Cobb

Air America, Sorta

It must have been an interesting calculation for the folks over at Air America to choose AM 1580 to be the LA station. It doesn't reach Orange County or the San Fernando Valley. But in South Central and the Westside it comes in loud and clear. That is if they haven't changed the transmitter since back in the day when 1580 was KDAY, the station that broke West Coast Gangsta Rap to the world. Be that as it may, as I drove north from Irvine, the garbled horror became more clear and finally intelligible around Carson. It's amazing to me that the station doesn't reach Long Beach, what are they thinking? If this is the America they want to air, they've got a long way to go. Start with radio stations we can hear, morons!

I hardly expected to enjoy Garafalo's show, but they do a good job of not taking themselves seriously while sticking a few serious subjects into the mix. The show immediately previous, while mostly garbled, was mostly whining about GWBush and the war in Iraq. But Garafalo and her co-host were actually reasonably entertaining, and saying things outright which are only cleverly hinted at on NPR.

Air America is going to eat NPRs lunch, and that's a good thing. There is nothing so annoying as their dumbed down Day to Day show. Have I snarled about that already?

Who knows if any of the listeners to Redneck Radio are going to swap over. We'll all have to wait until Air America can figure out where the rest of the nation lives.

Condi Rice & Black Liberals

If you hang around black socialists for a long enough time, you're certain to get headaches. Right about now the hand-wringing is at an all-time high: Condi Rice is about to shoulder the entire Bush Administration.

Like most liberals, black radical liberals wish to take responsibility for assuring everyone in the world will be free of racist oppression. Those of a more educated stripe as befits their higher status in the bourgiosie, look for quite subtle slights, especially those suffered by those like Condi Rice who ought to be queens somewhere in New Nubia. According to such schools of thought, the higher their status in America, the more tragic it is that they will face the same ugly debilitating racism as the rest of us, nevermind the fact that they are not debilitated and seldom even embarrassed. (Still everyone waits for the memoirs when the race card is bound to show the secret suffering.) And so as Rice approaches the stand with the world watching, certain blackfolks will be on point observing the forces of racist hegemony work against she who should be a righteous black sistah. Can you say Anita Hill? While there is certainly nothing inherently wrong with anti-racist activism of any stripe, there is very little that can be learned from how Class Three Racism affects the most powerful class of African Americans.

Of course Condi Rice is a Republican (from way back) and thus earns the emnity of all leftists. This is as it should be and so she earns a tidy amount of dismissive disgust, heavy on the disgust. Rice, like Powell cannot be dismissed. In these days post-MLK and post-X there is a tendency to look for the black leader. And many attending to the fate of African America in our semi-opaque world of culture and ideas seek to exemplify aspects of our unique character and strength in the person of publically recognizable figure. Bill Cosby as the black father is such a Fungible. That counts for negative roll models as well. Thus Condi is often villified and hung in political effigy as a classic example of a sell-out, Uncle Tom and or traitor to the Struggle.

Ironic aint it?

Not to the radicals. Such messages actually combine to make Rice a victim. Ahh. Now it makes sense.

I'm Rick James, Bitch

Dave Chappelle was interviewed by Elvis Mitchell this week and I really dug it. Even though I was probably expecting something completely different and in several different modes when I checked out his show at the Wiltern last year, I still find him to be a brilliant comic.

Since then, his show on Comedy Central has become a monumental hit, one that I've been hearing en passant. When I hang out on XBox Live, "I'm Rick James, Bitch" is by far the most popular quote from any movie, show or television program. It's up there with quotes from the film 'Office Space' and the Chevy Chase 'Vacation' flicks. I've not had a chance to see that episode - I'll wait for the DVD.

Chappelle aims to be completely honest with himself and his audience, and he has a refreshing sensibility about the nature of comedy. Directness is part of it. I like that.

Executive Privilege & Rice

Condi Rice has been speaking on television. I don't think this is reason enough for her to be compelled to testify, but I do agree that the Bush Administration is overly secretive. I don't think that they abuse executive privilege but they do undermine their own credibility by such standoffishness. They really are running the White House as the political headquarters of the Republican party which is what is so particularly annoying about things these days.

Frist's speaking up on this issue is really one of the first times in recent memory that the Republicans of Congress have been able to draw any attention away from the President and the White House itself. Compare this to the days of Newt Gingrich. What's up with the House and Senate? Have they lost their spine?

Richard Clarke has won this round. Which only proves that our Congress has a stick up it's butt.

Conservatism & The Butterfly Effect

In letting the strength of the logic of a conservative position or a moderation of a liberal position speak through me dispassionately, I appear more conservative than I think I am. As I present such arguments more and more, I notice strange things happening.

At the latest discussion, this time with my brothers the other day, I noticed this phenomenon in action.

Let's begin with some simple arguments.

Conservative Argument: The UN is relatively worthless.
As a practical matter, I find it necessary to respond to the false panacea of International Law. More and more I wonder exactly what it is, if anything, that American Liberals see as useful about international law other than that it symbolically represents the greatest consensus possible. To that I must simply respond that perfection is the enemy of progress.

The UN is an artifact of the second world war and the Security Council is an artifact of the Cold War. It's time to rethink the entire mission of the UN. The UN cannot, has not and will not depose despots. It drags its feet in search of a consensus that can never be. What can the UN do about Sudan? What will the UN do about Sudan? Nothing, I suspect.

The UN ratifies and second guesses. But doesn't the World Court do this better? The WTO, Red Cross, IMF, NAFTA, any dozen treaties, The Kyoto Protocol. These are all more powerful and effective organizations than the UN. What is the one thing that the UN does better than any other entity on the planet? The only answer I can give has to do with occupying realestate on the Hudson River. Outside of that it is a second rate entity.

Understand that this is not contempt for the UN. It sounds like it but why would the UN be beyond reproach?

Liberal Argument: The Development of the First World Underdevelops the Third World
Myth, I say. The angle here is to attempt to undermine the moral authority of American material progress. We are arrogant in our establishment of authority over people with dirt roads simply because we have 8 lane highways. Yeah? So? The overproduction of the First World benefits the Third. If we didn't have Merck over in New Jersey, where would the AIDS drugs come from, Jakarta?

My question is, what is it that the Second World does so well in their relationships to the Third that excludes them from debates about how American capitalism is a scourge on the planet? What did Brazil ever do for Burma?

We consume mass quantities of everything. We're fat and happy, but we are the most industrious fat and happy people. If not, we're close to the top. I seem to recall that there were some fairly good arguments about why American consumption is bad for everyone else. But I would argue that globalism will leaven that of necessity. That unless and until more nations begin to participate in the global economy, Americans will continue to monopolize the skills and wherewithal for its appetite. No matter what can be said about American hegemony, we cannot control scarcity and we cannot stop knowledge. America has everything to lose in international competition and the second and third world nations have everything to gain. We're not bombing the competition.

The net effect of this simple logic, plus simple observations like the country that has done the absolute most to completely isolate itself from American influence is North Korea (workers paradise or hell on earth, you decide), magnify what I think are mostly slight differences between Americans.

Maybe the difference really is that Liberals feel mostly guilty about being American whereas Conservatives feel mostly proud.

Hating Hospitals

I hate hospitals. So it's entirely likely that I'm to be cursed with having to deal with them. It's only been a few days since I spent half a day in an emergency room. Now I've got the bill. It's not pretty.

If that weren't enough, now my mother is in the hospital. She's anemic and they're doing all kinds of 'scopies on her tomorrow. Today they made her hold her breath in the CT scanner with a biopsy needle in her liver.

I don't even have the humor at the moment to shake my head at the retarded luck I'm having.

I realize I do not have the patience of a physically weak person. I hate being sick because I don't have the stomach for not being able to work through things. I'm going to hate dying. I can't go quietly. So sitting by my mother's bedside is an exercise in patience for someone else. Very trying.

I don't need this kind of aggravation, but I get it. That's why I needed a cigar.

Safe

The Higgs Boson & Supercomputing

I can tell that I'm about to become an old man. I know this because the most incredible technological fantasy I ever imagined is almost about to become something of a reality. Let me describe the fantasy.

When I was a kid and I would be sitting in the back seat of Pop's 1968 VW Bus on our way up to the Angeles Crest I would watch the freeway go by. But on the interminable trips to Mt. Baldy or Crystal Lake I fell into a trance doing this on the 60 Freeway. During one of these trances I imagined myself to be the pilot of an incredible machine flying low over Earth at about 60 miles per hour. My machine, disguised as a yellow steel and glass internal combustion engine vehicle with rubber wheels had a sophisticated system of laser scanners and a Molecular Forge.

The Molecular Forge was a less complicated version of the Subatomic Forge, but I hadn't been promoted to that level of surveyor in the Earth Observation League. What I did for the League was to take my machine, affectionately known as 'The Bus' and scan massive chunks of roadside property.

The first lasers, the Mappers, would scan the surface and composition of the target area to a depth of 3 meters and record the shape and position of the zillions of atoms, figure out their molecular structure, temperature and everything else about them. Secondly, the Disintegrators would vaporize the target areas and break them down into molecular cloud. The Forge lasers themselves would reassemble all these bits adding subtle tags which tied the reconstructed material back to the massive Survey. Ultimately we would know more about the Earth than the Earthlings, and if we found it suitable we could take over the planet at will.

I was proud of my machine, but why they assigned me to the Pomona Freeway was a humiliation I couldn't explain.

I've been a database guy forever. Even before I understood any computing theory, I had always envisioned their ultimate purpose as replacing librarians. We've come close enough in that we use it to Orkut librarians. But now it appears that some of the ultimate databases are being assembled. Why? In order to map subatomic particles of course.

In an 8 hour session of atom smashing, the new supercomputing grid being assembled for CERN is going to generate 10 terabytes of data. They're going to do this day in and day out. To help you comprehend the magnitude of this, right now the record for the largest database is somewhere around 67 terabytes. Now this is commercial information (I think it's the telephone billing system for NTT) and I'm sure that when you get into signals intercepts and telemetry for Echelon, there's plenty of terabytes online that we'll just never know about. But these guys are going to destroy those records in just a week of operations.

So they've invented new technologies to handle this awesome science. The Mappers are real. By the time my kids grow up, they'll have the whole VW Bus, and I can die happy.

Fetal-American

Insult Checks

OK. Here's a brilliant idea. If only I knew the right people I could make it happen. Since this is CC licensed, you shouldn't make money without my permission.

Insult Checks

Did you ever have to pay somebody that you hate? Your check should tell them so. There could be graphics with themes like 'blood money', or 'hush money' etc. A check that conveys the message, I swear to god i wish I never had to deal with you but here's your money. Or 'here's your friggen money now shut the hell up' a very convenient one for paying bets that you lose. A check with an image of a haughty Caiphas tossing 30 pieces of silver to a grovelling Judas would be a great one. Or one with a cigar-chomping fatcat tossing a coin over his shoulder to a frail whimpering wastrel.

God I want those checks. I have to find a printer.

Carousal Sans Arousal

I put on the lite Hollywood Suit last evening and swung around to a number of functions. I don't know what it is that I find so mildly fascinating in people.. well actually I do. That's why I read books.

Naturally, I'm one of those alien-comes-to-earth people who watches human social behavior with an odd mix of curiosity, revulsion, amusement and contempt. Every once in a while, however, I can jump into the primordial stew and appear as one of them. Last night was one of those exceptional times, although I could feel the clock ticking on my humanoid disguise.

LABlogs had a meat at Farmer's Market last night. I haven't been to that joint in about 20 years, I think. They've upgraded. It's quite the spot - as busy as City Walk and as animated as Knott's Berry Farm. The lox was pretty good too. My unknown host purchased several pitchers of beer of which I consumed mass quantities thereby recharging the batteries of my human disguise. I managed to meet several semi-interesting folks, but I think I missed the political discussion, which I guess is all I really care about. Since I am no longer in the business of seduction for kicks, making people have a mental orgasm is about the best I can do. Not that my skills were up to par at all lastnight. Anyway, I didn't really dust off that sabre. Instead I just watched faces, remembered names and sought out signs of passion.

The first subject was Douglas. Doug's the tech writer with the thin book on high tech jobs. If I had my brain in gear at all, I would have started to talk about offshoring and the book. But he was just the first person I met and I really wanted to get into the beer rather than the book. Since I wasn't really intent on talking to anyone about anything at all, I let conversations seque into each other, which upon further consideration can be considered rude, but wtf, it's LA.

Jonah and Susie were there. Susie has one of those kinds of smiles that makes you think of girl scout cookies, summer days, haystacks and rhubarb pie. She's the kind of person you hate to be cynical around, at least that was the impression she made on me without even saying much. Jonah's pleasant mood was clearly a reflection of his proximity to her. He's a pure native Cali boy who is managing his current estrangement from fresh ocean breezes. Outside of the 1 mile zone from the shore somewhere near the eastern edge of flightpath of the Santa Monica Airport he's taking life one day at a time. I told him of all numerous joints I've lived in, South Pasadena is my favorite. It's unnatural I must confess, my attraction to South Pasadena. Something awful needs to happen to me there. We've all got to find our place.

Slime and Defend

It's really disturbing how arrogant Bushies are these days, not only the apparent campaign to drag Richard Clarke in front of a grand jury, but the audacity that they are beyond criticism and reproach. Now distant memories about problems that Richard Armitage had as well as the ambassador who quit are slithering to the surface of my memory. This White House is too partisan and touchy for me. I'm sick of it. Is nobody taking a long view any more? This tit for tat is truly annoying.

Better

Tripping

Spain Again

Peak Oil Researchers

Use the following names to talk about 'Peak Oil'

• Paul K. Hubbert
• John Felmy
• Paul Roberts
• Chris Skrebowski
• Joseph J. Romm

(from Warren Olney)

Gasoline prices are rising again, with one survey claiming a national record of $1.77 per gallon. Despite predictions of $3 a gallon before the end of this summer, even by today’s standards, the energy that drives the world’s economy is dirt cheap. Yet, recent books called Out of Gas and The End of Oil are solemn reminders that that will inevitably come to an end. The question is, how soon? New research predicts that supply may stop meeting demand sooner rather than later, with drastic consequences for civilization and planet Earth. Are those the fantasies of Chicken Little, or does the world face massive economic depression and even “energy wars" in the next 30 years? Warren Olney leads a spirited debate among energy reporters, economists, energy trade representatives and a Clinton White House Energy Department official.

On Marriage: None of Your Business

I didn't catch the beginning, but certainly the end of Peter Sprigg's interview this morning on NPR. The conciseness of his answers was surprising. There are certain things he said which are particularly worth noting, in my ongoing drama over the state of marriage in our nation. Spriggs brings up the point of the government interest in marriage vis a vis procreation.

Why tie marriage to procreation?

If marriage had nothing to do with procreation it would be ludicrous for us to be even be discussing the government giving licenses to people to marry or requiring a court proceding for them to end their marriage. Why would we want the government to get involved in people's prvate relationships at all? I would submit the only reason it's a public instituion is because of the interest in procreation and child rearing.

While I have maintained that the state has an interest in the stability of domestic partnerships, and that civil unions are reasonable, I do so with the firm conviction that this is subservient to the goal of serving the needs of children.

From the perspective of Christian Charity, I consider a consequence of this. If we are going to have an internal third world, the state is under no particular obligation to insist on marriage. They may ask, but Christians would demand it in a charitable way. This is what we do for our perserverance, you should too. Indeed as Sprigg notes, there are fairly obvious objective studies that children fare worse with regard to poverty on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale when parents are apart. (We should all revisit that controversy - should you be married to get welfare?). So when it comes to domestic tranquility, the state is more likely to 'pacify' the rabble than insist they get married. Indeed isn't that what has happened to children of single mothers as welfare has been sliced and diced?

On the racial 'parallel':

"Those laws, from the start, were burdening the institution of marriage in the service of a totally unrelated social goal that some people had of keeping the races apart. Now, defining the marriage as the union of one man and one woman on the other hand is not irrelevant to the central purpose of marriage, it is the core of the central purpose of marriage."

Good stuff.

Hassle

14 Acres and What Do You Get?

Some 350 farmers have made something of a garden of sorts on 14 acres of property snatched up by the City of Los Angeles for a project that never materialized. Eminent domain was the snatching mechanism, and to smooth things over, they gave right of first refusal to the swipee.

Well now 12 years and some 580 trees later, the City has decided that its domain is not so eminent, and the original owner who is losing about 35,000 a month is drooling over the prospect of building warehouses.

I smell a train wreck.

UPDATE: Information

You're Killin' Me

As everyone who has ever watched the bad guy get his knows, the proper way to kill someone is to push them over an impossibly high cliff. Watch them scream as they go down and splat on the bottom.

The death penalty is certainly inhumane when handled by clowns. But there have got to be some surefire ways of snuffing people out reliably and swiftly which could give an audience thrills and chills. For my money watching them plunge from a very high spot has got to be tops.

The only difficulty for such a maneuver has to do with manufacturing an appropriately tough, yet transparent body bag. We in the gallery at ground zero don't want to get splattered and we certainly want to be able to see their face. There has certainly got to be some super baggy that could do the trick. Or perhaps a plexiglass box would suffice. I know. How about one of those huge inflated balls like in that Jacky Chan movie?

Death by deceleration. Now that's entertainment.

Afflicted

No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. -- John Dunne

Richard Clarke is making me want to look closer, the more heat he takes from the Bush White House, the deeper hole they dig themselves into. It's as if they have forgotten that history is recorded and will be reviewed. As I take in the broad sweep of his allegations, he makes perfect sense. That the White House is already on the defensive nauseates me. They can't even co-opt his expertise. This is crummy, and I am now getting accustomed to a White House that won't come clean.

When I think about all the overblown rhetoric that surrounded missile defense, how absolutely wrong the Bush White House was about that it really makes me sympathetic to Clarke's case. Not only that, but in the hearings, he admitted failure. That's courage, and it is a clear showing of character, yes I said character, that George W. Bush singularly lacks. Bush is too small to apologize. Somewhere inside of him is a little Richard Nixon but he's very clever in hiding it from the cameras.

When nine-eleven hit, the first guy I thought might have had some answers was actually killed in the WTC. His name was. John O'Neill, who had asked for more focus on the bombers of the USS Cole. I expect that his name will come up in Clarke's book, but even if it doesn't, he's the man for whom a great deal is owed. Clarke said that has CT not been reduced from a cabinet post, and had the top agency directors been directly accountable to the president, the AQ operatives in the USA, who were already identified by the FBI, more traps could have been set and sprung.

It truly amazed me when the Bush Administration allowed missle parts to be shipped from North Korea to Yemen. It was like spitting on the grave of O'Neill who proved right on the AQ-Yemeni connection. But now I have entered the realm of history, which of course is nuanced. Reading history right about now would be a lot more interesting than the press conferences I am hearing.

UPDATE: Drezner is reading. History twists.

MLK Sr. a What?

I want to throw something out there raised by a cat name Bob Parks. He says that he's heard that MLK's parents were Republicans. It's something you'd think people would have heard about before. It makes perfect sense, of course and is only symbolically significant, but there it is.

More on Spaulding

I caught the entire second segment of Fresh Aire's tribute to Spaulding Gray and it brought to mind some things I haven't considered in a while, which is the indulgence of analysis. It wasn't cemented in my mind until I Gray himself started talking about how difficult it was for him to deal with the fact that after having children, he wasn't being mothered by his girlfriends. A hell of a thing to learn in your 50s I'd say.

Gray got divorced, or legally separated (I suppose there is some difference) when his psychiatrist informed his wife that his behavior was sufficient in California to have him committed into a mental institution. She would have been on the hook legally. It's rather curious to follow this instance of marriage considering that Gray was having babies by another woman during his marriage to this one. They got together because, as Gray was having many operations on his eye, his girlfriend only had limited access to him in the hospital. The law giveth and the law taketh away.

Such legal conveniences are expected of those privileged characters in our society, again illustrating the differences between marriage and Matrimony.

I would like to believe Gray's exposure of his own life, in time, gave a mature treatement of his immaturity but I am not familiar with his later works. In either case I wonder with increasing suspicion what psychoanalysis reveals about personality and values in a corrective way. I've only been through a touch of it myself in the aftermath of my own brother's death. But I suspect that in the best circumstances psychoanalysis gives one a friendship that friends don't - allowing you to make an honest assessment of what you do in life.

Still, it is the conceit and privilege of those with dough to make reasonably functional lives out of that which would wreck the average Joe. But another way to think of psycholanalysis is as a crutch without which those who cannot walk under their own power to stumble through life more or less reasonably. We save those who ordinarily couldn't be saved thus extending the expectations of what is redeemable behavior. I have a problem with this and I am likely to be a harsher judge of Gray than I have been. It's a class thing too.

The Nineties

The 90s was the decade of the African American.
Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Puff Daddy, Denzel Washington, Oprah Winfrey, Colin Powell, Janet Jackson.
This is the decade in which African Americans came top with style, with class, and power in reserve. Men and women began wearing dreads and braids like never before. Reggae music became more popular than ever, and black models like Tyson and Tyra changed the look of high fashion. Where there was once only the Cosby Show, now whole networks seemed dominated by black sitcoms. At the beginning of the 90s nobody believed hiphop would move beyond gangsta rap, by the end of the 90s BMW commercials had hiphop soundtracks. African Americans pushed the multicultural agenda, migrated back to the South, recreating it, integrated the mainstream like never before, closed economic and educational gaps and triumphed on the domestic and world stage.

The 90s was the decade of the Republican.
Bill Clinton moved the entire Democratic Party to the right, why? Liberals were toast. We had Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, Term Limits, Tax Abatement, Welfare Spending reductions and the rise of governors playing at presidential politics. Rudy and Rush redefined the public sphere. People forgot Mario Cuomo existed.

The 90s was the decade of the tribe.
Decentralization became the standard and American culture made peace with its multiple personalities. When I think of the look of the 90s, I see Janet Jackson's album. The 90s are orangeish brown. It is dark red with stainless steel highlights. Think Urban Outfitters. Think Houston's restaurant. I see Djimon Hounsou and all fashionable black men with shaved heads. Clothes have become baggier, casual Fridays an institution. Facial hair is a lot more prevalent, but not quite like the 70s. If the 70s was plastic and neon, and the 80s steel and glass, the 90s was cherry wood and platinum. It was the decade where people named their kids Jason and Connor. It was the decade of the Alternative Mainstream, when everything that split off didn't die but survived on its own, where people felt more comfortable in their niches and niches became more acceptable to everyone. Cable battered the networks. McMansion 'communities' shrank the size of the new suburbs. Show what tribe you belong to, what's your tatoo? What's your gender? What's your preference? What's your ethnicity?

On Gay Marriage: Part VI

I made allusions to the 'nature' of the gay lifestyle which I had rhetorically toned down to 'the legacy of Stonewall'. My point was to illustrate the asymmetry of straight sexual lifestyle with that of gay throwing a wrench in the argument that marriage is the same thing and 'it doesn't matter if you are straight or gay, red, blue or green'. This is willful blindness poking it's ugly, empty head up once again and if there is any parallel at all between the thinking on race and on homosexuality this is it.

A cat name Kunstler nails it:

As much as the gay community wishes, they will never persuade the non-gay majority that homosexual behavior is wholesome, in particular between males. In reality, the norm of male gay social behavior is extreme promiscuity with predatory overtones -- hence, for example, all the problems the Catholic church is having with what is basically a homosexual subculture devoted almost exclusively to victimizing boys.

The wish to normalize male homosexuality is inevitably a way of discounting and marginalizing male heterosexuality. However, I'm not convinced that male homosexuals want to cede the social margin to the straights; that "outsider" position is so deeply connected with gay culture generally. What we are really seeing, I believe, is the final tactical move of the womens' movement to keep bothersome men away from them generally and to get as many men as possible corralled into a gay ghetto with the priapic diversions of gay life.

In the end what bothers me about gay marriage is the idea that it is exactly the same thing as marriage between a man and a woman, and this is the obvious result of the extreme relativism that has reigned as a kind of supreme fashion statement among high culture vamps since the 1960s. This relativism has been a long game of pretend -- pretending that all behaviors are equally okay.
It seems to me that this kind of lazy relativism is a luxury that can only be enjoyed by a cossetted elite luxuriating in a high entropy economy.

I am prepared to say that there is a fundamental and moral distinction between the generally accepted definition of marriage here in America and a proper Christian one. While all the Jews I have been able to query on this have provided me with the shocking news that gay rabbis are marrying each other, I believe I am on reasonable ground in assuming no such funny business occurs in Islam.

So while I'm not particularly concerned with people's squeamishness about homesexual acts themselves or whether or not hets are convinced about wholesomeness, it is important that lines are drawn in terms of beliefs and standards when it comes to the standing of marriage, or as I am now inclined to say with distinction Holy Matrimony.

We're not all the same and we're not all trying to be the same thing.

The Origins of Schism

I was engaged in a rather provocative discussion this morning over the question of rights. Keith, the guy I was debating asserted that we are losing something because God is not acknowledged as the source of our freedoms and rights. We didn't talk long enough for me to understand the nut of our differences, but what got me started was what sounded to me like blurring the line beween church and state - he made it sound as if the Constitution was valuable not owing to Jefferson's intellectual effort but to his divine inspiration.

I changed the subject, because I couldn't nail him on that and he brought something else up. This was the fact that he belonged to Price's church. Price is non-denominational. So in comparison to Cecil Murray of First AME, I asked him if he felt particularly impotent. You see, let's imagine you are against or for same sex marriage. If you get your congregation on your side of the issue in a sect of 3 churches, and you feel that the country is still out of whack with fundamental Christian values, you don't much choice but to take that classic cop out 'In It But Not Of It', 'it' meaning The World.

No small number of African Americans have left the Christian faith and/or disparaged it because of the inability of black churches to be effectively influential on white churches within their denominations with regards to civil rights questions, and this goes all the way back to the question of slavery and its associated deprivations. But what is one to say about Bishop Porkchop on the Porkchop Christian Network broadcasting live from the Porkchop Dome? There is no recourse but schism, it seems.

Dudley Hiibel Is His Name

Now you know. Now that you do, you should try to remember it because his case being heard by the Supreme Court is either going to result in smarter cops or not. Right now, this officer seems quite incapable of any verbal judo whatsoever. To me it looks like a case of another officer making everybody look bad (and piling on procedural requirements) because he didn't have sense enough to work through the law with the man standing in front of him. As familiar as I am with curbside behavior, I know this kind of malarky is not likely to go down in Los Angeles, but I'm not surprised to see it in Podunk.

Papersplease.org has some great material, and if you're a civil libertarian as I am, you'll probably be back:

Is Refusal to Show ID 'Probable Cause'?
This is the crux of the issue before the Supreme Court. Dudley Hiibel believes it isn't because of that pesky old Bill of Rights. Let's review a couple of those rights, shall we?

The Fourth Amendment
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Fifth Amendment
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

In other words, Dudley Hiibel was unreasonably searched and seized because he refused to show his ID. The argument that not showing ID makes for 'Probable Cause' is not only laughable, but clearly un-Constitutional. In addition, the mandatory showing of ID is nothing less than compulsory self-incrimination, which also flies in the face of the Bill of Rights.

Notice this justificication in the Nevada Supreme Court Decision against Hiibel:

Most importantly, we are at war against enemies who operate with concealed identities and the dangers we face as a nation are unparalleled. Terrorism is "changing the way we live and the way we act and the way we think."[24] During the recent past, this country suffered the tragic deaths of more than 3,000 unsuspecting men, women, and children at the hands of terrorists; seventeen innocent people in six different states were randomly gunned down by snipers; and our citizens have suffered illness and death from exposure to mail contaminated with Anthrax. We have also seen high school students transport guns to school and randomly gun down their fellow classmates and teachers. It cannot be stressed enough: "This is a different kind of war that requires a different type of approach and a different type of mentality."[25] To deny officers the ability to request identification from suspicious persons creates a situation where an officer could approach a wanted terrorist or sniper but be unable to identify him or her if the person's behavior does not rise to the level of probable cause necessary for an arrest.

There is nothing whatsoever in this case that gives any indication that this traffic stop, (and it was less than a traffic stop, in that the vehicle was already parked) had anything to do with terrorist activity.

I have been in a situation in which a rookie cop cuffed me because he was afraid of me. I was a black man driving a big expensive car in downtown LA late at night with the system booming. That means something. I can tell when a cop is afraid of me or not. It may be within procedure to cuff someone if you're afraid. Even so, it is not reasonable for a cop to be as evasive as this one was in speaking directly about reasonable suspicion, probable cause and what is or is not an arrestable offense. Around here, one of the first things out of a cop's mouth is what he's stopping you about. He might play a guessing game to see what you're going to say, but in my vast experiences with roadside manners, they get to the point pretty quickly. Not doing so is disrepectful of citizenship and subversive of people's trust in police.

In the gap between detention and arrest everyone needs to know the law, but it is incumbent on the officer to teach the citizen or suspect something about what's going on, so long as there is time and no imminent danger. The officer always has the advantage with respect to the law so the greater burden remains with the officer. Either they are soliciting cooperation or they are forcing their will, a failure in the first case should not automatically lead to the second. This is why this is a case of poor policing, in my judgement.

Sacred Art

Richard Clarke

Richard Clarke has thrown down the gauntlet. Now comes clobbering time for GWBush.

The Bush 43 White House has been able to hide behind Iraq for a good amount of time. I have been willing to say that Iraq was a good idea, if not a timely one. I am not one of those who find magic in UN sanction, but the president decided to go it alone, and he has to face up to that decision. So the question is whether or not the experts on terrorism really do agree with the president and what has he done to push them off or follow their lead.

I do buy Colin Powell's arguments that states still matter and that state sponsored terrorism is part of the threat picture these days. But I don't know what makes Donald Rumsfeld or any of the PNAC people experts on terrorism. Which is to say while I still look forward to a great American empire, it still must make the clear distinction between the wars against tyrants and the wars against terrorists. It has mushed up its rationales and is not coming clean. This is unacceptable.

A war against Iraq, regime change in Baghdad, is a good idea. I think it was inevitable. I think when all is said and done, America took the right path. But this is a path that others most certainly could have done more responsibily. Kerry has yet to prove to me that he would have taking the right road, much less more responsibly, but that still leaves Bush with a black mark which gets harder to ignore as time goes forward. He has taken advantage of the crisis (not as shamelessly as the Spanish Socialists - btw if anyone is still complaining about France, shut the hell up and look further south for your Quislings) and the time of crisis is over.

What positions Bush has put us in is not a bad one geopolitically, but it is a horrible one with regard to using the intellectual resources of this government properly. More and more he appears to me to be a single-issue, single-minded singleton. That's not presidential.

Twenty Years

Every once in a while I play a time machine game. I bring a person, often myself, back from a particular year and explain to them what's going on in front of me.

This evening was a rather remarkable game. I had brought myself into the present from 1984 as I browsed through the Fry's in Orange County and tried to explain the CG in the James Bond film on the plasma display to a self who had yet to understand multi-tasking. Later on the drive home, while stuck rather closely to my personal history, I found it simply amazing how many things had changed in the past 20 years.

Geopolitically, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union is the story of the century, but what I found almost incredible was what has gone on with American culture, particularly vis a vis blackfolks, who have become African Americans, by and large. In 1984, hiphop consisted of Run DMC, UTFO and Full Force (not to mention the 'real' Roxanne). Explaining the absolute dominance of hiphop to anyone nursing at the tit of New Wave and Punk in 1984 seems inconcievable.

In order to explain Barbershop 2, I had to explain Ice Cube, NWA and Gangsta in general. To explain Gangsta I had to explain the 'birth' of South Central via Mike Davis. This took me back to Latasha Harlins, Rodney King and the LA Riots, the opening of the 90s.

The expansion of cable, the proliferation of cell phones, the whole SUV thing would all seem remarkable. The dominance of the Republican Party, the economics of computing hardware, the double wars against Iraq, the rise of anime and of country music would all seem very odd to someone from 1984. The destruction of the WTC and the election of Arnold Schwartzeneggar are the most improbable events I could explain. The triumph of multiculturalism amid the backlash against Affirmative Action is a fascinating irony. The feats of reproductive science, genetic engineering and digital signal processing might have been predicted, but not the phenomenon of the internet, eBay and Google.

I'd say it has been a fascinating 20 years. What strikes you?

Barbecue

Fear

One Year In

Friedman:

Let's start with the Axis of Evil. We are up against a terrible nihilistic enemy. Think about what the Islamist terrorists are doing: they are trying to kill as many people in Iraq and elsewhere as possible so the U.S. fails in Iraq, so Iraq collapses into civil war, so even a glimmer of democracy never takes root in the Arab world and so America is weakened.

Nails it.

He goes on to suggest that if we had more troops, things would be better. I disagree. We are just not good at nation building. Should we be? I'm convinced that we are doing about as well as can be expected and that there is nobody on the planet better equipped to do so, although the Brits have a bit more experience.

I think that our softheaded partners are letting us take the blame for something that nobody can do well and blaming us for trying. Cheeky. Wrong. This is World War 3. Maybe it will take a year or so before countries decide which side they are on. Then it's on.

Quickness

It's Not You

On Being Socially Liberal

I started out in life as a Black Nationalist, and a partially militant one at that. It was the Catholicism of the Jesuits and the Social Responsibility of the Episcopalians that broke through that Nationalism and made me an essentially tolerant and even charitable individual after the model of Jesus Christ.

These days I am seeking to express my Christian ethics more explicitly. I do so for a number of reasons. Firstly in the context of my Republicanism I need to distinguish myself from the reactionary Right. Although many religious Republicans are painted as fundamentalists I think most are not. In fact, I believe that I am in direct conflict with Christian Fundamentalists and all those who would seek to replace laws established democratically with those unilaterally recieved on faith. At the same time, I have a great deal of respect for the consistency of dogma in ever directing us to heed the moral lessons of religion which have been established and maintained for centuries.

Over the next few months, a great deal of Cobb will be dedicated to exploring the themes of religion in society. I am thinking in particular why America has difficulty replicating MLK and why our Archbishops are not so heroic as Romero or Tutu. Why is it that the liberalism that is Christianity, from my point of view, has become so divorced from the liberalism we associate with National Public Radio? Why is it that the public accepts scolds like Dr. Laura from a religious perspective but not like the faculty of Notre Dame University from an intellectual perspective? Why is it when we know that Democrats and Republicans are both distorting the truth for partisan reasons that we do not seek the perspective of Imams? Why is it that we cannot discuss religious differences in the absence of conflict?

I will be bringing forth parts and pieces of discussion from a private forum here and I hope to engage folks here as well. The journey is both personal and public, and again it starts with the Nationalist, the militant, the ethnic enclave. It ends much more universally, but does it stop at the line of other religions? I think that's a reaction expected condescendingly by those who have judged religions millenia old by the ugliness of their religious neighbors and heresay. We shall see.

Heartache

I spent the entire morning and half of the afternoon in the Emergency Room over in Torrance today. I'm fine, but I sure was mad this morning.

I spent last evening rushing around to put together a slide show for this Sunday's after service coffee hour in commemoration for my recently departed grandfather. Pops came by with his DLP for the slideshow and I'd only put in about 60 pictures out of the 150 that I need for the powerpoint. So I'm grumbling around trying to get that done when I start getting these zaps through my chest.

I'm not saying anything about it, but they hurt. It's like somebody sticking a voodoo needle in and around my heart. It's real sharp for a second and then it disappears. Several times this happens. The kids are being complete pests. Everyone is getting on my nerves. I can't wait until I get them all in bed so I can relax. Brother, the stress is finally getting to me.

So finally the spousal unit gets home (we are back to being a two entrepreneur family, god help us) and we're ready to crash on the sofa and watch The Sheild. Ouch. It happens again. About six times that hour. After the show, I google up chest pains. Now I'm convinced its Angina.

My wife's father dropped dead of a heart attack when she was a young teen. I ain't going out like that, but all evening I'm trying to think whether or not I should go to the emergency room. I'm not exercising. I'm not short of breath. The pain doesn't go to my arm or my neck. I can handle the pain. In fact, this is what bothers me the most. What if I've already had a mild heart attack and I'm walking around on 80% heart muscle? I cannot afford to be sick. I cannot afford to drop dead.

I go to sleep without speaking.

G.I.

Thirty Ketubah Texts

I find it fascinating that there are so many interpretations and variations of the Jewish marriage contract, the Ketubah.

From Orthodox:

On the ___ day of the week, the ___ day of ___, in the year ___, corresponding to the ___ day of ___, in the year ___, ___, son of ___, and ___, daughter of ___, join each other in ___, before family and friends to make a mutual covenant as husband and wife, partners in marriage. The groom, ___, promises ___, the bride: "You are my wife according to the tradition of Moses and Israel. I shall cherish you and honor you as is customary among the sons of Israel who have cherished and honored their wives in faithfulness and in integrity." The bride, ___, promises ___, the groom: "You are my husband according to the tradition of Moses and Israel. I shall cherish you and honor you as is customary among the daughters of Israel who have cherished and honored their husbands in faithfulness and in integrity." "We, as beloveds and friends, promise each other to strive throughout our lives together to achieve an openness which will enable us to share our thoughts, our feelings, and our experiences. We promise to try always to bring out in ourselves and in each other qualities of forgiveness, compassion, and integrity. We, as beloveds and friends, will cherish each other's uniqueness; comfort and challenge each other through life's sorrow and joy; share our intuition and insight with one another; and above all do everything within our power to permit each of us to become the persons we are yet to be. All this we take upon ourselves to uphold to the best of our abilities." All is valid and binding.

To 'Secular Humanistic'

On the ___ day of the month of ___, in the year ___ at ___, ___ and ___ entered into this Covenant of Marriage. We pledge to each other our mutual trust and respect. We will offer support and encouragement for personal growth and the fulfillment of our shared dreams. We will be open, honest, loyal and devoted to one another. We promise to be faithful friends, companions and life partners and to comfort one another through life’s sorrows and joys. We shall honor each other’s individual needs, and shall cherish and love one another throughout our married life together. Let us weave our commitment to the Jewish people and culture into the fabric of our lives. Together, let us build a Jewish home filled with loving affection, laughter, wisdom and a dedication to peace and harmony for all humanity.

Bayesian Comment Spam Filter

Can be found here. I'm going to have to do this.

Uniform

Stuff & Thangs

Young Black Elite
Over at Blackweekly.com I have bumped into the flavor once again. Since I've returned to Los Angeles in 1997, seven years, one spouse and three children after my departure, the old crew seemed to have disappeared. Of course they didn't, they just left my social radar. Now seven years later, I actually have a little time freed up to run around town. It will be interesting to see what the scene looks like.

Pacing
Cobb will be undergoing a change or two in the coming months. The first thing is that I will be tending more towards the less caustic as I mentioned. The second is that I will be tending towards the less personal and topical. I expect to be writing a few more substantial pieces and letting the comic do the topical.

Raccoons
There are vicious raccoons in my tree out front. It's scaring neighbors and their dogs as they walk by at night. I'm going to have to call animal control.

The End

Marriage Is Not What You Think

Marriage is not what you think it is, marriage is what you get when you raise children. Donald Sensing gives us something to think about. I'll begin with this insight:

Elements of marriage such as property rights and the like do not centrally define what marriage is. Indeed, the historical and present record shows that such matters have varied widely across human cultures and experience. The wife as an equal partner is a modern development, but its lack in other times and places does not obviate the essential character of marriage, the procreation of the next generation. The various legal and social rights and recognitions that pertain to married couples are the result, not the cause, of marriage, intended to buttress its central purpose. Therefore, they are added or discarded inasmuch as they do so, though not without other influences as well. Thus, the legal rights and social claims of married partners are incidental, not essential, to defining what marriage is.

Sensings conclusions only seem reactionary when taken out of the context of his thinking, which I find not only logical but compelling. Someone somewhere said I sounded like this guy, but I had not much read his blog. I'm finding quite a bit to like, especially this about Jesus.

Back to Marriage. I had started somewhere down the road about Marriage gaining its specialness inherent in the notion of the committment required of couples in full anticipation of rearing children, but stopped short of prohibitions against same sex couple raising kids. (emphasis added)

The central proposition to the institution of marriage which makes it more than just a relationship is its aspect of permanent commitment the basis of which is central to family. This is the essence of what is sacred and critical of Marriage, without which it is nothing more than a formal acknowledge of a relationship between people. So it is not religion that makes marriage sacred though we refer to it as Holy Matrimony, rather it is the transcendent aspect of love embodied in the ideals of Marriage that gives religion appropriates as a sacrament. That is why Marriage is universal and religious rites center on its transcendant aspects the most important of which are permanence and fidelity.

When I say 'central to family' I mean it in the context of the understanding that the Wedding Vow althought it denotes the love between two, connotes the role of parents. DINKs are Marriage Lite. Voluntarily sterile DINKs are life partners for sure, but that's not what we mean by marriage. If it were nothing more than a blessing on a 'significant relationship' then we'd respect the host of the Dating Game (or any of its variants) as much as ministers who marry.

Sensing, dispatches with love rather quickly, and I think he does so to his credit. When reviewing my writing, I see that I'm trying to accomodate the loving aspect of both Matrimony and Civil Unions, and that is what puts them on a more or less equivalent basis. But I know that it's true that it is the commitment to raising children that makes Marriage special even though it's not explicitly emphasized in the Rite of Holy Matrimony.

I've also accomodated the need for the state to have an interest in social stability, but does that really matter when it comes to domestic partnerships that don't involve children? Not much relatively speaking.

So on the whole, in light of Sensing's clarity, I think I've put a bit too much emphasis on the romantic aspects of Marriage, which I think makes me rather typical. I stand corrected.

Anti-Terrorism Circa 1986

Break Up to Make Up

Homecoming

Allies

Shaka, When the Walls Fell

If you ask me the greatest episode of Star Trek, I would say that without question it was 'Darmok', starring Paul Winfield. Paul is dead now but he will long be remembered by me as the great Tamarian officer.

Finally, Rapheal Carter has put together The Darmok Dictionary which finally does the episode justice. If there was ever an allegory perfectly apporpriate to the African American angle into multiculturalism it is captured in Darmok.

The thing to note about this translation is that it's impossible to sum up the meaning of the phrase in a single word; it's a quite complex comment on an entire situation. The other phrases that we can reliably translate can, in fact, be summarized in a word or two--"Shaka, when the walls fell" means "failure." But the example of "Darmok" hints that this simplicity is an illusion, born of our limited knowledge of the language. For a Tamarian, "Shaka" would connote not just "failure," but a specific failure, in specific circumstances which you and I can't know. Consider Counselor Troi's example, "Juliet on her balcony." Dr. Crusher glosses this as an image of romance--true enough; but of course the phrase connotes much more than that. We are aware that the love of Romeo and Juliet is star-crossed; that it will end in tragedy; that it is love at first sight; that it is the love of youth and not of maturity; that the scene alluded to is a clandestine second meeting between the two lovers; that in it, Romeo is looking up at the Juliet's tantalizing backlit silhouette, while she sees him unclearly against the darkness; and so on ad infinitum. Every Tamarian phrase should be presumed to be this rich, though the richness is hidden from us.

His interview with Terry Gross back in the '89 was exerpted this past week. Cool guy. It's amazing that I didn't know that he was on Julia. That's something I should have known.

America Awaits Your Arrival

Now that I'm back on the employment train, in the proper first class compartment as well, it is amazing how quickly things seem to get back to my spoiled normality.

This was the first weekend that I've been able to go shopping and actually buy things. As I said, I got my HP 6110 All in One Fax/Copier/Scanner/Printer that does color. (As a fascinating aside, this thing costs 300 bucks. The idea that such a machine would exist at that price point would have made Xerox execs of the 80s die of fright.) Now that I can scan, I'll have a lot more Wellington House pics that I'll be able to publish. But the point was that Target and Best Buy are always there awaiting your money.

No matter when or how you attain your fortune, the retailers, the real estate agents, the motorcycle salesmen, the maitres d' are all ready to serve you. The plastic surgeon, the Ferrari mechanic, the DSL provider, the furrier, the jeweler. There's a massive army all infrastructured up and ready for you to express yourself financially. All you've got to do is say "I've got money to spend" and opportunities present themselves. It's stupendous.

It turned out that although I opened up my business account at Wells Fargo expecting to do my primary banking there, I showed up to deposit on a day that Diana wasn't in the office. I don't know how it is that a loan officer is split among several branches but that must be the case unless they only work 3 days a week. But my instant credit wasn't happening. The guy there tells me it's going to take '5 to 7 business days', which to me might as well be 'allow 6 to 8 weeks for delivery'. I asked him if he'd call into the bank the check was drawn on and verify funds. No, he says, Bank of America doesn't do that for us any more. (Light bulb). OK I says, I'll come back tomorrow to see if Diana can do something. Instead, I hightail it over to Bank of America, open up an account in 20 minutes and have credit overnight.

This country works when it comes to money. Nothing is broken when you have the funds.