And confirming that moral language is in fact the only language most men respond to, here is Ayn Rand:

“In spite of all their irrationalities, inconsistencies, hypocrisies and evasions, the majority of men will not act, in major issues, without a sense of being morally right and will not oppose the morality they have accepted. They will break it, they will cheat on it, but they will not oppose it; and when they break it, they take the blame on themselves. The power of morality is the greatest of all intellectual powers—and mankind’s tragedy lies in the fact that the vicious moral code men have accepted destroys them by means of the best within them.”

—   Ayn Rand in  Philosophy: Who Needs It, 67.

An excellent piece by the brilliant cognitive linguist, George Lakoff at truthout.org, which argues (from a Democrat perspective) that framing debates in terms that appeal to readers’ deepest values, rather than to narrowly defined self-interest, has been the reason why Republicans have been more successful in the public debate, recently. In fact, the notion that there is a narrowly-defined “economic man” out there, ceaselessly calculating his narrowly-defined economic self-interest, is one of the many reasons that academic economics has been so little accurate in either describing what is going on in the economic world, predicting the future, or offering any prescriptions that are not simply band-aids or downright counterproductive.

“It is morality, not just the right policy, that excites voters, that moves them to action, that creates movements. Legislative action must come from a moral center, with moral language repeated over and over.

What should be avoided, besides policy-wonk and pure-policy discourse? Again, the answer comes from Neuroscience 101. Offense not defense. Argue for your values. Frame all issues in terms of your values. Avoid their language, even in arguing against them. There is a reason that I wrote a book called, “Don’t Think of an Elephant!” Don’t list their arguments and argue against them using their language. It just activates their arguments in the brains of listeners.

Don’t move to the right (Lila: that would be left, for Republicans) in your discourse or action. That will just strengthen the conservative moral system in the brains of swing thinkers. Frame your arguments from your moral position.”

Demagogue: One who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

— H. L. Mencken

Taibbi Gives Obama Obscene Cover

“Matt Taibbi’s latest blog post demonstrates again the reality disconnect that’s required by the dual jobs of providing cover for President Obama while still trying to display lefty street cred with an attack on the latest obscene tax break for multi-millionaires. Taibbi’s post is by appearances about how a 50% tax break on hedge fund income has successfully survived Obama’s first two years and likely his entire time in office. But the focus of the piece is not Obama. He’s mentioned only once and not in a negative light, in paragraph 11:

‘The gift which is given as being given,
to one who does no favor,
at the proper place and time and to a worthy person,
this gift is considered good.
But that which is given for the sake of reward
or again with a view to the fruit or unwillingly,
that gift is considered emotional.
That gift which is given
in the wrong place and time to the unworthy
disrespectfully and with contempt is said to be dark.”

—   Bhagavad Gita

Joe Sobran on the best way to teach your children civics:

“Because I write about politics, people are forever asking me the best way to teach children how our system of government works. I tell them that they can give their own children a basic civics course right in their own homes.

In my own experience as a father, I have discovered several simple devices that can illustrate to a child’s mind the principles on which the modern state deals with its citizens. You may find them helpful, too.

For example, I used to play the simple card game WAR with my son. After a while, when he thoroughly understood that the higher ranking cards beat the lower ranking ones, I created a new game I called GOVERNMENT. In this game, I was Government, and I won every trick, regardless of who had the better card. My boy soon lost interest in my new game, but I like to think it taught him a valuable lesson for later in life.

When your child is a little older, you can teach him about our tax system in a way that is easy to grasp. Offer him, say, $10 to mow the lawn. When he has mowed it and asks to be paid, withhold $5 and explain that this is income tax. Give $1 to his younger brother, and tell him that this is “fair”. Also, explain that you need the other $4 yourself to cover the administrative costs of dividing the money. When he cries, tell him he is being “selfish” and “greedy”. Later in life he will thank you.

Make as many rules as possible. Leave the reasons for them obscure. Enforce them arbitrarily. Accuse your child of breaking rules you have never told him about. Keep him anxious that he may be violating commands you haven’t yet issued. Instill in him the feeling that rules are utterly irrational. This will prepare him for living under democratic government.

When your child has matured sufficiently to understand how the judicial system works, set a bedtime for him and then send him to bed an hour early. When he tearfully accuses you of breaking the rules, explain that you made the rules and you can interpret them in any way that seems appropriate to you, according to changing conditions. This will prepare him for the Supreme Court’s concept of the U.S. Constitution as a “living document”.

Promise often to take him to the movies or the zoo, and then, at the appointed hour, recline in an easy chair with a newspaper and tell him you have changed your plans. When he screams, “But you promised!”, explain to him that it was a campaign promise.

Every now and then, without warning, slap your child. Then explain that this is defense. Tell him that you must be vigilant at all times to stop any potential enemy before he gets big enough to hurt you. This, too, your child will appreciate, not right at that moment, maybe, but later in life.

At times your child will naturally express discontent with your methods. He may even give voice to a petulant wish that he lived with another family. To forestall and minimize this reaction, tell him how lucky he is to be with you the most loving and indulgent parent in the world, and recount lurid stories of the cruelties of other parents. This will make him loyal to you and, later, receptive to schoolroom claims that the America of the postmodern welfare state is still the best and freest country on Earth.

This brings me to the most important child-rearing technique of all: lying. Lie to your child constantly. Teach him that words mean nothing–or rather that the meanings of words are continually “evolving”, and may be tomorrow the opposite of what they are today.

Some readers may object that this is a poor way to raise a child. A few may even call it child abuse. But that’s the whole point: Child abuse is the best preparation for adult life under our form of GOVERNMENT.”

The Governor of Pennsylvania Ed Rendell on “Face the Nation” October 2, 2010:

“We don’t have it in our DNA to mislead the public.”

According to CNN Money the SEC and CFTC report on the May 6 “flash crash” blames it on an unnamed trader’s algorithmic trading of E-Mini contracts, leading to two crashes – one in the broad index and one in individual stocks. [None of this actually makes sense to me. I thought there were already circuit -breakers in place since “Black Monday” to stop crashes. Two. How does a sell-off in the broad index cause steep plunges in particular stocks, but not in others? Three. Why would an order of this size not be broken up? Four. Can you tell I don’t believe this flimsy story?]

“A large investor using an automated trading software to sell futures contracts sparked the brief-but-historic stock market “flash crash” on May 6, according to a report by federal regulators released Friday.

In the 104-page report, staff members at Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said an unnamed investor used a trading algorithm to sell orders for futures contracts called E-Minis, which traders use to bet on the future performance of stocks in the S&P 500 index.

The contracts were sold quickly and in large numbers, according to the report, on a day when the market was already under stress due to concerns about the European debt crisis.

The selling was initially absorbed by “high frequency traders” and other buyers, the report said. But the algorithm responded to an rise in trading volume by increasing the number of E-Mini sell orders it was feeding into the market.

“What happened next is best described in terms of two liquidity crises — one at the broad index level in the E-Mini, the other with respect to individual stocks,” the report said.

In other words, the lack of buyers and the rapid selling of E-Mini futures contracts began to affect the underlying stocks and the broader stock indexes.

As a result, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged nearly 1,000 points, briefly erasing $1 trillion in market value, before regaining much of the lost ground to close lower. It was the largest one-day drop on record.

Waddell & Reed, an asset management and financial planning company based in Overland Park, Kan., has been widely reported as the investor behind the sell order. But the report identified only a “large fundamental investor.”

Waddell said in May that it was one of possibly 250 other investors trading the E-mini futures contract on the day in question, and that it did not intend to disrupt the market.”

Who’s Waddell & Reed? Its website has a brief self-description:

“Founded in 1937, Waddell & Reed is among the most enduring asset management and financial planning firms in the nation, providing proven investment and planning services to individuals and institutional investors.”

Huff-Po adds some details from the SEC report (which I’ll read in a bit):

The new “circuit breakers” are in effect until Dec. 10. Under the rules, trading of any Standard & Poor’s 500 stock that rises or falls 10 percent or more within a five-minute span is halted for five additional minutes. On May 6, about 30 stocks listed in the S&P 500 index fell at least 10 percent within five minute”

Now, why December 10? I’ve no idea.

None of this is new. Just after the crash, Zerohedge had the pertinent questions based on a report by Matthew Goldstein at Reuters, which included the following crucial information:

“Waddell’s contracts were executed at Barclays Plc’sBarclays Capital and later given up to Morgan Stanley, according to the document.”

Barclays and Morgan Stanley, of course, played powerful supporting roles in the ongoing looting of mainstreet by the big banks.

At least, no one’s saying it was a just a “fat-finger” anymore.

From Truthout.org:

“The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos.

The report reveals that Dogan, the 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in the back and in the left leg and foot and that he was shot in the face at point blank range while lying on the ground.

The report says Dogan had apparently been “lying on the deck in a conscious or semi-conscious, state for some time” before being shot in his face.

The forensic evidence that establishes that fact is “tattooing around the wound in his face,” indicating that the shot was “delivered at point blank range.” The report describes the forensic evidence as showing that “the trajectory of the wound, from bottom to top, together with a vital abrasion to the left shoulder that could be consistent with the bullet exit point, is compatible with the shot being received while he was lying on the ground on his back.”

In the Bible, The Book of Esther tells how the queen pre-empted an attack on the country’s Jewish population and then persuaded her husband to launch an attack before being attacked themselves.

Israel has threatened to launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s facilities to ensure that the Islamic state does not gain the ability to threaten its existence.

Ralf Langner, a German researcher, claims that Unit 8200, the signals intelligence arm of the Israeli defence forces, perpetrated the computer virus attack by infiltrating the software into the Bushehr nuclear power station

Mr Langer said: “If you read the Bible you can make a guess.”

Computer experts have spent months tracing the origin of the Stuxnet worm, a sophisticated piece of malicious software, or malware, that has infected industrial operating systems made by the German firm Siemens across the globe.”

Read the rest of the piece at The Daily Telegraph.

What’s interesting to me is that when I was doing a little googling to find out about Stuxnet,  I came across a Microsoft page on it in July 2010 that listed Iran, India, Indonesia, and the US as the only countries in the world associated with the worm.