Cobb

Walter Cronkite: Dead

I watched Huntley-Brinkley.

Except for his Vietnam body counts, I watched very little of Walter Cronkite and have not had the experience of perceiving him to be anything more than an icon of a distant time and place where men were men and the truth was lassooed like a bulldogged calf, wrestled to the ground and branded with the CBS eye. He was just another old white man who spoke good English to me.

My inspiration came from the likes of Fred Friendly whose aim was ". . . not to make up anybody's mind, but to open minds and to make the agony of decision making so intense that you can escape only by thinking."

Quite frankly I can't imagine at all, that Cronkite made anybody think. Which is I think entirely the point of his celebrity. You opened your craw and swallowed down whatever fish that the grave and erudite Mr Cronkite tossed you. So now he's dead and people are wondering why when we swallow today's fish it stinks and gives us bellyaches. Well what the hell was he doing in 1968? Forming a news hegemony? I think it didn't work.

The presumption that we can trust news organizations to present expositorily through one talking head, a narrative that will leave us intellectually satisfied, and satisfactorily intelligent is one that is appropriate to the peasantry of any society. So another Cronkite can and will be manufactured and the peasants will settle down. In the meantime, enjoy the New Media while we still have liberty.

The Declaration

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Loyal To Powell

If there was ever any doubt to whom Colin Powell is loyal, consider his latest grumble.

Colin Powell, one of President Obama's most prominent Republican supporters, expressed concern Friday that the president's ambitious blitz of costly initiatives may be enlarging the size of government and the federal debt too much.

No shit, Sherlock.

And Sara Palin is quitting her job. Guess she's loyal to Palin.

American Independent Radio

If you had a ground floor opportunity to redo BET from scratch, what would you do? Guess what?

Every once in a while an opportunity comes around where there are only a few people who know what's up and they're not well enough connected to take advantage of something right in front of their face. I perceive this to be the case right now in minority radio.

If I were to get the opportunity to have a radio program, it would be called The Vector and it would be very much like Cobb in many respects. I would direct it to the internal Third World and point the way to the Second. To me, the best of the Second World would be well represented by the man who owns a small, multimillion dollar business. It's where I'm trying to go. In some respects, I'm not perfectly qualified to host such a show, but in other ways I'm the perfect man for the job. But that's not the point of this post, rather it is to draw attention to what's going on at Sirius & XM with regard to what appears to be a minority set-aside for satellite radio spectrum.

A cat I met last month, Malik Shakur is in the thick of following the FCC machinations and has an application in process for some of this spectrum. He's determined and his website is getting little traffic. I notice these things and I hope that to the extent people notice me, I can direct some attention his way. It's very difficult to be a one man crusade, especially when there are so many people who very desperately want to achieve the same goal. We're just not all networked.

So as I said, I'm going to get folks I know, whom I have confidence would be excellent in the radio business to get aware of Malik's efforts. Something important can happen here.

Obama Gonna What? - Taxes

Sounds like the press corps has grown some teeny ones. But of course the fudgy answer to the direct question comes as no surprise.

Form Over Content

The first thing I think people get wrong about me is that they think I'm on a crusade. I'm simply trying to avoid perdition. And I think that the road to perdition is marked by a number of signs that say 'black people should..' So I should take a moment to clarify to myself and to all folks what I think are a couple good ideas and reasons to stay out of the black solutions game aside from the obvious which is that it is fundamentally unhealthy to think as black people as a problem. Then again, the Negro Problem can be a compelling issue lo these fifty years later. If so, what exactly was the problem that WW2 solved and how did it manage to get all the attention it did in that short period of time? I guess compelling is a relative term.

I have been graciously invited to participate in various events leading up to CNNs Black in America 2 production. It's a very frustrating thing to contemplate. In the end I'm going to have to withdraw myself from consideration with the admission that I'm only assuming that such an effort would be frustrating and contradictory. It might be unfair to consider that CNN is likely to give my ideas and input the same sort of coverage that the LA Times and the New York Times have in the past - which is less emphasis and time than they deserve to a larger audience of which certain unflattering things are assumed. The end result of this would be that the coup would be to get me over on CNN's clock, program and agenda. 

The thing is that I'm an essayist, and the proof is in the following, accolade, syndication and collaboration I have generated right here at Cobb. If there is any reality to the split and conflict between this medium and that thing we often pejoratively call the MSM, it's that we're here and they remain there. I mean it's one thing for a producer or editor to shoot me an email, but it appears to be an altogether other thing for them to offer their interview of me here where I stand. And considering that is what I expect from my peers, in the form of trackbacks, blogrolling, badges and syndication, I consider that MSMs refusal to do so is a matter of form over content.

Nevermind the indented. I changed my mind.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to attempt to get that thing that would be essentially CNN's endorsement of me as a thinker worth a moment's attention by getting them to do what NPR, Pajamas Media, Amazon, NYU and Newstex have done, which is to specifically send their audience here through the mutually agreed linking and badging. It's very much like coming to my house to interview me. 

In the back of my mind, however, there is a man on the street interview somewhere in the expression of CNNs approach to this old Negro Problem. And in the very same way they would disrespect General Schwartzkopf in a documentary about Desert Storm by putting his segment in the show next to the opinions of some knuckleheads in the street they would do so to me. I know that's difficult to understand or accept, but that's the way that I percieve my opinion, or that which approaches my way of thinking about the subject is handled. Does that make sense to you? Do you see what I'm getting at? 

Now of course I don't need CNN and they don't need me. Nor do hundreds of other black bloggers need me nor I them. But there is a certain easily understood protocol that is exactly what the blogosphere has been doing for many years - it's the reason we succeed. That is to meet ideas as equals, writer to writer, right here on the web, where there is plenty time and space to get deep into issues that require depth. 

So let's see how this works out.

Instead I'm going to the other direction. I think Nixon's term was benign neglect. I'm trying not to care - to be purposefully indifferent. I realize that a lack of orthodoxy allows it. I can jump right in any time I feel like it.

The End of Blackmail

When living for hope fails, people get wise. People get pissed.

While the president is swatting flies in interviews with fawning journalists, people in Iran have gone buck wild. He's not saying anything because he doesn't react, he thinks things up and comes up with a considered position. There's just one problem with that, he's behind events and not defining them. One thing for sure is that when GWBush was the President, everyone in the world was redefining their position in reaction to what they thought Bush was going to do. That initiative is now reversed. Obama seems to be more like the great film critic rather than the actor on center stage. Maybe he thinks he's like Addison DeWitt in 'All About Eve', that he can control everyone because he exposes their weakness and then can dictate terms about how they can maintain their good name. That's not leadership, it's blackmail. First the banks, now the auto industry. Who's next?

One day in the not too distant future, people are going to decide, long before the president wants them to decide, that they don't care about 'hope' and 'change' and all of his excellent speechification. They're going to want to be ugly and mad about things the president will be unable to fix, and they're not going to be patient. He's going to say 'cool it, baby' and they're going to give him the finger. I chuckle for a moment at the irony because whenever I use the phrase 'cool it, baby' I am thinking specifically about Maxine Waters after the outbreak of the LA Riots. She got on TV saying that the president and all those politicians in Washington have no idea what's going on in her community. The people have lost jobs and have lost hope and no amount of pretty words were going to satisfy them. Nobody wanted to hear Maxine Waters say that. One man's riot is another man's rebellion.

Iran reminds us that when very big things get deeply out of sorts in a nation, relatively ugly things don't seem so ugly any longer. Ordinary political corruption that you can ordinarily stand makes you really mad when you can't get away with anything. When unemployment hits 10% nationwide, if one out of ten men want to smash things... ick.

As I watched the video (and I could only take about 4 minutes of it) I kept thinking this man could be hitting a person with that bat. He could be doing his rant and taking it out on a human being, and he's not getting tired. I know that it was an edited and finessed bit of video and the they guy obviously has more than a couple neurons to rub together, and it makes it all the more scary. Because in a down economy lots of smart people are going to be angry, and a lot of angry people are going to wise up.

Scary.

Where's the Spreadsheet?

At the Urban New Media Conference, I didn't get a chance to make a specific point that I would have liked to. And I realize that the bottom line may simply be, on the radio side of it, there's just no money in it. But what I didn't get a chance to hear was the political interest/excuse in it. What is 'it'? It is publishing budgets in progress.

If you live in California, you know what it's like to listen to the local radio stations tell you how the State Assembly and the Governor are going back and forth and back and forth on budget negotiations. Then Arnold and Karen Bass will come out and say that they're just days away from a deal...

But where's the spreadsheet?

I am interested in the ability of local online communities in partnership with local media to sustain a high quality discussion about political and economic events of primary interest to them. Participatory democracy at the local level needs to take place on line in partnership with radio leveraging synergy. I love listening to guys like John & Ken here in Los Angeles, but I want to check the facts myself. It's good to get caught in the emotion of politics, but in the end you need to analyze things for yourself. That can happen real quick when you seen budget numbers and who promises what.  Consider the following:

(OK Don't) - I don't have a spreadsheet insert thingy here and I should be the expert but putting one in isn't worth doing to sustain the point. The point is simply that right now you have to imagine budget line items in the rows and partisan constituencies in the columns. And at in every moment of public budget negotiations until the end, all of the columns are multiple until they are negotiated down to one.

The problem is, of course, that we don't get to see the starting positions and how far in which direction they go as the negotiations progress. We're stuck with the bottom line.

I'd like to change that. Wouldn't you?

Cadillacs, Corvettes, Cabbages & Kings

I have owned a Ford, but never a GM car. I looked at the long infomercial today at the GM site and, well. It's kinda like going to a new church and being greeted. Within a short period of time you start to get the lingo. And after you've heard it for the sixth time it starts to get a little creepy.

I should stay away from analogies because in fact I am rather experienced in reading corporate culture. As a management consultant, I've worked with scores of different companies and I assure you that few things are as deterministic of a company's ability to deal with change as their culture. I look at it from the perspective of technology. Consider email, for example. Does the email at your company work flawlessly? If not, it's a cultural problem. Email technology is 30 years old. There is no reason why yours shouldn't do exactly what it needs to do. It's simply a matter of the culture involved that makes your company ready to solve the email problem or not.

When it comes to GM. Their problem is rather simple. It is that they have never built cars that are irresistible to my generation. Nobody my age or younger wants a Cadillac or a Corvette. I used to rent Buicks back in the 90s but it wasn't until 1998 that GM started to put CD players in their rental fleet. That was 14 years after the invention of the compact disc. I was told, obviously the Buicks are for mature drivers, but the Skylark was the one for young folks. What? A Buick Skylark?  I kept looking at this infomercial thinking, they have absolutely no idea what the next generation of car buyers want. None. You look at Scion and you understand why GM doesn't lead, but follows.

My own guess at why has to do with the fact that GM has forgotten about gearheads - that in the era of hot rods, the cars were cheap and fixable and young people loved them because they added their own stamp. That's why DeSotos didn't survive the 50s. These days Mitsubishi Evos and Subaru WRXs evoke hot rodding. A Camaro? Not with my kids. I think GM thinks they can do Baby Boom numbers in a GenY economy. Retro ain't that chic. 

I'm simply convinced that GM thinks old and wrong. Then again, I knew that when Perot was there. 

Obama's Basement

General Motors is officially a state owned business. Which means it will soon be a state run business. Which means no matter how many people watch the new Transformers movie, them Camaro sales are not going to save it.

So what happened. Well, not to put a fine point on it, GM wrote home from to daddy Obama for some more money so he wouldn't get kicked out of his apartment onto the streets. Except Obama isn't his real dad. GM's real dad is the market, but the market disowned him. So the new adopted dad couldn't bear to see GM out there in the cold, cruel streets despite the fact that GM has thrown in with some roughneck union friends who are shaking him down. Well new dad sent more money and GM is still losing his apartment. So now GM has moved back home and lives under Obama's roof.

The question is now, how many of these street kids, unable to make it on their own are going to end up in Obama's basement.

Sowell's Three Bombs

Thomas Sowell dropped three bombs on his latest foray over at Bloomberg on the Economy. I'm finally getting something of him. He enjoys being blunt and he seems to have little patience for the intellectual geeky fun of economics. In that, he's much like a historian.

Tom Keene would often talk about 'pain-free' recession when indicating some of the small bias he has. But I still say he's one of the best journalists in the world. Sowell gets straight to the libertarian point that the government should 'do nothing' whereas Keene is searching for a more tantalizing insight. But I think Sowell is dead right. The politicians are rewarded for sound and fury, which may signify nothing, but justifies doing anything. So they do something, which more often than not defies accountability. In the case of TARP, they justified putting together a huge pile of money for the purposes of doing A, and then went and financed B. B being GM. But to the bombs.

Bomb the First. Marriage.
Black Americans that are married have had poverty statistics in the single digits for 15 years.  BOOM.

Bomb the Second. Home Ownership.
There is no statistical evidence that home ownership improves community. BLAM.

Bomb the Third. Home Ownership.
Sowell didn't stop renting himself until he was 51 years old. KABLOOEY.

The third bomb is more like a blip but felt more impressive when I heard it, an echo of the second. Sowell made the point which discredits some idea I held for a long time but hadn't revisited or thought about in a while. It's the Gautreaux idea. Actually, Gautreaux is a program that is compatible with or follows from the idea that if you put poor people in good houses, then good will necessarily come of it.

One implementation of that idea is Urban Renewal, and we've done a great deal of that. All of public housing programs come from the idea that it was the slum and the tenement which degraded the people and led to their social dysfunction. That if you took the people out of the gutter, the gutter mind wouldn't follow them. And what we have to show for that is failure, most notoriously in Chicago. Sowell notes that Democrats tried in the 20s, Republicans tried in the 30s. Both tried again in the 40s and 50s and nothing in his statistics shows that people were better off in government granted housing.

That's a lot to swallow.

Big Air

Where are the trillions? I don't know. We can all guess, and perhaps sometime next week the Administration will give us an answer. But until then, and for a long time after, the stink is going to follow the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve. She's worse than Brownie. And it's just this sort of incompetence that I expect from the minders in government. I myself provide a good example.

Cobb readers know that by profession I am a data architect / management consultant. I build the systems that corporations use to keep track of their money. What I can tell you is that I have the capacity to make very very transparent systems. I can also tell you that it's not in everybody's interest to have transparent systems. But that's not the thrust of my argument. You see there are also goofs and errors and blindspots. There are certain things that can be done that are not done in the business of watching the money of a business and there are lots of reasons. Now because of my personality, I tend to see those gaps in terms of laziness and incompetence. It makes me seem more prickly than I am. But I just behave that way because if it were my money...

But it's not my money. So while I'm responsible for building the systems that allow every penny to be tracked, I know that I'm not always required to do so. And it's not my money so I don't have to care. You see, having about 20 years of experience in this business, I could figure out in a week or so, given the right conversations with the right people, exactly how to set up a sophisticated system that would pay for itself in terms of analytic value...

But it's not my money and I don't get paid on that basis. I get paid on time and materials, not percentage of ROA improvements.

Two years ago I wrote Monetizing Carbon and introduced the concept of Big Air. Big Air is what will happen if markets are established (even if they are just tax credit markets) for CO2. I think it's a bad idea to monetize carbon. Why? Because it's not going to be the money of the scientists who actually know global warming, if there is such a thing. It's going to be the business of the money minders, like the accountants and systems folks who design that thing that looks after the money of the business. Those systems will only be as good as a few people want them to be. And we already know that the corporations who will suffer will make their compromises and the corporations who will benefit will make their inputs and the system that emerges will create a new inefficient dynamic. Why? Because the thing that enables it will be anchored in the cement of law, but tethered to accountability by the rubber leash of regulation. In other words, Big Air will do pretty much what they want to do for a long time before the entire system evolves into something of long-standing value.

The fundamental question that I think gets below a great deal of the back and forth here is how capable do we really believe our government to be? Are we really good at commoditizing and making that commodity do what we want it to do? How good are we with water, for example? How good are we with land? How about trees? And what is the cost of not?

I heard somebody say the other day that our children have been taught to be afraid of salt and sugar. I gave my Spock eyebrow to that notion and noticed the extra attention my kids have on it. We have a salt and sugar economy and we know that too much is bad for us, so how are we doing on that? There are large acts of faith being pushed into our proxy democracy. I think we should sober up.

Hands off the air.

Now I'm going to suggest something else, another way to achieve certain ends. It's cynical and snide, a modest proposal if you will. But before I go all the way there, I'll set up the precedent. You see what I think is going to keep the Administration in line and tame their ambitions is that somebody somehow is going to communicate clearly to the American people, before it's too late, the cost of these trillions of stimulus and life preservers. And because of that the people are going to be sensitive to other things drowning. It's going to have to take a communications miracle because taxes, unlike prices, take a while to kick in. We didn't need anyone to tell us that crude oil prices were going to affect all of us, it was made manifest quickly in something we do every week. But every week we don't pay for big mistakes in government. But by the time the big moves that the current political majority voted for with regard to free health care and free prep school and free alternative energy and free clean air, the wrecks in the economy will help them to understand it's their money. 

But maybe what we really need is a war. War is always the answer to every question, because in the end when humans don't get what they want, they rage. And once they've burned down the house they don't care about the crackers in the bedsheets any longer. The problem is solved. It goes something like this. nag nag nag nag nag nag nag nag Nag Nag Nag Nag Nag Nag Nag Nag Nag Nag Nag Nag NAG NAG NAG NAG NAG NAG NAG NAG NAG NAG NAG NAG NAG

RAGE

And then all the nagging stops. Like you don't hear any complaints about traffic problems in New Orleans any more do you? Nobody complains about the lousy PATH train service to the World Trade Center. Everybody has forgotten about the horrid misdeeds of April Glaspie. The poor room service at the Hotel Rwanda? Not a problem. This is, by the way, how people are going to forget about Netanyahu, Hezbollah will get much bigger bombs. And so finally the way people will forget about global warming is that suddenly there will be a much more immediate crisis. I don't think it will take a very large war. Maybe something brief with Mexico. Or maybe a nice civil war in China. My money is on the latter. And when China has their civil war, when Pakistan collapses, when Egypt and Syria go at each other, somebody will realize that there are suddenly fewer human beings and that their economies don't go towards wasteful consumer products. 

How do I reconcile this with my Christianity? I'm not sure. What I know is that people aren't serious until they are and the distance between 'ought' and 'must' is farther than we think. I don't trust the public 'ought' because this is where it has lead us.

100 Days, 18 Czars, Zero Confidence

Need I say more? Well, the WaPo says it all.

You've named 18 so far, according to something I read in Foreign Policy. That includes a border czar, a climate czar, an information technology czar and -- I don't think Thomas Jefferson grew enough hemp in his lifetime to dream up this one -- the "faith-based czar." Your car czar, Steve Rattner, was in the news last week, trying to keep Chrysler out of bankruptcy.

It took Russia 281 years to accumulate that many czars. Even with hemophilia, repeated assassinations and a level of inbreeding that would gag a Dalmatian breeder. You did it in less than 100 days.

What on earth is our President doing right? Can anyone name me one new idea? I really haven't been paying attention to this 100 days blather, and the few things I have heard all sound like handslap, soundbite reversals of policies it took the prior administration years to evolve. But who the hell are these czars and what the hell are they doing to our democracy?

RINO No More

There is probably no greater frustration than being a despised political minority. Well, I imagine being gimped would be a real bummer, but I'm not talking about all experience just the experience of political writing. I was going to say blogging, but I'm not so sure that I'm all that hot of a blogger any longer. I can't remember the last time I cared to put somebody on the blogroll or do a carnival or anything of that bloggy nature. I'm just happy that the 12 of you sit down around the fire and let me do this thing I do. From me to you.

And so I'm looking at that Raging RINO graphic in my roll of steenking batjes and I can't even remember all of the reasons I put it there. There are two that remain in my head. The first was that I put it there in recognition that I was not so ignorantly partisan that I would defend GWB just to spit in the eyes of his enemies when he actually needed criticism. That was the result, of course, of my reading of Fiasco by Thomas Ricks. And so I had to step out, while still digging Michael Yon, but being realistic about the prospects for the geopolitical neoconservative agenda, which I still support.

The second reason I put that label up there was because one of my favorite Republicans, Christie Todd Whitman started 'It's My Party Too', and I have always had a soft spot in my heart for the moderate factions of the Republicans. You know, like the guys who cared not a whit about Christian values but everything about fiscal responsibility. So I suppose I can take a minute out of character and yell for a moment.

ABORTION IS NOT THE ISSUE THAT IS DESTROYING THE AMERICAN NATION. IT'S THE INTEGRITY OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM.

Social conservatives have given us NOTHING but grief. And if we save a million fetuses between now and 2012 all they're ever going to do is grow up and pay trillions in government debt we have incurred because of the financial crisis.

Ahem. Excuse me. OK where was I? Oh yeah. Whitman and Arnold and McCain and all my favorite moderate Republicans and Goldwater Republicans who never got enough clout in the party to keep the manic moralizers from dominating the domestic agenda - moralizers who have demonstrated no real moral leadership that extends past partisan lines which makes the value of their sermons about what? Hard for me to say. I haven't really spent that much time making a case against those who follow Dobson, because I think Dobson's a good man. Actually, rather politically (ahem) unsophisticated, but a very good man. But what can he do now? He can start a soup kitchen, maybe.

At any rate, it's not only this Depression that has rendered the RINO pose obsolete, but the moves of the RLC itself which has not managed to assert itself despite all the thunderous mumbling around the ascendance of Michael Steele to the all powerful RNC, something I am extremely disturbed to find almost irrelevant at this moment in history. I am reminded of the distinct and pointed discussion around the theory of Reparations in full tilt boogie and September 10th 2001, then who cared?

I am going to be very, very happy in four years to have stayed employed at my six figure level. I find it entirely possible that there will remain an American upper middle class, but we probably won't spend so much on huge sunglasses (Have you noticed how the Jackie O look has come back these past two years?). But in all seriousness, the RINO means nothing, less than nothing and that is because the marginal utility of being a Republican partisan means next to nothing. The GOP took the wrong path in its heady days of moralistic machinations.

It lost the immigration issue. It lost the social security issue. It lost the economy.

It only helps the GOP to speak the facts because the swagger of superior principles (which they are) means nothing when the country stops working. Just keep your heads on straight my Righty friends and calmly speak the truth. I shouldn't have to remind you, and it shouldn't be so difficult. But posturing as pure Republican is foolish, so posturing as an almost but not pure Republican is derivative of that. So goes the RINO, because quite frankly if we don't get through this Depression properly, the entire Republic will be in name only.

Waterboarding Under the Bridge?

The number in my head was three. That's the number of bad guys that were waterboarded. Today it's  266. That's the number times that two of the bad guys were waterboarded according to the news all over the news. The most detailed of the details are evidently still in the hands of bloggers. Emptywheel is the source of analysis that losers of the sort the New Yorker hires are unable to effect.

Dick Cheney has stared Obama down with a challenge to answer the question that his inquiry provokes, "Is it worth it?", by releasing the rest of the documents at CIA. Basically Obama has only addressed the politically provocative side, which is over the question of legality.  It is clear that the number of waterboarding exceed the guidelines for the practice according to Emptywheel; it begs the question "why?" Of course the answer to the question is obvious, depending on what side you're on. If you showed symptoms of BDS the answer is neatly summed up by Andrew Sullivan.

The point is to exert total absolute control over another human being - and to break that human being into as many pieces - physical, psychological, spiritual - as possible. This breaking of another human being is what Cheney wanted; it is what gave him a sense of control after he had presided over the worst attack in American history. Even though the victim had nothing more to tell, the torture had to go on and on - in part to generate data to justify the torture. Can you imagine what it felt like to put Zubaydah on the waterboard the seventieth time, knowing he had nothing more to say, knowing he was the wrong guy?

Yes of course we have to imagine, because the results of the interrogation remain classified. Cheney on the other hand says to Obama show the results side of the equation you sanctimonious wimp. By the way 'sanctimonius wimp' is one of the best insults I've heard thrown against Obama. Nails him. Hat tip to Jules Crittenden who quotes Cheney:

“One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn’t put out the memos that showed the success of the effort. And there are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified.”

“I formally asked that they be declassified now. I haven’t announced this up until now, I haven’t talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country.”

“And I’ve now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was, as well as to see this debate over the legal opinions.”

So either Obama has to end his puffery allowing his drones a couple days to run to listen to Sullivan and the New Yorker and Jon Stewart or some patriots at the CIA are going to be sorely tempted to start leaking. This is, finally, the entire cat out of the bag. Now that Obama has played this much of the hand he must be about full transparency and go along with Cheney or be about political gamesmanship in which he gets to show that Bush broke the rules, leave why open to crude speculation, and cover up the results in the interests of national security. Then say, hey we're not going to prosecute anybody formally, we're just using this evidence to flay our predecessors in public - to let 'the world' know.

So as I've been saying for years, the Monster was on a short leash. This is the extent of it. See here from 2004:

But we're all capable of savagery. In that regard, there is no difference between 'us' and 'them'. We all retain the essence of our humanity which allows us to kill at all. No one suggests that we not kill the enemy. The difference lies in what our systems are constructed to do and how they perform when called into duty. The difference lies in the quality of the cage in which our monsters reside during the off season. The difference lies in the willingness to look, to see, to judge and to act when monstrous subjects are at hand. These are not differences made real by the existence of a Geneva Convention, but differences made real by the structure and behavior of the US military and its civilian oversight.

Obama wants to pretend that these are not his tools and that the world that hates America was right for 8 years. Disclose or be delusional.

Murder in the News

Phil Spector was found guilty of murder yesterday. Another man who drove deadly drunk into the car containing star athletes from the Angels was charged with second degree murder yesterday as well.

Every day I forget how much crime goes on. Every day I forget how difficult it is to solve crimes, how much effort goes into that constant battle against it. It's a sobering thought. Some days when I wonder about the economy, I always try to remember how basic and fundamental it is that we will always have jobs that cannot be outsourced and whose importance is permanent.

I don't know Phil Spector at all. The associations in my mind are tenuous. I don't see a face. I only know 'Wall of Sound', 'The Supremes' and 'Murder'. I don't know the name of any of his songs, I don't even know if he is a songwriter or a producer or an ex-band member of some band I should know. I'm quite likely to leave it that way. The more I know about Phil Spector as a murderer, the more I know about the reality that matters.

I don't know the name of the Angel's ball player that died in the car wreck. But I make sure that my kids hear me cursing at idiot drivers whenever we are in the car together. It's the biggest risk I share with them, and they oughta know how scary it can be.

I hear that one of the crew of the Maersk Alabama incapacitated a would be pirate with an ice-pick. The pirate had an AK-47. People are right not to focus on the car, the ice-pick or whatever it is that Spector used in his atrocity. It's the man that counts. Sometimes we have to ask ourselves if we are men enough to deal with these wayward men.

A couple weeks ago, March 27th to be exact, I made something of a fool of myself in front of Doc's new girl. To make a point about discipline, I stood up in the conversation we were having and started swinging my arms like a girl in a catfight. That, I said, will never be a martial art and no martial artist will ever lose a fight to a raging fool, no matter how incredible their rage. Swinging your arms in a rage is dangerous, but the proper man will take you out in a fight, like Indiana Jones famously did.

'Never ever' is hyperbole to underscore the point that we should never ever think that the rage of adversaries overrules our thoughtful discipline. This should be a caution to the Right in support of the sort of temperance our fellow citizens, so full of hope, are wanting to demonstrate these days. We could destroy the ports of Somalia because we have accumulated over the decades, an unrivaled military sophistication. All the discipline that is the Pentagon lies ready to spring into action, because we haven't been, by and large, foolishing swinging our arms like Kim Jong-Il.

Terrorists and other latrunculi swing wildly. A strategic Systems Administrative force on global deployment is our discipline. We are the world's policeman, and we need to get our patrol cars out there and ready for all the geopolitical slow speed chases to come, with discipline.

I Get Mail

I'm still on the mailing list from MoveOn.org because I was one of those people who believed that Clinton's sex life, though scadalous, was none of everybody's business. So I get to hear some of the high level propaganda which generates reactions in their constituency. Since I know some of you are out there, perhaps you can throw some intelligent light on the following populist blather:

The Republicans' claim about Obama's energy plan is so absurd that one newspaper called it a "pants-on-fire" lie.¹ The truth is that President Obama wants polluting industries, not working families, to pay for the costs of transitioning to clean, renewable sources of energy.

The fact is, GOP lawmakers are taking their cues from Big Oil and Big Coal, who are afraid that a clean-energy jobs bill will cut into their profits. And the best way to fight back is by showing Congress that small businesses across America are eager to begin putting people back to work in jobs that'll rebuild our economy for the 21st century.

We all know Obama said that he was going to put 'Big Coal' out of business. Is this really what his supporters want, or is it just another way to get more taxes out of them than out of 'little solar'? We've already seen the Obama administration alienate companies he's tasked with helping by his onerous demands. Pray tell what happens to those which suffer his animus from the start?

Obama Gonna What?: Armenian Genocide

Christopher Hitchens offers us a little benchmark to see if our President, who tends not to believe in any sort of war except those involving pure rhetoric, is going to be true to one of his many words. We should make the mental note on whether or not he waters down his rhetoric in the interest of making friends on the question of the Armenian Genocide.

President Obama comes to this issue with an unusually clear and unambivalent record. In 2006, for example, the U.S. ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, was recalled for employing the word genocide. Then-Sen. Obama wrote a letter of complaint to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, deploring the State Department's cowardice and roundly stating that the occurrence of the Armenian genocide in 1915 "is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence." On the campaign trail last year, he amplified this position, saying that "America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. I intend to be that president."

I expect some weasel words to be forthcoming just on general principle. Anyone who is willing to overlook what Iranians are doing in current conflicts - ie killing American soldiers in Iraq, certainly should have no problem brushing off something that happened almost 100 years ago. And I'm confident that he can come up with all sorts of bold and visionary reasons to bathe such weasels in the glow of his version of the future.

But here is just a convenient test of character. So let's see what comes of it.

The Politicization of Business

The question is one of aim, and the trouble with the current flavor of political oversight is that it is an oversight freighted with hostility. This hostility is popular and misguided and the current administration has not done, in my opinion, enough to curtail it. 

The aim of saving a business is to restore it to profitability. Period. 

A profitable business, especially the largest such business on the planet, will pay the highest salaries on the planet. This is to be expected. A board of directors, acting in the interests of shareholders, will approve compensation packages according to their understanding of what the labor market - at that level - requires. You don't take any Joe off the street and make him run GM. But the point here is now that the government has assumed the position of having some fraction of seats on the boards of directors if their mandate requires this anti-executive hostility. How can you be good for the company and be against its leadership from the position of a board member? 

The bill introduced into the House of Representative requiring a 90% tax on executive compensation is shamelessly hostile and contrary to the intent of restoring businesses to profitability. 

So now we get back to the question of aim and intent. If one sees the opportunity of putting businesses under the increased scrutiny of government oversight, whether that is good or bad for the country depends entirely on one's definition of 'business as usual'. 

If you suspect that 'business as usual' is corrupt and/or criminal and/or lining the pockets of executives, then the logical choice is to let such businesses FAIL. Not to bail them out and increase oversight. 

If the intention is to increase government oversight on general principle, then all of the bailout money is simply a bribe to put government spies and overseers in place in private industry. 

If the intention is to restore failing businesses to profitability in trying times, then something other than this hostility must rule the day.

FedEx Will Play Hardball

The following is from a very close friend and former FedEx employee:

I always follow news of this, the greatest company I have ever worked for.  Fred Smith is John Galt (from Ayn Ryan's Atlas Shrugged) and Howard Roark (from Fountainhead)  all rolled up into one. 

I recall a phrase he used in the 90's when the pilots (ALPA) threatened to strike at the time: "With you or without you."  In other words I will run this company with or without pilots.....which was simply an extrordinary declaration for a CEO of an airline to make. 

I have been waiting for true capitalist heros to stand up and speak out against the (if you can't afford to stay in business, we'll own your business) Soviet-era mindset this administration. 

Fred Smith is visionary embodyment of all that's good in American business.  He is well-equipt to lead charge of the goodly majority of American business leaders who remain bullish on our exceptionalism as Americans  We reamain a nation of opportunity, innovation and high achievement.

Following was cut/ pasted from transcript of Rush (who's audience jumped fron 14.5 to 24 million after President said people should "stop listening to him)

Story #2: Card Check: FedEx Threatens to Cancel Jet Orders

RUSH: I have always been an admirer of Federal Express and of its founder, Fred Smith, who got a C-minus or something like on his doctoral thesis in college. His doctoral thesis was the structuring and marketing plan of FedEx, and some pointy-headed professor said, "This will never work but it's a nice effort," and gave him a C-minus, and now FedEx is what it is.  FedEx has an order. They have an order for 30 brand-new Boeing jets, cargo jets, to deliver your packages overnight.  Thirty jets, the order for 30 jets equals billions and billions of dollars that FedEx needs to spend to upgrade their fleet.  "FedEx said yesterday that they probably will cancel the purchase of these jets from Boeing if Congress passes a law that would make it easier for unions to organize at FedEx."  This is card check. 

They said that if card check happens, they're going to cancel plans to buy as many as 30 new Boeing planes. "[S]hould Congress pass a bill that would remove truck drivers, couriers and other employees at FedEx's Express unit from the jurisdiction of the federal Railway Labor Act of 1926... In January, FedEx said its express unit exercised options to buy 15 more Boeing 777 freighters, worth $3.75 billion at list prices. However, the company deferred delivery of some of the planes as the U.S. economy faces a bleak outlook. FedEx's actions raise the stakes in an increasingly bitter battle involving chief rival, United Parcel Service Inc, and the Teamsters union, which has been trying for years to organize at FedEx, the Journal said.

"FedEx and Boeing could not be immediately reached for comment by Reuters." Cancel 30 jets. This is how you have to deal with these people.  This is how you have to deal with the mob.  This is how you have to deal with the Mafia.  You don't go up there and lobby 'em and talk and beg and cajole.  You say, "Fine. You're going to do this? We're going to cancel our growth plans, 'cause you're going to kill our company. You're going to destroy our company."  The problem with this is that I'm sure the Obama administration doesn't care if they destroy FedEx, because they are out to punish people who don't do it their way! They're out to punish people who do not have unionized workforces. 

What the hell do you think card check is?  Card check is a giant threat.  It is a threat. Now, I know Senator Specter has said he's going to come out against it.  That gives the Republicans 41 votes. That means they can filibuster and block it, if Specter holds true to what he's saying now.  But this is a key piece of legislation.  It is crucial that this thing be defeated, because if it passes, you're going to see this like we're hearing about FedEx from a lot of different companies.  They're not going to put up with it.  They're just going to see themselves go out of business for no purpose whatsoever.  And, again, don't make the mistake of assuming the Obama administration or Obama himself, are naive and they just don't understand.  They know exactly what they're doing.  They know exactly what they're doing. 

Their operating policy is returning the nation's wealth to its rightful owners.  Quote, unquote, "rightful owners."  FedEx is not a rightful owner of the nation's wealth.  FedEx is depriving people of a living wage because they have no unions.  FedEx is evil and mean, and so are all other American business.   So is AIG, and so are all these Wall Street people.  They're evil, and they have stolen what is not theirs. They have stolen the nation's wealth right out from under the nation's rightful owners, the real owners: the poor and the middle class.  This is purposeful. It is a purposeful attack.

People are fighting back.

From Billions to Trillions

Yike. Yike and triple yike. They say a picture is worth 1000 words. This chart is worth trillions. 

Republican Heresy

The funny thing about Republicans is that we all think we know what's Right. But in fact we do not, and the most successful Republicans are the ones who realize that in the end it doesn't really matter.

The first thing that you have to learn as a Conservative is that the Republicans are the only ones who are going to shine your shoes. Everybody else is out to step on your toes, kick you in the shins and otherwise cut your legs out from under you. Including, guess who? Other Conservatives. The only place Conservatives agree about what's most important is when they are talking about Republican candidates winning. Otherwise the Fiscal Conservatives could care less about the Christian Conservatives who can't stand the Moderate Conservatives and everybody hates the Jews. No wait, that was Tom Lehrer. Everybody dismisses the Libertarians and everybody hates the Liberals. That's it.

Ronald Reagan mastered the song and dance routine and communicated (greatly) a Commandment he invented, no doubt to create that mythical beast called The Base. Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican. This is, of course, a formula for intellectual stillbirth. How convenient for a party who managed to get ahead of the competition and declare a revolution. There was, I don't doubt, a Conservative Revolution, the salient effects of which we are heir to. But sometimes it's difficult for me to distinguish conservative government from good government. After all, the Founders figured it out, or so we say. What's so revolutionary about following directions?  What's revolutionary boils down to the character of the American who gets enough of us to say there's a revolution afoot.

Revolutions of words and votes. Yoiks and Hazzah!

As I was saying to my boy Jimi this morning. I think 20% of the electorate is serious. The rest are playing American Idol. The most politically accurate thing I've read in the past week as I peruse the daily bloviation is Rush Limbaugh's drawing attention to the obvious fact that 40,000 people run NYC. Taxwise. Damn skippy. Alienating them is like throwing rocks at Mafia windows. You can pretend for only so long that the Mob doesn't exist, and then you're suddenly a character in Lemony Snicket.

So as Gerard wryly notes, exactly as I have, there are exactly two political leaders in America today. Rush Limbaugh and Barack Obama. They are both entertainers with their fingers on the emotional pulse of 80% of the electorate. The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Republicans have not yet reached the point of desparation and hatred which aligns them emotionally behind their great entertainer.

Just you wait.

If you want to reach me. I'll be in the bomb shelter awaiting the call to sanity.

A Boohabian Retrospective

(from the archives July, 1998)
Posted without comment

Boohabian Q&A
	Perhaps the supreme irony of black American existence is how broadly black people debate the question of cultural identity among themselves while getting branded as a cultural monolith by those who would deny us the complexity and complexion of a community, let alone a nation. If Afro Americans have never settled for the racist reductions imposed upon them -- from chattel slaves to cinematic stereotype to sociological myth -- it's because the black collective conscious not only knew better but also knew more than enough ethnic diversity to subsume those fictions. -- Greg Tate
Edited by M.D.C.Bowen last updated July 11, 1998

---

Boo Who? - Who or what is a Boohab?

Well properly speaking, a boohabian is a prophet of phlow, but I borrowed the term from lyrics by a group called the Broun Fellinis, whom I estimate have created the greatest leap forward in the hiphop/acid jazz genre with thier album Afrokubist Improvisations. Their music represents to me, a post-racial ethics which is thoroughly and intelligently suffused with the best of American soulful traditions. I appropriated the name 'boohab' and called him an 'organic hiphop metaphysician'.

In cyberspace, I am known as boohab to hundreds of folks who act and react in webchat. There are several major fora, Cafe Utne, Slate Fray, Salon Table Talk, Electric Minds, SF Chronicle's Gate & Gravity. In these areas and others I have taken it upon myself to serve as a catalyst and facilitator of discussions of race. I've been doing so pretty much since their inception (with the exception of the Gate), and before them at The Well, Compuserv, Delphi and Usenet's S.C.A.A. Boohab is sort of the thinking person's Kibo of Race.

Here's something I wrote in 1994 it's probably the best way to describe what my orginal goals were with regard to black cultural production in cyberspace.

everything i do in cmc is an experiment in blackness as a post-modern concept. i am futzing with identity in cyberspace and trying to figure out what happens to your race when people cannot see you, hear you or smell you. (hee haw). everybody knows that you have some freedom in computer mediated communications (cmc) to choose who you be. if i choose to be black, how would i express it? if i choose to be white, how? why? what can i say in cmc that i would never say face to face? what silences are overcome w/ respect to racial issues, which are created?

i am extending the hiphop aesthetic to cmc and i propose bSpace as a black cultural exponent and concept in cmc. i am working with a few folks to create that space over time. some of that will happen in the cool zone. i have been reading all of the major literature (or so i think) about cmc and cyberspace and i must say that socially destructive white punk kids get about 3 orders of magnitude more press and critical attention than black folks. likely the best book on the subject is by howard rheingold, 'the virtual community - homesteading the electronic frontier' and we exist as blacks soley on page 144, in the same paragraph as ufo fanatics. also 'the metaphysics of virtual reality' by michael hiem inscribes the very ideas of *why* cyberspace in a 'eurocentric' framework.

as an organic intellectual, i challenge these as they relate to the possibilities of black identity in cmc. we all know who created it and we generally know why and what they had in mind when they did so. now that the i-way is opening up to the general yuppy public, what happens? what changes? when people bring their desires to cmc, it will be transformed but i investigate empirically what it is now and how that changes as black folks join up. i remain primarily focused here in usenet because it is open to the public, whereas i would find it much more enjoyable to hang out in more private areas. what do black folks say in private areas that they don't say here? what do they say here that they dont say privately? why are black people in cmc at all? what motivates them to use the technology? these are very important questions to me because i have been making a living doing computer work for many years and clocking big dollars in a culture that hardly expects me to...

The Man Behind the Boohabian Curtain - How old are you? What is your educational background?

A: I was born in southern California in 1961. I was a bright but bored student one year ahead of all my peers through Jesuit prep school. I dropped out of college twice, once from the electrical engineering program at USC because I couldn't afford it, and once from the computer science program at Cal State because I wanted to get rich, and I trusted the wrong kind of people to help me.

Thumbnail sketch:

• Family Man
• Alpha
• Republican
• Episcopalian
• B.I. Geek
• Writer
• (soft) Black Cultural Nationalist

Why Race?- Did you get into it with the goal of using the internet to further racial progress, or did that come later? or does your perspective as a black man in the us and your socio-political views mean that all of your activities are engaged in with that as an ultimate goal?

A: I was never really interested in race-relations, per se. as far as I was concerned, blacks and whites who wanted to get along would do so with no further assistance from me. my original artistic motivation was to 'save hiphop'. At the outset, I imagined that CMC would provide a new media which would extend the hiphop aesthetic to sampling multimedia, especially historical texts. I was very excited by the possibility of hyperlinking very dense lyrics a la public enemy to a kind of chomskyesque deconstruction. for me it was experimenting with writing and creating a new style. I thought of it as a mix of Cornel west crossed with Spaulding Gray crossed with George Clinton with a sprinkling of Rudy ray Moore. that was the artistic side.

The other side was the grass roots organization side which could be described in the dynamic we call the 'hookup'. Coming out of the guerrilla video / self-representation school, I thought it absolutely critical that black communities have their own public backchannel which would correct mainstream media distortions as well as directly inform blackfolks everywhere of models of success. Specifically, I believed that every black community organization which would consider publishing a newsletter would publish to the web. that was my webmaster/political angle. the bottom line impetus for that was the misrepresentations of the la riots, American provinciality and what I call the "semiotic swamp". Here is my original working document which outlines The Melioration Project.

It turned out that only a very few places on the Internet sustained the kind of bandwidth for the interactive hiphop provocation, and very few grassroots organizations were ready willing or able to get online. This was 1993, so I waited.

As I wandered the Internet deserts looking for fertile soil I ran smack into any number of hostile tribes. their hostility was often born of ignorance, and direct resistance to bringing the stochastic subjects of race to the sweet determinism of Internet purity. in the end, I found all of my more elevated sensibilities about black cultural production falling on deaf and/or intentionally plugged ears. So I needed to create a website.

I ultimately got hooked into anti-racist politics as a means to enabling all Americans to understand the context for why anyone would be purposefully black, as boohab is. Anti-racist activism has its own intrinsic value in the context of a democracy, and it is certainly a compelling thing to do, but in one way I got into it because I couldn't get a broad enough cross section of people to understand the context of my project to extend hiphop. Furthermore hiphop hit rock bottom, and Cornel West published 'Race Matters'. I felt that the opportunity to do in cyberspace what Spike Lee had done in film or what Anna Devere Smith had done in the theater was still there, but would not reach a critical mass who could comprehend the flavor.

My perspective as a black man is deeply rooted in the prerogatives of the group formerly known as the talented tenth and the post-soul generation. I am very much a part of a part of African American culture which is rarely ever shown to, much less understood by the American mainstream. I despair of its representation, even though there are some artistic works that come close to describing the flavor. but what I do in cyberspace is not about me, all my net writing is a creation, a pedagogical device; it's all purposefully lowercase. so in creating boohab, I try never to get personal or to personalize. it means nothing to me, as a black man, to be understood/accepted. boohab is pure politics, but with some artistic flavor. boohab in that respect represents the public citizen in me - it allows me to be 'derrick bell' without putting my name in jeopardy, sort of like 'TRB'. boohab rarely engages outside of the subjects of race. I have disciplined my whole reason for being in cyberspace to continue the work of boohab, which will (with any luck) soon come to a close.

To Hell With Hawker

This morning, Rush Limbaugh was right. 

The word has come down from the King that his new CEOs which he now protects under his throne shall not be paid more than 500k per annum. The new Austerity Plan also mandates (well, not mandates, but who dares challenge the King?) that thou shalt not fly any private corporate jets. 

So who cares if Hawker Beechcraft, Lear Aviation and Gulfstream go out of business? Only the people that work there. Unfortunately, they did not pay their lobbyists enough because the King has come down on them and their associated industries. Why? Because of appearances. What difference does it make if the corporation has owned the jet for years. Sell it, and don't buy another one. Don't lease, don't charter. Just don't. 

Obama Gets a Foreign Policy Clue?

Well, well what do we have here? Apparently the new NIE people are out and have come to realize their error. You see, two years ago we put up with a lot of BS, some of it tangentially supported here by A. Charles who has mysteriously vanished, that all of the evidence was in and that Iran should be trusted not to be pursuing nukes, and that a substantial change in attitude was necessary in US foreign policy towards Iran. In other words, Iran hawks be damned, Bush is an idiot. 

Over at Belmont the news lies this way:

The Obama administration is clearly going to great lengths to educate Congressional liberals and the public at large on the danger posed by Iran.  The point, presumably, is to dispose of the lefty canard that Iran is a fundamentally peaceful country caught in a security dilemma of American construct.  It also commits Obama to an aggressive (even if non-military) posture toward Iran, which is comforting to those of us who believe that we need a hardball, if nuanced, strategy for containing, deterring, and, if necessary, interdicting the Islamic Republic.
Procedurally, this episode is going to reinforce the view of conservatives that after Iraq, at least, the intelligence agencies undermined the Bush administration at each opportunity.  If there was “politicization” of intelligence during the Bush years, it cut against Bush policies more than it facilitated them.

If all this is going as Iowahawk claims, then some of my precience about Obama's potential will be vindicated. Funny that I finally find the post that I've been looking for the past month or so in which I talked specifically about Obama's capacity to be rational. Way back then, 4 months before Rev. Wright, I said:

There's an odd undercurrent in the argument against Obama for President. And it's true that he has made some stupid remarks on foreign policy, but that undercurrent pretends that he won't get smart fast.  

...

I'm not necessarily convinced that Obama is unreliable for politics as usual. I think that he is an original thinker and is ready to try new approaches, but that there's something conservative about him underneath the appeal that won't make certain mistakes.

Right about now, I'm wondering how long Obama is going to continue his role as chief BS artist. It clearly made Geithner look stupid. Oh, by the way here's the scoop on the one day delay on Geithner's presenation of our Dear Leader's Plan. Emmanuel and Axelrod recrafted the presentation, according to a guy on Bush's econ team, to make it look more different than what Bush had already been doing. The term he used was that Obama is spending too much time on 'product differentiation'. And of course it makes perfect sense, even without that particular insight, that if Obama's transition went so freaking well, that he couldn't have been changing that much - after all, what does anybody think Geithner's been doing all this time? 

Which reminds me. Where the hell is Austan Goolsbee? Did he completely discredit himself or what?

The Return of Neutron Bomb Management

I predict that it won't be long before people look once again at the career of Jack Welch. Most of the time, when it was done in the runup to his selection of Immelt as his replacement at GE, the outlook was sunny. Not too long ago people forgot that he was once known as 'Neutron Jack'.

I myself am trying to take a longer view and try to remember how bad things were when they were bad. What I recall, especially in the days when any idiot with two years of HTML and ColdFusion under their belt was considered a startup genius, was that there was a time in America when business management mattered. Not creative MBA tricks and the sort of souped up financial sophistication - but Lou Grant -style management. What we used to call MBWA. Management by walking around. Meaning touching people talking to people, motivating people, hands-on stuff  where people felt good about working for that rare thing we call a 'management team'.

Being a consultant, I know some of the things that happened to management teams, and it wasn't all good. But it began with the pennywise decision to outsource. I'm not protectionist by a longshot. My gripe with outsourcing is that it disembowels business knowledge from the core of the physical company. Amazon.com is a virtual company - let it reign. But most companies are not virtual companies and they shouldn't be. And we're all going to find that out the hard way in a short matter of time. Shrinkage is not just a joke from Seinfeld.

So this means that a lot of managers who aren't Jack Welch are going to be faced with making the same kind of tough decisions that Jack Welch made in the early 80s. It's not just the 'proverbial' hardest thing a manager does, it's the real deal hardest thing. Laying off people who don't deserve being let go because they are lazy or stupid or unethical, but because the company simply can't afford to keep them on payroll and must cut costs.  Jack Welch was smart, and returned his company to profitability big time. But all of us aren't so smart about restructuring and strategically wise cost-cutting. A lot of us will gut ourselves in the process us cutting fat. A lot of us will depopulate, not without anguish, but without strategic smarts. Just because it hurts to lay people off, doesn't mean the pain is over, especially if you do it incorrectly.

I might use all of the above verbiage to preface a sales pitch for the kind of management consulting I do. But it's simply the truth. It won't be long before lots of bosses come home ashen from the grief associated with sending people off the payroll. It could be you that does the sending. It could be you that gets sent away. But when people start singing  "You Send Me", it won't be to their darlings. 

I'm going to dust off my copy of 'Good to Great'. Downsizing is not going to be easy.

Where is the Geithner Stick?

The Geithner Plan does not appear to me to have anything working for it but gravity. I think of banks as weighed down birds hovering over a pit of insolvency. Then again so is every business. What if they decide to limp along?  How do you convince a bank, or any other business, to perform well and in the best interests of a newly shaped economy? The fact that this question cannot be answered with anything but compelling force is the fundamental dilemma we face at this crossroads.

The answer is industrial policy, which is a euphemism for socialism. There is no way around it.

Who killed capitalism? The bad capitalists. It is as it ever was. The question for our times is to discover if those who remain understand what is at risk and if they can hold out. You see, every day I hear economists and financial experts saying that a 7% ROI is the best that can be expected from now on. And you can bet that when inflation hits and interest rates start creeping up, the smartest people are going to be hard pressed to make their businesses have higher margins than that for investors.

I'm still reading the reaction to Obama and Geithner and I don't have a comprehensive bead on the particulars, but there has got to be more than just gravity at work here. If my bank doesn't pass the stress test, and I refuse government funds, then what? Am I automatically a bad bank? What happens to a bad bank? Am I forced to liquidate? Does the government take me over? On what authority? What happens to a bad car maker? What happens to a bad business? Is the government now going past regulation into something more authoritarian? And how is the Average Joe supposed to know when enough is enough?

A trillion dollars of carrot is a hell of a lot of government spending. And Obama's entire presidency hinges on whether or not the economy swings into line under his program. So where is the stick? Will Obama just say 'oh well', if GDP doesn't obey his formula? I don't think so.

And so, you know, I think that you have two choices in this situation: You can prolong the agony and shareholders will be happy until they’re not happy, and that could be a year from now or two years from now, or, in the case of Japan, eight years later. Or you can just go ahead and acknowledge that, yeah, there’s a lot of work that has to be done to put these banks back on a firmer footing.
-- Barack Obama, Feb 2009

Obama & Social Justice - Off the Table

The longest discussion we had on Obama here at Cobb was begun on October 13, the very cusp of the credit crisis. I made a provocative inquiry that bears repeating.

Submitted for your consideration. Barack Obama represents himself as a candidate for Social Justice, and as such, based upon socialist ideas, defies the authority of America as the ultimate philosophical origin of his legitimate power. Obama believes more in social justice than in the American Constitution and will seek to change American life in deference to principles originating out of Leftist critiques of Capitalism and of Western Society.

Obama will exploit class, race and gender narratives in order to achieve his vision of social justice and will attempt to transform the political consciousness of America by convincing it that its principles of equality as envisioned by the Founders was insufficient to sustain a moral society. This vision of social justice will of necessity hew to principles of Marxism.

As President, Obama would be necessarily constrained to effect significant changes in the way America works, but his emphasis and attempts would all come in defiance of the individual for the purposes of the collective.

I challenge anyone to show what principles Obama has championed and what rhetoric he has spoken that contradict my assertions here. I believe that Obama is intelligent, opportunistic and ruthlessly pragmatic and that any argument that fails to locate his core beliefs is further evidence of his ambition. Therefore, whether or not he wins this election, those core beliefs and their intellectual provenance must be identified.

I think the man is sufficiently overcome by events, and rather like George W. Bush, his legacy will have everything to do with is ability to deal with a crisis that he was not prepared for. Just as Bush was highly influenced by the Neocons in the most significant of his detailed tactics in not for his overall strategy, Obama will be influenced by the legacy of Yale Economics, Keynesians all, and their arms in his administration will be in the persons of Geightner and Summers who will act as if monetary policy is dead. His new auxiliary headed by Paul Volker will also be a part of the economic influence posse which is currently unnamed.

The Right will blame changes in social policy and entitlements as part and parcel of Obama's overarching 'Socialist' strategy, but I don't see it that way. Just as I didn't see GWB as a 'warmonger' unable to resist a 'Christianist' clash of civilizations. Rather I see Obama still as ruthlessly pragmatic. He will address the job in front of him, and he won't have much time for this social agenda. The man is out of the ghetto and he has a completely new, upgraded and smarter set of attendants than bushy eyebrowed radicals like Alinsky and Mansonesque rich white trash like Ayers and Dorn. I think Obama is going to enjoy the work. I certainly would if I was in his shoes.

So this is the ultimate abandonment of what I predicted, Obama's rhetoric for the masses. It's not because he didn't want to try and make those social dots connect. It's because he realizes the stakes are too high for him and he's on the big stage now. But I think it's also because we are now living in an age when, incredibly 100 billion is not a very large number any longer. So his executive order on SCHIP will be forgotten two weeks from today in the larger scheme of things.

On the other hand, in our wildest dreams, none of us suspected that Citibank and Bank of America might not survive an Obama administration. The way (if at all) he lifts a finger may become more symbolic than anything in the campaign.

Fifty Line Items

VARIOUS LEFT-WINGERY:

1. $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts

2. $380 million in the Senate bill for the Women, Infants and Children program

3. $300 million for grants to combat violence against women

4. $2 billion for federal child care block grants

5. $6 billion for university building projects

6. $15 billion for boosting Pell Grant college scholarships

7. $4 billion for job-training programs, including $1.2 billion to provide “youth” summer jobs for people up to the age of 24

8. $1 billion for community development block grants

9. $4.2 billion for “neighborhood stabilization activities”

10. $650 million for digital TV coupons, including $90 million to educate “vulnerable populations”

POORLY DESIGNED TAX RELIEF:

11. $15 billion for business-loss carry-backs

12. $145 billion for “Making Work Pay” tax credits

13. $83 billion for the earned income credit

STIMULUS FOR THE GOVERNMENT:

14. $150 million for the Smithsonian

15. $34 million to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters

16. $500 million for improvement projects for National Institutes of Health facilities

17. $44 million for repairs to Department of Agriculture headquarters

18. $350 million for Agriculture Department computers

19. $88 million to help move the Public Health Service into a new building next year

20. $448 million for constructing a new Homeland Security Department headquarters

21. $600 million to convert federal auto fleet to hybrids

22. $450 million for National Aeronautics and Space Administration

23. $600 million for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

24. $1 billion for the Census Bureau

INCOME TRANSFERS:

25. $89 billion for Medicaid

26. $30 billion for COBRA insurance extension

27. $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits

28. $20 billion for food stamps

PURE PORK:

29. $4.5 billion for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

30. $850 million for Amtrak

31. $87 million for a polar icebreaking ship

32. $1.7 billion for the National Park System

33. $55 million for Historic Preservation Fund

34. $7.6 billion for “rural community advancement programs”

35. $150 million for agricultural commodity purchases

36. $150 million for “producers of livestock, honeybees, and farm-raised fish”

RENEWABLE WASTE:

37. $2 billion for renewable energy research

38. $2 billion for a “clean-coal” power plant in Illinois

39. $6.2 billion shall be for the Weatherization Assistance Program

40. $3.5 billion shall be for energy efficiency and conservation block grants

41. $3.4 billion shall be for the State Energy Program

42. $200 million shall be for state and local electric-transport projects

43. $300 million shall be for energy-efficient appliance rebate programs

44. $400 million for hybrid cars for state and local governments

45. $1 billion for the manufacturing of advanced batteries

46. $1.5 billion for green technology loan guarantees

47. $8 billion for innovative technology loan guarantee program

48. $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects

49. $4.5 billion for electricity grid

REWARDING STATE IRRESPONSIBILITY:

50. $79 billion for State Fiscal Stabilization Fund

Now Zinni

Ricks reports:

It isn't good news that the Obama administration apparently offered retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni the job of ambassador to Iraq and then rescinded it without telling him.

Zinni has stepped on a lot of toes through the years, but he is highly respected both inside the U.S. military and in the Arab world. I think he would have made a good proconsul, especially if both the U.S. civilian and military sides of the effort reported to him.

That bus keeps rolling along.

Crash & Burn

Boy do I love transparency.

I guess the problem with being a community activist for too long is that you actually don't get to know many serious, ethical and competent politicians in Washington. And so when you finally get to the bigs, you have to pick stalwarts from the usual suspects. Problem is, transparency's a bitch.

I think it is a bracingly marvelous thing that we have a trail of crumpled bodies under the gleaming wheels of steel of the Obama bus. The big upside of being a saint is that by comparison nobody has high standards. Let us pray that Obama can keep that reputation long enough to get through some more of the dead weight inside the Beltway.

Now Thomas Ricks, the author of the finest critique of the Iraq War, 'Fiasco', is getting a sinking feeling in the pit of his gut about Obama's troubles in getting competent folks into the most key positions of power in the American government.

That sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach is caused by the course of Obama's cabinet picks: Richardson blew up on the launch pad, two of the more prominent picks have tax problems, his CIA pick seems inexplicable, his no. 2 guy at the Pentagon needed a waiver from his new anti-lobbying rule, and Hillary Clinton and her hubbie strike me as a ticking bombs.

It's starting to make me think that the Clinton backlash machine might not have been totally disengaged. What networks is Obama going to have to tap in order to tap the right candidates, and what kind of quids do those pros quo?

The Brotherhood of Steele

There is not enough billboard space in Los Angeles to express the measure of symbolic change now evident in the election of Michael Steele as chair of the RNC. I am very pleased to see that he has finally landed on his feet in an office worthy of his character and political appeal.

There's going to be a lot of shrugs, head shaking and raised eyebrows over the next media cycle. For me, it's a sigh of relief. There's not much to say ahead of this as far as I'm concerned. Steele is a good government, responsible conservative who in my mind best exemplifies the Old School values that Cobb has been all about for years. He is a social conservative without being an evangelist harpy. He is a fiscal conservative without being a rabid supply sider. He is the right man for the job of setting a lot of myths straight about the past, present and future of the Republican Party. I think the man deserves a party.

Interestingly enough, I think the politician that Steele's temperament most resembles is that of NY Governor David Paterson. He's been around the block and he's all business. He's not particularly glib or charismatic, but he's a natural born leader.

Obviously the stock for black conservatives is going to rise in media trading. You can certainly expect that we'll share a little of the spotlight for a while. That can be good and bad depending on who's doing the spinning. But I'm really excited to hear how Right Radio is going to take this considering some of the negative propaganda put out on Steele about his dalliances with the RLC, my particular favorite group within the Republican Party. Social conservatives may have some beefs. But I'd say that black conservatives are more social conservatives than not with regard to basic values. I am a social conservative, but not an evangelizing one - I think such matters are hot buttons for energizing a base, not for forward policy. This should be an area of interest once the dust settles.

Steele has a significant job ahead of him, but the non-job that everybody will certainly soon be talking about is handling the Republican Party's 'racial agenda'. It will be interesting to see how pretzel logic will attempt to rule the day in describing what it means for Michael Steele to be the head of the presumed party of white racism in America. But what you're actually going to see is Steele and Palin remaking the party with a revitalized energy and spirit, and you're going to see a good deal more lip service paid to marketing and outreach.

In my view, the GOP's issues are not with marketing and outreach, but with figuring out a grand strategy in the wake of Karl Rove's decade of machinations. So I'll continue to pay particular attention to Brooks and Douthat and their new way of speaking out. They have a winning way and a fine message based on the same conservative values as ever. With the calm, convincing and workmanlike dedication of Michael Steele at the helm of the GOP ship, it won't be long before the sailing will be smooth. Job One: 2010

A very good commentary with Steele from December.

Eight Years Ago This Week

Reflections on old reflections. Item the first, opposition to Ashcroft.

you nominate people because of their beliefs and because of their extraordinary ability. and when you have a mandate from the people to head in a new direction, you have an obligation to place someone in power who will do so. bush has no such mandate from the people, and therefore is being arrogant and divisive in his nomination of ashcroft.

bush did not campaign as pro-life and against row vs wade, these were not campaign promises. he did not campaign as a regressive on civil rights.

think about the primary complaints against janet reno by the opposition. in what way does ashcroft legitimately represent that opposite?

is there any suggestion that ashcroft would disarm the fbi in situations like the branch davidian standoff? is there any suggestion that ashcroft would appoint more special prosecutors rather than less? no.

it is because he is anti-abortion that he is being nominated and that is a direct concession to the christian right and it has nothing to do with substance of what republicans demanded and failed to receive from janet reno.

if the american people ask for x and get stealth religion instead, that is decietful. this is my problem with gwbush & the ashcroft nomination.

It turns out that the problem that the American people ultimately had with Ashcroft had nothing whatsoever to do with abortion, but with the legal activism which was a logical consequence of the demands that he, in the wake of 9/11, break the firewalls and connect the dots.

I think in retrospect, that Ashcroft, like Gonzales fell victim to an America that refused to be a wartime America at the direction of a president genuinely comfortable with his own culture of conservative values, who broke his neck to be a wartime president. Little did we know at the time.
--

Item the second, Northern militancy on the question of rights for Africans.

the abolitionist movement in the main did not possess the political power in the american congress during the lincoln presidency to force the north into armed conflict with the south on principle. abolitionist leaders in the congress like charles sumner were *reactive* as opposed to proactive with regard to militia actions in the western territories.

preservation of the union was the primary official motive of getting into war. but already guerrila fighting had begun precisely over the matter of slavery in the western territories.

john brown was the spearhead of the militant abolitionists, but he had great problems influencing the rest. in brown's thinking, a war was inevitable and he was bent on escalating the conflict, on the terms of equality under god, a far more radical position than that officilly stated (early or late) on emancipation.

so if you would like to believe that *the* moral motivation for the federalists was the negro question, then you would have to show john brown as the leader of that movement. clearly, brown had no federal sponsors.

i think the crux of this question can be answered by evaluating the positions in the congress of the matters of the two revolutionaries most militantly opposed to the general oppression of the african. and those two are nat turner and john brown. in the end i think you will find that the north was NOT escalating the wars started by those two, but fighting their own war for separate purposes.

lincoln defended the principle of human rights for the african, but that fell far short of civil rights. one could argue that some segment of the african population in the south enjoyed human rights prior to the war. it's rather like newt gingrich attacking bill clinton on the question of marital fidelity.

It's particularly interesting in retrospect. Listening to Gwynne Dyer via Dan Carlin's History podcast last night, Dyer said 'War settles things'. Which dovetails to something I said here to the effect that war becomes the reason for everything, whether or not it was the cause.

It can be imagined in a cynical way by a neocon such as myself that Bush went to Iraq for reasons other than the 23, and specifically NOT for the sake of Iraqi freedom in spite of the name Operation Iraqi Freedom. It is something we generally presume about Lincoln, those of us who looked close enough. Lincoln had no great cause to seek social equality for the African, but it's often said that he did. His geopolitical reasons, to keep a great nation together a mere 50 years after the War of 1812 when we finally proved we were an independent nation, had to be more prominent in his mind. So I think.

But what of those real freedom fighters? How was their cause abetted by the war? Obviously they had their own reasons to join the fight. In the end, we assert with finality that the war, costly as it was, was properly decided - the good guys won, and an oppressed minority began its path to liberty thanks to an ideological slant on a violent conflict initiated by an American president.

I don't see how, in the long run, we won't celebrate the overturning of Saddam Hussein likewise. Even if we don't give Bush full credit. After all, what should Obama reverse? What do you think his orders to his commanders in Iraq will be? Or is nobody thinking about that these days?

Obama Gonna What? Interrogation

Details on the legal equivocation on Obama's new policy on interrogation can be found at Flopping Aces. The following is a trick question:

1. Torture is prohibited as defined in section 2340 of title 18, United States Code.

2. Murder, torture, cruel or inhuman treatment, mutilation or maiming, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, rape, sexual assault or abuse, taking of hostages, or performing of biological experiments is prohibited.

3. Other acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation, and cruel or inhuman treatment, as defined in section 2441(d) of title 18, United States Code are prohibited.

4. Any other acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment are prohibited.

5. We are prohibited from engaging in willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency, such as sexual or sexually indecent acts undertaken for the purpose of humiliation, forcing the individual to perform sexual acts or to pose sexually, threatening the individual with sexual mutilation, or using the individual as a human shield.

6. Acts intended to denigrate the religion, religious practices, or religious objects of the individual will not be tolerated.

Why is that a trick? Because it is the Bush policy.

Pork Illustrated

Legalize It

I can't think of any time when I've been convinced that it was a good idea to legalize recreational drugs. I've always rather considered that for the kinds of people who found it worth the risk of flaunting the law to take them in the first place - well two things. Firstly, I can't imagine that they don't get enough of what they want despite the fact that it is contraband. So availability is not a problem. Although I don't know how, it's probably easier to get good weed than get good wine. Secondly, what kind of people would we be listening to anyway?

There are any number of arguments in favor of weed, and I'm fairly sure we've heard them all. What's interesting is that the medicinal argument is likely the weakest. After all, that's where drugs come from, the desire to give us something to fix what's ailing in our bodies. The problem isn't with drug use, but with drug abuse. And this is part of the substance of my argument against the legalization of recreational drugs, but the moral injunction is the better part.

Let's consider the term itself - 'recreational drugs'. What do I mean by that? I basically mean those substances that are, by their very nature, not easily capable of damaging the body. I would think that a recreational drug would incapacitate your ability to use it before it did any permanent damage. In that regard, Helium might be considered a recreational drug. It's non-toxic by nature and after you inhaled too much for the recreational purpose of making your voice sound funny, you'd pass out from a lack of oxygen. Or at the very least get fairly dizzy. It's possible to drink yourself into a coma from alcohol, but you have to try hard. Nobody who drinks a quart of hooch doesn't know they're drinking a quart of hooch. I figure that you can get too high to roll another joint, but plenty of people burn their lips on a crack pipe. That's about the extent of my first and second hand experience. By my definition, cocaine and meth probably don't pass the tests - certainly opium and heroin do not although I'm pretty sure that ecstasy does.

BTW, I broke my nose playing baseball when I was in the seventh grade. And when the doctor set it, I was fortunate enough to get a 'polar bear sized dosage' of morphine. It was because I basically couldn't get emergency service in my neck of the ghetto and it was about 6 hours before the first doctor would see me - so he hooked me up. So I can personally attest to the blissful effects of opiates. I still remember how it made me very happy with the world and how much more I hated it after the high was over. The lesson was not lost on me.

As a first principle, I firmly believe that human beings have the inherent right to make life or death decisions. And so from this principle it could be argued that if people decide to take drugs they're not hurting anyone else. Well, maybe that's true for your parents, but that's because you have Jeeves, Bitterman and Jemima to take care of you while they're out snorting it up in the Hamptons. The rest of us have jobs and a bunch of first person responsibilities and we can't all just take random mental vacations. So you say that's what the weekends are for eh? Fair enough.Then we must admit that taking recreational drugs is, after all, a recreation - one with risks, like skydiving. Hmm, sounds bourgie.

But what about the poor? It seems to me that most of the political arguments against drug prohibition are are behalf of the poor because of the onerous burdens put upon them by the state. The poor, it is argued, need more recreational escape - you can't blame them for taking drugs, you would too if you were poor. (This is an argument I hear from my fellow bourgeois compatriots). And when the poor are busted, they are treated more harshly, and so forth, War on Drugs, crack vs powder sentencing, and so on.

I would be much more accommodating of questions on the restraint of liberty except that I don't particularly find that the moderation in taking of marijuana, for best example, is so very burdened. Which is to say that it is adequately decriminalized already. I rather like the status quo, but I will admit that the specific legitimization of marijuana in America might be just the sort of thing Obama might try to get us out of the recession. And there's not much I couldn't like about such an incredibly bold plan. Everybody knows that if marijuana were legalized, somebody would stand to make billions - somebody public. That somebody would be a new class of American farmer and a lot of old tobacco farmers and their associated industries. So why not?

Well, there's this. If you think people who smoke cigarettes are pariahs, wait until you see how the majority treat potheads, who right now save everybody the trouble by doing their deeds in private. It would be a social calamity far more divisive than red vs blue, worse than black vs white, more devastating than gay vs straight. Trust me on that.

Oregon Police Shooting Report

The Oregonian found;

Under Police Chief Richard Walker and then Tom Potter, the bureau cancelled all formal training for two years from mid-1989 to mid-1991. Bureau commanders- under pressure to fight gangs, drug dealers and growing violence - decided the city couldn't afford to take officers off the street to put them in classrooms. As a result, officers went two years with no training in firearms, police tactics and how to deal with combative subjects. Two months after he became chief, Potter restored some training - 12 hours of classes in community policing and cultural diversity. Full weeklong training resumed last summer.

The Police Bureau provides little or no special training to help officers deal with mentally unstable people. It also provides little help for officers to control fear when it becomes so over-powering that it warps their judgment or distorts their senses when they have to shoot.

Portland police go 14 months between firearms qualification tests - longer than allowed by any of the major police departments queried by the Oregonian. Shortly after the January 16 accidental shooting of 12-year-old Nathan Thomas, the bureau said it would propose firearms qualification every six months, starting in July.

The bureau's marksmanship standards are low compared to many other cities. Phoenix and San Diego, for instance, won't allow an officer on the street who fails to score at least 84 and 85 points, respectively, in handgun qualifying tests. Portland requires only 75 points on a comparable test. A February list of the Police Bureau's gun qualifications shows that 218 officers, including Chief potter, shot with such modest accuracy that they wouldn't have been allowed to carry a gun in either of those cities.

How Are You Doing?

We Bowens are double dipping this year. The Spousal Unit has taken a gig. We're trying to get ahead of the game and save more moola just in case something ugly happens. I have a good deal of confidence that my company will remain strong through the first half of this year even in the face of disaster - much of the company depends on government contracts in India which is growing and we're still doing acquisitions in our division. So worst case scenario we get zero business in the first quarter, we probably won't layoff until the third quarter.

But according to the Bloombergs I'm listening to a lot of people with global focus are predicting 9+% unemployment and a jobless recovery. I know what a jobless recovery feels like - not good. So you better believe I'm saving for a rainy month or two.

IT is still what's called an early cyclical. That means when recovery hits, IT is one of the first places new money goes. So all I've got to do is get through this year, and no matter how the recovery starts, when I start getting business, that will be the very beginning. Our sales pipeline is fat but slow. We know people want to do stuff, but they're waiting and waiting and waiting. Everybody is waiting for the bottom. So yeah I expect things to slow down to a trickle - we may do 50% utilization and a hell of a lot of training and marketing advance work.

I for one am very interested to see what Obama has in mind for stimulus.

I want to know what you all are seeing out there in your neck of the economy. Is your job threatened? How do you see this thing playing out?

What's Wrong With Public Schools?

There is probably no better place to kick off a rip roaring discussion which is central to the quality of life in America than on the subject of public primary and secondary education. Why don't we jump into that bear trap here at Cobb?

There are several big ideas that come to mind when I talk about public schools, but I'm going to start with giving my background and I would like others to do the same, because I think it can put a lot of things in context. I'm going to spend most of my argument speaking about what I want and expect for my own kids as they go through the system and what I've learned from my experience, then I'll talk about what I think could be improved for my own district and why I think that should be a standard. I do this with much of Malcolm Gladwell's recent book Outliers in mind.

I went to a public elementary school that was all black in the late 60s. I then attended a Catholic middle school, also all black and in the 'hood and then a Catholic prep high school which was a broad mix of classes and ethnic backgrounds, much more like the city overall, but no girls. 

Anyway as I've said many times here. My wife and I decided to live in California primarily so that our kids could grow up to be near their cousins of the same age. That was the biggest factor in deciding where we would live - that we would have extended family all around. Similarly, my brothers and sister all moved out of the hood to more accomodating communities for their own and family lives. While my kids were in pre-school ages we were all within a 20 mile radius for my parents' 10 grandchildren. The next choice was, because of our finanical situation and the cost of living in California a choice between renting & public school in an upscale neighborhood, or buying & private school in a low rent neighborhood. This was the second most important strategic decision. We chose the former although we started most seriously considering the latter. There were three big factors in our choice and they had to do with our perceptions of the public parks and their programs, the weirdness of the local private schools and their costs, and the districting rules for public schools. 

It turned out that it didn't take us much time to figure out that if you wanted your kid to get music instruction or any special benefit classes on the chance that they might excel, you basically faced a lottery. Everybody knew which schools had the foster children and which had the gifted children's program. I say 'everybody' meaning, picky parents like my wife and I could nose around and find out what's what. The limited resources made the structure of the schools into a game, which is why the lottery existed. 

I am convinced that the ethics of multiculturalism and the dominance of collegian manners in our society (which happen to coincide with liberal if not progressive politics) have added to the kind of confusion about what the proper role of secondary education should be, and some of that has leaked into the primary grades as well, but not as significantly. 

What kinds of things should public education do well that it is not doing? What kinds of things does it actually accomplish well that don't need rethinking? Where are the major controversies about the performance of public education? What works for you?

Leon Panetta: Competent

Of course I would rather have the title Leon Panetta: Adept. But perhaps this is Obama's way of showing everyone that he's not going to do anything extreme or forceful, but merely competent. No doubt, competence is what we need, now more than ever. But it would be nice (wouldn't it?) if BHO had an ace or two up his sleeve. 

It clear that a lot of the spooks aren't impressed with Panetta and so it is likely that the chronic problems we have in Intelligence are going to continue to simmer for the next four years. But mediocrity seems to be all we can expect from the strategic muddle of disorganization that is the American intelligence community. 

So while I don't expect much from Panetta, I think I can trust him not to screw things up worse than they are already screwed up. That said, it was Rahm Emmanuel who characterized the Clinton White House as the most scattershot organization he'd ever seen in government. I can't imagine that the fence between he and Panetta is mended, so my inside baseball hunch is that Obama may be dismissive of the entire intelligence agency aparatus and that he intends that State will give him all the flavor he needs. After all, he was 'right' on Iraq all along, wasn't he?

Richardson Throws His Hands in the Air

Oooh that smarts. The most respectable candidate of the eight the Democrats fielded for the office of President just folded under a cloud of suspicion. This is bad, very bad. The WaPo reports:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has withdrawn his name from consideration as commerce secretary for President-elect Barack Obama, citing an ongoing investigation about business dealings in his state.

Richardson, 61, who competed unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination, was secretary of energy and U.N. ambassador during Bill Clinton's presidency, and also the first high-profile Latino named to Obama's Cabinet.

But a grand jury in New Mexico is currently looking into charges of "pay-to-play" in the awarding of a state contract to a company that contributed to Richardson.

The importance of the inquiry was apparently dismissed when Richardson was first nominated. But it may have taken on more weight in light of the "pay-to-play" allegations involving Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Obama hasn't even gotten into the Oval Office and his prospects are imploding. I happen to think that Richardson is a straight shooter and that he will be vindicated, but this puts the lie to the entire premise that Rahm Emmanuel is a fixer and that his extraordinary competence to 'get things done' is going to make Obama's road smooth. The spillover from Illinois Democrat corruption is out of control - and for it to hit Richardson, the most competent Democrat of national standing, is bad news indeed.

Burn the Bully Pulpit

It is a mistake whose dimensions are hard to grasp, but a mistake nonetheless to elect a president based upon what you feel the country needs to hear from the 'bully pulpit'. What the country needs to hear, has to be something consistent and coherent with the meaning and purpose of the Republic, and if we subject that sort of role to somebody elected by popular demand, we're in trouble as a society and as a nation. Needless to say we are in deep trouble.

All during the election season I had been giving a good deal of time to the thought that we needed some purple, some healing, some person in office who might be able to calm us down a bit. That was a bad idea. It was a bad idea in 2000 and it was a bad idea in 2008. I keep entertaining it because so many people are fixated on politics. Now I know that fixation in and of itself is something that won't be cured by electing a popular healer. It only intensifies the fixation on politics - it politicizes common sense. It politicizes all of the aspects of society that are supposed to be the 'bully pulpit' and subverts them - places them in service of political blandishments, which then become something other than coherent debate about policy.

That's where we are and it's why we're in trouble, and I was part of that, and now I realize my error. It took me a year, but I knew something was going wrong. Anyway, that's why I'm comfy turning away from politics per se, but focusing still on natural philosophy, on ethics and history and still what should guide policy. But there's a set of voices I no longer need to hear and a set of conversations worth ignoring because they're coming from the wrong place. I will continue to expect that wise people will participate everywhere, but the wisest will understand the limits of politics and give the rest of civil society its due.

The Local Failure of the Black Blogosphere

I'm a national guy and an international guy. I have a Local Deeds category and I haven't really used it much because I haven't really been local half the year. The past 24 months, I've spent most of my time in Seattle, Cleveland, Ft. Worth, Houston and Cincinatti. Still, I did manage to follow the Jamiel's Law topic well enough to get on radio. BTW, I think the matter has been addressed at the appropriate level although I'm not 100% behind the current solution. So most of the time I'm interested in national politics and culture.

It has been a while since a local issue of black interest has caught my attention, and when they do, it's usually something I sneer at because of the level at which it springs to national attention. You know the drill. Some racist asswipe in some backwater makes some outrageous statement or commits some felony and every African American on the Kwaku Network is sending me a 20 page diatribe with 400 email addresses on it. Then homeboy Howard Witt from Chicago sends out his email and it's on. A day later the Jackson or Sharpton camps have descended or not and then the mainstream media chimes in. Rarely do I get caught up in the rapture. Then if and when I do, I take my angle, get beat up about it until I make a video and then people say 'oh'. Or not.

There has been one singular local issue that I've taken up fully and that was the capital case against Tookie Williams. I was right. I tend to believe that my dismissive attitude towards these sorts of matters in general will be vindicated popularly with the inevitable progress of black America. I have a great deal of confidence in my perspective, but... There are a lot of Americans that have problems discussing black people as if they were people. I don't. Nor do I give any ground to those whose ethics force them to discuss black people as if they were special people. It makes me controversial, what can I say?

But to the extent that somebody has got to talk about black Americans from a local perspective, I am failing the blogosphere. I'm just not that attached to the 'hood. And one of the reasons I'm interested in the Urban Conservative Agenda is because I want to recognize those people who are. Actually, I don't care whether they are conservative or not, quite frankly, because I think black Americans are poorly served on a local level by all news organizations - nobody is doing a good job telling us what's up in Jena before it becomes JENA. Now we know too much - like Britney Spears or whomever is the Spears of the now. (Kwaku Network alerted me that one of the Jena Six shot himself last week - and this means what to the Obama Administration?)

Before I blogged my blog (brainstorm) I was a host at Cafe Utne's Society Conference. At the time I was a Progressive deeply steeped in black political and avant garde cultural traditions and as ignorant of Conservatism as most black Americans remain. It was my convention then, but not so much now, to ask people to tell me where they were coming from - literally. Gimme your zipcode. At the time, I was operating under the premise that a great deal could and should be assumed from the perspective of your demographic environs. I still think that's important but not when you're talking about national and international stuff - then you have to deal with political philosophy and history. In the context of the American Dream and the Struggle, the local details matter. In the global picture they most assuredly do not.

In the Conservative Brotherhood, one blogger in particular has impressed me above all by remaining focused on State and Local politics and that is Akindele Akinyemi. He is focused like a laser on what's happening in Detroit and in the Michigan Statehouse. I haven't really paid as much attention to him as I might have liked, then again, I'm a nationally and internationally focused writer.

The Coalition of the Damned, is by necessity, a local organization. If Houston has bad cops, then some Houstonians need to be raising their pitchforks and torches. But that has nothing to do with LA. The lesson I learned from studying the Rodney King thing to death decades ago was that the rules of engagement for cops is very different. In California, a majority of the state's police chiefs had beef with Darryl Gates. Most people didn't know that. The LAPD used to have rules of engagement that allowed officers to fire on fleeing suspect vehicles. In Houston, they banned that practice 10 years prior to the incident in LA that had me looking at police reform back in the day. The problem then, with the Coalition of the Damned is that in fact they are not a nationwide police watchdog group or dues paying organization with real leadership and an agenda and yet pretend to be. Why? Because of the failure of a real such organization to adequately do what it's supposed to. There is an October 22 Coalition run out of a post office box in NYC and somewhere perhaps there is a Stolen Lives database, but they're evidently short of some technical talent and obviously money. This continues to be the case, sad but true.

I would expect there to be some linkages to black blogging - a dedication to local matters with some discipline. Once upon a time in Los Angeles, I had such dedication. But I am intellectually incapable of making myself that person. I have never lived anywhere more than 6 years since 1982 except here in an upscale beach community in Southern California. I'm not cut out for the task of loving my town and following it around. People even see it on my indifferent face at the local highschool football game. That's what makes me good on the national, philosophical and theological. Somebody has got to have that local spirit, and I think that's exactly what CF's beef is as I interpret it. Let me tell it from my perspective, briefly.

After the Riot in LA when there was a Rebuild LA deal put together by local poohbahs (and if I remember correctly this was the beginning of Magic Johnson's role as big muck in LA) to get the black community back rolling. At this distance, it has worked very well - all of the chain stores are back on Crenshaw. But at the time when the racial tension between blacks and Koreans was at its peak, especially vis a vis LaTasha Harlins, black professionals like me were rolling our eyes. The fundamental question was why blacks didn't own the liquor stores and local retail establishments that Koreans were running in the black community. The answer was nobody black who went to college to be a business major had any intention on running a goddamned 7/11 in the hood. We were all headed to Corporate America. Black local entrepreneurship just wasn't interesting. Getting a 50K small business loan and franchising a Popeye's Chicken, maybe - but only after you hit the glass ceiling at Proctor & Gamble. It wasn't rocket science and among my peers there was no great mystery. Black people (like us) didn't want to be merchants.

CF has this experience in Atlanta. Black people like me wanted to live out at Nisky Lake and work for CocaCola. We didn't want to own a jewelry concession in Little Five Points or a taco joint in Decatur. Nulan understands very well, as I do, that there is a huge managerial brain drain on the 'hood and the ghetto. There simply isn't an economic base there that we are interested in where we were born. This is something my generation of college educated blackfolks share with lots of groups in the global economy and throughout history. See Thomas Sowell for details on nurses from the Philippines, Overseas Chinese and Indian IT workers in America. It's nothing new - entire classes of ethnics leave home, follow the bleeding edge of integration and take their families into middle class circumstances. It has been that way ever since the invention of indentures.

For some black Americans who have decided to cast their lot in the neighborhoods that reared them, we are at a great loss to hear them in their original forms. The blogosphere is the creation I always knew that the internet would provide; Digital Divide my ass. So what are black Americans doing to preserve and communicate ground level activity on a daily and weekly basis? Who are the local black bloggers and what are they talking about? Why is it that I have to learn about KIPP from Malcolm Gladwell? (Or did I hear about something like that the last time we were talking about Oakland?)

Perhaps it is the attitude of Cobb that suppresses that kind of discussion. I certainly don't want it to be. What I want it to be is something approaching the kind of heat and light surrounding the strip club shooting in Queens last year, where people from Queens logged on. But not just for the outrages, because that's not what life is all about.

I know we're never going to outdo Beyonce's music videos on YouTube, but there's got to be somebody out there who can do better than sending along the same tired Obama jokes and pictures by email.

The Conservative Elevator Pitch

From American Thinker.

Good question, Bob. In America today, conservatives believe, government is cruel, corrupt, unjust; and it just costs too much. And we conservatives just can't stand there and do nothing.

Liberals created this monster, Bob. Liberals believe that compulsory government programs are the way to help the poor and comfort the afflicted. But they are wrong. Government is not compassion. Government is force. You cannot solve social problems by force.

Conservatives believe in society not as social force but as social cooperation. That's why we must reform the welfare state into the welfare society. In the welfare society the American people, not liberal experts, will be in charge of their health care, their children's education, the comfort of the afflicted, and the decent provision of pensions.

With conservative reforms America will truly become that shining city on a hill, "still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom."

I think it can be accurately said, that the entire difference between being conservative and a Conservative, is that the Conservative organizes politically to fight that stupid, brutish government rather than merely hedge and hide. This is why being merely organic is not sufficient.

The biggest things our government has ever done are being done today with trillions of dollars. It's frightening.

Transparency Project

I'm interested in building a publically accessible system which details the budgets and spending of municipalities. I know a great deal about the technology. I've just been contacted by folks who do some of that for a living. It ought to be a blast. I think there would be a great deal of public interest in this. After all, it's trillions now...

I would appreciate any input you all might have for where this might take place now. I will investigate the difficult part which is to find out how to get the kind of software I know can make this possible, licensed and hosted. In the meantime I will putting together models and collecting data in MySQL.

NCMEC: More Government Please

This editorial by Chris Soghoian is very convincing:

While NCMEC was created by Congress, is mostly funded by the US government (and in particular, the Department of Justice), and plays a key role in assisting the FBI in its fight against child pornography, the organization isn't part of the US government. It is, instead, is a non-profit, and thus not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act, or limited by constitutional protections guaranteeing free speech, due process and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

It is therefore, in effect, an arbiter without oversight whose edicts are enforced by 'obstructing justice' sorts of charges. I suspect that the agency was created because of a lack of equivalent talent within the Justice Department, and I would also bet that salaries of the technical experts are way off the GS schedule. Not that they shouldn't be, which speaks to some other matters of reform, but here is a technical facility that has a bit too much clout.

Integrate it.

Get Rich Quick

DeLong asks the rhetorical (I hope) question, how the hell is Barack Obama going to fix all this. Him say:

The Obama administration is going to be rebuilding and reconstructing five major sectors of the American t. It has no choice--there is no other option. It has to remake:

• Autos
• Housing finance
• High finance
• Energy
• And the big one—health care

On what principles and through what procedures is this extraordinary exercise in structural economic reform policy going to be accomplished? I get how to do the macroeconomics of Obama administration economic policy. I don’t get how to do the structural side…

There's a reason he doesn't know how to 'do the structural side'. It's because Rome wasn't built in a day, and it didn't collapse in a day either. We evolved the problems that we have and they have pushed us into crisis. The sudden appearance of crisis is therefore illusury. It seems like somebody made a wrong turn off a cliff, but it was more like driving on balding tires on the edge for many miles. The result is a broken car and a long hike out of the woods. But nobody wants to seem to want to do the hiking. They want to call in an airlift, but you can't airlift all of GM. You can't airlift Citibank. They are on the slopes of Everest. If they're too big to fail aren't they also too big to rescue?

It seems to me that the problem with all of these problems is the idea that we can solve them in short order. The very presumption that what's wrong with America - the accumulation of long term dysfunctions that brought us to crisis, can be undone and set right is incompatible with the very concept of 'sustainability'.

I hear in this impatient desire all the requisites for revolution. We don't need a revolution. We need, maybe at least, to go without GM for a while.

The Obama administration is going to be rebuilding and reconstructing five major sectors of the American t. It has no choice--there is no other option. It has to remake:

• Autos
• Housing finance
• High finance
• Energy
• And the big one—health care

On what principles and through what procedures is this extraordinary exercise in structural economic reform policy going to be accomplished? I get how to do the macroeconomics of Obama administration economic policy. I don’t get how to do the structural side…

Birth Pains

Apparently Clarence Thomas is about to draw the ire of millions, and some massive fudge is going to happen or else all hell will break loose in America. He apparently has made the move that will force the Supreme Court to consider one of the several lawsuits over the birth of Barack Obama.

The provocateur in this matter is Leo Donofrio of New Jersey. Quoth he:

The main argument of my law suit alleges that since Obama was a British citizen - at birth - a fact he admits is true, then he cannot be a “natural born citizen”.  The word “born” has meaning.  It deals with the status of a presidential candidate “at birth”.  Obama had dual nationality at birth.  The status of the candidate at the time of the election is not as relevant to the provisions of the Constitution as is his status “at birth.”  If one is not “born” a natural born citizen, he can never be a natural born citizen.

Now of course the merits of the case may be simple and plain, and it must ultimately fall to the Court to decide, but the FEC has got to be something of a defendant here. They've certified his candidacy, so what's the deal? Anyway, Thomas is going to get the blame because his name is on the story - which is actually incorrect. Donofrio continues:

Furthermore, the case is scheduled for conference of all nine Justices, not eight. You should correct that.

And your reporting, which could have been complete with a simple phone call to the Public Information Office, is also deficient in that it wasn’t Justice Thomas alone who distributed the case for conference of December 5, 2008.  That was a decision taken after consideration of the full Court.

There are two docket entries for Nov. 19.  One of them shows that Justice Thomas referred the case to the full court.  The other indicates that the full court distributed the case for conference of Dec. 5. I suggest you call Patricia McCabe Estrada, Deputy Public Information Officer for the United States Supreme Court.  She will set you and your story straight.

As usual, the devil is in the details. Obama knows this which is why he has never been forthright in putting the matter to bed. This could get very very ugly.

American Sex

What is up with sex, and why is American sex different from other people's sex? Specifically, what have we done in marketing sex appeal into our consumer economy that changes what sex is, or what sex is supposed to be?

This is a monstrously huge question that we've touched on in the Weird Science thread, and maybe a little bit in dealing with the implications of Proposition Eight, but not really directly in terms of why sex matters as much as it does as a cultural phenomenon and what effect it has on the basic function of society.

Mark Steyn made quite a big deal about the birthrates of Muslims in Europe and how Scandinavians and Japanese are essentially dying out by not reproducing. When I was a kid, I came from a family of five, which was considered large but not huge. Now, the very idea of a professional with five kids is almost unthinkable, but one with two kids and one from a second marriage seems to be commonplace. We expect teenage girls and boys to be sexually active. Meaning what? How many times a week is normal, with how many partners? I came of age in the 70s when best selling advice came from Xaviera Hollander aka the 'Happy Hooker'. What of legal prostitution? San Francisco is going for it.

Speaking for myself I realized at the age of 10 that everybody is naked. I was helped by an issue of Playboy magazine which showed nurses and nuns and secretaries and schoolteachers. What resides in the sexual imagination today? What's left of it? With all of the pornography out there, is there any sexual imagination? What's the deal with safe sex?

How much should our sexual proclivities and orientations define us? Should that be political? Is sex easy or difficult - how much hesitation do we have making friendships sexual? It sex today as intimate as it used to be? Is it a sport or is it a sacred act? WTF?

The American Baseline Project

The first thing I'm going to do here is try something collaborative. It's going to be a Cobbler kind of thing and maybe we can cobble something reasonable together.

The Republican Party and any party has to be able to clearly communicate to the American people what they should expect from government - they need to refresh the basic covenant with the people. It is only based on these kind of objective baselines that we can say with any confidence whether we as American can be committed to our government agendas or if we should throw the bums out. Right now, it is my perception that 'consent of the governed' is getting short shrift and we feel that there's nothing to be done about it. So the natural inclination of the Left is to gather highly intelligent problem solvers, and the natural inclination of the Right is to gather highly moral patriots. These sets overlap, but neither are sufficient to deliver the promise of consent if they can become elected as the lesser of two evils with no objective regard to what government should be.

So I want to suggest that We the People aggregate some baseline expectations, department by department, issue by issue and then take off in tangential directions on which ideologies go which way on those baselines.

In other words, I'm thinking very seriously right now in turning Cobb into XRepublic, a collaborative enterprise of bottom up democracy.