A skeleton in the Chinese Closet;

Skeletons are outlines for a fleshed-out blueprint of positive mobility of purpose. The oldest political comment I know about Red China's leadership is:

They declared war on their own people.

China is revered for its long tradition of literacy, including the oldest Military Treatise, and their refusal to overlook the politically poisonous discipline of Torture. One CANNOT afford to overlook the Chinese acquaintance with head games and psychological warfare.

To put it in an American context, one might envision a situation in which Congressional Representatives used such tactics as "Bait," "Retaliate" and "Escalate," against citizens to the strategic end that the temper lauded by the Dylan Thomas poem, got out of control of its instigator. Properly tended, the fires of ire can be made to wax into a conflagration that results in _impotent_ rage, and attending self-destruction, merely by the passive nature of the suggested aggression.

By itself, there is no reason that the capitalist system should not govern and regulate such a contest. The principle of competition ought to be adequate to the task. Upon closer examination, we must syllogistically conclude that the electorate may not engage in such strategic endeavors equally; Congressional Representatives are not only perceived as premier in importance, but also have a real involvement in the business of the Nation. This is legitimately associated with National Security concerns. Corrupted, this becomes a sort of "brier patch," into which a low-motive bad-actor can continually retreat to regroup.

I expect this will finish China as it did Russia - the cost of such endeavors inevitably results in prohibitive expense. Their only source of salvation would be the Japanese maxim of assassination:

Fix the problem, not the blame.

Bar Joke 04-05-09

A guy walks into a bar, and orders a "Ben Franklin."

The bartender smiles knowingly, and verifies, "...two fingers south of the rim?"
"Exactly!" is the man's answer.
"Will Captain Morgan be OK?" the server inquires.
"...fact is, I feel the NEED to have a little Captain Morgan in me." the man assures him.

The barkeep returns with a mid-size tumbler, with an inch and a half of liquor, (not frozen, but cool,) sitting neat in the bottom of the glass. The patron is dismayed. "Is that ALL I _GET_?" he asks.

The prepared bartender doesn't bat an eye. "You must not know Ben Franklin," he intones, knowingly. "He was a NOTABLE pessimist!"

Bar Joke 04-04-09

A guy walks into a bar, and orders a "Tetanus Shot." The Barkeep does a double-take and asks him, "What do you want a Tetanus shot for?"

The man explains that, at the LAST bar, someone had slipped him a whole bunch of Drambuie in his Scotch, making it a "Rusty Nail."

The barkeep smiles, and accommodates the gentleman. He pours a shot of 12 year old Glenffidich in a shot glass, serving it without complaint. Before the patron can even lift the shot-glass to his lips for his first sip, the barkeep rings him up, and prints his tab to settle accounts for the evening. The patron is upset and asks, "What for you 86in' me? I didn't do ANYTHING!"

The barkeep is unflappable. "Just ask the bartender back at the other bar," he replies. "One Tetanus Shot should last you for TWO YEARS!"

What's going on around here? (I have discovered an editorial process.)

There are 300,000,000 Americans. While not all of these vote, or are even "OF AGE," no living breathing POTUS can accept input from them all. Any selective process on it must be stated in the old but necessary way: "Access must be controlled." Please read on for suggested penalty to those who abuse the privilege.

If POTUS' election is a political accomplishment requiring any assistance at all, the person or persons who assisted the accomplishment are due some consideration for their loyalty and the political confinement that choosing THAT Candidate over others caused them to risk. Politically the compensation is improved access. All others pay through the nose, in either political capital, or money to finance the next campaign.

EVERY Election in which there are more nominees than candidates has ruined political careers as casualties of war. This causes humans to be bitter, and bitter humans of THAT political aptitude cause patriotic consideration of the part of a sentient Nation interested in self-preservation.

For this purpose, politicians, like spies and hunting dogs have "Handlers." A simple, very destructive paradigm for a "Handler," is outlined here:

Ignore/Isolate - the subject
Reward - when he craves/seeks attention from you
Secret - have an inside joke for a secret; books by Salman Rushdie are a good way to see if a person is liberal or conservative Muslim, as a crib to execution of the practice.
Test - loyalty
Escalate - take it to the next level

Punish/Destroy - at will after usefulness is ended

The sixth and final step was not one I was prepared to understand at any time before the present (see time date stamp if needed.)

I have humorously written that Apathy and Negligence guarantee Deniability.

In fact, Deniability is an abusable concept that is nonetheless necessary - I subscribe to Latin maxim "Abusus non tollit usum" not Square Distribution Justice.

As an example, during time of war, if a dissident can tie the POTUS up in legalities, the dissident can EITHER emasculate the nation, OR blackmail its progress to advance his agenda. For this purpose, strategists in various positions are held harmless by plausible explanations that their actions were benign to accusation.

To be able to deny completely, a secret must be kept, and secrets propagate proportional to the square of the number of their membership. For another perspective, contemplate the old saw "Knowledge is Power," in the legitimate context of Technocracy. Old Lions will adopt the "technocracy," of their discipline (whatever that may be,) for self preservation. Nowhere is this more prevalent than Bureaucracy.

Presumably, I will eventually be an old Lion myself. As my values become corrupted to the values of the system, my influence will wax, as my morals wane, until the casualty is ethics. I suppose that the quantum point in time when ethics die, is when I should be put out to Political pasture... destroyed in the Hollywood language of Washington. A good signal to look for is a numeric count of passive voice statements, put through the discriminating seive of responsibility (patriotic or no. The corruption I leave behind cannot justify my own continued participation; a new ethical Paragon must then be sought.)

Polities will raise up pedagogues to sove their problems for them - a Teacher.

The persons whose job it is to protect, and advance the agenda of the Politician, (usually Politicos of one estate or another, some will be Machiavels) will reliably keep their candidate innocent of connivance, conspiracy and wrongdoing, by limiting their knowledge - a human Politician can only read so many Britannica's in one lifetime; the statement, "I've forgotten more than you know," is a reality for competent Elder Statesmen. To set your Politician busy-work in his reading should still be regarded as disloyalty, and penalized with political assassination, in my book.

Having established by logic that access must be controlled both for expedience and politics, we must conclude that ethical Politicians will appear completely incompetent at the START of ALL INVESTIGATIONS. Their question will be, "What's going on around here?" and they will not know; in fact, they will have difficulty getting straight answers... the loyal handlers of opponents will collude with their own loyal handlers to keep them deniable as long as possible.

Parenthetically, you might think patriotism an adequate guideline - it is not. The system compensates for the lack of Socratic definition of Patriotism by simply allowing all politicians and politicos to regulate each other by a perennial controlled political mayhem of a political crash-up derby.

Returning to our discussion of the sounds you may expect from a healthy investigation, the bad-actors will follow hard-on with exclamations of "What happened?" Politically, they will pass around lit dynamite sticks of evidence in the hot-potato tradition, and the one holding the bag when it goes off gets to face the Bill Cosby public, when he asked his wife: "You had it last... what happened?" ["Himself" album, in re. the gender of their offspring.]

When things are brought to light in the papers, there are usually things that are not relevant, or are private just as there would be in a commonplace murder investigation. If the published news was ONLY the mechanism by which Politicians agree to keep their stories straight, you would not be able to learn through history; I have, and truth in advertising laws apply to journalists despite the fact that their degree will ALWAYS be in journalism, not the subject about which they are attempting to report.

Reviewing; Deniablity is necessary. Access must reasonably be controlled. "What happened?" is the sound of a caught Politico... its only a matter of time after that. "What's going on around here?" is a question to which only Thespians and other good-guys want answers.

On a personal note: If you've read this far, "the damage is done." I am prepared to state that I perceive an editorial process at work. This blog is a copy of stuff I had, saved to my HDD, from which I duplicated what I had put up at Slashdot. It did not adequately exhaust Slashdot content back then, and I supposed that I did not "Save" reliably enough back to HDD-land. Now I have stuff on HDD that isn't reflected here... I THINK including one that enumerated WHY politicians cannot be 100% forthcoming at all times. Highlighting my admittedly bad spelling, by corrupting online content to discredit my intellect is a good next step to take. I am FIXING ONE I HAVE FOUND!

I am also disturbed by inconsistencies in Directory comparisons ON the HDD. I have made a Political Project of reporting these to the Dallas Branch Office of _the_ (definite article means you don't affiliate like a serf,) FBI. If they do not reply, they will be Patriotically guilty of the flaw of Benedict Arnold. It is unavoidable... they have to come down here to even suggest I lied - which I did NOT! It _WILL_ appear to be a Bureaucratic oversight. It may be that, and not a flaw bureaucratically overseen. Bring me my Subpoena for "inciting to riot," and "sedition." People... I'm THAT MAD!

A mile in Harpie Sharpie's shoes;

From Harpie Sharpie's point of view, I am the "House," in the Biggest Casino in the solar system. All he has to do to make a profit is hit the long shot. He makes his own evaluation of my system. Curiously enough, he freely attributes the Bearer Bond to be his own, and merely needs to assess the cost benefit of liquidating it at the Bank of Five Finger Discount.

1. The cost of a Wolf 7000 is $1200 new, but you can rent one at a heavy equipment store for $75.00 an hour. There is a bulk discount rate on hours if you rent for more than 8 hrs, but the total capital investment is higher; there is a 24 hr minimum.
2. The security guard is a dead loss. He's too poor to afford alcohol, too portly to interest women, and all he ever wants to talk about are the latest developments in the game of Tetris. He knows Harpie Sharpie on sight, so it's actually quite inconvenient.
3. A bulldozer to access the "physical plant," is a possibility, but to have it delivered, he would have to feign construction, and overhead would quickly become prohibitive.
4. Explosives have been a traditional shortcut to open a vault, but the only thing that gives explosives force is _containment_. To use the vault against itself you had to drill a hole in it, and this was just as easily used against the tumblers.
5. A cutting torch was a possibility; again the heavy equipment rental was open, with an acetylene tank etc, but he suspected that the perishable nature of the Bond in question would be more delicate even than diamonds.
6. A long (holiday) weekend would give him time to work his magic with the sandpaper, but this was not as reliable as his admirers made it sound, and the payoff was not an hourly rate for the time employed to withdraw his deposit. $100,000/72 hrs was an IMPRESSIVE hourly rate, but he knew from experience that you can only hit at BEST one K&S AR15 a quarter; the investigative heat lingered so. $400,000 a year WAS a tidy sum, but the prison sentence involved was prohibitive; no career advancement the whole duration, boredom and a stir-craziness that drove men mad were but the lesser KNOWN problems of the Prison Criminal Education System. Being socialized differently, and re-oriented sexually were also possibilities. Then there were the problems of explaining himself to McGehee, the tax man. Even if he was successful, found plenty of soft-targets AND eluded McGehee for two years, the $800,000 would NOT finance 2 years of Vegas Hotels, gambling and fee based female companionship.

Bus Drivers DEFINITELY had it better... if it wasn't for Rembrandt, he'd give up crime voluntarily!

An interesting application of Optimization;

My Math teacher tells me that there can be _no_ uninteresting numbers. If there _were_ a set of all x's such that each and every x is an element of the set of uninteresting numbers, there would be a smallest uninteresting number, and that would be interesting! I tried to theorize that there might be exactly one, but this theory quickly fell to the observation that, if this were the circumstance, it would be Unique, and interesting for THAT reason :-)

I can understand that individual numbers are not intrinsically fascinating, so I use the word "interesting," to characterize my application of recently discussed Optimization, in context of relativism.

A vault is useful for retaining valuables, but costly. My application of optimization attempts to answer the question: Is a $7,548 Safe a good investment to secure my $100,000 Bearer Bond?

I will fictitiously attribute the Brand to be "Kalashnikov and Sikorsky."

Bearer Bonds have been tested against oxidation, and they are perishable at temperatures in excess of 317 degrees F.

K&S model AR15 keeps the internal temperature below 300 degrees F for 72 minutes in a 1200 degree F fire, before succumbing.
Against a drill bit, K&S-AR15 takes 6 hrs and 37 minutes for the Wolf 7000, the best drill in the world to date.
The combination is 3 numbers, 0 to 80. While all combinations MUST take the form that the second number is HIGHER than the first, with the third lower than them both, there is STILL a satisfyingly high number of them. I evaluate that a lifetime has approx 2.5 B_illion seconds in it, so even at one a second without a pause for the niceties of toiletry, a human couldn't foil the mechanism by brute mathematical force. In fact, most criminals have a career shorter than 67-21 yrs (46,) and this is only 1.45 B_illion seconds. More to my contentment, there are only 57.6 thousand seconds from the end of an 8 hr shift to the beginning of the next. A drop in the bucket of available combinations for my K&S-AR15.
Since it is not electronic, loss of electric power cannot compromise it, nor can Harpie Sharpie, known safe-cracker devise an electronic key to by-pass the human factor. On balance, I cannot _CHANGE_ the combination easily; the expense involved is more than a $100,000 Bearer Bond is worth. I will have to limit key distribution in some way.
Harpie Sharpie has been known to foil a safe by creative application of sand-paper to his fingers. This requires physical access, and 3 hrs 42 minutes. I salve my fears by reminding myself that he is prone to be stealing diamonds in S. Africa to finance his favorite pastime of attempting to steal Rembrandt's "Night Watch." The concierge at the Johannesburg Hilton tells the Louvre every time he scores, and they move the painting to a new museum every two weeks until Harpie runs out of the ready green, and goes back to diamonds again. Other than that, Harpie is the best, so others will be less likely to succeed. I do not neglect to make it hard to access the restroom from the Vault after hours, and caffeinated beverages are nearby, (for a price,) while Adam's Ale is metered at a water fountain traditionally next to the lavatory.
I have read books on Antique books, and I reckon that my Bearer Bond will be a collectors' item from year 58 to year 300 or so, after which it will be too tattered to matter. My K&S-AR15 vault should be fine for that long at least... it doesn't rain much inside the Library, and the books are humidity controlled as well. I make a note to keep up with Drill bit R&D, in case they improve on the Wolf 7000.

I am now ready to attempt my time-value-retained is as to cost-per-dollar-day gestimation. (I am by no means rigorous as to the units of measure or desirable ratio.)

Cost of a safety deposit box for 300 years = $65 * 300 = $19,500.
Cost of K&S AR15 = $7548, amortized over 30 years::16,734.20 @ $46.47 per month.
Library Insurance against Fire's hotter than 1200 degrees for 72 minutes = $741.37 per annum. Payout = Library replacement cost, plus authentic $100,000 collectors' item Bearer Bond, as purchasable on E-Bay.
Insurance against Bad Employees with Loyd's of London - $71.49 per quarter. Payout = (Current cost of changing tumblers) OR (new comparable Vault,) whichever is less.

I will now compute my personal optimization table.

Factors:

1. Time to Bearer Bond Perishing in Vault - Maximize.
2. Temperature within K&S AR15 - Minimize.
3. Time to drill with Wolf 7000 or other best available drill - Maximize.
4. # of Combinations = don't go overboard.
5. Price to change combination tumblers - Minimize.
6. Time it takes to change tumblers b/c of bad employee - Minimize
7. Obligatory Security Guard to keep Harpie Sharpie on his best behavior? - Minimize (again, don't go overboard.)

I am happy with this list. If I felt the need to make the Combination electronic, I would HAVE to figure cost per time of electric usage. If I centralize monitoring so the security guard doesn't have to walk around, I have to figure cost of alarms (power bill included,) phone bills to central location, and my house, etc.

Although I appear to have be specific enough to be rigorous (specific enough to be humorous for CERTAIN,) we lack other numbers against which we may compare and contrast Vault values. Like an amortization table, the computations to "fiddle," might be arduous, but it illustrates that if you are prepared to be creative, you can find purchase on some pretty hard to quantify problems this way. I hope it is helpful.

From the point of view of a Punter - Politics or Football?

Montesquieu was a Historian/Philosopher who wrote extensively, and is himself observable to history. As such he can be blamed less than others for unlearned lessons from the mistakes of the Roman Empire; he documented them exhaustively in a lesser known tome "Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline."

Hardly a simple title, and a laborious read to the uninitiate, but instructive to those in history who wish to compare their own mistakes to the mistakes of the definitively Great. A few can learn from the mistakes of others before they derive them independently, but this (like Change,) is hard.

The following excerpt is from Chapter 4. Whatever he intended to write, he enumerated a commentary on campaigns.

Pyrrhus came to make war on the Romans at a time when they were in a position to resist him and to learn from his victories. He taught them to entrench, and to choose and arrange a camp. He accustomed them to elephants and prepared them for greater wars. Pyrrhus' greatness consisted only in his personal qualities.

1 Plutarch tells us that he was forced to undertake the Macedonian war because he could not support the eight thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry that he had.

2 This prince — ruler of a small state of which nothing was heard after him — was an adventurer who constantly undertook new enterprises because he could exist only while undertaking them. His allies, the Tarentines, had strayed far from the institutions of their ancestors,

3 the Lacedaemonians. He could have done great things with the Samnites, but the Romans had all but destroyed them. Having become rich sooner than Rome, Carthage had also been corrupted sooner. In Rome, public office could be obtained only through virtue, and brought with it no benefit other than honor and being preferred for further toils, while in Carthage everything the public could give to individuals was for sale, and all service rendered by individuals was paid for by the public.

The tyranny of a prince does no more to ruin a state than does indifference to the common good to ruin a republic. The advantage of a free state is that revenues are better administered in it. But what if they are more poorly administered? The advantage of a free state is that there are no favorites in it. But when that is not the case — when it is necessary to line the pockets of the friends and relatives, not of a prince, but of all those who participate in the government — all is lost. There is greater danger in the laws being evaded in a free state than in their being violated by a prince, for a prince is always the foremost citizen of his state, and has more interest in preserving it than anyone else.

The old morals, a certain custom favoring poverty, made fortunes at Rome nearly equal, but at Carthage individuals had the riches of kings. Of the two factions that ruled in Carthage, one always wanted peace, the other war, so that it was impossible there to enjoy the former or do well at the latter. While war at once united all interests in Rome, it separated them still further in Carthage.

4. In states governed by a prince, dissensions are easily pacified because he has in his hands a coercive power that brings the two parties together. But in a republic they are more durable, because the evil usually attacks the very power that could cure it. In Rome, governed by laws, the people allowed the senate to direct public affairs. In Carthage, governed by abuses, the people wanted to do everything themselves. Carthage, which made war against Roman poverty with its opulence, was at a disadvantage by that very fact. Gold and silver are exhausted, but virtue, constancy, strength and poverty never are.

The Romans were ambitious from pride, the Carthaginians from avarice; the Romans wanted to command, the Carthaginians to acquire. Constantly calculating receipts and expenses, the latter always made war without loving it.

Here we see flesh on the bones of the famous fragment from another work:

"Republics end through luxury; Monarchies through poverty."

This is the result of a failed search for the source of the observation: A Governmental System can survive ONLY SO LONG AS the people/public servants do not supplement their income from public monies. Failing even a mistaken attribution, I certify the idea is not original with me. I think Montesquieu has a better perspective than I do on a stimulus package just like President Bush 43's. Perhaps it's more like a blood transfusion - unavoidably imperative, but not a good process of which to make a casual practice.

Montesquieu was a veritable fount of helpful observations. I'll close with one that rebukes me personally:

I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ - Montesquieu.