All You Need to Know About the Election, the Electorate, and US Politics: A series of articles in the past week really hit home on the realities of American politics and the current state of politics in the US. Joe Bageant’s anonymous political consultant friend has an analysis of Obama’s “move to the center”, and concludes:

• Obama had to move sharply to the right on his position on trade, economics, globalization, social services and taxes, to avoid having the US power elite put all their money to work for McCain. With a dumbed-down electorate and a compliant mass media, lots of negative advertising (i.e. lots of campaign money) is now all you need to win an election (with rigged voting machines as a backup).
• Obama’s social polition is just fine with the power elite (who actually disdain social conservatives). But if Obama doesn’t move on economic issues, they’re just fine with the white socially conservative working class helping them defeat Obama.
• “Elite consensus on [foreign policy] is center to right, discussion are allowed on the mechanics of running the empire and the management of the military industrial complex, but never regarding the reality of its existence, its necessity or usefulness to most Americans.” War is the only healthy industry left in the US economy, and the US military machine is needed to protect the global financial interests of the power elite, so peaceniks need not apply to be its president. The fraudulent Let’s Bomb Iran house resolution 362 is bipartisan; there is no significant difference between the two parties on this issue (thanks to Valdis Krebs for the truthout links).
• The power elite has already got Obama rehashing what is now conventional wisdom in the US, that it is the responsibility of individuals, not the government, to make people’s lives better. The “ask not what your country can do for you…” anti-regulation, taxes-are-evil, privatize-everything, anti-social-services rhetoric is firmly entrenched in both of the two look-alike brands Americans get to choose from in November. If the government screws up, or if you’re poor or sick or unemployed or ignorant it’s your fault, you stupid, lazy voter. And both brands are “produced” by the same company, the power elite that owns both parties.

Major Life Changes: My brave Cheryl embarks on a one-year tour around the perimeter of Australia today; she has been through so much tragedy lately, so help me wish her bon voyage! Karen Crone is off to Nigeria to work in a medical centre. Patry Francis is recovering from painful surgery that has re-sensitized her to others’ more constant suffering. And Jen Lemen is still coming to grips with her recent astonishing and heart-breaking trip to Africa. Is it time for your life to change in a major way? What’s holding you back?

Why Feminism Must Be Anti-Capitalist: Or more precisely anti-corporatist. A brilliant essay by Jessica Hoffman argues that all forms of oppression are connected, and freedom for all of us depends on the destruction of all forms of oppression, including corporatist oppression.

The Collective Decision-Making Process: Chris Corrigan has created a new model of “talking our way to a decision” based on Otto Scharmer’s Theory U. I liked it so much I changed some of the words to create the collective decision-making process shown at right. The activities in the top half are individual, personal, while those in the bottom half are collective. Those on the left side are reflective while those on the right side are active. Through invitation and “opening space”, personal passion is engaged and leads to collective conversation, which through collective understanding leads to collective consensus, and then, through collective and personal decision, to personal responsibility for actions. This is what took me a long time to understand: While decisions may be collective (or may be made by fiat), actions are always ultimately personal; even in those actions that we undertake together, we are each, literally “doing our own thing”. If we are not first engaged, and if we are not part of the conversation that leads to consensus, and if we don’t then take personal responsibility to act, nothing gets done. I have seen in business that bad decisions are always ignored — people will jump through hoops to appear to be doing what they are told while actually doing what they believe makes sense. Our sense of personal responsibility is that strong. Passion –> Conversation –> Consensus –> Decision — That’s how things get (effectively and sustainably) done in this world.

What MBAs Don’t Know: Tony Wanless reiterates the arguments about the shortage of true entrepreneurship skills in our society that prompted my book. Thanks to Jon for the link.

Life After Birth: Another compelling, brooding, poetic essay and photo from Pohangina Pete.

The Ants Go Marching One by One: “We must think of ourselves as a line of ants bringing food to our Queen. But If we step out of line and decide to distribute the food amongst ourselves we will no longer be only receiving portions for our hard work. We will no longer be starving and working for more. The Queen will now be the hungry one and she will eventually die of starvation. All we have to do is step out of line; itís that simple.”

How to Design a Web Page: Liz Danzico’s slideshare presentation on the usability of WordPress is very smart: “People will do stuff [workarounds] when design fails…Most people ignore most of the [web page]…People don’t like surprises [i.e. changes]…People prefer verbs [over nouns] to navigate web pages…[after completing a task online] users need suggestions, nexts, and reassurance…Show, don’t tell.” Thanks to Kathy Sierra for the link.

Why Cap-and-Trade Solutions to Global Warming Won’t Work: “‘Cap and trade’ is the rage today as a primary solution to global warming. But the European Union’s struggle with this approach indicates it has an uncertain future. This is because global warming, at its core, is not a technology or policy problem. It is the greatest failure of thought in human history.”

Predictions Tell Us Nothing About What is Possible: Tom Atlee tells us (in addition to providing us with a poem) the three steps to realize what’s possible: Let go of outcome; Come to grips with our own intrinsic participation in Whatever Happens; and Look for positive possibilities and ways to partner them into greater probability. Thanks to David Parkinson for the link.

Create Your Video Calling Card: Natalie Shell shows us how to use video to tell the world what you’re all about. I want one of these.

Republican Platform Proposes Journeys to Mars: As if they hadn’t fucked up this planet enough.

Great Vegan Recipes: The cookbook Veganomicon, and a whole bunch of simple, wonderful online vegan recipes. Thanks to Patti Digh for the link.

Just for fun: Crow adopts kitten (thanks to Sam for the link). And the dumbest invention ever (thanks to my sister-in-law Morva for the link).

Thoughts for the Week:

• From Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” (thanks to William Tozier for the quote)
• From Esther Dyson: “Always make new mistakes” (thanks to Natalie Shell for the quote)
• From JP Rangaswami: “More and more, knowledge management is going to be about reducing the cost of, and simplifying the process for, letting someone watch what you do. Nonintrusively. Time-shifted. Place-shifted. Searchable. Archivable. Retrievable.” (thanks to Nancy White for the quote)
• From Charles Bowden in Blood Orchid: “We are an exceptional model of the human race. We no longer know how to produce food. We no longer can heal ourselves. We no longer raise our young. We have forgotten the names of the stars, fail to notice the phases of the moon. We do not know the plants and they no longer protect us. We tell ourselves we are the most powerful specimens of our kind who have ever lived. But when the lights are off we are helpless. We cannot move without traffic signals. We must attend classes in order to learn by rote numbered steps toward love or how to breast-feed our baby. We justify anything, anything at all by the need to maintain our way of life. And then we go to the doctor and tell the professionals we have no life. We have a simple test for making decisions: our way of life, which we cleverly call our standard of living, must not change except to grow yet more grand. We have a simple reality we live witheach and every day: our way of life is killing us.” (thanks to Beth Taggard for the quote)