Cobb

Out Blacked

I haven't been counting noses, and I haven't watched one minute of either convention on television. But it has come to my attention that both Rod Paige and Michael Steele spoke tonight. Has the RNC out-blacked the DNC? Just asking.

Schlafly & Dobson

I'm not quite as authoritative on the matter of Fundamentalism as I should be given the kinds of claims I am likely to make in the following essay, but I think I know a thing or two. One thing that makes my life a bit easier is understanding something about a promise made by Carl Rove to GWBush in 2000 which I learned about today.

The authority on this matter seems to be David Kirkpatrick who writes for the NYT. What I've learned from this gent is that I've been barking up the wrong tree, probably like a fool to those who know better, when I say that I want to kick Pat Robertson to the curb as an ascendant part of the Old School Republicans. You see, Pat Robertson isn't the man any longer. He has been replaced, by and large by Rev. Dr. James Dobson.

Dobson is the man behind Focus on the Family. Not only that, he's the author of the 'Left Behind' series of Evangelical fantasy books. Yeah I said fantasy, if you have a beef, take it up with the Archbishop of Canterbury. He's also the man on the phone every week with some of the President's people. In short, he's the dude that gives those of us drawing a bright line between Church and State heartburn.

Phyllis Schlafly is more well known for giving all sorts of people heartburn forever and a day. Me, I never paid a moment's notice to her. If you had told me yesterday that she was dead, I probably wouldn't even have Googled the obit. But according to insider Kirkpatrick, Shlafly's Eagle Forum are the parties responsible for strongarming abortion language onto the planks of the RNC's document.

What does this have to do with Carl Rove? Well, apparently Rove promised Bush 4 million more Christian Fundamentalist votes than actually showed up at the polls in 2000. And for this GWBush has been looking over his shoulder, and occasionally bending over backwards to find and keep those lost sheep happy. How so? Well, I guess you can take your pick of gut-wrenching right wing rhetoric and lay it at the feet of social conservatives like Schafly and Dobson. They are the prime sources of influence within the Republican Party.

Example A. Stem cell research policy.
Example B. Federal Marriage Amendment.
Example C. Partial Birth Abortion legislation.

Now none of those three examples above give me gas. I simply don't like Evangelical Fundamentalists. That's a religious beef. With regard to politics I like them blurring the lines between Church and State even less. Just as I dislike crotch holding knuckleheads representing 'Black', I dislike raputure bumpersticker Jesus freaks representing 'Christian'.

That's not fair of course. I've used Focus on the Family's movie reviews to help me decide on many occasions. In fact there's probably a great deal of common ground between my basic values and theirs. But I'm not a Fundamenalist. If you ask me which side won the Culture Wars, I'll say my side. They think they've lost. One day we'll disentangle Angry White Paranoia from all this mess but I'm satisfied not parsing it that close. As Ms. Rice recently said, we need to be a bit more humble considering how long it took us to achieve a multi-ethnic plural democracy. Bottom line is that America is getting better not worse and I'm not taking any cues from embittered pseudo-persecuted prophets of doom. Clear enough? Fundamentalists, find your suburb and get a grip.

(whew)

There are several big things that I take from this knowledge.

1. A hell of a lot can be bought with 4 million votes. GP are ya with me? (If you don't know, you better ask somebody). Seriously, this is a very concrete example of what swing voters can accomplish.

2. A very serious question can be asked as to whether it is via Dobson and/or Schlafly that socially conservative blacks are attracted to the Republican Party. I don't think so, but I want to find out. If so, then are we completely wrong about Sunday morning being the most segregated hour? If not, that means somebody needs to tell Fred Price and Cecil Murray that they're not playing a big enough game.

3. None of these people were anywhere before 1972. Which suggests to me that in 15 years African American influence in the Republican Party can be very substantial.

I think this should also clear up the distinction between what I mean between conservative blacks and black conservatives. I can imagine that there are a goodly number of African Americans who will come to the Republican Party via the Christian Conservative route. But I see a significant difference between them and white Evangelical Fundamentalists that's more than racial. Again, we'll need to disentangle sides of the Culture War when we look closer. Me, I'm sticking to the college-edumacated Talented Tenth elitist position when it comes to the Chu'ch, but I'll get in trouble one way or another. Quite frankly, I hope Ambra or LaShawn sets me straight on this. I think Mike King has sided with Jesse Lee Peterson too (whom I presume to be a sterling example of a black Evangelical Fundamentalist - but I could be wrong).

Finally, I wanto focus for a moment on Zell Miller. I like Zell Miller, who was attractive to me as a Democrat when I lived in Georgia. I don't know if he's changed his position much in the past 7 years but I know he's made a lot of enemies to his left among the Donkeys. I think I would be surprised to find that he has looked at policy and philosophy from Dobson and/or Schlafly to make his decision about switching parties.

Like me, he's just running like hell from the idiocy of the Left, not running to the 'wisdom' of Social Conservative Ideologues.

The New iMac

If I were Bob Adams, I would be punching holes in the walls right about now. Bob Adams, the semi-legend who had the responsibility for Xerox' workstation business must have constant nightmares haunted by Steve Jobs. Today at Apple.com, the new iMac can be eyeballed. The future of computing is now.

Back in 87, when I was at Xerox, the fourth floor of Xerox Centre housed the Industrial Design Group. It was there that I met John Seeley Brown while he was on a field trip. That was the year that he gave his famous 'information as basketball' metaphor. I loved to come down and browse the latest mockups of the computer of the future with their sleek lines and technically impossible flat full color screens. As soon as I saw the new iMac I was transported back to that design center.

Hmm. Now I have reasons to punch holes in the wall. I just learned that Tony Domit actually made a pile himself. Just as I was about to jump ship from Xerox, I spoke extensively with Tony Domit about a new venture which was going to put the Xerox workstation on a PS/2 board. I was only an apps programmer, but had done some fairly interesting stuff on that platform and I was very interested it its future. I most certainly would have had a nice equity position in AWP. He was having a collossal fight with other Xerox managers about getting the product out, primarily because it would make them look stupid. In the end he did. I'm happy for him, and kinda mad about my impatience. Oh well. There's always more money and more business.

PETA Abuses Free Speech

These days, free speech is often theatre. You would think that we'd have better theatre, instead we get 'Real World' shenanigans dressed up as 'politics'.

Members of the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals were arrested and charged with indecency and disturbing the peace after a chilly rally in March near Harvard University where they stripped to their skivvies and staged a nearly naked pillow fight to protest against fur.

At least they weren't wearing leather shoes.

More Support for the Internal Second World

Abiola makes a strong argument for expatriation of the educated in the Third World. I cannot recall the last time I considered this matter, but I'm sure that when I did, I thought it to support the notion of 'underdevelopment'. Not I am more convinced now that a professional brain drain is the result, rather than the cause of a nation's downfall.

Note also these goodies.

O

There's a new bee in my bonnet. It's Oakley. For a long time I probably regarded them the same way as everyone else. Too much testosterone. Today I'm a believer.

This infatuation was a long time coming. Several years ago, I had a few hundred left in my flexible vision account and splurged at Linden Optometry in Pasadena. The Oakleys were fabulous. I still have them, and they are and have been among my favorite material possessions. But I never fell in for their overpriced, overengineered watches. Back then, that was all they had, so that was all the thought I gave it.

Then two years ago January I found went shopping for casual shoes for the first time in a long while. I was shocked by how shoe technology had changed. People talk a lot of smack about what poor Asians are doing in shoe factories but I think the overwhelming majority of us would be absolutely stumped by the design and manufacturing process. Nothing said that like the Oakley Flesh Shoe, a kind of sneaker / loafer with no laces but a snug fit. Oakley makes shoes? They sure do and boy are they comfortable. I threw away an old pair of Timberlands for those, and that's saying plenty.

So I was looking to replace the Flesh and I had a pair of Nikes in mind, but I decided to check out the Oakley site to see if they had updated their shoe. Whoa! Immediately, I saw this thing called the Stick. It was exceptionally cool, and sold out. So I began a journey to the local authorized dealers to see if they had any in stock. Foot Locker? No. Foot Action? No. They didn't carry them - nobody buys Oakleys. Of course I'm told this by 19 year old kids who have to shout over the noise coming from the hiphop videos. So I try another mall. Same story, same noise, same moonshoe looking Nikes fill the walls. By this time I'm starting to appreciate that I don't want to wear anything but Oakleys. The harder I search, Spyder Surf Shop? No - the more I want them.

I end up at Sports Chalet in Torrance. There I meet Glen. Glen tells me that he's been on a tour of the Oakley factory in Orange County. Suddenly, the old stories from Wired Magazine started percolating through my head, how this guy Oakley was a fanatic talking about thermonuclear protection and sunglasses in the same sentence. Glen waxes poetic when he starts talking about Oakley products; he's so helpful I wished I had more money to shut him up and buy half the store. He tells me about his manager who's an Oakaholic and wears everything Oakley from head to toe.

But what really gets me are the boots. Not just ordinary boots, but tactical special forces extreme ultra boots. I even feel weird talking about them. Check out the cover:

The United States military teamed with Oakley to invent an assault boot specifically for the U.S. Elite Special Forces. Available now for civilian use, this military hardware exceeds the combat performance profile for durability, comfort and protection. Engineered with a lightweight athletic design, the Elite Special Forces Standard-Issue Assault Boot is braced by an over-the-ankle boot shaft and shielded by abrasion resistant panels on soft top-grain leather. Comprehensive moisture control maximizes comfort. Advanced polymer EVA and premium urethane offer resilient shock absorption. High-NBS vulcanized rubber maintains traction over a full range of terrain.

Glen tells me that not only do they last forever, but they weigh about 6 ounces each. The main difference between the one they sell to us civilians is the absence of Kevlar. Still, I can't stop salivating. He doesn't have any but I can always go to their store in Irvine. I consider it for a moment, then I realize that I would need tactical boots and a G3A3 if my spousal unit discovered that I spent 225 bucks on some shoes that make me look like a wannabee Neo. I finally manage to get out of Glen's sales perimeter and I can hear myself think again. Wouldn't you know, Sports Chalet doesn't have the Stick either.

I relent and order another pair of black swede shoes called ThirteenTwenty from the online store. A few days later they arrive via UPS. Ack! They're pointy toed and they don't fit. These look like shoes for a tightrope walker and I sure the hell don't want to look like Philippe Petit. There is no way to tell from the camera angle how flaming these shoes look on a man's foot.

So I pretty much am resolved to head down to Irvine and give these Oakley metrosexuals a piece of my mind, and I discover they have a store in Hollywood. OK, save myself a half an hour on the freeway. I get into the Oakley store and I feel like I've died and gone to gearhead heaven. You know I'm a gearhead, right?

First of all let me say this. Oakley golf shoes are so incredibly cool that they make me want to use exclamation points. Next, Oakley ski wear is actually manly with just the right touch of grunge. I stayed away from their denim because I was determined not to spend any money, but I have a feeling that my Gap days are over. Unfortunately they're not on it when it comes to head gear, although they're very close. The problem is that their ski caps are not watch caps, and I may have complained when I watched I Robot, but Will Smith had the right kind. Oakley's don't let you fold it up - the logo wouldn't work. I hate those pointy tops, they make people look like Jay, Silent Bob's drug dealing sidekick.

I found the perfect shoe at the Oakley store. It's called 'Teeth'. Yeah I know. It looks a great deal more outrageous online than in 3D. They must be the most comfortable shoe I've ever worn, and that's no exaggeration. I don't know how they've done it, but they feel revolutionary. They are perfectly snug and yet you can yank them off your feet without untying them. They've even done tricks with the tongue, laces and eyelets so that they feel different when you tie them. When you pull on the laces, they tighten all the way from the first set of eyelets. It's better than velcro. Yeah I got some Oakley socks too, and I remember them from when all they used to make were dirtbike handgrips.

I'm going to say that Oakley has probably got me as a customer for life. There are only three other brands that smack me with this level of extraordinary tech and gearhead style: TVR, Ducati and Breitling. Now you know what to get me for my birthday. That or a Dell Rack.

Necessary, Achievable & Noble

Is it just me or does John McCain sound like Les Nessman from WKRP? This is the second time I've wondered onto a radio broadcast of him speaking and I swear he sounds like a pinched professor. That doesn't detract at all from the rousing content, which although it got slightly tedious in the praise department, was good enough for me to hear to the end.

I turned on the radio just in time to hear half of NYC boo and shout. I had no idea what was going on. As soon as I switched on the radio I heard the word 'filmmaker' and then howls, whistles and catcalls. It took me a minute and then I put it all together. The speaker must be talking about Michael Moore. That was my chuckle of the day.

McCain put it plainly. We're all on alert. Bush did the right thing and he will continue to fight the good fight. I'll buy that. But more importantly, McCain struck the right note of patriotism when talking about our regular elections. You could just feel the love.

My friends, we are again met on the field of political competition with our fellow countrymen. It is more than appropriate, it is necessary that even in times of crisis we have these contests, and engage in spirited disagreement over the shape and course of our government. We have nothing to fear from each other. We are arguing over the means to better secure our freedom, and promote the general welfare. But it should remain an argument among friends who share an unshaken belief in our great cause, and in the goodness of each other. We are Americans first, Americans last, Americans always.

Nice one.

Queer Fist

It's probably not fair of me to mock the political sensibilities of NYC's recent mobs. I myself have mobbed NYC at a particular moment in time. But Queer Fist? They want to make out in public until Republicans barf all over themselves and then lecture us about freedom?

Back to your garrets you pathetic bohemian hunger artists! We've got a country to run.

Geopolitics Uber Alles?

I'm not accustomed to this kind of confidence, and I wonder today as I did in the month immediately preceding the war in Iraq if the smallminded and quarrelsome nature of our domestic politics has blinded us to geopolitical reality.

Considering all the time he's had, I find John Kerry mindnumbingly dumb on matters of foreign affairs. He has said not one thing that softens me to his cause. I continue to have my gripes with George W Bush, but it occurs to me that it is practically September and Kerry is still nothing but a nothing. I have heard no vision but carping against Bush and this shameless Vietnam bottom feeding. If Bush lacks, it is not for ambition, and a man of action is preferable to one who would let the likes of Michael Moore rally the troops.

So these days I am leaning more towards believing as I did on the eve of hostilities, that our domestic quibbles reflect poorly on us all, and given the choice of a strong foreign policy laced with realpolitik and the domestic agenda, I will take the worldly road. If I could vote for John McCain, I would. If I could vote for Colin Powell, I would. I cannot. But I think I am better off supporting their party, for nobody from the other side comes close.

We did the right thing in Iraq, and it doesn't matter who likes us for it. But I think I am willing to sacrifice domestic tranquility for the sake of the right confidence abroad, especially considering Democrat inability. The best American minds will always be at the disposal of the president, and so we cannot afford to let him fail - but at least we know GWBush will try to succeed at things that are worth pursuing, whereas for Mr. Kerry, all he wants to do is dance, and make romance.

My period of neutrality has ended.

Larry Franklin

The Google count for 'Larry Franklin' stands at 4380 at this moment. It's going to get a lot higher very soon according to the allegations I'm reading this morning. Apparently, this character is an Israeli mole in the Pentagon who was funnelling secret documents about Iran to Israel.

There's going to be a lot of thrashing before we can figure out exactly what's going on here. There seems to be no comprehensive message or spin developed. Since Marshall has played a big part in breaking the story, I'll watch there first.

I've long said that since the ascendancy of Khatami, the US should have made some strong diplomatic advances toward Iran's secular leader. Iran whose population has a great deal more in common with ours than those in Pakistan could be a great ally in the war against Jihadism. Eager to pound his fist about an Axis of Evil, GW has used a rhetorical club instead of a sharp stick. He's only set himself to bat .333 by his own standard, and there's still division about the first hit. It's not even a good 8 year strategy to try and take out 3 countries, four if you count Afghanistan which almost nobody does.

I believe that what this means about Iranian policy is the more significant story. I'm not surprised that Israelis have spies here or have the ability to turn Americans, and that kind of dirty business is not news. Disgusting, but not alarming. What I'm looking for is evidence that the Bush Administration was overly influenced by a foreign agenda, and any connection to Feith is going to be a hot button.

There's already enough piss and vinegar over the Office of Special Programs, if these allegations stick, and the FBI evidence seems strong according to Marshall, then there can be political hell to pay for GWBush. I've already complained that Bush, being outside of the Beltway was incapable of being a wartime president in terms of the administrative genius needed. Even with the great speechwriting he had, it took a lot more than that to wrangle that bureacracy to the ground. Depending on Rove's political hardball was foolish.

Interestingly enough I watched Richard III last night.

Booker Rising

Booker Rising is an excellent compendium of facts and statistics about African Americans. Edited by Shamara Riley of Crispus, a member in good standing with the Conservative Brotherhood, it aggregates moderate and conservative African American opinion from within the blogosphere and print journalism. If you haven't checked it out lately, do yourself a favor and hop to it.

A Clown From Portugal

Today, some asshat in a clown suit tackled the leader of the men's marathon. As a pathetic attempt at fame and desipicable deed against the sport, this idiot doesn't deserve any recognition. I hope Portugal is embarrassed, and I hope officials never release his name.

How Black Nationalism is Conservative

There are three touchstones in my understanding of race and economics in the US. I've just been handed a nice example that works well within that framework. This shouldn't be surprising, as it comes from one of the authors.

Massey & Denton
America is segregated by race in the legacy of its very own Apartheid. Residential segregation affects the prospects for non-whites by isolating them from mainstream products and services.

Oliver & Shapiro
The primary economic difference between blacks and whites is the matter of inherited wealth. While there may be parity and equality in some areas of American life, equity makes a transformative difference in every respect.

Glenn Loury
The legacy of race discrimination is bound up in the economics of America. Civil Rights Law in and of themselves are not sufficient to make up the gap. A passive non-racist attitude is no help. Ghettoes must be destroyed.

It's all fairly simple, really.

George, ever vigilant and right on target, sent me this from Thomas Shapiro. It took me a while to get past the egregious first example of a black family, but I didn't let that daunt me. It is a nicely nuanced revelation of what I consider the single most important understanding in the back of people's heads. Do they have the assets or not? It's a bit of text to chow down but worth it. Here's a nice quote:

No question about it. I mean, if my parents hadn't had the money to send my kids to [the private] Hills School, we couldn't have considered it. We would have had to really do belt tightening, and financial aid, and many more loans, more mortgages. It would have been very difficult and a real strain on us, especially with two. And we probably would have felt like we just couldn't swing it as a family. So, I don't know, I would have had to have gone out and gotten a job that would pay enough to justify two kids in private school. With that, it would have meant not being able to mother them as much myself. Or my husband having to change work, and all the soul-searching that would have meant for him. It's unimaginable. I can't envision a path that we would have been able to so comfortably just sail on over to Hills School. And, yeah, [we would have had to] go through a lot of heart-wrenching decisions about Alexander [school and tutors]. But they never had to do with money. None of these decisions have had to do with money. I can't imagine it being any other way.

As I post this, I am concurrently writing a piece about a few of my cohorts, the young gifted and black. I consider our fate in light of what I understand about wealth. All of my best friends are extraordinary achievers coming from relatively modest circumstances. I'm consider myself very lucky in that, and all of us seem to be drawn to each other in that way. I beleive that this hunger we have is a good thing, but that we ultimately will be replaced. Some other set of historical circumstances will create the Jordans of the next era. It is part of my aim to capture some of that spirit here as I write about myself and the Old School. It's the spark of Black Nationalism to challenge every aspect of America for the fate of true self-determination within us. How have we transformed that in our lives to meet the demands of survival and achievement?

For myself, I have found in America this very real matter of class. The notion that we are not class-bound is a foolish sentiment. We all recognize it vaguely, just as we recognize race sharply. But the success of the Civil Rights Movement and of Multiculturalism have take the edge off race. And yet we have not, as a society made that transition completely with regard to our acknowledgement. Too many are still thinking of black and low class in the same bucket and that has always rubbed me the wrong way, even in elementary school.

I bring forth the idea of 'Natural Aristocracy' again. It is more than simple meritocracy in that it involves values as well as merit. Consider this coming from a white family, something people like us, and notably Cosby, would often say:

I had cousins growing up in the city, and葉his is my own blood, but basically they turned out really trashy. Their friends were trashy. [I] did not even want sometimes to bring my own children around my cousins, because their lifestyles were different, their values were different. Things that were important to us were not important to them.

And Also

It is unfortunate that it is bound by race too. As far as I am concerned, that has nothing to do with it [lack of diversity]. I think it's economic because it's the same issue we dealt with when we lived in the city. It didn't matter if our neighbors were white or black, as long as they had the same standards we had.

This is precisely the attitude of the Old School and I am not surprised to hear it from upscale white families. I happen to believe that many of our white neighbors are a bit more wealthy and a bit less talented, which makes for an interesting edge in our relations, but we're still in the same world. My point is that this is the way the Natural Aristocracy replaces itself, through family values. It's not only talent and merit, but manners and priorities and values and these are things that arise from the socialization of families in neighborhoods, and they are maintained that way.

Noblesse Oblige is an absolute requirement for this kind of Conservatism to work. Careerism cannot prevail. People who are incapable of recognizing how success must be replicated and how the fate of the group depends upon how the resources of the successful are employed are to be weeded out. This is expressed in different way by successful blacks but consistent with Old School values.

I will conclude by saying that my generation has peeled back the onion. We have done Corporate America and we have done international business. Our parents may have marched in Mississippi, but we manage deals in Milan. We are bringing home strong understanding and valuable lessons. Our children are poised to make waves, but wealth is the key and we know it.

What Jimi Can't See

Jimi Izrael wrote a scathing critique of hiphop, he just doesn't realize it. Although he says that "Hip Hop music is the voice of America's poor blacks and Latinos.", when it comes to whitefolks he says:

First, there is the presumption that putting rappers at the podium will turn millions of black kids into a political force. But most of the millions of people who buy hip-hop music these days are white, and they have little or no comprehension of the deeper meaning of hip-hop culture or the social forces that begat it. They know only about rap music, break-dancing and baggy clothes. Young white kids can't truly relate to being black, but many can relate to being alienated. They grasp that message, along with the cartoonish violence, slanguistics and fantastical opulence of hip-hop life. They can't be rallied to adopt hip-hop's social agenda because they only listen to hip-hop, while we live it every day.

What Izrael says about white suburbans actually applies to every hiphopper, what he says about the first person plural only applies to hiphop's literati and others so inclined.

There is no deeper meaning of hiphop culture. It is what it is, and anybody anywhere can walk into any level of hiphop consciousness. It's exactly the same for opera, bhangra, dance hall, oi, gregorian chant and any other kind of music on the planet. Hiphop's social agenda is about as thin as as the pants on Lil Kim's ass. There is absolutely nothing hiphop has discovered through its 'politics' that adds any dimension of understanding to what black and latino politics have been. Hiphop consciousness is not political, it's simply about understanding and appreciating the music, which (duh!) over the past 20 years lots of people around the world have done. White kids understand everything about hiphop there is to understand which is rap music, break dancing and baggy clothes. If black and Latino kids are more invested in this 'deep meaning' of hiphop, more's the pity for them. But there is nothing about being black or latino with regard to hiphop that make them any different from their white brothers and sisters who consume the same products.

There is a real and significant difference between appreciating hiphop and actually performing hiphop dances, designing hiphop clothes or performing on a mic. But hiphop is merely a style, a flavor. Being down with the flava doesn't make you a dancer or a designer, and it sure as hell doesn't make you effective in politics. People who study dance, clothing design and politics have more to teach hiphop than hiphop has to teach them, and until we see the Hiphop Institute at Harvard, it will always be that way. As far as I know there is a turntablist instructor at Berklee, but the rest is all street apprenticeship. Street wisdom is good around the way. Didn't somebody rap about dying for a rock and dying for a block?

Hiphop's industrial base is disposable income. It's a bourgie institution which feeds on itself. It's politics, were they expressed, would bear the same contradictions and conflicts as that of the larger society. Hiphop, which is incapable of forming coalitions of any sort (not since Self-Destruction) would be hard pressed to get any coherent policy developed. But Russell Simmons does not make a think tank any more than Bono, and anyone with any hope for a new politics in the US needs to think long and hard about how Rock and Hollywood have developed their politics. Scary huh?

I know enough about hiphop to know that Aaliyah, Left Eye & De La Soul all took a great deal of pride in the fact that they could take their money and go hide away in other countries. That's where they found their peace away from the dimegrabbers, bootyshakers and sucka MCs who were just shorty versions of themselves. Hiphop's hierarchy despises its own roots because it exposes clearly how much it's just the ego trip of spoiled young Americans masturbating in the mirror or pointing a nine at it's own head.

Hiphop is a revolution of expression, but it only rarely expresses anything of enduring value. To desire hiphop politics is simply a desire to transcend the shallowness of the hiphop world. I think many hiphoppers will do just that, but I think they'll be loathe to call their mature politics 'hiphop politics'. Hiphop, just like Rock is all about youth. We hope that they'll grow out of it.

Good Boy

Noted without comment.

"I had my fun in 2000 and I made a lot of people angry," Williams said. "It's not fun when you're making people angry at the same time. I learned how to do it right."

OK one comment. You will note how they put "gentlemen" in quotes. Blow me.

Net Sports

Last night I watched my first Olympics broadcast of the Athens Games. I can't tell you how much it makes me yearn for Australian broadcasts. The Outdoor Life Network got it right when they broadcast the Tour de France. Stick to the action, don't put commentators on camera, switch cameras to different parts of the race, let color give historical context, not personal drama stories. NBC is so schmaltzy it's disgusting. I do not, repeat, do not want to have the camera zoomed in on an empty pair of wrestling shoes.

Since my family was at the previous two games, Athens is a letdown in every dimension. I haven't even paid much attention. So it was something of a pleasure to hear the Olympic theme and actually perk up. There was only one good aspect of the coverage last night, and that was Men's Volleyball. (As soon as I saw Marion Jones' baby drooling, I shut the tube off and cranked up the XBox.)

The sport has truly advanced since I last watched. What really shows up is how much more they use the spaces outside of which a normal volleyball game might be played. If there is one metric one could use besides the obvious speed involved, it's how far back players are to serve. The same goes for table tennis. Something that's also interesting is to see how players get wide of the playing fields up close to the net.

It took me a while to get used to the rally scoring, but it kept the action nice. Interestingly, recieving a serve was a better scoring position. But Lloy Ball proved that there's still a place for service aces. Sweet. I'll follow these guys on the court. That was pure drama.

Earth, Wind & Gangsta

The first record I ever bought was 'Getaway' by Earth Wind and Fire. It was a 45 that I bought from Crenshaw Records. I played it over and over on my record player until I memorized the lyrics.

This morning, like every morning, I woke up with a song on my mind. Unlike most mornings, I was unable to immediately crank up the iTunes and find it. And so I started this day shocked to my foundations that I don't have "Let's Groove" somewhere on my hard drive. In fact, I didn' have Arrested Development nor did I have any Red Hot Chili Peppers or Bill Withers. Something is out of joint here. So I am on a mission to correct these deficits as we speak.

Since I can play and rip at the same time, I found myself going back down memory lane to a particular lyric. noting as I do, and have been for a dozen years how lame contemporary music is when it comes to inspired love songs. Be that as it may, the lyric was:

Shining star for you to see
What your life could truly be.

Of course you know that. But did you know that there was once a street gang in LA called the Westside Family? They were originally Family but then got incorporated into the Crips. I know, because I knew a dumbass kid named Dana Andrews, who had the hottest sisters on the planet back in 1973. Dana had a faggy name and he was too lightskinned (with freckles) to get respect. Add to that the fact that he was a Catholic school boy and not very good at football or basketball and you had a formula. Dana did have balls, however and wasn't afraid to fight or shoplift. Typical knucklehead ghetto 7th grader stuff. So I was there at the beginning when Dana and other kids who lived somewhere in the nice looking public housing on Adams just west of Western decided to make something out of the green bomber jackets that they stole from Sears Pico.

He decided to call them the Gangsta Crips and wanted me to join because I had gone to public school, which added to the rep. Since I had gone to public school and knew how to fuckin' cuss, among other Huckleberry skills, I was very quickly becoming one of the most often swatted kids at Holy Name of Jesus School. Nevertheless, I wasn't interested in getting a big dog and making it bite public school kids who were relentlessly picking on us Catholic school kids. I didn't particularly like Dana although I had a huge crush on his sister Danielle and I wasn't about to steal a green bomber jacket, even though it looked hella cool. Besides, where I lived on Wellington & Jefferson, no bangers trolled. Our blocks already had the cohesion and we were deeply into street sports. Aside from all that, the very notion of following Dana Andrews was a joke.

Gangstas would go on to clash with Family. And it was this rivalry which brought to mind the constant bastardization of popular songs mouthed off by teenaged boys who thought they were being tough and clever.

Shining star for you to see
This is strictly Family

Service

Breakfast at Denny's

Michael Savage is on vacation today. So his guest host talked about race on the air. I didn't catch the beginning but the man was making some good points. Still, as usual, I turned off the radio and continued the conversation with my steering wheel at a higher level of discourse.

I told my own reparations story as an example of the kind of thing nobody hears in the shallow discussions that ever make the air. It starts here at my last grandmother's funeral. Those 200 acres would make a big difference, and I think every black family has got such a story.

It occured to me that the last people Americans want to hear stories about racism from are those of us who are well-educated, well-paid and articulate. The irony is that we are the ones most likely to have legitimate complaints of racism. I'm not saying that the poor and uneducated blacks don't face racism, but rather that their lot are more likely to be beat down by more factors. When someone with a master's degree is told they are not qualified, it's more likely to be a racist lie then when sombody from the ghetto is told that. Racism may be more consequential for the little guy, but it's more obvioius and blatant for the big guy.

That's all.

Poltical Burnout

This is exactly how I feel today, after being involved in a pissing match over Kerry:

Converse claimed that only around ten per cent of the public has what can be called, even generously, a political belief system. He named these people “ideologues,” by which he meant not that they are fanatics but that they have a reasonable grasp of “what goes with what”—of how a set of opinions adds up to a coherent political philosophy. Non-ideologues may use terms like “liberal” and “conservative,” but Converse thought that they basically don’t know what they’re talking about, and that their beliefs are characterized by what he termed a lack of “constraint”: they can’t see how one opinion (that taxes should be lower, for example) logically ought to rule out other opinions (such as the belief that there should be more government programs). About forty-two per cent of voters, according to Converse’s interpretation of surveys of the 1956 electorate, vote on the basis not of ideology but of perceived self-interest. The rest form political preferences either from their sense of whether times are good or bad (about twenty-five per cent) or from factors that have no discernible “issue content” whatever. Converse put twenty-two per cent of the electorate in this last category. In other words, about twice as many people have no political views as have a coherent political belief system.

It's probably more fair to say this is what the little man on my shoulder is telling me all the time. To listen or not to listen, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler to put up with the Coulters and Moores that American political life is heir to, or to take up arms by way of a think tank or 527...

Fay vs Schlesinger

Last time I checked, there were about 7 different investigations into the Abu Ghraib scandal. I'm not sure whether or not that's a good thing, but it will certainly have the effect of burying the significance of the findings. 20 years from now it will be interesting for people fresh to the deal try to figure out which one the American people cared about.

As for me, I somewhat care. I have just a few new thoughts on the subject. It appears that Schlesinger is going to try to lay blame as much as possible up the chain of command. This makes no sense to me. How can it be that an entire bureacracy is responsible for injuries to a dozen people? Instead of the effect of highlighting the probelm, it simply spreads the blame all over the place. When 500 people are responsible for $100 dollars of damage, it doesn't matter much to each. If your aim is to target Rumsfeld, as many people's aim is, you end up taking the whole bureacracy route. Dilutes a misguided effort. Dumb.

It's interesting to hear something that actually merits the adjective 'horrendous', and I say so only because I have yet to see this in a Quinton Tarrantino filme, which is the Dog Game. The rest of the abuses, I simply don't find so far outside of the imagination of vulgar Americans.

Which brings us to an interesting inversion, which is that our liberal and permissive society would be better represented to the world through a disciplined military code of conduct, than by the goodness of ordinary American people themselves.

Pardon My French

I like the French. While I don't particularly admire them, I would say without hesitation that they are an admirable bunch. I don't disdain them as is the current American fashion. On the whole I am positive. There are several reasons for this.

The French Have Balls
There's no other way to put it. The French are combattive, arrogant and stubborn as hell. They stand up to us, or anyone as if they really don't care what we think. They do, but they make a good show of not being the slightest bit purturbed.

French Is A Cool Language
There is something about the way French is spoken when done well that is remarkable. I studied French for three years in highschool and was pretty damned ready for honors in my fourth, except that there were not enough francophiles in my school to justify offering the class. So I had learned enough to start reading books. But the way French sentences and paragraphs are constructed allows for incredibly persuasive arguments. Call me weird but I really dug the French subjunctive.

The French Have Style
The last time I was in Paris, which was some time ago, I hung out with my cousin at a fashion show. It was a hiphop fashion show, in fact, and the models looked like they were straight out of a Janet Jackson video. It took me a while, having stared my eyeballs into straining, that these African women were not English speakers. Imagine a room full of girls that look like Sanaa Lathan

In addition to those things, the French Understand Sex and the French Are Free. They can and will lecture you on those matters. I think America will come back around to giving the French their due props. Wait and see...

While I'm at it, it being national stereotypes as informed by my limited personal experience, let me add the following.

Germans talk too much about the littlest things. I don't know how they do it, but they can get into discussions and not leave until they have completely exhausted the subject and taken score about who knows the most. Every time I speak to one of them, I get the feeling that they are counting the syllables in the words I am using. They're fricking relentless on this. On the other hand, they do understand loud music, fast cars and women in fishnet stockings.

Murkowski in Alaska

Lisa Murkowski is running against three conservative Republicans for the Alaska senatorial seat. I'm watching this race. What this article doesn't say is that the other three candidates are also trying to make abortion a big issue in the campaign.

Mainstream Republican leaders have embraced her. She's gotten the blessing of Alaska's senior senator, Ted Stevens, who called her "a hell of a lot better senator than her dad ever was."

She's been endorsed by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who made a campaign appearance in Anchorage. There has been a pipeline of Cabinet secretaries choosing Alaska to announce federal programs.

She supports tax cuts championed by President Bush and emphasizes her close relationship with Stevens and Rep. Don Young.

Money has poured in to her campaign since she began campaigning in January 2003 and she had raised $3.75 million through Aug. 4.

Her three Republicans challengers do not believe she's the best person for the job: Former state Senate President Mike Miller, 53, a gift shop owner from North Pole who spent 18 years in the Legislature; Wev Shea, 60, the former U.S. attorney for Alaska, now in private practice, and perennial candidate Jim Dore, an Anchorage house framer.

Miller has not been subtle in reminding voters of the circumstances of Sen. Murkowski's appointment. A mailer last week showed a frog with a gold crown under the headline "Kiss monarchy goodbye."

Miller's campaign also has been tagging Murkowski with a label considered leprous by Alaska Republicans: liberal.

Whitman Speaks For Me

The NYT has an article that shows about where my head is at.

Those who once might have been called Rockefeller Republicans say the prime-time slots set aside to present a centrist image show that the leadership knows the party must broaden its appeal to retain the White House. But they worry about their real influence in a party dominated by conservatives at a time when the ranks of House moderates are thinning and an activist group zeros in on candidates it brands RINO's, Republican in Name Only.

"Frankly, if the president wins walking away with this, maybe the country is in a different place than where the moderate Republicans are,'' said Christie Whitman, the former New Jersey governor and Bush administration official who is writing a book titled "It's My Party Too." "If he loses, it is an absolute validation of the fact that you cannot be a national party if you are excluding people.''

Mrs. Whitman makes it clear that she does not want President Bush, whom she served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to lose. But she is not alone in urging party leaders to consider the contributions of moderates at moments other than when it makes strategic sense

Leak

Gateway + MicroCenter

Gateway is finally showing evidence of brains. They are going to sell their machines in a new deal with MicroCenter. MicroCenter is by far the best retailer of software and software related books in the country. They are most definitely a destination. Gateway has been making mediocre consumer PCs for a long time and completely missed the mark with their cow-flavored retail chain.

I don't know how it can happen, but I am hopeful that this can result in more MicroCenter stores. I may still end up going to Fry's for the prices, but I do miss MicroCenter - which is a much smarter store with far better people. Come to LA, please.

Tertiary Meta

Amity

Malkin v Matthews

I have never had a reason to like Michelle Malkin, only a reason to dislike her, namely for her suggestion that MEChA members have their motives interrogated by major media. It's ironic that her snarky call for Katie Couric to play 'hardball' with the Mechistas is exactly the pickle she found herself in last week.

We have just been debating the necessity of dropping the loudmouths from conversations vis a vis 'intellectual non-violence'. I think that the ultimate result of that kind of discipline will result in a higher general quality of debate, with fewer debaters. It's clear that the blogosphere will roll on in any case, and I am hopeful that lessons like these are not fogotten.

For the record I have disliked Chris Matthews from day one. He has always been a fast-talking hounddog with no tact nor respect for nuance. What Keith Olbermann is doing reporting politics is anybody's guess.

Weird Science

At the UCLA Open House when I was about 12, I stood for a long time contemplating whether or not I should stick my finger into a flask of liquid nitrogen, and then pass it through the HeNe laser that had just burned a hole in a block of steel. Even though I considered myself a coward for not trying I'm pretty sure that I did the right thing.

They say really smart people never make the same mistake three times. That's because if they goof once, they're sure that it's somebody else's fault. Here you'll find the geek version of the Darwin Awards.

Greene Still Great

Moe Greene got bronze in the 100 meters last week. Scott Ostler has taken a moment to talk smack.

Justin Gatlin ran faster than the speed of Maurice Greene's sound.

Greene was clocked talking a mile-a-minute after the 100-meter dash Sunday night, but Gatlin stopped the real clocks in 9.85 seconds.

Greene claims he's still the Greatest Of All Time. Gatlin didn't have to say it, but he's the World's Fastest Human. Which title would you rather have? One title is made up and debatable and drawn in tattoo ink on Greene's shoulder. The other title is now etched in gold and in the Olympic record books.

But I think the guys at MSNBC have the proper perspective:

Greene has run 3 of the 4 fastest times ever in the 100 meters. But he does not hold the current world record. That was set in 2002 by another American sprinter, Tim Montgomery, who is currently under investigation by the U.S. anti-doping agency.

Montgomery's time was 9.78, Greene's previous world record was 9.79. Montgomery was running 10.12 or so and failed to qualify for the team. Furthermore Greene has overcome two injuries, including a broken leg, and has had to completely rethink his start. Amazing.

We haven't heard the last of Mo Greene.

The World's Ugliest Website

I'm doing research and looking at new companies to target for my business, and I came across one hideous website that I just had to share with you all.

Frontier Logistics

Yike.

NAACP: Co-Opted by the Majority

I'm going to cross a line here for the sake of provocation. It's strange because I'm not sure we're big enough to attract the kind of attention of somebody in the know, but I don't want to be dismissed, I just want some high level informed answers. Here goes:

I'm not sure that the NAACP doesn't fall into the bucket of special interest group. What do they do besides interpret reality into the argot of racial offense to a group of constituents whose sole political concern is racial offense? I think if you 'left race out of it' for a moment with the NAACP, you'd have a transparently socialist organization. Why would anybody on our side want to meet? And hash out what?

If I say that the NAACP has outlived its usefulness, I say it because it has been a success. Over the course of its lifetime, it has fulfilled its destiny in raising the racial consciousness of America to something that is fair. Not equal mind you, but fair. It is now incapable of doing incrementally more because there are no new ideas. It fights increasingly narrower battles at an increasingly pitched volume for diminishing returns, and now to maintain its own image it must overreach.

Therefore it must be relegated to the status of a watchdog organization with its eyes focused, not on the future, but upon the present. Its past doesn't matter. It doesn't need a general membership, it needs a few wealthy sponsors. It doesn't need an awards show, it needs big staff in Washington.

Am I wrong?

The Dynamics of Spawn Camping

The most happening game on XBox Live these days is the latest installment of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, known as Black Arrow.

I started playing Black Arrow last week. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, it's basically the most popular combat simulator online. If you have absolutely no interest in squad-based first person shooters, this may seem tedious but it's actually rather interesting, especially if you worry about how the socialization of your sons is progressing. If you have no son, it's still a fascinating foray into game theory.

XBox Live
What goes on here? Well, it works a little something like this. Your son has his XBox hooked up to a large anonymous network of several thousands of others people's sons. He drops in a game disc, which is essentially a $50 DVD that almost nobody tries to bootleg, and all the other gamers that are online at the same time appear. Now your son has a list of 40 or 50 (up to a hundred) other gamers on his 'friends list'. Most of these friends will be people he has, and will never meet in person. They could be from Alabama, Alberta or Allemagne. He just knows them by their 'gamertag', their alias, and perhaps by their voice if they've played enough. Voice? Yes, that's what that silly Bobby Brown My Prerogative headset is for. He can hear what all the other players in his room are saying, and of course he can talk back to them.

For generations people have been shouting back at sports players on the television. Your son may be stupid, but at least he knows that the people on the other side of the screen can actually hear him.

The Room
So boy turns on the game, enters a PIN through his handheld controller and now there are several thousand other gamers playing Black Arrow with which he may cooperate or compete. He chooses which kind of game he wants to play, say 'Total Conquest' (that would be compete via cooperation), and all of the hosts who are hosting that kind of game show up on the screen after a quick search. Not their faces, just their gamertags in a list. He can then enter any hosted game of any particular host and get started gaming. He can't start playing a game until he gets into a room. No matter what time of day or night, there's always a room with plenty of English speakers.

The Host
I mentioned hosting a room. Who is a host? Anybody who wants to be a host is a host. Your son might be a host. Maybe he's even a good host. So there is a choice your son makes. Maybe he wants to host a room, maybe he wants to join somebody else's room, maybe he wants to join a room wherever his friends are. Let's say he chooses to be a host and serve up his own room. He then configures up his room depending on how he wants to play. He will allow 16 people to play, two opposing teams of 8 each. He will allow friendly fire and he will ban grenade launchers. The game will be Total Conquest.

The Clan
In addition to having a large set of friends which are visible across games other than Black Arrow. You may join an identifyable clan within the context of the Black Arrow world. These clans can arrange to compete exclusively against each other in tournaments, but most of the action has unaffiliated individuals mixed with clanners.

Ready Up
One more thing. Your son and everyone on his squad has to decide which compliment of weapons they are going to employ. They do this in the lobby before the game starts. There are assault rifles, chain guns, pistols, sniper rifles and a variety of explosives. Take your pick.

The Libertarian Task

Here is how Libertarians can earn my unending respect and admiration: work out the microeconomies and advocate for open pricing in every aspect of life. Where should they start? Health Care.

I believe it was Thoreau who said that we who have never done things such as set a broken leg, have any idea of what real life is all about. I tend to agree with that sentiment. But what I break my leg, how much does it cost to fix it? I don't know. In fact if you try to Google up an answer, you'll find more information about dogs and cats than humans. That is absolutely pathetic.

But there's a reason why you can't find out about this enormous inefficient market. It's because the powerful interests are so deeply embedded that they cannot be extricated. Republicans and Democrats are incapable of even getting started to talk about reform. If Ralph Nader wasn't such a pompous ass, he'd focus the media on this issue. If Libertarians weren't such impractical dweebs, they'd quit showing off their ideological purity and get down to this business.

Hospital A:
Broken Leg Fixed $1500

Hospital B
Broken Leg Fixed: $1700

Now for every broken leg, as for every broken automobile, there are a million reasons why and two dozen ways to fix it. And you can be sure that there are nefarious characters ready, willing and able to scheme us out of our bucks. But Libertarians ought to dedicate themselves to opening up these markets and giving transparency. They will make themselves heroes and take down a lot of Republicans and Democrats in the process.

Hop to it.

Wal-Mart & The Marginal Labor Market

Sebastian Holsclaw has a great Wal-Mart discussion in which people claim that Wal-Mart takes more than it gives with respect to employee benefits because of the size of the safety net. Is Wal-Mart subsidized and incented to pay low wages and benefits? If there was a minimum wage hike to pay for more benefits would that be a good thing?

I interpret things this way: Wal-Mart is not special with regard to its 'dependence' on the safety net, it just has the wherewithal to respond quicker. This is a quickness that is, in part, enabled by its information technology infrastructure. As the price of this techology goes down, there will be more companies enabled similarly.

In a neighborhood with small businesses who compete for the same labor pool, small incrementals in employee benefits make enough difference for Wal-Mart (aside from its reputation) to tip the scales in its favor. I wonder if those in favor of increasing the safety net would feel more confident taxing those small businesses to the same tune they would Wal-Mart.

Social Conservatism, Elitism & The Natural Aristocracy

There has been a lot of blabber about the concept of aristocracy that has somehow filtered its way into the mind of Phil Agre, and thus into this corner of my worldview (and the blogosphere). We're going to have a problem here.

Agre begins:

Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and
civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality
and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the
modern world.

As it happens, I have fortunately stumbled, by way of Hispanicpundit whom I now thank, onto the work of Russell Kirk, a heretofore unknown progenitor of Conservative Thought. And while the very idea appears oxymoronic to the liberal flacks who dot the landscape with their yelps and insults, there are certain consistent principles which there abide. Yet it is true that having personified so much of Conservatism itself in the undeserving bodies of Barry Goldwater, George W. Bush, Tom DeLay and Trent Lott and indeed in much of what goes by the name of Republican these days, a very large host of Americans are misled and confused. It is only natural that pinko rats take advantage of this confusion. It is only appropriate that we on the Right seek guidance from history.

But since I am a writer all too familiar with my own nomenclature, this opportunity allows me to dig up a few terms that I think contemporaries will find more familiar, which is why I allude to the Matrix, elitism and social conservatives. To wit:

I am not a social conservative. I am an elitist. If the Merovingian were not a corrupted ghoul, I think I'd very much enjoy hanging out with him. He is powerful, intelligent, erudite and arrogant. Excellent qualities for a member of the ruling class. Unfortunately, he wasn't wise enough to ally with a circle of equals, and instead hired leagues of flunkies and goons. Thus it was inevitable that he would be defeated by a group of bounders of extraordinary caliber.

A social conservative would insist that a certain set of inflexible values be ascribed to in order to dine with the Merovingian. An elitest would devise a serious of tests. Social conservatives value loyalty and obedience. Elitists demand performance and competition.

I leave you with Thomas Jefferson:

I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. Formerly, bodily powers gave place among the aristoi [aristocrats]. But since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness, and other accomplishments, has become but an auxiliary ground for distinction. There is also an artificial aristocracy, founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed, it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say, that that form of government is the best, which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency.…I think the best remedy is exactly that provided by all our constitutions, to leave to the citizens the free election and separation of the aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi [pseudoaristocrats], of the wheat from the chaff. In general they will elect the really good and wise. In some instances, wealth may corrupt, and birth blind them, but not in sufficient degree to endanger the society.

This is the aristocracy of which Kirk speaks. Now you know.

LA Riots in Retrospect

In many ways, my engagement of the public in politics began in the years leading towards the LA Riots. Considering the candidacy of Bernard Parks has taken me back to some of the things I wrote as Boohab in relation to those days.

Since I see myself more and more as part of a conservative movement in both a public and personal context, I need to review my prior statements and perspectives in order to see what has changed and why. I think the matter of the Riot is specially deserving of review no matter what, but also since I was engaged head to head with David Horowitz I think it can also illustrate the difference and distance between black and white neoconservatives over contemporary issues involving race.

So I will be posting here some verbatims of me as Boohab, and see how well they stand up.

Russell Kirk: Once Over Lightly

One of the leading lights of Conservative thought is a gent by the name of Russell Kirk. Considering that I studied Computer Science and not a Political Science, it is not surprising that I've not heard of him before today. How then could I be a true Conservative? The same way any scientist who observes correctly the effect of air pressure on object even if he never heard of Bernoulli. Independent discovery still has a place in this world, however I would have preferred that somebody had hipped me to this cat many years ago. It would have been more Conservative, wouldn't it?

The first thing I'd like to note about Kirk comes from this excerpt of an Amazon reviewer's on his book The Conservative Mind:

One repeated note throughout this book is that markets and economic forces are disruptive and need to be tamed. Alternative sources of human values, other than what they command in a wide-open economy, must be preserved. The market, left unchecked, has the potential to overrun settled ways of life, to undermine religious faith, and to coarsen standards of behaviour. While this is not Kirk's only point, it is the one that seems most conspicuous today.

Now the first person I heard say anything like this was in fact Cornel West. I agreed with him then and agree with him now. Human value does not come from Markets. Indeed unregulated markets can be and probably generally are destructive of human value. I say markets need to be regulated by sustainability, which will require a revolution in accounting, and by strong declarations and defenses of human rights and civil rights. This, my friends, is the very basis of my gripe against Libertarians, whom I consider irresponsible and leaning towards anarchy. Libertarianis is certainly understandable as an ethos in the context today's complex and often over-regimented society, however it doesnt' stand on its own.

Now onto the famous Six Canons:

1. The principle of moral order -- a belief in a transcendent moral order to which we ought to try to conform the ways of society.

I tend to believe that this is absolutely true, but I think that people get bogged down in the matters of discovery. Which is to say that atheists have a hard time accepting that Theists have recieved any revelation, and this somehow unhinges their moral credibility. The hell with it, say it's all 'self-evident' and hash it out. Ultimately people will discover that murder is wrong. I believe their is a cognitive theorist who suggests that our emotions are hooked to our minds and bodies in such a way that we are inately capable of knowing (because it makes us feel bad) what is right and wrong vis a vis the low end of Maslow's Pyramid. There is a reason that the sight of blood or of human skeletons is revolting and scary - we are innately moral. The religious way to describe this is that God made that so. Fine. Transcendence is transcendence.

2. The principle of social continuity -- Conservatives prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t know.

This is a no brainer. Of course it's true. I don't even see how this is debateable.

3. The principle of prescription -- A reliance on the “wisdom of our ancestors.”

Well, now the value of this really depends on how broad a faction of ancestors one is willing to claim, no? But the basic principle stands. Human knowledge evolves slowly. Just as we physically evolve slowly. What is valuable doesn't change, so heed your grandmama.

4. The principle of prudence -- Public measures should be judged by their long-term consequences.

Really, what more needs to be said here, other than what I keep saying about Bush blowing the budget makes him more my enemy than my friend. But you already know this. Conservatives like me are all about the Long Now.

5. The principle of variety -- A healthy inequality is necessary for civilization.

This could mean any number of things, but presuming that it says something specifically in defense of a Class System (as contrasted to a Caste System), then I tend to agree. Throw in a little Peter Principle, a little meritocracy and open markets and I think it works just fine. People need to do what they are good at doing, and they need to be rewarded appropriately. Somewhere, some man needs to get a passionate night of lovemaking for not stealing a truck, but he's in another class than I.

6. The principle of imperfectability -- Since man is imperfect, no perfect social order can be created.

Abso-frickin-lutely. So now I suppose I need to check out this Jeremy Bentham character and see exactly which of his screws were loose. There's a task for another day. I've blogged quite enough today.

Keeping It Right

I'm adding a new category to my blog today in order to do something that I've been meaning to do for a while, which is to introduce and keep track of outstanding individuals and groups that smack me in the face as being Old School and/or Conservative Blacks and/or Black Republicans. This serves two primary purposes. One of them is to satisfy my packrat proclivities and organize something which I have failed to organize so far. The side effect of that will be to allow everyone else easy access to the same pile. And the other is equally self-serving which is to create a mountain of examples which deflect the ever increasingly tiresome questions about how/why and to what extent am I 'being' all that I claim to be. Ask them too.

Today I spotlight Tavares Forby, the young man who runs the newly hatched Blackpundit.com. He says:

I have very few black friends that I can talk mathematics, physics, politics, or other abstract subjects with. These are very powerful subjects that change the world. One night I went to go see the second Matrix at a theatre near UCSD. I got there about 40 minutes early because it was the first night it came out. During that 40 minutes before the move, I looked around the theatre and all I saw was a lot of Asian and White college kids with there text books open, using their TI-89, or had their laptop open doing some type of school work. I was amazed (besides the fact I was the only black there). And I thought to myself, how come I never see this in the black community? How can we get African Americans to shift some of their interest into something outside of their own? Maybe making these other interests look cool or a focus on changing the views of our younger African American generation can make a difference. Whatever the answer is, we need to get back in the race!

We're with you Tavares and we've got your back and I am pledging my support of the Keeping It Right network to insure that our folks are hooked up properly. At the very least, I can start placing some people in all the tech jobs people keep throwing at me over at my other site, Cubegeek.

Abortion: An Individual Right?

No.

First of all let's clarify something about rights. I say they are the gift of the strong. Others might say they exist independently, we just have to recognizen them. I disagree.

I could claim that God created a right for me to read your mind, but until the device is created that enables me to do so, does that right exist? If I claim God created the right, then it exists in perpetuity since the beginning and to the end of mankind, but I can't exercise that 'right' until I have the capability. Once that capability is expressed, then law springs up around it as does political rhetoric. Rights evolve owing to the relative importance they have in society.

Understand here that abortion is an invention. It is a medical invention that adds to the convenience of modern women such that they don't suffer the responsibility of childbirth and rearing if they choose not to. There are a lot of good reasons and bad reasons for this choice. But to speak of it as a right, I think mischaracterizes it. Rather I think of it as an enabler, or perhaps a consequence of the expression of something that more resembles a right which is sexual gratification.

Humans need sexual gratification. It's way down on Maslow's Pyramid. But there are also a huge number of choices there too. And I wouldn't be so quick to talk about a woman's right to choose abortion without talking about a woman's right to choose lesbianism or marriage or masturbation. Which is more fundamental, the sexual needs of the body or the need to be free of childbearing and childrearing?

Abortion is brutal contraception. Sure you have a choice, and I defend wise choice, but I don't give license.

One more thing that I want to add to this stew is the question of where one body ends and another begins. A woman cannot get pregnant on her own. She must have possession of someone elses genetic material in order to conceive. So it is inevitable that the other person has some 'right' to determine the fate of the development. A child, or an embryo, or a fetus or whatever you want to call it inside a woman's body is not hers exclusively. It is only half hers. So her individual rights are compromised the moment she becomes pregnant.

I say this because whether or not one agrees that a fertilized egg is a person, it could conceiveably be brought to term outside of the body in which it was fertilized and still exists as 'joint property' of the two parents until it reaches some measure of selfhood. It could go into another woman's body. It could go into an artificial womb. It could go into storage. Hell, it might even go into a pig or a cow or the bloody Matrix for all we know.

So if a woman's right to abort is absolute, then it stands in direct opposition to a man's right to sire. So what if he's a rapist. So what if she's a murderer? One person is still plotting to deprive the other.

David Horowitz Makes Sense

Uh Oh.

I think I'm having a paranoid moment. I just read an old article by David Horowitz and I don't see anything wrong with it. This is spooky. The article is the notorious Baa Baa Black Sheep published in Salon in 1998. Hmm

Mr. White

The past is often full of pleasant surprises. I just happened across an old section of my website (Boohab's Factotum) and in it was a search string for Google that pointed to the writings of the best ally I ever had as an anti-racist online.

James A. White (if that was his real name) was a German geneticist associated with the Human Genome Project working in New York. If you ever needed anybody on your side to completely thrash the ambitions of American Neo-Nazis, you couldn't design somebody better than Mr. White. All of the hard racial subjects, IQ, heritability, The Bell Curve.. White handled them with aplomb, authority and attitude. I tended to handle such matters with flavor, facts and ferocity; it was a great balance.

Anyway, here is the link. Here is an example of one of his exchanges with legendary internet white supremacist troll Matt Nuenke.

Nuenke:
When someone can show that you can take blacks and give them an enriched environment and they will be able to learn and function normally into adulthood then the genetic basis of IQ may begin to be in doubt. Until then, the stupid race hypothesis is the most credible and consistent. Whether one is a left winger or a right winger, good science does not care. Facts is facts.

White:
What do you do about the "white" groups who do no better than blacks on
standardized tests? There are obviously many who score no better, in order
for the white average to be 100. Where are these facts you refer to found?
In TBC? Those so called facts are very tainted. The Minnesota Twins
Studies? Again these studies are about as scientific as "The Legend of the
Seven Cities of Cibola". You continue to look only at tainted studies and
evidence, why not look at the studies and data which would tend to indicate
otherwise? In the meantime you are willing to continue the needless
sacrifice of the lives of millions of people on the altar of a theory of
racial superiority. The US went through this same thing once before in its
history. Also before the turn of the century in England there was a theory
of Social Darwinism which prevailed for a time which essentially said the
same thing about the English working class. Your attitude is the very
reason American society keeps going around in the same loops and never
solving the problem. Politicians get elected in the US by "playing the
race card", alternating between calling they inferior and calling them
saints. The temptation is too great and as long as that exists blacks in
the USA will always be pawns in a game.

Installing A Divinity In Your Head

I started out in life as a Black Nationalist. My late baby brother was born with Spinal Meningitis which he survived - this turned my mother, a lapsed Catholic, into a born-again Evangelical and introduced Jesus for the very first time into the household when I was in elementary school. Understand that as a kid, we never said grace or bedtime prayers. There were no praying hands on the mantel, cross or portrait on the wall. So suddenly I had to reorient causality onto this Jesus character.

It took a couple years, but I finally figured out that Jesus must be in my head and that I didn't have to alter my body position to speak to him. And since he must be God, then I don't have to sit and wait for an answer - either he's going to say something to me immediately or not. If he doesn't answer immediately, then he's saying, in effect, Michael go do what you want. How could he be incapable of hearing my prayer? If he answers prayer, how could he stand to be subordinated to my own will? So my checking in with Jesus worked with the provision 'unless otherwise directed by heavenly command, I'm about to do this'. Jesus never really stopped me from doing anything I wanted to do, but the act of checking in developed into a strong conscience. So strong in fact, that I became convinced that I was doing God's work. That stayed me for a very long time.

Soon enough it was off to Catholic School, who told me that I was too lowly to speak directly to Jesus and that I better check with Mary first. Hmm. That's a twist. Not only that, but they stopped in the middle of the Lord's Prayer, so the priest could say "Deliver us Lord from every evil and grant us peace in our day." Well the Catholics had it all over the Evangelicals for dignity and demeanor, but what's up with the intercession? I already had my P2P connection with Jesus hooked up, now this new gaggle of saints and clergy are cluttering up the connection and translating it to SNA. I swear if it was in Latin, I would have never given them a second thought.

Two years later I was off to study with the Jesuits. They deconstructed Genesis, taught me about who this character King James actually was (yike!) and introduced me to the machinations of the Council of Nicea. Well, there's a fine how do you do. These guys have a set of moral power tools which have made a fine mess of all previous constructions, but one thing stuck firm. Be a man for others - be Christlike. And suddenly I was no longer capable of making the ultimate sacrifice for any Black Nationalist cause.

In the end, I decided with Pops, that straight up Episcopalians were the right combination of tradition, structure and Living Jesus and Good Works. I took my second Catechism, was re-baptized and Confirmed into the Episcopal Church at the age of 16.

I bring this up because I am proud of having been Confirmed by an Archbishop and of all the discussions I have regarding the sensibility and provenance of my conservatism I never am questioned about my Christian faith. And yet any person with a reasonable amount of certainty about the propriety of their own sect might easily point an accusing finger at my less that singular history. Is this because we simply don't do that in America or that we have accomodated for our religious diversity? In other words, while some folks are dividing us up into Red and Blue states over something we only do once every four years why don't they bother dividing us up into 30 someodd sects based on something we do much more often?

Well, we don't need religious consensus to function as a nation. People more or less assume (I assume) that a proper religious upbringing is sufficiently moral to not worry about the differences in the forking paths to righteousness. After all, religion is all about righteousness. But this kind of benefit of the doubt is less likely in political circles, even though political ideology is less well defined than religious dogma.

I don't want to seque too far away from the theme of the title other than to say that installing a Republican in your head is not quite as likely to happen as installing Allah in your head. Is it because politics is not all about righteousness that we are so critical of non-deterministic political philosophies?

Parks for Mayor?

I want to get into it here about the prospects for Bernard Parks as he runs for mayor of Los Angeles after having raised a measly 80 grand for his campaign. As Patterico has reminded me, there are a number of blackfolks in Los Angeles who are not too fond of Parks for the way he finessed the aftermath of the Rampart Scandal, especially with the open allegations that he terminated all investigations into cops involved with Suge Knight and apparently cut immunity deals that defied reason.

I am saying all of this from memory because there's actually a lot to be said that I have some of my own writing about and I want to get some feedback on this thread too. I recently met Parks at Ofari's but didn't take the time to deal with him. I wonder now how he's playing his own race card in assuming some significant majority of an automatic black vote against Villaraigosa and Hahn.

Speak.

Doug Schuler & e-Liberate

Add one more pioneer to the stew.

Motivated by a desire to help make online discussions more productive -- particularly among civil society groups who are striving to create more "civic intelligence" in our society -- Doug Schuler proposed in his 1996 book New Community Networks that Roberts Rules of Order could be used as a basis for online deliberation. Roberts Rules of Order was developed by Henry Robert in the late 1800s to describe an orderly process for people meeting together face-to-face to make decisions fairly. One of the most important criterion was that although every attendee would have opportunities to make his or her ideas heard the minority could not prevent the majority from making decisions. Robert labored over his "rules" for 30 years and they are now in daily use by tens of thousands of deliberative bodies worldwide. One of the interesting things that we have learned about Roberts Rules is that the process seems to scale up: small groups of 5 or so can use as can groups numbering in the hundreds.

I told you this was a great idea.

My angle differs in that it seeks to overcome specific temporal and spacial boundaries assumed by Robert as well as work on multiple levels of sophistication. An XRepublic can thus generate resolutions of varying complexity on similar topics in different time frames - it doesn't seek to force every quorum to develop a comprehensive resolution for larger majorities, rather to generate specific resolutions for specific constituencies which are related one to the other. One of the things I am trying to achieve is a balance of simplicity and completeness such that the language necessary might be more rule-based. This way one can review the effectiveness of amendment with regard to enforcement.

For example if one constituency leaves out clauses which specify "you cannot murder by poisoning with mercury" in a murder law, and it doesn't have a mercury poisoning, then the resolution is safe enough. Why add to its complexity in anticipation of a sophistication that doesn't exist in the constituency?

Mo' Fragments

Orkut is Dead
So is Friendster. Long live Multiply. I guess.

Ball Sweat
My favorite energy drink is Sobe Adrenaline Rush. Some customers are near Starbucks, some customers are near 7-11. This customer has its own kitchen and so when I need to wake up from slaving over a hot laptop, I know there's a fridge full. I wondered if I was getting the maximum kick, so I found this site to have a lot of good subjective answers. But I like the taste of SAR.

Protecting Parker Center
Patterico has discovered an old black political tactic. Don't trust the newspapers when they defend cops. I know he doesn't trust the LAT on general principle, but he's exhibiting the kind of behavior, which in blackfolks, often brings hoots of derision. It's not easy being a skeptic, especially when it involves the murders of rap stars. I'm sure I wrote some delicious stuff about this way back in the day, but I can't find it in the archives.

Started Retarded
I know that I'm not the only person who noticed that there are (at least) two versions of that Black Eyed Peas song. Suddenly during the NBA finals, the rest of the world outside of the tighter hiphop sphere learned.

UK In Da House
The recent New Yorker highlights Dizzee Rascal & The Streets. Even though I knew half of them were thuggin' I always had a soft spot in my critical vision for French rappers, especially those and other Euros under the influence of Jazzy Jay. To wit {IAM, SLEO, Lucien (of course), Solaar (of course), and the just salty enough Raggasonic}. I haven't heard these new kids, but let's give them a shot.

Litmus Dumps
Somebody asked me what it is about me that thinks I'm Conservative. I'll agree that there's got to be a fairly shortcut way of describing it. My kneejerk is RTFM, what do you think I've been writing about for the past two years? But I suppose I can aggregate a dumbed down manifesto. Here's a first axiom: Youth Culture Is Stupid. Stay tuned. Oh, by the way Gay Marriage Is Oxymoronic.

Phil Agre Goes Crazy
I've been subbed to RRE for a couple years. It's more of the research feeds I browse and archive for no good reason other than that I am a packrat. He really started barking up the wrong tree the other day with the following grafs:

Liberals in the United States have been losing political debates to
conservatives for a quarter century. In order to start winning again,
liberals must answer two simple questions: what is conservatism, and
what is wrong with it? As it happens, the answers to these questions
are also simple:

Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and
civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality
and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the
modern world.

Here is a man who obviously travels in small circles. That may be his definition of Conservatism, but I think that he's got a dictionary Jones. Sniff the empirical Phil and leave the strawman theories for your undergrads.

The Last Word

I've heard a lot of discussion about Ebonics and BSV and whatever slanguage blackfolks are accused of speaking, but I've not heard anything so potent and clear as Avery Tooley's piece. Love it.

He's got the verbiage for all the explaining that needs to be done, plus the right attitude, and in this I make the distinction between proper and right. Language is that which flows from the self. It is the most personal of creations. It is your voice. What can it be besides a version of boastful scientific animism when some pretentious fop tells you that you're not. The most honest criticism that might be made is that one is not speaking the King's English. Fine. See Monty Python.

I've always seen language as power, and I've been a shape shifter. It was always clear to me that one speaks appropriate to the situation. Most of my teen years, there were three venues each with its own propriety when it came to speech. Home, School, Neighborhood. In my neighborhood, everyone sounded exactly like Ice Cube. At school everyone sounded like a character out of 'Donnie Darko' which shouldn't be a surprise since they filmed it there at LiHi. At home it was a mix of Cosby Show and Roc. Plus having learned conversational Swahili as a child and having Fracophones in the family, not to mention the Mom's lapses into Creole, flexibility and fluidity was always the order of the the day.

But I leave it to Tooley.

Doom Network

The Man In The Mirror

If you want to make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and make a change.
-- Michael Jackson

If this is what Michael Jackson considers a mirror, then he's truly desparate.

Jackson made a surprise visit to Los Angeles' pre-eminent black church on Sunday, which legal experts said was an effort to boost his reputation ahead of the showdown with the Santa Barbara County prosecutor.

With all the flack that I've been lightheartedly taking about what Republicans do or don't know about black people, you've got to admit that anybody off the boat could do a better job than Michael Jackson's handlers. First he hires the NOI for security, now he's at FAME. Jeez.

Now you know what's going to happen. Jackson is going to do time and a bunch of black hack flacks are going to try to compare him to Martha Stewart and pick through the newspapers to find out which other criminals got off light. They're going to say it's a racial thing and try that self-fulfilling prophesy. Certainly there are complications that make this an interesting story, but the racial sideshow blurs those distinctions. So for my part, I'm going to focus on the two protagonists, and I think Sneddon has the upper hand. The fact of the matter is that Tom Sneddon wants Jackson's neck and he's going to use all of his wiles to get it, since Jackson slipped through Sneddon's net last time.

Understand that Sneddon and Jackson are deadly enemies and that you can view Michael's latest works completely (at least I do now) through the lens of this particular fight. He's bleeding all over the page - why else would he hire Biggie Smalls to rap with him? Check out the lyrics from 'Unbreakable' off the 'Invincable' album. WTF?

Now I'm just wondering why you think
That you can get to me with anything
Seems like you'd know by now, when and how I get down
And with all that I've been through, I'm still around

Don't you ever make no mistake
Baby I've got what it takes
And there's no way you'll ever get to me
Why can't you see that you'll never ever hurt me
'Cause I won't let it be, I'm too much for you baby

Chorus:
You can't believe it, you can't concieve it
And you can't touch me, 'cause I'm untouchable
And I know you hate it, and you can't take it
You'll never break me, 'cause I'm unbreakable.

Can you believe this? I'm a big fan of the bogard, but this fool is in over his head. The fundamental difference between the Gloved One and the rappers he fronts with is that Jackson cannot survive outside of a multi-million dollar bubble. He'll never be able to go incognegro and that is his great weakness. It will undo him. When people say that you're a hypocrite just for going to church, you know you're in trouble.

I believe that Michael Jackson thinks that he's so special that he can push the boundaries of adult/child affection. He must think that his kind of love is beyond reproach. He comes from an effed up family and was clearly unable to create a normal one. So all of that purity and affection he might have had, he tries to overcompensate for with other people's hearts and other people's children. But it's too late. He's an old man and this crap doesn't work any more. Now he is faced with the kind of power that doesn't respect his money, state prosecutorial power. It must be rocking Jackson's world.

One more thing, looking into the future. If Jackson's estate survives, you can look forward to watching his kids blowing millions on the fast life. Golddiggers take note, there are some marks to be taken.