The More Decisions You Have To Make, The Worse You Get At It

Michael Lewis was on NPR's Fresh Air talking about his assignment hanging out with the president over six months to write about what it's like to be the president. It was published in Vanity Fair.

One comment he made caught my attention.  He said that President Obama knew of research that shows the more decisions you have to make the worse you get at making decisions.   So Obama avoids many simple decisions - like what clothes to wear, what to eat - so that he can save his decision making energy for the important decisions a president faces.  (Lewis said Obama had thrown out all but his blue and gray suits so he doesn't have to think about what he's going to wear and that someone else makes the menu.)  

I thought about this today after making decisions on the Alaska Airlines website today, taking advantage of discounted fares to LA to visit my mom.  I used up way too much decision making energy. 

It seemed a good time to check into this decision making fatigue story.  I found two interesting articles on this. First was a 2008 Scientific American article "Tough Choices: How Making Decisions Tires Your Brain" by On Amir. 

He mentions something called executive function which includes focused activity, decision making, and will power (as in resisting temptation.)

It turns out, however, that use of executive function—a talent we all rely on throughout the day—draws upon a single resource of limited capacity in the brain. When this resource is exhausted by one activity, our mental capacity may be severely hindered in another, seemingly unrelated activity. (See here and here.) . . .

For example, in one study the researchers found that participants who made more choices in a mall were less likely to persist and do well in solving simple algebra problems. In another task in the same study, students who had to mark preferences about the courses they would take to satisfy their degree requirements were much more likely to procrastinate on preparing for an important test. Instead of studying, these "tired" minds engaged in distracting leisure activities.These experimental insights suggest that the brain works like a muscle: when depleted, it becomes less effective. Furthermore, we should take this knowledge into account when making decisions. If we've just spent lots of time focusing on a particular task, exercising self-control or even if we've just made lots of seemingly minor choices, then we probably shouldn't try to make a major decision. These deleterious carryover effects from a tired brain may have a strong shaping effect on our lives.

One finding was particularly relevant to how I felt booking the tickets: It's harder to make the decision than to just weigh the tradeoffs.

Why is making a determination so taxing? Evidence implicates two important components: commitment and tradeoff resolution. The first is predicated on the notion that committing to a given course requires switching from a state of deliberation to one of implementation. In other words, you have to make a transition from thinking about options to actually following through on a decision. This switch, according to Vohs, requires executive resources.

It was a pain coordinating the different days and times with commitments we have in Anchorage and getting to see my son on the trip,  and of course the different prices.  But as taxing as that was, I think actually making the decision to push the purchase button and finalizing the dates and times and transferring $900 from my credit card to Alaska Airlines seemed to use up even more energy.  Now I know it's the switch from deliberation to implementation that got to me.

 A 2011 New York Times article, "Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?" by John Tierney goes into the background research even further.  If this topic interests you at all, this is a good article to pursue.  Tierney starts by talking about the decisions of an Israeli parole board.  It turns out they are more likely to parole you if your case is heard early in the morning.  By the late afternoon, the odds go way down.  He explains they're fatigued by then and rather than make a mistake, they just say no.

It also turns out that glucose can help pick you up, and snacks helped the parole board somewhat.

The mere expectation of having to exert self-control makes people hunger for sweets. A similar effect helps explain why many women yearn for chocolate and other sugary treats just before menstruation: their bodies are seeking a quick replacement as glucose levels fluctuate. A sugar-filled snack or drink will provide a quick improvement in self-control (that’s why it’s convenient to use in experiments), but it’s just a temporary solution. The problem is that what we identify as sugar doesn’t help as much over the course of the day as the steadier supply of glucose we would get from eating proteins and other more nutritious foods.

And it adds some information to an important question of mine:  why do some people make short term decisions while others make longer term decisions.  This is just one part of the answer, but it's interesting.

Your brain does not stop working when glucose is low. It stops doing some things and starts doing others. It responds more strongly to immediate rewards and pays less attention to long-term prospects. 

 That's the main reason, I guess, you're supposed to eat before going shopping.  This physiological information about how the body is affected by decision making adds a lot to planning good decisions.

“Good decision making is not a trait of the person, in the sense that it’s always there,” Baumeister says. “It’s a state that fluctuates.” His studies show that people with the best self-control are the ones who structure their lives so as to conserve willpower. They don’t schedule endless back-to-back meetings. They avoid temptations like all-you-can-eat buffets, and they establish habits that eliminate the mental effort of making choices. Instead of deciding every morning whether or not to force themselves to exercise, they set up regular appointments to work out with a friend. Instead of counting on willpower to remain robust all day, they conserve it so that it’s available for emergencies and important decisions. 

 I've always known that signing up for a PE class made it much easier to exercise more faithfully.  And that resting and eating well are important.  Knowing what causes these problems, means for us, like it does for the president, that we can avoid unnecessary taxing of our executive function:

“Even the wisest people won’t make good choices when they’re not rested and their glucose is low,” Baumeister points out. That’s why the truly wise don’t restructure the company at 4 p.m. They don’t make major commitments during the cocktail hour. And if a decision must be made late in the day, they know not to do it on an empty stomach. “The best decision makers,” Baumeister says, “are the ones who know when not to trust themselves.”

 There is A LOT more interesting stuff in the Tierney's whole article. 

"I love the way he lights up around his kids" and other Republican speech thoughts

First, let me take something totally out of context, the way the Republicans are running with Obama's inept comment about entrepreneurs. 

Here's Romney's comment about his running mate Paul Ryan:

"I love the way he lights up around his kids . . ."

Wow, I thought when I heard this.  But it makes sense from a man whose religion forbids smoking.  It must be thrilling to see someone have the freedom to light up around his kids.  Of course, I'm assuming it meant tobacco and not that medicinal herb, cause then we'd need to know about Ryan's health issues. 

Fortunately for the Democrats, they don't have to take an out of context comment like this and run ads riffing on it, because Romney and his colleagues like Rep. Akin say enough real stuff to give them serious political ammunition.

I heard Marco Rubio and part of Romney's speech.  A few quotes from Rubio I thought worth commenting on:

"Our national motto is "In God we Trust," reminding us that faith in our Creator is the most important American value of all."

It's interesting that Romney, a little later would say:

"And I will guarantee America's first liberty: the freedom of religion."

Let's remember exactly what the First Amendment to the Constitution says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Given the first Amendment's prohibition on the establishment of religion by Congress, it seems strange to claim 'faith in our Creator' as the most important American value of all. I understand the First Amendment was to get government out of the religion business and letting people practice as they please.  I would think justice and freedom would be higher on the list.

 Wikipedia reminds us "In God we Trust" was not the motto of our founding fathers. 

Never codified by law, E pluribus unum was considered a de facto motto of the United States^{[citation needed]} until 1956 when the United States Congress passed an act (H.J. Resolution 396), adopting "In God We Trust" as the official motto.^[4]

And reports tell us that the convention protestors were not allowed to assemble any closer than 10 blocks from the convention.


Rubio spoke movingly about his dad.

My dad was a bartender. . . A few years ago during a speech, I noticed a bartender behind a portable bar at the back of the ballroom. I remembered my father who had worked for many years as a banquet bartender.

But I couldn't help think that if everyone in the US shared Mitt Romney's values about drinking alcohol, Rubio's dad wouldn't have had a job.

And then there was the homage to the convention theme of American exceptionalism:

"For those of us who were born and raised in this country, it's easy to forget how special America is. But my grandfather understood how different America is from the rest of the world, because he knew what life was like outside America."

Rubio's granddad, as I understand it, before coming to the US only knew Cuba - the country the US has been boycotting since Castro came to power over 50 years ago.    I have no doubt that Rubio's grandfather loved his life in the US, and his gratitude for living here is appropriate.  But I'm not buying his expertise on how things are in all the rest of the world 'outside America."  There are a lot more options than Cuba. 

The US is an amazing country and has been an inspiration to people around the world.   But so was Germany before WW I. After the humiliating Treaty of Versailles,  Hitler promised Germans he'd regain their former greatness.  Rubio suggests Romney, too, will restore the US to its former greatness and beyond:

Mitt Romney believes that if we succeed in changing the direction of our country, our children and grandchildren will be the most prosperous generation ever, and their achievements will astonish the world.

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins.  Given that Rubio had already ranked faith in the creator as his number one value, you'd think he would remember this line from Proverbs:

Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before stumbling.

I hope you realize this has not been a review of Rubio's (and certainly not Romney's) speech.  I've just taken a few lines.  Some of my comments are more serious than others.

I hope enough Americans realize, when they hear speeches like this analyzed by the media, that they too are taking what they see as the most interesting lines or the lines most likely to gain hits for their online articles.  Listen to or read the speeches yourself.

Rubio's speech.
Romney's speech.

If You Vote For Obama Are You Voting For A War Criminal?

Obama's continuation of many of the Bush administration's war on terrorism actions are troubling - torture, the right to kill American citizens who are terrorists, the continued war in Afghanistan, etc.

Shannyn Moore posted a loooong conversation between John Cusack (the actor, who is also, clearly someone who thinks) and Jonathon Turlock a law professor and expert for various media.

Basically, they ask the question - Can you really vote for a president who violates the constitution and commits war crimes because "he's better than Romney" or because "I like his social programs?"

My personal rational has been that if a Republican appoints the next two Supreme Court justices, the chance to save democracy will be postponed another generation. 

There is also the assumption they make that Obama is in fact a war criminal.  It seems that they are guilty of convicting him without a trial, the same crime they accuse him of with his powers to assassinate people like Osama bin Laden, and worse, American citizens.  It's seriously disturbing, and that's why the media should cover it so there can be a full blown debate and the facts and interpretations can be examined.

Crossing the Rubicon is the metaphor they use repeatedly - is there no point past which Obama could go before you wouldn't vote for him? 

The alternatives to voting for Obama aren't nearly as well developed as the argument that he is a war criminal.  

“Look, you’re not helping Obama by enabling him. If you want to help him, hold his feet to the fire.”
Turley: Exactly.

If, like me, you live in a strongly red state, you can vote for a third party candidate as a protest vote.  No matter how I vote, it won't cost Obama any electoral votes.  People in blue states run the risk of too many people protesting and giving electoral votes to Romney.  When people voted for Nader in 2000 they were blamed for losing the election and the mainstream Democrats didn't get the message that people were protesting Clinton's moving so far to the right. 

So, I guess now we need to be sending messages to Obama that we are voting for one of the third party candidates unless he pledges to change his ways.  USA Today reported that there would be five third parties that will be on the ballots in more than five states:

• Libertarian
• Green
• Constitution
• Party for Socialism and Liberation
• Justice Party

Here are some excerpts from the conversation between Turley and Cusack:

Some of the charges against Obama:

Turley: Well, President Obama outdid President Bush. He ordered the killing of two U.S. citizens as the primary targets and has then gone forward and put out a policy that allows him to kill any American citizen when he unilaterally determines them to be a terrorist threat. Where President Bush had a citizen killed as collateral damage, President Obama has actually a formal policy allowing him to kill any U.S. citizen. . .

Cusack: Does that order have to come directly from Obama, or can his underlings carry that out on his behalf as part of a generalized understanding? Or does he have to personally say, “You can get that guy and that guy?”
Turley: Well, he has delegated the authority to the so-called death panel, which is, of course, hilarious, since the Republicans keep talking about a nonexistent death panel in national healthcare. We actually do have a death panel, and it’s killing people who are healthy. . .

Turley: Well, the framers knew what it was like to have sovereigns kill citizens without due process. They did it all the time back in the 18th century. They wrote a constitution specifically to bar unilateral authority.
James Madison is often quoted for his observation that if all men were angels, no government would be necessary. And what he was saying is that you have to create a system of law that has checks and balances so that even imperfect human beings are restrained from doing much harm. Madison and other framers did not want to rely on the promises of good motivations or good intents from the government. They created a system where no branch had enough authority to govern alone — a system of shared and balanced powers.
So what Obama’s doing is to rewrite the most fundamental principle of the U.S. Constitution. The whole point of the Holder speech was that we’re really good guys who take this seriously, and you can trust us. That’s exactly the argument the framers rejected, the “trust me” principle of government. You’ll notice when Romney was asked about this, he said, “I would’ve signed the same law, because I trust Obama to do the right thing.” They’re both using the very argument that the framers warned citizens never to accept from their government. . .

On the lack of media coverage:

Cusack: Oscar Wilde said most journalists would fall under the category of those who couldn’t tell the difference between a bicycle accident and the end of civilization. But why is it that all the journalists that you see mostly on MSNBC or most of the progressives, or so-called progressives, who believe that under Bush and Cheney and Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez these were great and grave constitutional crises, the wars were an going moral fiasco’s — but now, since we have a friendly face in the White House, someone with kind of pleasing aesthetics and some new policies  we like, now all of a sudden these aren’t crimes, there’s no crisis. Because he’s our guy? Go, team, go? . . .

It seems to me that there was media coverage about the Bush administration because there were lots of Democrats opposed to what Bush was doing.  But there isn't any noticeable Republican opposition to torture or assassination so there is no opposition and the press doesn't cover it. 

Who Ya Gonna Vote For?

And so then it gets down to the question, “Well, are you going to vote for Obama?” And I say, “Well, I don’t really know. I couldn’t really vote for Hillary Clinton because of her Iraq War vote.” Because I felt like that was a line, a Rubicon line –
Turley: Right.
Cusack: — a Rubicon line that I couldn’t cross, right? I don’t know how to bring myself to vote for a constitutional law professor, or even a constitutional realist, who throws away due process and claims the authority that the executive branch can assassinate American citizens. I just don’t know if I can bring myself to do it.
If you want to make a protest vote against Romney, go ahead, but I would think we’d be better putting our energies into local and state politics — occupy Wall Street and organizations and movements outside the system, not national politics, not personalities. Not stadium rock politics. Not brands. That’s the only thing I can think of. What would you say?
Turley: Well, the question, I think, that people have got to ask themselves when they get into that booth is not what Obama has become, but what have we become? That is, what’s left of our values if we vote for a person that we believe has shielded war crimes or violated due process or implemented authoritarian powers. It’s not enough to say, “Yeah, he did all those things, but I really like what he did with the National Park System.”
Cusack: Yeah, or that he did a good job with the auto bailout.
Turley: Right. I think that people have to accept that they own this decision, that they can walk away. I realize that this is a tough decision for people but maybe, if enough people walked away, we could finally galvanize people into action to make serious changes. We have to recognize that our political system is fundamentally broken, it’s unresponsive. Only 11 percent of the public supports Congress, and yet nothing is changing — and so the question becomes, how do you jumpstart that system? How do you create an alternative? What we have learned from past elections is that you don’t create an alternative by yielding to this false dichotomy that only reinforces their monopoly on power.
Cusack: I think that even Howard Zinn/Chomsky progressives, would admit that there will be a difference in domestic policy between Obama and a Romney presidency.
But DUE PROCESS….I think about how we own it. We own it. Everybody’s sort of let it slip. There’s no immediacy in the day-to-day on and it’s just one of those things that unless they… when they start pulling kids off the street, like they did in Argentina a few years ago and other places, all of a sudden, it’s like, “How the hell did that happen?” I say, “Look, you’re not helping Obama by enabling him. If you want to help him, hold his feet to the fire.”
Turley: Exactly.
Cusack: The problem is, as I see it, is that regardless of goodwill and intent and people being tired of the status quo and everything else, the information outlets and the powers that be reconstruct or construct the government narrative only as an election game of ‘us versus them,’ Obama versus Romney, and if you do anything that will compromise that equation, you are picking one side versus the other. Because don’t you realize that’s going to hurt Obama? Don’t you know that’s going to help Obama? Don’t you know… and they’re not thinking through their own sort of self-interest or the community’s interest in just changing the way that this whole thing works to the benefit of the majority. We used to have some lines we wouldn’t cross–some people who said this is not what this country does …we don’t do this shit, you had to do the right thing. So it’s going to be a tough process getting our rights back, but you  know Frankie’s Law? Whoever stops fighting first – loses.
Turley: Right.

Affordable Care Act - Victory - And Media Framing

Fox News:  The ruling is a victory for the president

New York Times:  In a striking victory for President Obama

Michael Moore on Democracy Now: "This really is a huge victory for our side, in spite of all of my concerns with this law,"

CNN:  Thursday's narrow 5-4 ruling was a victory for Obama,

There's lots to speculate about the Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act. Too much.  So I'll just focus here on the media reaction, particularly all those who have framed it in terms of zero-sum games, in terms of winning and losing. 

Game Theory (in brief)
Zero-sum games are those where [the outcome is a fixed amount]  there can only be one winner and one loser.  What I gain, you lose and vice versa.  If there are five slices of pie, the more I eat, you fewer you can eat.  Classic zero-sum games are, in fact, games, like chess or basketball or boxing where there is one winner and one loser.  If we think only in terms of winning and losing though, only about the immediate outcome, we fail to see that these are really, in the larger context, variable sum games.

Variable-sum games are ones where the outcomes can vary, they can be larger or smaller depending on how the players play the game.  For example, in the pie example, if two people fight over the pie, instead of having five pieces between them, the pie pan could crash and smear the pie all over the floor and fill it with glass leaving no edible pieces.  (I've discussed game theory in previous posts - here's one with more detail.)

And a boxing match may have a winner who is given $1 million and a loser who gets $100,000.  That may be the win-lose part, but beyond that the loser may get valuable publicity, even a book deal, or he may get serious brain damage, or all three.  The important game to follow in most situations is bigger than who won and who lost.  It's about all the side effects of the game that ripple into many areas. 

Focusing on victories, on winners and losers, takes our attention off the broader consequences.  Sure, some people's lives will be improved by ACA and others possibly harmed, but let's get our facts right about this and acknowledge it's not zero-sum.  And sure, the health care bill could be much better.  But the Republican insistence on 'market based'  solutions to everything has blocked many options and is another example of either/or thinking, that ignores market failures - such as tens of millions without access to health care - that require government intervention.   Treating everything as black or white, as you're either for us or against us, or you're a good American or a traitor, blurs all the gray in between. 

We see this in the conservatives who have turned on Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts for what they see as his betrayal.   They made the Affordable Care Act into a loyalty test.  If you are for it, you're the enemy, if you are against it, you are an ally.  Until you fail the next test.

And the media, by focusing on this idea of winning and losing, play into this way of seeing the world.  Life is not a zero sum game.  The economies of nations can have many outcomes from the bleak world of North Korea to the bustle of Brazil.  We can have everyone poor, we can have many poor and a few rich, we can have many relatively well off with a few poor and a few rich, and many other combinations.  We can have health care where millions of people cannot get care.  We can have a system that distributes care based on wealth,  or based on the number of years of life a procedure will save, or based on corruption and connections.  It's a variable sum game.  And we must get past simplicities, like, "poor people are poor because they are lazy."  It may be true for some, but there are lots of other explanations, including how society is structured, and why, for example,  baseball players can make tens of millions of dollars and teachers can only make tens of thousands of dollars. 

Not all the media focused on the winner/loser meme.  And the President himself recognized the problem with framing the decision as a victory for Obama.  

President Obama:  I know there will be a lot of discussion about the politics of all of this - who won and who lost. That discussion completely misses the point.  Whatever the politics, today's decision was a victory for people all over this country, whose lives will be more secure because of this law and the Supreme Court's decision to uphold it.

But he's still talking in terms of victory.

Court Questions

There are lots of other issues in this decision to parse out.  What does it mean about the court?  Earl Warren, a Republican Chief Justice appointed by a Republican president got his court to vote unanimously in their landmark 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision to end school segregation.  Was Roberts thinking about Warren in this decision?  Was Roberts unable to get a unanimous decision or didn't he try?  Was he worried about the reputation of the court as partisan so he found a way to support ACA?  Or did he think that this was unquestionably constitutional?  Or did this simply fit his pro-big business bias?   Was he trading this one for a negative vote on a future important case?  Say gay marriage?  Or more power for business?  Are there hidden precedents embedded in this decision that he can use to forward his Federalist Society values in future cases?  We don't know what he was thinking and probably won't for quite a while if ever.

Health Care Questions
There are questions about how to get better health care for Americans.  About the cost of health care and the affect of ACA on the US budget deficit.  And how this will affect the election.  The Republicans during the primaries were worried that the creator of the Massachusetts health program wouldn't be the strongest candidate against Obama.  Will Romney's obvious shift from being a supporter of universal health care with a mandate in Massachusetts to a harsh opponent of Obama's very similar plan be credible?

Media Questions
And there are questions about the media's rush to be the first to announce the Court's decision that led to Fox and CNN incorrectly reporting the outcome.  Ironically, HBO's new program The Newsroom's first episode which was broadcast Sunday and posted online, included a newsroom debate over how to report the just beginning to unravel story about a BP oil well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. 

The media, of course, will argue that the market demands digestible soundbites, brevity, simplicity, so they need to use understood story lines like winners and losers.  Israelis and Palestinians have been caught in a zero sum game for decades now.  Is that what is ahead of us as Republicans* force Democrats into a zero sum game over the future of the US?  Or can we step back and and see our common interests and get off this road to destruction and back onto the road toward more justice, more peace, more cooperation, more prosperity for more people?


So, while the media felt compelled to dissect this decision before they even read it, it seems to me that we'll be figuring out all the implications for a long time.



*I think there's plenty of evidence of Republicans stonewalling everything Obama, epitomized with the Republican Senate minority leader's declaration that their top priority was to prevent Obama from getting a second term.  Anything that might put Democrats in a favorable light, they opposed.  Democratic animosity exists, but not nearly at the same the level.

"The United States government has never acknowledged any error in detaining Mr. Boumediene, though a federal judge ordered his release, for lack of evidence, in 2008."

IT was James, a thickset American interrogator nicknamed “the Elephant,” who first told Lakhdar Boumediene that investigators were certain of his innocence, that two years of questioning had shown he was no terrorist, but that it did not matter, Mr. Boumediene says.

The interrogations would continue through what ended up being seven years, three months, three weeks and four days at the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. . .  [SCOTT SAYARE, NY Times May 26, 2012]

The United States claims to be a different kind of country.  A democracy that values freedom.  Our government was angry when three young American hikers were arrested in Iran after having crossed the border.  They were arrested in Iran, and it wouldn't be completely irrational for the Iranian government to wonder if they had had any contact with the CIA before entering Iran.  Our government demanded their release.   Boumediene was arrested far from US shores - in Sarajevo where he worked with orphans for the Green Crescent, the Islamic equivalent of the Red Cross.

Our moral high ground has been obliterated by Bush's reaction to 9/11 and the conversion of Guantanamo Bay into a 'terrorist' torture camp.  Despite campaign promises Obama has not closed Guantanamo.

American citizens are responsible for this, because we are a democracy.  We are the Board of Directors, so to speak.  And while in the private sector, such directors have found ways to avoid responsibility for their companies' misdeeds, that moral responsibility does lie squarely on them, and in this case, on us.

I've tried to pick out parts of the story that point to all the times he was declared innocent or that there was no evidence.  The rest of his story you can read in the article.  

The United States government has never acknowledged any error in detaining Mr. Boumediene, though a federal judge ordered his release, for lack of evidence, in 2008. The government did not appeal, a Defense Department spokesman noted, though he declined to answer further questions about Mr. Boumediene’s case. A State Department representative declined to discuss the case as well, except to point to a Justice Department statement announcing Mr. Boumediene’s transfer to France, in 2009. 

President George W. Bush hailed his arrest in a State of the Union address on Jan. 29, 2002.

A human being's life isn't worth anything if he can be used by a politician as a symbol of his prowess.  How many times does this have to happen before we (more than the skeptical 20 or 30%) challenge presidents who do this?  

In time, those accusations disappeared, Mr. Boumediene says, replaced by questions about his work with Muslim aid groups and suggestions that those groups financed Islamic terrorism. According to a classified detainee assessment from April 2008, published by WikiLeaks, investigators believed that he was a member of Al Qaeda and the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria. Those charges, too, later vanished. 

In a landmark case that bears Mr. Boumediene’s name, the Supreme Court in 2008 affirmed the right of Guantánamo detainees to challenge their imprisonment in court.

[T]he government’s sole claim was that Mr. Boumediene had intended to travel to Afghanistan to take up arms against the United States. A federal judge rejected that charge as unsubstantiated, noting that it had come from a single unnamed informer. 

The terms of his release have not been made public or revealed even to him.

If this article is accurate, Boumediene wasn't given an apology nor even told the terms of his release.  He's living in France, but without a passport.

Mr. Boumediene, as an American, I am ashamed at how you were treated and I offer you my sincerest apologies.   I know that isn't much, but it's something.  I understand when law enforcement, at any level, arrest someone because they have some evidence of criminal involvement.  But when they know they've made a mistake, there should be an apology, and in egregious cases like this one, some sort of compensation and assistance.  (The article says that he's getting a monthly stipend but he does not know from whom.  I'd like to think the US government is giving it, but I know that's probably wishful thinking.)

And if anyone reading this has a problem with my apology, I'd just ask how you would react if an Iranian apologized just like this to the three American hikers his country imprisoned. 

And to my American readers, we all have a responsibility for getting the US back on the right track.  If you aren't registered to vote, do it this week.  If you are, get ten others to register.  We also need to let Obama know that we aren't pleased with some of the policies that he has continued from the Bush administration.  I understand he's not dealing with a friendly Congress, but let's let him know that we want him to stand up strong for what he believes.  The majority of the American people don't need to agree with you 100%, Mr. President, they just need to know that your core values are good and that you stand firmly behind them. 

What Bush Couldn't Do in Seven Years, Obama Does in Two - Bin Laden Reported Dead

Just got back from a bike ride and was about to delete my ThaiVisa news feed when I saw the words:

U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to announce on late Sunday evening that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been killed in Pakistan, nearly 10 years after the devastating attacks of September 11.

The White House confirmed that Obama would hold an unprecedented late-night news conference, but gave no details. All the major news networks in the United States cited sources saying that Bin Laden had been killed.

According to Fox News, Osama bin Laden was killed over a week ago by a U.S. missile in Pakistan. CBS News, NBC News and CNN also said that Bin Laden's body is in possession of the United States.

The cynic in me is wondering how the right, particularly the crazy right, are going to deal with this.  Let's see.  GW made it his mission to find and kill Bin Laden.  The BBC quoted Bush on Dec. 14, 2001:

"We're going to get [Bin Laden] Dead or alive, it doesn't matter to me." 12/14/2001 [32]

But by the time he left office seven years later, he Bin Laden neither captured nor dead.

The Kenyan, Muslim, socialist president (as some on the right like to characterize Barrack Obama) managed to do the deed in a little over two years. 

Nixon's attorney general used to say, "Watch what we do, not what we say."  Good advice then and now.  Bush said.  Obama did.

Clearly this is a huge symbolic event, and symbolism is everything.  But how much actual physical threat was Bin Laden these days?  I don't know.  And how will the symbolism play in the Muslim world?  We'll see.

At least former President GW Bush handled it well:

This momentous achievement marks a victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001.

Why Obama Needs to Stand Firm and Why He Can't

Summary 

1.  Prisoner's dilemma research shows that the Tit for Tat strategy is the most successful in long term game relationships.  A game is a situation in which the outcome of a relationship is affected by how each player acts.  The Prisoner's Dilemma is one kind of game.  The basic choices are 1)  cooperate and 2) defect. Tit-for-Tat strategy is to cooperate in the first round of a relationship (or negotiation) and after that mimic the other player's last strategy. 
This model would suggest that Obama should begin by cooperating, and then copy the Republicans' last strategy.  The Republicans have been defecting in almost every interaction with the Obama administration.  But Obama, for the most part, cooperates.  In a prisoner's dilemma situation this is a sure losing strategy over time.

2.  African-American males are successful in the white world when they act in a non-threatening way.  If they can maintain self-control, suppress anger, and respond instead with quiet, measured, rational words, they lower the likelihood that they will trigger latent white stereotypes of blacks.  Getting angry and articulating black frustration and anger may work well inside the black community, it doesn't play well outside it.

Thus, these two models would suggest that Obama needs to stand up to Republicans every time they defect (do not cooperate), but all his training, indeed, the very behavior that has allowed him to get elected president, now prevents him from doing what he needs to do - express his feelings and stand up and strike back at Republicans.  Now that he has made it to the presidency, he has to learn how to let go of the black male survival tactics and act, not like a black male, but like an equal to all the others in DC who are allowed to show appropriate anger. 

The Background

[Note:  1.  These aren't terribly difficult concepts, but they run contrary to how many people think.  Going over them in class, it was much easier when there was interactive discussion so that if students didn't grasp a point, I would know and could try a different approach.  I also was able to use a simulation exercise that let students see for themselves how they fell into traps based on their own models, traps which cost them.  My point here is to suggest that if this is new to you and doesn't make sense right off, that you shouldn't simply dismiss it, but be humble and accept that there might be something here worth pursuing.  At the very least, I'd ask you not dismiss it simply because you don't get it.  You can also use the comments option below. (To do that, click on the word comment at the bottom of the post.)  Or go to pursue other sources that explain it better than I do.  If you know this well and disagree with it, or I've made an error,  point out those problems in the comments too.
2.  These are just two conceptual models for thinking about this issue.  They offer an explanation.  There are a lot of other ways to look at the situation, which could be better models for finding strategies for Obama.]

Why Obama Needs to Stand Firm


Game Theory -  Game theory is an field of mathematics that examines games.  Games are relationships in which  

• two or more players interact 
• how each player plays (behaves, acts)  
• affects the outcome of all the players. 

Commonly understood 'games' are the obvious examples - chess, football, etc.  But game theory extends to all interactions where the outcome of each player is affected by the behavior of all the players, such activities as finding a parking place, elections, investing in the stock market, or making dinner.


Types of Games  
(I'm focusing just on two types of games.)

Zero-sum games are games where there is a winner and a loser, where the more I win, the more you lose.  In zero-sum games, the size of the outcome is fixed.  It's like a pie.  There is just one pie.  The more pie I eat, the less there is for you.  It's a $10 prize.  The winner gets the whole $10.   Many people see every interaction with other people as a win-lose situation and thus they do everything they can to win as much of the pie as they can.  In their eyes, life is a never ending competition for fixed, finite resources.

Variable-sum games are where the outcome itself could vary depending on how the players play.  Variable-sum games are not as obvious as zero-sum games because the activities we tend to call 'games' tend to be zero-sum in design.  But having a barbecue is also a type of game.  Does one person supply all the food and do all the cooking or is it potluck?  How this is worked out will affect whether there is a lot of delicious food or nothing edible.  The outcome - amount of good food - is not finite, but variable.

But we can look at traditional zero-sum games and see them, too, as variable sum if we pull back a bit.  They are zero-sum if we only look narrowly at who wins and who loses.  But if we look at all the outcomes, it becomes clear they are variable sum games too.  Take a boxing match.  If we only think of winner and loser.  It's zero-sum.  But if we look at other outcomes it's variable sum.  Will the boxers emerge healthy and whole or will they be injured or even permanently maimed?  I might lose the match, but be able to write a book about my experience and gain fame and fortune even though I lost.  Or I could become depressed and drink myself to oblivion.  The outcome is extremely variable if we consider all the outcomes and not just the win-lose and who gets the prize.

One more example.  Was the first Iraq war a zero-sum or variable-sum game?  [I'm not going to answer that here, but I will respond to readers in the comment section.]


The Prisoner's Dilemma

The prisoner's dilemma is a particular type of game.  It comes from the police tactic of separating two prisoners and telling each:

"The other guy has confessed.  You're going to jail.  If you confess too, you'll only get three years.  But if you refuse, you'll get ten years because your buddy confessed."

The prisoner has to determine if his partner confessed or not.  If he didn't confess, there's no evidence and they will both walk.

So, the basic structure of the prisoner's dilemma game is this:

• If you cooperate and the other player cooperates - you both come out ahead.
• If you cooperate but the other player defects   -  the defector comes out better than the cooperator.  (The reverse is true if you defect and the other player cooperates)
• If you both defect  - both lose, but not as much as when one cooperates and one defects.

Robert Axelrod used computer simulations of prisoner's dilemma games and found that the winning strategy - over a period of many games - was Tit for Tat.

Tit for Tat Strategy

In this strategy, you begin by cooperating, and then copy the other player's last move.  This doesn't necessarily work in individual games, but the player who uses Tit-for-Tat in every game comes out ahead overall in a series of games.

Examples that Axelrod uses include the arms race and the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  If both players defect all the time, they both lose more and more as they go along.

I recognize that just reading what I've written above isn't going to convince the skeptics.  One needs to read further, even participate in simulations, to see how this plays out in life.  But I can only lead you to the water.  Most will have to do more reading on this to really get it.  But I'll go on anyway.

Implications for Obama

You led off by cooperating.  The Republicans have defected every time.  The only times you (defected) stood up to them - say on health care - you ultimately won.  The worst situation is to cooperate when the other player defects.  You fall into a deeper and deeper hole.  And they are not encouraged to cooperate, because they know that you will cave and cooperate again.

Now, both sides defecting constantly is a lose-lose situation for the nation in the long run.  And there are other games going on besides the votes in Congress.  The Republicans are clearly winning the game of interpreting what is happening to the American people.  If a plurality of people get their only news from Fox News, that will probably continue to happen.  Democrats have to better communicate the stories about what's happening in DC.

But with the Republicans saying the deficit is the most important thing (they won't fund unemployment benefits UNLESS the money is made up somewhere else) yet adding to that deficit by insisting on tax cuts for the top 2%, the Democrats have an easy opportunity to score.  If they can't capitalize on the Republicans now accepting extended unemployment assistance AND adding to the deficit with the tax cut extensions, then they have no chance of winning.   This is a message the American public would understand.  And when the Republicans can block anything with a 'majority' of 40%, there is another message that Americans can understand.  The minority, not the majority, rules in the Senate.  The minority is holding the country hostage.


Why it will be hard for Obama to show his anger and stand firm against the Republicans

Black American males have not traditionally succeeded in white American through confrontation.  When they have stood up to white authority, even white non-authority, black men tend to lose.  This is not a story most white people know, but every black person does.  Black parents teach their sons that they have to be respectful with everyone and if stopped by the police to show their hands and not do anything to give the cops an excuse to shoot them.

Terrance at Pam's House Blend expresses this training clearly:

As an African-American male, I have always been taught to show respect to the police, even when or if I feel that the officer is wrong. As a survival technique, I am teaching this to my son and I convey this to my students and all of the other young people that I engage in my lectures. My parents and other elders have always taught me "an argument with a cop is an argument you will always lose ... if you don't get along with the police, you will probably go along with the police and that's a trip you do not want to take. Even when you're right, if you fail to comply, you're wrong. You're objective during an encounter with the police is to leave that encounter in the same manner in which you entered it, in one piece. You can challenge the officer later in court. That's 'Black Man - 101.'"

Ask any African-American mother about her teenage son if you don't believe this. Here's a post from My Sweet Brown Son.  First she talks about how her 6' 250 lb son was asked by his high school football coach for his class schedule.

. . . Take a good hard look at him on the 50-yard line, and it’s easy to get it twisted: He looks like an angry, aggressive, big, black jock—a guy who crushes the opponent on the field, and off the field, probably doesn’t put much effort into much more than football, girls, and black boy shenanigans.

I don’t know if this is what one of his team’s assistant coaches had on his mind recently when he called the boy over to take a look at his class schedule. Mazi handed it to him and shifted nervously from foot to foot, his mind on who knows what. I can only guess what he expected to find, but when that coach looked at Mazi’s schedule and then back up at Mazi, I could see in his eyes that his perception of who my boy is was completely, forever changed.

See, what that coach wasn’t expecting to see is this.

Image from My Sweet Brown So

That’s Honors Physics. Honors Algebra. Advanced Placement Psychology. Honors Language Arts. And Mechanical Drafting—the first in a series of courses that’ll put Mazi on firm footing toward becoming an architect. Peep the grades: All A’s, and one B. He’s number 44 in a class of 546—and still climbing.

She goes on to speak of her fears for her son:

And every time that child leaves this house, I fear that someone will look at him, his size, his skin color, his swagger, and see what they want to see, and not who Mazi is. Not a day goes by without us warning him to be respectful, to watch his tone, to be extra vigilant when approaching people in his path. And last week he got his license and bought himself a car with the cash he makes as a lifeguard, which of course means that now when he snatches his keys and heads for the door, I'm a nervous wreck thinking that he's going to get stopped by the cops.

I have good reason to be nervous for him, you know. In just the past week, three—THREE!—black men have been shot, two killed . . . [Emphasis added.  This was a Jan 19, 2009 post.]

Jonathan Capehart in a Washington Post piece explains another aspect of the controlled anger of successful black men:

Black men, especially educated black men, grew up with images of non-violent protests in the face of aggressive policemen, consequences of actually "displaying anger" like the Rodney King situation and are conditioned not to "act out" in crisis situations. Even in sports, you see "fits of rage" with black athletes, but even that is more controlled than, say, hockey, where if black athletes were to display that level of rage -- it would be called a riot!

If Obama were to display anger he runs the risk of Angry Black Man syndrome, becoming too scary or threatening to the public, immediately non-presidential! . . .

. . ."You can't show anger, otherwise you are judged a certain way," said one prominent friend who would only speak about this on background. "It's already a societal thing where people find black men dangerous. So you can't be angry.... You learn early on there are certain lines you do not cross." Think about it. There's no African American version of, say, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff with a widely known and celebrated reputation for F-bombs and confrontation. 

In a more recent Washington Post article - after the elbow in the lip and Wikileaks - Courtland Milloy writes:

By most accounts, Obama acts like a black man behind closed doors. He talks trash while shooting hoops, talks Chicago South Side tough with his aides and conveys a range of emotions, including anger.

Once in public, though, he demurs - as if upholding some unspoken bargain with white America to never look like an angry black man in exchange for continued off-the-charts "likability" ratings and a shot at reelection in 2012.

For a more historical look at this, we see an analysis of black male images in the movies:

From WW Norton, Looking at Films

In that film, Poitier's role (a black doctor treating a white racist) was a type he was to repeat many times over: a character who, when faced with adversity and racism, expresses his anger with controlled eloquence, effecting change through the strength of his will and the righteousness of his cause. In Ralph Nelson's Lilies of the Field (1963), Poitier played another righteous character, a handyman who helps a group of German nuns build a chapel in the Arizona desert, and he became the first African American actor to win an Oscar for a leading role. Poitier played similarly admirable and well-received characters in Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) and James Clavell's To Sir, with Love (1967). In the former, Poitier portrayed a highly respected doctor with impeccable international credentials who falls in love with a wealthy, white San Francisco college girl; and in the latter, he portrayed an English schoolteacher who in just a few weeks turns a ragged group of East End students into proper young British adults. To such roles, Poitier brought a dignified, controlled, and stoic presence. He played heroes who sublimated their aggression and passion by mastering socially sanctioned manners, in every sense of that word.

Whites may respond that things have changed, and they have.  But if you've ever been bitten by a dog and/or know lots of people who have, you learn to act carefully when there's a stray dog around you don't know.  I first became aware of this different way of seeing the world in 1967 when I visited a black friend at the University of Missouri.  Wherever we walked around campus he pointed out escape routes if a police car was nearby or a group of menacing white students in his path.  Years later I asked a black colleague at a conference why he was always in a suit and tie.  His answer was, so when (not if) I get stopped by the police, they might think I'm not dangerous and it will be a little easier.

And it's still an issue.  Just last spring I talked to a white woman who had recently married a black man - a man in his fifties who has won the highest honor his profession has to give.  They were driving in New Jersey late at night and were stopped by the police and treated badly. She started to yell at the cops about rights and racial profiling and he very firmly told her to stop and get back in the car.  Later he told her to never, ever do that again.  He's the one who will get the consequences of her righteousness.  

So, the US has created an environment which forces black boys to act submissively dealing with white authorities if they want to stay alive, let alone succeed.  And teaches black men that they have to suppress their anger and be calm, rational, and non-threatening, perhaps most important here - non-confrontational -  if they are going to succeed in the white world.

We have a president, who would NOT be president, had he not learned those lessons well.  But as President he has to mix it up with powerful white men, AS AN EQUAL, not as a black man adapted to succeeding in a white world. 

But no president has all the necessary skills.  They need a vice president and other officials around them to balance their strengths with other strengths. If Obama can't learn to play hardball with white Republicans - not to mention those in his own party - then he has to get some good poker players to advise him and perhaps even sit in for him where he needs these skills.

All the Kings Horses. . .

President Obama:

The bottom line is this: Every decision we make is based on a single criterion -– what’s going to best protect and make whole the people and the ecosystems of the Gulf.

How do you make whole the people who were killed?  How do you make whole the people whose businesses have been devastated?    How do you make whole an ecosystem whose whole food chain has been thrown horribly out of whack?

You don't.  Once it's broken you can't repair it.  This is not like fixing a car after a wreck by putting on a new fender.  Either the President is making glib promises or he doesn't yet realize the enormity of what has happened.

Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize

In an earlier post I offered one defense of Obama's getting the prize - that simply his election changed the world's dialogue and the potential for peace.  While he may not have taken actions that can be connected with increased peace, beyond campaigning for the presidency, I asked readers to identify someone or some group that had had a greater impact on world peace than Obama's election. 

Today Obama said in his speech there were more deserving people for the prize.  While there are people who have made greater personal sacrifices in pursuit of peace, I'm not sure that their impact on world peace was greater than Obama's election. 

Since I wrote the original post on this topic, I thought further that if his mere election changed the dynamics of international relations, then perhaps the American voters, rather than Obama himself, should have been given the prize.

But after hearing Obama's speech in Oslo today, I can only wonder how we have managed to get such a thoughtful, and forthright president who can express his vision so eloquently.   Maybe the years of having Bush as president have lowered my expectations.  This president dealt with the complexities of the world, the contradictory tugs that our values and desires pull us.  His words don't paint a black and white world, but one of great nuance.  I can travel the world once again and proudly point to the man that my fellow citizens and I elected to be our president. 

Yet I can't help but wonder what the people who support Palin think of such a speech.  Is it too subtle?  Is it too abstract?  Part of me suspects that the better Obama is, the more some of his detractors oppose him.  They simply can't deal with their world view being challenged in any way. 

Why Isn't Obama Making His Decision on Afghanistan?

 The Asia Times Online reported on Nov. 6  a possible reason why Obama hasn't made his final decision on Afghanistan.  It the report is accurate, perhaps he was awaiting the results of various negotiations.  Then there was Fort Hood and now he's in China.  Just a possibility. 

ISLAMABAD - Abdullah Abdullah, who this week withdrew from the presidential election runoff in Afghanistan, thereby handing victory to the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, did so under pressure from the United States, Asia Times Online has learned.
In exchange for the pullout of the non-Pashtun Abdullah, Pakistan's military has agreed to actively mediate between Washington and the Taliban over a reconciliation plan that will allow the US to exit from Afghanistan, as it is doing in Iraq, with a semblance of success.
A senior Pakistani diplomat involved in backchannel negotiations on Pakistan, Afghanistan and US relations told Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity that the deal over Abdullah, whom Islamabad considers to be pro-India, was made during the three-day visit to Pakistan last week of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Apart from other senior officials, Clinton met with the chief of army staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, and the director general of Inter-Services Intelligence, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha. It was agreed that all US-led negotiations with Abdullah, which included offering him the position of chief executive officer of Afghanistan, would stop, and Karzai would get full backing for a second five-year term.
It was also acknowledged that Washington's political leadership, like the Pentagon, now accepts that the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan is best tackled with contact between the Pakistan armed forces and the Taliban, and not by the political governments of the region.
Clinton's visit came at a crucial time as Pakistan is engaged in a battle against the Pakistani Taliban and other militants; if it fails, there will be a cascading effect in the whole region and a sure defeat of American interests in Afghanistan.(the rest can be read here.)

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan" - Asking the Basic Policy Questions

Policies, say like what the US should do in Afghanistan, can be looked at from many different perspectives. But it seems to me there are two basic questions we need to answer.

1. What purposes can we serve by being there?
   There seem to be quite a few we could list
1. Stop Al Qaeda
2. Change a government that makes women subservient to men
3. Stop the cultivation of poppies and drugs
   (You can debate the extent that such goals are reasonable or reflect an accurate understanding of Afghanistan.  A key question ultimately is how important are these goals in relation to other goals we want to achieve.  Will resources spent on Afghanistan mean we don't have resources for other goals?   Which, ultimately, are the most important?  If fighting in Afghanistan meant, really, that we prevent Al Qaeda from destroying the US, then we'd certainly decide to stay there. If.)
   
   
2. Can we achieve the purposes?
   
   No matter how noble and worthy our goal, if we have no chance of achieving it, one has to question our pursuing it.  Of course, few things are so absolute.  In any situation it isn't either/or, rather it is a range form 0% chance to 100% chance. 
   
   Decision theory gives us a number of 'rational' models for calculating level of risk and potential outcomes.  In some cases, it is relatively easy to plug data into the boxes and get a clear outcome.   But in complex policy decisions, not only is filling in the boxes difficult, but the emotional power of people's ideological stories of how the world works, causes people to interpret the same data totally differently. 
   

So, we have these two basic questions to ask in any important policy decision (and personal decisions as well.)

If someone is drowning and your purpose is to save him,  should you still jump in when you have a 90% probability of drowning too?   If the person in the water is a mass murderer, most people may feel saving him doesn't serve an important enough purpose unless the rescuer had 100% chance of surviving.  If the person drowning is you ten year old son, you may jump in even if you have only a 1% chance of surviving.  But most likely, you aren't even considering these probabilities, you are acting on instinct and emotion.  But if you die too, leaving two other kids without a mother, how good was that decision?  Even if the intent was noble? 

But when we are making foreign policy, we generally do have time to think these decisions out and calculate our likelihood of success.  Even if we can't do it with certainty, the exercise puts our assumptions out on the table, exposed to analysis and debate.

• I think it would be good for the world if terrorist groups who regularly blow people up are stopped.
  
  
• I think that Afghan women should be free to choose how they want to dress and if they want to go to school, etc.

But if the US can't achieve those goals, is it worth it to make a noble, symbolic effort?  At what cost to other projects such as better education and health care, or infrastructure, or assisting people in other parts of the world where we can succeed? 

This is the dilemma that our President faces.  Plus he has political consequences to weigh as well.  If we pull out of Afghanistan and the Taliban retake the nation and things go back to where they were pre-invasion, there is no question that Obama will be blamed for various kinds of diplomatic cowardice.  Even though it was GW Bush who took us into Afghanistan and then diverted our efforts there by invading Iraq, Obama will get the blame (or credit) for what happens now.

And if we stay and Afghanistan proves to be another quagmire that just sucks in American lives and resources with no visible gain, Obama will get blamed for that as well.

Into this discussion we now get to see the resignation letter of a US State Department employee who has been working in Afghanistan. 

Matthew Hoh first US official to resign over Afghan War    

The letter appears to be genuine.  He seems to be saying the goals might be good, but there's no chance of success.  According the the Washington Post  (Oct. 26, 2009) the US Ambassador in Afghanistan took Hoh's letter seriously: 

U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry brought him to Kabul and offered him a job on his senior embassy staff. Hoh declined. From there, he was flown home for a face-to-face meeting with Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"We took his letter very seriously, because he was a good officer," Holbrooke said in an interview. "We all thought that given how serious his letter was, how much commitment there was, and his prior track record, we should pay close attention to him."

And as Hoh himself is quoted in the article:

"I'm not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love," Hoh said. Although he said his time in Zabul was the "second-best job I've ever had," his dominant experience is from the Marines, where many of his closest friends still serve.
"There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed," he said of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys."

(Ouch, so if you're for getting out of Afghanistan you must be a peacenick, pot-loving hippie?  Do these negative stereotype labels never die?)

Perhaps this guy is just overly idealistic and when things didn't turn around in the five months he was in Afghanistan, he was ready to throw in the towel.  But the letter reveals a thoughtfulness that belies that sort of conclusion.

Anyway, this is more fodder for this discussion.  During the Vietnam war there were voices like this slowly adding up and they were dismissed by the Pro-War folks as 'peacenik pot-smoking hippies' (so maybe Hoh was trying to pre-empt such a dismissal).  Eventually, a majority of Americans agreed we should be out of Vietnam.  While some still argue "We could have won if we hadn't held back the firepower" the real point is that Vietnam's "fall to Communism" didn't signal that all the dominoes of South East Asia would fall to Communism.  Vietnam was not a threat to the US and much of Southeast Asia prospered.  All those stories of why we needed to be there, proved unfounded.

But that said,  we have to choose carefully which lessons from Vietnam are appropriate to apply in Afghanistan.  Nothing is simple.  But I'm guessing that in the long run, getting out as soon as we can is the best for most everyone.

It's The Year of the Ox - So What's the Difference Between Cows and Oxen?

My unfinished posts are piling up.  So let me get these Thai cattle pictures from the Petchabun trip up to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Ox. But are cows oxen? Does it matter?


The Prairie Ox Drovers says:

• What is an ox?
  Oxen are steers of any breed of cattle, that are at least four years old, and taught to work. Steers, in this catagory, that are younger than four years old, are called "Working Steers".

• What is a steer?
  A steer is a castrated bull.

• How are oxen different than cattle?
  There is no difference. Oxen are just cattle that have been taught to work.

Wikipedia says:

Oxen (singular ox) are large and heavyset breeds of Bos taurus cattle trained as draft animals. Often they are adult, castrated males. Usually an ox is over four years old due to the need for training and to allow it to grow to full size. Oxen are used for plowing, transport, hauling cargo, grain-grinding by trampling or by powering machines, irrigation by powering pumps, and wagon drawing. Oxen were commonly used to skid logs in forests, and sometimes still are, in low-impact select-cut logging. Oxen are most often used in teams of two, paired, for light work such as carting. In the past, teams might have been larger, with some teams exceeding twenty animals when used for logging.

An ox is nothing more than a mature bovine with an "education."

Various other sites include cows and other bovine as the stars of this Chinese Year:

Chinese zodiac sign - Ox (Cow)

Chinese New Year 2009 - The Year of Ox - The Year of Brown Cow

Year of the Ox, Cow, Buffalo or Bull

www.Chinese-Zodiac says:

2009 Year of the Ox 2009 -the Year of the Bull! The Chinese New Year's Day is Jan. 26, 2009.

Happy ox chinese zodiac symbols (Niu) Year! Gong Xi Fa Cai (May You be Happy, May You be Wealthy)!

Chinese Calendar began in 2697 BC when the Yellow King became king.

This year is the 4706th Chinese Year beginning from January 26, 2009, the Year of the Bull, Cow or Ox. The birth year of President Barack Obama (1961) was a Bull Year.

Chinese astrology is not like western astrology.
The Feng Shui Shop gives predictions for the year for all the animal signs of the Chinese astrology. And he lets us know we have some control over how things turn out:

Chinese astrology is not like western astrology. The whole idea of it is to be informed of what may come and how you can apply cures and enhancers to avoid potential problems and having the information in advance you can avoid many of the problems that are forecast. The information will also assist you to be prepared and to make informed decisions that may affect your wellbeing and endeavors. It is important that you know when and how to avoid the bad influences during the year.

The message I am trying to convey is even if you are a Sheep and you read below or somewhere else advising that 2009 will not be a good year for you and all misfortunes will befall on you, adopt a positive attitude and follow the advice given below and in the 2009 Flying Star (Xuan Kong) recommendations, you will be able avoid any bad luck that is forecast. Knowing how to avoid negative Flying Stars can help alter your year's luck in a good way. I know you will come across websites or other Practitioners who will predict all sorts of doom and gloom for a certain animal in any year, please take this with a pinch of salt and enjoy a great 2009.

Glimpse at Today's Thai News

J brought home the Bangkok Post today.

The King of Thailand sent a message President Obama, this account from Xinhua:

The message stated that, "I believe that, under your strong and energetic leadership, the United States will overcome the many daunting challenges ahead and bring about positive changes to the world community at large. Thailand as a long time ally stands ready to continue working closely with the United States."

"As our two countries enter the 176th year of relations, I look forward to working with you and your new administration to further enhance and advance our close and strong alliance for the prosperity of Asia and the Pacific region. As the Chair of ASEAN, Thailand also welcomes deeper engagement of the United States to that end. We certainly look forward to welcoming you and members of your administration to Thailand in the near future," read the message.

Police Academy First

FEMALE CADETS: The Royal Police Cadet Academy has opened its doors to women for the first time in its 107 years.
Apart from academic subjects, the 70 female cadets will receive mental and phsical training as will their male counterparts throughout the four-year course.
After graduation, they will be given the rank of police sub-lieutenant and assigned to investigate work or child welfare in major tourist provinces.

iPhone arrives in Thailand
The long-awaited Apple iPhone has finally arrived Thailand on Friday.
The TrueMove iPhone 3G launch, handled by True Move, was held at the Royal Paragon Hall at Siam Paragon from Friday to Sunday. The rest here.

Barack Obama's First Day in the Oval Office with Friends

I mentioned earlier my computer art class assignment to take four different downloaded photos and make your "fantasy" picture by combining them. Well, I got a little carried away and added a few more pictures than I had to. So here's my fantasy - Obama's first day in office with a number of people who helped pave the way. There are many, many I've left out, but here are a few key ones. (Double click to enlarge the image.)




Our current assignment is to do a 30 second video. At last we're using a tool I know as much about or more than most of the others - iMovie. But we are also using Photoshop's animation capabilities. The first attempts have been tedious, but are looking good. I have some real video and some hand made animation. I'm not sure if I'll combine them or just do the animation.