Can we believe in change?

I feel very conflicted about the Obama victory. On one hand I am excited to have a President that will not be the center of jokes. Obama won't act like the village idiot, and he won't distance America from the rest of the world. He is a rebranding of America, and one that is way past due. His victory is also a clear indication that this country is a land of opportunity for people of all skin tones.

But what kind of opportunity are we talking about? Should I be excited that the plutocrats are no longer racists? Should I dance a little jig because a black man can sell out as easily as a white man? Because Obama has sold out, and that is why he won. The elite fear change, unless change is merely a slogan, and that slogan has been part of every Presidential campaign since the birth of this nation. Nothing ever changes though. I take that back... a little. One thing will change. Obama won't be the huge screw up that Bush was.

While Obama won't say or do the stupid things Bush did, he won't undo them either. He won't end the War on "Terrorism" (he will expand it), and he won't restore our civil liberties. In fact Obama is surrounded by key players that have helped create the mess we are in.

So lets give ourselves a pat on the back for electing the first Black President, but lets not forget that Obama offers us more of the same we got from Bush.

What is your platform?

A forum I frequent had an interesting topic today. We were asked to spell out what our platform would be if we were to run for President. This is what I posted in reply:

I would run on a platform that stressed shifting unconstitutional federal powers to the individual states with the benefit of lowering taxes and gutting the corruption that needlessly expands the federal budget without any return to the average citizen.

I would disband the US Army and keep the Air Force/Navy. The only grunt soldiers would be the National Guard for each state, and they would fall under the command of the Governor. Calling them into action would take a declared war by congress. I would cut the size of the marine corp and those remaining would only ever be called into straight up offensive action. I would scrap all above water ships in the navy and shift entirely to submarines.

I would weaponize space. I would build a missile defense shield. I would put NASA inside the Air Force and shift money from crappy new jets into new space vehicles that can bomb from space and carry out scientific missions.

I would end the war on drugs and end all federal prosecution of victimless crimes.

I would roll the CIA and DHS into the NSA.

I would disband the DEA.

I would end FCC censorship.

I would make the Federal Reserve entirely public and remove it entirely from the influence of private banks.

I would remove all foreign bases. I would open trade with every country without tariffs. I would end all forms of aid/payments to other countries (the only exception being humanitarian aid during a specific crisis).

I would open our borders for immigration.

Audiobooks and Objectivism

For the last few weeks I have been spending much of my time listening to audiobooks. I had forgotten how much I love them! They are perfect for listening to on the way to work and back, and you can even listen to them at work. If you can multi-task, then an audiobook allows you to maximize your time and stay entertained even while doing mundane tasks.

Lately I have been listening to The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. It is a series of fantasy novels that explore the philosophy of Objectivism. I read Atlas Shrugged ten years ago so the political philosophy wasn't new to me. While Goodkind manages to plagiarize the ideas of many of his contemporaries in the fantasy genre, the political angle of the series gave me many opportunities to examine the dangers of good intentions, and I found myself consuming the books one after another.

The series is so popular that Sam Raimi (Spiderman, The Evil Dead, Hercules etc) is bringing it to television this fall.

My favorite book was Faith of the Fallen, which is probably the most obviously objectivist book of the series. It was also the most original. I didn't notice a single idea that was "borrowed" from Robert Jordan (from whom he borrowed the most in previous books). In the book, Richard (the hero of the series) is captured and forced to live as a commoner in a socialist (in the Stalinist sense) state. He learns first hand about the state of slavery that exists when men are forced to live for the benefit of those "in need", and how bureaucracy stifles the human spirit and elevates the worst characteristics in humanity. The government creates sociopathy in the name of fighting it. This probably appealed to me because of my anti-statist leanings.

While the objectivist hero is self-reliant and abhors bureaucracy cloaked in good-intentions, they are also noble and extremely loyal, willing to sacrifice for those they love. The stories praise the willing sacrifice made by free men, as they trample the notion that we are best served by sacrificing our independence in the name of vague ideas about the common good.

Democrats should be ashamed!

Glenn Greenwald sums up the great victories accomplished by the Democratic party since taking over the House and Senate in 2006. It sickens me to think that these people were elected to change this country's course, and they have done nothing but keep it going in the wrong direction.

Here is the list:

• Repeatedly funded -- at the White House's insistence -- the Iraq War without conditions;
• Defeated -- at the White House's insistence -- Jim Webb's bill to increase the intervals between deployments for U.S. troops;
• Defeated -- at the White House's insistence -- a bill to restore habeas corpus, which had been abolished by the Military Commissions Act, enacted before the 2006 election with substantial Democratic and virtually unanimous GOP support;
• Enacted -- at the White House's insistence and with substantial Democratic and virtually unanimous Republican support
-- the so-called Protect America Act, vesting the President with extreme new warrantless eavesdropping powers;
• Overwhelmingly approved the Senate's Kyl-Lieberman Resolution, to declare parts of the Iranian Government a "terrorist organization," an extremely belligerent resolution modeled after those which made "regime change" the official U.S. Government position towards Iraq;

• Deleted from a pending bill -- at the direction of the House Democratic leadership and at the insistence of the White House -- a provision merely to require Congressional approval before the Bush administration can attack Iran;
• Overwhelmingly enacted -- at the White House's insistence, and with substantial Democratic and virtually unanimous GOP support -- the "FISA Amendments Act of 2008," to vest the President with broad new warrantless eavesdropping powers and to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, all but putting an end to any chance for a real investigation and judicial adjudication of the Bush administration's illegal NSA spying program;
• Confirmed, with the indispensable support of two key Democratic Senators, Bush's nominee for Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, despite his support for radical Bush theories of executive power and his refusal to oppose torture;
• Stood by passively and impotently while Bush officials flagrantly ignored their Subpoenas and refused to comply with their investigations.

Why do we vote for these liars??

If you've used a phone in the last 5 years...

Betrayed by Obama, but the ACLU offers hope

Today Americans hoping for change were betrayed by the candidate we thought was different. Barack Obama voted along with the Republicans to pass legislation that legalizes the warrantless eavesdropping done by the Bush administration and the major telecoms. It also prevents lawsuits against the companies that betrayed their customer's privacy. Obama's position on this legislation is a huge disappointment because it demonstrates that he shares the same outlook on civil liberties as the Bush administration.

This is not some fringe issue either. If the government can spy on us without warrants, then no one can stand up to that government without living under a magnifying glass, with every action scrutinized. We all break the law, but only those that are inconvenient to the powerful will be held accountable, while the well connected will break the law with impunity and hold onto positions of power. Want an example? Eliot Spitzer. He was a thorn in the side of the ruling elite, so they used the Patriot Act's expanded police powers to spy on him, and then used illegally gathered (according to the 4th amendment) information to discredit and disgrace him.

The ACLU has vowed to fight on and will challenge the new law in court as it is in clear violation of the 4th amendment.

"This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans' international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment."

Read the press release here

If you want change, Obama isn't going to give it to us. Do not send him money. Do not support him. Support groups like the ACLU and the EFF.

An ad every politician should see

Click for PDF

A Declaration For Our Times

http://www.constitutioncampaign.org/ad/ad.pdf


When in the course of human events the government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the Right of the People to alter it and demand restoration of those Constitutional Principles that have so long assured their Liberty, Safety, and Happiness.

Therefore, on the anniversary of our Independence, we offer this new declaration for our times.

The history of this president is one of arbitrary usurpations of power, the effect of which is to establish tyranny through false promises of greater security.

He has created a multitude of new programs and sent swarms of petty officers to spy on Americans in a misguided effort to combat foreign terrorism. He has invested these agents with sweeping new powers to monitor our conversations and ransack our personal papers and effects without judicial supervision or any reason to believe – as the Constitution requires -- that a crime has been committed.

He has further claimed the power to disregard legislation that Congress has passed.

He has suspended the laws and treaties against torture, authorized the kidnapping of mere suspects, and transported hundreds of prisoners beyond seas so that no independent judiciary could question the legality of their mistreatment.

He and his supporters in Congress have granted amnesty to the officials who unleashed torture and humiliation upon helpless prisoners, to the disgrace of our nation.

He has denied these prisoners access to attorneys, family, and friends, and has claimed the right to try them before military tribunals specifically designed to disregard the most basic principles of law.

He has imprisoned thousands of lawful immigrants for months without charges, under brutal conditions, until his agents, rather than independent courts, decided that they posed no threat.

He has wrapped his usurpations of power and his deprivations of liberty in thick cloaks of secrecy, thereby showing contempt for the rule of law and the proper functions of Congress, the courts, and the press.

At every stage of these oppressions we have sought redress, but our petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

We, therefore, resolve to resist these usurpations by all lawful means at our disposal. To this end, we insist that the powers of our national government be shared by all branches of government and not concentrated in one alone. And we call upon Congress, the courts, and the press to reassert their constitutional functions vigorously and restore the promise that is America.

To these ends, we mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.



Sign The Pledge

Pillars of the Earth

I just finished reading Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth. Many friends recommended it, and it has seen renewed success because it was promoted by Oprah herself at the end of last year. While I enjoyed it, and went through it almost non-stop, it was not as good as I expected it would be. It would have been better as a shorter book with a condensed time-line, but in its current form it seemed to go on forever. I was also surprised by the copious amount of graphic sex and violence. It almost amused me to think of Oprah reading some of the nearly pornographic scenes depicted in the book. While I am far from prudish about such things, I just didn't expect it in a book so heavily recommended by a mature bunch of readers.

Maybe Oprah will read A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin and recommend it someday. It has all the steamy sex and gratuitous violence along with a better story.

I just wrote to my Senators

This is what I sent to Amy Klobuchar:

Dear Senator,

I am writing because I am very concerned about the upcoming vote on the FISA legislation. I am urging you to support Senator Feingold in his defense of the 4th amendment. Please take a principled stand to defend the constitution and prevent another erosion of rights that are clearly labeled as inalienable in the constitution. This is not just about the immunity for telecoms, which is a slap in the face to every law-abiding citizen, but this is about defending the constitution itself.

Please do not be swayed by the fear-mongering going on. Most Americans are not fooled by the rhetoric. Please take a principled stand and make me proud to call you my Senator.

With regards

This is what I sent to Norm Coleman:

Dear Senator,

I am writing because I am very concerned about the upcoming vote on the FISA legislation. I am urging you to support Senator Specter in his defense of the 4th amendment. Please take a principled stand to defend the constitution and prevent another erosion of rights that are clearly labeled as inalienable in the constitution. This is not just about the immunity for telecoms, which is a slap in the face to every law-abiding citizen, but this is about defending the constitution itself.

Please do not be a part of the failed fear-mongering campaign that has already hurt the party enough. Most Americans are not fooled by the rhetoric anymore. Please take a principled stand and make me proud to call you my Senator. You will easily beat Al Franken if you stand up for our freedoms.

With regards

The 4 Day Win

Lisa and I have started reading The 4 Day Win by Martha Beck. The book has a different twist on dieting that I enjoy. Martha points out that we eat as a way to reward ourselves, so the key to weight-loss is finding other ways to reward ourselves. Martha has the reader set easy goals and a reward for accomplishing that goal on the first day, with a bigger reward for completing 4 days. This is to increase our ability to set and meet goals, and to learn to reward ourselves with rewards other than food. This helps us find new ways to meet our comfort needs without snacking.

This is how Martha explains the method:

"Adult development theorists know that significant change requires an "early win," evidence that our efforts are yielding success. It takes about four days of virtuous living to create a little weight loss. That also happens to be the time required to get used to eating less. In other words, if you can get past day three of a fitness regimen, things improve. I began to think about weight loss as a series of four-day wins.

Once you've started healing your brain with gentle, kind self-observation, you can lose weight by "sneaking up" your exercise and "sneaking down" your food intake in four-day increments. Sneaking is another way to prevent famine responses. If you're totally sedentary and eat 2,500 calories a day, don't instantly go to 1,200 calories and hours of aerobics—your weight loss will be sudden and violent, but also fleeting. Try dropping your intake by 100 to 300 calories and taking 500 more steps each day for four days. Then cut out another 100 to 300 calories, and add another 500 steps. Sustain for four days. Repeat until you see a weight loss. It will feel strangely easy to stay the course."

Lisa set a goal to drink more water, and I set a goal of eating a serving of fruit every day. Lisa's first day reward is new lipstick, and mine is an hour of computer games. Lisa's four day reward is a massage, and mine is an hour in a flotation (sensory deprivation) tank.

Frustrated with Obama

I know I made a goal to avoid national politics, but I have been unable. It has become increasingly difficult to let it go, and I think the biggest reason is that the issues seem incredibly important. The issue that has my attention right now is the capitulation by Democrats to the lawlessness of the Neoconservatives. What makes this episode especially painful is the way that Obama has decided to support the legislation that makes the 4th amendment all but a joke, and rewards those that ignored it in the past with immunity. While Obama has promised to oppose the immunity for telecommunications companies, it is doubtful that, at this stage, that provision can be stripped. When we needed principled leadership (while the bill was up for consideration in the House), Obama was nowhere to be found. I'm sure some Obama supporters will excuse him for this because he is not a member of the house, and that he will "try" to do something in the Senate, but what he demonstrated last Friday was a complete lack of leadership in the face of a full-out attack on our liberties.

Here is how Glenn Greenwald explains the issue:

In the past 24 hours, specifically beginning with the moment Barack Obama announced that he now supports the Cheney/Rockefeller/Hoyer House bill, there have magically arisen -- in places where one would never have expected to find them -- all sorts of claims about why this FISA "compromise" isn't really so bad after all. People who spent the week railing against Steny Hoyer as an evil, craven enabler of the Bush administration -- or who spent the last several months identically railing against Jay Rockefeller -- suddenly changed their minds completely when Barack Obama announced that he would do the same thing as they did. What had been a vicious assault on our Constitution, and corrupt complicity to conceal Bush lawbreaking, magically and instantaneously transformed into a perfectly understandable position, even a shrewd and commendable decision, that we should not only accept, but be grateful for as undertaken by Obama for our Own Good.

Accompanying those claims are a whole array of factually false statements about the bill, deployed in service of defending Obama's indefensible -- and deeply unprincipled -- support for this "compromise." Numerous individuals stepped forward to assure us that there was only one small bad part of this bill -- the part which immunizes lawbreaking telecoms -- and since Obama says that he opposes that part, there is no basis for criticizing him for what he did. Besides, even if Obama decided to support an imperfect bill, it's our duty to refrain from voicing any criticism of him, because the Only Thing That Matters is that Barack Obama be put in the Oval Office, and we must do anything and everything -- including remain silent when he embraces a full-scale assault on the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law -- because every goal is now subordinate to electing Barack Obama our new Leader.

It is absolutely false that the only unconstitutional and destructive provision of this "compromise" bill is the telecom amnesty part. It's true that most people working to defeat the Cheney/Rockefeller bill viewed opposition to telecom amnesty as the most politically potent way to defeat the bill, but the bill's expansion of warrantless eavesdropping powers vested in the President, and its evisceration of safeguards against abuses of those powers, is at least as long-lasting and destructive as the telecom amnesty provisions. The bill legalizes many of the warrantless eavesdropping activities George Bush secretly and illegally ordered in 2001. Those warrantless eavesdropping powers violate core Fourth Amendment protections. And Barack Obama now supports all of it, and will vote it into law. Those are just facts.

The ACLU specifically identifies the ways in which this bill destroys meaningful limits on the President's power to spy on our international calls and emails. Sen. Russ Feingold condemned the bill on the ground that it "fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home" because "the government can still sweep up and keep the international communications of innocent Americans in the U.S. with no connection to suspected terrorists, with very few safeguards to protect against abuse of this power." Rep. Rush Holt -- who was actually denied time to speak by bill-supporter Silvestre Reyes only to be given time by bill-opponent John Conyers -- condemned the bill because it vests the power to decide who are the "bad guys" in the very people who do the spying.

This bill doesn't legalize every part of Bush's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program but it takes a large step beyond FISA towards what Bush did. There was absolutely no reason to destroy the FISA framework, which is already an extraordinarily pro-Executive instrument that vests vast eavesdropping powers in the President, in order to empower the President to spy on large parts of our international communications with no warrants at all. This was all done by invoking the scary spectre of Terrorism -- "you must give up your privacy and constitutional rights to us if you want us to keep you safe" -- and it is Obama's willingness to embrace that rancid framework, the defining mindset of the Bush years, that is most deserving of intense criticism here.

The Tao

While I have studied Taoism on and off for a couple years, I have recently renewed my interest in studying the philosophy. I heard Dr. Wayne Dyer on XM last week, and he was talking about his latest book Change Your Thoughts, Change your Life - Living the Wisdom of the Tao. Dr. Dyer spent an entire year focused on the Tao, and in that time he studied the life of Lao Tzu and read several translations of the Tao Te Ching. The book examines each of the 81 verses of the Tao, and puts each of them in a context that fits modern culture after explaining the meaning. I recommend the book to everyone.

Last night Lisa and I listened to the first five chapters of the audio version together. It was a very spiritual experience. I look forward to reading more.

All politics are local

I have noticed that I am spending far too much time reading sites like reddit and digg. I am fascinated by politics at the national and global level, and this has done two things. It has opened me up to the reality that big governments are very corrupt, and that the bigger and more powerful a government is, the harder it is to change. This causes me to flip between righteous indignation and impotent apathy.

Once I realized that I was caught in a catch-22 (both energized and disempowered by information), I realized that this is exactly the reason that we should focus our energy on what is happening in our own sphere, and do our best to stay out of partisan politics at the impersonal level. That doesn't mean I am giving up on important issues, but it does mean that I will focus on those issues at the personal level. This seems to make an end-run around the one thing that gets in the way of attempts to better society: I am not forcing my beliefs on others. I am merely behaving in a way that I feel others should behave. Instead of forcing a potential improvement on others, I will embrace the change myself, and allow my example (positive or negative) to speak for itself.

In order to improve in this area, I am going to set a few goals.

1. Stop viewing partisan web sites. This includes most news sites, and news aggregators like digg and reddit. Instead of wasting my time on those sites, I will spend the time I am online on sites that have inspiring stories and good self-help articles.

2. Get involved in learning more about friends and family, and helping them with whatever they need. See The Best Kind of Happiness

3. Expand my community by meetings others that act locally. I need to find a local non-profit, or some other existing community of like-minded people.

I am sure that I will think of more. For now those goals should be enough to get me started.

The best kind of happiness

A good friend asked me to give my philosophy in a nut shell. This seemed difficult at first. I have been influenced by many schools of thought, and some of them can be described in manners that would make them seem in opposition. I am influenced by Sufi Islam, Taoism, Christianity (the teachings of Yeshua), Judaism, Mormonism, Buddhism, Pantheism, and dozens of concepts embraced by modern spiritualists/teachers.

After a couple minutes I was able to agree to two basic concepts: (1) our experience is completely up to us, and (2) the best happiness we can experience comes from the happiness we share with those we love. This post is about (2).

Today I found an excellent post on The Huffington Post. While I find myself sharing less and less of my viewpoint with most of that site's bloggers, I have to admit that I enjoy some of the lifestyle articles that are either cross-posted or written for the site. Today's interesting article is called To Hell With Random Acts of Kindness.

It talks about why we should be actively kind to those we care about. We better our own lives when we better the lives of those around us. Literally, we are loving our neighbors.

-----------------------------------------------
(I have reproduced the article below)

To Hell With Random Acts of Kindness

By Karen Salmansohn

Have I got your attention?

What I mean by the above: Try conscious acts of kindness with the people you already know and love!

One of the top secrets of happiness: developing heartfelt, loving, deep connections!

Here are the researched facts from Gallup:

* If you feel close to other people, you are four times as likely to feel good about yourself and life.

* People who claim to have five or more true friends with whom they can discuss important problems are 60% more likely to say that they are "very happy."

* People with a best-friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their work! However, unfortunately, only 30% of employees report having a best friend at work!

* People with at least three close friends at work were 46% more likely to be extremely satisfied with their job -- and 88% more likely to be satisfied with their lives!

What's interesting about these career statistics is that many companies actually discourage workplace camaraderie. In fact, nearly one-third of the 80,000 managers and leaders interviewed by Gallup agreed with the statement that "familiarity breeds contempt."

But according to Gallup researcher, Tom Rath, these foolish companies who feel this way are only harming themselves.

"When we asked people if they would rather have a best friend at work or a 10% pay raise, having a friend clearly won," says Rath. "Friendships are among the most fundamental of human needs."

Your assignment:

Today decide to do more conscious acts of kindness for the important people in your life: your paramour, platonic buddies, colleagues, assorted and sordid family members. Remember what you love about each individual, then call them or write them to share your admiration directly. Better yet, invite them out to a dinner of their favorite food group. When sharing a conversation, really share it. Avoid conversation interruptus. Let people finish their thoughts. In fact, from here-on-in decide you're going to listen 50% more. Truly listening is one of the best ways to spoil someone you care about. Fran Leibowitz joked, "The opposite of talking isn't listening. It's waiting." Prove Fran wrong.