Cobb

Mfume's Departure

Under ordinary circumstances, considering the great deal of respect I once had for Kweisi Mfume, I would in this piece review his accomplishments during his tenure at the NAACP. However, there aren't many expectations that I've had of the organization. So if he did a good job by NAACP standards is something I wouldn't really bother to know much about. I admit it, I'm apathetic.

The NAACP puts a face, sometimes a cockeyed face, on matters of racial outrage. This is an admirable task except for the fact that the majority of Americans echo that outrage anyway. There is rarely an event of racial significance that the blogosphere, the punditocracy or anybody with a mouth big enough to get on television, doesn't say just as much as the NAACP. So why isn't their membership larger?

The reason is simple. The NAACP is a black political organization. It's not about people of color, it's about blackfolks. My expectation was that Mfume would, in wresting control from that demagogue Ben Chavis, bring the strength of the Multicultural Movement front and center in the new NAACP. From my perspective, there is nothing fundamentally different about racial issues facing blacks in 2004 that weren't there in 1996, but clearly the opportunity to get Asians and Latinos swelling the ranks of the NAACP is lost. So as far as I can see, it's the same organization it was before Chavis, back on the rails, solvent, black, boring and almost superfluous. That is, superfluous to blackfolks as a voice of outrage.

That the NAACP is black and not Asian and Latino is a problem. It is a problem that the NAACP must resolve or face increased marginalization. Its byline is that it is the oldest Civil Rights organization. That's like saying the Communist Party is the oldest party in Russia. That means it's more about the past than the present. Problem.

Mfume, I'm sure, did a decent and respectable job at the organization, he simply didn't do the job that might save the NAACP from obsolescence. So who's next?

Somebody's Idea of Black Culture

Baldilocks is meditating on an old meditation. I thought I'd bring back some flavor to that discussion that we've discussed here and there.

The way I see it, there are two bogus arguments that fuel such problematic discussions and and one shady argument. The first bogus argument is the racist one. Blacks are genetically predisposed to be blockheads, so ugliness is inevitable. Second bogus argument is a slippery version of the first, racist, but trying not to sound racist: Black *culture* is predisposed to ugliness and so such behavior is to be expected. The third argument is the shady one which suggests that Black culture *should* have ugly elements in it because it's appropriate to the political struggle of African Americans.

If people really respected Artest as an individual (or disrespected him as an individual) we wouldn't be talking about black people, culture or authenticity. But now that we are, Mr. Peabody, crank up the wayback machine.

Boot To The Head Simply stated, one hundred years from now, people will forget Nelly, but they will still be playing Thelonius Monk. In the words of Stanley Crouch, there is some music which seeks to 'elevate with elegance', and then there is music to shake your ass to. Seeing as men and women will always have reason to shake their asses, it won't really matter if it's Nelly or someone who has yet to be born, rise to pop stardom and then fall into obscurity. The asses will be shook, the tune forgotten. But for those cultural productions which are part and parcel of the will to reach excellence and perfection, for those which sustain the spirit, the memories will be strong.

Mass Markets & The N Word
The stop dead in your tracks argument in my hip pocket about 'Why can't white people use the n-word when blacks like xxx use it all the time?' has changed. The answer I now give, when asked, turns the tables. Of all the African Americans there are, why is it that you wish to emulate blacks like xxx? This answer helps the clueless to understand that blacks recognize class distinctions between themselves, which is part of my reason for bloviating on behalf of the Old School into the blogosphere. But let's take this distinction one step further and talk about the commercialization of black culture.

Soul Plane & Minority Pride
Again, the little white man in some black heads still isn't dead. Worrying about what whitefolks think will drive you to drink. It's precisely because there will always be some who believe just what you fear. What these insufficiently proud African Americans forget is that Hollywood is irrelevant to that racist thinking. The Klan doesn't need Soul Plane as an excuse. And nobody needs white liberal guilt shushing people in sensitive response to the bleating boycotters.

There. That should keep their heads ringing for a minute.

The China Outlook

I met with my new partners last night and they outlined to me some of the plans which have netted them a great deal of investor interest, actual cash, and American execs poking them on the shoulder saying "Can we work for you, please?". I have to say that this is one of the most exhilirating weeks I've had in my life.

So the outlook for me taking the position is excellent. The prospects for making a nice pile of Yuan is also very good, and the experience of my partners in China at or near the top of the pile is quite encouraging. One of the commenters at Dresner says that China is a civilization masquerading as a nation-state. That's quite possible. I'm looking at it as a very very large corporation with a set of executives that we all desparately hope know what they are doing.

A couple things are clear, and several other things I'm learning are new. The first thing is that the more you believe in the greatness of a nation being defined by the industriousness of its middle class, the more you will have to admit that China is well on its way to inheriting that mantle from the United States. As a corrollary to that, it should be well understood that the closeness with which we deal with the UK is likely to be replicated after we 'get over' the transition. In this, the era of the global small business, the consequences could be that such a transition will happen without an armed conflict. This is my hope, and quite frankly, my investment.

I imagine that there may still be some purists after a fashion who might suggest that Sony is not an American company or that Toyota doesn't make American cars. And yet I think they would have a very difficult time convincing others that Spiderman is not an All-American film or that the Prius doesn't appeal to uniquely American sensibilities. I hardly think of the Netherlands when I fill up at a Shell station. Who says 'Royal Dutch Shell'? But the reality is that such institutions are deeply engrained in American life. What we eventually got over with the Japanese, we must inevitably get over with the Chinese. And so if and when it comes to banking or military might, that might not be so easy, but at the commercial level, I think we'll handle things just fine.

As a market, the American middle class, rounds out to about 70 million households. In China, those with equivalent purchasing power is about 4 times that. I'm not certain that the current status of the corporation, short of what Wal-Mart has achieved over the past ten years with its brilliant use of information technology, is ready to handle such a market. It's easy to say that the same ideas will work, but I strongly believe that a great number of business plans, and companies organized around such business plans, will not scale. I believe that selling to a global market of say 700 million, there are only a few corporations who are ready willing and able. So as this market of consumers evolves in China, nothing great American corporations take for granted will work of necessity. Nor will businesses born and bred in China necessarily have the magic to handle this expansion. What I think is going to happen is that there will be many companies who are successful initially, but will get slashdotted by too much success. It's one thing when your call center can handle 5 million calls to complain about your product's failure, but what about 50 million calls the next year?

Here's the surprising anecdote. Not 7 years ago, GM built with about $3 billion several state of the art automobile assembly plants. And why wouldn't they make them state of the art? China pays good money. What you don't hear is that now, something on the order of 40% of GM's global revenue (or is it profit, I don't remember) comes from those new plants. When GM went there, they understood that they would be catering to the upscale crowd. So they figured that the Chinese would want Cadillacs. No. The most popular GM car in China for the bling bling set is the Buick. That's what they love. Hmm. Maybe Tiger Woods knew something we didn't after all. Maybe not.

The moral of the story is that the Chinese consumer economy may be as familiar yet as strange as the Buick. Perhaps Pepsi will beat Coke over there. Maybe their favorite NBA team will be the Houston Rockets but because of Juwan Howard, not Yao Ming. Remember that we called it 'space' and the Russians called it 'the cosmos'. Modern China will be the same as, but different from the US. And like two overlapping circles, there will be some that is mutually exclusive, and I think a lot which will be excitingly brand new.

Let's keep one thing in mind, the Chinese, like almost nobody else, want to be like us and better. That means they are heading in the same direction. They don't hate us because we send a few billion to Israel. To them that is a pittance in a pot. They don't hate us at all. They envy our economy and infrastructure and they're working hard to get their own up to speed and beyond. They run their country like a corporation, not a democracy. Right now they're spending. Think about it.

Sounds Like Genius

It appears that we have a genuine prodigy in our midst. According to all who ought to know, Jay Greenberg is our once in a millenium composer. I just want to hear it, and I wonder why it is that I believe that this is a genius that is readily found simply because of the context of what he produces is likely to find resourceful ears.

In the previous story, hearing Sophia Stewart ramble about the eyeball on the back of a dollar and why the NAACP is not defending her claim to capitalist largess reminds us that only certain kinds of genius are going to be recognized. That is the genius that the king appreciates. The rest is merely cleverness.

What if his mind were drawing a tabla instead of a cello? He'd probably be beating paint cans in the IRT instead of inverting treble clefs at Julliard. Speaking of which, have you ever listened to Squarepusher?

The Real Oracle

It turns out that the W brothers aren't quite the storytelling geniuses they were cranked up to be. Somebody named Sophia Stewart has won her day in court charging that the Ws ripped off her ideas big time.

Monday, October 4th 2004 ended a six-year dispute involving
Sophia Stewart, the Wachowski Brothers, Joel Silver and Warner
Brothers. Stewart's allegations, involving copyright infringement
and racketeering, were received and acknowledged by the
Central District of California, Judge Margaret Morrow residing.

Stewart, a New Yorker who has resided in Salt Lake City for the
past five years, will recover damages from the films, The Matrix I,
II and III, as well as The Terminator and its sequels. She will
soon receive one of the biggest payoffs in the history of
Hollywood, as the gross receipts of both films and their sequels
total over 2.5 billion dollars.

Stewart filed her case in 1999, after viewing the Matrix, which she
felt had been based on her manuscript, "The Third Eye,"
copyrighted in 1981. In the mid-eighties Stewart had submitted
her manuscript to an ad placed by the Wachowski Brothers,
requesting new sci-fi works.

Ahh the woes of intellectual property. Her side of the story is all here.

Conservatism and The Black Image

Ed Brown has been jabbing me in the ribs every week about why the Black Right hasn't defended Earl Graves when he did right, or why the Black Right didn't defend Kwesi Mfume when he did right. I don't have specific answers to that, just a general one. Black Conservatives don't play the 'Positive Black Images Game'.

My theory is fairly simple. Once you step outside the homestead of black liberal politics, you're on your own. And one of the first notions that goes out the door is cosmic justice. You see, you will realize very quickly as a black conservative, that a sizeable majority of blackfolks don't have your back. Black conservatives haven't lost their minds, they've only lost the benefit of the doubt. It is that benefit of the doubt (which is more or less the confirmation of an archtype / stereotype) you suddenly cannot be a 'black leader' as they are popularly understood to be. You lose the right to publicly call yourself poltically black without a measure of controversy. And to the point of this essay, you lose the credibility accorded those who might protect the image of the black man and the black woman. That's a job that black conservatives are not allowed to have, despite the upper middle class desire latent in all Americans to have black conservatives represent. The positive black image is a conservative cultural fact that is denied by liberal politics.

This afternoon I considered the possibility that there is a class of black entrepreurs in the rap industry who are more influential than anybody dares say. I just hear tell of some producer who is under indictment for money laundering to the tune of 1 million dollars. Now we can all pretend not to be impressed with such a figure, but not many people get their hands on that kind of cash. Obviously it's drug money we're talking about; half of gangsta rap is an open source biography of ex-drug dealers and hustlers. So who represents black businessmen? Well, if you count what goes on television, and who gets documentaries made about their life stories, the answer is clear. Big ballers. They control the image. It's their surly lifestyles who make up the public knowledge of our rich and famous.

For me, becoming a Republican, as an expression of black conservatism has been difficult. But becoming Republican for its own sake was easy. The difficulty of being a Black Republican has everything to do with fighting every perception about blackfolks that doesn't fit with every perception about Republicans. Most of my conservative black cronies get over this hump, but most blackfolks, including many conservatives I know personally, have a hard time with this reconciliation. So they are 'independent'. I understand that most folks of this sort have nothing to prove politically, and so it's not so critically important that they make something of their political identity. Nor is it so important that I make something of it. But for those who take political activism and politics more seriously, the identity issue with black Republicanism is real.

The battles are fairly shallow and interminable. They go on and on about the same idiot things. It's a trap that liberals never seem to tire of baiting. Black Republicans take a measure of false pride in their embattled status and do a good deal of sniping back. But in the end, the existentials of Black Republicanism are acheivable in short order. You get over it, you're in, and the world keeps turning. But if there is one real lesson that black Republicans learn quickly, it is that they have very little control over their image. It is just another species of racism. No matter what black Republicans do, we can't seem to get enough credit for it to outweigh the stereotypes.

Out of this experience it is clear to me that the manipulation of the images of blackfolks continues to have significant payoffs to certain political interests which are aligned with the interests of racist and the non-thinking of the ignorant. This is a consistent fact whether one is conservative and liberal. Somebody is always challenging with ignorance or with lies, the image of the African American you have in mind. The significant difference between conservatives and liberals on this matter is that liberals fight for absolute control over that image and conservatives inevitably relent. The liberals have won.

The maintenance and construction of the image of the African American is a perennial liberal project. They're all putting in work. It's a task they win whether or not positive images are maintained, because there is a liberal interest in portraying blacks as oppressed. There is also a liberal 'responsibility' for black success too. The only image that disconcerts black liberals and presumeably most whites (liberal whites + racist whites) is that of the independent self-made black, aka 'uppity negro'. Ironically, many rappers fit that mold perfectly.

We in the Old School are happy enough with our own well-understood image to overcome existential burdens faced by the multitudes who fret and sweat over media images. That doesn't make the lies more digestible, but underscores the value we place on self-understanding (starting with Woodson). But whether we opt out of the uphill battle of correcting popular stereotypes, or ignore the whole game with some self-satisfaction, it's clearly not our bag. While the occasional Cosby is quite welcome, ultimately we have to say that we knew who we really were all along. But I believe that even when we say what we are all about and try to exemplify, we're never going to win the images battle. Nevertheless, we have the reality of individuality and truth on our side. That's good enough for me.

Strange Dreams

Last night I dreamed that Jay-Z pulled a gun on my daughter and I had to shoot him. I didn't want to because we were business partners and friends. So I found myself in the bitter predicament of shooting him in front of my daughter and wanting him alive. I scrambled to get him emergency treatment. His daughter and mine were playing around his body.

He owed me an explanation, and when I finally got the nursing staff to stop tranquilizing each other and the two little girls, the doctors got to work. When he was finally lucid, Jay was my old friend again. He said that he didn't know what made him do what he did, but he was glad that it was me that shot him. He needed that. He thanked me for shooting him, because he knew I couldn't kill him. Of course I could, he's just lucky I decided not to.

It was this decision that gives me pause to think about self-interest.

It's All Good

This has been one of the best weekends in my life.

I have a hyperbio which I have maintained more or less for 10 years. Except it hasn't really changed because it chops my life into about nine parts of about 4 years each. It's clear to me that I am finally out of part nine which included the recession, nine-eleven, the death of my grandfather and some of my awful situations, some of which has been chronicled here.

The Wedding Renewal was most excellent. Better than I expected, mushy, the whole bit. Funny, I took no pictures. I scanned in 2500 over the past week, but took none that evening. Being nervous is good for you.

Symbolism

Mardi Gras

Sunshine

Swirl

Easter Face

6480 Photos

I finally did it. I sent all 41 undeveloped rolls of film to be processed for the holiday weekend.

As one or two of you know, today is my tenth wedding anniversary and we are having a get-together tomorrow over in Inglewood. I've been working on perfecting the A/V presentations all week, so it was part of the deal that I take care of all those celluloid memories. All told, I added more than 2400 photos to the collection including scanning in half a milk crate of snapshots.

If any of you are face with such a task, I highly recommend the latest Photoshop Elements 3. It has really made this work go smoothly. Considering that all of the GIFs, JPGs, TIFs, PNGs and PSDs are in umpty folders on multiple drives, the catalog feature it has puts them all together nicely. They have really hit a home run with the interface this time. It's fast and sensible.

I'm going to break a rule or two and post a picture of various members of the Nuke. They're just irresistable. I figure if Lileks can get away with it, so can I. By the way, I am absolutely sold on letting the film pile up. I found an independent guy who did the whole deal for me at 7 bucks per roll including photo CD and proof sheets. Yeah that's over 300 bucks but compare that to 12.99 at Rite Aid.

So beware. The cuteness express is about to roll.

Suburban Samurai

Happy (Gumbo) Thanksgiving

Artest & Race

Maybe I ought to pick a theme a week and beat it to death. I'm still not finished with Abortion, but I've been having too much fun planning my Thanksgiving and being disgusted with David Stern.

Is there a racial component to this discussion? That depends on how large it is. I think people who consider this matter as an extremely horrible situation for the NBA are influenced by race. I think most sound minded people see it as a brawl and little more.

Race plays into this at this level only because of the world historical hype that has put an exclamation point behind every adjective. As soon as you start talking 'image of the NBA' then you are talking race. It is inevitable and unaviodable to deal with race if you desire to manage that public perception of a national sports league. Scale it down, and it's a big fistfight between assholes that got nationally televised and talked to death. Scale it up and race is just as legitimate an issue as anything else.

Before this incident, most people never heard of Ron Artest. So how suddenly is he the face of the NBA? Only because he fits a racial stereotype. Nobody has asked Artest to conform to the behavior of anyone other than black role models. He's not Robert Parrish and he has nothing to prove to America, he's just another pro athlete.

Literal Rednecks

In somebody's neck of the woods, some rednecks talking out the side of their necks got their necks broken.

The truck driver and father of six had come up from his home in St. Paul, Minn., intending to hunt on public land. He got lost in the dense forest and, wandering near a swamp, climbed onto a tree stand — a wooden platform built on a branch. A hunter approached and told him he was on private property. Though he hadn't noticed a No Trespassing sign, Vang said, he climbed down and walked away.

Then, Vang said, five or six hunters in all-terrain vehicles drove up and demanded to know why he had trespassed. He told them he was lost. They surrounded him and began spitting out racial slurs. The men told him they would report him to authorities. They cursed him. One of the hunters was carrying a gun, he said. Vang, walking away, turned and saw the gun pointed at him. He dropped to the ground. A bullet whizzed by him.

Thus sayeth Vang, who turned out to be more than these airheads bargained for. I don't understand what it is with people who think they can just provoke anybody without repercussions. Rule number one is never point a gun at somebody unless you're aiming to shoot. And if you shoot, don't miss.

And so..

He shot the man who had pointed the gun at him. The man dropped. The other hunters ran toward their vehicles. Vang kept shooting. More men fell. He chased those still standing, shooting one in the back. He heard the man groan. He walked past the body.

As the hunters' friends — alerted by walkie-talkie — arrived in two more ATVs, Vang took off his blaze-orange coat and turned it inside out so the camouflage pattern showed. He reloaded. An ATV whipped past, a man steering with one hand and holding a gun with the other. Vang shot him and the young woman sitting behind him.

I think Vang knew he was a dead man walking as soon as he killed the first man. Anyone for gun control?

Rather Not

Sending A Message

The Best We Could Do

In listening to Kofi Annan's Communications Chief this morning on the radio, it has become clear to me that there wasn't much the UN or anyone could do to avoid the Oil For Food scandal.

Considering the pain that Iraqis were suffering in the aftermath of the Gulf War (which is not repeating itself), it was in the interests of the US and the UK to get as much humanitarian aid to as many Iraqis as possible. The problem which was unavoidable was that there was only one way to get that aid to Iraq, through Saddam Hussein.

Why Conservatives Should Defend Ron Artest

David Stern's banishment of Ron Artest from the NBA amounts to the establishment of a nanny state.

A guy walks into a bar. He gets drunk and insults another patron. The offended party takes a swing at the drunk and connects, knocking the drunk on his butt. The drunk stumbles towards the door. On his way out the door, a trial lawyer who just happened to be in the same bar informs the drunk that the man who hit him is rich, and offers his services to sue. The drunk takes him up on his offer and wins 2.5 million in civil court. The bar patron declares bankruptcy and lays off 15% of his employees.

Justice?

When I first moved to NYC and was tutoring kids in a program at Columbia, an Italian guy asked me why Americans are so arrogant. I told him it's because we are always within a few degrees of separation from somebody rich. We don't have to work as hard as other people to reach a level of material success. The secret? OPM. Other People's Money. There's an entire class of Americans who reach affluence and leisure just managing OPM. Since this Italian kid was a grad student, I reasoned that he was surrounded by just such Americans. He suddenly understood.

There is also another class of Americans who prefer to be the movers and the shakers, rather than their attendants and toadies. These are truly remarkable people who are easily distinguished from the idle, decadent and otherwise Paris Hiltonesque rich. We're arrogant because we're a few degrees away from them too.

Anybody who thinks there are any atheletes who didn't work their asses off to get to the top of professional sports is really living in a dreamworld. People like Ron Artest are the go-getters, and people like David Stern are the estate administrators. When the attendants and toadies can transfer wealth to appease the whinings of drunk fans and the morally outraged, it is an inversion of the values that make this America a great place.

It's class warfare. It's soaking the rich. It's wrong.

The Indiana Pacers have just been destroyed by the collective actions of drunk Detroit fans and their head commissar, David Stern. Be afraid.

The Mouse Returns

Stern, Ashcroft & Saturated Awareness

I thought I might get away with only talking peripherally about the Detroit melee, but I have actually found interesting in the matter worth talking about directly.

First of all, my opinion. No punch in the face is worth 5 million bucks. There is absolutely no way in hell it is acceptable for Artest to be suspended for a season. This is nothing more than a pure excess in moral outrage. The punishment is outsized. In the ideal situation I would have done this as Artest; have the culprit identified and setup a special legal situation. On the condition that I don't sue your family into starvation, you will drop your gaurd and I will deliver a crisp combination to your face. I will then spit in your face. The beating will be videotaped and delivered to the internet. OR I will sue you into bankruptcy. That's justice.

But there is no justice being dealt in this matter. Almost immediately I've noticed how quickly folks have fallen into a pattern which is almost identical to that of the immediate wake of nine-eleven.

The thing to keep in mind is that something changes when you get media saturation of this sort. It happens fairly often in America. At least three or four times a year there is an event that is so prominent that you get the effect of 100 million minds thinking about the same thing at the same time. This is what I'm calling Saturated Awareness. It is a powerful force that is not being appropriately considered.

The standard sets of analyses about who knows what and when is certainly appropriate, but the problem is that very little use is made of the strength of public ethics. In November of 2001, all of us found 'anthrax' somewhere, and we tested the ability of our phone systems and police departments to respond to our concerns. They couldn't of course. Our new diligence overwhelmed authorities, and it always will. In these situations, there are winning and losing leaders. The winning leaders, like Rudy Giuliani are the ones who respond by the reassurance of directing our concern into actions we can take. The losing leaders like John Ashcroft are the ones who respond by promising to lead a regime of change so we don't have to do anything. In other words those who promise to take care of us fail. Those who show us how to take care of ourselves win.

In the meantime a portion of the new elevated consciousness should rightly fuel greater scrutiny on whomever was asleep at the switch. It's enough that a few heads should roll, but generally there is already somebody who already knows what should have done, but simply didn't have the focus or resources to do their job. Common sense dictates that some security guards doing their jobs could have maintained a bright line between fans and players and avoided the conflict at the Palace. Now that everyone knows it, it would be trivial for 100 million of us to pitch in a penny each to fund such an organization. Instead, the Commissioner is out to make an example of Artest. Why? To attempt to satisfy our needs and do something for us. But that something cannot be done for us. We have to do it ourselves, we need to be better fans, and the Commish needs to show us how. If he did so, we'd immediately see the difference.

Americans are like that. It's why we like singing God Bless America during the seventh inning stretch. It's our part. It's a fairly useless and almost ridiculous part, but it was what we were asked to do and we always want to do our part. That says a lot about the quality of our leadership doesn't it? You bet.

What is mind-bending is that so much of this is Saturated Awareness is forgotten. Only the experts retain the kind of institutional memory required. That's why leadership is still as important as ever. The last time something like this happened, it involved none other than Latrell Sprewell choking his coach. In my opinion this was a much more egregious act by a player than going after some drunk who hit you in the face with a thrown beer. And yet I heard nobody draw the parallel between last Friday's brawl and that incident, or to Roberto Alomar's spitting incident in baseball. If they did, then they'd have to confess how stupid million dollar fines would seem, now that the public outrage has died down. Most of us would still be breaking our necks to pay for that gob of slob or glancing punch both of which happened over 6 years ago.

It comes down to the acts of individuals but when they are so deeply analyzed and so broadly covered, it is human nature to try and draw parallels. When the act is shocking and despicable it's our instinct to punish severely and then try to set up a zero-tolerance policy. It's almost like clockwork, we can expect somebody to demand some change 'so that this will never happen again'. This is the beginning of error.

But things like this do happen, it's just that we're not paying attention. So it wasn't surprising to find that within a few days a similar incident was reported. The reality hasn't changed, we've just been made painfully aware of it. That painful awareness gives insightful leaders an opportunity to treat us like the adults we are and assist us in making intelligent contributions to society. Instead the temptation to make outsized gestures and overwroght proclamations seizes leaders by the throat and chokes the brains out of them. So it has been in Basketball and Justice.

Beyond Halo 2

I finally finished the Halo single player campaign. It was a blast. Like a lot of folks, I was fairly perplexed by the ending. The cinematics in this one were insufficient, by my reckoning, to give me enough details to fill in plot holes. On the other hand, I was very interested to get to the next level, just fresh from the exhiliration of beating the last set of baddies down.

It's true that Halo2 is more expansive in every way than the first. I can see how Halo3 could be even greater. What seems to be the huge surprise, and I may be reading this wrong, is that Earth itself is the Arc, and the Prophet of Regret came to warn humans that the Covenant was on a course to glass it. The Arc, if I'm reading that correctly, is the place where all of the Halo rings can be remotely activated. If Earth is the Arc, then it alone is safe from the Halo weapon, and/or the Founders were the original Earth inhabitants and Humans are the decendants of the Founders. With these pieces, Halo now approaches a new level of sci-fi drama. Or as this guy explains:

the halos don't kill flood...they kill their only means to spread which is all sentient life (meaning everyone else)...the halos were created to contain the flood, so when the rings were activated, they were already quarantined inside the rings, which is why they were able to survive.

The "Ark", which in Biblical terminology, is a safe haven for remaining life (eg. Noah's Ark contained animals, humans, etc, that were to be "saved" from utter destruction (the Great Flood).). So the theory about the humans actually being decendants of the Forerunner are actually likely. This would explain why Regret's fleet only had few Covenant warships (which if they had more could have easily obliterated Earth's defenses) at the start of the game, because he didn't know that humans were on the "Ark".

Earth contains the key to activate all of the Halos, as stated by 343 at the end of the game. If you all remember, at the Halo2.com site, when you point the cursor at the continent of Africa, it says "This is what we came for", which means the key is in Africa. This explains why the only place you get to fight on Earth as MC is Old and New Mombasa (which are actual cities in Africa). This is why the Covenant did not fully glass Earth, as they did with Reach, because they need to get to the key and begin their "Great Journey" into godhood, which they believe the forerunners became after activating the rings (foolish bastards!)

thats, more or less, what i came up with after beating the game, except for the Africa bit (totally looked over that :err: ) lol.

Im just curious what would be if the covenant ever find out the true purpose of the Rings, or worst yet, they actually manage to activate them. Thats why I think they bought in Abriter. Use him to help rally the covenant against the Prophets and help them to realize the truth of what the rings actually do (wipe out all life). This, consequently, i think will result in a truce/agreement between the Humans and Covenant converters to stop the flood and the religion of the false prophets.

Basically the whole story references, and in some instances, are identical to the Bible. i.e. Master Chief the savior and the one true hope to save mankind, the Ark as a haven for life, 7 Rings - the 7th day, Sunday (holy day), etc...

The question is whether or not Ridley Scott believe so, because he is being pitched this movie like nobody's business. You just have to get the right writers interested in taking up subplots and complications on the various alien races of the Covenant and voila.

In the meantime, I've got my ranking up to 5 in the online game and can now concentrate on that exclusively.

Obligatory Seriousness on DeLay & Ethics

Tom DeLay is a lightning rod for criticism, and rightly so. I much prefer Newt Gingrich. I think Tom DeLay is one of those powerful Republicans, like Ed Meese and John Sununu, who will not disappear as quickly as most people would like, but whose place in history will accurately reflect the often wayward ways of power. I don't like him and I don't believe that he serves the public interest. However he is a cog in a big machine whose excesses we all must tolerate. He's still not as bad as Darryl Gates was.

As rules go, I think defenders of DeLay have a legitimate point. An indictment is not a conviction. That's about all the point they have.

Aside from the fact that there is nothing the opposition seems prepared to do in order to rid the Congress of Mr. DeLay except wish, I will grant this fight the status of a molehill rather than a mountain. The Texas redistricting fight is old news about dirty pool. As soon as possible the Dems will reverse it, holding the same moral card they have for decades - minority enfranchisement, which seems only to mean something good when Democrats establish it. The irony is, of course, that you can't seem to have it both ways. Either the Republicans are 'suppressing the black vote' or they are 'stealing it'. I really have a big whatever to that, although I'm sure there's some legitimate corn in that load of crap.

DeLay has gotten away with everything short of breaking the law, which means that he's pissing a lot of people off by doing whatever the hell he wants. He's not my idea of a great man or a great Republican, but he is doing it for my party. I'm with Shays on this one.

In the overall scheme of things, I think this is simply hypocrisy. It is not a miscarriage of justice, nor is it a inch that will lead to a mile, or a dangerous precedent. One could stretch and say that it is a blow for honesty, an acknowledgement about how Congress operates in the real world. I'll call it as I see it, a completely selfish and crude act of power politics. Exactly what we should expect from the likes of Tom DeLay. Is this news?

Treo 650 Blogging

Note to self: Get hBlogger.
Also keep track of Patterico's quest.

Dupe

Goodbye Sears

Wall Street (investors) cheered the sale of Sears & Roebuck to KMart this week. Ordinary Joe should look forward to seeing the Craftsman Tools being sold at Home Depot. This is a money deal and everybody seems to understand that perfectly.

When I was a kid, I believed that American Corporations were these giant, permanent immovable objects. I have learned that they are a great deal more dynamic than I ever imagined. In fact, they come and they go. This particular move is something of a surprise. While my stock market predictions are just about right (Dow 11,000; NASDAQ 2,100) for the year, predicting what will happen to businesses is literally anybody's guess.

Well I don't care what anybody says, Sears is going down. The guys at Kudlow & Cramer were just salivating over the deal. US News says:

At the Manhattan meeting, hedge-fund manager and self-proclaimed Warren Buffett fan Edward Lampert, who owns 15 percent of Sears and will serve as chairman of the combo, conceded that the deal was an "enormous undertaking." But he also expressed confidence that a strategy of cutting costs, mixing the pair's most successful product lines--Martha Stewart Everyday from Kmart, Kenmore and Craftsman from Sears--and converting several hundred Kmarts situated in more upscale demographic areas into Sears stores would work.

I don't buy it. They saliva was over real estate. That's right. And I think we're just about at that point where the American people have gotten so silly that we need to understand the value of land again. Too much high falutin' going around for my taste, and so we need a little bit of interest rate creep and to see the price of gold break 500 bucks. I say Lampert is valuable as Sears' very own Carl Ichan. He doesn't know snot about retail and will not in a million years beat Wal-Mart prices or Target savvy. So he'll do a bunch of real estate transactions, change what malls look like, and carve up Sears into little pieces with KMart's cash.

Marketing people are seing the light of a new day. People don't care about brands as much any longer. We don't care if it's a Kenmore washer, we care that the damn thing doesn't shake the whole house in the spin cycle. Quality is divorced from brands, and people buy 50 dollar DVD players, and throwaway 'burner' cell phones. Comprende? We don't 'Trust Sears' we just shop there.

Mark my words, KMart is going bye-bye and Sears is next. Only shareholders will be happy. The rest of us will be at Wal-Mart & Target.

Da Brawl

Elections are not enough. We need fistfights.

I haven't said anything about fuckthesouth.com and various snide backbiting about red states and blue states, but I've had it about up to here and I'm ready to smack somebody. But I'll admit to it. Over at Baldilocks, she found and remarked upon a classified ad that some Dem put out as an open invitation to a fistfight. He wanted to find somebody who actually voted for Bush so he could kick his red ass. I'd pay for ringside seats, and really couldn't wait for somebody to throw a beer.

I grew up in a fistfight neighborhood, the oldest of four boys. So I know just where this comes from, how far it goes, and how long you can put it off before it gets too crazy. But human beings have a visceral need to push and shove, to smack each other in the face when logic doesn't suffice. There is a superceding logic of violence that we need to satiate - man does not adjudicate by words alone.

I've been in enough fights and seen enough fights to know the good ones from the blood feuds. You don't let a man who wants his wife back to fight the man who took her. That kind of squabble can't be squashed mano a mano. But a debate about an election? Yep? The man who kidnapped your kid? Nope - that goes to the death, but the man who cut you off in traffic, or called your president a fucking idiot warmonger. This is the kind of talk that can be shutup by a left hook to the schnoz. The problem is that most of the weenies who can't figure out how to get their life back on track in the wake of GW's double are those most in need and least likely to get the crap beat out of them. So they remain full of crap; vile, vindictive, uber bitchy, trifling, backbiting snitty crap.

I can't think of anything more stupid and poofy than all this mouthing off about what the 'blue states' ought to do to the 'red states'. As if they would. All written by metrosexual journalist pricks who couldn't catch a football much less run their own country. The very idea that these guys could go their separate ways and lease the US Military is the height of condescension. Do I sound as if I were sick of hearing it? And don't let me forget Arianna Huffington, who is just the kind of shrill instigator that keeps this fever up. Man what I wouldn't pay to see that one smacked into silence. And Rush Limbaugh puking every 10 seconds during GWBush's dedication of the Clinton Library? Oh my god beat his lard ass down.

What's this? Violence to cow dissenters into silence? Yes, because the opposition isn't loyal enough to take one on the chin from and for their brothers. That's just the kind of fight that needs to take place, where the combattants realize that their differences are enough to bring the conflict to blows, but that they still must live together as brothers. That's how the dynamic works - and suddenly there's a new kind of respect shared. The aggrevating harping stops when you know the retort can be physical, and when both parties have exhausted themselves physically in the ring, they have to get up and have that bloody embrace. But unless that happens all the nasty, snarky, snide spitting continues.

I have no idea how we as a nation are going to get this done. Maybe it will happen the way it happened in Detroit this weekend. Sports hooliganism. If it were possible to get the Dallas Cowboys into the Superbowl representing the red states and the New England Patriots representing the blue states, that would do it for us. Then all over the country we could have some nice bar brawling. But if talk radio and blog bitching continues as it has, I remain convinced that we're not going to be right until some of us eat some knuckle sandwiches.

Any liberal blogger who wants to duke it out with me, I'd be happy to put on some boxing gloves and go a round with you. I promise to raise your hand in victory at the end, after I smack the crap out of you.

The Biography of a Parrot

Dr. Condoleezza Rice became the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor, on January 22, 2001.

In June 1999, she completed a six year tenure as Stanford University 's Provost, during which she was the institution's chief budget and academic officer. As Provost she was responsible for a $1.5 billion annual budget and the academic program involving 1,400 faculty members and 14,000 students.

As professor of political science, Dr. Rice has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the highest teaching honors -- the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.

At Stanford, she has been a member of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, a Senior Fellow of the Institute for International Studies, and a Fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. Her books include Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (1995) with Philip Zelikow, The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin, and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984). She also has written numerous articles on Soviet and East European foreign and defense policy, and has addressed audiences in settings ranging from the U.S. Ambassador's Residence in Moscow to the Commonwealth Club to the 1992 and 2000 Republican National Conventions.

From 1989 through March 1991, the period of German reunification and the final days of the Soviet Union, she served in the Bush Administration as Director, and then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, she served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1997, she served on the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender -- Integrated Training in the Military.

She was a member of the boards of directors for the Chevron Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the University of Notre Dame, the International Advisory Council of J.P. Morgan and the San Francisco Symphony Board of Governors. She was a Founding Board member of the Center for a New Generation, an educational support fund for schools in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, California and was Vice President of the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula . In addition, her past board service has encompassed such organizations as Transamerica Corporation, Hewlett Packard, the Carnegie Corporation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Rand Corporation, the National Council for Soviet and East European Studies, the Mid-Peninsula Urban Coalition and KQED, public broadcasting for San Francisco.

Born November 14, 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama, she earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974; her master's from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded honorary doctorates from Morehouse College in 1991, the University of Alabama in 1994, the University of Notre Dame in 1995, the National Defense University in 2002, the Mississippi College School of Law in 2003, the University of Louisville and Michigan State University in 2004. She resides in Washington, D.C.

Gung Ho

Oblivion

I Know Black People

No you don't.

(Sigh.)

Yee Haw!

I just got back from my visit to my new accountant. I'm home free. I'm in control of all my taxes and I've got money left to burn. Happiness has been pursued and captured. It's a wonderful feeling.

Obligatory Seriousness on Pat Oliphant's Cartoon

A big lipped bird? In the context of Oliphant, which I cannot recall, he may think that he's not out of line. Maybe he's portrayed other Cabinet members as animals, but whatever excuses will be proffered, this is a pretty low blow.

I wonder why he picked a bird, and if a bird why not a crow? OK so it's a parrot. Still, why not just go for the gusto? Everyone should know that crows are the smartest birds on the planet, so to say that Condi is dumber than a crow is damned insulting. On a good day, I could even accept the trickster aspect of a 'yes massa' crow, but a parrot? The allusion suggests that Condi is even dumber than the putatively dumb Bush.

It's not the first time intemperate blowhards have taken swipes at Condi Rice, and it won't be the last. She's certainly above it as are most of us over here in the Old School. But it's an interesting commentary that this probably won't go far as being categorized as a racist snipe. Technically, it's not. But if Oliphant is not indeed in the habit of portraying political bigwigs as animals, he's going to have some explaining to do.

I'm fairly happy for Condi Rice, and it's notable that her Black Ops may begin to pay off big time in her rise to power, especially as regards development in Africa and matters of AIDS. I take a bit of vicarious pride in having that black track through State and I will be watching to see if Armitage stays on - because he's one I especially like and admire.

As some analyst mentioned yesterday, Rice is actually better suited for this kind of position in which she is a public speaking diplomat among heads of state and runs the show rather than as the NSC Advisor who herds and coordinates interagency commmunications and policies between varying bureacracies.

Reverse Spoofing?

OK now I've seen it all. I'm just checking the blog for referrers which are a bit high today and I see that I have been cited as a 'sponsor' for a popup. I have no idea how that happened.

Somebody at Fastclick.net has pulled an interesting fast one. Somehow their popup pops up from somewhere and then it redirects the victim to here. So I've got to figure out how they did that.

Obviously you could see how bloggers might be reluctant to undo the spoof, since it attracts traffic to your blog. But I'm not associated with fastclick.net and I don't want to be, despite their being rather clever bastards.

UPDATE:
Nevermind. I actually *am* happy to be associated with fastclick.net because they are part of the conglomerate that hosts my racism test. Thanks to Kyle for discovering this.

Damned If You Don't

One of the consistent arguments that I've had in my favor about the nature of this occupation and suppression of the rebellion is that the US has been fighting as cleanly as possible. What pacifists have exploited are the onesy twosies of Abu Ghraib and more recently the shooting of a combattant in a mosque. But what there has nver been is a humanitarian crisis of the sort wars generally produce. Iraq is not full of refugees living in squatter camps or running towards the borders. This has contributed to the force of the rebellion, and made it tougher for humanitarians to do their jobs.

Iraq is not a classic charity case, says Kenneth Bacon, a former Pentagon spokesman who heads Refugees International, a Washington advocate for those displaced by war or disaster. Unlike in Afghanistan (news - web sites), Bosnia, Haiti or other places the West has tried to help, in Iraq there's no starvation or widespread disease. There is no refugee crisis. Still, Iraq is broken on a large scale. Only big contractors and military engineers can fix the electrical grid, oil fields and water and sewer systems. Luring Western experts means six-figure salaries.

This is from an article which updates the whereabouts of O'sullivan of JumpStart International, who has decided to bug out.

So there are two notes to remember. One is the bad news that Sully is out of the picture. The other is the corrective news which you should keep in mind whenever you hear an American (flabby-butt bourgie) journalist exclaim how dangerous Iraq has been. It would be a lot less dangerous if we simply exterminated Iraqis and destroyed more of their infrastructure more indiscriminately.

Missile Defense News

My buddy tells me that the DOD has put together a successful test of the Airborne Laser. Say what? 6 powerful lasers that paint a blistering hot softball-sized spot of pure energy at a ballistic missile in boost phase? Holy smokes!

But wait. Here comes the skeptic in me. I remember when the stealth technology first came out. Some of my engineer friends made me get that same yahoo feeling I had this morning, but as we sat and talked about it, as engineers do, he suggested a flaw. In Feynman like style he asked, OK so if our stealth planes are invisible to radar, how do we know where they are? He said, radar waves aren't the only types of energy in the electromagnetic spectrum. And so with that I inferred that we use microwave radar which he neither confirmed nor denied. I haven't followed up, because I have come to understand that new weapons systems are simply designed to leapfrog.

So how does the offense win in the ballistic missiles vs lasers war? Taking the same line of questioning, how do we avoid getting burned by our own lasers? Why smoke and mirrors of course. Hmm. Watch for new export restrictions on that kind of coating that turns regular sunglasses into mirrorshades, and pray for sunny weather. Other than that, suck on this Kim Jong Il!

Spellings Nominated

"..so these two midgets walk into a bar.."

Grandbaby Got More Back

Who is more evolved? Them what got big booties or them what got less? Well it only takes a moment's consideration after reading this NYT article to figure it out:

Humans were born to run and evolved from ape-like creatures into the way they look today probably because of the need to cover long distances and compete for food, scientists said on Wednesday.

...

Among the features that set humans apart from apes to make them good runners are longer legs to take longer strides, shorter forearms to enable the upper body to counterbalance the lower half during running and larger disks which allow for better shock absorption.

Big buttocks are also important.

"Have you ever looked at an ape? They have no buns," said Bramble.

Maybe this explains why women always look better when they are running and why I still love Marion Jones. Speaking of which, did the scandal ever evolve to anything more than a media slam job? No. Shades of Richard Jewell.

Rats

GWBush has dropped a few bombs in the past week. He has been gracious in victory but probably won few hearts in maganimity. He has done what fundamentally needed to be done in Falluja which is crush the rebellion, or at least crush the rebels. He has lost some of the most prominent folks in his administration. His underlings have pissed off senior CIA pros to the limit.

What the heck is going on here? This is a lot of change for a couple weeks. Where's the keel on this ship, and what is the nature of this exodus? I'm waiting to hear a speech, or has it been made when I wasn't paying attention.

Drama & Trauma

Joe Hicks was on the radio last night. He basically expressed his disgust at the people putting people on the streets in mindless protest over the reforms being carried out at King Hospital. The LA City Council is behind this fulmination. I've ditched concern over the issue and I'm convinced that Hicks is correct. Then again everybody has a right to go out in the street and yell. Too bad they look like such idiots.

What's wrong with liberal black politics? It is married to drama, and trauma. Too often, public interest doesn't go much beyond the noise.

Obligatory Seriousness on Foreign Born Presidents

The noise to draft Arnold Schwartzeneggar has reached an annoying pitch, or maybe it was just that one radio host last night who badgered his callers. For him, the only legitimate reason not to change the constitution was to admit you don't trust foreign born immigrants.

My point is simply this. Do we really need to outsource the presidency? A constitutional amendment which allows foreign born individuals to become president is more than an open invitation. It is a call for assistance, an admission of dependency.

Furthermore, if not Arnold than who? You don't amend the Constitution for the sake of one man. I don't care if he's Jesus.

Yeah But..

The NYT Reports:

NASA plans to try to set a world speed record for jets on Monday with the flight of a pilotless vehicle that culminates a decades-long research program into hypersonic flight.

The craft, the X-43A, is powered by a rocket booster dropped from a modified B-52 bomber. In a short dash above the Pacific, it is to use its experimental scramjet engine, which is expected to push the craft to almost 7,000 miles an hour, or 10 times the speed of sound.

Yes but this aircraft is only as big as a kayak.

Yellow Green

you are yellowgreen #9ACD32

Your dominant hues are green and yellow. There's no doubt about the fact that you think with your head, but you don't want to be seen as boring and want people to know about your adventurous streak now and again. Your saturation level is higher than average - You know what you want, but sometimes know not to tell everyone. You value accomplishments and know you can get the job done, so don't be afraid to run out and make things happen. Your outlook on life is brighter than most people's. You like the idea of influencing things for the better and find hope in situations where others might give up. You're not exactly a bouncy sunshine but things in your world generally look up.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

My Heart Goes to the Heartless

Liz recently invited me, graciously and thoughtfully as usual, to comment on questions regarding the seemingly irreconcilable differences between left and right in this post-election 12 step season. I demurred silently, as rudely usual. I think there's too little blur in top 20 lists, and I'm definitely in the blur zone when it comes to crisp definitions of my conservatism and conservatism in general.

However there are salient points that I think can be illustrative, but only when I think of them. To wit.

The phrase 'Character Counts' stands in contradistinction to the phrase 'Competence Counts'. If you ask me what separates liberals from conservatives that dichotomy splits the difference. Conservatives care mostly about performance and don't give a damn how you feel about it. Liberals want everyone to feel a sense of belonging no matter what kind of lamer they are.

Now there's a cat named Blackwill who is yet another leaving public service under a cloud of suspicion. It ails me to hear this kind of newsm he's the kind of guy who appeals to me. Why? Precisely because of this kind of testimony about him.

By the time I'd arrive in my office at 0730 (early, because I knew there'd be a lot of work waiting), I would find between 20 and 30 e-mails from Blackwill, time-stamped from 0330 onward, most dealing with materials he'd gleaned from the Internet. He was exceptionally demanding of his staff, to the point where they were breaking down with overload.

While Blackwill made my life difficult, he was always a decent human being. I think his major fault was that he simply lacked empathy toward other human beings, whether they were staff or foreign counterparts. It seemed, at times, that what he knew about managing personnel he'd read in a book. He could and would argue his side exceptionally well; he was not quick to realize that other sides might have some merit on occasion.

That being said, I'd go back to work with Blackwill in a flash..

I haven't been as international in my life as I might have expected given what I was up to three years ago. So I'm not quite as experienced as I should be to talk about human nature vis a vis the expression of power and wisdom. Yet I retain the distinct feeling that many, perhaps too many Americans, are spoiled in that they expect talented people to be heroic as well. The world isn't gentle, and people who deal with it needn't be. But for these false expectations we shun men like Blackwill. I call that hateration, but I could just unconsciously be regurgitating the moral of the story of 'The Incredibles'.

Thankless Jobs

Less than a week after PLO Chair Yassir Arafat dies from complications of sudden physical manifestations of his grinchlike soul, yahoos in Palestine are taking potshots at his successor Abbas. You couldn't pay me enough tribute to take such a thankless job.

Colin Powell, once the nation's clearest hero, now retires not two weeks after his boss gets re-elected. Sounds to me like he's clearing the hell out ASAP. Another tour of duty complete. Along with him go three other Cabinet members including Rod Paige, co-signer of the controversial 'NCLB', the unfunded mandate to force our kids and schools to just be better.

Meanwhile over at the CIA, our new notable Scheuer has several associates who are following him out the door with the assistance of Porter Goss' boot.

If I were the billionaire I deserve to be, I would use the US Government to develop a profound sense of frustration in brilliant men and women, then give them some job satisfaction.

Jacking Al-Jazeera

My brother Doc, in his heady froth of patriotism, gave me a bit to think about the other day. It's a simple question I'd never considered before. Why doesn't the CIA just jack Al-Jazeera?

When I began listening to Chomsky a long time ago when he manufactured his own version of Manufactured Consent by dominating progressive left thought, I have believed that the CIA had moles operating in joints like the NYTimes. While I've come to a bit more sophisticated understanding of information theory, I understand there's no need for a physical arm-twisting editor on board. Information can be contained and parsed out in such a way as to appear complete and suggest without confirmation or denial of a concealed truth. In other words, my ability to influence what you think exists independently of my capacity to control what you think. When nits comes to grits, influence is enough, especially when you are the CIA and can always restrain what anybody can know without your permission. The point of all this is that I've always believed the CIA capable of great manipulations, and influencing any media outlet or conglomeration of them doesn't seem beyond the pale. In fact, it is not beyond the realm of possibility, as far as I'm concerned that Rupert Murdoch himself is operating according to a CIA plan.

I don't concern myself with such far fetched ideas, I just concede the possibility that they might be in somebody's interest.

Considering that symbolically, OBL is the most wanted man in the world one wonders what lengths our boys have gone to track his whereabouts. How difficult would it be for the CIA to figure out which reporters at Al-J are getting the periodic videotaped bloviations of Public Enemy Number One. There is a transaction that occurs here on the regular and clearly his emissary has mastered the art of the dead drop. But we've busted spies before, how hard can it be to bust a reporter for an enterprise as green as Al-J?

I believe that an organization like Al-Jazeera, despite its editorial position whatever it may be at the moment, is more valuable in the long run to US interests than one that is compromised and embarrassed by our spymasters and CI agents. Nevertheless, I have few doubts that there are more bugs in that joint than anybody there suspects. If not now, then soon.

Standing of the Unborn

As a Christian, I am fully aware of my proclivity to challenge moral thinking in the public sphere, but I engage this within the context of our civil society. This provides an ethical challenge between what I think, feel and believe and what I am willing to do. I choose the moral framework of religion and the instrumentality of the law.

Fifteen years ago, I poisoned my mind with a dose of critical legal theory beginning with the works of Derek Bell and Kimberle Crenshaw. In those days I was seeking a legal understanding of racism and legal strategies against it. Basically I was trying to get under the question of whether or not our Constitution and/or founders were principly racist and if so, irreparably so. One of the legal terms I learned was that of 'standing'.

Standing basically means the ability of a person to his or her testimony be recognized in a court of law. If you are a space alien or a lizard or anything but a human, you do not have standing in a court. Anyway, all I was interested in was the diminished standing of Africans here in America, but I did learn this powerful concept.

So when the question of legalizing abortion or making abortion illegal comes up, I see it in terms that pro-life advocates suggest which is that a fetus is a person. IE an individual, IE someone who is endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights among which is certainly life. So abortion is a constitutional question if a fetus is a person, just as slavery was a constitutional question if an African was a person. In many ways the the question is parallel - is a woman's unborn child her property or does it own itself? There the similarity ends.

I say that an unborn child is property and not a person endowed with rights. So I am very interested to guage people's position on the matter of the standing of the unborn.

If one believes as I do, that an unborn child is the joint property (or if the word property is sounds too harsh, say 'responsibility') of the parents, then they must consciously relinquish that property in order for the state to act in their stead in the matter of its disposition. Or, as I said before, the state must meet some burden to show that the pregnant pair are like a car out of control without brakes and intervene on behalf of society.

If one believes that the unborn child has some kind of standing to exercise its right to life. (very consciously using the phrase 'right to life'), then the state has a much more powerful interest in intervention. They probably shouldn't have to prove any matter of capacity, simply the intent to deprive the unborn of their right to life is sufficient. It is the standing of the unborn as a person endowed with inalienable rights that makes this a very central legal question in our nation.

See?