Cobb

The Disappearing of Greg Smith

Greg Smith is about to disappear. The reason why is because we live in an era of cowardice and deceit. The reasons for this era are beyond the scope of this essay, however I predict that Smith will disappear. He will go into that same place where I like to think I live, which is the domain of integrity and courage. It's hard for me to tell because life is a battlefield full of smoke and confusion.

Those who are supposed to be responsible to bring such matters to our attention have not, and so it was on Mr. Smith alone to reveal what we all needed to know. Some might pretend that not all of us need to know that there are moral capitalists possessed of integrity and courage, others pretend that there is no such thing. But those of us who try to have integrity and courage know such acts when we see them, and we understand how painful it is to undertake them. I am like you Mr. Smith, in case you may not have realized how many brothers you have out here in the smoke and confusion.

He will enter the realm of people who are unashamed of bronze medals and runner-up status - those of us who sense the butterfly wing's difference between the efforts required to stand on podiums and the massive difference between the accolades given by those who have no sense of the effort.

Listen to me, I am under the influence of NASA. I purchased a five disk boxed set documenting the endeavors of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. Last night I watched astronauts - men on a scientific mission enthralled with glee with the spectacle of geology of the Hadley Rille. I watched the extraordinary efforts of men in service of mankind when lives were at stake and millions of eyes were watching. And they were happy, and having the time of their lives. We were right to consider them heroes, even though, by Apollo 15, they were not standing on the podium.

There is an old poem about the strongest and fastest man and to whom life's battles are given. Greg Smith has decided to take no more from the man who thinks he can disrespect his customers and thereby pervert the only morality capitalism possesses which is the mutual benefit of parties.

This is how the decline happens. It happens as those who assumed no good are rewarded with bad news and the myth of evil and incompetence becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. But we know not to listen, for we are the disappeared. No film at 11. 

By the way, it is my opinion that the Volker Rule was all that was needed but purposeful obfuscation has ruled the day, and I agree that Smith is toast. 

Symbolically Throwing Away My Vote

In a contest between Romney and Obama, the country loses. Both posers are interested in selling their image and putting a lid on things. Romney because it sounds like the only thing he would say, and Obama because it's what he wishes he could do. That is to say Obama can do the first thing and Romney can do the second, neither of which is particularly good for America at this moment in history. So I think today that I'm going to follow Taleb and cast a vote for Ron Paul, the nutcase crackpot. Why? Because only a nutcase crackpot like Paul (being very specific) has the nerve to base his entire campaign on a few salient facts and properly directed wishful thoughts. 

Let me take a tangent and speak about videogames. 

In Skyrim and all the other best crafted RPGs, you spend a long time wandering around taking odd jobs and dodging authority until you get enough skill to take on more and more powerful characters. At some point, you don't decide which boss you want to support, you decide which boss you want to kill. When you become adequately powerful, even the swarms of police and guards are too weak to contain you. In any case, what you never do is sit around studying positions and strategies and then cast your vote for a proxy who will change the world for you.

You can only see the world by killing the obstacles in your path one by one.

Once you've done that and only once you have done that can you understand the world you have changed through your actions. As I apply this to democratic politics in the context of our bourgeois elections and campaigns aimed at the rhetorical level of peasants, I realize that my symbol is just as good as my vote. Except I get to symbolify as much as I want, here on the blog. In other words, I've recognized the value of killing obstacles blocking my view of the world, and for me, 99% of them are financial. Therefore what I need to do is make every effort to kill financial obstacles. That means voting for Ron Paul because only Ron Paul will create the conditions under which the proper disaster will occur in the short term. Obama and Romney on the other hand will sustain a stasis field which will behave like Wile E. Coyote walking on air over a deeper and deeper ravine.

Since I'm in the 5% and in an industry that grows organically by objective improvements, my primary concern is that new money keeps flowing, and also that I can take advantage of chaos and failure. I cannot advocate chaos and failure because it is not in my nature to be a vulture. 

 

Lulz Smacked Down

So like most of the early adopters, I joined Google Plus. Unfortunately, most of the people who started adding me into their circles, and the most verbose people I added into my circles had a network effect of pulling me into the Occupy discussion. The good news was that since I'm hanging out with hackers more and more, I had some hacker tangents as well. The bad news was the overlap between hackers and Occupy was annoying, and I said as much. The interesting news is that with the infiltration and subsequent arrest of Lulz members, almost all of those people have disappeared from Google Plus.

The general news is of course that LulzSec has been pwned by the FBI and its ringleader has turned defector for consideration of leniency.  This comes to me as no surprise. Much of the noise surrounding Anonymous, Lulz and Wikileaks comes from people who demonstrate little legal or political sophistication. They surely didn't know how outgunned they are. 

I made an AnonymousCowardly remark over at Slashdot the other day.. let me see if I can find it. It was my last word prior to the bust.Nope. Can't find it. Anyway, I've never been impressed that the political end of Anonymous capabilities have been properly aimed for the benefit of democracy. I think they remain incapable, and I believe they are learning the hard way that democracy requires exactly the openness that is resisted at the core of their being. All of this appropos my musings on 'famousity'.

Newt's Decency

I knew that Gingrich won the NC primary, but I didn't know until tonight that he threw CNN's John King to the gators. 

Gingrich is the most peculiar of the candidates. On the one hand, he is an insider's insider having been the Speaker of the House. In that role, ushering in the Contract With America, he went balls to the wall on Federal spending in a game of brinksmanship that brings back chills. On the other hand, he has been making rounds in the media brainstorming ideas that make even Robert Reich say, hey am I really talking to a Republican here? He has a real personal life, meaning he's not *even* trying to look like some Stepford President. (and I'm probably abusing the metaphor). Conservative ideologues and hardliners dont' think he's 'Conservative' enough - and what that means is that Social Conservatives don't think so, which to my reckoning is a plus.

But this is really about Gingrich's moment in thowing the media to the dogs and putting them on notice that he will not be cowed by their bull. Everybody on the Right knows that the media has been soft bigots for the low performance of President Obama on a number of critical issues. So finally he took the stage and reversed the sexual chokehold that the Hollywood Left thinks is a game-changer for what they presume conservatives to be, and left them tapping out. We've even had a little bit of that screwy perception here at Cobb, but it can be instructive to show exactly what kind of Conservatism Gingrich will demonstrate in his campaign. 

This may have been the moment, as with the Army-McCarthy hearings, that the decency of the people asking questions has been astutely brought into focus.

Shen Yun, Falun Dafa & The Will of the Divine

I forget how civilized I am because I have been raising children for 18 years. 

Last evening I broke my fast for the first time in about 4 years, put on the long black coat, expensive scarf and headed out with the Spousal Unit to reacquaint myself with the high arts. The last time, we went to see Dudamel's premier at the Disney. This time it was Shen Yun at the Segerstrom and the arts were not quite so sophisticated, but high nevertheless.

It was my first time to the South Coast art complex, home of the South Coast Rep and the Pacific Symphony Orchestra. The architecturals are most appropriately dramatic if not arrestingly splendid. As we had a quick drink and dash of excellent sushi at Leatherby's Cafe Rouge onsite. I just had to marvel at this little plop of class right in the middle of Corporateville California, headquarters of Taco Bell. It was quiet and plush and the people were well-appointed and polite - not meaning the staff who get paid to be so, but the patrons. Eegads Maggie!

Across the way at the Segerstrom it was more bustling with the sort of crowd one would expect to find at a high school graduation; the older two generations in moderate attire with the appropriate proportions suitable for an English & Chinese presentation. My Mandarin sucks these days, but I do pick up the occasional phrase and can tell a Northern accent from a Southern. We shuffled in with the pack and found our seats convient to both viewing and quick egress. And so it began. 

Both the Unit and I were expecting something rather different than what we beheld. It was her idea to see dancing acrobats, but instead we saw acrobatic dancers that were only occasionally acrobatic. What was a complete surprise was the component of moral suggestion that was part and parcel of the program. You see, Shen Yun are cultural ambassadors for the Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong. If you've never heard of Falun Gong, what you basically need to know is that they are on the outs with the Chinese authorities and all of the backscatter you hear about 'the human rights record of China' can be quickly characterized as the news we get here in the States as the various brutalities heaped upon the Falun Gong. 

I was certainly aware that the Falun Gong was in this sort of trouble, but hearing Shen Yun present itself as the oppressed Falun Dafa, I figured there was more than one Falun the Red Chinese have beef with. Not putting the two together could be attributed to the Lawrence Welkian presentation of the matter. You could easily mistake the whole affair for a Sunday Matinee for families. It aint Sarafina! So as I write this without knowing the body counts for the Falun Gong it is a bit difficult for me to determine how forced are the smiles on the performers. But that is as it should be because despite the three or four expressly political narrative dances, there was a lot of performance to take in.

Most of the pieces were, from an analytical point of view rather energetically staid as can be expected of classical Chinese that was certainly composed to entertain royalty. I could get that feeling watching the various dances that these were very much of the sort designed to make you think 'aah these are my handsomest people, and see how they all dance in unison for me'. You would notice that they all had at least sevens and eights in their groups of dances. A soloist would never command the stage for more than a few moments, and romantic duets were rare as well. 

Nevertheless, the most memorable ensembles were those that set the modern students against the snaky agents who, covered in black, summoned themselves into wolfish crouching circles around brightly colored innocents. And so there it is as I left it without much more immediate curiosity about digesting Chinese history or current events. Instead I reflected on the oft repeated fact that Shen Yun is the largest troupe representing classic Chinese dance in the world. It illustrates the simple that the Chinese government is, in this regard, at war with itself. Nobody needs 500 years of recourse, much less 5000 given that actual progress does happen in 10 generations. There are limits to the logic of conservation. But still.

So Sue Me (Danger Will Robinson)

Classic:

Washington, Jan 6 (Reuters) - The American Bar Association president's suggestion that unemployed law-school graduates have no one to blame for their predicament but themselves elicited a range of reactions from law professors and administrators at a major law-school conference, with many expressing dismay at what they called insensitive and misguided remarks.

In an interview with Reuters Wednesday, William Robinson, who became ABA president last August, said, "It's inconceivable to me that someone with a college education, or a graduate-level education, would not know before deciding to go to law school that the economy has declined over the last several years and that the job market out there is not as opportune as it might have been five, six, seven, eight years ago."

Some at the conference of the Association of American Law Schools -- the largest annual gathering of law professors -- called the comments tactless.

"A lack of concern for law graduates -- or anyone, for that matter -- looking for a job in this economy smacks of questionable character," said Robert Ashford, a professor at Syracuse University College of Law who founded the AALS's Section on Socio-Economics, which focuses on economic issues in the legal profession and in legal education.

Others said Robinson was unfairly picking on students.

 

Pinker's Non-Violence

There's a great deal to say about this book and that's primarily because there's great deal in it. It is the kind of compendium of argumentation one would expect to come out of a single mind which correlates with a number of similar types of theorists but it defies common sense and theoretical plans in ways that make its own thesis mockable. Which is to say it's bound to be a controversial and important book for years to come as we come back to it rather in the same way we came back to Fukyama after 9/11.The thesis? Stop worrying about The Bomb because in just about every way you can measure, humanity has grown up and we are all non-violent now.

I've had just about all I can take of Pinker as he marches into the current events section late in the book. I may finish, but I've certainly read enough to find some extraordinarily good stuff. What Pinker has done in many ways is that he has justified just about everything I've considered in my eschewing the domestic noise over the body counts of the Civil Rights Movement as its justification. He has opened up the real can of facts about the thing I've been calling War TV - getting real about the body counts and the relative importance of mortality in estimating how much moral outrage is appropriate given the nature and history of war. So it's rather disappointing that he spends so much time exemplifying this and that in terms of gender and race relations in contemporary America rather than something socially much more world historical like the One Child Policy in China.

Pinker sometimes annoys me by confusing the map with the territory. Granted, you must not suspend disbelief as he goes through the statistics about violence - and he does so in every category in every country in which they are available, but when statistics fail to show motive he inserts his own narrative which I think tends to be overly progressive. Pinker also betrays a biased understanding of how history unfolds. He most definitely comes from the Great Man school. Have too recently read Esdaile's account of the Napoleonic Wars as well as several histories from Ferguson (Warburg, Civilization, Pity of War, Ascent of Money) most everything Pinker gives as a reason for conflict feels incredibly reductive. As well, he all too often falls into contemporary metaphor for example, citing Tom Lehrer's song "Who's Next" to describe the public's attitude towards nuclear proliferation. That's ok for bloggers. Not so much for historians.

To his great credit, Pinker eviscerates a good deal of wishful thinking and illustrates how attitudes and mental illusions cloud the way people interpret facts and news. I think that at an individual level, Pinker has got it nailed. But I don't think he does any justice to the ways and means by which polities express themselves and wield the powers that move the great powers. This is the missing piece in his narrative that I think moves too quickly from statistical correlations and causalities to conclusions about whys and wherefores. He has done, as far as I can tell, a very credible job in interpreting the statisics and analyses to which he has availed himself, but the arc of his story is far too ambitious to support the theory he proposes. Nevertheless, the entire subject of violence has been kicked up a notch and the challenges he presents to sociology is rather immense. Number one on this chart is his disabuse of the 'hydraulic theory' of violence - that every suppression of violent behavior in one segment of society or humanity must be countered by an escalation somewhere else, or that aggression suppressed boils under the covers only to explode somewhere else. In this, he explodes myths about war in Africa, the nature of rape and speculation about our long peace' lacuna, like the idea that WW3 is next.

Number Two myth that Pinker explodes is particularly salient. Pinker challenges the unquestioned association of violence with poverty. The argument is simple and clear. The third world remains poor, remains young and remains 'restlessly' male. But the incidence of civil wars change dramatically over time even though these 'structural variables' do not. 

What dampens my enthusiasm about Pinker's book is that I think he extrapolates a bit too far with his ideas about civilizing processes, specifically when making the case about nukes. His use of Hobbesian Leviathan ideas work in conjunction with his ideas about personal honor codes and self-help justice, but when he extends them to the progress made on nuclear disarmament I think he completely misses the boat. I think that it is entirely reasonable to give credit where credit is due with regard to nuclear disarmament and the failure of the Cold War to end in nuclear winter. And he is right to chastise the maintainers of the Doomsday Clock to change their criteria so that it's always a minute to midnight. But nuclear disarmament talks were the reason new regimes were set in place to make great power war less likely. Such diplomacy does not trickle down. So all the multifarious reasons the rape of women within the context of marriage has been criminalized has nothing to do with the multifarious reasons Russian troops did not engage American troops in Vietnam.

In short I don't see any overarching theory that can explain the reduction in violent human behavior than exactly the allegory he uses in his title. 'Better Angels'. There are too many specific angels to describe the whole heavenly host. And that is proper. Perhaps vio But where he goes to make the cases that he can are excellent and not to be missed. I do tend to agree that his theory ought to be 'The Nationalization of Violence' and spend more time examining the very specific ways that societies, cultures, groups and individuals disempower themselves of violent recourse for the sake of national identity - presicesly the give and take of individual sovereignty and the defense of rights. That would be a book we could sink our teeth into.(Because it would support or debunk a further explanation of why political philosophy does or does not work to reduce war.)

Because the social contract has changed so much between the 17th/18th century Europe and today in so many sovereign polities one cannot make much use of those statistics. But we could look at the trade offs between individual defense of liberties & honor codes vs those formalized by government powers in a variety of nations. I just felt throughout that South America just didn't figure into any of his calculations and the nature of the crimes perpetrated by dictators there in recent history were given short shrift merely because they didn't involve enough Europeans or interest enough European statisticians. So he had no narrative to make up and left power laws to describe all their conflicts.

So basically what you are left with is a chunky soup of a book that masquerades as a meal. Everything that is wrong with the book is everything wrong with aggregating micro and uneven distributions of statistics into a grand narrative that self-admittedly can make no predictions. It's almost a theory but more often than not sounds like wishful thinking in the gaps between very strong and pointed debunking arguments. If Pinker is the best in the world, he shows exactly how far we have to go to understand ourselves. If not, then he puts statistics to good use, and overuse showing why we need more historians like Esdaile and Furguson. 

Obama's Fascist Temptation Revisited

About four years ago, when I cared a great deal more passionately about the foolishishness of the American electorate I was stunned to discover a sort of childish petulance that needed to be slapped around, but was instead coddled by that rudderless gadfly who soon became the Democratic Nominee and then President. I had reasons to be somewhere between upset and merely despondant at the man himself, but I was clearly revolted and disgusted by his shallow partisans and their Black Eyed Peas remixes. I wondered out loud if a man who clearly had no political philosophy outside of expedience would take advantage of such a shallow set of questioners such as those lobbed to him by the mainstream press. You remember calling me shrill, don't you? Yes, because I used the same term as Jonah Goldberg.

Today I think is a good time to look back and play gotcha, and I'm going to do it with a particularly snarky article (this one by New York Magazine). Well, actually I'm not going to reprint it, except to excerpt the following bits.

Then why is Obama doing this to us?
Actually, Obama says he won't ever use the power to detain American citizens indefinitely, because, in his words, doing so "would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation."

So if he thinks the law is so bad, did he sign it as a prank? Ha ha, you thought I was going to shred the Constitution! That's pretty funny, actually. Not as good as the classic Elijah Wood episode ofPunk'd, but almost. 
Is MTV literally the only channel you watch?

Sometimes MTV2.
Obama actually threatened to veto the legislation at first, but after the language was softened enough that he could essentially ignore it, he signed it. Also, it was embedded in the National Defense Authorization Act, a larger bill that funded the military, and he couldn't very well appear as if he didn't want to fund the military, especially in an election year in which the GOP will likely try to portray him as some kind of peacenik.

But if he's not going to use it, then it's all good — no harm no foul.
Except that the next president might not have a problem with detaining American citizens indefinitely, and now that the bill is law, he or she will have the explicit authorization to do so.

There have got to be some smarter liberals out there than this fake dialog exemplifies, but it demonstrates the nature of what passes for political debate in major media. The essential gravity is that Obama is to be trusted but nobody else can be, when in fact it is clear that Obama was elected on the strength of his campaign's rhetorical opposition to just this sort of legislation. I understand that we're all supposed to be cynical about what politicians do and say, but reactionary cynicism is just as bad as ignorance; in either case you shutup and let injustice happen. 

The cost of abandoning the GWOT policy of GWBush is already manifest in the deteriorating situation in Iraq and there will be no simple way to arrest that. And I tend to believe that the significant Al Qaeda threat in America has been crippled to the point at which a strong President could ask Americans to keep calm and carry on. But ours is not the sort of President that asks average Americans to perservere, he sees himself as the deliverer of cosmic justice, a rescuer, a Robin Hood. And so this is how he selects to keep his halo lit.

This is the President who leads from behind the polling of the least thoughtful Americans, and he has squeezed every internet nickel from them with his populist slogans and ran the most expensive presidential campaign in history to conjure up the biggest government budget in history which creates the biggest deficit as a percentage of GDP in American peacetime. I wish he had a real political philosophy. That way we could hold the electorate more responsible to him by disciplining their expectations within the context of proven ways to run goverenment. But what we have is an electorate that has become trained to hew to the words of anyone sufficiently radical who casts doubts on the status quo without having a demonstrated and superior alternative with any philosophical or practical pedigree. It is a cycle of desparation rooted in unreality and only connected to the enthusiasm of the mob.

That is the road to fascism. The question is whether or not Obama can craft out something that disciplines the electorate to its benefit. If he cannot but continues his populist themes, he will have taken one step closer to "power of the people by any means necessary, embodied by me". 

Let's watch how he elbows through the next crisis and with what justifications.

The Stem Cell Psychosis

Every once in a while, I hear some smartass evangelical atheist try to convince people that GWBush initiated some great religious fanatic foreign and domestic policy. I keep my head of course, and mostly I have kept quiet. But it's getting a little tiresome and at this point I feel that it is necessary to kill the myth that Bush was anti-science based on his opposition to embryonic stem cell research. 

Myth: Bush was against stem cell research.
Fact: Bush was against federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Research on existing lines of embryonic stem cells was never curtailed.

Myth: Bush opposed embryonic stem cell research because of religious reasons.
Fact: Bush opposed embryonic stem cell research for moral & ethical reasons. 

Myth: Embryonic stem cell research was promising.
Fact: It promised, but did not deliver. As of 2006, there were 76 proven therapies using adult stem cells and zero from embryonic stem cells.

Myth: We can never know what we might have gained.
Fact: The ban was reversed by Obama in 2009.

Myth: Now science can proceed.
Fact: Pluripotency in human adult stem cells was bio-engineered in 2007. The presumed reason to use embryonic stem cells was their pluripotency. 

 

The Anti-Science Party

From The Atlantic

Behind Door #1 are people of extraordinary ability: scientists, artists, educators, business people and athletes. Behind Door #2 stand a random assortment of people. Which door should the United States open? 

In 2010, the United States more often chose Door #2, setting aside about 40,000 visas for people of extraordinary ability and 55,000 for people randomly chosen by lottery.

It's just one small example of our bizarre U.S. policy toward high-skill immigrants. Every year, we allow approximately 140,000 employment visas, which cover people of extraordinary ability, professionals with advanced degrees, and other skilled workers. The number is absurdly low for a country with a workforce of 150 million. As a result, it can be years, even decades, before a high-skilled individual is granted a U.S. visa. Moreover, these 140,000 visas must also cover the spouse and unmarried children of the high-skilled worker, so the actual number of high-skilled workers admitted under these programs is less than half of the total. Perhaps most bizarrely there is a cap on the number of visas allowed per country regardless of population size. How many visas are allocated to people of extraordinary ability from China, a country of over 1 billion people? Exactly 2,803. The same number as are allocated to Greenland.

What a surprise.

The Fungibles

Edited by M.D.C.Bowen last updated January, 2003

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The following is a list of the only black people that count in America. You know it, I know it, so let's just get over it and admit it. You want details of why? Check out the Isbell Theory below. You want it more scholarly like? Try Bell's Rules.

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OJ Simpson	Johnnie Cochran	Colin Powell	Thomas Sowell	Shelby Steele	Michael Jordan	John McWhorter	Bill Cosby	Condi Rice	JC Watts
Alan Keyes	Maxine Waters	Louis Farrakhan	Jesse Jackson	Al Sharpton	Khalid Muhammed	Cynthia McKinney	Spike Lee	Charles Barkely	Denzel Washington
Halle Berry	Barry Bonds	Willie Horton	Will Smith	Puff Daddy	Tupac Shakur	Cornel West	Skip Gates	Oprah Winfrey	Tiger Woods
Ward Connerly	Chris Rock

Each of these individuals represent some opinion, character flaw or character strength against which all African Americans are judged.

The Isbell Theory
Charles Isbell October 1995 
There is a Black Leadership vaccuum... but it's not for Black folks, it's for White folks. The leader and messiah being sought is *not* being sought by Black people, but by White people. The mainstream wants a national Black leader--a spokesperson really--so they can have someone to point to, someone to reason with, be angry at, hold onto, respect, hate or whatever, but make no mistake, it is a leader for *their* sakes, not for the sakes of Black people. By contrast, Black America is happy to go on being the non-monolithic people we've always been and to address our issues locally, individually and internally. I don't think we have a messiah fixation or a particular desire for a national leader.

Sure, Jackson is respected for having done something and some folks will follow him, but that does not a Black National Leader(tm) make, as should be obvious. Farrakhan is respected as the head of an organization that has shown some concern for the community and has actually made some inroads in addressing a particular set of problems and some folks will follow him, but so what?, that still does not a Black National Leader(tm) make. Colin Powell? Oh, please. Cochran? Oh, he won one for the gipper, but a spokesperson? Sorry, I don't want one, I gave at the office.

Having said that, I should point out that what Blacks do seem to searching for is a symbol--not a person--that makes our oppression clear. The Rodney King beating is a symbol that says "SEE! We told you about the cops!" but nothing more. Mark Furhman serves the same purpose. It is important to realize that this is a search for an event so powerful that White folks cannot ignore what we know is true; it is *not* a search for a leader, a Moses, a Messiah.

Now, to the extent that an individual can articulate our frustration, our fears and make the event clearer, we are grateful, but I don't think we're really searching for a person to do that because, well, there's no leadership vaccuum we need filled.

Why is all this important? Well, it says something about the way the nation views its Black population. We are, essentially, aliens, a group whose experiences, culture and world is so foreign--and monolithically so--that the rest of the country needs some person to bridge the perceived gap.

Sadly, there is a gap of perception, but there isn't a person who is going to articuate it for America and make it plain (especially since this isn't even what the country wants; the country wants a Black leader who will make Black people understand the country, not the other way around). The only way to fill this gap is to listen to the masses and what they are saying in common and in discord to you everyday, not to look for one voice to provide you with a soundbite. The only way to deal with this gap is accept your own responsibility in bridging it.

As to the MMM, its center role in all this is ironic. For Farrakhan, this may have been about White America--I don't know and I don't care, really--but for the rest of the folks there, this wasn't about White folks at all. It was about Black folks. I don't think we were sending a message to White America, though there is one there for White America, we were just talking amongst ourselves. America, we were just talking amongst ourselves.

 

A Nigerian, A Chinese & A German Walk Into a Bar

A Nigerian, A Chinese & A German walk into a bar. The bartender says to the Nigerian, what'll it be? The Nigerian orders a beer. The bartender says to the Chinese, what would you like? The Chinese has a glass of Merlot. The bartender says to the German, how can I help you? The German says 'Gin and tonic'.

Three American college professors in the corner argue for six hours about the significance of the difference of the questions and answers.

Plutocrats, Oligopoly & Insurance

One thing any Occupy squatter can tell you is that he hates the plutocrats. I can agree with that, I suppose. What's a plutocrat? I'm going to guess that a plutocrat is a crony capitalist who profits from lobbying Congress into granting him monopoly or oligopoly powers. In other words, he short-circuits free market competition by twisting the arm of government to grant him license are guarantee him business. 

I've always hated that. Why? Because I learned at a very young age that I needed car insurance. I thought I just needed a driver's license and a car.Then I learned that the police can stop you and ask you to prove that you have bought insurance and give you a ticket if you didn't have it. And so I had to pay, living in a redlined neighborhood, the rate that somehow every insurer agreed on was the proper rate for me living in 90016 at the age of 19.  So I grew up with an intense hatred of insurance companies - those government mandated entities that made it safe for people who had money for premiums to live their lives without risk along with those of us who had to deal with risk. In California, if you had 100,000 in liquid assets, you could self-insure. Pay up or avoid the cops. 

The resentment lasted into my 30s, I guess. But I started to wonder why mothers of gangbangers didn't take out life insurance policies on their sons, and other ways to game the system. I paid close attention to the changes in the law with regard to the new coverage called 'uninsured motorist' and then realized something new. Not only do insurance companies know that some people won't buy insurance, but they insure against that - and who pays? You guessed it. The insured motorist. 

But why is car insurance necessary anyway? When you think about it, it's because so many people buy cars on credit. If you wreck the car or even ding that rapidly depreciating object you possess but don't own, somebody wants to get their money back. That somebody, the finance company, doesn't really trust you not to wreck. Nowadays, some people even need payment insurance - you're not even trusted to pay the note. So it all gets back to trust, or I should say a lack of trust for the uninsured motorist. Or in my case, that realization, when some cholos rear-ended my Karmann Ghia on the Harbor Freeway, then fled the scene. There's all kinds of liability out there, and guess what? Shit happens.

What does any of this have to do with plutocrats and oligopolies? Somebody convinced the State Legislature in California that if it was going to have 15 million some odd drivers, and all the car dealers wanted to sell them cars on credit.. all of the dynamics I just explained. You can be sure the Automobile Insurers of California or whatever their name is, watchdogs that legislation. 

There is something inherently difficult about the insurance industry. If I had a million bucks, I wouldn't try to come up with actuarial tables and register with the Insurance Commission to do business in California. But somebody does, like that annoying Flo chick in her white nursey uniform and that obnoxious smarmy little gecko with the New Zealand accent, and that snarky cartoon babe with purple hair, not to mention that 32 bit animated general with the hat over his eyeballs. Oh wait, those are just corporate logos for Progressive, Geico, E-Surance and General, not the oligarchs themselves. I'd imagine there are almost no youth in America today who go to college and say that someday they want to be the CEO of a better insurance company than State Farm. Who thinks Prudential or The Hartford are sexy? Even when Farmers is building Los Angeles a new football stadium, that ain't sexy.

But you can't think about car insurance or car dealing or car financing or hit & run driving without thinking about all of that, and you can't really do anything new in that business without having a lot of expertise because ultimately it's about regulating human behavior around models of risk. Non-trivial to be sure. And did I mention lawyers? Do you have any idea how much legal procedure happens around car accidents, drunk drivers, underage drivers, vehicular manslaughter, hit and run and plain old grand theft auto? 

I wonder if Occupy doesn't mention anything about the insurance industry because they don't know, or they acknowledge it as a reasonable thing, or they don't have a cutesy epithet like 'bankster' for actuaries. The current administration said that health insurance for everyone ought to be the law of the land. As soon as he said that, I heard that angry voice of the 19 year old me being rejected at Mercury, the discount car insurance firm, just for being too young. Yeah, they have all the angles on car insurance figured out, and they have it figured out for every sort of insurance. Why? For the same reasons, we're all living on somebody else's credit and the system cannot afford the uninsured. 

The thing is, of course, that everyone can game the insurance business, and the wealthy can game the game and hedge against those who don't play. But that's all about how much risk you can stand. The fundamental question remains. Can you play in a risky world without insurance, or do you need an industry to help you get through a life with some legal recourse? Don't want to lose your house because you get sick? There's an insurance policy for that. Don't want to get your car repossesed after an accident? There's an insurance policy for that. Don't want to miss a payment on your credit card? Don't want to die broke? Don't want to have a cavity unfilled? There's an insurance policy for every peasant situation you can get yourself into. Hell, I should sell pepper spray insurance to protesters. 

Encampment as Political Free Speech

Pitching a tent in a public park is an act of defiance to whomever you're shouting at. But the campers at Zuccotti Park think that Wall Street is in close proximity. It is not. 

Dodd-Frank, the legislation that *will* change the way banks run their business, is not at Zuccotti Park and it doesn't live under a sheet of blue plastic. The Occupy crowd should learn this lesson, but they won't. 

Robert Reich crabwalks an argument in defense of the campers who have been ordered to vacate the premises. 

This tsunami of big money into politics is the real public nuisance. It’s making it almost impossible for the voices of average Americans to be heard because most of us don’t have the dough to break through. By granting First Amendment rights to money and corporations, the First Amendment rights of the rest of us are being trampled on. 

This is where the Occupiers come in. If there’s a core message to the Occupier movement it’s that the increasing concentration of income and wealth poses a grave danger to our democracy. 

First Amendment rights are not a zero-sum game. Political speech must merit attention and it must support principled action. What Reich conveniently disregards is that there is no 'Occupy Manifesto'. There's just a bunch of people who are 'concerned' and 'aware' and 'making their voices heard'. That and a toddler throwing sand makes you a parent. Billions of those, get in line. All of that free speech is going nowhere but into the microphones and videocameras of a few dozen media affiliates and ultimately into their editing rooms. None of it is coming out coherently as recommendations for appropriate regulatory reform. 

In short, the Occupiers are outgunned by real policy wonks. #OWS doesn't know where to find a real banking regulations expert and so have decided to use a sleeping bag instead. No matter how you slice it, 'We are the 99%' is not going to be the text of any of the real democratic politics that comes out of Washington to be enforced by the SEC. 

If such a Manifesto were made, vetted and circulated, instead of requests for cash and non-perishable food for campers, a real process could ensue. But that would require the kind of discipline and thought exemplified by the likes of Thomas Paine. "Hey hey! Ho ho!" doesn't cut it. And so they will fail.

The people, united, are always unrequited.
Zuccotti Park is blighted so they've been disinvited. 
Their movement's benighted and some should be indicted.
The law, they can't write it, and so they'll never right it. 

Now that they've been smited, will they keep trying to fight it?

 

Shut Penn State Football Down

I am a USC football fan, when they win. I'm glad to see anyone beat Ohio State or any school in Florids. I also happen to think that the NCAA has very little integrity. College football is big business and the kids should get their share, but they don't. When the NCAA jumps on the case of this or that star athlete getting money, they are ridiculously hypocritical. Any first year law student could figure out a more equitable business plan that pays student athletes in trust. This dilemma has been to me the most interesting thing about college football. Now that we've got outrageous criminal negligence institutionally protected at Penn St., there is now something much more compelling to think about. Now that Bishop Paterno has been defrocked, why not go after the Pope? Some time in the past year, there was some flack about the ex USC player who bought a car for his parents, and for this and other trivial reasons, USC has been eliminated from various parts of competition. Child's play. There is, at this time, in consideration of the allegations, no reason not to consider the most harsh punishment in the history of the NCAA In the cards for Penn State. The witch hunt should not stop. Statistically speaking, I find it difficult to believe that US colleges are significantly different with regard to such abuses than the population at large, or the Catjolic Church. Think about it.

Every Old Building Has Cracks

If you asked me last week who Joe Paterno was, I would only know two things: football and legend. I wouldn't have been able to if he was alive or dead or if he coached college or pro. What I know now is that he, being a legend, is in the minds of people who believe he should know everything, connected to the latest sex scandal to occupy the MSM. 

So there's a new story to add to the old story. Something more for the peasant Americans to know. And I am beginning to feel more weary about what we all must know, given the state of today's communications networks, and optimistic about the next economy.

What I understand is that it must be inevitable that we will sell each other our dreams. That there is a fundamental biological need for us to hear each other's voices and share each other's company, but that with a sophisticated enough computer sytesm, human company can be simulated. And so we will pay to have 'someone' pay attention to us forever. Long after the last tree has been chopped down and we get power from the heat in the center of the planet, we will enjoy life in a Matrix of our own creation. But in the meantime, we are scandalized by real human failure which is the truth that's stranger than fiction and therefore more compelling. 

it's because I'm looking to that inevitable post-material future 150 years away that it is easy for me to be dismissive at this particular moment. Paterno is old news. He's an old brick building that everyone thought was solid. But his cracks made him suited for condemnation, and so he will be demolished. 

Paterno is no Caligula. Relatively speaking his drama is merely that. It is not world historic, but it rocks some people's worlds. Some people will shake their heads belieiving now that if it is true that Paterno was involved in a pedophilic homosexual prostitution scheme, that anything is possible. Anything has always been possible, but we build up legends around men so that we can believe that only a few things are possible. But you forget Caligula. 

I don't hope anything either way for this football legend. I only hope for justice to be done. 

Free Speech [Not] in Hollywood

The NYTimes has permission to flash me messages. So they flashed me a message informing me that Eddie Murphy will not be the host of the Oscars. My first reaction before reading the story was that perhaps he has come down with a heinous illness. That would be sad, because now that Heavy D is gone, Murphy remains one of the few icons I associate with my youth and the real culture I lived. That's an odd sentiment and somewhat multicultural, but I was just thinking this morning about how unfunny Gilda Radner was upon retrospect. In fact, I remember a whole lot of time I spent trying to laugh along with Coneheads consuming mass quantities of beer. It's not that I didn't get it, but how long can that be funny? it can't. So if you ask me, Saturday Night Live was where comedians went to grow tired and still have an audience, and in that regard stands well in the tradition of Cats and other perennial Broadway shows for the benefit of the sort of tourist who thinks Chevy Chase was awfully good looking. Don't get me started about Caddyshack.

Eddie Murphy, on the other hand, had the quality of genius comedy that was truly rare, discounting as we must his ability to exploit every stereotype known to black man. Still, he turned them on their heads enough times to keep me in stitches. Murphy stands with Billy Crystal, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Sam Kinison and Steven Wright as one of the best. I should do a top 20 list one of these days. But the point about Murphy is that he brought black American comedy up to date and into the mainstream. He changed what American comedy could do and say as profoundly as Bruce, Pryor and Carlin before him. It's sorry to see how many sad imitators came after him. Murphy knew he made profanity look easier and funnier that it was and that his gift was greater than vulgarity.

The reason Murphy quit the Oscars was because his business partner, Brett Ratner who was a co-producer of the Oscar show, got booted over a tempest over his language. The Daily Mail gives us some clues:

Ratner used a pejorative term to describe gay men in response to a question asked at a screening of his latest movie.

In his apology he said sorry 'for any offense my remarks caused,' adding that the slur was 'a dumb and outdated way of expressing myself.'

He said that 'as a storyteller I should have been much more thoughtful about the power of language and my choice of words.'

Initially Sherak said Ratner's remarks were 'inappropriate' - but said the academy had no plans to remove him from his Oscar-producing position.

On Monday, Ratner also recorded an expletive-laden interview with shock jock Howard Stern.

In the revealing interview, he discussed oral sex, masturbation and the size of his testicles.

He admitted he was stunned he had never impregnated anyone because of his virility: 'How lucky I am that I never got a girl pregnant. It's crazy.'

He boasted a doctor had told him he had 10 times the sperm count of an average man his age.

He also claimed he asked Lindsay Lohan to get an STD test when they allegedly slept together when she was 19.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2059531/Eddie-Murphy-quits-host-Academy-Awards-wake-Brett-Ratner-scandal.html#ixzz1dEsl6l8g

This is an action by what is popularly known as Hollywood's Gay Mafia. They have big toes and one is well-advised not to step on them. Note the carefully worded apologies, if you can stomach that sort of thing.

I only stop to mention this sort of fake high-mindedness to note how important things other than property have become amongst those who have it. Again, I am about halfway through Niall Ferguson's 'Civilization: The West and the Rest' and he is discussing the failed revolution of Simon Bolivar and the way in which the different attitude towards property and franchise were dealt with in North and South America. The key and important matter of civilization is that property owners not be dispossessed of their good for arbitrary reasons outside of the law. So is hosting an awards show about free speech? No. It's a private affair hosted by wealthy people and attended by wealthy people. So they can pick and choose. But neither the anonymous homosexuals nor were Ratner & Murphy's rights abridged. This is just a courtly bitchfight nothing of which has any standing in a real civilized court.

I look at the powers that be in Hollywood and the current mediasphere knowing with growing certainty that they will not be disintermediated so much as marginalized in the new greater economy of literacy that the internet is providing. Fewer people will care about the Oscars, and more people will see with transparency the hypocrisy of those who pretend to defend the honor and integrity of homosexuals. You will hear that the recusals will be about rights, but they are only about image.

Murphy will get the benefit of my doubt as someone who is fed up with the charade. I'm going to check out Dennis Miller's opinion on the matter as well.

Herman Cain & The $5 Racial Bet

Today, I don't know, and I presume that America doesn't know the race of the woman who accused Herman Cain of sexual harrassment. It should stay that way forever because the matter never rose to a prescuted criminal matter. However,  American politics and media being what it is will inevitably draw this person into the eye of the media storm.  

So what will America think? It depends on the race of the woman in question. Bet on it.

Spank!

posted without comment.

Herman Cain's America: Eyeglasses, Moustaches & Cigarettes

About four years ago, I had a belly laugh. It was the first time a candidate for president made me crack up. The moment belonged to Fred Thompson on the occasion of him putting his foot in the butt of Michael Moore on health care. It was practically Churchillian in flavor. Unfortunately Thompson had none of Churchill's luck or longevity and fell over.

It was not the first time I had marked my sentiments for the time when America would tire of slick politicians and think about somebody with a moustache. As sick as I get of dainty utopians and their manicured dreams, I knew some kind of catastrophe would be necessary for Americans to finally elect somebody with real working class credentials. When they elected Obama, I could only hope his disaster would show Americans finally to get rid of slick, fast-talking, Ivy League, pontificators. I want an America confident enough in itself to vote for a Mike Ditka instead of some Armani role-model. I want an American president who drinks Jack Daniels.

This is an advertisement that I thought I'd never see in my lifetime. Non-slick. Non-corny. Maybe America has learned its lesson. This will be a lightning strike across the land. I think it could very well make Herman Cain the inheritor of Sarah Palin's mob, and another little bit of my heart.

Obama the Hack

David Brooks. Him say

Obama faced a choice. Double down on conciliator mode or become a fighter. Think of the latter as the Bibi Netanyahu strategy: since I have no negotiating partner I’m going to come out swinging in a way that pleases my base.

If Obama were a Republican, he could win with this sort of strategy: Repeat your party’s most orthodox positions and then rip your opponent to shreds. Republicans can win a contest between an orthodox Republican and an orthodox Democrat because they have the trust in government issue on their side.

Democrats do not have that luxury. The party of government cannot win an orthodox vs. orthodox campaign when 15 percent of Americans trust government. It certainly can’t do it presiding over 9 percent unemployment. It’s suicide.

Yet this is the course the Obama campaign has chosen. He’s campaigning these days as the populist fighter, the scourge of the privileged class.

That makes him easy to beat, actually. Obama cannot win a second term on his record, and he can't win by promising to be a healer again. He needs a miracle, which could only be delivered by the continued abject poverty of spirit in the Republican candidates.

Occupy Jupiter

Bork's Unsurpassed Ugliness

Adam Serwer is pulling a fast one. Beware. 

Him say that Bork be opposing Civil Rights. Why? Because, according to Sewer, Bork says the Civil Rights law was 'unsurpassed ugliness'.

Here's what Bork actually said almost fifty years ago. Read it slowly.

“The principle of such legislation is that if I find your behavior ugly by my standards, moral or aesthetic, and if you prove stubborn about adopting my view of the situation, I am justified in having the state coerce you into more righteous paths. That is itself a principle of unsurpassed ugliness.”

If you are any part of the American Right, then you know that the government is not the sole and ultimate guarantor of social justice. It is in fact, the people. Or as the Left likes to say, 'the community'. aka 'the 99%'. Why do the 99% need the state to coerce *themselves* into more righteous paths? It's a kind of throwaway assumption that everything, including the people, needs to be regulated. 

Axiomatically, according to the old tired stale wrong Political Correctness, the people need to be regulated because they are White. But more importantly, if this statement by Bork is to be properly interpreted as Serwer does, then the implication is that Civil Rights legislation as it went to Congress was not about a true defense of the only rights we have, as Russell Kirk would inform us, but rather the legalized enforcement of a popular opinion of some moral dimension. That truly is ugly.

Joe Nocera adds balance.Why? Because Romney likes Bork. And for the record, I believed that Bork was railroaded as I saw it happen back in the day. 

American Spring (October Edition) & OWS Update

I have been thinking about how awful I would be to the hippies of OWS. But then I would only be throwing rotten tomatoes. They like vegetables, right?

Of course everybody who is 'occupied' is not a hippy. But I cannot seem to get out of a particular bubble. I think my G+ account has been spammed to that crowd. I know, unsubscribe. But I need to know what everybody thinks. Nevertheless, I've been thinking about the nature of this protest and comparing it to the LA Riots, where people were ready to burn down buildings. Well, actually they did burn down buildings. That's the level of street action that gets results. Militancy. 

So now the Kadaffi is dead, it's probably a good time to take inventory and compare America to the Middle East. 

Iraq: Saddam: Dead
Libya: Kadaffi: Dead
Egypt: Mubarak: Deposed
Yemen: Saleh: On the ropes.
Pakistan: lots of dead ex-leaders

In good old Washington DC, Barney Frank is still chilling, and journalists like Wolf Blitzer are looking mighty fine in their silk suits.

The Tea Party has been shown up a little bit. But their ruckus has been a bit more long in the tooth than the new OWS peasants. My favorite stories from OWS ground zeroes reveals that my cynicism has gotten the better of my skepticism. In one, some dude with felony warrants was hanging out in a tent at Z. Park because he knew he could score drugs and get free food. In another, some poor fool woman who thought she could just go out and sleep in the same tent with a stranger was sexually assaulted. 

Tangentially, there's a big CNN story about how many Americans end up behind bars in the Prison Industrial Complex. There's a reason for that: we have lower tolerance for people who have felony warrants and sexual assault. In other countries, those people are free to roam the streets. 

So I continue to compare OWS to football. Football is still producing more concussions and injuries. Football is still getting more people to yell and shout in a community. Football is still producing more concrete winners and losers that people can objectively track on a weekly basis. 

I hear that the movement is planning a bank run on BAC. That is really interesting. I wanna see how well they do. I heard from Rick Santelli recently because I was on East Coast time. But I don't have time for his pith. That's a long show - too long to record and watch.

Natural Beauty

This is not America. This is Chile. 

Do you know why this could not be America? 

Jaded Old Farts & The Need for 'Creativity'

I'm not sure that world needs more ballet dancers, but I'm more convinced that we don't need the sort we would get out of public schools. It is absolutely true that the architecture of public education is industrial but so are most of the jobs as 'jobs'. I mean if you want to get 'a job' then public education will get you that.

I'm not sure where he's going with all that. I mean lolcat pictures are creative and enormously popular. We're not missing out. Has there ever been a kind of music you wish you could hear but nobody was making and you couldn't get? Has there ever been a kind of recipe that you wished you could eat but nobody knew? Was there ever a sort of dance move you needed to see but nobody could perform? Exactly what kind of creativity are we lacking for? We obviously have the sort that imagines a planet without humans flourishing in 50 years. Do we need that sort?

I think that the lecturer imagines that human beings are infinite. We are not. Food still tastes good. Sex still feels good. Music still sounds good. Football is still good fun to watch. You don't have to experiment with all that - unless you're a wealthy jaded old fart bouncing around to international conferences telling jokes (about 7 year olds) to a bunch of other wealthy jaded old farts, and their bohemian spoiled children in their obscure fashions. Creativity is natural human expression. We get enough and don't need to be educated about how to be creative.

Art, on the other hand… well that's a different matter.

Just Another Riot

For reference from the Army Manual on Civil Disturbances:

1-32. A riot is one or more groups or individuals who are part of a larger crowd that involves threats of violence against persons or property. In some cases, a crowd will continue to gather until it evolves into a riot.

1-33. Riots vary considerably in both targets and players. A communal riot, for instance, deals with deep-seated ethnic, religious, and language differences. Commodity riots involve an attack on property by acts of vandalism, looting, and arson. Protest riots, such as the riot around the World Trade Organization (WTO) Assembly in Seattle, Washington (30 November 1999), illustrated individuals and groups aggressively and sometimes violently acting out or voicing their opposition to the assembly. The Democratic Convention in Chicago, Illinois, in 1968 reflects a riot that directly targeted police and authority in general. Celebration riots occur across the US as a result of home team victories in sporting events, among other reasons. Celebrating crowds look to make the moment more memorable through raucous acts that demonstrate their joy or happiness, for example, the riots that took place in Chicago in 1992 as a result of the Chicago Bulls winning the National Basketball Association (NBA) Championship.

1-34. Commanders and leaders must be aware that highly organized groups of protesters and/or demonstrators have developed tactics to disrupt the control force. These crowd tactics were published in handbooks for communist organizers during the Cold War, and today the Internet contains sites that are devoted to sharing these tactics with the general public and various protest groups. Although these tactics are somewhat outdated, commanders and leaders must be aware of them and their potential consequences. Many of these groups, such as anarchists, often mock the tactics employed against large crowds; for example, they may identify the police as “Darth Vader Cops” when the control force response is in full riot control gear. Commanders must be aware that well-organized crowds may attempt to engage the control force, surround it, and overpower it by sheer numbers. To avoid this, commanders must do a detailed terrain analysis (intelligence preparation of the battlefield [IPB]) of the area to include all approach and exit routes in the area. The control force flanks have to be protected to avoid being enveloped by the mob. To avoid being enveloped, the on-site commander should keep the crowd at a comfortable distance from the control force formation, which is usually the lethal zone of his NL munitions. Establishing predetermined rally points for the control force is critical in the event that this type of tactic is used by the crowd. 

 

Is That What You Want?

Campus Republicans at Cal Berkeley make a point. A good point.

Quote of the Day

It doesn’t occur to liberals that there are problems for which solutions might not exist; the notion that cultures and countries may suffer from tragic flaws does not enter into consideration, because if that were true, there would be no need for liberals.
-- Spengler

Whispered Words of Wisdom

When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, 
speaking words of wisdom, let it be. 
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me, 
speaking words of wisdom, let it be. 

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be. 
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be. 

And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree, 
there will be an answer, let it be. 
For though they may be parted there is still a chance that they will see, 
there will be an answer. let it be. 

Let it be, let it be, ..... 

And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light, that shines on me, 
shine until tomorrow, let it be. 
I wake up to the sound of music, mother Mary comes to me, 
speaking words of wisdom, let it be. 

--

I've been hearing that Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul a stupid question. Now you know the answer they all got, but this is the way to think about it, that is if you're a liberal and don't want to be accused of hatefulness.

Andre Carson: Strike Two

Well, now I know the dude who has been making the noise about the Tea Party being racist. He might not have been the dude last week, but he's The Dude now. It's Andre Carson, Dem rep from Indiana. And doubleplus this. He's a muslim. Wait. That's not all. His grandmother had his seat before - he's a legacy. And of course he's the reason that Allen West is considering dropping out of the CBC.

First of all, West should stay in the CBC and take Carson down. IE he should make the CBC choose between the two of them. 

Now what is Carson doing that's so outre? He's amping up his claim that the Tea Party's politics are racially motivated using incendiary language. If it weren't for Breitbart and West, this would go on like the Monty Python witch trial, full of sound, fury and absurity. But now the stakes are put up or shutup. That's because this is #2 for Carson.

It turns out that Andre Carson was the individual personally responsible for the claim that he was called a nigger fifteen times at a Tea Party rally last April. Breitbart offered anybody $100K to prove it, and Carson backed down. 

I suspect that Carson will get another chance before some child along the parade route points out that he's naked and all the people say, oh yeah he actually is naked. Still, there are already 2033 comments at Politico.com. 

My, aren't we racealicious this week?

It Bears Repeating

The Obvious Other Side

Rose and her colleagues conducted four different studies that included surveys and observations of nearly 2,000 children and adolescents. The researchers found that girls had positive expectations for how talking about problems would make them feel, such as expecting to feel cared for, understood and less alone. On the other hand, boys did not endorse some negative expectations more than girls, such as expecting to feel embarrassed, worried about being teased, or bad about not taking care of the problems themselves. Instead, boys reported that talking about problems would make them feel "weird" and like they were "wasting time."

Males believe discussing problems is a waste of time, MU study shows

Sticks and snails and puppy dog tails. Boys like to talk about car crashes and who could beat between Batman and Superman. Boys like to talk about how they got that scar on their shin and that enormous turd left on Mr. Green's lawn by that stray dog. Boys like to talk about blood and guts and death. Girls don't. 

It's not that boys don't like to talk about problems or their feelings, it's that that somebody decided that boy problems and feelings were inherently stupid and uncivilized. So which university is going to publish that study? Do you want to know how that makes me feel? Hmm. It makes me feel like smashing somebody's head into a wall - either that or having a big bowl of Capn' Crunch at 10:30pm. 

Lady P From London

Pauline Pearce has here moment of courage:

The Viral

The Considered

Begging Questions of Medical Ethics

This afternoon I read about seven medical experiments that medical folks secretly wish they could do. I love the little para in Wired Magazine that's part of the intro. 

Most scientists will assure you that ethical rules never hinder good research—that there’s always a virtuous path to testing any important hypothesis. But ask them in private, perhaps after a drink or three, and they’ll confess that the dark side does have its appeal. Bend the rules and some of our deepest scientific conundrums could be elucidated or even resolved: nature versus nurture, the causes of mental illness, even the mystery of how humans evolved from monkeys. These discoveries are just sitting out there, waiting for us to find them, if only we were willing to lose our souls.

What is at the bottom of the nature vs nurture argument, I contend, is an answer not worth pursuing. Because why? Because ethically speaking, we already understand what Aldous Huxley made abundantly clear in 1931, of the fundamental injustice of eugenics. And we should understand that 'universal' health care need only provide the basics to be of great benefit to society, despite the ridiculous overreach America will soon be paying for. 

That's the essential point. 

I want to try a perverse point, which is that the rich and powerful will go burn babies alive if they're convinced it will prolong their wealth, power, life etc. So the scientist might as well go whole hog. You see, I distrust the ethics of the mechanism that brings the fruits of such knowledge to the masses with its false modesty and utilitarian promises. 

Cow Clicker

It has been over a year since I last played Mafia Wars. I collected billions of stuff, and I think it has one truly great educational aspect. As you collect millions of dollars a day, you recognize how big a trillion dollars truly is. Aside from that, I follow Ian Bogost to keep my head straight about what is and is not a waste of braincells with regard to gaming. 

His Cow Clicker is a classic meme. Know it.

People of (Armed) Quality

My current understand of Seventeenth Century Europe is fundamentally complete thanks to Neal Stephenson. What strikes me most interestingly now is the extent to which their problems with matters of succession and civil society were much more intractable than ours. Obviously they had to wait until their monarch died, or in the case of Charles I, was executed. But in the meantimes, there were large segments of society that appeared to get on in their diehard partisanships without the benefit of an electoral, or fund raising process. 

I am always astonished by what I see as the credulity of middle class Westerners who expect corporate responsibility. I myself has been part of that large crowd who believed that large groups of literate people could affect change through the aggregation of will into integral institutional power. Accent on the word integral. Corporate institutions lack integrity by definition - it is because they are not truly capable of tyranny. At the same time corporate business is, in its neoliberal evolution, becoming a more group-thinky comfortable place for literate people, and a more wishy-washy gathering of marketmakers. How does this happen?

My short answer is that the nature of today's collaborative white-collar work specializes people into sublimation and takes away their ability to get the gestalt of their business. People are reduced to working within a narrow context of human experience and lose the ability to make judgments. We live in a society that increasingly says 'Dont try this at home' and among individuals who more often say 'That's above my pay grade'. I wouldn't go so far as to say we're being infantilized.. how about juvenalized?

So I am attracted to the idea of minimum rulesets and 'empowered' individuals. I use the term 'empowered' because I think a broad spectrum of people understand that it means giving people leeway to carry out decisions they heretofore were not allowed. I put it in quotes because I don't believe in 'empowerment'. 'Empowerment' is affirmative action, a staircase you are pointed to, a promotion within a fixed structure, and one can be empowered a thousand times without really gaining power. It is the removal of the rulesets and leaving people to their own devices and consequences that sets men free, not showing them how to polish their resume and get to the next level. 

It is this concept of People of Quality that intrigues me because there is an implied presumption that they were free to do as they pleased. An armed gentleman was expected to take his own life into his hands, and live by his word, not so much by his pledges of allegiance to abstract laws. People of quality conducted themselves as humble and obedient servants of the wills of people to whom they gave their word. Or at least that's the flavor I get. 

My atheist friends would remind me how clearly this feudal arrangement of lordship followed a hierarchy up to God, and that the sort of implicit hierarchy that people of quality maintained could not be broken - thus reducing the peasantry to immutable lowness. Tying all that to matters of birth and blood (as manipulated as that could get) put even greater restraint on those not well-born, favored or talented. Who indeed could defy those with the superior understanding of the Word of God? It is no wonder the Protestant Revolution was so bloody. 

At any rate I am taken by the prospect that people of armed quality retain the same relationship to peasants and to the law as ever, and that the fear and loathing men who would have their own weapons and their own Bibles making themselves accountable to only those they want, and not some altruistic common good of the masses - this fear and loathing is nothing more than peasants have always felt towards the gentry. Now dig that you NPR slurpers.

The Tea Party Downgrade

"They did it, not me."
-- Obama Administration

So.. let's see if I understand this correctly. The biggest grass roots political movement in the past 20 years names itself Taxed Enough Already. They elect people to Congress beating other candidates who said we can raise taxes. Their representatives gain a majority in the House based on that simple idea, don't raise taxes, and our brilliant president thinks he can pass a law raising taxes so that he doesn't have to cut government back so much. The president fails to win a negotiation against this political force and so he throws up his hands and says they control things, not me. I'm sure the President's supporters still call that kind of rhetoric leadership. 

I know. Obama really didn't see it coming. They were so busy listening to Tina Fay's charicature of Sarah Palin that they thought they could just browbeat those 'teabaggers' into submission. They thought they could make jokes about Boehner and that the House would cave in to Obama's aura and do his bidding. 

Maybe he thought it would be just another Obamacare. Or maybe he thought SEAL Team Six would do him a favor of some sort. Or maybe he thought that if he could show some profit from TARP, he'd make his point about stimulus and everybody would come around. 

I think America is waking up to the idea that this set of ugly, nasty, stupid, foul citizens who say 'keep your hands out of my pockets, bitch' are serious, and they're not backing down. Not for nobody. 

 

A Provocative Thought About MLK's Legacy

Whenever the Republican Party quotes Martin Luther King Jr. about character versus skin color, there is an odd reaction. It suddenly occurred to me that the net of that reaction is that would be defenders of King against 'co-optation' by the Right launch immediately into the histrionics about the Poor People's Campaign and King's weighing in against the War in Vietnam. So when the Right gets King's message about race correctly, enemies of the Right are quick to move the goalposts - well, they say, King wasn't ultimately about race.

So what was he about? The answer must inevitably be socialism. Which makes credible, some limited degree of McCarthyism against him. Do you see where I'm going here? 

If the enemies of the Right must backtrack on their racial premises of King's legacy, they justify the argument long made but never accepted that opposition to him was not singly a racist complaint. 

On the other hand, one could more credibly say that King was a pacifist. A turn the other cheek kinda guy. But then that blunts the interpretation of his 'not fearing any man' in his last days signalling some possible alliance with the Black Power movement. 

Either complicated way, you simply cannot deny the fact that the American Right is not defined by racism.

Double A

I am troubled by the prospect that Obama will become the first President to get smacked down by Moody's, then again, what's Moody's. America is still the most powerful and richest nation on the planet, it's just a pitiful shame that this knucklehead President was so blind to think he could put on brakes and have no plan whatsoever for accelleration. 

"I just want to share the wealth." will go down in history as one of those moments in which the President's facility with that economic thing we are is proven to be woefully inadequate. 

Boehner is demonstrating that he can't add either. Apparently his plan, now accounted for by the CBO, doesn't even meet his own criteria. He's about to be a day late and a couple hundred billion short. Thursday is voting time, and Harry Reid, super-genius has got several crates of Acme products just a-waitin'. 

In the meantime, I just read a remarkable story about a man with an 800 FICO score, 30K in the bank and 20% down was not approved by Wells Fargo for a condo loan. We are back, ladies and gentlement. Back to 1981 - well, not quite yet. We don't see the inflation yet, but we are in those days of liquidity crisis. And guess what, you don't get no credit, suckas.

My man David Goldman tells us that Moody's is the company for people to lazy and/or inept to do their own credit analysis, and those that know already know and have hedged appropriately. When America goes AA, we'll still be America, and the deals we will do, we will do. This is the realpolitik that Obama is expecting he can play, like the rest of the Social Democrats who find nothing particularly upsetting about banking on the IRS' abillity to collect rain or shine. 

The IRS will be hacked. 

That's what happens in banana republics. Realpolitik and deals will be done because of powers that will force them to be done. To hell with merit. We don't even talk that language any longer. Once upon a time, there were no gambling casinos in California and we approved them for the tax money. Once upon a time there was no lottery in California and we approved it for the tax money. Today marijuana and same sex marriage await their day in the legal sun. Tax it! That makes it OK, so goes the logic. That's Double A ball. Bush league thinking. 

The Meaning of A Punch In The Nose

For a long time, I have had the category 'A Punch in the Nose'. I use this blog category to virtually slap around some idea or activity that I find distasteful, immoral or stupid. But it has deeper associations for me. 

I happen to be one of those people who firmly believes that a certain amount of chivalry is necessary. By chivalry, I mean a code of honor among free men that allows them to adjudicate matters of dispute independently of institutions of law. The aim is not to counter the law, but to uphold its spirit without enduring its tedium and expense. 

Americans remain fascinated by television shows that dramatize small claims courts. I've watched a few episodes of Judge Judy and Judge Joe Black and I sense that the intended audiences are to bring their own judgments into sharper relief. Watching is an ethical exercise. We all judge. Do we judge well?

If a society is to have liberty then there must be balance between the freedom of the individual and the oversight of the republic. I sometimes question whether American society is sufficiently grounded, on the whole, with the proper amount of good sense to uphold a reasonable common law in the breach of official enforcement. It is not that I think we are essentially too barbarian. On the contrary, I think we have accepted too much policing and lawyering, and having done so atrophied our native civil abilities. Because of this long held belief on my part, I have always been of the opnion that a punch in the nose is better than a lawsuit. If I would have my way, the blood in the streets of America would come more from fists than from billy clubs. 

I readily admit that it is a complicated matter. Between the extremes of Hobbes and Rousseau, I can be a bit confused. Let me go back... 

For your edification, I grew up in what I would call a 'knuckle-up' neighborhood. One in which bicycles were abused in the manner that give birth to what we now call 'extreme sports'. There was a certain amount of violent action in several dimensions of life that we no longer find socially acceptable, for one simple example, roller derby. My theory is that the suppression of this acceptable level of violence and action has changed our patterns of dealing with risk. IE people who feel safe because they wear helmets might drive faster, or having eliminated risk in one area of activity balance it out with a completely new risky activity. My own one-off experience says that people who grew up with Tom Sawyer's expectation of and experience with fistfights doesn't generally need to go rock-climbing for adventure. And my own slightly biased opinion is that people trade sex for violence  - which is to say we have traded away a society where arguments could be settled with a chivalric punch in the nose instead have one in which the most childish disputes engage attorneys.

If it can be said that I prefer a masculine society, then I must agree.  

 

 

 

Relationships & Veiled Language

Appropos the Skepchick.

The Conservative Populist Movement

Ah. Now we're getting somewhere. Last week David Brooks wrote:

If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred billion dollars of revenue increases.

A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things without putting any real crimp in economic growth.

The party is not being asked to raise marginal tax rates in a way that might pervert incentives. On the contrary, Republicans are merely being asked to close loopholes and eliminate tax expenditures that are themselves distortionary.

This, as I say, is the mother of all no-brainers.

But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

And I agree with him. In response to the populism of the Obama campaign, Republicans everywhere have let their inbred cousins have the podium, and keep the podium. The Tea Party, as I was reminded this morning is now and should be henceforth known as the Populist Right, or at least that's what I'm going to call it, and Cobb readers know how much I dislike populists. 

The Populist Right has really failed to do anything impressive and while I've not been following as closely as I normally might, I don't expect to be pleasantly surprised when I bother to look. The oncoming train is the $4 billion a day shortfall that somebody in government is going to have to start dealing with. I've been saying that the only way our current crop of politicians will fix this is after it collapses beyond repair. And those Americans who were responsible for electing the current crop of retards are those who are going to reap this whirlwind.

I can already see, in a larger sense, how the smart money has left the building. How over the next several years the pain of inflation is going to kill so much middle class optimism. How understanding economics now is going to make a huge difference for my children, and how sorry the situation will be for all those who don't. 

The Populists on both sides have it all wrong, and I expect their identity politics to continue. They will be rioting in the streets in a few years. 

Kizzy Wanted to Get Married

I'm allowed to say that, but maybe you aren't.

I Remember That Sarah

The Undefeated Teaser Trailer from Dain Valverde on Vimeo.

Irksome Nosy Moral Dainty Persons

There's somebody preaching gentleness from a blog with a heart symbol in the title. She writes: 

Here's a better list:

• To feed the hungry;
• To give drink to the thirsty;
• To clothe the naked;
• To harbour the harbourless;
• To visit the sick;
• To ransom the captive;
• To bury the dead.

• To instruct the ignorant;
• To counsel the doubtful;
• To admonish sinners;
• To bear wrongs patiently;
• To forgive offences willingly;
• To comfort the afflicted;

In the real world, those acts of mercy can take many, many forms. Perhaps you'll find him ladling soup in a homeless shelter. That would be an easy one to spot. Or maybe he's the young medical student who circles back after a long day of work to read stories to the pediatric patients. Maybe he's the guy who listens patiently as his grandfather goes on and on about a distant memory not quite still within his reach. Or maybe he's the one who's working fulltime and getting his degree because he dreams of a large family and wants the means with which to support them. Is he the guy next door? The one who "only" goes to Sunday Mass, but who also cheerfully picks up two young soccer players and drives them to practice three times a week because their mom is bedridden? And all the while, in the car, he is their friend. Their real friend. A strong shoulder to lean on in a time of crisis at home. Just a real good guy. Look for a real good guy. Someone who will journey with you.

This is somebody who did not grow up where there are street gangs. Which means there are either no streets, or there are cops and/or soldiers who pacified them. Aside from the annoyance such people provide me as they luxuriate in the convenience of all that is, there is a significant problem with this philosophy: it requires a vengeful defense. It requires a hegemonic overlord. It requires the extermination of rebellion without which, the Morlocks win.

I am not saying that these are improper values, but I'm disagreeing with Shakespeare when he says that the quality of mercy is not [con]strained. Mercy does not come cheap. It comes out of the goodness of a well-fed heart. And we must always be aware of how to feed those hearts, and at what price they are defended. When it comes to the care bear extremes, we enable the defensive Beast. 

I remain in the middle of my re-reading of the Baroque Cycle, just having finished a Tom Clancy and the new Seal Team Six memoir of Wasdin. I know why I'm harsh. But I wonder if such nosy moral dainty people know how much they need harsh troops.

 

We know what causes people to doubt the existence of God, or grace, or human kindness. But we should also and equally understand what give people strength from those same things. We are naturally reactive and accepting of all of the qualities of human character. What's troublesome is the idea that we can engineer it for any size society, when in fact we cannot.

I want you to think about nationalism and patriotism, and I want you to doubt it for a moment. In fact, I want you to understand how a built-up aversion to nationalism and patriotism works in your favor. It's a bit counter-intutitive, but it depends upon your actual independence. I want you to imagine that you are a millionaire and that you don't care about patriotism - rather like George Soros but not so extreme. Some terrorist destroys the Statue of Liberty. Your reaction is indifference. What you will be is one vote in favor of not engaging the wrath of 150 million Americans. Do you get it? The Statue of Liberty means nothing to you because you don't need it. You need almost nothing from those things America promises to Jane Doe. Your identity is not wrapped up in such small gifts. Your byline is 'What do you mean we?'

You don't want Sam Jackson to torture the terrorist. You don't want the state to execute the murderer. You don't want the cop to shoot the bank robber. You don't want the vice principle to swat the bully. You don't want any part of any of that violence that gives the masses any sense of cohesion or safety. You want nothing to do with that world that delivers small comforts to small people. You've got your John Donne twisted. 

Do you see how this kind of individualism works in the world? I see it as the same sort of extreme philosophy that asks for only mercy, gentle forebearance and kindness. I say we must be judgmental in all things large and small. We must be prepared for the whole man and so we must be whole men. We cannot disengage when things get ugly, there is not always some proxy to defend us in principle. 

Kato & The Crazy White Boy

If there was ever a moment that I thought, hmm, maybe Green Hornet starring Seth Rogan might be a good idea. then I'm not as sane as I think I am. It was a stupid idea, and Green Hornet is a stupid movie. I sit here wondering how anything so slapdash can earn money. The good news is, that in the US, it didn't.

Getting 120 million dollars to spit at the ghost of Bruce Lee can only be a bad idea, but that's Hollywood. That's what passes for entertainment.  

Soetoro?

Who the hell is Barry Soetoro?

Obama’s college transcripts from Occidental College indicates that Obama, under the name Barry Soetoro, received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia as an undergraduate at the school. The transcript from Occidental College shows that Obama (Barry Soetoro) applied for financial aid and was awarded a fellowship (scholarship) for foreign students from the Fulbright Foundation Scholarship program – an international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government.  Grants are available for U.S. citizens to go abroad and for non-U.S. citizens with no U.S. permanent residence to come to the U.S.  To qualify, for the non-US citizen scholarship to study in the U.S., a student applicant must claim and provide proof of foreign citizenship.

 Oh. Nevermind. 

The New Literacy

Patrick Clair Motion Design Reel 2010 from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

The new literacy is not literacy at all. It is about being informed about what's changing.

The new literacy is not for you and I. For we grew up in a time when most people believed in meritocracy and progress. We expect that hard work and concentrated thinking will generate benefits that have multiplier effects. We believed that sowing led to reaping. But now we are living at the end of those times, and the value of understanding the natural world is diminishing while the value of understanding the new cultural semiotic swamp that is global literacy is increasing.

In other words, if it's not in Google, it might be worth knowing, but you'll never profit from it.

The new literacy is like the first publication of the Bible. It will threaten the hierarchical Papists, make them defensive. Today's literate Papists are not merely mainstream media, but mainstream education and all the ways that people have come to know what they know during the 20th Century. We forget that the 20th Century invented mass communications, and mass communications has always been propaganda. Now we have alternative propaganda - and we choose which dogfood we eat. Now we decide whose koolaid we drink. 

Let's not forget the origin of drinking the koolaid was Jonestown. There's a need to get a grip on the reality that lies beneath all of the new symbology. I expect that my children will get it. More than any other generation and more than most of their peers, my own children have every cyber advantage. They deeply know the value of real face to face relationships, they cannot be fooled by virtual reality. But there are still masses yet to come.

Through the 80s we used to joke about the price of Levi's jeans in Russia, and in the 90s we saw men in Mogadishu wearing Air Jordans. The masses of people who are moving from the rural areas into cities around the world will next signify their emergence with cell phones and access to the Internet. As false as the status of jeans and sneakers may have seemed to upscale Yanks, it was enough for them. But the sorts of MTVified info-gloop many Americans still are fooled by, say the wit of Tina Fey, the sagacity of Alec Baldwin or the humor of Tracy Morgan, that entire enterprise can become the mental shackles of the next global middle class. It's so appealing. 

America has developed a way to monetize the surplus time, attention and dollars of the Baby Boom. That is what we have created. And to the extent that the 60s showed us the most muscular muscle cars ever, and the 70s and 80s showed us what crap cars we could put up with - the industrial revolution is mostly a done deal for the planet. We are living in that surplus period and settling back to an era of infrastructrual Pinto Pony MPGs. Basic transportation. When the world cannot afford and doesn't look forward to living in the architectural standards of Dubai and the industrial revolution slows down to Pinto quality infrastructure, the quality of life will become less material and more mental. 

I think we in California understand this fairly well. We all have, under the influence of Hollywood and other romantic notions, carved out extra space in our imaginations for meaningless intellectual luxuries. We're attuned to the status that accrues from knowing Bruce Willis' mechanic or Jada Pinkett Smith's hairdresser. Look at the info in the graphic video in this essay. That is intellectual fashion - the fashion of knowing something that is completely beyond our ability to influence (or sometimes even beyond our ability to comprehend), and yet take pride in knowing the narrative. That is the new literacy.

And it's little brother and enabler is the new growing international language of graphics and glyphs. Everybody understands Charlie's bite. And we will all soon understand the new standards of post-industrial light and magic. 

 

Right Here, Right Now. You know it. It's Little Brother. 

Political Spam of the Day

No one has been able to explain to me why young men and women serve in the U.S. Military for 20 years, risking their lives protecting freedom, and only get 50% of their pay. While Politicians hold their political positions in the safe confines of the capital, protected by these same men and women, and receive full pay retirement after serving one term. It just does not make any sense.

Monday on Fox news they learned that the staffers of Congress family members are exempt from having to pay back student loans. This will get national attention if other news networks will broadcast it. When you add this to the below, just where will all of it stop?

35 States file lawsuit against the Federal Government

Governors of 35 states have filed suit against the Federal Government for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It only takes 38 (of the 50) States to convene a Constitutional Convention.

This will take less than thirty seconds to read. If you agree, please pass it on.

This is an idea that we should address.

For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform... in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don't care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop.

If each person that receives this will forward it on to 20 people, in three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message.. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution: "Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States."

-- Actually I think there is already something like this...