Cobb

Losing the Flavor

This morning I have climbed out of the queen size with aching thighs to find bad news to my surprize. ODB is gone, and I hardly knew him. If he did, 'ooh baby I like it raw', then I know one more tiny thing more than his duet with Mariah Carey. But what catches me a bit flatfooted is the reverent nostalgia for the very concept of an Old Dirty Bastard.

Down here in the Wonderbread Heartland of the Left Coast where everyone wears desginer sandals to the gym showers so as not to catch something requiring Lamisil, we don't know jack about ODB, and couldn't miss him if we wanted. This is the pudding I'm dipped in, and I'm always making a way when I can. So when I read Jimi's ode, I wanted to wipe a tear from my eyes, but the tears didn't come. I no longer have the ghetto heart. I seem to have left that man's heart at Crenshaw and Jefferson about 15 years ago.

Just like that one nigga in your crew, he wasn’t on no bullshit--rapped about life, the life he saw as ya’ll rode around looking for a liquor store. He’d rap about the girl crossing at the light---with the window open, loud enough so everyone on the streets could hear. The girl might give him a finger or give him a number---lines like “Girl, I’d eat all the shit out yo’ ass” can be seductive---but no matter what, when that nigga hopped in your ride, you made room. Because everyone knew there was adventure afoot. The night might end in a fight or in jail--- or both. It was all par for the course. That nigga was trouble--- he was a trip. And he was priceless. That’s why you kept him around. And that’s why we tolerated Ol’ Dirty.

I haven't had that nigga in my crew since the days we snuck in to see Bruce Lee movies. I haven't had that crew since the days of waffle-sole Nikes and powder blue sweatsuits. I haven't tolerated men like ODB since before gangsta rap. Like the pit in my stomach feeling watching a man in a white wifebeater, large pink curlers and 18 inch arms swagger in my direction, those feelings just don't happen any more. I know the feeling well, I just don't feel it.

The ghetto lost all of its flavor to me suddenly. Of course nothing happens all at once, still I can remember the day back in 1994 when I took it upon myself to walk 125th Street in Harlem end to end. For years afterward I would continue to cruise the ghetto streets from city to city. But after that day on, it would be a distant monologue of observation, not an intimate call and response. From Albany Avenue in Hartford, to MLK in Tampa, ghettoes failed to leave me breathless. They became stunningly similar with canned drama. Why? Because I didn't live there and I didn't have to care. But in '94, when I did live there and I wanted to care, I found there was nothing for me there.

It was rather disappointing for me to find little in Harlem to care about. I had once tutored kids at St. Luke's Church up on the hill. I knew the place well enough to know where to find excellent fish fry ,which blocks not to walk, and familiar faces at the Studio Museum. But hoping for Harlem to be an example of something special was a failed hope. It was just a city with a lot of blackfolks in it, and I imagined that most of them, like me, just wished that Harlem would assist their ambitions rather than challenge them. In the end, it is the quality of deprivation that gives rise to the special hunger of black emergence. Harlem like many other American cities develops that hunger but rarely satisfies it. In that way Harlem like every other ghetto is a good place to be from, but only if you end up somewhere better.

I've been wearing the metaphorical khakis and loafers for a decade now. It has only been my life as Daddyman that has required me to take money as seriously as I do. In certain moments, especially when hanging with my dog K, I kick myself for not kicking my financial game up a notch when I was still a young player. But at the time, I wanted to be an coder, an artist, and a politico. BAP/Boho days are fondly remembered and those ambitions were mostly satisfied but new priorities emerged and I had to leave all that challenge behind. I headed to the juicy suburbs of Atlanta, the acknowledge First World Black Mecca of my generation, and I never looked back.

I have a neighborhood where people push strollers, jog at night and can order Thai food for delivery. The Bruce Lee movies are all on DVD at a number of local establishments. As I have expected it to, it has made life pleasant and removed the challenges of ghetto life, and the flavor of ghetto personalities from my daily routine. I have no special desire to relive my past, or immerse myself for the sake of keeping it real or remembering where I came from. I'm not where I am by accident, but as an expression of what I want. I am where I need to be.

As I watched Chapelle's Show last night on the tele, it was cool to see where I might be if I was single and kept to the old dreams, managing my ambition from the 'hood, with regular forays into the underworld. I can't say with any precision that's where Dave goes, but I know he knows what I would know if I hung more with the homefolks. It takes me a minute to distinguish Lil Kim from Faith whatshername. But on the passing of ODB, the man who inherited king fool from Coolio in my book, I note the passing of a section of my old flavor.

Pour a drink for what once was but is no more except in vivid memory.

A Full Day

So I went to my Capoeira class today, and now I am sore. That's a good thing.

I cannot begin to tell you the names of the moves that I was doing. That's because I have no idea how they are spelled, I just know how they hurt. There's a lot of thigh burn involved in Capoeira. But I'm lucky that I have some real practitioners here. They show little tolerance for the jazz-hiphop form that I wasted time in a dozen years ago. Which is a good thing, because even though I knew there was more than a personality conflict going on between myself and the dreadlocked, baggy pants women (excuse me, wimmin) in the Peoples Republic of Cambridge, I was feeling a bit bad about dropping out of that 'class'. It was clearly a vehicle for the shirtless instructor to get over. It takes an Alpha Male to know one. I got off on a bad vibe with everybody in that loft studio.

Today was different. I learned four moves and combo'd them together. Unfortunately this class goes for 90 minutes, and I should have had some breakfast. I worked myself to the lactose limit several times, but did a pretty good Au.

Then I headed out to see my boy for some structural advice. He hooked me up with a new attorney and CPA so that I can prepare for the international. This stuff gets complicated quickly. In the meantime he showed me around the shop he's the CFO for. Now I know what an excimer laser looks like on the inside.

It appears that I am going to have a tangle of corporations and limited partnerships in order to flow the bucks from one continent to another without getting sued. I rue the day I may have to face some asshole in court. People have no idea how ugly this can get in real life. My boy explained briefly about the fortune he lost at the hands of an overseas con-man. One trick to beware of is that one guy can be running a con on multiple of your associates at once. There's no safety in numbers. But from where I stood drawing arrows and circles on my notepad, the future looks bright.

As the day came to a close and the light that usually reflects on my TV screen has disappeared over the horizon, I sat down to a little bit of Halo. I'm totally accustomed to the new feel and am now tweaking skills. I've learned the maps for the most part, although Lockout always gives me vertigo. I'm developing a style and a combination of tactics. Then I finally landed the bonanza - a full 8 on 8 fracas at Colossus - Team Slayer to 250. The full dynamics of the game emerged in this one, because when you play for that long, you have to communicate a strategy for the game. Our side did, and we dominated. It was a superb battle that all of us will surely remember and try to replicate - like the first game of Cat & Mouse on PGR2- I think the high score Team Slayer match will live on. BTW, Juggernaut is slammin' too.

The kids baked oatmeal cookies and watched James & the Giant Peach. I burned a couple logs in the fire and we had Smores. My boy won a whiteboard in a pin the nose on Voldemort at his schoolmate's birthday party. I have survived another day without a new spyware infection.

It has been a good day, but boy do my legs hurt. I'm walking around like Fred Sanford.

No Blacks in NZ

Here's an interesting article.

The recent pop culture fixation on large bottoms has been around since at least 1992, when rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot scored a hit with "Baby Got Back."

But some credit the recent booty shakin� efforts of shapely stars Jennifer Lopez and Beyonce for the fresh emphasis on bigger and rounder posteriors, coupled with the fashion explosion of the Brazilian-style low-rise jeans.

Tsk. Those people just don't know. We raise 'em like that. They must think it's collagen injections.

The Long Now

I am painfully aware that since the middle of August ore thereabouts, the quality of my writing at this site has deteriorated. I in the middle of one of those transitory moments in which I am rather fed up with my ability to look beyond my shortcomings. I have these moments because for most of my life I have arrogantly and studiously ignored most of the people who brought them to mind, and so I have become relatively immune to criticism. It's a flaw, I admit it.

It would have to be someone like Stephenson who brings this to mind, although it's just as often a Shakespeare play on DVD or an article by Michael Pollan. I get mad at myself for not being able or willing to concentrate on anything of substance as I define substance.

So I am in a long now, an interminable present, and endless fixation on the topical. In other words I'm not looking deeply at anything. In some ways I want to counter this with my series on abortion, a worthwhile subject if there ever was one, but I'm lacking in the energy and I can't get these comments to work well enough to generate a proper Socratic dialog. What's the last book I read? I haven't finished one all year, I think. Instead, I've been monkeying around with Visual Basic. Bleaugh!

Maybe I can become sarcastic. That's always good for the comic.

A Literary Beowulf Cluster

But people on the Beowulf side may never have taken a writing class in their life. They just tend to lunge at whatever looks interesting to them, write whatever they please, and let the chips fall where they may. So we may seem not merely arrogant, but completely unhinged.
-- Neal Stephenson

I have just come to understand something with a clarity heretofore impossible, clouded as it has been with feelings. Thanks Neal. I'm a Beowulf writer, as are most of us bloggers.

Real World

What's Harder To Get?

Drudge and Unfogged are talking about a cat named Michael Scheuer, newly ex-CIA who is saying that OBL now has some sort of religious permission to use a nuke against the USA.

Now as much as I appreciate ex-CIA cats who lash out, which is to say a considerable amount, my first reaction is to say whatever to that. OBL is our enemy, and if we are at war with him, I'm not sure what purpose it serves to consider that he has permission. This would always be assumed anyway, wouldn't it?

What is more interesting and pressing is whether or not he has the goods. We'll keep an eye open on Scheuer.

Halo 2 Rules, Changes the Rules

Halo grossed $125 million in its opening 3 days. Bigger than Spiderman2.

Halo 2 sold through 2.4 million units in its first 24 hours of North American release, Microsoft announced today. That adds up to $125 million in gross receipts, giving Bungie's latest Xbox project a place in the record books for both games and the entertainment industry at large.

To pull a couple of examples from the movie business, the all-time record for a movie's opening weekend belongs to Spider-Man 2, which grossed almost $115 million. Pixar's The Incredibles, launched this past weekend, drew a $70 million gross in its first three days. Shrek 2 owns the record for the highest single-day gross, drawing $44 million on May 22, 2004.

That's what I've been doing all day.

The End of My Blackness - Part 7

As of more or less now I am no longer a Black Republican. I'm just a Republican.

The reason is actually pretty simple. I am what I am, and I'm tired and bored of the novelty. Jumping up and down and saying I'm a black X is fun and interesting for a while, but it really is rather presumptuous. Not that I mind being prosumptuous or even provocative. It's just that in order to do so, you have to make a bunch of assumptions about people who are not like you or who you assume are like you. That's annoying and gauche. So I'm not going to do it any longer.

I'll still be reppin for the Old School, but depending on how soon I move to Beijing, that may become tired too. Hard to say at this moment.

Now this in no way affects any of the commitments I have to KIR, The Bear Flag League, VisionCircle, The Conservative Brotherhood or the California Republican Party itself. I'm simply excusing myself from the "I'm a Black Republican, what are you?" game.

Does that make sense?

Why I'm Not A Democrat

Perusing JPB's site can be a very cool experience. Check this out from 'T'.

According to The New York Times, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, reflecting on her party's recent losses in the presidential, Senate and House elections, asked: "How did a party that is filled with people with values -- and I am a person with values -- get tagged as the party without values?"

As one who was raised a Democrat and became a Republican only 10 years ago, I would like to answer Gov. Napolitano's question as honestly as she posed it.

Gov. Napolitano, your party does indeed have very many people with values in it. But the Democratic Party is no more representative of the average Democrat's values than the National Council of Churches is of the average Protestant's values. Both are far to the left of their membership.

Here is the Democratic Party as most Americans, including this John F. Kennedy liberal -- a New York City born and raised, Jewish, Ivy League-educated intellectual who lives in Los Angeles -- see it.

To most Americans, Michael Moore is a Marxist who has utter contempt for most of his fellow Americans, who goes abroad and tells huge audiences how stupid and venal his country is, and in his dishonest propaganda film, portrays the American military as callous buffoons. Yet, this radical was given the most honored seat at the Democratic Party convention in Boston, next to former President Jimmy Carter.

To most Americans, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are race-baiting demagogues. Yet they are heroes to the Democratic Party. Most Americans do not see their country as the bigoted and racist nation regularly depicted by both black and white Democratic leaders.

Another Confession

This time from Barlow, whose diatribes, I've recently missed. I guess it's safe to go back out into the blogosphere again.

I have a terrible admission to make. I've been so fanatically opposed to this administration that I have taken dark satisfaction in their failures, even though they were American failures as well. I welcomed growing indications that the situation in Iraq was deteriorating into a sump-hole of back-alley insurgency. Good economic news was bad economic news as far as I was concerned, and vice versa. I was tickled to death with Al Qaqaa and its terrorist-purloined WMDs, and not just because the name was so great. Surely all these bad tidings would eventually add up to an indictment that would convict Bush in the eyes of the American people and they would rouse themselves from Fox-hypnosis and 'possum sleep and vote for change.

But it didn't turn out that way. While I still believe that half of America is hallucinating on hot religion and bad TV, I can't say I have been any too sane, having been delivered into a condition where I took comfort in the successes of our enemies and frowned at news of economic recovery. Despite my own financial anxieties, and those of all around me, I have been so zealous that my own well-being was secondary in importance to the political damage bad times might do the Bush administration. Now that's hallucination. And I'm sorry.

I wonder if I've been an unusually hard-blowing blowhard. I don't think so...

Unelectable Dot Com

Go and read the joke just in case you forget all the things people were saying while they're still on the net. Anybody want to take this to the geeky nth degree? There has got to be several gigabytes of wishful thinking and propaganda that still exists on the net.

Robbery

A Woman's Value, A Woman's Duty

In my continuing moral exploration of the issues surrounding abortion, my first step was to suggest in the political realm that there is much wiggle room. I think it is a radical position to want to reverse Roe and that both sides could be satisfied with a healthy dose of government regulation.

At this point I'd like to look at the sense I have of the relative value of a fertilized egg and fetus vs the woman who bears it. My theory is that the value of a woman's life, and that the value of the eggs, fertilized eggs, fetuses and infants varies society by society, but that no matter what the society the woman is at the top of that chain. That being the case, what is the duty of a woman, or of society to these items which are putatively subordinate to her? At what point should that value be inverted?

The argument that struck me was this:
If the life of an infant were equal to the life of the mother, then our institution of marriage would not exist. That is because we would be perfectly willing to have women die during childbirth. In addition to the old adage, an eye for an eye, we'd say 'a child for a mother' and call it even.

But there is no society in the history of mankind that has subordinated the life of a woman to her progeny. We might find some places where kings had harems and that a woman bearing a child of noble blood would be killed, but I hardly think that's what we're aiming for today. It's certainly not marriage and family as we know it or want it.

What we must face is the fact that human life is valued relatively in our society and in the world, and if duty to life is based on the value of lifem then a woman's duty to herself is greater than that owed to her unborn.

I think that quickly reverses once a child is born, but not before. "Kill me, but leave my fetus alone", doesn't quite cut it.

Deathbed

Halo 2: First Look

I didn't think I'd be writing this early, but it turns out that I have a break at work. Yes, I'm at work.

I picked up my copy last night at EB Games in Torrance. I was 26th in a line of about 75. The headlines say that MS has already done 100 million worth of business. I have no doubts. I was going to wait actually, but last evening I saw my MS communicator show that a couple of my buddies were already online playing. I couldn't stand that kind of peer pressure. I felt midnight pass through the states like New Years Day.

I got back to the crib at 12:28am and popped the disk in calmly. I hate shrinkwrap like the next guy, but I wasn't going to do something stupid with my big knife. So I patiently created my profile, inverted my look and logged onto Live. As I expected, there were already people I knew online playing including eedad, my fearless clan leader. I decided to go the long way and start a new campaign offline.

The trailers pick up the story reasonably well. The head Covy is getting branded for goofing the Halo mission and the Master Chief is getting a medal for his participation in the same. We're in orbit. I basically played a couple deathmatches and CTF online for about half an hour last night and another 90 minutes or so to complete the first chapter last night and this morning.

The gameplay seems smoother and faster. I've been playing Black Arrow for the past few weeks and I can tell that my aim is a lot better than it has been. At Medium, the grunts and other aliens come and drop at a predictable pace. The opening is not quite as heartthumping as the first Halo but then again, I'm hardly the noob I was. I dual-weilded all the indoor battles and it's brilliant. With a couple of plasma rifles, the MC is about as deadly as any FPS character ever. It rather reminded me of Berserk mode in 'Brute Force', except that the two rifles fire independently. So you can go lefty or righty or both. It will take me a while to get used to the different combinations of dual-weilding, but it's really a great dimension to gameplay.

The headsup is disoriently different at first. It took me a long time to get used to looking for life bars in the bottom left instead of the top right. Also, in multiplayer I had voices coming out of the TV and the communicator. Furthermore you can really jump high in the new game. As I get used to these fundamental changes, Halo 2 should soon feel natural.

The AI is definitely improved. You can immediately see that when you get to do a little Warthogging. Let a Marine drive and ride shotgun. He'll drive you to the right places and with the gunner, get the job done even if you kick back and relax. I noticed a bit of a glitch in firing if the driver does a quick 180 - plasma goes in weird directions, and your range isn't that good, but shotty is good.

Recharging is quick. Not only your shields for the battle armor suit but for the big gun on the Scorpion. Spend all your time fighting and no time looking for health packs. Brilliant again.

China Tech: First Look

CTN are the first initials I know. The first is for ChinaTechNews and the second for ChinaTravelNow. These two seem to be fairly decent sites that I'll be scoping out.

On Kudlow & Cramer the other day, they had a cat on who was a securities analyst who said the big stock play is of a company that sounded like 'Outlook'. Cramer was saying that it might be the next 'Shanda'. So I checked out what Shanda was, and it turned out to be the number one gaming developer over there. Fascinating. That's going to be part of my task when I get there.

Following Shanda takes one to a number of interesting places. The first place I found was here at Pacific Epoch. I expect that to be a regular site for news in the sector. Speaking of which, DigitalChina is also one of the 800 pound gorillas to be paid mind.

Now I need to figure out what decoupling the Yuan means.

Eleven Nine

Yes I stood outside at midnight like a kid. Yes Halo2 is better than the first in just about every way. It's faster. The weapons are cooler, the environments seem larger.

And yes I *am* going to work today.

The Vast Greatness of Gaming

I missed an opportunity to dignify my rantings through appeals to authority the other night. I was too busy drinking margaritas and consuming juicy steak with my wife and friends. So instead of being at Beckman Auditorium hearing:

Techno-cultural historian Steven Johnson is a contributing editor for Wired and Discovery magazines, and is the cofounder and editor-in-chief of FEED, the revolutionary Internet magazine that managed to blend technology, science, and culture. He is also the celebrated author of the award-winning books Interface Culture; Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software; and, most recently, Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life.

I was just telling that story of Mandume, the Seville, and Jersey Highway Patrol again.

Be that as it may, I happen to think that this cat Johnson is onto something once again. I really dug his explanation of emergent behavior. And I was pretty thrilled to hear him talk about what he has learned over the past few years about thought centers in the brain. Notably that you're supposed to use only 10% of your brain at a time. Why? Because the brain is a collection of specialized tools that have evolved to do different kinds of thinking. Basically take your left-brain / right-brain theory and break it down a couple dozen times and this is where cognitive theory is getting us. So the MRI of a guy solving crossword puzzles is different than the MRI of the same guy playing piano. Different mental task, different part of the brain.

As a reader of Oliver Sacks from way back in the day, such matters have always been of deep interest to me, and I'm definitely going to change the way I start thinking about how my kids brains are developing. Speaking of which, he said that we now know with a great deal more certainty that emotional states are deeply related to thoughts. A happy person remembers happy times. A sad person remembers sad times. Until you're happy, you forget your self-esteem and all the good things you did when you were you. Stuff like that. Anyway, that's just another big incentive to remind me not to make the kids cry when I correct their homework.

But Johnson's newest book is of a revolutionary piece. 'Everything Bad is Good For You' is due out this spring. He argues that television, movies and videogames are not the mind-rot they once were. In fact that they stimulate the mind in ways previously never considered. There are all kinds of tangents one can take with this, but it's something I understand. I long ago decided that it would be better for my kids play videogames than to watch television because of their interactivity. I expect Johnson to discover a nice set of concepts of mind-jigger that vids give us.

A simple example in obviousness might be the comparison between 'I Love Lucy' and 'The Wire'. In the old days, the plot basically focused on one caper with a small set of characters that was resolved in 30 minutes. A show like 'The Wire' mixes multiple clans of characters with clashing interests going in several directions at once. Watching shows like 'Gunsmoke' only required one glance to get in on the fun, but if you tuned to an episode of '24' in the middle of the season, there's no way your are going to be able to make sense of its complexity.

Online videogames, especially what MMORPGs are morphing to, expand on this even further because behind each character is another human being, not a screenwriter. They are not simply games, they're economies. This is not your father's idiot box.

Rafe Gets Real

Rafe Coburn has been an annoying git for several months. He got so political that I forgot that I liked him. It's not that I mind people being political, it's that I mind intelligent people that I respect being so totally wrong that they sound brainwashed.

I haven't read him in a while but I think that he describes exactly why I didn't.

So in the process of dealing with last Tuesday, I came to an important realization, and it actually made me feel a lot better. It's pretty obvious, but I think a lot of people are having trouble getting there. I know I was. Here it is: I'm not responsible for getting Democrats elected. There are paid professionals who are in charge of that. They have to figure out which candidates can win. They have to come up with a message that will appeal to the majority in any electorate. They have to raise the money to run the ads and pay the campaign workers and buy the bumper stickers. None of that is my job.

More importantly, there's no reason for me to try to pretend to be something I'm not in order to help Democrats get elected. That means that when I'm talking to people, I don't have to moderate my views to make it seem like I'm more "reasonable" than I really am. Those of you who read this might be confused, because I don't really bother with moderation when I'm writing for this site. But believe me, when I talk to actual human beings face to face, I generally strike the pose that many liberals do, which is that I'm a moderate who agrees with them on most things and is still going to vote for a Democrat. I have no idea whether that persuades anyone to vote for the candidates I support, but it certainly isn't any fun for me. Going along to get along sucks.

I see him coming back to life in his final stages of acceptance. Too bad more people don't stop pretending to be great purveyors of logic and reasonableness. Good.

China

Adding this new category to my blog, I'm starting the journey towards a greater understanding of China and things Chinese. I've started (sorta) by getting into an argument about the war in Iraq with a cat who runs a site called PekingDuck.org, but there's a lot more to learn. A lifetime to be sure...

So my first stop is to check out LonelyPlanet.com and see what they have to say there. Since I'm a blogger, and I understand that China has only one ISP, it may be difficult to blog from Beijing. We'll see.

Finished Fable in Fifteen

Fable is nowhere near as big as Knights of the Old Republic. Its story is not as complex, its scope is smaller. But I'm ready to play it again from start to finish, and that's something I'd never say about an RPG of this sort.

I think that the authors of Fable have come up with a very happy medium, and that is because of the fighting system. I spent most of my time in Fable battling, sometimes with (dumb AI) allies but mostly singlehandly, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I cannot think of any other fighting game I've ever played that allows such a wide arsenal of offensive and defensive weapons to be weilded in real time. The targeting is nice but not too easy, the spell gradations are very cool and the variety of enemies is really nice.

While it's true that the boss battles leave quite a bit to be desired as boss battles go, I don't particularly like boss battles, and so it suited me just fine. It took me three days to beat Bastila in KOTOR and I was really about to give up completely. When it came to fighting the last boss, I just said forget it. It wasn't worth a one minute cut scene after having played the game for weeks. But I think the folks at Lionhead understand that even in a great fighting game, it's a lot more fun to hack and slash legions of enemies than to conquer big monsters.

I went pretty much straight for legendary good-guy status and spent almost no time interacting with anyone who wasn't directly involved in my quests. I think part of that has to do with the fact that it's far easier to select and emply use a variety of weapons than it is to use the variety of expressions. I am at a loss to explain why it was so easy to map the skills onto my right thumb but the left d-pad was a monstrosity of cascading menus. If I wanted to laugh or belch in someone's face, they will have walked halfway across town before I could engage them, but in a second, I could slow time, zoom through them, summon a creature, make myself berserk and triple club them with a flame augmented obsidian greathammer. Then again, I can belch at people in real life.

I cannot describe how delicious it is to have this array of weapons and spells at your disposal. But playing them has left several other dimensions that the game has completely unexplored. I'm going to explore them while I patiently wait for Amazon to deliver Halo2 to my doorstep.

Finally, A Real Protester

From Deutche Welle:

A train carrying "Castors" of nuclear waste from France to Germany ran over a protestor who had chained himself to the tracks, severing both of his legs. He died of his injuries a short while later, police reported.

A 23-year old environmental activist paid the ultimate price for his convictions on Sunday. Despite a large security operation, the young man managed to chain himself to the railway tracks near Avricourt, in protest of the latest transport of nuclear waste from a French reprocessing plant in La Hague to a storage facility in Gorleben, Germany.

A spokeswoman for France's SNCF rail operator said the train's driver noticed a group of people sitting on the tracks, and pulled the emergency brake. "One of the people remained sitting, and his legs were cut off and he has died," the spokeswoman said.

Falluja: Commandos Take Main Hospital

So the first thing we have done is to capture the main hospital in Falluja and blocked a major escape route. Rebels will not be able to use the main hospital to treat their wounded or launch attacks against the coalition forces.

Units: First Marine Expeditionary Force

U.S. intelligence estimates there are about 3,000 insurgents dug in behind defenses and booby traps in Fallujah, a city of about 300,000 which has become a symbol throughout the Islamic world of Iraqi resistance to the U.S.-led occupation.

Whose Enlightenment?

I would like to invite my liberal and atheist pals not to spit, because the wind isn't blowing the way you think it is.

I want to think of a concise way of saying it. I like this confession:

Karl Rove kicked our ass. There is no other way to slice it. We got an old-fashion whupping and it hurts. I, and a whole lot of people like me, just found out that we are seriously out of synch with our country. America, my beloved America come what may, is a conservative nation. I am anything but conservative. I am in the minority. The other guys are in the majority. They won. We lost. I lost. It's their country to run as they will. That's the law and it's the America way. I will honor it. I do not have to like it. Goddamn all Ghost-worshippers!

but I dig a touch deeper and I get this:

The nation's racial heterogeneity also partly explains its conservatism. U.S. heterogeneity sharply contrasts with the much greater homogeneity in Canada, Britain and continental Europe. People are much less likely to support income redistribution to people who are members of different racial or ethnic groups. Ethnic divisions make it easier for the enemies of welfare to vilify the poor, by making them seem like parasites who could be rich but prefer to live on the public dollar. The pro-redistribution populists were defeated in the South in the 1890s by politicians who stressed that populism would help blacks (which was true) and that blacks were dangerous criminals (which was not.) The enemies of Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society also employed racial messages that conveyed the idea that welfare recipients were dangerous outsiders who should not be helped. The sharp racial division that runs through American society makes it possible to castigate poor people in a way that would be impossible in a homogeneous nation like Sweden, where the poor look the same as everyone else.

Although I think this is a good argument, I want to disagree. Why? Primarily because I think America's integrative xenophobia strikes a very good balance. We've created the Hispanics and we've created Diversity out of necessity, but it is a lesson we've learned well. The alternative to this is the liberal and Christian conciet of Enlightenment.

Simply stated, if we are to defend pluralism and democratically open societies, we cannot do so while spitting on Christians in our conservative nation. Because it invites Christians to take ownership of the Enlightenment values, which are certainly a Christian legacy, but not entirely owned by Christians. We simply don't know enought Turks to say otherwise in our popular culture.

So if atheists and liberals punt American democracy to Christians and religious conservatives, then those two groups will certainly take as much credit for it as possible and liberals and atheists will have marginalized themselves further into their own private Idahos.

Yes we are a conservative nation but if you cannot respect the proper reasons why without glib cynicism, you doom yourself to oblivion marginalizing both yourselves and the reasonable citizens you have no idea existed in harmony with the devil you think you know.

Kerryism Doesn't Exist

The word from one of the managing editors from Newsweek was that inside the Kerry Campaign was absolute chaos - that Bob Shrum had the Kerry message bouncing from pillar to post. It showed.

I've got the November 4th episode of Charlie Rose still on the DVR and I wish that I could broadcast it to all my readers. The clearest evidence of pure vacuum is the meaninglessness of 'Kerryism'. What is it, and which Democrats will need to be responsible to it come 2008? It's nothing and Democrats can do whatever they want next time around. They are starting from below ground zero.

Clinton was the biggest thing to hit the Democrats in a generation, but he's gone and there's nothing new on the horizon. He couldn't help Gore; he couldn't help Kerry. Daschle is dead.

The editors on Charlie Rose said that Kerry was trying to appease the center, the moderate left and the far left. Where Kerry himself was a deficit hawk, he could never make the case. All that ever came of that idea was Pat Buchanan's dissent. Kerry couldn't even lead his campaign better than Pat Buchanan shouting from the sidelines as regards Bush's profligacy. Kerry was advised to come out against gay marriage. He's not for it, but he couldn't say it. He failed the global test within his own party, and so did nothing. Captures him perfectly.

Kerry has left his party squirming. It is both spaghetti and a void writhing in pain and disbelief. The first thing they're going to have to admit was that Kerry was a total failure, and what is it ... MoveOn. I'm still waiting for a candidate for president who wears a beard. Here's your chance, Dems.

Meanwhile, I'll continue the Old School mission and work on the pregnant opportunities to bring the Republicans around to heel. It's difficult to tell whether we'll have better luck with Giuliani or McCain. But my eye is on Colin Powell, again.

Us

Selma and Falluja

Everybody with half a wit knows that the coalition forces will produce a military victory in Falluja. From TPD:

We're going to "win" in Fallujah, at least in the military sense. We'll most likely raze it to the ground. But can we ultimately triumph over all this animosity, from within and outside of Iraq? After all, our winning formula from the very beginning was "hearts and minds."

I would like to remind people that some hearts and minds are not worth winning.

It is my understanding that Samarra and Falluja represent the main cities in the two provinces that stand against Alawi in Iraq. Everybody else can't wait to vote and prove that they can cobble together a functional government with real power sharing. In the meantime, Falluja simmers with militant resentment. And while most opponents to Bush have had a full election season to ignore all kinds of realities, sooner or later they are going to have to recognize that when the other 18 or so provinces vote, there is going to be a greater mandate in Iraq than there is here in America - and once and for all they are going to have to admit that Bush did in fact bring Democracy to Iraq. As Agent Smith says, it is inevitable.

But there remains a particularly annoying fascination with the outlayers, and it is at this point that I as an African American suggest how to look at Falluja. Look at Falluja as the heart of the Confederacy. Look at Al Sadr like the head of the KKK. And look at the international coalition in Iraq as you looked at all of the nations in the world who expressed concern at America's old Negro Problem.

Clearly the severity of the oppression and the militance of the resistance in Iraq is much greater than ours was. But if you asked blackfolks in 50s Selma Alabama if they would mind thousands of soldiers rumbling through with tanks to crush the Klan, I think you know the answer. There is nothing of value worth preserving in the ideology of the anti-coalition militant rebellion in Iraq. It is intransigent and serves only to promote chaos, and Americans are wrong to suggest that simply because they are Iraqis, they deserve more consideration than Alawi is giving them. There is no case for the rebellion that stands any reasonable test, indeed they stand against the necessary progress for Iraq.

Moreover, they have produced no equivalent to MLK. Instead they have consigned civilians to thuggery and cosigned the terrorist kidnappings and executions of various outlaws. For these reasons alone they should and will be crushed.

Good riddance.

Cobb.org

I have procured the Cobb.org top level domain, and over the next few weeks, transfer this puppy over. I simply don't have the time nor the inclination to do all this crap myself, so I'll be hiring out the task. If you can point to a decent looking site you've done and want the business, drop me an email ([email protected]). Otherwise I'm going to bite the bullet and call Sekimori.

In the new world of Cobb.org the comments will work and world hunger will end as will global warming. We'll also rid Minnesota of mosquitos and put John Kennedy back in the White House. Stay tuned, and thanks for your perserverance.

Private Idaho

I've been doing a modicum of thinking about the permanence of the Alternative scene in America and what it says about zero-sum social progress. Today in the aftermath of the re-election of GWBush there's a whole different twist.

It is surprising to me how the spin of the losers has taken over. They have characterized the average Bush voter as an evangelical hick with no sense of intellectual vigor. I get the feeling that these people were more hurt by November Second than by September Eleventh. Here's an excerpt from somebody now forced to retreat back into his own private Idaho:

Who ARE those 53%? What happened to MY America--the America that would
see through such a vapid fool to the truly dangerous handlers behind him,
and cast them all out like demons; the America that had a respect for a
freer press in 1972-4, and thus brought down a far less corrupt and stupid
President, before we became a one-channel state; the America that would
see the "Patriot Act" for the Fascist framework it is, and tear it down;
the America that had the respect and goodwill of most of the world, even
past September 11th; the America that preached tolerance (we can argue
whether it ever PRACTICED it to the fullest extent possible, or even
3/5ths of the way) and was, just a few years ago, beginning to see gay and
lesbian rights as closer to "mainstream"; the America with a Supreme Court
that ratified women's control of their bodies; the America that thought
Senator Roman Hruska was a little addled and eccentric when he proposed,
in support of the truly mediocre Nixon Supreme Court nominee J. Harold
Carswell, that "mediocre people need representation, too"; the America
that had black leaders like Martin and Malcolm and Stokely and Huey,
rather than Chief Justice Clarence Thomas, and Prime Minister Condoleeza
Rice, and Media Czar Michael Powell..

It goes on and on. You get the drift.

It boils down to a single fallacious phrase 'my America'. Your America, anybody's America is just a tiny corner of it. It's not yours until you own some of it and control some of it, and for most of us that's a house, maybe with a front yard. This is the ownership society, and if you ain't owning, you're renting. You live in a rented blue house, not because the landlord agrees with you, but because he knows your type is attracted to blue. But he can paint it red, you can't. The smart landlord keeps the house blue, the smart tenant understands and respects this.

"Rights are the gifts of the strong." This is a phrase we need to keep in mind because today's strong Americans are committed to it. But it's their committment that we should honor, not the abstract principle. The man who is cursed for doing good may decide to take a holiday. But that's what a lot of folks are doing today.

I am recognizing the pain that people must feel in recognizing that they are not as connected as their love of songs like 'We Are The World' suggests. This is a contradiction. You cannot be 'alternative' and zero-sum at the same time.

The Fall of Falluja

Alawi has called for a hard press on the militias holed up in Falluja. It's going to be ugly.

From what I've heard of the Iraqi people, they have been exceptionally responsive to the kind of iron fists they grew up with. With Alawi calling the shots and Iraqi army in joint ops, the citizens seem to be much more prepared for the ugliness of battle. Still, it must be with a heavy heart that Alawi sends in the marines.

One of the things I recall from the news over the months is that very few people in Iraq know how to read maps, and very few of the houses in the various towns and cities have anything resembling what we call addresses. So even when we have infiltrated militias with informants, it's not possible to call a mortar strike. Such precision does not exist among the villagers. So it will be inevitable that ordinary people will be mowed down, accidently.

Falluja will not be cleansed, it will be thrashed. And it has come to this. I haven't made a secret that I was opposed to the first war on Iraq - in fact, I still have a 'No Blood For Oil' sign in my closet. At the time, I was swayed by the notion that American police and soldiers would not perform well, and might ultimately balk at the politics that drove them to fight. I'm certain I used the words 'the US military has been turned into a mercenary army for the sake of an undemocratic regime' or some such notion to announce my questions about the worthiness of Kuwait as an ally. Today, I am much less likely to believe that either soldiers or cops have the luxury of second-guessing the politics that drive the rules of their engagements. They are middle class people doing their jobs, just like the rest of us. We all know the politics suck - all politics not under your direct control suck. And so like it or not, American soldiers at the behest of Alawi will go hard and hot into Falluja and start wrecking things. Real soldiering.

I though to myself what would I do in such a situation. I certainly wouldn't want to leave my hometown simply because some asshat militia is holed up maybe 3 miles away in a part of town I don't frequent. But a militia on the run might be anywhere. I'm a red man in a blue state, a black family surrounded by non-blacks. There might be a Baptist next door to me. I don't know. Yes I've been to a Baptist Church, but I'm not one of them. Really. Well, I know my wife is a Baptist but she's not one of the bad ones. Really. Could I keep the occupying soliders out of my neighborhood? Could I keep the militamen out of my neighborhood? No. If my city were declared a target what could I do?

I could leave. I'd bet most Fallujans cannot. I'd bet they'd better try. There has been plenty water under the bridge where bodies were burned. Falluja knows its reputation. Falluja knows what's coming. The city will fall to the troops at Alawi's request and it's going to be ugly. But we know that.

What Else?

Incredible

Pixar has done it again.

I think we have seen the future of family entertainment. Pixar has created characters that are better people than people. Clearly this movie is going to make half a zillion bucks over its lifetime. There is no way you could get any teenaged girl to remain a teenaged girl if she were to play that role in a live action 'Incredibles'. There would be no end to the celebrity deathtraps that would spontaneously generate around humans saddled with the stardom such a film creates.

I was just thinking this morning how great a show is 'The Fairly Oddparents'. It's great just be being solid family entertainment without the odious burden of child stars. My God, who could suffer another Hillary Duff, Raven Symone, Mary Kate & Ashley or any of the rest of the twisted, denatured suburban avatars, who grow up and try to do music videos.

In 20 years, people will still smoke. But we can hope that there will be no child actors left. Pixar has showed us how, with style, morals and brilliance.

Go and see it before your kids get ridiculed on the playground for not.

Electable

Abortion

My job hasn't changed this week. Nothing has changed this week except that we have proven that America finds GWBush more or less acceptable as President, and that Democrats have proved themselves incapable of convincing anyone but themselves of their wisdom.

I'm a little piqued at the backbiting, so I've decided to say the 'A' word. Somehow, folks have decided that the next thing that the great boogeyman is going to do is rip Roe v Wade to shreds, and that he's just wringing his hands and twisting his moustache with sniggering delight. Why? Because George W. Bush is a right-wing religious fanatic in the hands of the evangelical lunatics who want to turn America into a Christian Republic - sorta like an Islamic Republic except with chicken fried steak.

The latest blather into this fracas, aside from Teri Gross who is dignifying the paranoia, is the rumor being circulated that Senator Arlen Spector has warned President Bush against nominating a pro-life judge. Somehow it always comes down to abortion.

Not that I care, but let's try to take this matter seriously and find out exactly why abortions themselves are so important and how much people are actually willing to do to change things. My take on it is this. There's not going to be any significant motion on this issue. The only people who are fired up about it are marginal to the political process and most of us are shouting at shadows. I suspect that this will be as controversial as gay marriage, but that's never stopped me before.

I think America could actually survive a great number of restrictions on abortion and may have to, but that the government will always be too slow. I also think that privacy advocates will win in the end and that Americans will reserve the right to keep sex private, whether or not that actually makes sense. Finally I expect that my thinking, which probably seems blurry at the moment, will get sharp enough to become arrogant.

So the first piece of evidence that I want to throw into the stew is that of Mifepristone. Sound familiar? How about if I call it RU 486? How about if I call it the Abortion Pill? Of course there was a huge controversy about this pill in the pre-9/11 era. But it was approved by the FDA and apparently, you can get it if you need it. You don't have a right to it, it is a method.

I contend that regulating the methods of abortion are a different matter than restricting the right to abortion. In general, I believe that human beings have the right to make life and death decisions - despite the fact that many of us punt to the state. I would argue that by the same authority that adults have to choose whom they sex, and have authority over their progeny, they have authority to determine the reasons - the logic and the yes and no of it. Yes I want a child and I get authority over that. No I don't want a child and I get authority over that.

But just like people have a right to drive cars down hills, they forfeit some of that if they don't have brakes. A pregnancy is like a car rolling down a hill, the further it goes the harder it is to stop. The question is where on that hill do we draw the line over which the state's interest in avoiding ugly crashes supercede that of the (co)-driver's interest in personal control.

Today I'll say birth. As soon as you are born, you become a citizen, not before.

The Blind Planet

Every once in a while I have those kinds of dreams that are so compelling that when I wake up in the middle of the night and go back to sleep, I dream it again in continuity. Last night was such a night.

In this particular dream, I and another astronaut had come upon in a large plain surrounded by dark mountains a large area enclosed by a very secure looking chain link fence. Actually there were two sets of two fences, each with razor wire on top and a dog track in the middle of the pairs. The groud was a dull rusty reddish brown and we could see strange footprints on the arena sized infield.

We scaled the fences with no problem. The place was lit with banks of lights not unlike a football stadium, but the size of the enclosure was more like 100 yards wide and a mile long. We walked around the area trying to figure out what kinds of creatures were kept in here by the footprints, especially the deep ones which were perfectly circular, an inch deep into the hard dusty ground and looked like they were made by an elephant - a very large elephant.

It was dusk and getting darker and soon we couldn't see anything beyond the stadium lights which seemed like they were getting dimmer by the moment. We took off our helmets after a brief atmosphere check. The air was silent and cold. The lights were clearly going out. Somebody, or something, knew we were here. I started walking the long way, my partner, Jones, crossed over to the other side.

A bright light caught the corner of my eye. Jones had turned up his suitlights to observe something on the ground in the growing dark. I could see him about 75 yards back over my left shoulder. As he did, the stadium lights went out completely, as if in response. Then it happened, I heard an ear-piercing shriek from the corner of the arena behind him. In the narrow beams of my suitlights, I ran toward him only to be intercepted by two kiwi-like creatures. They ran like ostriches but had skin like lizards that was a kind of marbled green pattern. They were about 5 feet tall with thick legs and a short neck. Their heads seemed much too small for their muscular bodies - and they ran fast making shrieking noises as they headed straight for my partner. They ran full speed into him sending him sprawling on his back. As he struggled in his spacesuit like an upended turtle, the creatures started shrieking a different call towards the other end of the arena.

Whatever made those large footprints was bounding this way in the darkness, following the alarms of the birds. My partner's lights pointed straight into the air making dusty reddish columns in the dust raised by the commotion. The birds kept calling and the thumping got louder. I turned up the intensity of my lights to see clearer and then the birds shutup and headed towards me. Uh oh. I ran towards the fence on my right and started to climb. I was high enough to escape getting bumped. They leaped up and tried to grab at me with their ducklike beaks. They had flat head and large eyes which looked to be 100% iris. I shone the light directly at them again, they blinked and started shrieking again. This time really loudly in a higher pitch.

The large creature, which I still couldn't see, must have stopped in its tracks and started heading towards the birds and I. The birds slammed their bodies into the fence effectively dropping me to the ground. I turned off my lights and ran along the fence towards the monster in complete darkness. The birds weren't particularly scary but I wanted to get behind whatever that big thing was before it knew what I was. With my lights off, the birds must have circled in confusion and continued their noise at the normal level. I'm sure I passed the big thing, but what was it?

RIP Yassir Arafat

I know, he's not dead yet, but he is the lamest of ducks.

All this mystery surrounding exactly what's wrong with this man stinks to the high heavens to me. As they say on CSI, poisoning is usually done by people close to the victim. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the culmination of a Mossad plot, or a Fatah or a Hamas..

But what the death of Arafat will most likely reveal is how much he, as the lightning rod of accusations of foot-dragging, was indeed the stumbling block of peace. His legacy will be an interesting lesson to us all, and it will not be complete until Palestine has a flag, borders and an embassy in London.

Arafat's fate seems emblematic of warlords and pseudo-leaders all over the world. Maybe he was one of a kind, but maybe he was ahead of his time - head of a people in the margins of world opinion, trying to become a nation against the odds. But I think history will judge him harshly and I think that Palestine is doomed to suffer the same fate as Albania. The unwanted millions will languish in a third world land - a country in name only. But what is Palestinian nationalism? How has it become so impossible to achieve?

I think it has become impossible because the militants are not defenders of land, property and the material possessions of the Palestinian people, but because they have been defenders of radical ideas. Their claims have been legitimated by persistence, but are essentially rooted in an insatiable oppositionalism to Israel. It's not enough for Palestinians to have and to hold, they have to hold forth and be heard. Arafat personifies the leader fighting forever for mindshare above all, how else do you turn down land and peace?

I have no special hopes for Israelis nor Palestinians. Their competing claims for Jerusalem will continue until somebody nukes the place. Arafat is gone. Let us see if those who succeed him will follow him.

Man Bites Dog

In the WSJ:

A 9-year-old African-American fourth-grader from inner-city Oakland is helping keep alive a dying Asian art form -- Chinese opera. A challenge to even native Chinese speakers, it weaves elements of mime, song and acrobatics.

Dreams of Durga

In less than a week, the adventures of Earth will continue. The Halo universe is taking shape in my imagination thanks to the ilovebees story.

I've known about the viral marketing site for quite some time, but I didn't pay much attention. But the 40 some odd audio clips make a fairly compelling story and humanizes a great deal of the backstory. I've decided to purchase the two Halo books by Nylund (who is probably a hack, but a good hack) to fill out my eventual immersion in all things Halo. For those who are not so gaga to decrypt the fun convolutions of the bee fans, there's Dana's Bee Blog which spells it out in more easily decipherable English.

The one thing that is clear about this new Halo stuff is that there's a lot of estrogen and progesterone in it, not just testosterone. What do you call feminine macho? Machaca? Well a lot of the bad guys get cut to machaca in the bee narrative, but I won't spoil the adventures of Janissary James, Kamal and the rest of the gang.

This is going to be great.

Over There

More About The Society

It's not the Quad A, AAAA but the AAAS. Society not Association. My bad.

MISSION
The African-American Alumni Society ("the Society") was established in 2000 with a core mission to assist in the advancement of Loyola High School of Los Angeles through the united efforts of its alumni as well as to foster the continued cordial relations of the Loyola alumni in the Amcan-American community. The Society seeks to recruit qualified Amcan-American prospective students for entrance into Loyola High School. The Society also seeks to support the development and advancement of African-American students of Loyola High in efforts to secure their successful matriculation.

The Society seeks to generate and maintain the active interest of all Loyola alumni in its regular business. The Society assists with the development of Loyola High School and the fulfillment of Loyola High School's mission, through fundraising and public relations efforts. The Society provides the African-American alumni with regular opportunities to assemble and maintain valued relationships through the promotion of alumni events and religious activities. The , Society acts in accord with the values of the Catholic, Christian and Jesuit nature of Loyola High School.

CURRENT INITIATIVES
Community, Outreach Tutoring Program:
Established in 2000, this initiative offers 8thgrade students from targeted Catholic and private schools the opportunity to hone their math, English and interviewing skills in order to gain admissions to the Catholic high schools of their choice. The program is offered free to the students through the generous' support of the Loyola community. To date, more than 900 students have participated in the program, including 50% of the Amcan-American students in this year's Freshman class.

Black History Month Outreach Program:
Established in 1999, this initiative offers Loyola alumni and underclassmen the opportunity to return to their respective elementary schools and give testimony to their individual experiences while a student at Loyola, and in their current profession. The goal of the program is to impress upon our young men and women the value of ~ a Catholic education, and of attending a premier Jesuit educational institution.

St. Peter Claver Scholarship:
Established in 1992, this scholarship offers need-based assistance to African-American students with exemplary conduct. The scholarship has been successfully endowed with $462,000 through the generosity of the Loyola community. To date more than 64 awards averaging $2,745 have been given to deserving Loyola underclassmen.

Welcome Back Reception:
This annual gathering of Loyola's African-American alumni, underclassmen and their families offers the opportunity of fellowship and discussion regarding the Loyola experience.


INITATIVES UNDER DEVELOPMENT

Mentor Network:
It is dearly recognized that a young man will transition into adulthood more effectively when shown the correct I?athfrom one who has walked it before. The objective of this important program is to pair underclassmen with Alumni in order to begin teaching them the opportunities and responsibilities that lay ahead in their development beyond the halls of Loyola. It is anticipated that the Mentor Network program will begin in the Spring of 2005.

African-American Alumni Society' Scholarship:
Administrative processes are almost complete in the establishment of this merit-based scholarship to support and recognize the accomplishments of African-American scholars at Loyola. Requests for endowment support will begin in January of 2005.

Thinking of Ways to Gloat, Not.

Aside from the fact that I am wearing all red today, I'm pretty much at the same level that I was yesterday. No nervousness, no excitement, just happy to be on the same vibe as 51% of America.

To tell the truth, I'm actually more excited to see Tom Daschle get the boot. That's worth gloating over. Other than that I'm curious to see what superlatives left partisans are hurling. I'd imagine that God's call center has a very long queue today.

Last night I had my spreadsheet and made my call at 9:15. It went the way I thought. I was surprised that Kerry refused to concede considering that Alaska too was on the Bush column, but we all knew that it came down to Ohio.

What interests me today is the amount of excuse-making and apathy people whose faith was broken yesterday we are going to have to suffer through. The election is going to 'prove' all kinds of consipiracy theories, and the wierd will just get weirder. Meanwhile, those of us with the political bug will find new things to talk about.

I don't have any reason to gloat really. I'm hoping that the percentages for Bush were higher in Cali than were expected. I'm fairly confident that the percentages of blacks for Bush were doubled - we'll see and hear spin soon enough.

We all had a moment, an overly long moment, to come together and squabble about stuff we generally understand and don't directly influence. In this moment, called election season, people get illogical in their logic - thinking everything they think matters and makes a difference. I got fed up with it a while back, and the final straw was Kerry (or was it Edwards) talking about how impressed he was that Cheney loved his daughter. We're all going to take our favorite symbols and suggest that these things we were so convinced we were right about distinguishes us from the fools who went the other way. That's just a continuation of the same delusion. I'm not going there.

I think the interview Thune gave this morning on NPR was just about right. We took advantage of the way the issues divided us to reach out to a few more people that we can agree with long enough for our election goals to be met. Now it's over, and we can get back to being normal people. We aren't really red and blue people, we just wear the colors for a few weeks, and then we go back to not particularly loving, hating or caring about other Americans we don't even know.

The process works. Congratulations America, you've shown yourself entirely capable of committing to non-violently turning over the most power in the world. That's always reassuring. Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. It will be nice to once again be able to make political commentary without all the exclamation points.

Ohio + New Mexico = 4 More Years

That's my call.

A Reward and a Promise

Slate gets Black and Republican in the same headline. Wow! But wait... it's a sideways attack.

It's probably true that the Republicans are not targeting heavily black precincts because they're heavily black; they are targeting them because they're heavily Democratic. But let's not be naive: They are also targeting black precincts because they expect to find voters and polling officials who are relatively poor and socially powerless and hence easier to bully and intimidate. This may not be racism in its purest form—animus based on nothing other than race—but it's close enough to make decent people want to take a shower. Note to Karl Rove: If the GOP wants to shake its image as the home of modern racism, this is not the way to go about it.

Considering that for Ford, the full-time black man who wrote this stuff, Carl Rove is the only Republican he thinks worthy of his 'advice', I'll go him one better.

As a black republican I hereby offer a $500 reward for any photograph of an identifyable Republican operative at a polling place who is harassing African American voters.

You have until Friday to produce the evidence.

I will deliver it to the Chairman of the California Republican Party and I will find out the names of the people involved and I will publish them here.

I find it hard to believe that the same Republicans I know, who don't have time or experience to get off their backsides and get out the black vote are more motivated to go into those same neighborhoods and pester blackfolks. It simply doesn't make sense to me. So show me the money, and I'll show you the money.

Election Update

Homeland Security

A Nation of a Million Hoodies

I haven't hooked up my own music today at the office, so I've been forced to listen to Eminem twice already this morning. I hear that he's been getting a bit of press for his political vehemence which is clearly anti-something. I think it's a safe bet to say that he's anti-Bush but I really didn't pay that much attention to the video. On the other hand I know what he said last time around in 'Square Dance' so it wouldn't surprise me at all.

The image from the video which sticks out is that of the little cartoon Boriqua getting all pissed and putting on her hoodie. It's a great image that hasn't been done enough in animation. The only folks that have come close are the animators of that Disney flick Voyage to Atlantis. I know it's a Disney flick because it hasn't yet come out of DVD, and well Disney are the masters of artificial scarcity. (It's going to bite them in the ass within 4 years, take my word for it.)

But what really strikes me off-balance is the notion of people reflecting 8 years hence that it was an Eminem video that got them off their duffs to vote, which is a lot more than you can say for Public Enemy. Of course all us grownup know that Kerry won't stand up for Em, and only a kid would swing lefty for Kerry, but they're all part of the equation. (Only my part of the equation is correct.) I would expect rather that the hoodie kids would rather toss eggs at the next WTO or maybe spraypaint somebody's fur coat, but what do I know? Bottom line: I give PE more credibility.

I like the excitement generated and a big turnout is a nice but what will Em be rapping about this time next year. Not politics I'll bet. Good marketing though. We'll see what MTV is playing next week this time.

California Initiatives

I have conservative rules of thumb that I just invented for dealing with the questions of bond issues and initiatives.

#1. Initiatives are 'nice to have'.
If it were truly a compelling political issue, then the legislature would be dealing with it. That may not always be the case with California's especially wimpy legislature because they are so accustomed to punting to the voters at large.

This year it is especially obvious that the California Assembly is trying to get the voting public to cosign their girly resolve. I'm going to reject as much of that as possible. None of the initiatives gets the benefit of the doubt.

#2. Bonds Double.
This Children's Hospital bond for 750 million will cost 1.5Billion. The stem cell research bond for 3 Billion will cost 6 to pay back. It's no wonder these are on the ballot, because no legislator in his slippery right mind would dare try to pay for such stuff, attractive though it may be, when our deficit is so huge.

This is not the way to go. I'm sorry but I don't need stem cells. With three billion we might find a way to help what, 2000 cancer patients in 8 years maybe? I like Jerry's Kids as much as anyone, but spare me the telethon, and don't take it out of my taxes.

#.3 Immediate Taxes are Best
If you're going to tax me, let it be simple and direct. A half percent sales tax for police officers? That I can deal with. I still might not vote for 'A' depending on how charitable I feel. I feel that Bratton is doing a good job and I'm rather perversely proud that LA doesn't have so many donut-bellied cops per capita as the Windy City or the Big Apple. So the existing strategy works well enough.

Ugliness

Trudy Schuett

Trudy Schuett is fighting the good fight. Check it.

For the month of October, Domestic Violence Awareness month, I've been tracking news stories on domestic violence and encouraging my readers to contact their local media to correct some of the many factual errors that keep getting recycled. Each of the stories appearing at the DesertLight Journal represents at least one e-mail either correcting an error or thanking the reporter for their balanced coverage.

It is my stance that current programs, which are rooted in feminist anti-marriage, anti-family ideals have failed miserably in serving their communities and have in fact, impeded progress in finding solutions to this problem. Even though these kinds of programs have been in place for 30 years, they still only promote divorce as the single solution and have made no effort to seek other options. In addition, in most cases they still refuse to recognize or help either male victims or female abusers. Websites for these organizations are often more concerned with placing blame and providing divorce assistance than anything else.

I believe that I've had some impact -- pieces that appeared in the Arizona Republic early in the month reflected only the feminist side of the story, but a more-recent article was more objective. My local paper, the Yuma Daily Sun, which has mainly ignored my efforts in the past will be providing a link to my site as a resource in an upcoming article on domestic violence. I've also noticed a general trend away from the simple repeat of bogus statistics in the media as the month wore on.

Checke it out.