The Nature of Evil

Thought provoking.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil.html

This is Just A Good Article

about human nature.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/the-onward-march-of-folly.html

News Media Bias

Here’s a story about bias. The bias come from trying to make every electoral contest a horse race, because that creates a false tension sells copy and ads. It’s a cynical, destructive approach. Lord I wish there was a news media that was useful instead of distorting.

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/09/22/how-the-media-s-real-bias-works-in-mccain-s-favor.aspx

Israel

If one accepts the dictionary definition of “Ally,” in what respect is Israel ours? If one uses the dictionary definition of democracy, how is Israel, a segregated society, democratic?

Here are some uncomfortable, frame breaking essays.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0518-07.htm

http://www.alternet.org/story/47148/

http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/about/index.cfm

Economy in Brief and a Link

There is a reason why we face an 11 trillion dollar deficit, and banking meltdown; it is the prevailing wisdom of the last 30 years put into force without apology by the Republicans: tax cuts, deregulation, privatizing, outsourcing, off-shoring, deficit spending, and belief in a worldview that is obviously, demonstrably false. The economy boomed after the Clinton tax increase and lock in. Note that it was not the increase itself, it was the sufficiency of revenue combined with the unlikely event of further changes either up or down, that allowed for the boom. Revenue needs to be sufficeient and taxes stable.

http://www.cbpp.org/9-12-08bud.htm

What Are We to Do?

There is no question that our government and governing party are at the same time incompetent, arrogant, and ignorant. But they advertise themselves as such. It’s sort of their party line. I have tried for years to explain to people that there are consequences to actions, often foreseeable to persons of historical and geographic learning. But we worship when we should think, believe when we should examine, and rigid when we should be resilient. We have arrived at the logical destination of the prevailing ideology of the last 30 years. We need a paradigm shift.

John McCain and the Honor Code

I watched the recent movie about young Johnny McCain. I noted in one scene when his father was called to the boys’ school because of young Johnny’s poor academics. The father asked the principal. has Johnny broken the Honor Code: did he lie, cheat, or steal. Then, he didn’t, but now he has lied and cheated. Don’t let him steal this election too. Stop the insanity!

Define Crime

The words of Gary W. Potter, Professor of Criminal Justice and Police Studies at Eastern Kentucky University, in writing about the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s, illuminates some central premises: “There is precious little difference between those people who society designates as respectable and law abiding and those people society castigates as hoodlums and thugs. The world of corporate finance and corporate capital is as criminogenic and probably more criminogenic than any poverty-wracked slum neighborhood. The distinctions drawn between business, politics, and organized crime are at best artificial and in reality irrelevant. Rather than being dysfunctions, corporate crime, white-collar crime, organized crime, and political corruption are mainstays of American political-economic life.”

Liberal and Conservative Accomplishments

Liberal and Cooperative Accomplishments

• Extending the vote and civil protections to all adult Americans.
• Unemployment Insurance and Social Insurance.
• Safe and inexpensive Food and Water through enforceable regulation.
• Hoover Dam, the Tennessee Valley Authority, REA – the Rural Electrification Authority, Electric Cooperatives, without which large parts of the country would have no electricity.
• Air-conditioning and computers, the internet, satellites, GPS and more which were inventions of government sponsored programs.
• The GI Bill and State sponsored Universities providing affordable education.
• The Soil Bank

Conservative and Individual Accomplishments

• Raised taxes on wages and lowered taxes on unearned income
• Three Quarters of federal debt accumulated by three Conservative Presidents
• Massive devaluation of the dollar by the logical outcome of their belief in invisible hands and cronyism
• Massive and expensive expansion of the military to fight nonexistent threat; one at the expense of social goods like infrastructure maintenance and care for the least among us.
• A distribution of wealth approaching Latin American levels.
• Largest number of homeless and unemployed ever.
• The judicial murder of people later found innocent.
• Imprisonment of almost 2 percent of the national population including those who committed no crime against property or persons.
• Wrecking in turn each industry that they have deregulated. Banks, Airlines, Energy and other deregulated sectors fail then require reregulation.
• Wars for irrational beliefs that are against the national interest.
• Self-destructive and irrational fear, hate and ignorance.