us in its clutches, and even then it is never satisfied. And that is why it corrupts, and why absolute versions of it corrupt absolutely.

Because it often creates and amplifies the very fear that makes it hard for those who covet it to sleep without it.

Power fucks us up. All of us. And it has my soul sick with despair that we will never give it up.

And the only reality that gives me hope is that we always seem to fumble forward. Always. Even when we move backwards, as I believe we have in the last 7-8 years. Even as we fuck up our own and one anothers' lives with it. Even as we make it very, very difficult for people of good faith to believe in the world and the liberal democracies where it is still coveted so much.

Hope lies in the fact that we always fumble forward, eventually, even as we cling to the ugliness and abuses and bullshit - the power - for far too long.

That hope needs to become reality for even hope to be real. Perhaps even I, as well as my children, might be able to see that come to fruition.

What to do about universal health care

Regina Herzlinger, a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, has a proposal for universal health insurance that gets closer to a real solution, I think.

America, Insure Thyself

Her argument in toto:

"As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continue their battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, they also sustain a debate over what constitutes universal health care. Obama says Clinton's 'mandated' health-care plan is unaffordable for working-class Americans; Clinton says Obama's voluntary plan would leave millions uninsured.

Yet both candidates agree that affordability relies on government and big employers' continued involvement in deciding what kinds of products and services insurers can offer consumers -- and that's their big mistake. Instead, the candidates should step back and embrace a new way of thinking about health care: putting consumers first by empowering individuals to buy portable health coverage. Moving to a consumer-driven system will enable the universal coverage both candidates seek, because it will control costs and improve quality far better than governments or businesses can.

Since the 1970s, U.S. health-care financing has become increasingly centralized, with large employers and government programs now managing roughly 90 percent of spending. At the same time, health-care costs have routinely outstripped growth in GDP, wages and general inflation. The government's track record in picking winners and losers in health-care markets is terrible.

For example, Duke University Medical Center's innovative congestive heart failure program reduced costs by 40 percent by integrating the many providers needed to treat the disease and thus substantially improving patients' health. But Medicare pays only for fixed-price procedures, such as surgeries or doctor visits. The result? As Duke's enrollees became healthier and used hospitals less, Duke lost the revenues it once earned by filling those empty beds.One-size-fits-all payment systems used by massive buyers like Medicare help drive away the innovators who could lower health-care costs.

When it comes to embracing health-care innovation, however, Big Business fares no better than Big Government. In order for employers to get big discounts, they have to buy health care in bulk, offering just one or two basically identical plans to their employees. The result is consistent mediocrity. After all, how can Chrysler find a single health plan that works just as well for a 55-year-old diabetic with a bad back as it does for a 30-year-old triathlete who sees a doctor once every few years for a sprained ankle? Splitting the difference in these cases means that people do not get treated in the preventative or chronic-care settings that they really need.

Both Clinton and Obama support continuation of this dysfunctional model by leaving in place the existing employer tax deduction, and even offering additional federal spending to supplement it.

To expand health-care access and lower costs, our best option is to turn health-care purchasing over to the American people. Sectors driven by competition for consumer spending, like retail, display increasing specialization as providers offer niche products and services -- unlike our health-care sector, where, to paraphrase Henry Ford, you can have any plan you want as long as it's an HMO or a PPO.

Here's how to right the ship: First, as John McCain has proposed, end the employer tax deduction and give every American a tax credit to buy health care coverage -- in his proposal, $2,500 for individuals, $5,000 for families. This will almost instantly create an enormous 'pull' mechanism for insurance competition. Next, make even the sickest patients into true health-care consumers by paying insurers more for sick patients than healthy ones. About 80 percent of America's health-care spending goes toward 20 percent of the patients, typically those with one or more chronic diseases like diabetes or cancer. Giving a chronically ill patient the ability to choose among competing private plans would transform not only the insurance industry but also the health-care delivery sector, by spurring competition to offer better treatment models at an affordable price. People with congestive heart failure, for example, would favor health insurance policies that offered them an integrated care program, like Duke's, over ones that feature today's fragmented providers.

For an example of how universal, consumer-driven coverage can help control costs and improve quality, consider the system in Switzerland. Swiss employers enforce universal coverage by requiring individual employees to provide proof of health insurance; the poor and the sick are subsidized so that they can buy health insurance as readily as everybody else. The Swiss have excellent health status, at far lower costs than ours. Switzerland's health-care consumer satisfaction ratings are the best in the world.

In arguing the issues of universal coverage and affordability, Clinton and Obama rightly focus on the critical pieces of the health-care puzzle. But unless they address the question of consumer choice, their debate is much ado about nothing: We won't have truly universal health care until we have a mechanism to bring everyone into the system, and it won't be affordable until individuals and families can choose their own insurance coverage from competing insurers. Only consumer-driven health care will give entrepreneurs the flexibility to fashion a wide variety of appealing plans and services while allowing consumers to choose the most cost-effective coverage for themselves. Americans need and deserve a health-care system that is universal, affordable and innovative."

The logic of the Swiss system contradicts what I think is the sounder reasoning of Professor Herzlinger's proposal. But that is largely, I think, because Professor Herzlinger is holding a higher standard, as I do and as I think most Americans do and should, for what quality universal health insurance and access to health care should mean.

Professor Herzlinger's argument is exactly why I favor John McCain's health care proposal over what I do believe are the well intentioned proposals of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, with my more marginal approval for Barack Obama's proposal.

I do think that we should seriously consider giving a free market with a democratic conversation about the need for universal health insurance and care a try, with a role for non-profits and voluntary giving to fill in gaps, and only mandated giving as a compromise in emergencies that cannot be handled any other way, and, perhaps, let some chips fall where they may. My thinking on mandates, at this point, is that they are generally counterproductive, even when they are understandable. A tax credit is certainly preferable to a mandate.

I think this is what has fucked up liberal democracies since their inception. Our lack of faith in our own values. Our lack of faith in liberty and democracy, for real, to help us help ourselves to solve even our most serious problems.

Me too, probably, when I think about it.

It would not just be nice for us to find and have that kind of faith. It would resolve many of our most serious challenges, especially the challenges of terrorism, despotism, totalitarianism and other forms of illiberalism that feed off of our lack of faith.

If I had only wish for my children, it would not be that they never experience hurt or pain, which is not possible. It would be that they are able to live in a world that stops taking seriously the legacies of fear and aggression to resolve our differences that have long dominated the world, and starts taking those liberal values seriously.

The smart way out

Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to President Carter and respected foreign policy thinker, makes, for me, the first coherent and thoughtful argument for the advantages of an American pullout from Iraq.

The Smart Way Out of a Foolish War

It is nice to finally see someone make the argument, rather than just assert a partisan line as a reaction against an opposition policy, which is too often the way things are done in American politics and Washington, generally.

On Iran and Israel and Palestine (at the end of the article), I think Brzezinski is undeniably right and it is nice to see someone argue openly for the position he takes on Iran, of open negotiations.

On Iraq, I still think he's wrong.

It's a tough call, I know. Will leaving breed action on the part of Iraqi security forces and reduce dependency on American forces? Maybe. It's a tempting line of reasoning, I have to admit. It is essentially what liberals have been arguing since they've called for a pullout.

The problem is that they really don't know that. It's a policy position liberals have been taking in contrast to the Administration and they are bullshitting if they say that they know that Iraqis will step up to the plate and shed their dependency on American troops if Americans leave.

The truth is they don't know. They, just like everyone else in politics and too often in life, me especially, talk and write like they know more than they do. Pretty common in politics, really. I encourage everyone to note it and be skeptical of it in my own writing.

The likelihood is so uncertain on such a call, that when the stakes are this high, my call goes to the people doing the work, first and foremost, meaning both Iraqi security forces and the government responsible for them and American forces, both of whom, who, by and large, also disagree with Brzezinski's call, here. Brzezinski might be angling for a job with an Obama administration. But he seems to genuinely believe what he is arguing, here, enough, that I might give him the benefit of the doubt. It also might be somewhere in between as it, sadly, often is in politics (cynical reasoning is not new to Washington, as you may have noticed).

But the fact of the matter is that the people who do the security work that Zbigniew is commenting on, here, in a thoughtful Washington Post article, to be sure, but not security work that he does day-in-day-out as those Iraqi and American soldiers are doing there in Iraq, say that he is wrong. And I trust them better, is the truth. They are the only crew I really trust more wholeheartedly through this whole godforesaken mess. One of the reasons I just might join them after my stint here at Cap City, if that is feasible and my most reasonable path for my life, by my lights.

And it makes sense. When the Iraqis are ready to take over, they will say so. When the American forces think they are ready to take over, they will say so.

But magically wishing that they will stand on their own two feet, when they may not know everything they need to know or be reasonably prepared for everything they need to be reasonably prepared for to make that a reality in a very complicated and difficult security mission, is wishful thinking, I think, on Zbigniew's and most liberals thinking, frankly, that pretends far more certainty than they could actually ever have.

The truth is that most people do not really know what to do next. And liberals in Washington are often just as arrogant as the conservatives in Washington who started this goddamn war. Like those conservatives, they often have good intentions. But like those conservatives, those intentions often are not matched with better understanding or results. And like those conservatives, they are generally loathe to admit when they are wrong or have fucked up.

I have every reason to trust those American and Iraqi soldiers, on this one, and every reason to be skeptical of both Brzezinski and liberals who reason like this without accounting for the legitimately experienced and knowledgeable skepticism of those troops.

Zbigniew Brzezinski might not be a bad advisor to a candidate or President Obama, just as Joe Nye might not have been a bad advisor to a candidate Hillary Clinton.

But that doesn't mean they are right about a pullout.

And there is every reason to believe that those troops know better what they are talking about doing the work, day-in and day-out.

My colleagues have all kinds of reasoning I don't agree with. But I also know that, for the most part, they know what they're doing better than most people who write about, critique, and otherwise comment from the sidelines on our work. And I'm quite confident that the same is true, generally, among those troops in Iraq, as well.

Politicians play politics. That's the problem. They get too wrapped up in their bullshit and the bullshit that too often substitutes itself for substance in politics. That's the problem with power. It makes cowards and bullshitters out of all of us.

And that's why it's a safer bet to trust those who have less reason to bullshit and more commitment to getting the job done right. Those people are the American and Iraqi troops, by my lights.

But I do appreciate finally hearing on argument, on this question. Makes the discussion that much more reasonable to have someone take thinking about it seriously.

What drives me craziest about my job

We had a long day, today.

I teach at an alternative special education school for kids with serious behavior and mental health issues. The kids in our cluster tend to be more aggressive behavior problems. We have a lot of thugs and a lot of kids just seeing how much they can get away with. In special ed, we have all kinds of labels like "conduct-disordered" and "behavior-disordered". And the value of those terms is in understanding dysfunctional behavior, depersonalizing it, to some degree, and focussing on teaching better, more functional, behaviors and the academic skills that these kids miss out on because they fuck off their classes and have often done so for a very long time. So many of their reading, math, and other skills are extremely low. So low, that I am in awe of their capacity for bullshitting themselves that it doesn't matter, most days. But many kids act in exactly this way, sadly.

We do see a lot of progress. It's very, very, very slow. It's a job that requires the most patience I have ever had or seen in any job I have ever had or seen. Our cluster, in particular - we have some of the more misbehaving kids in the school - is a daily dose of hostility, aggression, nastiness, resistance to doing work, blowing off school and school work and otherwise wondering why the hell we do it, often.

But you do see enough progress that you know that you're making a difference. You just don't hear it very often from the kids and their parents. And the fact of the matter is that if these kids didn't have teachers to be patient with them, they would be in very, very deep shit in life. Most schools, generally, would have and already have kicked these kids out, at this point. This is very much a school of last resort for many of these kids. And, lucky for them, a school staffed with some of the most patient, decent, and, often, skilled, teachers I have ever worked with. I do believe that adults and kids rationalize kids' behaviors, too much, and look for explanations other than those that offer responsibility as a path towards something better. But, on the whole, these are some of the most decent people I've ever worked with.

The staff are the reason to work in a school like this. Even after experiencing far tougher school experiences than most teachers in most schools, they are less grizzled, less cynical, less mean-spirited, more decent, more patient, more genuinely concerned and compassionate, more skilled, and just more decent people to be around that other schools I've worked in.

Having said that, this job drives me crazy, most days. It drive me crazy because I care so much about these kids and what we're doing.

But it also drives me crazy because of all the bullshit.

I have come to the conclusion that most of the problems of the most serious poverty (and maybe of all poverty, in wealthier liberal democracies, like the United States, at some level) is often a function of people constantly bullshitting themselves and one another about why they are facing hardship.

The most serious bullshit I deal with with these kids, which may or may not be correlated with anyone's poverty - is the very stupid and foolish and wearing rationalization that school and education and intelligence doesn't matter.

There's a million different variations of it. School doesn't matter. I know people who don't have much education and have good lives. Smart people think they're better than me. There's school smarts and street smarts. Yada, yada, yada, fucking yada. A million different excuses for why I'm not taking school seriously and if that means that my life suffers as a function of that, there will always be someone to blame for my circumstance other than myself.

It gets wearing, most days.

And today was a particularly wearing version of it.

If I could pinpoint one reason why it is discouraging being a teacher, many days, this is it.

The very kids and people who need education and its benefits the most are, often and generally, the very people most resistant to owning up to that fact because it hurts their feelings and their egos and they would rather have both of those safely in tact than to face the truth that education matters enormously in life, both in terms of material well-being, but also, often, in terms of being a more decent, thoughtful, and well-rounded human being.

And the bigger lie is that when I fail in school, it is because others have failed me, which might be true, sometimes, and will always be true, at some level, no matter how good a job teachers and schools do, and because people who have failed in school and Americans do settle for a system of schooling that will always fail those aspirations as long as it is politicized more than being an open, more independent system where schools, teachers, and kids and parents can improve on their own merits rather than bullshitthing themselves through political or other reframing of their situations that is constantly trying to escape responsibility for their lives.

I know. I care about this job and this work far more than most kids or parents and probably a lot of teachers and administrators do. I know, because I work longer hours that most teachers and administrators. So why get all worked up about it?

I guess because I didn't come from much. And I wanted to make opportunities available that might not otherwise have been available had I or someone not offered them.

And because it's perfectly clear to me, now at the ripe old age of 34, that education clearly is the most important investment of time, energy, money or whatever that anyone will make in their lives. People will say different. But they're bullshitting themselves, generally.

Because education is the one most serious way to tell the difference between what's true, what's real, what matters, and what's bullshit. Education, when it comes down to it, is what is left over after the bullshit is skimmed away.

And what drives me craziest about this job is everyone bullshitting themselves, me, and one another about that one, central, clear-as-fuckin' day truth about the fuckin' world, no matter how much people try to talk and bullshit their way out of it.

And when kids and their parents can't come clean about that fact of life, then all of this feels like an enormous waste of time. I know that's not true, because I'm terribly concerned for most of these kids once they venture out into the world beyond school. They're in deep shit, as it is. They're in deeper shit if they pretend that all that learning, or the lack thereof, doesn't mean anything in their lives.

Down deep, no matter how much people pretend, they know it's bullshit. Education isn't everything. But it's a huge fuckin' doorway to most things.

What keeps me here and in teaching, for now, is that, like a parent - like a teacher - I know that it matters, even if the kids and even many of their parents don't, many days.

I'm glad I've done it, just to have the opportunity to contribute and to cut through the bullshit a little, in my own life and in the world, at large. I don't think I would have understood the world as well had I not done this work. Now I do.

And plenty more to learn where that came from.

Independence

I have come to the conclusion, watching politics and the markets of the last few years, that I have no interest, whatsoever, of being dependent on any other soul - not an employer, definitely not the government, not any charity organization, noone - for any important thing in my life.

Life is interdependent as a matter of fact. There is no escape from that reality.

But some people carry bigger loads than others, that is just a fact.

And I intend on carrying the heaviest loads and living a live of financial, professional, personal, political, intellectual, and otherwise independence with no hesitation, anymore. My life is my own. And if want it to remain my own, I need to create a life that will support that kind of independence.

That is my aim in life, right now.

Everything else is an illusion.

And if there is anything I do not want for my life, it is to live a life of illusions.

Democracy in the market - the capacity for self-correction

While I take issue with the idea that finance executives were "trapped in a dance" they could not quit - they made choices and they are responsible for those choices; they were just mistakes and not some conspiracy against the economy - this is the best explanation of the finance crisis that I have read to date.

The financial system: What went wrong?

The Economists' warning that reregulation would be foolish and undermine the responsibility and learning about the risks and benefits of securitization that needs to take place to avoid such messes in the future is a wise one.

That, not its perfection or even just its information-producing capacity, is the brilliance of the market: it's capacity, and all of our capacity, for self-correction. That is the democratic nature of the market that liberal democracies would be ill-advised to take for granted.

Read this article if you want to understand, better, how this meltdown happened, what it says about investing in ventures that produce real value, and how to avoid this kind of problem in the future.

Benjamin Graham (and Friedrich Hayek) would just shake his head and say, "They should have read my book."

And Warren Buffet is laughing all the way to the bank.

Giving, independent of ideology

George Will redeems himself with this excellent column on charitable giving.

Bleeding Hearts but Tight Fists

I have to admit that I have gotten less charitable, as of late, largely because I am taking more seriously living within my means, after too many adventures in credit cards in my young adulthood, and building savings and investment and fiscal responsibility into my budget.

I have no interest in maintaining that as a permanent habit. I just need to learn to live within my means and build wealth to give to others as well as support myself and my family.

Benjamin Graham is my model, right now. He went broke at about my same age during the Crash of 1929. Generosity is my instinct. I just need to trust that I'm taking fiscal responsibility seriously enough to build wealth to be generous with. Warren Buffet, I believe, has given more than half his wealth away, at this point. I want to have that kind of flexibility in my life.

And the money wouldn't hurt, either.

What the world should look like, when the bullshit clears

One where people have the freedom to learn from their own mistakes.

That's the kind of world I want for my own children.

That's the kind of world I need for my students, if they are to have a shot at a decent and good life.

Truth be told, that is the life that we all need, when we're honest with ourselves.

That's what a liberal democracy should be, when all the bullshit clears.

The power of honest thought

Roger Cohen has an excellent column in the International Herald Tribune, this morning, and the strongest argument I have heard, yet, for an Obama Presidency.

Imaginary snipers, real challenges

He writes:

"Here's some news for Hillary Clinton: The Bosnian war was over in 1996.

Those of us, like myself, who first went to Bosnia at the start of the war in 1992 and then, in 1994 and 1995, endured Bill Clinton's circumlocutions as we sat in an encircled Sarajevo watching pregnant women getting blown away by shelling from Serbian gunners, know that.

We know that as President Clinton mumbled about "enmities that go back 500 years, some would say almost a thousand years," Bosnia burned. We know what that talk of intractable grievances dating back to 995 was meant to communicate: No Western intervention could achieve anything in the Balkan pit.

Only after the mass murder of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica, three years after the initial Serbian genocide of 1992 against that population (and one year after a genocide on his watch in Rwanda), did the gelatinous Clinton develop some backbone. NATO bombed, Richard Holbrooke did his brilliant work at Dayton in November 1995, and the guns fell silent in Bosnia.

So, yes, the war was well and truly over when Hillary Clinton arrived in the northeastern Bosnian town of Tuzla on March 25, 1996. It was over, although she recently recalled "landing under sniper fire." It was over when "we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

Oh, please. Researching a book, I also visited that base in 1996 to talk to Major General William Nash, then the commander of U.S. troops in Bosnia. If you'd lived the war, the base was a small miracle of American order and security...

...Clinton made up Bosnian sniper fire in an attempt to show that she's tougher than Barack Obama; that she's a hardened, seasoned, putative commander-in-chief ready to respond to crisis when the "red phone" of her fear-mongering ad rings.

John McCain's own recent "misspeaking" about Iran, placing (Sunni) Al Qaeda in (Shiite) Iran, also smacked of muscle-flexing: He wanted to signal toughness to the mullahs in Tehran, where Obama has suggested he'd seek dialogue.

But what the United States, and those that look to it, need now is not more braggadocio from the White House. We've had a seven-year dose. That's enough.

What's needed, rather, is some new, creative thinking about a changed world in which authoritarianism is enjoying a renaissance and America and its allies need to work together to spread peace, prosperity, freedom, equity, security and, yes, democracy.

U.S. hard power has not worked. The Iraq invasion was bungled. European soft power is insufficient.

As Constanze Stelzenmüller of the German Marshall Fund notes in an important recent essay called "Trans-Atlantic Power Failures," a "European Union with 27 member states and a total of 1.8 million men and women under arms" is incapable of pacifying little Kosovo ("one quarter the size of Switzerland") on its own.

The trans-Atlantic bond of Cold War years is gone forever. The alliance is going to be looser, more pragmatic. But it has to find "the right mix of idealism and realism," and a new cohesion, if one-pipeline Russia and one-party, Tibet-tormenting China are not to prosper with authoritarianism-for-export.

Foreign policy debate in this election campaign has been paltry. I'd like to hear something about GWOT - the "Global War on Terror" - the heart of U.S. national security strategy. It amounts to war without end because "terror" is a tactic and tactics don't surrender. GWOT should be abandoned: It's externally divisive and internally treacherous. Al Qaeda can be beaten sans GWOT.

I'd like some discussion of what NATO might do to help spread the Iraqi burden and ease a gradual extrication of most U.S. troops from Iraq.

On issues that cross borders - terrorism, financial market volatility, global warming - and on Iran, Israel-Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq - three things are essential: a new moral authority in the White House, the capacity for original strategic thought, and a 21st-century understanding of the border-jumping networks that have knit humanity into new relationships.

Obama, in his speech on race, did important things. He confronted reality, thought big, probed division, sketched convergence. He took Americans and many people beyond U.S. shores to a different mental place. Imagine that capacity applied to GWOT, Iran, Russia, China and Israel-Palestine.

If you don't like the sound of that, there's always seasoned swagger of the kind that runs from imaginary snipers."

Banking on the promise of Obama's stronger thought process is tempting for me. I'd be more willing to do it if he wasn't pressuring for a pull-out. It's clear, from his last ditch political maneuvering, this primary, that Obama is politician as much as honest leader, so I don't know exactly what to trust with him, anymore. That's the downside to playing conventional politics. And it's a downside that Obama is stuck with, at this point, until I'm clear that he's more on the up and up.

But I do know that I will not vote for a politician pressuring or calling for pullout to appease war-weariness in lieu of leadership.

Leadership does not mean doing what is popular. Leadership may account for popular opinion. But leadership, by definition, means having vision of a genuinely better path and persuading others of that path.

Pull-out is not a better path. I have not seen one strong argument on pull-out that would, in the least, justify, honestly, good that it would do for Iraqis or American soldiers or the rest of the world. I have seen plenty of rationalizations for war-weariness. I have seen plenty of emnity for George Bush and Republicans. I have seen plenty of bullshit "peace at all costs" arguments from the left. But I have yet to see an honest and strong argument for pullout that demonstrates benefit for Iraqis, Americans, or anyone else, for that matter, other than the butchers ready to slaughter more Iraqis in the name of any number of ugly causes.

Barack Obama knows that, I imagine, though there is no way for me to be sure of that or anything from him or any leader or any person as long as it contradicts their word. And if I take Barack Obama at his word, he is pulling out American troops from Iraq. And without making that argument.

John McCain is not pulling out. There are plenty of concerns I have about a McCain presidency. But pulling out of Iraq is not one I have to worry about.

I am tired of politics as a bullshit business of lying and divination. I do not trust politicians, at this point, except by what they say. And if that bothers them, they can start getting more honest.

It is power and its seductive call that allows people to rationalize both their dishonesty and, as a consequence, their dishonest reasoning about power and its consequences.

And I have no interest in being a part of that, anymore, as much as I can avoid it.

I'd love to have Barack's creative and intelligent thought to unravel so many international security messes we find ourselves in, today.

But not at the expense of the soldiers that he or any President send into harms way to do the life-threatening work that they commit them to and not at the expense of the lives of Iraqis who have found themselves a part of a civil war that many of them did not ask for and had no role in creating.

If Barack wants my vote, he needs to earn it. Same goes for any candidate for any office.

And, at this point, in history, given the depths of bullshit that it is clear to me occupies political circles, they either need to be honest with me and the American people more or expect me to take even their benign lies as truth until they can demonstrate different.

I am tired of settling for a politics that confuses lies with truth, too often, because the participants lose track as everyone comes to confuse bullshit with something more honest.

Thought has the power to imagine our way out of our often tragic situations in life and create something better. Barack has that power, if he so chooses. So does John McCain.

The question is whom understands the problems of power and security, and so many of the policy issues we face, better and can lead us out of those problems.

These two candidates split the difference of a political system too geared around power and not geared nearly enough around substantial thought. John McCain splits that difference slightly better, for me, at this point. Barack Obama could do the same if his serious thinking does more than just try to affirm a liberal or Democratic Presidency, neither of which are compelling reasons to me, at this point, for an American President or for electing any world leader.

What I need is more honest discussion and debate and more honestly better ideas. Whoever has those, will get my vote, generally.

The lying has consequence. And it clearly has and and does all through our culture. Ignoring that or pretending that the law or force or whatever damned fool pretense that someone has about what will make us more honest is doomed to more of the same.

If we like the way things are, we should just continue pretending like somehow things are better than they are or that we are not responsible for how shitty things are, today.

Both are tempting lines of reason. Both are bullshit.

And I want leaders who are ready to end the bullshit.

May the best candidate win.

The world we choose

I think I've finally made some peace with the bullshit of the scolds in the world and all of our own similar tendencies to repress in lieu of more decency.

If people keep choosing to take this route to fruitlessly force people to be better, they deserve the world it creates.

That is the direction we've taken. I hope these are the consequences we intended.

Because this is the world we chose.

Why is it so hard for us to imagine or believe that we choose to be good people? Or bad people? Why is it so hard for us to imagine that we choose to be good, to do good, or to be bad, to do bad, of our own accord?

Why is it so hard for us to accept that we choose to do good of our own conscience?

It's not. For people who choose to do so.

The only people for whom it is hard to accept such a premise are those who don't choose to be good or do good, for real, but only do so for fear of the consequences otherwise.

And those people are not good people, genuinely, of their own accord. Their life is one long lie to themselves. Because they have never, honestly, chosen to be good of their own free will because it is the right thing to do. They've never really chosen to be good, for real, is the truth.

And how sad for anyone who chooses that life.

And if we don't take a different direction, that is the life we chose.

And how sad for us.

In which case, thank goodness we have children to choose better than us.

Yes we can

...cut this bullshit out.

Detroit mayor, aide plead not guilty to lying about affair

What are we doing investigating a mayor for having an affair?

Why are they facing felonies for lying about it under oath?

We have become such petty, mean-spirited little scolds.

We have got to be insane if we really think that history will look back and say we did good with this nonsense.

I realize now that the reason I love all of the great writers and artists I grew up loving was not because they made assholes like this prosecutor go away, but because they made plain who was the real asshole in situations like this.

Is this really what makes this country great? Hardly.

It's hard to believe that anyone could be older than 10 and think anything different.

Why we need to stick

Michael Ware gives the most credible argument I have ever seen on a national TV program for why we need to stay. And why we should trust soldiers on the ground more than any fuckin' politician or politician activist or columnist any fuckin' day of the fuckin' week.



All I have to say after this election is, fuck the Democratic and Republican parties. Those asswipes can suck my fuckin' balls until they learn to demonstrate 1/1000th of the courage of the men and women they send in harms way.

Too hard to stand up for my and their freedom? Fuck you, you cowardly pieces of shit.

Go fuck yourselves with your bellyaching about your goddamn careers.

And, Hillary Clinton, there is a special place in hell for cowards like you. These folks can't question orders. Your job is to question orders, you coward. You just thought it was more important to have the power than the responsibility. And fuck you for your cynicism and your cowardice.

I'm well aware that it's more complicated that all that. Political pressure and yada, yada, yada. You don't like political pressure? Try suicide bombing. Or having the heads of children sent back to you in coolers. Try that political pressure on for size.

What the fuck do you think terrorism and such brutality is all about, you brainless fuckin' cowards? Advancing the radical, progressive agenda of Palestinian statehood. Yeah, you would believe that, you fuckin' ninnies.

What the fuck did you get those Ivy League educations for? To brag to your friends about how tough your life was to get that piece of paper?

Try standing between some semblance of order and fuckin' chaos and endless bloodletting, you fuckin' pussies.

Grow some fucking balls and get honest with America and what needs to be done in this war.

And stop letting people like Michael Ware and those soldiers he's representing for, here, out to fucking dry.

You got a friend in Hal

Sean Hannity's on the hot seat, these days, because, after an effort to tar Barack Obama with guilty by association with his Reverend, Hannity's at one time close friendship with a neo-nazi radio talk show host, Hal Turner, was revealed on air on his talk show.

Sean Hannity Confronted Over His Relationship with Neo-Nazi Hal Turner

Here's Hal Turner confirming the relationship and the line that really caught my eye:

"I was quite disappointed when Sean Hannity at first tried to say he didn't know me and then went on to say that I ran some senate campaign in New Jersey. In fact, Sean Hannity does know me and we were quite friendly a number of years ago.

When Hannity took over Bob Grant's spot on 77 WABC in New York City, I was a well-known, regular and welcome caller to his show. Through those calls, Sean and I got to know each other a bit and at some point, I can't remember exactly when, Sean gave me the secret "Guest call-in number" at WABC so that my calls could always get on the air...

...I can tell you from my firsthand, personal experience that Sean Hannity does, in fact, agree with many of my political and social views. I can also tell you that Sean Hannity disagrees with some of my political and social views. I won't go subject-by-subject to say which he agrees with and which he disagrees with. You can figure that out easy enough on your own!...

...Another big difference is that I am perfectly willing to use force and violence against my enemies while Sean Hannity and others are not. Those using me as a prop to attack Sean Hannity would do well to remember this fact. Rest assured I will remember them when the opportunity presents itself; especially as it pertains to that douche bag sodomite Max Blumenthal for the falsehoods and total trash he wrote about me in 'The Nation' magazine."

Yeah, Hal Turner looks like quite the shithead.

And for everyone romanticizing force, right now, notice who you're gettin' chummy with. Congratulations on your new best bud, one of the millions of minions of the other great leader in history who romanticized force as a governing philosophy.

As Hal makes clear, this isn't just hyperbole. The people who really do believe in force as a governing philosophy are real fuckin' shitheads.

Congratulations if you just joined or have long joined their ranks.

Why are we such chickenshits?

George Will writes this horribly reasoned column, yesterday, that really gets at what has worn on my last nerve during this political period.

"The government of this fiefdom south of Phoenix claims that when it approved Dale Bell's blueprint for his Western-theme restaurant with an outdoor stage in an enclosed courtyard, it assumed the stage would be used for mimes or poetry readings. Mimes in Arizona scrubland? Poetry at the San Tan Flat Steakhouse and Saloon? The authorities were, they insist, shocked when country music broke out, and they are scandalized because some customers, not content to tap their feet to the Western beat while they eat, get up and dance.

Foot tapping is, so far, still legal in Pinal County. Outdoor dancing is not, at least at a dance hall, and Pinal says San Tan Flat morphs into one at certain points on certain evenings, when customers dance and Bell does not make them stop. He thinks the U.S. Constitution's protection of self-expression encompasses the right to (in the language of his brief to the county court) 'sway, shuffle or even dance.'...

...But when the county imposed fines against Bell of $5,000 every day that anyone dances, he headed for court. The question concerns statutory interpretation. The statute includes "dance hall" -- along with bowling alleys, penny arcades, skating rinks and other things -- among the "amusement or recreational" enterprises that must be "within a completely enclosed structure." Does Bell's restaurant, which makes 99.75 percent of its revenue from food and drink (the rest comes from pool tables and trinkets) become an illegal (because not completely enclosed) dance hall when someone rises to "sway, shuffle or even dance"?

Down in the legal weeds, Arizona's tax code says dance halls charge admission fees. Bell does not. And there is no Pinal prohibition -- an oversight, perhaps? -- of outdoor musical entertainment.

Beyond the weeds there is this mighty oak of a principle: There must be a judicial leash on governments to prevent them from arbitrarily asserting that the plain language of a statute means something that it plainly does not say.

The 14th Amendment's guarantees of equal protection and due process of law should mean that government may interfere with a citizen's economic liberty only to promote important government interests that cannot be advanced through less restrictive means. Under today's weak "rational basis" standard, courts validate virtually any abridgement of economic liberty, no matter how tenuous the connection to even a minor public purpose. Conservatives, note well: Restoring economic liberty requires a kind of judicial activism -- judges judging rather than merely ratifying government's caprices.

Despite Pinal County's nit-picking, Bell, who is represented by Arizona's chapter of the Institute for Justice, is still in business, partly because his customers fancy the Maine lobsters -- not normal fare at dance halls. Children prefer marshmallows they roast over fires next to the space for the forbidden dancing. Roasting is not illegal in Pinal, yet."

Does George really believe that if this town outlaws dancing that it is a legitimate use of government authority even if "the plain language of a statute means something that it plainly does."

No, is the answer to that. Does he really believe that dancing should be outlawed anywhere? No. And if he did, would so many people be reading his columns? Of course not. Why doesn't he just say that. Because the of the forced reasoning of this godforsaken political period.

That's what bothers me about this period. All the goddamn lying.

Everyone tip-toeing their way around matters of liberty for fear that to do otherwise makes them an accomplice to terrorism, child rape, and other assorted evils of the world.

As if anyone who advocates liberty is really arguing that anything goes, which is the perpetual fear of liberal societies that keeps them from taking liberty seriously.

The truth is that we are cowards. And I don't have the stomach to keep watching this cowardice over and over again and pretend like it is better than it is.

The lying wears me down, is the truth. So does the pressure. And every new futile rule that is meant to save us from ruin.

Has it ever worked before?

The obvious answer to that is no. We just don't have the courage to face it.

I am tired. That's the design, actually, which is why I am so resistant to resigning on this one. But I'm tired. And I'm afraid people are too small to consider anything else for themselves.

And it all just makes me want to give up on humanity as this hopelessly fearful, stupid, unjust lot.

Why are we such chickenshits? Because we're just too goddamn scared, that's the truth.

All I know is that it leaves me not wanting to help this stupid, scared lot at all. Go do something more worthwhile with my time.

Something that doesn't involve lying, my whole life, about how people can be forced to be better than they really can.