The Major

Category: Politics

  • Yay For Vermont, Part II

    Yay again for Vermont politics: Vermont towns seek to impeach Bush

    “Props” to Alyssa for the link.

  • I Like Vermont Politics

    Vermont Becomes First State to Call for US Troop Withdrawal from Iraq

  • The Prime Minister of Estonia is an Idiot

    In an article in the New York Times today, I learned that the prime minister of Estonia has read a total of one book on economics in his life. The book was by Milton Friedman. He also thought that much of the Western world used a flat tax.

    Based on these two things, he implemented a flat tax for his country. I think I would like someone that was a little more aware of what was going on running my country.

  • Post-Election Preparation

    On a recent The Show with Zefrank, I learned that President Bush is evidently not preparing for a Democratic takeover of the House or Senate. It is claimed that this is because they are in the “game” to win (and is therefore only planning for the possibility of a win). I ask this question to my faithful readers; Is the Bush administration not preparing for the possibility of a Democratic takeover of the House or Senate because:

    a) They are idiots.
    b) They know the Democrats aren’t going to take over the House or Senate because it is rigged.
    c) They are lying. They actually are preparing, but are saying otherwise for some purpose.

  • You Are Being Robbed

    This is the most blatant evidence of election fraud I have seen so far. Read the brief write-up and then watch the video: Video testimony of vote machine whistleblower

  • Source of Military Equipment

    There’s a lot being said about Hezbollah getting their rockets from aid from Syria and Iran. Well…who do you think supplies Israel’s warplanes? It sure isn’t Israel. Yep – It’s the United States.

    And every time over the past few days when you hear that Israelis have been killed, how does Israel retaliate? An eye for an eye? Impossible. They kill many more of their enemy.

    This whole thing really is making me sick. And to think my tax money is going to support this crap. That really pisses me off.

  • Bringing Revolutionary Ideas to the Mainstream

    I am a slow reader. So I am still reading The ABC of Anarchism.

    Berkman does a great job of making Anarchism make sense. His arguments are logical and well-thought out, even if they could use some more evidence.

    This is different from most revolutionary thinkers that I come across, on paper or in person. Case in point: Months ago, Alyssa and I went to see Kevin Zeese, who is running for senate in Maryland, speak in San Francisco. At this event were many other liberal speakers. One of them was an immigrant to this country, and she was simply railing against the US population as a whole. Does liberalism not claim to represent the working class? I wonder what percentage of our country she would have fathomed to think belongs to the working class? You can be sure that it is a large majority.

    And I have seen this plenty of times – speakers or politicians insulting their audience. Perhaps they don’t realize who their audience is? More likely is that they are elitist. You aren’t going to win anyone over with your ideas this way unless you are in fact speaking to the elite.

    Now, even if you think that the masses don’t “get” it, as Berkman argues, then you should look at why they don’t get it, and not just jump to conclusions like “they are all stupid.” Berkman looks at this very closely, and essentially comes to the conclusion that the masses don’t get it because they are being trained their whole lives to not get it. Chomsky put it another way – that of course the system is not going to let ideas succeed which are harmful to the system itself. It’s just not something that makes sense.

    Anyway, I hope that after I finish this book and a few others, I can be a little bit more coherent. I hope you all are doing well 🙂

  • News and Notes

    I think once or twice, I have started a blog post in this fashion. I think I have a lot of things almost worth saying, but nothing that is worthy of its own post. So I just start slamming my thoughts all into one post. Anyway, here goes:

    I posted my car for sale on Craigslist. I hope it sells soon. Because when it does, I am going to buy a mountain bike and maybe a new laptop. Also, I can “move on.”

    I really get a great feeling out of doing something correctly. I usually can’t do something correctly if I am rushed. So I have learned to not even try, sometimes, if I am going to be rushed. Today with my car, I was able to take my time and get this first part done right. I double parked in front of my apartment to take all of my belongings from the car to the apartment. Then I drove it down Van Ness to get it washed. $50 + $10 tip. Worth it for a good detail. I then drove it back to my garage and took about 40 or so pictures. You can see them here. Posted on craigslist…and now I just have to hope it will sell. Actually, if I don’t hear from someone by tonight, I will post on eBay or the paper or autotrader.com. But the great thing is that my legwork is done. At this point, almost all my work can be done from a desk.

    Moving on…Alyssa and I saw “An Inconvenient Truth” on Saturday night down at Santana Row in San Jose. It was a great movie. Gore covered everything: past, present, and future of the effects of global warming. past, present, and future of what is being done to prevent global warming. I think that a lot of “issue” movies miss out on at least a few of those things.

    I was honestly pretty amazed at the scope of our current problem. I didn’t realize that we were already so far in the deep end. But that doesn’t much change my outlook. I was already on Gore’s side, at least I would like to think, when it comes to the environment. One thing I would like to do, however, is take a look through the Gore-debunkers’ arguments just to see if they have any substance to them.

    I sometimes think that I am a bit too exposed to the liberal viewpoint of things and not exposed enough to the conservative viewpoint. And even if someone is a complete liar, you can still learn a lot from listening to them.

    On the way back to the city on Saturday night, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh. I have always thought that the guy spouted complete nonsense, but I gave him another chance. He failed. He spouted complete nonsense (except for one small rant he had about a Walmart issue). But even so, it was good to listen to him because so many other people soak this crap up, and it is good to know what the talking points from the other side are.

    The same theory goes with reading almost all newspapers. Even if you think that they are completely controlled by corporate America, you can still learn what corporate America wants you to think. And that is very valuable.

    Moving on (again)…I am currently reading ABC of Anarchism by Alexander Berkman. I can’t really say that this book is a great read. But it is great in the fact that the main idea is so new to me, and it has gotten me thinking a lot. The main ideas are that workers are “wage slaves.” This means that they have the freedom not to work, but they will starve if they don’t. And they are being stolen from by the capitalists – they get paid much less than their work is actually worth. This is evidenced by the fact that there is so much excess capital to go to those at the top – those who did no actual work. I can’t really say that I disagree with any of this. But at the same time, a lot of what he says is stated as fact, when indeed it could use a lot of supporting evidence. I cannot complain about this too much, however, since this is indeed supposed to be an introductory book to anarchism. I would very much like to read more on the subject after reading this book.

    One way that these ideas are applied to real life is by thinking that – remember that guy that cut you off today? That was horrible, wasn’t it? Well where were you coming from when he cut you off? You were coming home from work. Your workplace where you spent 8 hours getting stolen from. So, yeah, that guy that cut you off wasn’t very nice. But if we’re going to get mad at someone, why are we going to get mad at that guy? Get mad at those who are stealing your hard work.

    Having said that…I would not say that I am an anarchist. I will have to read a lot more on the subject before that previous paragraph becomes something that I would care to defend fully. The field of Economics is pretty much the enemy of anarchism – I’ll have to do a bit of reading on that as well.

  • Thank You, Black People

    It looks like black people just “get” it. Only 15% of black people approve of the job that President Bush is doing. This is virtually unchanged in the past two years.

  • Burn the Newspaper

    DHS wants to bring charges against the NYTimes.

    Myself and a lot of other people are going to be very, very pissed if this sees the light of day.