Cobb

Gil-Scott Heron: Dead

There is a poem by Nikki Giovanni that sums up in about 25 lines everything I think about black consciousness. I could write about it for years, but the essential thing to say doesn't take more than 30 seconds. There are lyrics in a song by Lionel Ritchie that sums up my confidence that I would grow to be the man I expected to be despite all the odds. There's a song by the Isley Brothers that puts me immediately at peace every time I hear it. If I didn't know better I might say that everything I needed to know about black culture could be summed up that way. 

Once upon a time I didn't know better, and in those days it was important for me to find a way to express every emotion and cultural concept in my shared black language. I called it, as I finished my last experiments in it The Well-Wrapped Universe. I would never have to use any metaphors besides those invented in the 'hood to communicate my humanity to all of humanity - and as Earth Wind & Fire said, "If you don't understand me, it's your fault."

I knew I was being selfish even as I over-exaggerated self-referentially in post-modern blackness as a 'Boohabian persistent black object'. But it was still charming and fun in the 90s. I felt the beginning of the end when I found myself, a bit to my surprise, across in Europe trying to make myself understood. I knew I couldn't be so persistent when I found things I was looking for in Borges' poetry and in the lamentations of Chinua Achebe and spiral tales of Carlos Fuentes. Yeah, I was that multicultural. 

The problem with Gil Scott Heron is the same problem as with John Cheever. It's the same problem as with Issac Hayes and with Jesus Christ Superstar. He's too damned specific. It's like saying New Orleans and then humming When the Saints Go Marching In. You can't get away from the fact that Gil-Scott Heron wrote 'Angel Dust', 'Whitey on the Moon' and 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised'. You might want to think of Curtis Mayfield in some broader context than the Superfly Soundtrack. You might want to try to extend the cultural significance of The Wizard of Oz, but it's still always "I'll get you my pretty, and your little dog too". And Vince Geraldi will always be Linus and Lucy and Mikey will always be Life Cereal and Wil Wheaton will always be Ensign Crusher. Forever.

Issac Hayes is the big bald black man who made the ungh sounds of the 70s like a natural man was supposed to. And Jesus Christ Superstar made all pop culture Jesus freaks and hippies approachable for a moment. But what I didn't know when I was 13 years old was that those symbols wouldn't last forever and explain more about the world than just that moment. It was hard for me to accept that Kwai Chang Caine's grasshopper lessons wouldn't serve me long after the show was canceled - especially when I learned that role was supposed to be for Bruce Lee. 

And I began to become resentful of all the things I knew to be true but only for my Well Wrapped Universe. I began to hate the fact that the world couldn't catch the flavor and it didn't want to study. That there is what Gerald Early calls lure and loathing. But I played in all sections of the orchestra, and mastered all the languages and idioms. 

Still. I was prepared to hear that Marvin Gaye's 'Whats Going On' was not the greatest album ever recorded. I was prepared to hear that Alex Haley's Roots was not the greatest American story ever told. But it was hard to give up the arcane gems. It was hard to have to explain The Last Poets. It was difficult to remind people that LA had KDAY, KGFJ, KJLH and KACE, each a different flavor of black radio. And as time went by, it was disappointing to explain Yellow Back Radio, you know, and break it down. It was painful to read High Cotton alone. It was ridiculously hard to give up on explaining George C. Wolfe and so now I explain the real killer. 

The real killer is when, above and beyond the Well Wrapped Universe you find superior examples. It's like dissing Michael Jackson in 1982 when John Landis was just discovering him.

So I look back on Gil Scott Heron and what can I say? He was deep to me as a teenager when I sat in the back of the bus and recited him and Richard Pryor like the perverse psuedo badass I was, or pretended to be. When the world was ruled by The Funk, and when Issac Hayes said ungh, you said ungh back. When you looked with admiration at the matron in the white uniform and 14 inch arms who stood in the back of the church and swung a mean tambourine; when the hardest working man in show business dropped to one knee and the sweat on his forehead let you know he was The Godfather; when all you had to do was say Aretha and everybody shutup. That was the day for Gil Scott Heron and all the ghetto poets of America. When Flip Wilson was preaching in The Church of What's Happenin' Now. When the New York Times used slang words to let the reader know that a Negro was speaking. That's when Gil Scott Heron's message to the masses was a thing to hold in reverence. When everybody had the expectation that some wino had more humanity in him than the President, when hippy dippy weathermen were funny, when you were excited to see Goldie Hawn  pop out of a little door and say 'sock it to me'. That was then. 

It's all so specific that unless you're over 40 years old, you probably have no idea of half the things I'm talking about. Just like I didn't get Bugs Bunny jokes about A ration cards or victory gardens or the aphrodesiac powers of nylon stockings until I went and studied. 

You can go and study Gil-Scott Heron, but his world is over. It's just taking up space in a part of my brain I don't use much any longer. His voice is coming out over the transistors of my old leather covered Federal radio on 1230 AM, hot times soulin' on the weekend, KGFJ.

A rat done bit my sister Nell
and Whitey's on the moon.
Her arms and legs began to swell
And Whitey's on the moon.  

There's some things you remember for which you'll never need Google. I'm prepared to accept those things only mean something to me, and only because it used to mean something to the me I used to be. That's what it means not to be televised. 

Obligatory Seriousness on the End of Birther Madness

I hear that there's an official request from the President of the Uniteed States to the appropriate bureaucracy in Hawaii providing a birth certificate, putting to rest all rumors to the contrary. There's really only three things to say about this.

1. It illustrates that if the President wanted it done, it would be done. End of story. Therefore, he clearly didn't want it done.

2. Birthers need to STFU.

3. Birthers will not STFU. They will go find another conspiracy theory. 

There are always parallels made between Birthers and Truthers. Some odd bunch of peasants who don't deserve franchise have managed, in our brain dead mediasphere to make headlines. That's nothing new. I think the better comparison is made between Birthers and the people who assumed that Dick Cheney was trying to make money from Haliburton and had secret meetings with energy people in his office. In both of these situations there is a level of contempt in the Oval Office that spits contemptuously at the presumption of irate citizens. 

Clearly Obama was working on a principle. 

 

Obligatory Seriousness on Terry Jones

Terry Jones is the evangelical whose grandstanding and staged burning of the Koran has got him in a lot of hot water. He should drown in it, no less than other clerics who think that America should take political cues from their faith. But some people, especially atheists, have suggested that he be tried for incitement, reckless endangerment and even murder. Why? Because some nutcases on the other side of the globe used his provocation to set them off on innocents, namely UN staffers in Afghanistan. That logic, to charge Jones, is absurd, but there's nothing particularly defensible about Jones.

I am impressed witht he fact that Jones prepared his act for maximum effect. He could be considered a symbolic terrorist, manipulating media to outrage, insult and injure a particular class of people. But that's only a moral and ethical definition - we are fortunate that it is not a legal definition. Where would it stop? As shrill as this act is, it is very little more than a staged act by one individual. It is not a political movement by many people over a long period of time. If one were to bend the rules of causality to accuse Terry Jones of murder, how many executives of Planned Parenthood should be next? 

In the end, Jones made people of a certain mindset do what they were aiming to do, none of which is justifyable. I am stuck with an analogy of Malcolm X whispering in Emmett Till's ear - "Hey, go whistle at that white girl."  You can see how vile that would be of Malcolm to send Till to some dangerous fate, but you still couldn't accuse him of murder. Murderers are murderers, period. But those who send innocents off to murderous environments are far from being guilt free.

Obligatory Seriousness on Assange

Some zealot named Assange is responsible for leaking the names of dozens of Afghan informants through WikiLeaks as part of a greater effort to fight the Pentagon. Over the past week many comments have been made to suggest that in light of this, perhaps unintended consequence of Assange's mission to disclose the ugly truth about war, that he doesn't have problems sleeping with the knowledge that these informants will be hunted down by the Taliban.

Aside from the matter of Assange's apparent moral fecklessness, there is the matter of his entry into the intelligence business. The fact that the release of such names has been disclosed in this instance does not mean such leaks have never taken place before - if so, how would we know? Clearly, Assange has decided to work at cross-purposes to the Administration's war effort. He is apparently not up to it. That he comes to us in large print, compromised in the same vector he wanted to be sainted.

Coincidence? I think not.

Obligatory Seriousness on LeBron & The World Cup

I have five things to say on LeBron.

1. If I was LeBron, I would have left Cleveland too. It makes little sense to be the world's best and live in a second rate city.

2. Shaq made no difference. It obviously takes more than two to make a winning NBA team.

3. The new Heat will encounter new defense, a la 'hack a shaq' that will shut down whatever the new trio is called in the first season. I like 'The Amazing Three' from the cartoon. I'm surprised that I haven't heard more.

4. Dan Gilbert doesn't need to be any classier than any other loudmouth NBA owner (Mark Cuban).

5. Jesse Jackson should mind his own business, and if I were LeBron James, I would find a way to quietly tell him so. 

--

I have five things to say on the World Cup

1. Suarez of Uruguay got the booing he deserved, but he was not as bad as Zidane.

2. Forlan of Uruguay got the Golden Ball he deserved. He made the most beautiful goal of the entire series.

3. I'm disappointed in NED. They depended too much on Robben against Spain.

4. If Muller hadn't got put out of the semis, I still think Germany would have won.

5. Yay USA. Expect a lot more attention from American sports fans. Still, Altidore pooped out and should have done more.

That Flotilla

Every once in a while, a phrase creeps up into the news cycle that carries its context with it, obliterating all prior use of the phrase. Wordsmithing is to be expected. That's the genius of modern media, meme creation. It doesn't need to be either grounded in reality or respecting of traditional usage. I would wager that we have a relative spike in the use of new idioms of this sort.

As I listen to No Agenda, I am reminded of the power of PR firms. They know things we don't know about how to create things we are expected to know. A world of bourgeois info consumers, that's what we are - those of us with disposable income and disposable brain cycles. It's why the iPad is popular. Because we have time to read all that brain spew. I'm a brain spewer myself. I've got time to think and no particular village to run. I'm no Hill & Knowlton or Fleishman Hillard and neither are you. So try to remember that your opinion is brilliant, but nobody knows about it because you don't have those guys working for you.

But what a lot of people already suspect can be amped into virtual media certitude with the assistance of an intelligence service, a PR giant, a sufficient editorial dollop of yellow journalism or a government agency or two. And what we tend to forget is that when, oh say Saudi Arabia and Syria have an interest in spreading their spin on events, the right words will ring in the right ears. So if you suspect that Israel is up to no good, it doesn't take a million dollar PR budget to buy yourself the proper global media meme.

And so today we are living with the word 'flotilla' pretty much at the top of the search trends, although I've waited a few days to publish this or say anything, so who knows what's transpired since I wrote it. I refuse to dignify 'peace flotilla'. Well I guess I just did by putting the two words together. It's PR, and it's fake and it's deceptive and it's all over the English, Hebrew and Arabic speaking world. 

I don't generally care to comment on Israel or the Palestinians other than to note from time to time how lame our policy has been since Shalit was abducted. I have generally abandoned care and snidely suggest an international protectorate for Jerusalem, but David Goldman recently let me know that has been tried before. I am satisfied with all of my investigations that the Israelis are doing a commendable job, all things considered.

So let be be one more to jump on Caroline Glick's bandwagon.Oh and by the way, I will use the terms 'military blockade' and 'human sheild' in reference to the matter of the Marvi Marmara.

GTMO Again

I remember when GTMO was a big deal on everybody's lips. I learned a lot from Stashiu over at Patterico's Pontifications. The subject came up again this morning elsewhere and so I had to look some things up. So I'm putting up this post to remind me of the keywords.

In retrospect, what I'm thinking about GTMO is rather simple. Number one, here is the declassified Operating Manual. I haven't read it but I do have it. Download Gitmosop

Number Two: Most of interrogation is not dangerous or inhumane. You'd have to read Stashiu to know that - he was there. I'm not going to do your homework for you.

Number Three: Only Hamdan had a case. The rest was mostly baseless, or caseless as the case may be. Yes I'm being flip. Then again, where are the lawsuits? If you have more information on the lawsuits, by all means, share it.

I Remember Lena

She was old when I was young, but she was beautiful. She was extraordinarily beautiful - as if she were another species of human. She came to my neighborhood to speak when I was a child. She took her time. I don't remember much of what she said, but that she believed in us. Don't quit. Work hard. Common sense things coming from a legend makes them seem more real.

She was right there. I saw her. It was unreal.

She had a kind of accent, a kind of unusual power in her voice. She had eyes that swallowed you whole. Her teeth were brilliant white pickets. Her skin was perfect in every way. She was regal. I didn't want to get too close. She didn't get tired, she didn't want to say hi and then jump quickly back into the limo. She lingered. She waited until everyone asked what they wanted to ask.

I got the feeling she outlasted all of her opposition and that she was free. She never let anything corrupt her out of frustration. Time was on her side.

Scott Brown Looks Good

Scott Brown. From nowhere. 

I haven't heard a word he's said, but like most folks on my side of the curtain, I think his billboard is brilliant. 

From his website:

State Senator Scott Brown has led the fight in Massachusetts against wasteful government spending and higher taxes. He is a free-market advocate who believes our strength as a nation flows from its people. He believes in a culture of family, patriotism and freedom. At his September 12 announcement of candidacy for the U.S. Senate, Senator Brown articulated a core set of beliefs that guide his thinking.

• Government is too big and that the federal stimulus bill made government bigger instead of creating jobs
• Taxes are too high and are going higher if Congress continues with its out-of-control spending
• The historic amount of debt we are passing on to our children and grandchildren is immoral
• Power concentrated in the hands of one political party, as it is here in Massachusetts, leads to bad government and poor decisions
• A strong military and vigorous homeland defense will protect our interests and security around the world and at home
• All Americans deserve health care, but we shouldn't have to create a new government insurance program to provide it

Senator Brown is a proud member of the Massachusetts National Guard, where he has served for nearly three decades and currently holds the rank of Lt. Colonel in the Judge Advocate Generals (JAG) Corps. Brown was awarded the Army Commendation Medal for meritorious service in homeland security following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. His career in public service began as selectman in Wrentham. He then went on to serve three terms as a State Representative and won his current State Senate seat in a special election in 2004. He is currently in his third Senate term.

Sounds like a winner to me. Today he is four points ahead in the polls.

Gnicrowe Dyelecght

It has been a while since I've updated my list of books I've been reading, but as I trod through the snow this evening back to my hotel room, Banks' Transition was on my mind. I could only see through my glasses in the thin strip of light between the scarf pulled high over my mouth and nose and the brim of the hat pulled low over my forehead. I followed some anonymous persons footsteps on the snowy sidewalk in the dimming light and it seemed to me to be a completely alien experience.

In Transition, certain persons are transported into the bodies and minds of others. Having done so they go through a mental checklist of their mental abilities. Languages come first. Most of the target humans have four or more languages, but nobody gets transmuted into a single languaged black American like myself. I have enough French to get on a bus, and enough Spanish to order a taco, but who doesn't? What I do have is just about every American English dialect, from Georgia Drawl to Texas Twang to East LA Spanglish to Brooklyn Eytalian-English, to suburban Upspeak. And though I don't have it as much as I used to, I surely have that which would make me absolutely indistinguishable from Ice Cube if you were to hear me on the phone. With all of these, including a light Scandihoovian, all it takes is two weeks dipped into the element, and I'm in full brogue. And so it occurred to me what a conceit it is that Europeans think themselves so damnably sophisticated in their polyglottish when there's less distance between London and Venice than there is between Phoenix and Seattle. 

I don't mean to be dismissive of European history or culture. Well, actually I do for the same reasons the Euro Zone was created. Italy ain't got much on Texas and 58 million Italians know it. Especially in the wake of this global recession, the PIGS aren't faring very well. (Portugal, Italy, Greece & Spain), whereas plenty of hope and vitality lies with the BRICs or so it's said. Tangentially, as I'm on a rip with my atheist pals, I wonder how readily they would dismiss San Marco Square given all of its religious totemry. Why not defend an atheist suicide bomber in Il Duomo? Obviously Mr. Kurt Westergaard doesn't seem to be worth anybody's time of day, neh? The Continentals are committing cultural suicide in some crazy perversion of Descartes, they think, therefore they shouldn't impose their being. Well, to a certain extent, especially that which gives rise and courage to the likes of our Social Democrats, good riddance to the knot of you.

There is nothing special about any dialect or language. Sapir-Whorf has been disproven and Turing was he who did it. And if you don't believe me, you should recall that you are reading from a digital device. There are simply better and worser communicators, and so when I think about it I wonder how long it will remain that we are transfixed by the skill of language translation. Surely you realize that thing which is Google is making all of this a job for dumb computers. Like chess. I give Kurzweill full marks on that score; how long do you think it's going to be before your iPhone will translate your voice into any language - sounding like you? Not long.

This brings us around to the ignorant mutterings of the day and the hearts bleeding over Harry Reid's obiter dicta. Harry Reid, fer chrissake! Him say Obama no have Negro Dialect. Him speak-um with forked tongue. White Eyes big-um race hater. Me take-um political scalp.

Deus ex machina will not solve petty human freakouts, insecurities, neuroses and emotionalisms. But it sure is fun to mock them from this corner of.. where am I again? Oh yeah. Cleveland.

An Offhanded Dismissal of Today's Black Nationalists

A thoughtful reader asks questions in italics:

1.      As much as black people talk about black pride, why is the Black Nationalist Movement relegated to nothing more than a fringe movement.

Because there are three flavors of black nationalism right about now. The first and basically the only flavor that matters is black cultural nationalism. This is a soft kind of position that basically adheres to the idea that black culture is all that and Elvis was a vulture. You could think of the leader of the black cultural nationalists as Spike Lee. Cult-Nat types are basically interested in investing as much value, time and treasure into blackness, primarily out of love for blackness. It's all about the flavor and being immersed in it. All the cult nationalists range from your basic India Irie to the edge of hard afrocentrists. Any black dude who wears dreads is one of them unless he does it strictly for the chicks, including white chicks.

The second flavor of black nationalist is the separatist. Your Nation of Islam, New Black Panther types. The survivalists. The ones who rents Rosewood more than once. These types don't last long in the daylight, but you'll find them in most every black neighborhood. They'd never live anywhere but black neighborhoods. Sometimes they masquerade as Muslims, got to give the black power handshake, calls blackfolks Kings and Queens, thinks that Neely Fuller and Cress-Welsing are deep thinkers. Rarely do they keep their 'slave' names. Separatists aren't always militant, but they're almost always racist. As soon as you hear one say, "black people can't be racist", you know you've got a live one. Ask them about Tawana Brawley or Nat Turner... and bring a lunch.

The third flavor is a kind of black nationalist is the kind of neo-nationalist. They will simply say they are 'merely' pro-black, but they are exclusively pro-black, specifically about recycling black dollars. What they want most is black power for black people with black money, because by and large they are convinced that the world works in an ethnic mercantilist way. These are a class of bounders beholden to no tradition who will call themselves 'nouveau niggers' because they really have no other idea of what a black man with some power and money is like. They think that they are more reality based than the others, but they're playing an ahistorical game too.

All black nationalists think that racial integration is an iffy proposition. They will always prefer Malcolm X to MLK, and with some exceptions on the neo- side, always prefer Karl Marx to Adam Smith. They will sing the praises of black unity and are generally pissed that 'we cant get our thing together like the Jews' or whomever. What binds all black nationalists together is a sense of shame they feel for the race for which something MUST be done. And then you listen to their plan..


2.      To your knowledge, has their philosophy ever been tested (i.e. its followers win government office and successfully implemented any of its tenants)

Yes. It's a smashing success in black history departments all over America, and nowhere in Africa or anywhere else. Every black nationalist with any organizational dollars can be traced to one degree of separation from a black bookstore, black studies curriculum, or black media outlet. They all have to stay plugged into the continual intemolectual spew otherwise reality would knock some sense into their collectivist theories.  But outside of that same old mau-mau game, nobody is making any money being a black nationalist outside of the Nation of Islam, and the chitlin circuit that collects speaker fees from gullible undergrads.


3.      If not, would not cities such as Detroit and New Orleans provide a platform for their philosophy? Why haven’t they taken the lead on rebuilding these cities?

Because the political end of black nationalism is a dead end. Whether black political activists with a nationalist bent like it or not, white liberal Democrats have no patience for all that bullshit. Not that white liberal Democrats are not full of it themselves, but they know how to run political campaigns and control votes and dollars, and without them black nationalists have no organization, no infrastructure, no say. Hell, black nationalists don't even have a list of names of black nationalists.

That doesn't mean that black nationalist sentiments of the cultural, separatist and neo- strain don't matter in political contests and rhetoric. They do. Black nationalist words speak much louder than black nationalist actions, and those words count, and they appeal to African Americans on the fence - like memes of Obama getting shot. Or in defense of Mumia and Tookie. Or hateration against Obama as 'half-black'. But none of that influence is permanent. In the end, there is NO black nationalist organization of substance in America, meaning with money in the bank. (as compared to say... Ebony and Jet,  or Sucka Free Sunday) http://www.mtv.com/shows/sucker_free/series.jhtml

The most important thing to understand about Black Nationalism is that it has always battled with Christianity in general and the Black Church in particular. And it has always lost. That's really all you need to know.

4.      It is my theory that the Black Nationalist Movement is best left to those who live in their momma’s basement and quote Prof. George James to hide the fact that they just don’t want to work.

Oh plenty of them work, and they work hard. It's just that the work that they work doesn't work.

Happy Holidays from the Woods Family

Guess who will be hanging out with Kobe Bryant for a while?

Is UCLA Too Big to Fail?

I wrote to the LA Times:

There is almost nothing, I repeat nothing, you can spend $100,000 on 18-22 year olds and get something of vital importance to society. UCLA will fail as will the business model of this sort of university. It will fail just as surely as the newspaper industry has failed, and the reason is simple. You can get the same or better information online from people who will share it for free.

Look at MIT OCW. That's free. And a well motivated student can learn what he or she needs to know without the imprimatur of this bankrupt public system.

I attended Cal State in the 80s and wondered what it was I was missing for not having attended UCLA as an undergrad. So I did the common sense thing, which was to go to the UCLA bookstore and buy the books that UCLA students were required to buy. What I learned was that physics was physics and astronomy was astronomy and what I was able to learn had everything to do with my desire and discipline and nothing to do with .. well the patience of smart-assed 22 year old teachers aides.

Everyone who is protesting is gambling on their ability to leverage a dysfunctional political system for funding something a truly smart person would be able to provide for themselves. This for the privilege of having a credential that speaks louder than one's own skills. It's marketing. It's failing. And so are the institutions that hire such dubious individuals, because obviously the endowment is not helping.

Surely the Left commenters here should stop romanticizing simply because UC is a public institution and rather recognize what a UCLA education has become... a bourgeois luxury. If you don't believe that, consider the quality of those opinions written here by students in the fray.

There is a culture of foolishness in America that could do well to fail in this failing economy. And at some point Americans will stop watching television shows like 'Entourage' and spending $2.50 for 8 ounces of energy drinks, or beer for that matter. But until that happens, one cannot take seriously these sorts of complaints.

This is basically when I put on my Dirty Jobs hat. Perhaps our problem as a society is that we have too many 'educated' opinions.

Obligatory Seriousness on Derrion Albert

Every man's death diminishes me, so here it is plain as day. Murder.

I used Google Street View to get a flavor of the neighborhood in which Derrion Albert was beat to death by a gang of teenaged thugs. I read a couple stories about the fact that he was a good kid and didn't deserve to die. And so I think, just like with Jamiel Shaw, Albert's is another chapter in the long history of communities without men. That's what I said. Communities with men don't let boys run the street.

But this neighborhood had a community center. Obviously the 34th Ward Centre and the Agape Center if that is or is not the same place, didn't provide enough cover. Community activism that doesn't put public safety as the number one priority is part of the problem. Which goes to the heart of a problem in a lot of ghetto politics which is ambiguity over police protection. You may recall similar trouble in Philly and NYC.

There's this:

Now the Obama administration is taking a stand and sending Holder to the area where the incident took place. The Attorney General will meet with school officials, residents and students to talk about school violence. Holder arrives in Chicago Wednesday.

Kinda makes you wonder what exactly if anything Obama is doing with the office of Homeland Security. Why would you send the Attorney General to talk about 'school violence'? Smells like a photo op to me. I didn't pay much attention to whatever it was the President said a couple weeks ago in his national address to school children. I'm fairly sure it didn't include words to the effect that if you get killed walking to or from school, we'll investigate.

The solution to the problem of deadly crime in impoverished neighborhoods is the same all over the world. Police. I don't know what we are to make of this death by linking it to ghetto politics or not. Either there is something categorically wrong or this is another isolated, stupid human tragedy. If it's the latter, there's nothing to do but say, gee that's too bad and shrug. After all, there is a big typhoon killing hundreds in the Phillipines and a huge earthquake that killed many more hundreds in Indonesia. No doubt there are still thousands of refugees getting no attention from us Americans in Darfur. Ever notice how Darfur kind of disappeared after Obama got elected? And, hey what about Iraq? Don't we still have troops over there? Oh yeah...

And so if Americans have the nerve to have opinions about what can and should be done in the life and death situation that is war, and we still are in two of them at last count, then the problems of the South Side of Chicago should be an open and shut case. Guess what? It is. And the answer is. Police. Crackdown. With. Community. Support. Against. Gangs. Period.

With 'school violence' as an accepted area of political debate and attorneys in suits pontificating behind podiums with three or more microphones, you get nowhere. Instead, what you need are men in those community streets who are not afraid of roving bands of criminal youth. And if the community itself cannot provide such men, then they should be imported from places with a surplus. Call it occupation if you like. If you don't like, then laissez faire. Let the denizens of Sherwood Forest kill themselves and whoever can escape... escapes.

So now that I think about it. It seems to me that life insurance is more important than health insurance. And if you really want to make a statement about a domestic political agenda, you've got to put a higher priority on murder than on illness. So where's the police czar? Or maybe Obama can talk the street gangs of Chicago into a peaceful settlement. Maybe that's what Holder was sent to do.

I'm going to leave you with one last provocative thought. If you ever want to have an unending discussion about black communities online, talk with black women about finding a good black man. I guarantee you that the conversation goes on and on. Now is that a conspiracy, or is it just a real fact that real men are nowhere to be found in close proximity to where Derrion Albert was beat to death by wild boys?

Obligatory Seriousness on Van Jones

OK, so maybe Dvorak was halfway wrong about the President's CTO, but I've seen about 7 minutes of Van Jones video, some of which is Congressional testimony and I'm thinking that Obama must really believe that older people are incorrigible and unforgivably stupid.

But maybe I'm thinking the wrong way about how czarist political sausage is made. Maybe you hire smart young people who haven't built anything to be the mouthpieces of the office of the President. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around, that you got the most experienced people you can to advice the White House on how things really work and then reality-based policy moves from there. Nope. That's not the Obama way. He gets young Turks.

Well, this turkey is out on his can. Let him fast talk someplace else.

Obligatory Seriousness on Michael Vick

The man has paid his debt to society, and then some.

Not long ago, I put up this public apology as an example of the sort of language we are likely to hear in our pandering society. I did it as a parody because I find that as the mass communications of the mainstream media disintegrates, so too is the public faith in our institutions. People have no automatic reason to trust them implicitly and certain individuals can profit by tearing them down rhetorically. I think that this is generally corrosive to society, and I'm not sure what's going to keep the public faith. That so many have fallen for Obama's bunkum is disturbing.

So I listen carefully for the sort of extra-institutional judgments that the media moderate with an ear towards what they are actually second guessing. So people who feel that they must speak up against Michael Vick at this point, I consider enemies of the justice system.

Anyone who believes that an appearance on 60 Minutes is required, so that the people can make up their own minds, is taking away power from the judge, the jury, and the courts.

Birthers

Sometimes it helps to know that you are part of a tradition. I am part of the African American conservative political tradition, for what it's worth. And as such, I recognize those issues that are close to my interests as part of that tradition and those which just happen to be interesting at the time. There is always political dissonance, and a lot of noise about the meaning of that tradition, and today's noise is about Birthers.

Birthers are to Obama what Truthers were to Bush, a loud idiot minority stuck on stupid, or in Churchill's famous definition, fanatics: persons who can't change their mind and won't change the subject. Birthers believe that Obama should not be President because they claim he was not born in America. There are a lot of crazy and unbelievable things that can and do happen in this country that a little dilligence could clean up, but the provenance of the President is not one of them.

Intelligent opponents of Obama's policies have figured out ways to be provoked to defend the intransigence of Birther's hatred. That only goes to show a general lack of confidence in reason and the echo chamber that even our dispersed media generates. I say it's a waste of time and credibility.

So my point is to have this moment of obligatory seriousness to dismiss the Birthers and their defenders. You're all gone mental.

Sotomayor

I don't know how to judge a judge and neither do you. But just because I have no objective standard to help I am not going to get all exercised about who she *is* or where she comes from or what she looks like or the fact that she's a she.

Dennis Miller said something this year that has had a profound effect on me, and it's just common sense, but I'm going to have to name it. I'm calling it ducking down Miller's Alley. Miller's Alley is a one way street home. He basically said don't spend a lot of time worrying about something that is completely beyond your ability to change. I'm the kind of person who needs to be whacked upside the head with this message, because I'm out there on the boulevard like a motherless child. I need to turn down Miller's Alley and head home where I make a difference. So do a lot of people.

What happens in American politics is that we get annoyed with what we think other people believe. And most of us don't really know what we believe because we cannot sustain a productive conversation about things worth knowing. We argue because it solidifies something in us that we don't want mushy, giving us a false sense of security. But solidified arguments are not so very useful as understanding the process of discovery. That's not what we are doing - we are not discovering anything of value, instead we are uncovering a new class of clowns who look like us but are clearly wrong. Every political development in our national life gives us a new class of freaks to avoid like the plague. 'They' are ruining 'our' America.

So today is the day of California's ruling on Proposition 8. Today is also the day that the first handlers out of the block will start Sotomayor on her path through a guantlet of pundits, pollsters and political parasites, in anticipation of the greatest show on earth, the Senate Confirmation Hearing. The screech of tires has already begun and its just a matter of weeks before the ultimate crunch of steel and broken glass. But in the meantime the squeal will get louder and more incessant.

I know it's irresponsible of me as a public citizen to head down Miller's Alley, but it's really not my job. I think I might do a better job if I were employed as a pundit, pollster or partisan, but I'm not. And so I'm going to reserve judgment on the judge. I will watch without worry.

Cramer vs Stewart

I was in the middle of other things when people all over the web went cuckoo over Jon Stewarts alleged fisking of Jim Cramer. I have one thing to say about the entire affair and in the end I believe that it is the only thing that matters.

What Jim Cramer was that Jon Stewart never will be is someone who made money for people. Cramer was responsible for running a business whose job it was to make money for his clients - and he made it to the top of that field and had the responsibility for many people's jobs in the financial industry. No matter what Stewart says, in the end he is just an entertainer and he is responsible for what? To make people laugh. What Stewart is doing is taking the cheap shot to an art form with maybe a dozen 'researchers' who scour YouTube for something he can play for laughs. In the process, he has been mistaken for and misrepresented as an 'investigative journalist' or someone whose 'standards' of 'tough questions' have put the news media to shame.

And yet he still cannot hold a candle to The Onion.

Be that as it may, in the grand scheme of things Cramer was the boss of adults who worked in a very important industry that is currently in crisis - a crisis that means something to the livlihoods of millions of people around the world. Jon Stewart, on the other hand, is a comedian. If everyone of his equal talent and standing in his industry were to declare bankruptcy and never come back whose livelihoods would be affected? Perhaps bored college students with snarky attitudes might be found throwing their lattes against the walls, but little else would change. 

When Stewart writes a book that compares favorably to PJ O'Rourke, give us grownups a jingle.

Obligatory Seriousness on Obama's Use of the Word 'Responsibility'

It's easy to think clearly when you assume the worst in politics and then ignore the whole beast. So I follow economics instead of policy, seeing that policy is lunacy. I'm working on not subjecting myself to the ungodly torture that is cognition of the word 'responsibility' coming out of the piehole of the man responsible for an imminent multi-trillion dollar deficit. I'm merely awaiting a modern reincarnation of David Stockman.

In the meantime, there is some enthusiasm in finding Martin Peretz coming to his senses over his latent recognition that Obama is quite content to be appointing Saudi tools as diplomats. Which is to say that there's the distinct probability that so-called thinkers on security in the Obama Administration are indeed surrender monkeys with 'America Last' tatooed on their pudgy asses.

God Save The King

I've already made the mistake of not taking inauguration speeches seriously, and being a creature of habit, this year is no exception even after three decades of me making that same mistake. Not only that, instead of breaking the habit, I've gone and been influenced by other commentary. Not much, but enough to fill in first impressions just enough to be rather callow. That said, I don't feel altogether dismissive enough to let Obama's speech go without comment, but I'll file it under Obligatory Seriousness. 

Firstly, there are two ways to deal with the Obama Phenomenon, and yet again I am being consistent. One way is to take in the entire scene, and the other is to read the text. I read the text, period. It is the same thing I did for the Saddleback interview and for the second and final debates. Although on the second, I also watched. That was a mistake as well. Thus I have very little to say about what I've heard about the secondary events - the cheesy poetry, Justice Roberts' hideous gaffe, or Aretha Franklin's re-writing of our American version of 'God Save the King'. But I will say that there's something very unsettling about the passive voice repeating 'Let freedom ring' when the proper lyric is 'Great God our King' after 'Protect us by thy might'.

Ironically, 'God Save the King' is everything that's on my mind at this moment so many Americans I find worthy of second-guessing if not mockery have suddenly found it in their hearts and minds to acknowledge what a great country this is, today. I wish there was some way I could make instant movies that could morph - Micheal Jackson's Black or White video-style, colored faces cheering jubilantly about Obama into white powdered faces trumpeting the greatness of the British Empire, my old bean. Of course there's nothing wrong with chauvinistic patriotic blather, it ought to be encouraged. I just wonder if any of these blokes recognize how they sound to my ears. Not that I'd rain on anyone's parade in person today. I save my reflections for the page. 

The speech was good. Almost very good, but lacking in a theme. It was very full of bullet points and metaphors that only lasted one sentence or two. There is very little in the speech not to like and I think it represents the evolved pragmatism that the once effusive Obama would probably not have given. This is not the Obama who won Iowa. This is the smart, tough guy who is aiming to be the smart, tough President, and it's about time. 

Today, Bank of America lost 29% of its value. The incredible process that led up to that fact surprises and worries me a lot. Today, the 44th President of the United States of America was sworn into office. The ordinary process that led up to that fact doesn't worry, nor surprise me a bit. I know that one process has nothing to do with the other, and yet the political process must now begin to direct and correct the economic process. That is not an occasion for balloons and bunting, but one for prayer. God Save the King. 

Blagojevich

I'm sure the Jesse Jackson Jr. is one of the 'candidates' for Obama's empty seat whose disposition has come under an immense cloud of suspicion. Hell a full blown FBI investigation. I'm trying to remember where I've heard it said that this seat is a 'black' seat and Jackson had better get it.  Google doesn't serve, but the text is out there somewhere.

Well, like I said. People are starting to recognize politics as politics. Speaking of which, there have been what? three Democrat scandals in a row? Finally Cold Cash Jefferson went down.

Anyway, as of this morning, Jackson is confirmed as 'Candidate Number Five'. He'll be doing the appropriate mambo to insure he doesn't have to swallow his own backwash. On the other hand, offering just one million probably made him the low bidder, in which case I agree with McArdle who says it was probably the low bidder who turned Blagojevich in. Makes sense.

Skinheads & Seas of David

Remember back in the good old days before Malvo? You know, when the comics all used to say in their black vs white routines that only whitefolks had mass murderers? Yeah well. And remember when they used to say there were no black terrorists and then we had Seas of David, the crackheads who figured they'd blow up the Sears Tower for al Qaeda? I seem to recall that some people said that the FBI was infiltrating a bunch of innocent black muslims who were not really capable of doing any real harm. I wonder if any of those folks are saying the same thing about the knuckledraggers who just got busted for their fantasy of taking out several dozen blackfolks including That One.

Hoo boy.

We've got some sick and twisted cretins over here, but you know the good guys tend to win. I still can't really watch a Virginia Tech football game without thinking what those folks went through. Every time I think about LSU football, I think how they rallied in the post-Katrina morass. I swear to God I still think of that nutcase in the UT bell tower just as often as not when I hear 'Hook 'em horns'. I don't know why I have these strange associations with death on college campuses - maybe I'll invent a good reason now. The colleges come back. Their spirit returns. I know that we have some morbid political goofs who won't let the soul of Bunchy Carter rest, and so every once in a while (OK more often than not) Lefties make a point in mentioning it whenever they have their 'America has so far to go' speeches at UCLA. But most of the time, kids on campus get on with the ambitious and happy business of filling their heads with knowledge in search of brighter horizons. And so it goes.

I think these particular dregs didn't really have much of a chance to carry out their evil loser plot, and we're indebted to the locals and feds who are generally on their game, as they were this time.

On Gwen Ifill

Some people, notably Rush Limbaugh surprising no one, have complained about Gwen Ifill's role as moderator of tonight's Vice Presidential debates. Why? Because she has a book out in January about Obama. I take this not as a rallying point but as a tell.

The Right has been complaining for years now that the media is in the tank for Obama, about liberal bias and the leftiness of the mainstream media. We have known this forever. So what? Now they are not only whining but implying that Palin can't handle it.

This, my friends, is called panic.

I happen to like Ifill. She's poised and respectful, smart and what a good reporter should be. If she's biased I can't tell it. When it comes to the Right being afraid of her, then it can only mean that they're scared for Palin. I heard the generally gracious Dennis Miller skewering Catie Couric on the radio last night. By the way, if you want to hear my attitude on most any day of the week, Dennis Miller's grown ass man is the closest approximation. I smack around the Lefties but I laugh while I'm doing it. If Miller, who admittedly snaps a bit to attention watching the picture of Palin holding her baby like 'a lioness with her cub', has to take digs at reporters, something else has fallen out of his repertoire and that is the kind of respect a White House officer should have.

My guess is that the severity of the financial crisis in the American banking system has given every one a bracing cold shower. This is exactly the kind of eventuality Conservatives have been saying that the Obamas of the world were in absolutely no shape to handle. Now we have one, who's looking Presidential? Nobody. Nobody at all.

In a world where the Vice President of the US can't handle a PBS reporter, I want to have my money in a Swiss bank.

BTW. Here's a hint to the idiots on the McCain team. Remember all those times that Obama and his wife kept bragging that 'he could have had a job on Wall Street, but instead he went to the ghetto'? See if you can spin that to your advantage, you morons.

On Greed in Business

This morning I listened to Dan Carlin's latest podcast. In the first part, he didn't have much to say and repeated himself a number of times, dragging out the point. Fortunately it was a good point. In the second part, he lost his mind, but I won't go into the second part, rather elaborate on the first. A lot of people have been mouthing off that GREED is the reason why Wall Street is having a hard slog of it these days. A lot of people are wrong.

To use Carlin's apt analogy - saying that people who run business want to make money is like saying that people in sports like to play games. Duh. That's the point. Pitchers pitch, batters bat. Salesmen sell, investors invest. The point is not that pitchers want to pitch faster or batters want to bat further, nor is it the point that sellers want to sell even more at higher prices and buyers in the marketplace want to buy even more at lower prices. The problem is when people change the rules of the game and have no real idea where it will get them. What we are seeing in the financial securities market is not the exposure of greed, nor something fundamentally wrong with capitalism or the 'absence of pure capitalism'. We are seeing what happens when the players exceed the limits of the old rules.

I don't know how many times, in pro football, the rules for pass interference have been changed, but I would think that it has been at least four times in my lifetime. At one time you couldn't touch the reciever when he's catching the ball. Now you can have one hand on him. At one time you couldn't block the reciever off the line of scrimmage. Now you can hit him once. The rules have changed because of what we have seen with extraordinary recievers and defenders. If following these rules one day results in a touchdown the might have won the SuperBowl getting called back and destroys the credibility of the referees, it would be stupid to say that the reason the game is losing confidence of the fans is because football is just too violent, that would be ridiculous. Violence is part of the game, and it is an agreed-upon level of violence with rules and supervision that makes everybody happy and professional about it. The same thing is the case with markets.

Not long ago, Wall Street changed a rule on the ability for traders to engage in a transaction called 'naked shorts'. It was something that the heads on CNBC talked about for a couple days and then it went away. The market makers and regulators are always changing rules to adjust to reality. It makes a real difference to people who play the game, and there are never any shortage of opinions. Mark Cuban, for example had this to say:

This is not a loan that has no value to you, the shareholder. You are PAID for loaning the stock. In fact, for some stocks, you are paid quite a bit. So if you own a share a stock and you take money for it being loaned out, then you have to deal with the consequence that the person who borrowed your share may vote the share. In fact, your shares may not only be loaned to someone trying to short the stock, it may be loaned out to someone who only wants toVOTE THE STOCK.

You get paid for loaning the stock. Its your job to know what rights you have to the share of stock that has been loaned out. It is your job to discuss with your broker whether or not you want your shares loaned out. If you get paid to loan the share, and its voted in a way that goes against your interests, you can scream all you want, but you prostituted your rights. You is a corporate ho.

Now what's all this business of stock loans? I have no idea. Never done it, but somewhere there are rules governing the short sale of stocks and what market makers can do loaning and trading short options and all that complexity. The point is that there are incentives to do just about any and everything with every kind of money: stock, debit, credit, loan, asset, bond, option, strip, coupon, reit, trust, fund, debenture, commodity, adr you can imagine. You can buy them, sell them, trade them, insure them, gift them, hide them, bundle them, unbundle them, hedge against their rise, their fall, their liquidity. You can place time limits on them, or remove them. And people are probably inventing new things to do with new kinds of financial instruments every damned day, like sports coaches and players are always thinking of new ways to improve their game. All within complex sets of rules that the pros and dedicated fans know something about. How do you or I know if it's cricket? Sometimes you just have to be a player to know or even have a clue.

Now I agree with Carlin, that somebody was incented to DO MORE. Well duh. Obviously there were incentives to make more people homeowners. There were obviously incentives to keep intrest rates low. Seems like an obvious combination for financial organizations to make more home loans. Was it right to emphasize this segment of the market? Of all the things that are interesting to do in the financial world, why issue more risky loans and then try to secure it with credit swaps? Why bundle loans sideways instead of longitudinally? Because that's what the people want!

Let's talk a moment about bundling sideways. I heard this on the radio yesterday and it's something I never even thought about, I'm not even sure what the technical term is called or how often its done, but it's a very cool idea.

Lets say that you are a bank, Bank of Cobbler, and you own 100 million dollars of 30 year home loans whose total value at maturity is about 105 million. Roughly 5% is the value of that bundle 30 years out. That's a mere 300 loans with an average value of 350,000 at maturity. Roughly speaking, you get 289k of debt service every month. You with me so far? Simple math, divide 105M/360. Now let's say that looking at the actual history of cashflows over the past 36 months, you are getting an average of 285k allowing for late payments, a small default rate, overhead and being conservative. Suddenly, you need to get a million bucks, like now. So you can take your loan portfolio of that 100M and then sell the next four months of loan payments to a third party. But you make a deal based on a less conservative figure. You need a million and you should be getting 289K so you bump up your loan amount to 1.1M. Your actual collections should be anywhere between 1.140 and 1.56M for those four months, so you figure you can handle the interbank loan rate of 3%. So now you have securitized off some portion of your loan portfolio - the next four months, for 1.1 million in cash. All you have to do is collect on those 300 mortgage payments and pay $33,000 in interest.

Obviously things are a little more complicated than this because you have to make determinations on which parts of these payments are interest and which are principal and rejigger your asset base vs your cash base and treat those monies with the appropriate wisdom. But you can see how easy it is to turn this tiny fragment of you loan portfolio into cash. It seems like a relatively safe bet. The problem now becomes, what exactly are your liabilities if Joe Mortgagepayer doesn't pay two of those three months, and how do you hedge that in your language on the interbank loan? There are probably some interesting rules for that, and obviously investment bankers like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs had more legal leeway than your average mortgage banker or commercial bank. I mean your average Wall Street trader does 100 million dollar deals in their sleep. What's interest on 1.1M for one quarter? Hell, they could pay that out of their pockets. Now you can imagine all the kinds of side bets that could be made with that 1.1M in cash.

The deal was that Fannie and Freddie were quasi-government guaranteed, so that a third party - say Bank of Bowen would have no problem loaning that 1.1M at 3%. Why? Because there was essentially a guarantee that the loans behind this is good money. Now I don't care what Bank of Cobbler does with that 1.1M, so long as I get my 1.133.

Anyway, I haven't come up with a way to show how that 1.1M loan leverages a way bigger amount, but it may have something to do with the way the original bundle was classified at the Bank of Cobbler. That is to say if Joe Mortgagepayer and two more of the 300 in that pile miss one payment, then Cobbler has to declare it somehow to Bowen. Let's say that during those months, that pile had to be re-graded as AA instead of AAA. Then I wouldn't have given Cobbler a 3% rate but probably 4.5%. And then I would have used the difference to buy an insurance premium. Now my insurer is on the hook for this chopped up pile of mortgage pieces in which I have an interest, and Cobbler has an interest and Fannie Mae has an interest and Joe Mortgagepayer has an interest. If I don't get my 1.133, then my insurer has to pay me, Cobbler may call Joe on his loan so he can repackage a new pile at AAA, but now I don't trust Cobbler's porfolios, and my insurer is really in the tank for the little policy premium I took against 1.133...

In all of this failure, all the players are playing by rules we may not understand because we don't get into these transactions, but they are the rules that are necessary to keep all the players interested in the game. I use the term market makers clearly here because the market is not a natural phenomenon, any more than football is a natural phenonmenon, but playing the game becomes a natural part of our culture because it is based upon innate human traits - you can call them Greed and Violence, but it's much more than that.

Google Chrome

Yeah I got Google Chrome. Yeah it's fast. Yeah it's slick. Yes it's better than Safari. But it's not enough.

Four reasons.

1. It doesn't even support Google Notebook. What the hell were they thinking? Why release a new browser without Firefox's killer Google App? Makes no sense.

2. I can't change the color of the browser. It defies all of my Windows thematic settings, and I hate that color blue. It reminds me of the idiot defaults of IE.

3. No smart text stuff for Typepad. Various tabs and such don't show up.

4. No support for del.icio.us plug-in.

In these ways it is only marginally better than Safari. But it is fast and everything works. Still, I'm sticking with Firefox 3.

Obama + Biden

I got my face shaved today. Barbershop time. My barber, definitely old school, but a supporter of Obama, is now showing some more doubts. Obama's triangulation is fairly complete, and he has all the attributes of a mainstream Democrat candidate but none of the bona fides. Reverse the ticket and it's just what you would expect of a fairly good choice. If I were a democrat, I think I might pick Biden Obama. Biden Obama makes sense theoretically but Obama Biden?  If you were to be one of those people who voted for Obama during the primaries, Obama Biden would not *even* be on your mind.

So basically all of the principled Leftists and Progressives get to downplay the VP position. The only consistency here is a dogged determinism against Bush's foreign policy. That's what Biden cements. It's really the last thing Obama should do - campaign on a primarily foreign policy platform, but it does moderate the whole look and feel of the OBandwagon.

Like most reasonably sound people, I made my mind up a long time ago. It didn't take me as long as this campaign has gone to pick my wife of 15 years, so I really don't understand how it is people can keep talking about it this long. No wonder we've gotten into the weeds of dueling assets.

I think the entire thing with the text message is emblematic of Obama-ness. He promises to avoid the MSM and be all young and fresh with his text message delivery of the news. Then his organization leaks it out to the MSM anyway, and the whole text message network never works, and the actual news is not groundbreaking at all, but a safe triangulated thing.

Just premature.

Two in Passing

Bernie Mac was never so much Bernie Mac on television. TV wasn't ready for his genius. Because Bernie Mac was one thing that we have never heard, a brilliant and extraordinarily well-informed sports authority who cursed like a sailor. I've seen his brilliance twice, once in that form with Bryant Gumbel on his HBO show Real Sports and the other time in Spike Lee's film 'Get on the Bus'.

Get on the Bus was Bernie Mac's debut to a big audience, and he still had that raw edge of a black man not sufficiently appreciated. Ask me and I'll say the phrase 'grown ass man' started then and there with Bernie Mac. Bernie Mac was conservative. People tend to act as if they don't understand what black conservatives are like - as we remember Bernie Mac, keep that in mind.

--

Issac Hayes was a lyrical man in a big black man suit. Somehow he always seemed heavier to me than he actually was. He never managed to convert his intimidating largeness in the way James Brown (the sportscaster) or Geoffrey Holder did. So I am particularly aware of how he generated an elaborate sort of music on the edge of orchestral. His voice was uniquely earthy and passionate in a way so many of us wanted to be known in the 70s - Soulful with a capital S. But unlike a load of other singers, Hayes didn't spend a lot of time saying 'Huh!' like the chorus of Kool and the Gang's Jungle Boogie, so popular in those days.

All of these thoughts on Hayes are new for me and gotten in the past year. Some NPR show hipped me to him and I listened seriously for a short time. That's what I got. I'm sure we've lost all that and more.

As a side note, when I was in Cleveland a few short weeks ago, I had lunch in the Galleria and the jazzy joint there. One of the waitresses flirted with me saying that I reminded her of Issac Hayes, it was one of the few times in life I was too taken aback not to have a sweet rejoinder. I could only blush and smile. I think Issac would have wanted it that way.

So That's Paris?

I took 30 seconds out of my busy day to watch the McCain ad that calls Obama a celebrity. So? Isn't he the biggest celebrity in the world? Of course he is. I think it was a well done ad. What's funny is that I didn't know ahead of time that he was comparing Obama to Paris Hilton or Britney Spears, I'd have to ask what's with the chicks? Obviously, it's not my demographic.

500 Tons of Yellowcake

The key word here is yellowcake.

The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program - a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium - reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.

The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" - the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment - was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.

What's now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles south of Baghdad - using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.

This is the stuff that Plame's husband, Wilson said there was none of. Or to be more precise he said there was no more of it being bought. Which may or may not be true and this stockpile doesn't prove him wrong. Wilson's problem was that he said so without having any proof and then blamed the Bush administration for trying to destroy him. Etc.

Is 500 tons of yellowcake a weapon of mass destruction? No. Is it material for a dirty bomb. Nope. It's an industrial sized ingredient for a big nuclear program. How many nukes could you make with 500 tons? Over 100. So is having 500 tons of yellowcake evidence of a nuclear program? Yes. Is it evidence of an active nuclear program?  That's a question for inspectors. 

What's perfectly clear here is that until the completion of this transaction, Iraq hadn't been disarmed. The world is now safer.

Jesse Helms: Dead

I actually haven't read an official obituary, but I can gather that the man has died from the number of comments in the RSS feeder. I'm going to say something that you probably won't hear anyone else say which is that American racists need democratic representation too. So when it came to Helms and Thurmond, I basically saw them as the official representatives of American white supremacists.

You will note that there is nobody immediately coming to follow in their segregationist footsteps, but at least he lived long enough to see Obama get the Democratic nomination as official as that may be.

As a Republican, people who know no Republicans tend to think that I must be trying to follow his lead. The closest they come to being correct is the fact that I once considered living in NC. Other than that, I only think of the man when forced to by such accusations. At any rate I'm sure somebody somewhere benefited from the works of his life which is ever tainted by his racist ideas. Too bad.

Sean Bell & The Reasonable Man's Strip Club

What is the difference between community expectations of black men who happen to be at strip clubs at 4 in the morning? Should they expect them to be cops or johns? That's a tough question in today's political environment. I say we are suffering some deteriorating standards when something like this case raises outrage. I really don't have a lot to say except to raise some points that don't seem to be raised. In particular, what duty does the community have?

From that perspective, and as you might suspect, my sympathies are with the police who were involved in the undercover operation investigating the criminal element that ran the strip club in question. And I am dismayed at the appearance of community members (but who knows where all the protesters came from?) who didn't seem to care whether or not cops put their lives on the line.

Obviously there is no reasonable way to say that Bell deserved to die, because of what we have learned about him in all after the fact. But one does have to weigh the privileges of partying with the responsibilities of law enforcement. Bell's life is not a reasonable price to pay, but I believe everybody walked into this situation with their eyes open.

One more thing. I haven't weighed in on race vis a vis law and order since the Philadelphia black militia. I haven't heard anything updating that situation. But I wonder, in the zeal that many folks had to have black men do some self-policing, what their attitude might be in this particular situation vis a vis policing. Would the strip club be considered off-limits?

Damned If You Do

McCain, apparently, and not that I've been listening or am much concerned at the moment, dissed some Republicans in North Carolina for airing a 'racist' ad. I haven't looked any closer because I expect the story has no legs, except for the following reported at Patterico:

It’s fair to call someone who votes against Obama solely because of his race a racist but there are other reasons than racism someone might vote for McCain. There are people like me who will vote for McCain because I don’t like Obama’s liberal policies, his lack of experience, and his questionable character. That doesn’t make me a racist, except perhaps in David Plouffe-world.

The irony is that this was a throw-away line in the interview. Plouffe was conceding that Obama has lost some voters to McCain, and it’s telling that Plouffe thinks votes have been lost because voters are racists. Clearly Plouffe believes that a segment of McCain’s support comes from one-dimensional racist voters.

That’s a sad and one-dimensional view of the electorate Obama craves to serve. As President, I don’t think Obama the uniter will be motivated to connect with racist McCain supporters … unless they happen to remind him of a racist old uncle.

The full National Journal interview is here.

Limbaugh was mouthing off against McCain on the matter this morning. I turned him off. McCain, I think, is guilty of either pandering or being more stupid than I thought. I tend to believe the former, and I'm not particularly saying much - I think that level of pandering (wrt McCain) on both 'racism' and 'global warming' is basically required to get the attention of a certain fragment of the American electorate.

What's a bit more interesting is that I don't see the pieces as aggregated. That is to say there are very few single issue racial or climatic voters. Rather, all of us have some fraction of our decision weighted on race or climate and a certain amount of pandering gets a certain amount of our support.

The fact that McCain will not get attributed any significant gain among 'the black vote' is demonstrable proof that 'the black vote' is racially motivated. It doesn't mean much only because there's not much meaning anyone can take from this kind of babble. Still it is a consistent indication that we're not really talking about people who aggregate into block bodies, rather that the lot of us angle towards or away from candidates according to these block-like ideas.

As usual, I give McCain the benefit of the doubt, and as usual I am sick to death of all the blather surrounding Jeremiah Wright. As for the Weather Underground? I'll deal with that separately.

Gripping Guns & God

Right Radio is all over Obama's pledge to be the candidate of the bitter. I think the circle of contempt is clear. All we need is for Barry to find some people who are as mad as hell and not going to take it anymore and we'll be right back with McCain as Nixon supporting the silent majority.

Obama's characterization of the denizens of 'Pennsyltucky' is perfectly consistent with those in Trinity's congregation and uplift programs. He wants the disaffected vote, and being the Leftiest candidate, he should be certain to get it. What the Right cannot stand is that this is Obama's America.  Limbaugh this morning chimed in saying that Middle America *is* bitter, but bitter about the things that have been denied them because of the Left.

How many clowns can pile out of the bittermobile? We'll give it a week.

On Condi as McCain's VP

The news is abuzz with the prospect that Condi Rice may be seeking the office of Vice President. What is particularly interesting to me in this regard is the extent to which it suggests that her differences with the Bush Administration in foreign policy might be at issue and the implications that accrue to the differences between McCain's geopolitical worldview and Bush's.

Of course this is not the primary reason for the buzz. Rather, or so it appears, the reason is for the identity monkey wrench it throws to the Democrats. However it is not so shortsighted as the particularly shallow counter-candidacy of Alan Keyes against Illinois Senator Obama when that little fiasco was attempted. Rice is a genuine superstar and darling of the GOP and very popular.

I think Rice makes for an attractive candidate and have no doubts she's up to it. Lots of people like her for lots of reasons, and her geopolitical gravitas is hardly dismissible. At any rate, her positions would certainly get the focus they deserve. Whether or not such is a good thing for McCain remains to be seen. I think it augers well for the independent vote as well as the dissident Democrat vote.

As much as I got excited about a Petraeus vice-presidency, I cannot see that working with McCain. Besides, I'd rather see Petraeus as SecDef.

More on Condi:

• The Rice Card
• The Biography of a Parrot
• Condi's Black Ops
• Condi's Black Ops II: Tyrone Willingham
• Condi Rice & Black Liberals

On PBS On Joe Louis

Over the short weekend, the Spousal Unit and I found a flophouse no-tell motel in the San Gabriel Valley to pass a sleepy afternoon. There, with mirrors on the ceiling and pink champagne on ice, we watched the bittersweet tale of Joe Louis on the local PBS affiliate TV broadcast.

As the SU sighed at gentle Joe's misfortune I parsed the narrative with exruciating exactitude, enjoying, analyzing, second-guessing and running a counter-narrative all at once. I cannot seem to let go with documentaries the way I do with action flicks. It's the same way I shout back at my children's teachers when I criticize the subjects they allow. But then again, if you're going to teach Global Warming, it might as well be to middle school kids.

About Joe, there was this disbelief that he could be humbled and obliged to America that ran through the entire program. It was as if the entire class of memories were being shape-shifted into the privileged impatience of Black Power for the sake of the generation that didn't know Joe. And at the same time you think, my God how easy it could be for any one of America's wealthy blacks to erase the Brown Bomber's enormous debt to the IRS.

At once I marvelled that the symbolism of the man could be so great and yet the actual man so manifestly abused. Was American patriotism ever purchased so cheaply? At the same time, I never sensed for a moment that Louis himself ever questioned that he should be patriotic. In the end, you have to love your country and your countrymen, or leave them.

On Jeremiah Wright, Geraldine Ferraro & Obama's Best Blackness

Patterico sez:

Tom Bevan:

Brian Ross’s report for Good Morning America on Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is potentially a huge problem for Obama. In the piece, Ross has clips of Wright delivering sermons in which he says we should not say God Bless America, but God “Damn” America, in which he calls America the US of KKKA (referring to how racist the country is), and in which he says about September 11 that America’s “chickens have come home to roost.”

As if that weren’t bad enough, Mark Halperin has a Youtube of Wright in which he says Jesus was a black man killed by rich white folks and he drops the N-Word in reference to Hillary.

Jeez.  This is Obama’s “spiritual advisor”?

I knew Wright had said supportive things about Louis Farrakhan, and that’s bad enough.  But I had no idea it was this bad.

Unless our news media is totally in the bag for Obama, I think Bevan is right. He’s going to face increased scrutiny on this, and it could be a real problem for him.

He's right. And what he is going to discover, if Barry is the kind of brother I think he ought to be, is exactly how deep the rabbithole goes with regard to the amount of lipservice blackfolks give in defense of our weaker bretheren.

To wax theoretical for a moment:

I was listening to a talkshow the other night and the host couldn't figure out if Obama ever wrote about being damaged by the n-word. If Barry were to concede that it's so hard for a black man like himself today, he's going to get dissed far and wide. He won't. So it's difficult for some whitefolk to understand how or why superstars like Barry should give 'victimology' any play whatsoever. So here is what whitefolks need to hear (and I'll make a video too) which they always get when it is explained to them this way in person.

OK. This is for you white dude. I want you to go back you highschool memories and think of your first crush. You can see her face, her blonde hair, her blue eyes, the way she walked, her voice and how a mere glance from her turned your insides to jelly. She never touched you, she never even spoke to you, but you spent so much time thinking about her. You loved her and hated her at the same time. There are still songs that take you back to the moment. One day she actually spoke to you and told you that you were lower than toad poop. You never forgave her, and you never will.

For some blackfolks, this is what the first racist experience is like. For you, maybe it was the first time you saw your father hit your mother. The first time a bully smacked you in the face and gave you a bloody nose. The first time you flunked a class. The first time you wrecked your parents' car. You had nightmares.

Now grow up and get over it. Easy right? For some people yes. For others there are decades of reading self-help books and going to therapy and strange obsessions. For some blackfolks, racism is like that. On the surface, the stupid act of a stupid person and in the context of world history, less than a drop in the bucket - like your job, your marriage and your kids. A mere nothing. Disposable minutia in the great scheme of things, like a night with a hooker.

So. Will Obama ever admit that it hurts to be a black man in America? No. But will he play to the politics that caters to the victims of America? Of course. He's a 'new' politician. So Jeremiah Wright is the baggage - he's the man responsible for saying 'bad things happen to good black people, and it's not your fault'. And this is the kind of fellow traveller Democrats need because they are holistic, and Obama is holistic. Like Bill (and unlike Hillary) Barry feels your pain, especially if it's black pain of the sort mentioned above. It's real.

I don't think that area is proper to bring into politics which is why crusty, impersonal characters like Cheney don't phase me. I don't need the guy to pretend like he likes me and can relate to me on a personal level. Which is another reason Obama doesn't sway me outside of his policy positions. (see here).

Tom Bevan:

Brian Ross’s report for Good Morning America on Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is potentially a huge problem for Obama. In the piece, Ross has clips of Wright delivering sermons in which he says we should not say God Bless America, but God “Damn” America, in which he calls America the US of KKKA (referring to how racist the country is), and in which he says about September 11 that America’s “chickens have come home to roost.”

As if that weren’t bad enough, Mark Halperin has a Youtube of Wright in which he says Jesus was a black man killed by rich white folks and he drops the N-Word in reference to Hillary.

Jeez.  This is Obama’s “spiritual advisor”?

I knew Wright had said supportive things about Louis Farrakhan, and that’s bad enough.  But I had no idea it was this bad.

Unless our news media is totally in the bag for Obama, I think Bevan is right. He’s going to face increased scrutiny on this, and it could be a real problem for him.

On Elliot Spitzer

Of all the questions one might pose to a man who uses prostitutes, the most ridiculous one is 'why'.

On Photoshopping Obama

I heard a story on Monday afternoon about some picture of Barry that had been photoshopped (or not) showing him in some somehow insulting getup. Having seen the picture finally today, I don't see what the big deal is. Then I found another version which must be the photoshopped version which shows... well you can see for yourself the difference.
The version I got was too small for me to even tell if it was Obama. But there's certainly a difference between the two.

What's cleverly insidious about the shopped picture is that it's too small for me to detect photoshopping.  Generally these things are easy to spot. This one is not.

At any rate there's some controversy about who is circulating this picture, but again I don't find it particularly offensive. It's a simple lie. Considering the dozens of monkey pictures I've seen of GWBush over the past few years, I'm waiting for that level of caricature to surface. This is, after all, the same country that made P.T. Barnum & Flavor Flav rich. There are few levels of uncivil ridicule to which Americans will not stoop. This is just low rent stupid stuff. Let it go people.   

A Dude Works on a Ranch

Aha. So I saw the YouTube of the officer that went dead off on a skateboard kid. It's hilarious that right at the end of the video he asks if the camera is on. It sounds like he's about to say "If I find myself on YouTube.." and considering the abuse he heaps on the kid, some further abuse is forthcoming. I've been hearing about this deal in the sphere, but never paid it any mind all last week.

The first thing I thought when I watched the video was that this cop was a rookie. Because one of the first things cops learn as a rookie is that you are not allowed to take any shit from anyone. Never. Not one inch. You are the law and people are not at liberty to disrespect the law. So as he came out of his 'dont disrespect me, this badge or the department' thing I said - ahh rookie.

The video is kind of shocking, but the more I listen to it, the more I side with the cop. The kid loses his skateboard and gets a verbal beatdown and has to deal with his mother being called by the cop. It's rather obvious that the kid could have been cited for boarding there - can't tell if he was arrested or not. You definitely need the PR from the department's standpoint that the officer gets suspended.
But what really went down? A kid learning in no uncertain terms that the chubby man in yellow driving an electric scooter is not to be trifled with. Yes, precisely because he is an officer of the law.

It turns out that Officer Rivieri is a veteran on the force, which implies to me that when he said that the kid needs to learn about respect if he expects to live long in this world, that Rivieri has probably seen some ugly shit. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he had to deal with some grave situation recently. Anyway.

The real commentary on our society can be found in the comments.   
Support your local police.

On The Super Bowl

I hated this Super Bowl, and I suppose that proves that my plan is working. My plan is to become more invested in sports and less in politics in the coming year. But there are unintended consequences. Pain. Rather like Commander Data wanting to experience ordinary human emotion I find myself a bit overwhelmed by taking this crap seriously. What's worse is that I still haven't developed the proper vocabulary for excoriating players. It remains in my limbic brain from childhood. All I can do is curse and sputter. See the spit flying? Fricking losers.

I had to leave all of the Super Bowl parties early. I couldn't take it.

There were about six commercials out of sixty that were worth beans and not one that was just great.
The eTrade talking baby. The fire breather. The giant pigeons were memorable but that wasn't even a funny commercial.

Ask your doctor if Plaxico is right for you. Side effects may include bad calls on fumbles, loss of Super Bowl rings...

Knives Out

Is Dr, King a major deity or merely a stellar figure? If this is a matter of some controversy to you, then I suppose you might be one of the members of the community of folks whose hands are trembling over the latest Obama-Clinton cat fight.

This unbearably shallow debate is the kind of racial shadowboxing that Democrats specialize in. Clearly, Clinton has offended some Civil Rights fashionistas by wearing her King Legacy Pin slightly askew. Obama has made it clear that he recognizes the opportunity for what it is, a chance to say he's more right by not having made any such fashion faux pas.

There's really not much else to it but that, although I imagine many commentators will ride the tangents into the depths of space. There's only one way this can get better, which is if the candidates 'go there'. But of course they won't - they can't. There is no real debate on race because there is no real controversy on race. There is no real racial policy in America, there are only people with good manners and common sense and there are people with bigotry in their hearts and minds. The latter group makes life tedious and outre for the majority of us, and occasionally unbearable for a few of us, but nobody should expect any candidate to do more than hire or fire a few attorneys at the EEOC, and then life goes on. You can bet neither of them will even say anything that specific. Instead we are all to imply that somebody is 'playing a race card' which essentially means nothing.

Now I know that as a black man, I am presumed to be extraordinarily sensitive to any racial impropriety. That's because I am heir to generations of victims and am thus some sort of victim myself. So goes the common wisdom. In America, I have the exclusive privilege to generate some extra measure of sympathy because of this. However, I personally choose not to exercise this privilege although I reserve the right to do anything that I deem appropriate to my character and reputation. For those black men who rise in social prominence in America, we are aware of the tradeoff. All Americans are invested in one way or another to whether or not such a privilege is invoked. Some want to see a certain amount of obeisance to the tradition of complaint as the politics of civil disobedience are invoked. Others want to see a certain amount of disregard to that tradition as demonstrative of a more powerful sort of agency. I make the distinction between the politics of civil rights and those of social power. Nobody should ever give up civil rights, but the agency of establishing and maintaining social power requires different tactics than those most familiar to Americans when they think of black politics, ie sit-ins, marches, and stentorian race baiting rhetoric.

Barack Obama cannot be unaware of this. If anyone wants a clue to understand how he is likely to react, then let this be a clue. He will assert his personal character and reputation according to assumed social power. In other words, he will do exactly what he did in Iowa - he will act presidential. He will not, under any circumstances be pulled in the direction which would intimate any extraordinary sensitivity or victim status. He will be a wall, and anyone thinking they can prick him into flinching will find their strategies backfiring. But such pricking, should it continue, will be met by a clench-jawed fury. Think Denzel Washington in 'Man on Fire'.

This is what I know about my generation of black men of substance. It applies to Obama in a particularly unique way because he does inherit another privilege of the common American wisdom. That is, as a black man with power in the Democrat Party, he has no explaining to do. As a Senator for Illinois, it is likely that he got more black votes to get him in office than did Michael Steele in Maryland as Lt. Governor, but not many more. Nevertheless it is presumed that simply because he is a Democrat he is the de facto leader of the black electorate. Given the chance, blacks would anoint him The One. In some ways, he walks in the shoes of Ron Brown, except that Obama is that much further along the curve, a cabinet post could be considered beneath him in America's mind. Any black Republican in an equivalent elected position would would have more explaining to do, although by the very same token of social power, they generally have not.

Aside from all that, an Obama Clinton catfight is entertaining for this Republican, and I'm hoping it becomes more vicious as time goes on. So here's to hoping they stop clawing and pull out more dangerous weapons that cut deeper into fleshy issues. There will be blood, I hope Obama doesn't get too much on his suits.

On the Bradley Effect

The what?

Some pundit somewhere has to take credit for inventing a term I never heard of before, and my parents worked for Bradley. It has to do with the skewing of exit poll data due to an overabundance of white guilt. Lord knows that Shelby Steele is going to use this one.

So we're in deep prognostication horse race territory and nobody gets paid to say "I have no idea why", so the crazy theories are hip deep. Explaining why the exit polls showed Obama leading in New Hampshire and actual ballot count saying he loses is the order of the day. Thus the Bradley Effect theory. When they get on TV or in front of a reporter, they want to look enlightened. Yes my neck may be red but I voted for the colored fellow. They say. But in fact, they voted for the white one.

I'm taking all of these screwy theories with a grain of salt. I just wanted you all to know that. I expect somebody is going to write a PhD thesis in American studies on the 57 varieties of racism suffered by poor Barack before this year is over. I just wish everybody would stop being so surprised that he wins and surprised that he loses. There is no predicting. There are just results and armchair punditry.

But just in case, I've got to come up with a cool meme too.

This Was the Moment

Obama wins Iowa. Good for him.

Huckabee wins Iowa. So what?

I heard Obama's victory speech on the radio and boy was he pumped. He sounded like the man who just won the Boston Marathon ready to predict winning the LA Marathon - telling the streets in the next town to submit. But that's the kind of confidence winning in Iowa give presidential candidates, and Obama is ready. He sounds like a very good winner. Of course I don't take the symbolism of his victory quite as seriously as the chanting crowds, nor should he.

As for Huckabee, one commentator got it right. Every vote for Huckabee is a final vote for Giuliani. Huckabee, best described as a 'pro-life Jimmy Carter', has proven that the hardline conservative vote is not invincible. Nobody but nobody in the GOP expects Huckabee to do much of anything after this. In fact, they are defying him. I'm riding that wave of defiance.

Bhutto Bombed

I fear the day when Pakistan becomes more of a liability than an asset in the GWOT. We already know that the SIS, their CIA, is very dicey and has manipulated a lot of intel on Bin Laden and others. I am coming to think that their turnover of AQ Khan was basically all the quid they were willing and able to pro quo the US.

Just last week when Musharraf announced that he would end the state of emergency, I was beginning to think optimistically. His allowing of Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif back into the political process was a crucial step in linking his Presidency to a future democracy. Plus he took off the uniform. Sure there was and is still a huge issue with the Supreme Court mess, but I think he was making progress. Now with the assassination of Bhutto, Musharraf and Pakistan have taken a body blow.

Somebody needs to be the figurehead for a huge crackdown on terror, and I think it has to be Musharraf's biggest ally in the SIS. The question is whether or not that institution can be trusted to do anything in the interest of a secular democracy. They may hold the key.

We know that Pakistanis have great trust in the Army, but the Army was not called out in response to the protests and gnashing of teeth over the death of Bhutto. That's a good move. But the Army and the SIS together are not going to save Pakistan. Could it be Sharif? Could it be one of the figures still under house arrest in the state of emergency?

This gets uglier every week. Pray that civil war does not begin.

All of Baseball is an Asterisk

Steroid use in baseball is de facto legitimate, but everybody is embarrassed about it. Now the charade is over.

It shouldn't take grand jury investigations or a whole bunch of time or money to find out who is using what in order to play baseball any better. All we have to do is drop the phony 'enforcement' regime and bring the whole practice into the open, which is to say legalize it. The game everybody has been watching and enjoying, they have been doing so under false premises. Instead of just Barry Bonds, it was him and a sizable fraction of the entire league, including coaches, doctors, owners, and other associated weed carriers. If you thought baseball was 'pure', now you must live with knowing you've been in love with a fake.

Everybody should admit that it doesn't get any worse than this. All of major league baseball is an asterisk. Not literally all, but symbolically all. There is no longer a situation in which performance enhancing drug uses can be asterisked into compartmentalized areas. The stink permeates the entire sport and there is no more walling it off. You can now add baseball as the fourth horse. It is now sex, drugs, rock & roll and baseball. Mom and apple pie stand alone.

From this moment forward, the only hypocrisy left is a crackdown. I've have said it before. Professional baseball needs performance enhancement because of the very nature of the competition. Chess, for example, does not. In golf, it's the technology of the tools that undergo the change. Basketball, is the 'purest' major sport left. As for the nobility of sport itself and messages to kids:

There seems to me nothing inherent in the values we seek to revere in sport which limit them to football or baseball. If there is a such thing as athletic nobility, surely it can't be limited to a handful of contests. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, the human drama of athletic competition, certainly all of these are found in sports other than those we dote upon. So it seems to me that some of our ethical dilemma in picking the wrong sports heroes because we are picking the wrong sports. Think about it this way, there was once a time when boxing was considered the domain of athletic nobility. That is no longer the case. Although some would argue that we have lost something permanently as a showcase for heroism, I say it has just moved on to another sport. We are not at a loss for heroes, they just work another arena. Or maybe our society doesn't value courage, strength and speed as much as we thought.

But let's say we allowed drugs in our pro sports. Whatever the values our society places on its mastery I think it is absurd to assume that the critical elements of every sport would become threatened by generally allowing dope. I could be wrong, but I don't believe that we know so much about long distance running as we know about weightlifting. Every highschool kid knows that steroids will grow the kind of muscle mass that makes for a better weightlifter, but what kind of drug makes one a better ski jumper, a better hockey goalie, a better golfer a better video gamer?

So I think that people should admit that it's not the drugs, but the cheating that makes the difference in athletic nobility. If we allowed it, the drug regimen would become just another part of the diet and training discipline athletes use. For those who believe that a drug free purity is necessary, create another class of competition. I happen to think that the Olympic Games best suits the class of competition which should be drug free. After all, many of these are the sports which have little else going for them but the prestige of athletic nobility.

This is baseball is on drugs. Get over it.

CIA Interrogation Tapes: Methods

What part of 'compartmentalization of sources and methods' do you not understand?

As I think about the destruction of tapes of CIA interrogations, the thing that strikes me is that this seems to be the kind of thing you absolutely don't want to fall into enemy hands. So I think it stands to reason that there are very few 'need to know' folks outside of those whose job it is to make sense of the intelligence provided by any recordings of interrogations.

As a CIA officer, I could not imagine that I'd have much confidence that in today's political climate, that congressional oversight in matters regarding interrogration is much more than a witch hunt. It's all anybody seems to care about. We've weasel-worded waterboarding into the torture category and all of the -gate hunters are trying to find evidence of who boarded whom and when with no regard to the aims or the standard hiding practices of sources and methods expected of the CIA.

I predict that it won't be long until the Democrat candidates promise to use the full force of their office to expose and punish any and everybody in the Agency who ever used or approved the use of some overbroad interpretation of the word 'torture'. It will be called cleaning house. It will in fact be a purge. It will come at the expense of the faith of CIA career people that their own sources and methods will not be exploited for poltical gain.

Shots Fired

In a country of 300 million, somebody is bound to get shot. This week the media's attention has focused on three black men who were among the many.

In the first case, two men were burglars who got busted by a belligerent and nosy neighbor. This guy named Joe Horn in Texas essentially called 911 and informed them that a burglary was happening next door. He then proceded to get his shotgun, leave his house and chase down the burglars with deadly force despite being warned not to.

The call started off calmly enough.

"(There are) burglars breaking into a house next door," the caller is heard on the 911 tape telling a police dispatcher.
Pasadena resident reportedly shoots suspected thieves.

"I've got a shotgun do you want me to stop 'em?" The dispatcher was quick to respond.

"Nope don't do that. Ain't no property worth shooting somebody over OK?," the Pasadena dispatcher said as he called out officers to the scene.

What Joe Horn did was entirely predictable. In his heightened state of panic, he shot the two men dead without any regard to the appropriate rules of engagement. This is exactly the kind of result I predicted would happen in the case of the Philadelphia Black Militia. Fortunately, it hasn't happened in Philly, yet. It's always a bad idea to send civilians to do a cop's job whether you are in Texas, Philadelphia or Iraq. Every civilized country has police. We know how to do this. Joe Horn was a fool for taking the law into his own hands and he's going to live with regret for killing those men for the rest of his life. He's a somewhat sympathetic fool, but a dangerous fool nonetheless.

Police tend to be on the scene for the aftermath. It's easy to say 'too little too late' when it comes to second guessing the cops. It's easy to connect the dots and say something ugly going on should have been prevented. That was the case for the star football player who was shot and killed last week. It seems everyone everywhere is mourning his death and thinking, that could have been me. I bet they're also thinking, why there wasn't somebody there with a shotgun at the ready. I know I did. But Joe Horn reminds us of the ever-present downside.

There is a narrow window of time between the beginning of a potentially deadly crime and the time that cops can arrive on scene. Call it the Red Zone. Civilians get caught in the Red Zone all the time. What can we do? What should we do? There's no telling or predicting when or where you might be stuck in this zone. It happened to me. I know my instincts are to defend my neighbors and myself. But I've thought long and hard about whether it's my job to use deadly force. It's not an easy question, because the responsibility is, by definition, the biggest responsibility anyone can face - life or death. In my maturity, I've come to accept more of that responsibility. I wrote:

I have come to accept something about my civil duty and responsibility to the public to my fellow countrymen. In dropping the persona of my bohemian self, in becoming a husband and father, in becoming a middle aged man, I had to acknowledge my own power to be an example, more than I ever thought I'd have to be. Way deep down inside I knew the truth of the phrase 'civilization is where you put it', but I always thought when it came down to it, it would fall to the professionals and experts. I should have known better. It takes all of us, not just rhetorically, but really.

I couldn't say I wanted to be a police officer. I wanted to be a 'bhuddist cop'. I didn't want to disturb my inner peace through the action of bringing peace into the world. I was a bumpersticker pacifist. And because of that I inverted that latent desire in people I didn't respect from courage to cowardice.

Yes I want to own a gun, not to be any old pistol-packing vigilante. But I start to wonder about the men who do, just as I wonder about the men who drive Porsches in my neighborhood, and the men whose sons I admire in the local Scout troop. What is my relationship to my neighbor, and how have I let them down by not knowing them better? What are the slim tendrils of curiosity that I can work into bonds of mutual interdependence? Today I know something I didn't know in 2000 or in 1992.

I'm responsible for war and peace in my community, and I have no right to cry over a loss that I never invested in.

So I'm saying that I understand, I think, what the better part of Joe Horn was thinking. I understand what many people are saying when they call for us to take more responsibility for the safety of our communities. Our sense of violation is physical and visceral. We want to act, and stop that bad thing from happening. It's such a basic human attribute that it's universal. But we tend to forget that this is the same feeling that cops and soldiers have, and why they do what they do every day. We tend to forget that because we get involved in political micromanagement. We look at  bureaucracies and start up with the statistical morality game. How many men could have been saved if only...[insert politically motivated, yet heartfelt institutional reform here].

There is a subtle kind of victimology going on here. We complain that the System ain't good enough - that it doesn't protect us from murdering crooks, gun-happy vigilantes, corrupt cops, stupid judges or overzealous prosecutors. It's very hard to get that System to give us true satisfaction, because that only comes from revenge. What we have is a Justice System, not a Revenge System. Lucky for us.

So all we can do is take out verbal revenge and try to get our satisfaction. Here is as good a place as any.

Bombs Over the Beltway

A lot of inside political baseball socks have been knocked off by the announcement of two bombshells this week. I yawn and speculate.

Trent Lott Resigns
To spend more time with his family? How about to spend more money with his family. Dude has the opportunity to walk into some serious walking around money. And why shouldn't he? I don't think anyone has suggested he was particularly bribable as Senators go, so let him go for the dough. He obviously didn't have it coming in, and he's made a big splash in his career. I never liked Trent Lott although I forget exactly why I didn't in the days before the Strom Thurmond remark. Nor am I particularly interested in looking up why not in my own blog. Senators come and senators go. He's gone. It looks like John Kyl is in. That is to say, he is in line to become the new Senate Minority Whip. I actually do like Kyl. He's clear and forthright as politicians go. Not much doublespeak with Kyl. On the whole, I think it's a good thing.

Oprah Backs Obama
You could see this one coming a mile away. In fact, I thought it was already official. Apparently not. Fresh from handling her South African business recently, Oprah's got a new pet. That's nice. It's probably not much of a double-edged sword for Obama. I can't imagine that anyone who was for him will back away because of this, and those of us who think he can be pretty loopy on foreign policy aren't going to change our stripes because of the great Ms. Winfrey's sterling endorsement. I can imagine that his publisher is going to be pretty happy and he'll certainly get another book out if he doesn't suck up to become Veep in the next four years (given Clinton).

oh yeah and one more bombshell, but it was in the prior week.

Petraeus as Vice President
Petraeus could even make Sam Brownback electable. No matter what kind of conservative you are, you like Petraeus because he was the first leader in the entire Iraq War that made sense at the beginning and still makes sense today. But of course the killer combination would be Giuliani and Petraeus. How likely? Not bloody likely. David has got a job to do and he's still doing it. Our future security problems are not even reflections of our current ones, so it would be purely symbolic. DP ought to go to the Joint Chiefs or Sec Def. He sure as hell would make a better impression on the military than Rumsfeld, desptie Rummy's bold leadership. There's got to be another magic bullet for the ticket somewhere.

War Plans for Iran

"if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (the Iranians) from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."
-- GW Bush

Sounds reasonable to me. It is in everybody's interest to keep Iran from going loony. The trick seems to be how might this be done when they are funding Hezbolla.

But let's just say for the sake of argument, that there isn't jack we can do to stop Iran from building the Islamic Bomb. What's next? Obviously, any president who isn't having his military planners consider that possibility isn't worth a dime. Obama, are you listening?

Anyone who read Colin Powell's bio knows that the general spent many months with many thousands of troops and tactical nukes at the ready watching the Fulda Gap ever on alert for WW3. He was there. That's no joke.  That's the way America operates, and that is not going to change. It should change. We should pre-empt those with hostile intentions. It's pay now or pay later and the PNACians understand this.

We have been fortunate to have a President who puts troops in harms way and develop our own capability in the field of operations. Petraeus is somebody who could not have happened in the Carter, Reagan, Bush or Clinton eras. In those days, the American President was too accustomed to overusing, and often abusing the Directorate of Operations of the CIA and paying proxy soldiers and Contras to do the geopolitical heavy lifting that should have been our burden in the first place. The more I study this sad history of the Cold War, the more I lament the idea that we could place 'advisors' all over the globe and do covert war using local 'freedom fighters'. I'm glad we have a real Army and yes Blackwater doing all of this hard military work above board in broad daylight. That's how American wars should be.

But the plans for such wars should always remains ongoing and in secret. That's what the Pentagon gets paid to do - plan for and respond to threats.

In the current American political environment, it is difficult for me to see how we might ever attain the kind of rapport with the Iranian people that we deserve. We Americans are quite lousy at diplomacy. I don't mean our diplomats and bureaucrats at State, I mean our citizens. We don't establish real ties to foreign countries in very significant ways. Even now through the Iraqi conflict, we have not by and large come to any advanced accommodation with the Iraqi people. We have done admirably well as of late being the proper soldiers in pacification, but we Americans can hardly brag about being goodwill ambassadors to the Middle East. It is not because of our foreign policy, it is because of our worldview. We can be so very condescending. Even through that, I have been constantly buoyed by the actual words of Secretary Rice and Ambassador Crocker whenever I hear them. It's not enough, but it's something.

I don't know how to get America on track, to focus on national consensus so that we may give our better natures more air. The same spirit that brings us to compassion over the conflict in Darfur is the primary American spirit. When it comes down to it, we do help and we do everything in a big way. We will come back to being a nation of consensus.

When we do become a nation of consensus once again, it will be useful to point out, and believe me I will, those marginal loudmouths who will turn the bile they reserve for the Bush Administration towards America in general. For when the White House and the Congress will bi-partisanly agree to defend American interests abroad, you can be sure that the George Carlins of the world will cynically describe us as 'a warlike people' while fighting to preserve their grip on the right to spew the obscenity of the day. It will be the tenor of language they will have to use in order to shock us out of the 'complacency' of rational national interest.

Those of us who to strive to be rational everyday are quite well aware that Iranians fall in love and have babies too. It only means they are people. We hear critics suggest that war plans dehumanize the enemy - and it is only a sort of xenophobic racism, or religious intolerance that allows us to consider drawing up plans to fight wars. What they cannot seem to imagine is the kind of rationale I've had as a moral geopolitical neocon since day one:

Yet if I could stop for a minute and start dealing with the hideous facts of the matter on the ground in Iraq (and probably a half dozen other horrible places), I wonder if I would mind so much if my president is Shrek instead of a Handsome Prince. I'm a policy snob in the face of Saddam's clear and present danger. Not to me, to Iraqis. It's not about me.

Since it is not about me, and a busybody neighbor is better than an abusive parent, I have to concede the fact that an ugly rescue is better than benign neglect. I feel that our geopolitical snobbery and posing are pretty worthless right about now, and the fact that we have to wheedle our way around the diplomatic chicanery of the UN and everyplace else is only necessitated by a failure of brotherhood and an ignoble squeamishness which is not rescued by our well-meant outrage at Bush's mendacity. I do believe in class warfare.That means noblesse on our part and revolt by the Shi'a.

The focus of the world is on Saddam Hussein. WMD or no, Iraqis are hopeless without our intervention. Now is the time for action, political snobs be damned. No matter how physically wreckless we may be, and I have a strong feeling that we won't be, this war is better happening than not. No matter how diplomatically wreckless we have been, and I know for damned sure that we have been, those are only words and hard feelings, but they're not lives. Lives are more important than words.

Americans who rationally observe the actions of Ahmadinejad's Quds forces, his engagements in Iraq and Lebanon through them and Hezbollah must see how he seeks to undermine the rule of law and of national sovereignty. Americans who hear his willingness to question the statehood of Israel should rationally question his willingness to respect borders.

So we plan.