Cobb

John Yoo: The Unnamed

This is the interview that people who have decided to hate Judge Gonzales don't want to hear. It is by John Yoo, the man who is unnamed because of the political pressure Democrats seek to bring to bear in the cause of besmirching George W. Bush, and throw yet another monkey wrench at the idea that Bush is not racist.

John Yoo is a former deputy assistant attorney general in the office of legal counsel of the Dept. of Justice. He wrote some of the memos in the new book The Torture Papers, including some pertaining to the Geneva Conventions and the definition of torture. He signed off on the memo denying prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Conventions to al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Yoo is currently a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley.

The basic fact to overcome that our liberal friends can't seem to wrap their heads around is that the Geneva Convention is a treaty. You don't treat people who are not signers to the treaty the same as you do with signers of the treaty.

Yoo says:

It is also worth asking whether the strict limitations of Geneva make sense in a war against terrorists. Al Qaeda operates by launching surprise attacks on civilian targets with the goal of massive casualties. Our only means for preventing future attacks, which could use WMDs, is by acquiring information that allows for pre-emptive action. Once the attacks occur, as we learned on Sept. 11, it is too late. It makes little sense to deprive ourselves of an important, and legal, means to detect and prevent terrorist attacks while we are still in the middle of a fight to the death with al Qaeda. Applying different standards to al Qaeda does not abandon Geneva, but only recognizes that the U.S. faces a stateless enemy never contemplated by the Conventions.

At this point in time, I'm a little bit behind in what Gonzales has done specifically with Yoo's start. If I remember correctly, he did begin by assenting to such a premise as that above (made by Yoo last May) back in 2002 when GWBush was just beginning to look at what the law said. The 'quaint' and 'provincial' adjectives in his comments about the Geneva Convention where then blown completely out of proportion, and then he magically became the Torture Guy.

John Yoo: The Unnamed

This is the interview that people who have decided to hate Judge Gonzales don't want to hear. It is by John Yoo, the man who is unnamed because of the political pressure Democrats seek to bring to bear in the cause of besmirching George W. Bush, and throw yet another monkey wrench at the idea that Bush is not racist.

John Yoo is a former deputy assistant attorney general in the office of legal counsel of the Dept. of Justice. He wrote some of the memos in the new book The Torture Papers, including some pertaining to the Geneva Conventions and the definition of torture. He signed off on the memo denying prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Conventions to al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Yoo is currently a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley.

The basic fact to overcome that our liberal friends can't seem to wrap their heads around is that the Geneva Convention is a treaty. You don't treat people who are not signers to the treaty the same as you do with signers of the treaty.

Yoo says:

It is also worth asking whether the strict limitations of Geneva make sense in a war against terrorists. Al Qaeda operates by launching surprise attacks on civilian targets with the goal of massive casualties. Our only means for preventing future attacks, which could use WMDs, is by acquiring information that allows for pre-emptive action. Once the attacks occur, as we learned on Sept. 11, it is too late. It makes little sense to deprive ourselves of an important, and legal, means to detect and prevent terrorist attacks while we are still in the middle of a fight to the death with al Qaeda. Applying different standards to al Qaeda does not abandon Geneva, but only recognizes that the U.S. faces a stateless enemy never contemplated by the Conventions.

At this point in time, I'm a little bit behind in what Gonzales has done specifically with Yoo's start. If I remember correctly, he did begin by assenting to such a premise as that above (made by Yoo last May) back in 2002 when GWBush was just beginning to look at what the law said. The 'quaint' and 'provincial' adjectives in his comments about the Geneva Convention where then blown completely out of proportion, and then he magically became the Torture Guy.

How Many Cops Have To Die?

I just got off the phone with Doc, who is loading up on carbs. Apparently he's going to be on duty all night due to some firey protests happening at Parker Center right about now. Enraged citizens are saying things like 'how many cops have to die before you change?'.

All this comes in the wake of a recent decision against car thief Stanley Williams who got bopped upside the noggin with a flashlight last year. Nobody's going to fire the cop who did it, citing a lack of evidence of excessive force, ie the cop didn't even draw blood. Urban Leaguer John Mack was looking for cosmic justice there, and Hahn himself decided to spite his own police chief for election brownie points with the assumed 'black vote'.

Now just the other night, yet another car theif who took cops on a high speed chase was apprehended - with a rain of bullets. This kid happened to be a black teenaged kid on his way down the slippery slope. And so there is predictable outrage.

Doc is pissed at the local media because, as he put it, "Never in a million years are they going put a mic in front of a reasonable black person who says Williams had it coming." Amen to that.

Obligatorily, it's always a gross miscarriage of justice when suspects die before they get their day in court. But that goes without saying. What needs to be said in this and every case are the particulars. The particulars here are that this kid's father recently died and there was nobody to pick up the slack. A tale as old and tragic as time itself. This poor kid hit a brick wall and that's a shame, but he was running in the wrong direction to begin with.

I'm pleased to see that there are no headlines on this unrest at the moment, but I don't watch local news. If there is bad news tomorrow in the idiot escalation of this series of unfortunate events, I hope it's less than lethal. Nobody has to die over this crap.

How Many Cops Have To Die?

I just got off the phone with Doc, who is loading up on carbs. Apparently he's going to be on duty all night due to some firey protests happening at Parker Center right about now. Enraged citizens are saying things like 'how many cops have to die before you change?'.

All this comes in the wake of a recent decision against car thief Stanley Williams who got bopped upside the noggin with a flashlight last year. Nobody's going to fire the cop who did it, citing a lack of evidence of excessive force, ie the cop didn't even draw blood. Urban Leaguer John Mack was looking for cosmic justice there, and Hahn himself decided to spite his own police chief for election brownie points with the assumed 'black vote'.

Now just the other night, yet another car theif who took cops on a high speed chase was apprehended - with a rain of bullets. This kid happened to be a black teenaged kid on his way down the slippery slope. And so there is predictable outrage.

Doc is pissed at the local media because, as he put it, "Never in a million years are they going put a mic in front of a reasonable black person who says Williams had it coming." Amen to that.

Obligatorily, it's always a gross miscarriage of justice when suspects die before they get their day in court. But that goes without saying. What needs to be said in this and every case are the particulars. The particulars here are that this kid's father recently died and there was nobody to pick up the slack. A tale as old and tragic as time itself. This poor kid hit a brick wall and that's a shame, but he was running in the wrong direction to begin with.

I'm pleased to see that there are no headlines on this unrest at the moment, but I don't watch local news. If there is bad news tomorrow in the idiot escalation of this series of unfortunate events, I hope it's less than lethal. Nobody has to die over this crap.

Keyhole

Keyhole

Michael Jackson, Secular Sex & The War on Terror

I've been watching more VH1 than ever recently. My Tivo misrecoreded and I got stuck with 60 minutes of a 90 minute documentary on the Gloved One. I think that Michael Jackson is going down because he's guilty.

Jackson is guilty of thinking that he could trust children. When he his found guilty, it's going to destroy him. He won't be right for a decade. It will be interesting to see Michael Jackson on the other side of this, but what's going to happen in immediate future is fairly easy to guess.

First of all, anyone who sees this documentary as I did, will finally understand Jackson's weirdness. This is the first time any explanation made perfect logical sense to me. Sparing you the details, Jackson believed all sex was damnibly evil according to the principles of Jehovah's Witnesses. The cleanest possible sex, therefore would be sex with children. At most, probably dry humping and touching through clothes, but who knows really? This is the guy who read the bible to prostitutes sent up to his room.

Why Michael Jackson decided that he needed to be purer than anyone in the world is anybody's guess. But the unintended consequence of it was that he couldn't simply screw chicks like an ordinary dude. Screwing chicks, and I use this terminology purposefully, would have saved his soul from a jury of his peers. However, Mr. Jackson felt the need to be extraordinary. His prison was of his own creation, something he couldn't escape partially because he was always wealthy enough to keep it functional.

Bottom line. Jackson is a victim of his own tortured psyche. By refusing the dirt of the world, his unique dirt has no sympathy in the world. He never learned to make lemonade from life's lemons. Instead, he sought the company of people in his own narrow emotional niche. Boy stars, boy cripples, Vienna choirboys, those enchanted with a naive innocent boy's eye view of the world.

The interesting thing is that it's not too difficult to believe that Jackson's perversion is not particularly shocking. The story of how he became to be a pedophile is more shocking and intersting than the perversity of what I believe to be the alleged crimes. Our taboo's [in]appropriate as they may be are sufficient to put him under the jail, but I hardly expect that the evidence will show Jackson to be a predator. Think of the evil genius who obsessively strokes his cat. It's not normal, but is the cat really harmed?

We know, or perhaps we in the lay public only think we know, how vicious and sick child predators can be. And there is plenty about our society that makes it damned near impossible to grow up straight given our general inability to talk straight about sex. So it's going to be difficult to get perspective on exactly how sick an entertainer with a dirty sinner boy's view of sex is.

For one thing, the revelations about the source of Jackson's dysfunction is more of an indictment of the Jehovah's Witnesses than anything. Their moral constraints on sex cause an insurmoutable conflict for Jackson, as they must for anyone with any moderate amount of contact with contemporary American society. Even as I think about Witnesses I have known, the parallels are striking. Jackson, and possibly millions of other Americans, are psychologically damaged by draconian restrictions on sexual expression to the point at which no sexual act can be considered moral, but rather a necessary evil.

That there are sects of Christianity that impose such restrictions on sex, it is the fact that America is a secular democracy that gives us the right to laws which supercede such 'wills of God'. (And we secularists hope (to God?) that Iraqis choose wisely in this regard).

I think it is arguable that we are sexier people because we Americans must deal with this sexual duality. If Prince couldn't scandalize us, he wouldn't be sexy. If the Moral Majority hadn't piped up, Janet's would be just another boob. The very fact that there is something to virginity in the American psyche is what made Britney Spears whatever it was that she was. Oh yeah, a sex symbol. America creates and markets sex symbols on a daily basis. It's a huge economy that would flop over dead in a truly libertine society. Sexual liberty (freedom under the law) is a very large part of the capital L Liberty that we cherish. It should surprise no one that when we raise our hackles against other societies we look at the status of women. One of the first questions we ask is whether their women can be sexy or not. I'm not saying we're right or that our judgement is sound in any case, but we ask all the same. After all, why would any American care about 'female genital mutilation'? Because we think of sexual pleasure as a fundamental right, a measure of liberty.

So denying freedom to Michael Jackson, a sex symbol if there ever was one, strikes a deep chord. There must be a great deal of righteousness attending this matter, because we will need to strike a blow for the right kind of sexual freedom. We'll draw a line in the sand. We'll send a message. We'll say 'never again'.

It's too bad that we couldn't have gotten over this hump with Gary Condit. The death of Chandra Levy was a great deal more scandalous in all kinds of dimensions than Jacksons bumps and grinds, dirty as they may be. But there's the unwritten rule that only black men truly exemplify evils. White men may offend and make errors in judgement. They may even become tragic anti-heros, but only the black man can embody the spirit of wrong. And in case you forgot, we have a black serial killer too. There are two white exceptions to the embodiment of evil rule, however. They are Clinton and Bush. Other than that, we save our best hateration for the uppity and errant. Condit might have broken that cycle, but instead some lunatics dropped a bomb on our moral circus and we had to get serious.

Today, however, there is no question about who is legitimately in the White House. We have given our souls back to the Beatles again and the Patriots are victorious. The Iraqis have spoken loud and clear in defense of democracy. Rice and Gonzales have integrated the top jobs in government service to the astonishment of nobody, and Cheech and Chong are getting back together. In other words, all is well with America, so we can get back to the mindless business of moral mythologies. By the way, I keep forgetting to mention because I kept forgetting that everyone forgot about terrorism marring the Rose Parade or the Super Bowl.

We're complacent again. What a country!

It is my sincere hope that our complacency has not taken place in a vaccuum. We should by now have been hardened to the concepts of 'advanced interrogation' and unilateralism. We should already be nice and deaf to the lamentations of Sudanese women and babies in our complacency. This hardness will prepare us for the inevitable dirty bombs and ugliness to come in the asymmetrical war we wage on behalf of truly free people in the first world and the hope that the rest of the planet hopes this way. I think we are properly reserving our rage for the right enemies, and we are prepared to spill the right amount of blood in our righteous indignation.

But I do worry that we may not have enough money in the bank.

Chances are that, for the sanctity of family and the protection of children, such a deviant as Michael Jackson will be removed from the public and sent to his doom under some prison somewhere. He's sure to get his due process. And most certainly every American with an opinion will note that justice was done. By the time he gets out of jail, we'll have our Megan's Law databases indexed by Google with alerts automatically emailed just in case he is released to a halfway house in our immediate vicinity. In fact, we'll know about all of the sexual predators and violent offenders by then, if the current trends continue. but I wonder if we'll be any safer from those who are truly after our balls.

Michael Jackson, Secular Sex & The War on Terror

I've been watching more VH1 than ever recently. My Tivo misrecoreded and I got stuck with 60 minutes of a 90 minute documentary on the Gloved One. I think that Michael Jackson is going down because he's guilty.

Jackson is guilty of thinking that he could trust children. When he his found guilty, it's going to destroy him. He won't be right for a decade. It will be interesting to see Michael Jackson on the other side of this, but what's going to happen in immediate future is fairly easy to guess.

First of all, anyone who sees this documentary as I did, will finally understand Jackson's weirdness. This is the first time any explanation made perfect logical sense to me. Sparing you the details, Jackson believed all sex was damnibly evil according to the principles of Jehovah's Witnesses. The cleanest possible sex, therefore would be sex with children. At most, probably dry humping and touching through clothes, but who knows really? This is the guy who read the bible to prostitutes sent up to his room.

Why Michael Jackson decided that he needed to be purer than anyone in the world is anybody's guess. But the unintended consequence of it was that he couldn't simply screw chicks like an ordinary dude. Screwing chicks, and I use this terminology purposefully, would have saved his soul from a jury of his peers. However, Mr. Jackson felt the need to be extraordinary. His prison was of his own creation, something he couldn't escape partially because he was always wealthy enough to keep it functional.

Bottom line. Jackson is a victim of his own tortured psyche. By refusing the dirt of the world, his unique dirt has no sympathy in the world. He never learned to make lemonade from life's lemons. Instead, he sought the company of people in his own narrow emotional niche. Boy stars, boy cripples, Vienna choirboys, those enchanted with a naive innocent boy's eye view of the world.

The interesting thing is that it's not too difficult to believe that Jackson's perversion is not particularly shocking. The story of how he became to be a pedophile is more shocking and intersting than the perversity of what I believe to be the alleged crimes. Our taboo's [in]appropriate as they may be are sufficient to put him under the jail, but I hardly expect that the evidence will show Jackson to be a predator. Think of the evil genius who obsessively strokes his cat. It's not normal, but is the cat really harmed?

We know, or perhaps we in the lay public only think we know, how vicious and sick child predators can be. And there is plenty about our society that makes it damned near impossible to grow up straight given our general inability to talk straight about sex. So it's going to be difficult to get perspective on exactly how sick an entertainer with a dirty sinner boy's view of sex is.

For one thing, the revelations about the source of Jackson's dysfunction is more of an indictment of the Jehovah's Witnesses than anything. Their moral constraints on sex cause an insurmoutable conflict for Jackson, as they must for anyone with any moderate amount of contact with contemporary American society. Even as I think about Witnesses I have known, the parallels are striking. Jackson, and possibly millions of other Americans, are psychologically damaged by draconian restrictions on sexual expression to the point at which no sexual act can be considered moral, but rather a necessary evil.

That there are sects of Christianity that impose such restrictions on sex, it is the fact that America is a secular democracy that gives us the right to laws which supercede such 'wills of God'. (And we secularists hope (to God?) that Iraqis choose wisely in this regard).

I think it is arguable that we are sexier people because we Americans must deal with this sexual duality. If Prince couldn't scandalize us, he wouldn't be sexy. If the Moral Majority hadn't piped up, Janet's would be just another boob. The very fact that there is something to virginity in the American psyche is what made Britney Spears whatever it was that she was. Oh yeah, a sex symbol. America creates and markets sex symbols on a daily basis. It's a huge economy that would flop over dead in a truly libertine society. Sexual liberty (freedom under the law) is a very large part of the capital L Liberty that we cherish. It should surprise no one that when we raise our hackles against other societies we look at the status of women. One of the first questions we ask is whether their women can be sexy or not. I'm not saying we're right or that our judgement is sound in any case, but we ask all the same. After all, why would any American care about 'female genital mutilation'? Because we think of sexual pleasure as a fundamental right, a measure of liberty.

So denying freedom to Michael Jackson, a sex symbol if there ever was one, strikes a deep chord. There must be a great deal of righteousness attending this matter, because we will need to strike a blow for the right kind of sexual freedom. We'll draw a line in the sand. We'll send a message. We'll say 'never again'.

It's too bad that we couldn't have gotten over this hump with Gary Condit. The death of Chandra Levy was a great deal more scandalous in all kinds of dimensions than Jacksons bumps and grinds, dirty as they may be. But there's the unwritten rule that only black men truly exemplify evils. White men may offend and make errors in judgement. They may even become tragic anti-heros, but only the black man can embody the spirit of wrong. And in case you forgot, we have a black serial killer too. There are two white exceptions to the embodiment of evil rule, however. They are Clinton and Bush. Other than that, we save our best hateration for the uppity and errant. Condit might have broken that cycle, but instead some lunatics dropped a bomb on our moral circus and we had to get serious.

Today, however, there is no question about who is legitimately in the White House. We have given our souls back to the Beatles again and the Patriots are victorious. The Iraqis have spoken loud and clear in defense of democracy. Rice and Gonzales have integrated the top jobs in government service to the astonishment of nobody, and Cheech and Chong are getting back together. In other words, all is well with America, so we can get back to the mindless business of moral mythologies. By the way, I keep forgetting to mention because I kept forgetting that everyone forgot about terrorism marring the Rose Parade or the Super Bowl.

We're complacent again. What a country!

It is my sincere hope that our complacency has not taken place in a vaccuum. We should by now have been hardened to the concepts of 'advanced interrogation' and unilateralism. We should already be nice and deaf to the lamentations of Sudanese women and babies in our complacency. This hardness will prepare us for the inevitable dirty bombs and ugliness to come in the asymmetrical war we wage on behalf of truly free people in the first world and the hope that the rest of the planet hopes this way. I think we are properly reserving our rage for the right enemies, and we are prepared to spill the right amount of blood in our righteous indignation.

But I do worry that we may not have enough money in the bank.

Chances are that, for the sanctity of family and the protection of children, such a deviant as Michael Jackson will be removed from the public and sent to his doom under some prison somewhere. He's sure to get his due process. And most certainly every American with an opinion will note that justice was done. By the time he gets out of jail, we'll have our Megan's Law databases indexed by Google with alerts automatically emailed just in case he is released to a halfway house in our immediate vicinity. In fact, we'll know about all of the sexual predators and violent offenders by then, if the current trends continue. but I wonder if we'll be any safer from those who are truly after our balls.

Martyr

Martyr

Don't Be So Quick To Judge GoDaddy

The best commercial for the Superbowl was the one with the cat and the butcher knife. Gotta love that.

Second best belongs to GoDaddy for pushing the goddamned limits. Fox deserves a big kick in their pants for pulling the second spot and I hope GoDaddy gets their money back. It was the only commercial that brought back the irreverance of the dot com revolution commercials. They held up their end. Better yet, they're blogging about the censorship. It's second best, but also most significant.

Condi's Black Ops II: Tyrone Willingham

According to the WaPo's Russakof:

Perhaps Rice's biggest impact on Stanford football was as provost in 1994, when according to Tyrone Willingham, she was "very, extremely instrumental in my becoming head coach."

Rice as provost and Willingham, one of the few African American head coaches in Division I-A, sent a powerful signal of Stanford's vision of opportunity, recalls athletic director Leland. In 1999, Willingham coached the team to its first Rose Bowl appearance in 28 years, and Leland remembers watching the game that clinched the bowl berth from the press box with Rice. With two minutes to go, Leland says, Stanford recovered a fumble, sealing the victory, "and right then, Condi jumped up and cried out, 'There is a God!' I said it was fitting that for 4,000 years we've debated this question, and Condi Rice has settled it -- at a football game."

I had heard that Rice was a big football fan, but I really had no idea until I read this piece. Thanks George.

RIP: Ossie Davis

Ossie Davis was the man a lot of people think Morgan Freeman is. Ossie Davis is the old man of black acting and activism, a man with a soul two miles deep. A couple weeks ago I was helping Moms with one of her many computer problems, and so being in her bedroom I had to bear up under the weight of the Gospel Channel, whichever one that is. As part and parcel of this was a family drama about a middle aged woman who began to lose her mind from Alzheimers. It had the distinct feel of an episode of 'Touched by an Angel' except for the fact that it ran feature length. As hokey and soapy as it was, there were many truly tender moments in dramatization of things we think we see on television but actually don't. What happens when mom gets Alzheimers. In this drama, which I'm pretty sure was funded by Dobson's group. Davis played the magic negro. He came with the appropriate bibical hardline in a soft reassuring drawl, every time the husband in the story felt as though it were time to give up some virtue.

I've never been a huge fan nor a great critic of Ossie Davis. He and Ruby Dee have always represented a pedestrian kind of morality which became intimately familiar over the years. Together, the were like soft pokes in the shoulder, never too bossy but always in the same spot. Whenever you thought of a role for Ossie Davis, you knew exactly what you were going to get. A wise old black man coming out of a tradition of love and respect who was going to show you, one way or another, the right thing to do.

This familiarity was something our generation rebelled against. Davis aptly represented everything dusty about the Old School. Twice in Spike Lee's films, Davis represented an old authority being challenged by youth's vision. As 'Da Mayor' in 'Do the Right Thing', he was called a drunk and ridiculed. That very black tradition of having 'an elder' in every neighborhood was called into question. I believe that to me, and to many others Davis himself became permanently associated with a powerless generation of African Americans whose moral vision was more appropriate to 'Negroes' rather than contemporary blacks dealing with new social issues. On the other hand, in 'Get on the Bus', Lee's film about the Million Man March, Davis represented the disgust an older generation with its well-wrapped universe of culture and respect had for a younger generation often confused and adrift in a world of freedoms they never sacrificed to earn. In either aspect, Lee perceptively cast Ossie Davis, a man you can hardly look at without calling 'Pops'.

Davis and Dee were producers for a long time in their careers and I will be setting the Tivo to absorb more of them. Ruby Dee must be crying relentlessly now. That they could be apart is a greater tragedy than his death.

The passing of such actors, pioneers breaking barriers, will be a long season. We will be looking at Poitier and others one day. Buy their DVDs now, if you can get 'em.

RIP: Ossie Davis

Ossie Davis was the man a lot of people think Morgan Freeman is. Ossie Davis is the old man of black acting and activism, a man with a soul two miles deep. A couple weeks ago I was helping Moms with one of her many computer problems, and so being in her bedroom I had to bear up under the weight of the Gospel Channel, whichever one that is. As part and parcel of this was a family drama about a middle aged woman who began to lose her mind from Alzheimers. It had the distinct feel of an episode of 'Touched by an Angel' except for the fact that it ran feature length. As hokey and soapy as it was, there were many truly tender moments in dramatization of things we think we see on television but actually don't. What happens when mom gets Alzheimers. In this drama, which I'm pretty sure was funded by Dobson's group. Davis played the magic negro. He came with the appropriate bibical hardline in a soft reassuring drawl, every time the husband in the story felt as though it were time to give up some virtue.

I've never been a huge fan nor a great critic of Ossie Davis. He and Ruby Dee have always represented a pedestrian kind of morality which became intimately familiar over the years. Together, the were like soft pokes in the shoulder, never too bossy but always in the same spot. Whenever you thought of a role for Ossie Davis, you knew exactly what you were going to get. A wise old black man coming out of a tradition of love and respect who was going to show you, one way or another, the right thing to do.

This familiarity was something our generation rebelled against. Davis aptly represented everything dusty about the Old School. Twice in Spike Lee's films, Davis represented an old authority being challenged by youth's vision. As 'Da Mayor' in 'Do the Right Thing', he was called a drunk and ridiculed. That very black tradition of having 'an elder' in every neighborhood was called into question. I believe that to me, and to many others Davis himself became permanently associated with a powerless generation of African Americans whose moral vision was more appropriate to 'Negroes' rather than contemporary blacks dealing with new social issues. On the other hand, in 'Get on the Bus', Lee's film about the Million Man March, Davis represented the disgust an older generation with its well-wrapped universe of culture and respect had for a younger generation often confused and adrift in a world of freedoms they never sacrificed to earn. In either aspect, Lee perceptively cast Ossie Davis, a man you can hardly look at without calling 'Pops'.

Davis and Dee were producers for a long time in their careers and I will be setting the Tivo to absorb more of them. Ruby Dee must be crying relentlessly now. That they could be apart is a greater tragedy than his death.

The passing of such actors, pioneers breaking barriers, will be a long season. We will be looking at Poitier and others one day. Buy their DVDs now, if you can get 'em.

The P Factor

The P Factor

Black in the 80s

Oh man VH1 has done it again. If you are not watching 'Black in the 80s', you're missing a great series. It's all in there. Lou Gossett, Spike Lee, Run DMC and all that. Them was my days, brudda!

BTW. If you ever get a chance to see Eddie Murphy in Boomerang, you get closer to any picture ever to where my head was at as a single man in corporate America. It's still hilarious when I look at it today and think about me and my running buddies talking about women's feet.

Eye on Ford

Submandave makes a prediction that I think passes muster.

Democrat Congressman Harold Ford Jr. from Tennessee will "cross the aisle" and support President Bush in establishing private Social Security accounts. He will end up one of Bush's major bipartisan partners and be invited to the signing of the final Bill.

Ford has always struck me as the kind of individual who smells like a Republican, in the good way of course. But he's got too much sense to abandon what has been handed to him, so he's a Democrat. He doesn't strike me as the kind of individual who might get his dander up like a Zell Miller, but I don't think he has much other company in the Democratic South, such as it is.

Ford has instant BAP credibility. Let's see how quickly it gets impugned if the prediction comes true.

Eye on Ford

Submandave makes a prediction that I think passes muster.

Democrat Congressman Harold Ford Jr. from Tennessee will "cross the aisle" and support President Bush in establishing private Social Security accounts. He will end up one of Bush's major bipartisan partners and be invited to the signing of the final Bill.

Ford has always struck me as the kind of individual who smells like a Republican, in the good way of course. But he's got too much sense to abandon what has been handed to him, so he's a Democrat. He doesn't strike me as the kind of individual who might get his dander up like a Zell Miller, but I don't think he has much other company in the Democratic South, such as it is.

Ford has instant BAP credibility. Let's see how quickly it gets impugned if the prediction comes true.

I Don't Just Happen To Be Republican

Geopolitically, I'm a textbook neocon, although tending toward the cheap hawk scenario. I believe American Imperialism can be a force for post-colonial liberation. Economically, I'm for open borders, open shops, no minimum wages and pollution commodities markets.

I'm for minimalist good government and private elistism when it comes to social policy. I think the American safety net should be infrastructural rather than personal - that is America should not guarantee free health care, rather they should guarantee the country's ability to stop polio and smallpox from ever becoming a problem here again. That safety net should be indexed to a reasonable incremental margin above Western standards moving up and down over time in line with economic performance. The idea that Roosevelt's Great Society should be a permanent endowment does not make sense to me.

I agree with the president that borders should be open and that America should have a net immigrant growth taking advantage of the peace dividend of the 20thC. That is to say until China gets its act together, we should expect to educate Chinese immigrants and grow this country that way..on down the line to Bangladesh. Repatriation is imperial thereby guaranteeing that what works best here is ultimately implemented there - America as global incubator & VC.

That's way more Republican than Democrat, and I think the reason has to do with principled socialism in the Democratic party, which I do not abide. I think the global business model is going to win and destroy the Democrats' economic base and discredit their political theory. The wane of Big Labor and the rise of Undocumented Labor is the indisputable evidence that socialists are on the losing side. Business American Style, complete with its 401Ks, paid maternity leave, stock options, flexible medical accounts, flatter organizations, real-time communications & computing, entrepreneurial quickness, diversity training and other first world innovations are all evolutions of capitalist corporatism and the revolution of business management ala Peter Drucker. The left had nothing to do with it. It was the rise of the Yuppie and the MBA that accounted for American business productivity over the past 25 years, now this is a real investor class. This thing GWBush calls the Ownership Society is real, and the fact that more Americans read the Wall Street Journal than ever before is no accident.

Such things don't just 'happen to be' Republican. It is the real legacy of the Reagan Revolution in contradistinction to the Saturday Night Live vision of America. We can look to our culture and see where the lines are drawn.

I am most impressed with GWBush's open, above board use of the regular Army (and Reserves) in dealing with Iraq. Just having watched Harrison Ford in Clancy's 'Clear and Present Danger', it is amply clear that the American Presidency has been dramatically changed and indeed liberated from hand-wringing secrecy. There is a huge difference between what GWBush had done today (and ironically what Rumsfeld sought to downsize in terms of diversifying the Powell Doctrine) and what Reagan did twenty years ago. Whether it was the nature of Saddam's national threat or the irony of using covert action against terrorist cells, the end result of marching large numbers of American troops to overturn a foreign power is tremendously beneficial for the reputation of America as a nation that does what it says, rather than as a nation that sends 'military advisors' around the globe in pursuit of secret policies. This to me is GWBush's greatest legacy, one that makes America honest and plain.

Domestically, I believe that we should be able to sustain a broad variety of classes and that it is vital that the same old American dream be accessible to an internal Third World. I have a great deal of disdain for the necessity to legislate and otherwise regulate into existence of affordable housing. I think that the political leadership of the nation should be responsible to keep business feet to the anti-trust fire in order to sustain a diversity of mid and small cap businesses that operate on thinner margins in more downscale communities and regions. In other words, instead of small towns in the midwest emptying out because all profits have been sucked out for the sake of mega-efficiency that some lower performing businesses remain solvent and provide steady, if low income jobs.

That means insurance reform, and restrictions on massive capital investments. It means American businesses above a certain level should aim to be globally competitive, not just use their accumulated capital to consolidate and cherry pick smaller businesses for mergers and acquisitions. I understand that this is a constraint on the road up, but it can also force a kind of efficiency downward. Again, to my way of thinking, it is simply anti-trust.

That's all for now, I smell a new tangent coming on.

I Don't Just Happen To Be Republican

Geopolitically, I'm a textbook neocon, although tending toward the cheap hawk scenario. I believe American Imperialism can be a force for post-colonial liberation. Economically, I'm for open borders, open shops, no minimum wages and pollution commodities markets.

I'm for minimalist good government and private elistism when it comes to social policy. I think the American safety net should be infrastructural rather than personal - that is America should not guarantee free health care, rather they should guarantee the country's ability to stop polio and smallpox from ever becoming a problem here again. That safety net should be indexed to a reasonable incremental margin above Western standards moving up and down over time in line with economic performance. The idea that Roosevelt's Great Society should be a permanent endowment does not make sense to me.

I agree with the president that borders should be open and that America should have a net immigrant growth taking advantage of the peace dividend of the 20thC. That is to say until China gets its act together, we should expect to educate Chinese immigrants and grow this country that way..on down the line to Bangladesh. Repatriation is imperial thereby guaranteeing that what works best here is ultimately implemented there - America as global incubator & VC.

That's way more Republican than Democrat, and I think the reason has to do with principled socialism in the Democratic party, which I do not abide. I think the global business model is going to win and destroy the Democrats' economic base and discredit their political theory. The wane of Big Labor and the rise of Undocumented Labor is the indisputable evidence that socialists are on the losing side. Business American Style, complete with its 401Ks, paid maternity leave, stock options, flexible medical accounts, flatter organizations, real-time communications & computing, entrepreneurial quickness, diversity training and other first world innovations are all evolutions of capitalist corporatism and the revolution of business management ala Peter Drucker. The left had nothing to do with it. It was the rise of the Yuppie and the MBA that accounted for American business productivity over the past 25 years, now this is a real investor class. This thing GWBush calls the Ownership Society is real, and the fact that more Americans read the Wall Street Journal than ever before is no accident.

Such things don't just 'happen to be' Republican. It is the real legacy of the Reagan Revolution in contradistinction to the Saturday Night Live vision of America. We can look to our culture and see where the lines are drawn.

I am most impressed with GWBush's open, above board use of the regular Army (and Reserves) in dealing with Iraq. Just having watched Harrison Ford in Clancy's 'Clear and Present Danger', it is amply clear that the American Presidency has been dramatically changed and indeed liberated from hand-wringing secrecy. There is a huge difference between what GWBush had done today (and ironically what Rumsfeld sought to downsize in terms of diversifying the Powell Doctrine) and what Reagan did twenty years ago. Whether it was the nature of Saddam's national threat or the irony of using covert action against terrorist cells, the end result of marching large numbers of American troops to overturn a foreign power is tremendously beneficial for the reputation of America as a nation that does what it says, rather than as a nation that sends 'military advisors' around the globe in pursuit of secret policies. This to me is GWBush's greatest legacy, one that makes America honest and plain.

Domestically, I believe that we should be able to sustain a broad variety of classes and that it is vital that the same old American dream be accessible to an internal Third World. I have a great deal of disdain for the necessity to legislate and otherwise regulate into existence of affordable housing. I think that the political leadership of the nation should be responsible to keep business feet to the anti-trust fire in order to sustain a diversity of mid and small cap businesses that operate on thinner margins in more downscale communities and regions. In other words, instead of small towns in the midwest emptying out because all profits have been sucked out for the sake of mega-efficiency that some lower performing businesses remain solvent and provide steady, if low income jobs.

That means insurance reform, and restrictions on massive capital investments. It means American businesses above a certain level should aim to be globally competitive, not just use their accumulated capital to consolidate and cherry pick smaller businesses for mergers and acquisitions. I understand that this is a constraint on the road up, but it can also force a kind of efficiency downward. Again, to my way of thinking, it is simply anti-trust.

That's all for now, I smell a new tangent coming on.

Mo Greene: Gone

I'm sure that in the world of Track & Field, somewhere out there Maurice Greene is getting his props. But as we approach this Super Bowl Sunday, amidst all the blather about what [black] athletes lack in character, we in the American public have truly forgotten this man.

It hasn't been a year since the Olympic Games in Athens. What can you remember? If I say 'Marion Jones', what's the first thing that comes to mind? Drug scandal? It's a shame that she was slandared like that. We destroy those whom we are supposed to respect and raise higher the profile of twisted characters. What's wrong with us?

I have endured long, long, long conversations about the value of whathisname who almost sorta mooned some football fans a couple weeks ago. But in my universe nobody from the NFL approaches the inspiration of Olympic athletes. From my odd point of view, football players are most fun when they are something of charicatures of themselves. 'Remember the Titans' factor notwithstanding, people like Emmitt Smith are boring. Give me Deion Sanders or Jeff McMahon any day. What football fans are loathe to admit is that the days of Vince Lombardi are long gone. Football is no longer the noble metaphor it once was, and there is no team capable of being 'Americas Team' the way the Packers once were.

There are coaches out there in basketball and football, notably Bill Belichik and Larry Brown who have done well to generate all for one and one for all attitude that shuns the cult of personality around superstardom. But none of the major leagues today seem capable of sustaining such an attitude. Major League sports are in the same kind of crisis as is the Catholic Church and it speaks poorly of us all. But what's worse is that we ignore those possessed of singular talents and character, like Maurice Greene.

Greene remains the patron saint athlete of this blog, as I said in the beginning. He's the man in my book though he may not have the popularity he deserves. And as the antics and scandals escalate in the world of pro sports and people look for some way to outdo or undo what was done last year at the Super Bowl, there I will sit mildly amused and a little disgusted.

Mo Greene: Gone

I'm sure that in the world of Track & Field, somewhere out there Maurice Greene is getting his props. But as we approach this Super Bowl Sunday, amidst all the blather about what [black] athletes lack in character, we in the American public have truly forgotten this man.

It hasn't been a year since the Olympic Games in Athens. What can you remember? If I say 'Marion Jones', what's the first thing that comes to mind? Drug scandal? It's a shame that she was slandared like that. We destroy those whom we are supposed to respect and raise higher the profile of twisted characters. What's wrong with us?

I have endured long, long, long conversations about the value of whathisname who almost sorta mooned some football fans a couple weeks ago. But in my universe nobody from the NFL approaches the inspiration of Olympic athletes. From my odd point of view, football players are most fun when they are something of charicatures of themselves. 'Remember the Titans' factor notwithstanding, people like Emmitt Smith are boring. Give me Deion Sanders or Jeff McMahon any day. What football fans are loathe to admit is that the days of Vince Lombardi are long gone. Football is no longer the noble metaphor it once was, and there is no team capable of being 'Americas Team' the way the Packers once were.

There are coaches out there in basketball and football, notably Bill Belichik and Larry Brown who have done well to generate all for one and one for all attitude that shuns the cult of personality around superstardom. But none of the major leagues today seem capable of sustaining such an attitude. Major League sports are in the same kind of crisis as is the Catholic Church and it speaks poorly of us all. But what's worse is that we ignore those possessed of singular talents and character, like Maurice Greene.

Greene remains the patron saint athlete of this blog, as I said in the beginning. He's the man in my book though he may not have the popularity he deserves. And as the antics and scandals escalate in the world of pro sports and people look for some way to outdo or undo what was done last year at the Super Bowl, there I will sit mildly amused and a little disgusted.

Remembering Turkle

I found this paragraph:

Turkle (1984) vividly describes nerd self-identity in her ethnographic study of undergraduate men at MIT. In one social event "they flaunt their pimples, their pasty complexions, their knobby knees, their thin, underdeveloped bodies" (196); in interviews they describe themselves as losers and loners who have given up bodily pleasure in general and sexual relations in particular. But Turkle notes that this physical self-loathing is compensated for by technological mastery; hackers, for example, see themselves as "holders of an esoteric knowledge, defenders of the purity of computation seen not as a means to an end but as an artist's material whose internal aesthetic must be protected" (207).

Back in the first days of the internet, the world turned to people like Donna Hoffman, Howard Rheingold and Sherry Turkle to understand what the wired world was all about. Each of these individuals are alive and kicking in their respective disciplines and better informed about the medium than ever. Yet somehow in the wake of the acceptance of the stereotypical 'geek', their particular studied genius is ignored. These days we are just as likely to grant credibility to anyone with a fetish for cartoon penguins or puts numerals in their spelling of computer jargon. More's the pity.

These days, there seems to be a boom market for manifestos. But they all seem to be pointed to the cult of the dead cow and other elite programmers, hackers, coders, crackers, open source devotees, distro evangelists, p2p mavens and others heavily invested in the new world of geek cool. But this is all Guild-speak. The rest of us need to pull our heads up periodically to look at how all this effects us as people. Turkle's paragraph, now 21 years old, reminds us that there are basic human things going on here. So let's try to keep that in mind, eh?

Next up, decoding the latest manifesto.

Remembering Turkle

I found this paragraph:

Turkle (1984) vividly describes nerd self-identity in her ethnographic study of undergraduate men at MIT. In one social event "they flaunt their pimples, their pasty complexions, their knobby knees, their thin, underdeveloped bodies" (196); in interviews they describe themselves as losers and loners who have given up bodily pleasure in general and sexual relations in particular. But Turkle notes that this physical self-loathing is compensated for by technological mastery; hackers, for example, see themselves as "holders of an esoteric knowledge, defenders of the purity of computation seen not as a means to an end but as an artist's material whose internal aesthetic must be protected" (207).

Back in the first days of the internet, the world turned to people like Donna Hoffman, Howard Rheingold and Sherry Turkle to understand what the wired world was all about. Each of these individuals are alive and kicking in their respective disciplines and better informed about the medium than ever. Yet somehow in the wake of the acceptance of the stereotypical 'geek', their particular studied genius is ignored. These days we are just as likely to grant credibility to anyone with a fetish for cartoon penguins or puts numerals in their spelling of computer jargon. More's the pity.

These days, there seems to be a boom market for manifestos. But they all seem to be pointed to the cult of the dead cow and other elite programmers, hackers, coders, crackers, open source devotees, distro evangelists, p2p mavens and others heavily invested in the new world of geek cool. But this is all Guild-speak. The rest of us need to pull our heads up periodically to look at how all this effects us as people. Turkle's paragraph, now 21 years old, reminds us that there are basic human things going on here. So let's try to keep that in mind, eh?

Next up, decoding the latest manifesto.

Eason Jordan: Tick Tick Tick

In the steady disintermediation presaging a major shift in the way industries do business, Eason Jordon is being hoisted on the petard of disclosure. Blogs do it better than major media, and as others in the blogswarm have noted correctly, we are going to hound down and parse the question of journalistic privilege during wartime.

For excellent reading on the subject, see Rony Abovitz.

Right now I believe that US soldiers were too busy doing real soldiering, that nobody here really reported, to target harmeless and discredited Arab journalists. But I would not be surprised if Arab embeds on the rebel side got blown up collaterally, many times.

But the larger question, it seems to me, keeps coming back to the nature of what our attention sustains, and what value it truly has. I certainly feel indebted to those journalists who are truly war correspondants, like Dexter Filkins who are not afraid to go into the middle of the shooting and bring some perspective about battles onto our screens.

Somewhere in this blog, I have advocated for WarTV, all combat all the time. I want to see video images from the fronts. I know this to be impossible - there is a certain Heisenberg effect that would be generated by live coverage that no self-respecting general wants. I think the 'video game' coverage of laser guided bombs is about as close as we're ever going to get to that. Short of this kind of 'trial of the century' wall to wall coverage, I think we as an audience have to judge the effect our attention has on what data becomes ethically distributable. In other words, our hunger for news is the sole reason that journalists are in the middle of wars anyway.

If Knowledge = Pain, then the curious are masochistic, and voyuers are sadistic. (wrings hands, twists moustache) Let's see what happens as the clock runs down on Eason Jordan.

Everybody Loves Oprah

I'm going to throw out a wild idea. I've been in some fairly vigorous debate over at Vision Circle with the gents who make me think the hardest about black politics. There, I wrote the following:

Perhaps Democrats have only recently become non-racist enough for their liberal ideas to come from behind the condescention of radical chic and actually deliver some worthwhile patronage to black constituents. Hey but that's not my issue. I discount the racism on both sides, and thus have taken away the power of 'we love black people' to focus on more hardball issues - like the kind of permanent economic improvement that is not dependent on the political will of the majority.

As soon as I wrote that, it occurred to me that there is a very cynical way of looking at Oprah's success. America loves Oprah because no matter how wealthy and powerful she becomes, she is always open, friendly, accessible and (gulp) non-threatening. Oprah stays middle class. No matter what she does, she's still right there.

In the North, they say you can get high & mighty as you like, but don't get too close. In the South they say you can get as close as you like, but don't get too high & mighty. Oprah is from the South, can't you tell? She seems incapable of offending, and I believe that is her genuine personality. I don't dislike Oprah, but I do like Cosby better. I favor my father, who is from the North, can't you tell?

I am far from convinced that blacks and whites in this country have separate destinies. But there remain a host of things we have yet to do as blacks that stand out to me like sore thumbs. Unfortunately, those are things that are generally reserved for upper class folks with money, brains and/or power. So my sore thumbs are not considered 'authentic'. I know better than anyone that unique rage of the privileged class that Ellis Cose wrote about a decade ago. Every now and then, we get closer to the kind of promised land I could retire in, but I still look at films like Eddie Murphy's Boomerang and dream on.

What is the power of 'I love black people'? How does it disarm and disable? Just throwing it out there.

Everybody Loves Oprah

I'm going to throw out a wild idea. I've been in some fairly vigorous debate over at Vision Circle with the gents who make me think the hardest about black politics. There, I wrote the following:

Perhaps Democrats have only recently become non-racist enough for their liberal ideas to come from behind the condescention of radical chic and actually deliver some worthwhile patronage to black constituents. Hey but that's not my issue. I discount the racism on both sides, and thus have taken away the power of 'we love black people' to focus on more hardball issues - like the kind of permanent economic improvement that is not dependent on the political will of the majority.

As soon as I wrote that, it occurred to me that there is a very cynical way of looking at Oprah's success. America loves Oprah because no matter how wealthy and powerful she becomes, she is always open, friendly, accessible and (gulp) non-threatening. Oprah stays middle class. No matter what she does, she's still right there.

In the North, they say you can get high & mighty as you like, but don't get too close. In the South they say you can get as close as you like, but don't get too high & mighty. Oprah is from the South, can't you tell? She seems incapable of offending, and I believe that is her genuine personality. I don't dislike Oprah, but I do like Cosby better. I favor my father, who is from the North, can't you tell?

I am far from convinced that blacks and whites in this country have separate destinies. But there remain a host of things we have yet to do as blacks that stand out to me like sore thumbs. Unfortunately, those are things that are generally reserved for upper class folks with money, brains and/or power. So my sore thumbs are not considered 'authentic'. I know better than anyone that unique rage of the privileged class that Ellis Cose wrote about a decade ago. Every now and then, we get closer to the kind of promised land I could retire in, but I still look at films like Eddie Murphy's Boomerang and dream on.

What is the power of 'I love black people'? How does it disarm and disable? Just throwing it out there.

No Wood No Peace

No Wood No Peace

The UN Mandate

I can't believe my ears. I heard people today defending the UN inspectors and privileging their process over that of the US military.

I don't see how anybody could say that given the spineless mandate of UN peacekeepers. This is the UN that is careful not to call what's going on in Darfur 'genocide'. I actually believe they have a point, but that's not the issue. The issue is what a UN mandate actually mandates, and I am gradually being convinced that it means nothing.

When I awoke from my bourgie American haze to the gutbucket reality of geopolitics late in the 80s, one of the situations that got me to wake up was that of the wars for Namibia. In little more than an afternoon at some rally, I was alerted to the fact of Namibia's wealth in uranium, and the proxy wars being fought in and around that country. Suddenly Namibia was on my map. And when I looked at any political map, I found that South Africa had a claim on Walvis Bay, the port city of Namibia that facilitated the global trade in uranium. The UN began trying to act on this matter in 1978, and the territory wasn't settled until 1994.

Am I under the influcence of the film 'Hotel Rwanda'? Yes. Do I think that the closing of the UN Mission in Iraq was cowardly? Yes. I believe that anyone who is not afraid to shoot at UN Peacekeepers is capable of defeating their efforts and rendering all UN proclamations to the effectiveness level of prayer.

Oil for Food scandal aside, it is becoming clear to me that the UN bureacracy is not actually effective. NGOs do a better job. What exactly do the world trust the UN to accomplish? I'm not exactly sure, but it has proven itself to be a poor arbiter.

State of the Union - Live Blogging

18:08 Even Kerry is clapping.

... (missed a few minutes)

:11 - An active force for good in the world. Confident and strong.
Quite true.

:12
Well, he's jumping straight into it. The legacy. Prosecuted corporate criminals. That's not Ashcroft's doing so much as Spitzer's. Nobody punished Microsoft.

:13
The left side doesn't like making tax cuts permanent. 150 government programs that 'don't fulfill essential priorities'. But I do like 'wisely or not at all'.

:15
Yay for community colleges. Yay for increasing Pell Grants.

:17
Every time he says 'small business' people just yell. Boom boom boom, he's just ripping through this stuff. It sounds like the British Parliament with all the Hear Hears.

Environmentally responsible forms of energy. Conservation, and Nukes. I knew the nukes were coming. Good on that. Hydrogen fuels, yeah whatever to that. Clean Coal will make a bigger difference. More secure, less dependent on foreign energy.

:20
Uh Oh Immigration.
Rejects amnesty? What's that all about. Hmm. A reversal?

Social Security. Honor its great purposes. Strengthen and save Social Security. Do I smell triangulation?

55 years and older. No changes. AARP gets what they want.

2042? Don't tell me about 2042.

It should not be a small matter for the US Congress. The left side of the aisle wants to punt.

Smart move now in citing a whole bunch of ideas. They're all on the table.

:27
He sets out the ground rules. Sounds good to me. OK it's not worth all that much clapping. Now this is starting to get boring. It sounds like he's got the whole thing laid out.

:31
Does everybody like this Thrift Savings Plan? Well he's pitching it you young people.

:32
Government should not undermine the values..OK Constitutional amendment? I thought that was dead. This is all for applause.

Human life never bought or sold as a commodity. Not bad. CSspan can only focus on one side of the aisle here it seems.

OK now the activist judge thing. Energize the base. OK

:35
We continue to support faith-based...OK.
Young men an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence. That sounds like Compassionate Conservatism. Parents & Pastors, Coaches and Community leaders. Good one. So now Laura Bush takes the stage. Deft move W.

:36
Reauthorize Ryan White Act. Hey the left side stood up. 'Everybody has AIDS'. Oops there got the brothers standing up quick.

:38
DNA evidence. Barry Scheck is smiling. Yay. Special training in capital cases? Good.

:41
I didn't realize that Dennis Hastert was that fat.

:42
NATO is training Iraqi troops? I didn't know that. Maybe they are good for something after all these years.

:43
The conditions that feed the ideology of terror. Yeah right, we're going to change the conditions of the world? The only force powerful enough.. is the force of human freedom. Is that so hard to believe? Did Zarqawi say that?

:44
Our aim is to build and preserve a community of free nations. Because democracies respect their own citizens and their neighbors. Very good stuff. Ukraine, Palestine. Nicely.

:46
Secretary of State Rice. I like the sound of that. 350 million aint much. We can afford that. Is peace within reach? Hmm. I sorta doubt it. But let's give it six months.

Oooh. Call out the Saudis. Call out Egypt. That's what I'm talking about. Confront Syria. Well the Syrians have a weak government, what can they really do?

:48
Iran must give up its Uranium enrichment program. As you stand for your own libery, America stands with you. We have a nice example of this now don't we?

Aren't people getting tired of standing up and then sitting down again? Well about the Iraqi elections they really do have to. Nice story about the woman who got her parents out of bed. Hey Sofia. This his your night. Brilliant. Is her finger still blue? No matter. This is the highlight of the evening.

A small group of extremists will not overturn the will of the Iraqi people.

:55
An effective command structure for the Iraqis. Iraqis must be able to secure their own country. W, knows that he cannot afford to abandon Iraqis. Anybody who saw the movie 'Three Kings' knows that story. We will not set an artificial timetable. Good.

:59
Paen to the troops. Injured troops. Right on target. This is shaping up to be a pretty damned good speech. Bryon Norwood. Hugs. Oh man I'm about to cry.

:01
Confidence in freedom's power to change the world. We live in the country where the biggest dreams are born. Good stuff.

--
OK it's over. Whew. Somebody give me a tissue.
Thank God for CSPAN, I couldn't stand to hear the spin coming in right away. Good Night.

State of the Union - Live Blogging

18:08 Even Kerry is clapping.

... (missed a few minutes)

:11 - An active force for good in the world. Confident and strong.
Quite true.

:12
Well, he's jumping straight into it. The legacy. Prosecuted corporate criminals. That's not Ashcroft's doing so much as Spitzer's. Nobody punished Microsoft.

:13
The left side doesn't like making tax cuts permanent. 150 government programs that 'don't fulfill essential priorities'. But I do like 'wisely or not at all'.

:15
Yay for community colleges. Yay for increasing Pell Grants.

:17
Every time he says 'small business' people just yell. Boom boom boom, he's just ripping through this stuff. It sounds like the British Parliament with all the Hear Hears.

Environmentally responsible forms of energy. Conservation, and Nukes. I knew the nukes were coming. Good on that. Hydrogen fuels, yeah whatever to that. Clean Coal will make a bigger difference. More secure, less dependent on foreign energy.

:20
Uh Oh Immigration.
Rejects amnesty? What's that all about. Hmm. A reversal?

Social Security. Honor its great purposes. Strengthen and save Social Security. Do I smell triangulation?

55 years and older. No changes. AARP gets what they want.

2042? Don't tell me about 2042.

It should not be a small matter for the US Congress. The left side of the aisle wants to punt.

Smart move now in citing a whole bunch of ideas. They're all on the table.

:27
He sets out the ground rules. Sounds good to me. OK it's not worth all that much clapping. Now this is starting to get boring. It sounds like he's got the whole thing laid out.

:31
Does everybody like this Thrift Savings Plan? Well he's pitching it you young people.

:32
Government should not undermine the values..OK Constitutional amendment? I thought that was dead. This is all for applause.

Human life never bought or sold as a commodity. Not bad. CSspan can only focus on one side of the aisle here it seems.

OK now the activist judge thing. Energize the base. OK

:35
We continue to support faith-based...OK.
Young men an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence. That sounds like Compassionate Conservatism. Parents & Pastors, Coaches and Community leaders. Good one. So now Laura Bush takes the stage. Deft move W.

:36
Reauthorize Ryan White Act. Hey the left side stood up. 'Everybody has AIDS'. Oops there got the brothers standing up quick.

:38
DNA evidence. Barry Scheck is smiling. Yay. Special training in capital cases? Good.

:41
I didn't realize that Dennis Hastert was that fat.

:42
NATO is training Iraqi troops? I didn't know that. Maybe they are good for something after all these years.

:43
The conditions that feed the ideology of terror. Yeah right, we're going to change the conditions of the world? The only force powerful enough.. is the force of human freedom. Is that so hard to believe? Did Zarqawi say that?

:44
Our aim is to build and preserve a community of free nations. Because democracies respect their own citizens and their neighbors. Very good stuff. Ukraine, Palestine. Nicely.

:46
Secretary of State Rice. I like the sound of that. 350 million aint much. We can afford that. Is peace within reach? Hmm. I sorta doubt it. But let's give it six months.

Oooh. Call out the Saudis. Call out Egypt. That's what I'm talking about. Confront Syria. Well the Syrians have a weak government, what can they really do?

:48
Iran must give up its Uranium enrichment program. As you stand for your own libery, America stands with you. We have a nice example of this now don't we?

Aren't people getting tired of standing up and then sitting down again? Well about the Iraqi elections they really do have to. Nice story about the woman who got her parents out of bed. Hey Sofia. This his your night. Brilliant. Is her finger still blue? No matter. This is the highlight of the evening.

A small group of extremists will not overturn the will of the Iraqi people.

:55
An effective command structure for the Iraqis. Iraqis must be able to secure their own country. W, knows that he cannot afford to abandon Iraqis. Anybody who saw the movie 'Three Kings' knows that story. We will not set an artificial timetable. Good.

:59
Paen to the troops. Injured troops. Right on target. This is shaping up to be a pretty damned good speech. Bryon Norwood. Hugs. Oh man I'm about to cry.

:01
Confidence in freedom's power to change the world. We live in the country where the biggest dreams are born. Good stuff.

--
OK it's over. Whew. Somebody give me a tissue.
Thank God for CSPAN, I couldn't stand to hear the spin coming in right away. Good Night.

Straight Liberals

It has been a long time since I have called myself a 'straight liberal', but I recall the occasion that made me think so. It was a visit to a club in Los Angeles called Catch One which was, at the time, a eye-opening if not mind-blowing experience.

During that particular point in my life, around about 1989, I was getting tired of my old buppie cadre and decided to go out on a limb, experimenting with such radical concepts such as reggae music and fashion, Pacifica Radio, and Multicultural Politics. I ended up being something of a spoken word artist and a host of other things, but I never forgot where I had come from or why I left. And it was this sense of realism that made me choose the term 'straight liberal' because while my new girlfriend who very much resembled Joie Lee suggested that I explore my feminine side, I wasn't at all conflicted about my own sexuality nor my distrust of 'the personal as political'. Still, I was not averse to letting such ideas run free in my mind, and I surely recognized the power of such artistic endeavors as Marlon Riggs' 'Tongues Untied' and Mapplethorpe's photographs.

I think that my experience of those years was instructive in that I got enough of a taste for the boho lifestyle to understand its limits, strengths and weaknesses. After about 4 years of it, I got married to my old buppie girlfriend and never looked back. More recently I have viewed much gay activism with skepticism, especially that over the question of marriage. It may be the particular set of politically and culturally active gays I came to respect, but I never could see that wedding rings and mainstream social acceptance were their endgame. My recent smackdown of Larry Kramer speaks to this.

Trolling Negrophile for potential ways and means to improve my blogtraffic, I came across the following:

The black gay movement has been hijacked. Yes hijacked by these —self-promoting ambulance chasing looking pretty for the camera manufactured cookie cutter stepford fags who are into activism because they could not cut it in Hollywood. Or America's next top male model. Or the AIDS divas who are mostly, though not all, terribly dysfuctional. They hold groups of black men hostage with their self-righteous rhetoric and "brothas are dying" proclamations while they finance their trips to get manicures and wear their designer clothes to AIDS conferences bringing to mind Mother Teresa in Manolos. Not that people doing good work should not get paid and wear what they want. But thinking of some AIDS divas that are not doing good work, who I would not let run my little cousin’s lemonade stand, or my grandmother’s yard sale, let alone an AIDS agency, brings to mind the corrupt preacher stealing out of the collection plate.

I can't say exactly what I expect from hearing sexuality discussed intelligently, but I have to admit that if there's something to be learned, you could do a lot worse than Charles Stephens.

I've not expected much from, nor invested much time in black gay blogging or writing in general. In the long view of things, I think that our intimate relationships speak more to issues of self than they do to issues of society. I believe that the gulf between the personal and the political is, and should be wide - that ones duty to others is a matter of selfless obligation. To bring ones sexual history into it is simply inappropriate, and quite frankly selfish. I thought of that in particular yesterday as Terri Gross interviewed the black daughter of the late senator & arch segrgationist Strom Thurmond. His sexual exploits were legendary to the Washington insiders. To the rest of us, he was something else entirely, but we needn't have known the whole man to know enough, and none of us should have been the ones to judge. His paternity serves no political purpose, and yet I recall the outrage and theorizing that went into much of the verbiage of that scandal. In the end what good did it do us? None. That woman is no political symbol, she's somebody's daughter.

And so we are faced with the problem of this blurring of lines in American politics in which people put greater and greater amounts at stake in having their own existential situation confirmed or denied in the personal politics of the days or the personalities of politicians. Meanwhile, I think men of goodwill are turning their backs to the entire charade. That spells trouble.

We should not confuse the personal with the political and it's about time people started standing up and saying so. I care about the health and robustness of our pluralistic democracy, but I don't care about what you do on your knees, religiously or sexually. I think more people should make the distinction and I'm glad to find one whom I think has.

Straight Liberals

It has been a long time since I have called myself a 'straight liberal', but I recall the occasion that made me think so. It was a visit to a club in Los Angeles called Catch One which was, at the time, a eye-opening if not mind-blowing experience.

During that particular point in my life, around about 1989, I was getting tired of my old buppie cadre and decided to go out on a limb, experimenting with such radical concepts such as reggae music and fashion, Pacifica Radio, and Multicultural Politics. I ended up being something of a spoken word artist and a host of other things, but I never forgot where I had come from or why I left. And it was this sense of realism that made me choose the term 'straight liberal' because while my new girlfriend who very much resembled Joie Lee suggested that I explore my feminine side, I wasn't at all conflicted about my own sexuality nor my distrust of 'the personal as political'. Still, I was not averse to letting such ideas run free in my mind, and I surely recognized the power of such artistic endeavors as Marlon Riggs' 'Tongues Untied' and Mapplethorpe's photographs.

I think that my experience of those years was instructive in that I got enough of a taste for the boho lifestyle to understand its limits, strengths and weaknesses. After about 4 years of it, I got married to my old buppie girlfriend and never looked back. More recently I have viewed much gay activism with skepticism, especially that over the question of marriage. It may be the particular set of politically and culturally active gays I came to respect, but I never could see that wedding rings and mainstream social acceptance were their endgame. My recent smackdown of Larry Kramer speaks to this.

Trolling Negrophile for potential ways and means to improve my blogtraffic, I came across the following:

The black gay movement has been hijacked. Yes hijacked by these —self-promoting ambulance chasing looking pretty for the camera manufactured cookie cutter stepford fags who are into activism because they could not cut it in Hollywood. Or America's next top male model. Or the AIDS divas who are mostly, though not all, terribly dysfuctional. They hold groups of black men hostage with their self-righteous rhetoric and "brothas are dying" proclamations while they finance their trips to get manicures and wear their designer clothes to AIDS conferences bringing to mind Mother Teresa in Manolos. Not that people doing good work should not get paid and wear what they want. But thinking of some AIDS divas that are not doing good work, who I would not let run my little cousin’s lemonade stand, or my grandmother’s yard sale, let alone an AIDS agency, brings to mind the corrupt preacher stealing out of the collection plate.

I can't say exactly what I expect from hearing sexuality discussed intelligently, but I have to admit that if there's something to be learned, you could do a lot worse than Charles Stephens.

I've not expected much from, nor invested much time in black gay blogging or writing in general. In the long view of things, I think that our intimate relationships speak more to issues of self than they do to issues of society. I believe that the gulf between the personal and the political is, and should be wide - that ones duty to others is a matter of selfless obligation. To bring ones sexual history into it is simply inappropriate, and quite frankly selfish. I thought of that in particular yesterday as Terri Gross interviewed the black daughter of the late senator & arch segrgationist Strom Thurmond. His sexual exploits were legendary to the Washington insiders. To the rest of us, he was something else entirely, but we needn't have known the whole man to know enough, and none of us should have been the ones to judge. His paternity serves no political purpose, and yet I recall the outrage and theorizing that went into much of the verbiage of that scandal. In the end what good did it do us? None. That woman is no political symbol, she's somebody's daughter.

And so we are faced with the problem of this blurring of lines in American politics in which people put greater and greater amounts at stake in having their own existential situation confirmed or denied in the personal politics of the days or the personalities of politicians. Meanwhile, I think men of goodwill are turning their backs to the entire charade. That spells trouble.

We should not confuse the personal with the political and it's about time people started standing up and saying so. I care about the health and robustness of our pluralistic democracy, but I don't care about what you do on your knees, religiously or sexually. I think more people should make the distinction and I'm glad to find one whom I think has.

Compacts & Contracts

I am optimistic but have mixed feelings about the new overtures that Republicans and Newt Gingrich are making towards African Americans. The new 'Mayflower Compact for Black America' from the Gingrich camp and Bishop Harry Jackson's 'Contract with Black America on Moral Values' both strike me as mixed blessings.

These days, it is taken as an article of faith by just about everyone that American Evangelical Christians belong to the Republican Party. To the extent that these initiatives are generated out of that particular sentiment, problems will arise. Were I one of those Evangelicals, I would wonder exactly how closely the direction from the Party is meeting the aspirations of the grass roots. From where I stand it looks like a match made in Heaven, but working out the details will keep everyone in Purgatory for a time. Those details are that everyone in the Party is not genuinely evangelical though they may be looking at the Black Vote that way. Conversely everyone in the black right is not evangelical and they may percieve the Republican effort to be too narrow.

But even where expectations meet in the middle, I see two important caveats. The first is that one should understand that this is all about votes and the broad appeals are going to be used primarily for marginal purposes. The Republican Party is not going to spend proportional amounts of money to go after all Evangelicals, but as many as possible especially in battleground states. Every candidate that gets generated out of this effort is not going to be dipped in the Holy Spirit. In the end, what matters to Republicans is beating down Democrats and if you can beat down the Devil doing so, that's a bonus, but not a necessity. People who think this is an opportunity to glorify His Holy Name are going to be dissappointed in the end. It's going to come down to money, just you wait and see. Living in California as I do I cannot imagine this initiative being as successful as it will be in the Black South. Then again, I might be surprised.

The second and more particular point is that it can be assumed that this effort for the Black Vote will be considered a subset of the Evangelical Christian vote, in otherwords a subset with a twist rather than a whole new constituency. These will be people who are looking for blacks who sing Amazing Grace with rhythm, but they won't know who Kirk Franklin is. This represents a bold opportunity in the meet and greet department, and I'm going to cash in on the new openness too. I'm not evangelical by a longshot, so watch my elbows.

Aside from those gotchas, there is a lot of good afoot. To the extent that getting black votes is a self-fulfilling prophesy and in the end my goals are all about diversifying the heretofore monolithic black vote, this is all good news.

One particularly bright spot in the news is this meeting as described by the LA Times:

Last week, about two dozen black civic and religious leaders who agree with Bush on moral issues visited the White House, where they received the president's thanks and were urged to support his plan to revamp Social Security.

One who attended the meeting, the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers of Boston, said the post-election period marked the beginning of a "significant transformation" among African Americans, a clear move toward the GOP.

Rivers had been hosted in the White House by Bill and Hillary Clinton, who heralded his work with gangs in Boston. He also has conferred with Police Chief William J. Bratton about Los Angeles' gang problem. Lately, Rivers has been embraced by Bush, whom he supported last year.

I am critical but not skeptical. I have seen the synergy between white Republicans and conservative blacks up close and personal. It is genuine and real. I've seen the freckle-faced call for moral clarity and patriotic respect, and I've heard the dark-complected 'Amen!'. Yet anyone who thinks this marriage is going to be easy is not paying close enough attention. To my eyes, the kind of fire and brimstone preachers who are down for a moral crusade in terms of anti-gay activism are a far cry from the Thomas Sowells of the world and strangers to the world of Republican fundraising.

Further, I'm saying it loud and clear right here, that there are going to be struggles for attention in this initiative. The old Talented Tenth contingent, speaking for myself and my existential partners, who are well integrated and upscale are going to seethe a bit while Republican operatives attend to the Moral Minority. But the fact is that ministers do deliver votes whereas all we can deliver is talent and legitimacy. This takes place during a time when moderate Republicans such as myself, McCain, Whitman, Giuliani & Schwartzeneggar are having serious beefs with social conservatives.

I recognized this dynamic a while back, and I was bit surprised to see that my neocon, pro-business angle on Republican politics was not the dominant position from the black perspective. I expected to see more Walter Williams types in the room, instead we were more than offset by the Jesse Lee Petersens. But that's my own activist gripe; the ordinary black voter is going to be well served by this friction and jousting. The point is that there is attention and attraction.

In the end, geting below the surface of the skin game is what the Republicans need to do, and they are about to do so. I hope people are smart enough at this juncture to hold tight to their core beliefs and wrangle out some real horsetrading patronage out of these initiatives. Republicans are going to have to be patient and recognize that diversity in the African American electorate is real - that this one size is not going to fit all. Black voters and political activists are going to have to recognize that they don't get to co-opt the entire racial demographic.

I understand clearly that the advantage in this game at this time lies with black evangelicals. My partner in this struggle of the Conservative Brotherhood, LaShawn Barber, exemplifies where the nexus of the larger American Right and Black Conservatives are meeting right now. Her popularity is self-evident and on the rise. But just like the Brotherhood, black moderates and conservatives are not in ideological lockstep. But all of us are hoping that intiatives of this sort will generate a breakthrough in the national dialog and will energize a diversity of interests in the real diversity of the black electorate.

The bottom line is that both political parties are going to have to work harder to get and keep the attention, votes and money of African Americans. These initiatives, particular and peculiar as they may be across the broad spectrum of political initiatives to increase the black vote, are welcome and indeed encouraged. Here's to hoping that people are smart about it.

Compacts & Contracts

I am optimistic but have mixed feelings about the new overtures that Republicans and Newt Gingrich are making towards African Americans. The new 'Mayflower Compact for Black America' from the Gingrich camp and Bishop Harry Jackson's 'Contract with Black America on Moral Values' both strike me as mixed blessings.

These days, it is taken as an article of faith by just about everyone that American Evangelical Christians belong to the Republican Party. To the extent that these initiatives are generated out of that particular sentiment, problems will arise. Were I one of those Evangelicals, I would wonder exactly how closely the direction from the Party is meeting the aspirations of the grass roots. From where I stand it looks like a match made in Heaven, but working out the details will keep everyone in Purgatory for a time. Those details are that everyone in the Party is not genuinely evangelical though they may be looking at the Black Vote that way. Conversely everyone in the black right is not evangelical and they may percieve the Republican effort to be too narrow.

But even where expectations meet in the middle, I see two important caveats. The first is that one should understand that this is all about votes and the broad appeals are going to be used primarily for marginal purposes. The Republican Party is not going to spend proportional amounts of money to go after all Evangelicals, but as many as possible especially in battleground states. Every candidate that gets generated out of this effort is not going to be dipped in the Holy Spirit. In the end, what matters to Republicans is beating down Democrats and if you can beat down the Devil doing so, that's a bonus, but not a necessity. People who think this is an opportunity to glorify His Holy Name are going to be dissappointed in the end. It's going to come down to money, just you wait and see. Living in California as I do I cannot imagine this initiative being as successful as it will be in the Black South. Then again, I might be surprised.

The second and more particular point is that it can be assumed that this effort for the Black Vote will be considered a subset of the Evangelical Christian vote, in otherwords a subset with a twist rather than a whole new constituency. These will be people who are looking for blacks who sing Amazing Grace with rhythm, but they won't know who Kirk Franklin is. This represents a bold opportunity in the meet and greet department, and I'm going to cash in on the new openness too. I'm not evangelical by a longshot, so watch my elbows.

Aside from those gotchas, there is a lot of good afoot. To the extent that getting black votes is a self-fulfilling prophesy and in the end my goals are all about diversifying the heretofore monolithic black vote, this is all good news.

One particularly bright spot in the news is this meeting as described by the LA Times:

Last week, about two dozen black civic and religious leaders who agree with Bush on moral issues visited the White House, where they received the president's thanks and were urged to support his plan to revamp Social Security.

One who attended the meeting, the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers of Boston, said the post-election period marked the beginning of a "significant transformation" among African Americans, a clear move toward the GOP.

Rivers had been hosted in the White House by Bill and Hillary Clinton, who heralded his work with gangs in Boston. He also has conferred with Police Chief William J. Bratton about Los Angeles' gang problem. Lately, Rivers has been embraced by Bush, whom he supported last year.

I am critical but not skeptical. I have seen the synergy between white Republicans and conservative blacks up close and personal. It is genuine and real. I've seen the freckle-faced call for moral clarity and patriotic respect, and I've heard the dark-complected 'Amen!'. Yet anyone who thinks this marriage is going to be easy is not paying close enough attention. To my eyes, the kind of fire and brimstone preachers who are down for a moral crusade in terms of anti-gay activism are a far cry from the Thomas Sowells of the world and strangers to the world of Republican fundraising.

Further, I'm saying it loud and clear right here, that there are going to be struggles for attention in this initiative. The old Talented Tenth contingent, speaking for myself and my existential partners, who are well integrated and upscale are going to seethe a bit while Republican operatives attend to the Moral Minority. But the fact is that ministers do deliver votes whereas all we can deliver is talent and legitimacy. This takes place during a time when moderate Republicans such as myself, McCain, Whitman, Giuliani & Schwartzeneggar are having serious beefs with social conservatives.

I recognized this dynamic a while back, and I was bit surprised to see that my neocon, pro-business angle on Republican politics was not the dominant position from the black perspective. I expected to see more Walter Williams types in the room, instead we were more than offset by the Jesse Lee Petersens. But that's my own activist gripe; the ordinary black voter is going to be well served by this friction and jousting. The point is that there is attention and attraction.

In the end, geting below the surface of the skin game is what the Republicans need to do, and they are about to do so. I hope people are smart enough at this juncture to hold tight to their core beliefs and wrangle out some real horsetrading patronage out of these initiatives. Republicans are going to have to be patient and recognize that diversity in the African American electorate is real - that this one size is not going to fit all. Black voters and political activists are going to have to recognize that they don't get to co-opt the entire racial demographic.

I understand clearly that the advantage in this game at this time lies with black evangelicals. My partner in this struggle of the Conservative Brotherhood, LaShawn Barber, exemplifies where the nexus of the larger American Right and Black Conservatives are meeting right now. Her popularity is self-evident and on the rise. But just like the Brotherhood, black moderates and conservatives are not in ideological lockstep. But all of us are hoping that intiatives of this sort will generate a breakthrough in the national dialog and will energize a diversity of interests in the real diversity of the black electorate.

The bottom line is that both political parties are going to have to work harder to get and keep the attention, votes and money of African Americans. These initiatives, particular and peculiar as they may be across the broad spectrum of political initiatives to increase the black vote, are welcome and indeed encouraged. Here's to hoping that people are smart about it.

Iraq Review

This is an opportunistic time to review my thinking on Iraq, which hasn't changed a great deal since the last time I weighed in on the matter last year.

The >60% voter turnout in Iraq really speaks for itself, and I think that it's about time that people who have been stretching the boundaries of logic and common sense trying to find ulterior motives in the President's intentions ought to admit that they are full of crap. That, not surprisingly, includes a great many Iraqis themselves. But most especially, I'd like to send a boot to the head of those critics who made such a fuss about the meaning of the word 'sovereignty'. Remember that? Still skeptical?

I think that Friedman is dead on target about the Shi'a on stage. They are going to be conciliatory and recognizing the significance of their new legitimacy, they are going to be gracious while the world watches. Importantly, Iranian mullahs should be shaking in their boots. Their ability to suggest that their form of revolution is the only legitimate path toward islamic empowerment has just been savaged by the reality on the ground in Iraq.

For the first time since the LA Riots, I listened to Dan Rather drone on for more than 3 minutes straight and I'm not quite mortified but rather sorry for the old sap. He veers onto a tangent about poor roads, spotty electricity service and no garbage collection. It actually makes sense. So when asked, aside from security, what's holding back these bread and butter issues, he talks about shiite vs sunni and 'slipping into civil war'. Is it me or did he completely elide the question? Here everyone and their mama has been mumbling about Shiite vs Sunni, and then he asserts that the real issues are infrstructural, then when asked about progress on infrastructure he starts in about how the insurgents aren't going anywhere so many more Iraqi police and guardsmen have to be trained.

I'm not as convinced as some that the next government will have great difficulty mustering an army to give rebels the boot. The thing that convinces me that Iraqi nationalism isn't dead are my memories over the design of the new Iraqi flag. There are already reports that the Iraqis are starting to hand over more intel on their fascist bretheren.

Meanwhile not many I've head in the American press are willing to admit that there are secular forces in the Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni slates who will assert themselves. And as soon as the General Assembly begins their constitutional deliberations, these factions are going to have to be identified as well as their positions. No longer will the media have an out to suggest that the three 'groups' are going to rip each other to shreds or 'slip into civil war'. There will be real horsetrading politics going on. I predict that the anti-Bush spinners will focus purely on Iraqi foreign policy and [dis]regard for the US, and basing rights.

Let us recall a bit of the litany. Two days after Christmas, the international press was calling for Rumsfeld's head. It didn't happen. In November, we went hunting for 3,000 rebels in Falluja. We routed them. This past weekend more than twice that many Sunnis voted in the election, Sunnis from Falluja. The end of October saw the end of the Madhi Army. You don't hear anything about al Sadr any longer do you? Also back in those days, Kerry thought he could destroy the administration for missing 380 tons of high explosives out of 406,000 tons already accounted for. Back in the beginning of October, the whiners were sure that a single election wouldn't work and that the country was inevitably headed towards partition.

What would be a good thing to see right about now is some update on the Bremer Report. We haven't really heard anything about the infrastructure in Iraq. We know that 50+ people were murdered over the election weekend and that was a rather high number. That so many Iraqis did their duty and voted begs the unasked question about what they've been doing all these other days when the terrorist bombers are not so busy.

GWBush is still a mediocre president. Going to Iraq is still a good idea. American troops are still crushing militias in rebellion. Al Zarqawi will be the next idiot to get his due. Now back to your regularly scheduled pissing and moaning.

The Metaphysics of the NFL

The Metaphysics of the NFL

Beyond Bombs

Thanks to Kevin McCullough, I discovered an interesting tie in Condi's history. It's an interesting time, now Black History Month, to draw connections. It turns out that Rice knew one of the Four Little Girls of Birmbingham Alabama. She says:

I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, before the Civil Rights movement--a place that was once described, with no exaggeration, as the most thoroughly segregated city in the country. I know what it means to hold dreams and aspirations when half your neighbors think you are incapable of, or uninterested in, anything better.

I know what it's like to live with segregation in an atmosphere of hostility, and contempt, and cold stares, and the ever-present threat of violence, a threat that sometimes erupted into the real thing.

I remembered the bombing of that Sunday school at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. I did not see it happen, but I heard it happen and I felt it happen, just a few blocks away at my father's church. It is a sound that I will never forget, that will forever reverberate in my ears. That bomb took the lives of four young girls, including my friend and playmate Denise McNair. The crime was calculated, not random. It was meant to suck the hope out of young lives, bury their aspirations, and ensure that old fears would be propelled forward into the next generation.

I've long said that history belongs to the survivors, and there's a huge part of American history that few people want to admit to - the wrong side of the Civil Rights Movement. When you watch Eyes on the Prize, you won't find people pointing with pride to their uncles in the white mob. So there's much moral history written in courage that overwrites the despicable acts, and blackfolks have an upper hand in inheriting that. Doing the right thing in Alabama wasn't easy, but for many it was necessary. We are extarodinarily fortunate that Dr. Rice will never forget.

Today, after Iraqis have voted after a long dark period in their history, it is perhaps overly simplistic to draw parallels between the unpopularity of presidential orders to send troops to 'interfere' in affairs of self-governance. But there are many of us who hold certain Constitutional constants to be universal. If we are to be called 'outside instigators', sobeit.

Beyond Bombs

Thanks to Kevin McCullough, I discovered an interesting tie in Condi's history. It's an interesting time, now Black History Month, to draw connections. It turns out that Rice knew one of the Four Little Girls of Birmbingham Alabama. She says:

I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, before the Civil Rights movement--a place that was once described, with no exaggeration, as the most thoroughly segregated city in the country. I know what it means to hold dreams and aspirations when half your neighbors think you are incapable of, or uninterested in, anything better.

I know what it's like to live with segregation in an atmosphere of hostility, and contempt, and cold stares, and the ever-present threat of violence, a threat that sometimes erupted into the real thing.

I remembered the bombing of that Sunday school at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. I did not see it happen, but I heard it happen and I felt it happen, just a few blocks away at my father's church. It is a sound that I will never forget, that will forever reverberate in my ears. That bomb took the lives of four young girls, including my friend and playmate Denise McNair. The crime was calculated, not random. It was meant to suck the hope out of young lives, bury their aspirations, and ensure that old fears would be propelled forward into the next generation.

I've long said that history belongs to the survivors, and there's a huge part of American history that few people want to admit to - the wrong side of the Civil Rights Movement. When you watch Eyes on the Prize, you won't find people pointing with pride to their uncles in the white mob. So there's much moral history written in courage that overwrites the despicable acts, and blackfolks have an upper hand in inheriting that. Doing the right thing in Alabama wasn't easy, but for many it was necessary. We are extarodinarily fortunate that Dr. Rice will never forget.

Today, after Iraqis have voted after a long dark period in their history, it is perhaps overly simplistic to draw parallels between the unpopularity of presidential orders to send troops to 'interfere' in affairs of self-governance. But there are many of us who hold certain Constitutional constants to be universal. If we are to be called 'outside instigators', sobeit.

US Search

I just wasted a perfectly good 2 hours at US Search looking up random people in my contacts list. I found every one of them. It's rather astounding that so much information is available, and yet when you really think about it, it's not so much at all. It's only because I know the people that I know that any of the information is correct. If I didn't know the people at all, I'd take more of the information presented as credible. They say that the test of intelligence is knowing what to discard. True.

I'm buying Schneier's book on IT security, 'Secrets and Lies' to get myself up to date on some basic concepts of security. As well I'm thinking about Ricky Jay and different kinds of confidence games. There's so little we actually know about people, and so many people out there. I am finding at this point in my life that I'm feeling a bit like a teen - that everybody else is having fun with everybody else except me. Only this time I know that people are very disconnected.

Every time I think about the old demographic chestnut that about half of the people in the US are born, live and die within a 50 mile radius it makes me think about Foucault's ideas about sex and proximity. We only think that we are falling in love with the right person, but our experience is far too limited. We love the one we're with, and we try to change them, and we resign ourselves. I'm comfortable with all that, except now I know where several of my ex-girlfriends live. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

But we are getting better about understanding the connections between people. For example, I had no idea that there was a difference between the sexual activity of teens and adults.

Still I didn't pay the 40 bucks it costs to deliver the details for any of my foundlings, which illustrates a principle about privacy. It costs time, effort and money to invade someone's privacy. No security analysis is useful without a cost/benefit analysis. What your information is worth to somebody else is usually a whole lot less than what it's worth to you, so little in fact that it may not be worth going after, even when it's in plain sight.

Lastly, I want to give a plug for HUMINT. I really have a ball watching '24' and shows like that. Go Jack.

Rage

Rage

Manthought 101

Manthought 101

Oh Yeah, That

Oh Yeah, That